Throughout her more than three decades as a force in Virginia politics, state Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) has drawn attention for the withering attacks she has aimed at the commonwealth’s most powerful lawmakers — not just those from the opposing Republican Party but fellow Democrats as well.
Yet it was Lucas’s barbs against President Donald Trump that vaulted her into the national spotlight. She found herself there again on Thursday when the Justice Department announced that it had indicted her and six others, including her two daughters and grandson, for allegedly running an illegal marijuana business.
As she has in the past, Lucas, 82, a leading Democratic power broker in Virginia who serves as the Senate’s president pro tempore, mounted a fierce response, casting the indictment as an attempt to “silence those who stand up to them” and saying, “I will not be intimidated. I will not be bullied. And I will not back down.”
Democratic leaders seized on the indictment’s timing — less than two weeks before the midterm elections — to accuse the Trump administration of carrying out a political attack, though it is an open question whether the case against Lucas will have any significant influence at the polls. Lucas is not on the ballot this year.
“In these polarized times, voters are likely to evaluate this political moment in the context of their own partisanship,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at the University of Mary Washington. “The immediate political impact is likely to be minimal. Democrats will likely say this is just another Reflecting Pool liner case, and Republicans will say it’s another corrupt Democrat.”
The Justice Department’s investigation into Lucas’s cannabis business began during the administration of President Joe Biden, though the probe gained momentum earlier this year, at least publicly, when federal agents raided her Portsmouth offices and a cannabis business she co-owns.
Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom Trump chose to lead the Justice Department over the summer, denied on Thursday that partisanship drove the indictments. “We don’t do political paybacks,” he told reporters at a news conference announcing the charges.
His assertion did not satisfy Democratic leaders. In a joint statement, Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine (D) and Mark Warner (D), as well as Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D), said that the timing of the indictment “certainly raises questions about the DOJ’s motivations.”
Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), in a statement posted on X, said Lucas “and her family deserve the opportunity to present their defense and speak to the allegations.” The governor also said that the indictment’s timing “undermines” the Justice Department’s “previously longstanding policy” of not issuing indictments “close to an election” and “further erodes” trust in the nation’s highest ranking law enforcement agency.
Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax), Virginia’s Democratic Senate majority leader, described in a statement the allegations as “serious” but declined to address the merits of the government’s evidence. He described the case as having been “driven by politics,” pointing out that the Justice Department is led by Blanche, Trump’s “former personal attorney,” and asserting that “this prosecution is being brought by the most corrupt administration in American history.”
Leading Republicans in the state trod cautiously.
Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle (R-Hanover) avoided prejudging Lucas in a statement while vouching for the Justice Department as an entity that was following a “constitutional process.”
“The federal indictment contains serious allegations, and the Justice Department will continue to do its job and get to the bottom of it,” McDougle wrote. He declined to elaborate “while the constitutional process plays out.”
The Republican Party of Virginia declined to comment, referring reporters to McDougle’s statement.
As word of the allegations filtered across Virginia, the state’s political world was rife with speculation about where the investigation could lead.
Joe Morrissey, the former Virginia Democratic state lawmaker who has clashed with fellow Democrats, including Lucas, said he has received calls from a dozen legislators and others in Lucas’s orbit who are concerned that their calls to her may have been wiretapped.
“Right now, Democrats are clamming up tighter than a clam in the hot August sun,” said Morrissey, who is running for Petersburg City Council.
Tim Anderson, a former Republican House delegate who represented a Virginia Beach district, said Democrats are seeking to deflect attention from the seriousness of the charges against Lucas by portraying the case as political.
“She’s going to try to make it about President Trump,” said Anderson, who has tangled with Lucas in the past. “It’s not political. It’s the culmination of her life’s choices.”
The indictment landed with early voting already underway for midterm congressional elections, including two highly competitive House races in the state — one centered in Virginia Beach, another in the Richmond suburbs.
The political environment is especially charged in Lucas’s part of the state, known as Tidewater, which includes the Virginia Beach seat held by Rep. Jen Kiggans (R) and part of the Richmond-area district occupied by Rep. Rob Wittman (R).
TV viewers are seeing back-to-back political ads for both of those races as well as a House contest in North Carolina that is also served by the Norfolk-Virginia Beach media market. Yet news coverage of the Lucas indictment was powerful enough to break through, with TV stations carrying Blanche’s indictment news conference live.
Bob Holsworth, a longtime Richmond political analyst, questioned whether Lucas will have the same political sway in Richmond while under the cloud of the indictment. “She’s had ironclad control over that [finance] committee, members of both parties, and it’s hard for me to imagine that that remains,” he said. “She uses that power, and every single person on that committee goes along with her. Not sure that’s going to happen anymore with her.”
Lucas has invoked her personal story to connect with voters, a story that includes growing up in segregated southeastern Virginia in the 1940s and dropping out of high school to have her first child at the age of 14.
Her father toiled in Norfolk’s naval shipyards, an industry she also entered. She became the first woman to graduate from Norfolk’s ship fitter apprenticeship program.
Lucas entered Virginia politics in the 1980s, becoming the first Black woman elected to the Portsmouth City Council. She was elected to the state Senate in 1991, and she became the first Black lawmaker to rise to president pro tempore in 2019. She also became the first Black senator to chair the Finance and Appropriations Committee.
Over the years, Lucas clashed with Republican governors, including most recently Glenn Youngkin, using her leverage as finance chair to block his $5 billion plan to build a sports arena in Alexandria for the Washington Wizards and Capitals.
But she also has made herself a source of agita for fellow Democrats, publicly accusing Democratic lawmakers in 2016 of passing over Black senators for key committee posts, taking their votes for granted and leaving them to fend for themselves in partisan battles with Republicans.
“I’m getting tired of being treated like I’m invisible,” she groused then.
Lucas achieved national notoriety in April when she used an expletive in a social media post that invoked Trump as she celebrated Virginians voting to redraw the commonwealth’s political map to favor Democrats over Republicans by a 10-1 margin. The state’s highest court later voided the result.
Then, in May, the FBI executed the search warrant at Lucas’s offices and business in Portsmouth. The senator cast the investigation as retribution for Virginia voters approving the redistricting plan.
“I have never been afraid to stand up to Donald Trump.” Lucas said at the time.
The effects of her indictment were evident by noon Thursday when the Virginia State Crime Commission met in Richmond. The seat that would have been occupied by the senator remained vacant.
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