or at least do poorly in the state?
Virginia has lots of upper income families, yes, but the state is unique in that many of those high earners work for federal agencies and departments. They are much less scared of the word "government" than private sector wealthy people, because taxes pay their salaries.
Where does this idea come from?
715,000 total VA govt workers vs. 4,301.6 total workers overall. Granted most of those are in NoVA/Tidewater (military focus) but NoVA has a varied private sector experience with high percentages or even higher than govt, esp in tech. Source BLS https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.va.htm
As for the idea that upper income families aren't scared of govt, that is true to a certain extent but I would say a good percentage of upper income Virginians still would favor cuts but not extreme cuts. Its a fine balancing line esp in VA-8 and VA-11.
1) A high margin among government employees for Dems (and their family members/close friends, who might not work in government but have sympathy for that line of work and vote that way) could override a small majority for Republicans among private sector high earners, you know.
2) Upper income families vary widely across the United States. Virginia's are naturally going to be very, very different than most, given the proximation to DC.
