Virginia won because it scored well on everything but cost of living. I think it's quite likely that the criteria was essentially selected with NoVA in mind.
The government is 25% of the economy, and it's just starting in the cloud.
The amount of money the US Gov. is going to spend on AWS will be jaw dropping.
It will trickle down into states, cities, and other governments like Canada.
And of course the deeply entrenched lobbying power.