Youngkin agrees to game of hoops with MD governor, new FBI headquarters goes to winner

Governors of the two states vying to be the home of the new headquarters for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will duel for the honor by going head-to-head in a basketball contest with Republican Glenn Youngkin taking up new Maryland governor, Democrat Wes Moore on his challenge to take it to the hardwood for all the marbles.

The sprawling new complex for the once universally respected federal law enforcement agency that many now view as the Democratic party’s secret police or President Joe Biden’s “personal Gestapo” is reportedly slated to be bigger than the Pentagon, a vast improvement over the antiquated J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington D.C. where the Bureau has been housed since 1975.

With the competition for the project heating up, Moore -who recently replaced media darling Larry Hogan in the Terrapin State’s governor’s office – took to Twitter with the challenge to his counterpart in the Commonwealth along with a video of him sinking baskets before a Washington Wizards game at Capital One Arena.

Moore threw down the gauntlet, “@GlennYoungkin let’s go one on one, winner gets the new FBI headquarters.”

Governor Youngkin, who is no slouch when it comes to shooting the roundball, accepted the Democrat’s challenge along with a video of him burying a shot from three-point territory with nothing but net.

Youngkin previously posted a video of him delivering from downtown range when he challenged former President Barack Obama who is an avid basketball enthusiast to go mano a mano when he was in town to stump for Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who was thumped by the Republican political newcomer in the 2021 gubernatorial election, a stunning blow to the big blue machine in a state that was easily won by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race against former President Donald J. Trump.

Youngkin played basketball while in college, suiting up for 58 games over four seasons of Division I action at Houston’s Rice University where he attended from 1985-1989 on a full athletic scholarship, his father also hooped for Duke University while he was in college. Gov. Moore played college football, starring as a wide receiver at Johns Hopkins University.

With the annual Men’s College Basketball Tournament set to tip-off this week, Youngkin posted video to Twitter of him filling out his March Madness brackets on Friday with cameos from various state team mascots,  Spiro the Spartan from Norfolk State University, Duke Dog from James Madison University, the University of Virginia’s Cav Man and Rodney the Ram from Virginia Commonwealth University who cheered him on.

Moore is lobbying strongly for the new FBI headquarters, and not surprisingly, introduced race as a persuasive factor, saying that securing the complex and its economic benefits is personal for him and calling on President Joe Biden to “honor” his commitment to racial equity by tabbing one of the possible two sites in Maryland as the location.

“While providing the very best location for the FBI at the very best price for the American taxpayers, you can be responsible for writing this new chapter in both law enforcement and racial justice that embraces communities that were overlooked, underserved, and outright avoided for generations,” he said in a letter that was also signed by County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) and Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller, according to the WaPo.

Longtime Maryland Democrat Congressman Steny Hoyer also played the race card in an effort to influence the decision makers.

“Minorities, and African Americans in particular, have been … left out of advantages that are handed out by the federal government, and governments in general,” he said. “The governor is going to make that case, and I’m sure he’ll make it very effectively, very persuasively.”

Virginia lawmakers have called for Biden to avoid meddling in the process.

“We don’t think asking somebody to put their thumb on the scale makes any sense here. Usually, where I come from, a thumb on the scale is a bad thing. We want to avoid thumbs on the scale rather than encourage and promote thumbs on scales,” Virginia’s Democrat Senator Kaine said at a Thursday news conference.

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Chris Donaldson

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