K-STREET, 10,000 FEET: HUD relocating to Virginia, in win for Glenn Youngkin, loss for Wes Moore

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — Gov. Wes Moore (D., Md.) suffered another stinging defeat this week when the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it will relocate its sprawling headquarters to Alexandria, Virginia, bringing thousands of jobs to the area that could have gone to Maryland.

The Washington Reporter was on-site for the historic announcement, in which HUD Secretary Scott Turner was joined by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R., Va.), who has been poaching scores of large and small businesses from both Washington, D.C. and from Maryland during his time in office.

Turner, when asked by the Reporter if moving HUD’s headquarters to Maryland, said that “our answer is simple: we looked all over the DMV, and Alexandria, this building that we’re sitting in, was where we chose.”

“Thank you to the governor for his leadership and his enthusiasm, thank you to [GSA Commissioner Michael Peters],” Turner said.

“We looked all over and we were very deliberate, and we were very serious about our search,” Turner also said.

HUD’s selection is undoubtedly a blow to Maryland, which has already suffered a historic credit downgrade under Moore’s watch — a fact that Youngkin was quick to bring up.

“We came in in 2022 with a very clear plan to make Virginia the best place for business, the best place for organizations to bring their workforce,” Youngkin said in response to a question from the Reporter about his pitch for businesses to relocate.

“We started with making sure that we had sites that were available. We then moved to make sure that we were streamlining regulations, and we have streamlined 80,000 regulations in Virginia that save businesses and people $1.2 billion a year. We then wanted to lower the cost of living in Virginia. We had $9 billion in tax relief for Virginians during this time period, and yet we’ve run over $10 billion in surplus.”

While Youngkin was celebrating the relocation of thousands of jobs to his state, Moore was preparing to set off to Colorado for a fundraiser in Aspen.