County service meets a veteran’s need for purpose in Spotsylvania County, Virginia

Key Takeaways

Drew Mullins got used to a high level of professionalism earlier in his career. 

He didn’t have a choice. As a Navy SEAL, his work days often put him in life-or-death situations. 

“The great thing about being blessed to have worked at the highest level in the special operations community is that you’re working with the best people,” he said. “When you’re working with the best people, with the best support elements, with all the resources you need to do your job, everything is just a matter of performance at that point.”

After meeting that standard for 23 years, what follows is almost certain to be a letdown. But while the stakes have changed, Mullins is finding fulfillment as a Spotsylvania County, Va. supervisor. He’s redefining his goals and finding ways to apply to local government the leadership skills he embodied for decades. 

“The teams that perform the best are the teams where each individual does their task at 100% focus,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s not about you —  it’s about the team, or it’s about the nation or it’s about the bigger thing you’re trying to solve.

“A lot of folks don’t have the luxury in their life of working for something bigger than themselves. And I’ve realized that’s what I missed. My children and my faith give my life meaning, but I was searching for my purpose.”

He was settling into his life in retirement with a wife and two young children and had started planning to buy a violin store in nearby Fredericksburg when he ran for the Board of Supervisors. By the end of 2023, he had two new jobs.

The adrenaline that fueled his special operations work in Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq isn’t as much a part of his life now, but he found he thrived on his Board’s collegial, respectful and collaborative atmosphere. He’s finding ways to apply his experience to his new work after easing into his new role and learning voraciously throughout 2024, finding ways he could contribute with unique input.

“It’s taken me the better part of this year, then the fog lifted,” he said. “I feel like not everybody in county government has the experience of knowing what strategic is, versus operational, versus tactical.”

When Mullins found himself falling down on the job of getting back to constituents early on, he made up for it. 

“Now I’m trying to make a deliberate focus for the rest of my time doing this, when someone takes the time to write to me, even if it’s just to complain about something, right? Acknowledge it.” 

He credited the Virginia Association of Counties’ training program with helping him feel complete and comfortable as a county leader.

While he is not a total acolyte of the book “Team of Teams,” Mullins has applied lessons from its author, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, under whom Mullins served in Afghanistan.

“Frame the problem, frame the question you’re trying to solve, boil it down to the essence, and once you’ve identified that, now let’s address how we can resolve that, conquer that, mitigate it, or alleviate it, whatever it is,”

 Mullins recounted. He finds himself applying this to the county’s approach to data centers. 

“Yes, they’re big, we can all agree on that,” he said. “But what can we, as the county government, do to address that bigness? If they looked more attractive, would that alleviate their concerns? How can we realistically address what people don’t like and help them figure out what can be done?

“I think what people who classify themselves as politicians make the mistake of doing is thinking, ‘I can’t tell them the truth because they’re not going to like it.’”

But he keeps following through.

“Sometimes, just the action of engagement through the process, when people get to the finish line, they realize, ‘OK, everything’s been done that can be done…this is the reality. But we wouldn’t have known, that unless you’ve gone through it with people. So that’s really rewarding.”

While respecting the personnel work the county’s administration performs, he wants the county’s policies to reflect the importance of its staff.

“At the end of the day, people are the most important component of any solution,” Mullins said, reflecting on his own motivation. “People want to feel like they’re part of something that’s going to be a good thing, that you’re helping as a collective organization to help each other.”

Mullins often asks residents why they chose to live in Spotsylvania County. While still a SEAL, he moved there in 2004 for the quality of life. He also found, as a military tactician, a lot to appreciate in the county’s history, particularly its place in the Civil War. 

“I tend to appreciate more of the tactical acumen of a lot of the Southern generals, considering the resources that they had to work with and how they got more out of it, and the spirit of the fighting man at that time,” he said. “You can find battlefields everywhere around there. What happened here eventually meant the end of slavery.” 

He recognizes the significance of the Rappahannock River’s boundary from Northern Virginia, which he hopes will prevent his county from falling victim to sprawl.

“We’re within an hour of Montpelier and Jefferson’s Monticello and other places. Because of that, though, it gives us the luxury of having an identity, you know, an identity rooted in the history of the state. We don’t want to lose that.”