After World War I, and especially in World War II and the Cold War, the Navy berthed more and more ships in the region. Today the Atlantic Command is located there, along with training centers at Fort Monroe, war games simulation facilities in Suffolk, and air bases supporting the most modern jet fighters. Retired military also settle in the region. The diversity and international perspectives of the Navy personnel changed the politics of Virginia Beach. It was a bastion of the Byrd Machine in the 1950's.
Tidewater faces fewer jibes, in part because the boundaries of Tidewater are so amorphous.
It's like Los Angeles, with communities developed right against each other. If you drive down I-64 east of Williamsburg, it's very difficult to identify the boundaries of Newport News, Hampton, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach. And if you head west from Virginia Beach, the edges of Norfolk and Portsmouth and Chesapeake are no more obvious than what you saw driving east. They are rural areas, despite having been settled continuously by Europeans longer than nearly any other area in North America. Neither is wealth.