Northern Virginia schools fight the Trump administration over transgender issues. They can afford to.

The Loudoun County School Board recently voted 6-3 to hand Republicans an issue in this year’s governor’s race.

They were joined by counterparts in Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County and Prince William County, creating the spectacle of five strongly Democratic localities unilaterally aiding the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears that, to put it charitably, has struggled all summer.

Technically, the motion that the Loudoun school board voted on didn’t say, “Hey, let’s invite the Republicans to whip up a frenzy about some of our policies,” but that’s essentially what the board members did when they voted to defy the Trump administration and stick with their current policies that allow transgender students to use the restroom of their gender identity (policies which they say align with recent court rulings on the subject).

As a result, Republicans now have a potentially potent talking point they didn’t have before. To be sure, Republicans were always going to talk about transgender issues — they’re useful for rallying a base that seems somewhat sluggish this year — but now they have a more recent example to cite. Even better for Republicans, they have the viral image of a woman protesting the Trump administration while holding a sign that proclaimed: “Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom, then Blacks can’t share my water fountain.” (I’m not sharing the photo because I’m not sure who owns the rights to it and I don’t want to run afoul of copyright laws.)

Former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican, commented on social media: “Someone needs to identify the lady holding this sign so Republicans everywhere can send her a note and thank her for giving the Sears campaign some much needed momentum. She may have single-handledly enabled Sears to seize on an issue that could make this a competitive campaign.”

Ben Tribbett, a prominent Democratic adviser, posted: “The cancer in the party is not a crazy lady with a sign — it’s no one willing to confront her about it until the press picked up on it. Hundreds of Arlington Dems there and they let all of us down by staying silent.”

We don’t know yet what impact this issue — and that sign — will have on the campaign, but it is potentially a turning point. To win, Republicans need to replicate the larger-than-usual turnout in rural areas that Glenn Youngkin generated four years ago. The most recent Roanoke College poll found Republicans far less enthusiastic about voting this year than Democrats are. Now, at last, Earle-Sears has an issue that could set conservative rural voters aflame. In political terms, the best thing for Republicans is that this isn’t some issue they manufactured; this is a response to an outside event, which gives it more credence. Democrat Abigail Spanberger has done a good job so far at trying to take issues off the table. Earle-Sears wanted to run on right-to-work; Spanberger says she’s not for a “full repeal” of the state’s laws that forbid compulsory payment of union dues. Earle-Sears wanted to run on a platform of eliminating the so-called “car tax.” Spanberger says she does, too. (Earlier, I wrote a column about how neither one can do this.) Here’s an issue that Democratic localities have set on the table. Republicans have gladly accepted the offer to talk about this, even if many Democrats don’t want to.

If we were CNN or Fox, you can imagine how the rest of this column would go. Instead, we’re Cardinal, so I have a very different question to ask: How can these Northern Virginia localities afford to put their federal funding at risk?

The answer is remarkably easy: These Northern Virginians simply don’t get much federal funding, on a percentage basis.

The fact that I’m even asking the question reveals my own rural bias.

Here’s what the math shows:

Loudoun County gets just 2.39% of its funding from the federal government, according to figures posted on the Virginia Department of Education website.

No other locality in Virginia gets a smaller share of its school funding from the feds. Arlington County, where the infamous photo was taken, gets 3.31% of its school funding from across the Potomac.

By contrast, Tazewell County schools get 30.71% of their funding from the federal government.

I’m sure that in a county the size of Loudoun, that 2.39% still works out to a lot of dollars. It’s still a very small percentage, though. Loudoun is also the most affluent county in the whole country, with a median household income of $174,148, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Loudoun is also rolling in so much cash from taxes on data centers that this year it reduced its personal property tax rate. On a per-pupil basis, the federal government provides $506 for each student in Loudoun County. I’m sure Loudoun officials count on that money, and appreciate it, but if it went away, Loudoun is in a far better position to replace it than Tazewell is (or lots of other rural counties).

By contrast, the median household income in Tazewell is $45,788, and the federal government pays $5,283 per student. If federal funding went away in Tazewell, that county would have a crisis. A county like Tazewell simply can’t make up those dollars.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of how strongly Loudoun County feels about its current gender policies — but the fiscal reality is that it can afford to take on the federal government in a way that other localities simply can’t.

Other Northern Virginia localities involved in this dispute aren’t as well-off as Loudoun County — nobody is — but they are far less dependent on federal funding than other localities in Virginia.

Here’s how the percentages stack up:

Arlington County: 3.31%
Fairfax County 6.31%
Prince William County: 6.20%
Alexandria 9.75%

In much of rural Virginia, school systems are twice as dependent on federal funding — or more.

The political reality here is that there’s zero chance of those rural systems adopting transgender policies that are going to run counter to the Trump administration’s policies. And I’m quite certain that lots of people in Southwest and Southside are outraged by the policies these Northern Virginia localities have adopted. I’m not particularly interested in debating those — there are lots of forums, left and right, available for that. However, I will gently point out to both sides that there are alternative scenarios here that involve the same principles but have nothing to do with gender identity.

Suppose some future Democratic administration insisted on policies that some conservative local school boards found offensive. Suppose those school boards decided to stand up to federal threats to pull funding if they didn’t comply. Those rural school systems couldn’t, not when some of them are getting almost a quarter or more of their funding from Washington. (Prince Edward County: 21.72%. Greensville County/Emporia: 23.42%. Nottoway County: 25.26%.) It’s not just rural school systems, either. Danville gets 21.99% of its school funds from the federal government, Martinsville 23.01%, Bristol 23.22%, Lynchburg 23.28%, Portsmouth 23.68%.

There’s a point to be made here that has nothing to do with gender policies; these numbers are simply the entryway. That point is this: For all of the Republican objections to even having a federal Department of Education, it’s Republican localities that are the most dependent on federal funding. That’s because that funding is generally tied to income, and the least affluent localities tend to be either Republican-voting rural areas or Democratic-voting central cities. They are the ones that need federal funding the most; the Democratic-voting suburbs may need it, too, but they are far less reliant on such funds. Loudoun stands as the prime example.

Maybe you think these Northern Virginia localities are standing up for the civil rights of transgender students. Maybe you think what they’re doing is repugnant. Regardless of what you think, these localities have the luxury of affluence to take the position they’re taking. Rural localities might never take those positions, but even if they wanted to do so — or take some position contrary to some future Department of Education — they couldn’t afford to.