A first-time candidate bankrolled by a Washington-based union PAC just ousted a Virginia Beach incumbent who wouldn't vote to give government employees collective bargaining power — and the people who will pay for those contracts weren't even in the room.
Janet Byrnes, a 38-year-old former police officer and political newcomer, holds a 55% lead over incumbent Amelia Ross-Hammond in District 4, and she's not pretending about how she got there. "I did have a lot of union support, and it did help my campaign," Byrnes told the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. That's not spin — that's a confession.
Here's the transaction: Government employee unions want collective bargaining, which gives them the legal right to negotiate binding contracts with the city over wages, benefits, and working conditions. The city council votes on whether to allow it. So the unions found a candidate who would vote yes, flooded her campaign with cash, and deployed activists to polling places on Election Day. Byrnes received a $40,000 donation in September from Government That Works PAC, a Washington-based political action committee, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Both candidates spent roughly $70,000 total — meaning one PAC check from the capital covered more than half of Byrnes' entire war chest.
The incumbent Ross-Hammond abstained on the 2024 collective bargaining vote that ended in a 5-5 tie, killing the measure. She said she wanted more time to study the issue. "I was looking at the long-term fiscal health of the citizen," Ross-Hammond said. "Where are we going to get the extra money?" It's the only question that matters, and it's the one union-backed candidates are not required to answer.
The Virginian-Pilot framed this as a story about voter sentiment and new representation. They buried the structural conflict: the people who will sit across the bargaining table from the city are the same people who bought the seats on the council. When the contract comes up, who represents the taxpayer?
Virginia authorized local collective bargaining in 2021. Portsmouth and Newport News have already opted in. Virginia Beach hasn't — but the unions are playing the long game, replacing holdouts one district at a time. Council members who voted for collective bargaining — Worth Remick, Jennifer Rouse, and Joash Schulman — are all leading their races. Barbara Henley, who voted against it, is also winning, suggesting the union effect is most potent when it targets a vulnerable abstainer rather than a committed no.
This isn't about whether city employees deserve better pay. It's about who sits on both sides of the table when the deal gets cut. When the negotiating party picks the negotiator, the taxpayer doesn't have a seat. The founders called taxation without representation tyranny. They didn't say the word "collective bargaining," but they knew exactly what it looked like when one side writes the rules and the other side pays the bill.
