Federal Fallout: The 2025 Virginia Elections

Hi everyone, I’m Sam and this is Federal the Virginia Elections. This episode is the grand finale where we will go over the Virginia Supreme Court ruling that finally came down on the redistricting referendum. And then at the end, I’ll talk a little bit about what what might be next for me. So to begin, I wanted to talk about this Virginia Supreme Court opinion we were all waiting for it. Oral arguments had happened. And really, everyone was on pins and needles waiting for the Virginia Supreme Court to rule. And luckily, they finally gave their order on Friday. 00:34.01Sam ShiraziAnd it was I would say a surprise I think a lot of people even some republicans at the end of the day thought the Virginia supreme court was not going to strike down the redistricting referendum because obviously it had passed and so a lot of people on the democratic side especially but even some republicans had said “As much as we may believe in legal theory, it’s just hard to imagine the Virginia Supreme Court overturning a referendum.” But that’s what the Virginia Supreme Court. In a 4-3 opinion, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the redistricting referendum was not lawful because the process which the Democrats put it the ballot did not comply with the Virginia Constitution.01:01.14Sam ShiraziAnd so I’m going to kind of break down the opinion. I don’t want to dwell on the opinion because at the end of the day, you know it is what it is. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled. And, you know we’ll have to see what happens,01:25.91Sam ShiraziYou know now that the new redistricting map is not going to happen we’re going to be using the same map in 2026. And actually, it was the Virginia Supreme Court that drew these maps through their special masters that they appointed. So kind of things coming full circle from the beginning of the the decade when the Virginia Supreme Court drew the maps.01:47.80Sam Shirazibut also something also came full circle in terms of the 2025 election so this podcast was started in 2025 for the Virginia elections that that year and this is really the last kind hurrah the 2025 Virginia elections. Why is that? Because the issue in this case was, what is the meaning election? And what it mean the 2025 elections to happen?02:02.86Sam Shiraz02:07.48Sam ShiraziAnd what I mean by that is in order to pass a constitutional referendum in Virginia which the Democrats needed to do in order to redistrict there are a few procedural things that have to happen. The General Assembly, both the Virginia State Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates, has to pass the constitutional amendment once and then the Virginia constitution says it has to be passed again after the next general election. 02:40.65Sam Shiraziand so the entire case essentially came down to what does the term after the next general election mean. So the Democrats, what they did about a week before the election last November, they passed the constitutional amendment. The election happened. The Democrats the election. In January, they passed the constitutional amendment again. And then it went to the voters and the voters passed it.02:57.18Sam ShiraziSo the Virginia Supreme Court say the maps can’t into effect? Why did hey say essentially the referendum was invalid? What the Virginia supreme court the majority the four four justices who ruled for the republicans in this case what they said was after the next general election means so, again, the entire case is what does election mean?03:21.71Sam ShiraziAnd what the majority said was, once voting starts, once early voting happened, the election is underway and so you cannot pass this thing when early voting is happening you cannot pass constitutional amendment voting is happening. you have to wait till after the next general election, which in the general election started.03:48.67Sam Shiraziso that was the majority opinion essentially what they were saying is this this two- time requirement thing yeah know there’s a reason it’s a in in the Virginia Constitution. You don’t want to rush these things. you want to give voters an opportunity to vote on it.04:01.73Sam ShiraziAnd you know that’s what the majority opinion said. The dissent was you know pretty clear that in their minds. Election day means election day, and that’s when you have an election. If you ask someone, when is the next general election, they’re going to say you know November 4 or whatever the date of the election is.04:18.98Sam ShiraziElection has not been thought of as a forty five today early voting period and so I think at the end of the day both of the majority opinion and the dissenting opinion were basically saying, we’re trying to figure out what election means. And the majority opinion says election is the entire voting season when early voting is going on. The dissent was saying election day is literally election day. That’s when there’s an election as opposed to the entire early voting cycle.04:38.80Sam Shirazi And I was surprised it was a 4-3 opinion, to be perfectly honest with I thought they either try to make this unanimous or maybe it’d be 5-2. But I think the fact that it was 4-3 shows that the court was really torn about this issue and it was not an easy issue.04:51.32Sam ShiraziI could tell honestly when right before the referendum the supreme court issued the Virginia supreme court issued an opinion allowing the referendum to go forward you could tell in that opinion that they were not happy with this result. And reading between the lines, you could tell that some of the justices really didn’t want the referendum to happen. I think they felt like they had to let the referendum happen.05:24.90Sam Shiraziand so we’re in this odd situation where Virginians voted for this thing and you had millions of people voting and it passed, and the Virginia Supreme Court at the last second saying it is invalid and it shouldn’t have happened. 05:40.60Sam ShiraziBut I had flagged in previous podcast, the Virginia Supreme Court very explicitly said they might that. They left that open that possibility. And the Virginia Supreme Court sometimes, I think, feels that it is not necessarily to to the either the voters they left that over that possibility and the Virginia supreme court sometimes I think feels that it is not necessarily going to you know bend to the will of either the voters or The General Assembly if they feel that the law is not being followed and they take the law seriously. And, you know i’m sure a lot of people have different opinions about what the Virginia Supreme Court did. But at at the end of the day, you know they are the highest highest court in Virginia.06:10.50Sam Shiraziand it’s important to respect the legal process and and you know that’s what they said essentially and and you know we we can kind of go on. 06:17.24Sam ShiraziNot surprisingly, Republicans were very happy. They felt felt vindicated. They felt that this is what they had been saying all along, that the Virginia Democrats were not following the law, and that once the Virginia Supreme Court finally made the ruling they were going to rule for them, and they were right. It was a 4-3 opinion, so just barely the Republicans were were correct, but obviously republicans were happy about this opinion on the other end this spectrum democrats were not happy about the opinion, some of them were blaming the court. Some them were more to accept the results. But at the end the day, it is what it is. We live in a system where have to abide the rulings that the judges make. And it was a 4-3 decision. And I think that the Democrats were06:50.52Sam Shiraziwere frustrated by this. However, I kind of urge both sides not to dwell on the opinion. And I’ll talk a little bit about what’s happen after this. But I really kind of encourage people on both sides. you know the Republicans are going to be wanting to celebrate and say, you know this is the greatest thing ever. The reality is the Virginia Republicans are in pretty difficult political situation07:21.79Sam ShiraziThe Democrats have a trifecta. In all likelihood, the Democrats are to keep their trifecta another two years after the elections next year for the State Senate and House Delegates. So they’re not in a great place. And talk about the House Representatives races this year in Virginia. And we’ll talk about the house of house of representative of races this year in Virginia. Republicans don’t have an easy time with those either. So as much as they got that kind of a temporary reprieve from all the bad news that Virginia Republicans have had, you know last year, this isn’t necessarily going to help their07:53.42Sam Shiraziprospects other than you know I’m sure they’re grateful they don’t have to deal with this gerrymandered map in 2026 but it’s not like things are are going great for them otherwise. Virginia democrats you know it’s easy to kind of get bitter and blame the courts and you know there’s a lot of things they that when something like this happens, there’s a lot finger pointing, there’s a lot being upset. And that’s, it makes sense. I mean, that’s a human reaction to something like this if the Democratic side. However, it’s also important not to this because the reality is it happened and got to and got to figure out, what’s plan B, because this was plan A and it didn’t out. And so to have to figure out what are to after this? And so I want to talk about what this means for Virginia and the midterms. 08:20.72Sam ShiraziBefore I do, I did want to note, I mean, we’ll see what the Virginia Democrats end up doing but it’s not impossible that this comes back again. And how can it come back again?08:50.29Sam Shiraziso what the Virginia democrats can do if they win next year in the general assembly for the state senate and the house delegates which at this point it looks like they’re going to do they can pass this again in January of 2028 and then in 2027 they can pass this thing you know much more before the election so that this whole issue doesn’t come up again. So in other words, we could have another referendum in April 2028, I wouldn’t necessarily put that past the Democrats given what happened so09:22.36Sam Shiraziwe may be back here again in 2028 doing this all over again and you know we already know what the democratic map would look like perhaps they would change it but long way of saying: This may not be the end of the map. It’s the end of the map in 2026, but I don’t know if it’s going to be the end of the map forever, and we’re just have to find out if the Virginia Democrats decide to do that again.09:41.66Sam ShiraziHaving said all that it sounds like you know the map is set 2026. We are to use the map. This is the map that was used in the elections this decade in Virginia. The Virginia Supreme Court, through its special masters, drew this map in 2021. So I really want to just spend some time thinking about, okay, what is going to happen now that the old map is be used. And I think the first thing to note just straight up from the beginning is Democrats still have an opportunity to flip seats in Virginia and particularly they have a good opportunity to flip at least two seats. So10:14.88Sam Shirazias much as this was a blow to Virginia democrats I think they also need to not dwell on it forever and think about okay: We still have elections coming this November. Things are still us generally in the national environment looking good for us so don’t want to dwell on this opinion. Similarly for the Virginia Republicans, they will not want to dwell on this forever and say, oh you know everything’s great because they may still lose seats in Virginia this year and they’re gonna have to think about that so I guess what I’ll do quickly is just give you a rundown of each of the current seats based on the current map in Virginia. and just see where we are. Okay, so I will start off with the first congressional district. This is currently represented by Republican Rob Wittman, and all indications now are that he is going to run for re-election.10:59.35Sam ShiraziIn 2024 this was a Trump seat it voted for Trump by about five points however Abigail Spanberger in 2025 did win this district. And this is going to be one of the top two races in Virginia this year. For the Democrats, it’s one of the more seats. So we’ll talk about the second district. That’s be the top priority. But I think after the second district for the Democrats,11:21.86Sam Shirazithe first district is going top be number two in terms of the seats they’re going to try to flip. And I’ll talk a little bit about both the general and the primary. In terms of the primary, I think realistically, there are a few people running, but I think the Democrats and and the national Democrats are supporting Henrico prosecutor Shannon Taylor.11:39.35Sam ShiraziShe ran for a attorney general in 2025 and came up short in the primary and the Democrats recruited her to run in the first district. And I think she’s a strong candidate for the Democrats because she comes from Henrico, which is the most populous part of this district.11:53.69Sam ShiraziAnd she’s also a prosecutor which you know gives her some credentials in terms of trying to win over swing voters. However Rob Wittman he is a longtime incumbent and is known to perhaps have some crossover appeal. Like in 2024, he did better than President Trump. So Wittman but won by about points in a district that Trump only won by about five points. So you can see how Wittman has overperformed Trump in the past.12:21.40Sam Shiraziand I think it’s going to be a really interesting race and given some of the other redistricting developments that have happened across the country, this seat is going to become even more important because I think if the Democrats are trying to get a majority, they will need to win seats like Virginia’s first district.12:37.44Sam ShiraziAnd to me, it’s it’s a little bit like the 7th District in 2018. So 2018, Abigail Spanberger flipped the 7th District. I think at the beginning of the cycle, it didn’t seem very likely that Democrats would be able to flip that seat.12:49.02Sam ShiraziHowever by the end they were able to do it and I think similar type seat Henrico suburbs that are kind of matched up with some you know so rural areas. I think Shannon Taylor she’s go to be doing well in the Henrico suburbs which is her base and she’ll be doing well in the Chesterfield suburbs. Wittman, he’s going to do well in the northern neck part Virginia, the rural parts Virginia along the Chesapeake. That’s his base. Perhaps the battleground region be closer to Hampton Roads where the district kind ends in areas like Williamsburg. And so see if that’s here the race is ultimately decided.13:13.21Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, I mean, this is going to be a big big matchup. I think as much as the district has not really been super competitive in the past, this is the election that the Democrats are going to throw a lot at it. And I think, you know at the end of the day,13:39.94Sam Shirazithis will be the race along with the second district to watch in Virginia in 2026 to see if the democrats can win a majority because if the democrats are able to win the first district I think there’s a very good chance they’re going to get a majority in the house of representatives. If they can’t win the first district doesn’t mean it’s impossible for them to get a majority, but it does make their life that much more difficult. So in some ways as much as I get the Democrats wanted this referendum to happen and the new maps to happen, Virginia is to be even more important in the general election now at least these two battlegrounds. Because if the gerrymander had gone through, there be that much attention paid to Virginia in the general election because at the end the day, the point the gerrymander was to elect Democrats.14:09.56Sam ShiraziNow these seats are going to be very competitive. And so we’re to see a lot attention focused on Virginia like there was in 2018. So 2018, Democrats, similar situation. got Trump in the White House. Democrats were trying to flip the House. And they needed to win seats in Virginia. And they flipped three seats in Virginia. So Virginia in 2018 was one the top battleground states in terms the House. I think the same thing is to happen this time. Virginia is to be one the top battlegrounds.14:33.35Sam ShiraziAnd the first district is really a ripe pickup opportunity for the Democrats. It’s, I think, still a traditionally Republican seat.14:52.31Sam ShiraziI would you know say the republicans right now have an advantage But if the Democrats are able to really focus on this district, the national environment keeps getting worse for the Republicans. I think it’s definitely the type of seat that can flip So first district one to watch here in Virginia.15:42.46Sam ShiraziAll right, now let’s go down to the Second district. This in the Hampton Roads area, primarily in Virginia Beach, going into Chesapeake and Suffolk, and then going into the Eastern Shore. The current representative is Republican Jen Kiggans. She is being challenged by someone she defeated in 2022, and that is former Congresswoman Elaine Luria. And so I think there might be a primary for Luria, I think realistically we are looking at a Jen Kiggans, Elaine Luria matchup. in 2024, President Trump very narrowly won district by you know less than a point. However, I do think this is the type of seat that sees a lot of swings and Spanberger won it by a healthy margin in 2025. And the second district is just the perennial battleground district. Every single competitive election nationally for the house the second district is going be a target. And I think you know the first, I think, is a little bit of a reach district for the for the Democrats. The second is a must win for them. I think if the Democrats can’t win the second district in they’re not going to a House majority.16:14.47Sam ShiraziIt’s just as simple as that. So I think if the democrats want a majority in the house of representatives they have to win the second district there’s really no way around it. And the thing is, I think the Democrats currently have an advantage in the second district for a couple reasons. One, it’s just such a swingy district. Every time it swings against the party in the White House, we saw it happen in 2022 we saw it happen in 2018. We saw it happen in 2010. It just swings against the party in the White House.16:40.50Sam ShiraziSo i think there’s a good chance just based off that the democrats have have a chance of winning the seat. And then if you think about some of the federal impacts do just cuts the federal government I think Hampton Roads has felt that. So again, one of those districts that is going to be feeling the federal fallout. So I think those two things, most people think Luria has an advantage right now not saying it’s impossible for Republicans to win it,17:02.22Sam Shiraziand they’re probably going to throw a lot more at it now that it’s not going to be the gerrymandered version of the second. But also have to kind of be realistic about how much this this district swings. And Luria has previously represented the district. So I think she’s a good candidate for the democrats and again the first and the second are going to be the top two battles this year in Virginia All right, so we knocked out the big battleground districts at the beginning. The next few districts over more quickly. Third district that is in Hampton Roads, current incumbent is Democrat Bobby Scott. I don’t think he’s have an issue in the primary or general election, so17:38.26Sam Shiraziexpect a pretty easy race for Bobby Scott this year. We’ll talk about the fourth district this is in the Richmond area going down to southside current incumbent is Jennifer Mcclellan. Again, I don’t see she’s Democrat. I don’t think she is going to have a problem in the general election or the primary.17:57.93Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s talk about the fifth district. This one’s a little bit more interesting. The current incumbent is Republican John McGuire. And there are a few people running here, but I think the person who may end being the democratic nominee it sounds like he’s going to stay in the race and i think he’s going to run in the fifth is former congressman Tom Perriello who used to represent the fifth. Now on paper President Trump won this district by about twelve points in 2024. Which is you know not out of the realm of possibility. I think the challenge for the Democrats here is that even Spanberber in was not able to win the fifth.18:31.49Sam ShiraziI think part of the the challenge here is this is a very polarized district. So The Democrats in this district tend to be concentrated in the Charlottesville area, so Charlottesville City and Albemarle County.18:45.25Sam ShiraziThat’s where a lot of the democratic bases and the the district also has a decent African American population so the democratic base is kind of the people in Charlottesville and the suburbs and then the African-American voters. And the Republican base here is really, rural working class white voters. And there’s a amount evangelical voters in this district because it is where Lynchburg is located and Liberty University. So i think there is a lot of things going on in this district in terms things that in theory make it competitive the Democrats, but also make it difficult. And I think this is just a district that is difficult to move for the Democrats. And it’s pretty inelastic. And what I mean that is it’s pretty easy the Democrats to get 40% in this district. And I think on a good night, it’s to be pretty easy Tom Perriello to get to 45% in this district. I think the question becomes can Perriello get up to 50%. 19:23.70Sam ShiraziIt’s just one of those districts at some point you’re going hit a ceiling and Perriello in 2008, he was able to win during the blue tsunami, partly because he did okay with some of the rural white white voters. 2008, economy was doing a really badly. War in Iraq wasn’t going great. So I think was able to make some inroads with white working class voters. Can he do that again? I think much more difficult in this environment20:06.39Sam Shiraziwith with you know polarization that’s caught up to the democrats. It’s a long way of saying, I don’t think it’s impossible to win this district, but it it would really require a good night,20:17.32Sam Shirazipossibly getting a type of swing that like we saw in 2008 where there was a blue tsunami, not just a blue wave. I think a blue wave democrats could probably flip the first and the second district. It would really require a blue tsunami for the Democrats to flip the fifth. And so I don’t want to say it’s outside the realm of possibility but i would not also be counting on the democrats flipping this district. However it does appear that Tom Perriello is gonna keep keep and keep trying to win this seat. 20:43.13Sam ShiraziOkay now let’s move over to the sixth congressional district that is represented by republican ben Cline. This is a pretty deep red district. I think Ben Cline was in a lot of danger with the with the gerrymander the new 6th District. However, the old 6th District is very red and i don’t think then Cline’s going have any issues in the primary or general election. Okay, let’s over to the 7th Congressional District. The current incumbent is Democrat Eugene Vindman, and this district was a three-point Harris district in 2024. However, Spanberger did do better than that in 2025.21:20.26Sam ShiraziIn terms of the Republican primary, I think Vindman is going to be facing most likely State Senator Tara Durant. You know I think on paper this could be competitive I think the challenge over republicans are going to have again goes back to the federal fallout this is the type of district that you know It’s not really built for the Republicans to win in a Trump midterm. If you saw both in November 2025 and during the redistricting referendum, Democrats were able to do well in Northern Virginia, do well in Prince William County. So I just think it’s be hard to beat Vindman. The Republicans might try to give it a shot. I don’t anticipate them spending a lot of money here because realistically they have a lot of incumbents they want to protect so I don’t think they’re gonna really try to go after a Vindman. But of the currently democratically held seats in Virginia, this one’s probably be the closest. So just something to keep in mind. oOkay now let’s move over to the eighth congressional district And that is represented currently Democrat Don Beyer. This is the bluest district in Virginia. And so I think any action here be in the primary. Beyer already has a couple primary challengers. The question is, do some the people are planning in the new seventh, remember the new seventh was supposed to be the lobster district.22:26.00Sam ShiraziI think some the in that district are just to out drop out. They’re not to anything else. But I see some those people in the eighth. For example, does JP Cooney end up running? or anyone who’s in the seventh, they end in the eighth? I think it’s to be hard to beat Bayer in a primary, if being honest, just because he’s been preparing the primary a while. I think he knew he’d probably have a more competitive primary this year.22:52.39Sam ShiraziSo if I had to guess, I think Don Beyer is probably to be able to come back to Congress, even if he faces a serious primary challenger.23:02.13Sam ShiraziAll right, now we’re gonna to Southwest Virginia in the ninth congressional district. The current incumbent is Republican Morgan Griffith. This is the reddest district in Virginia.23:20.82Sam Shiraziand this was going to going to be the only red district left in Virginia. However, that’s probably not going to happen anymore because of the redistricting. The thing is, I think Morgan Griffith is happy because there was a risk he could face a primary challenger from one of the other Republican congressmen in Virginia if the new map went into effect. That’s not going to happen. So i think he’s going to be safe both in the primary and general election. Okay now let’s go up to Northern Virginia to the 10th congressional district. This is currently represented by Suhas Subramanyam. Now in 2024, this was actually kind of a close seat.23:57.05Sam ShiraziAnd Harris only won the district by about seven and a half points. Subramanyam who’s a democrat you know he faced even a closer race he only won by less than five points. So in theory this could be a competitive seat i think again the problem the republicans are going to have Federal fallout, Northern Virginia, you know they’re just not this is not the type of environment that the Republicans are be able to flip a seat like this district. So I think both for the primary in general, the Republicans should be pretty24:28.33Sam Shiraziunlikely i think republicans are unlikely to give this a serious effort and so i think Subramanyam both in the primary in general should be pretty safe All right. One last district in Virginia, and that is the 11th congressional district that is currently represented by Democrat James Walkinshaw. Again, a very blue seat, I think Walkinshaw will get a serious challenger in the primary or the general either. So I think that’s kind the lay the land in Virginia.24:44.54Sam ShiraziMost the incumbents are to be safe. I think the incumbents that are in most danger are24:52.44Sam ShiraziNumber one is Jen Kiggans in the second because it’s just a perennial battleground district and it tends to swing against the party in the White House. And then the Number two most endangered incumbent is Wittman. If the Democrats get a night, if there’s a blue wave, they might be able to knock him even though he’s a longtime incumbent.25:14.90Sam ShiraziAnd he’s had over-performances in the past. I do think in these wave elections, things can catch to And so I think that’s one thing Wittman has to be the especially because I think politics can swing back and forth. So we talked about the redistricting referendum. Republicans got upset. They were fired They got their voters out. They weren’t able to win the referendum, but it was much closer than I think a lot us expected.25:36.46Sam ShiraziNow that the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled for the Republicans, I think a lot of Democrats are very upset and they are trying to channel their anger. And you know logically, if you’re in Virginia and you’re a Democrat, what you’re going to want to do is try to flip the seats you have a chance of flipping And so I think while, yes Kiggans is going to face a serious challenge i do think after Kiggans a lot of democrats are going to look to rob Wittman. 26:09.78Sam Shirazias a potential incumbent that could be knocked off. And so I think in some ways, obviously, he’s happy that he doesn’t have to run in the gerrymandered district, or he doesn’t have to retire, but he’s not out of the woods. And I think And, it’s interesting the thing with elections is they can back and forth. I think in November 2025, Democrats were feeling pretty good and they got a big victory. And then we are in May 2026 and the Republicans feel pretty They won at the Supreme Court, Virginia Supreme Court. But.26:29.61Sam ShiraziIt’s less than six months away until November, and we’ll see how they both the Democrats and Republicans feel in November after we get the results and the voters make their final say for the midterms. okay so now i’m going talk about the future of the podcast you know i had been debating this for a long time27:02.41Sam ShiraziAnd I think right now with the Virginia Supreme Court ruling it’s time for me to end the podcast. As sad as that is, I think the reality is this was really about the 2025 Virginia elections. I wanted to stick through to see the referendum. And now we have the Supreme Court decision that really is about the 2025 Virginia elections. This is kind of the book end of those elections. And This year in Virginia, the rest the year is to be interesting. Realistically, I don’t think the primaries are to be that much. There’s not going to be a lot. We basically the nominees are to be the major districts the primary. So I don’t think there’s a lot to talk there.27:37.06Sam ShiraziCertainly the general election is going to be interesting. I just don’t know if there’s enough material for basically two congressional seats to do an entire podcast every week about you know those races. i’m sure they’ll be interesting to follow but I don’t really know if it justifies continuing the podcast. And you know I think for me personally, like podcasting, posting on social media you know it takes a lot of time and I want to be mindful of you know my priorities and and wanting to focus on things that you know matter to me, like my family. And so as much as I love doing this and I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope people have found it very useful, there’s also a time for everything and a time to move on And so I think as much as I want to,28:18.34Sam ShiraziI think it’s time for me to hang it up with the Federal All Out podcast. It’s been an incredible I’ve appreciated everyone who’s come as a guest and who’s listened. And, I hope to perhaps it one day again. But I think the 2026 Virginia elections are to be as interesting as the 2025 Virginia elections. However,28:38.34Sam ShiraziI hope that I was able to share some of my interest and passion in Virginia elections matter what, and show everyone how interesting they can be and how there’s always so much going on in Virginia. I really love Virigina. And you know no matter Where you fall in the political spectrum, you’re Republican, or Democrat, you’re independent. I hope you were able to listen to this podcast and get something out of it. And I hope we can all kind of come together after a very long referendum process to maybe, you know focus more important things in Virginia and and try to move on after the Virginia supreme court ruling so29:14.22Sam ShiraziI think that’s going to be it for me with federal fallout. I’ve enjoyed it and I appreciate everyone who’s been listening and this has been federal fallout. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out of Virginia Elections. This episode, we will look at what’s next with Virginia redistricting, specifically what’s going to be going on at the Virginia Supreme Court now that the redistricting referendum has passed.00:13.62Sam ShiraziSo last episode, we kind of broke down the results of the redistricting referendum. I may talk about that some more down the line. However, I did want to talk about basically the next step in the redistricting referendum.00:25.34Sam Shirazisaga that has gone on in Virginia. And that is the Virginia Supreme court, because while the Republicans put up a good fight, they weren’t able to defeat the referendum at the ballot box. And so before the referendum, they had brought a lot of legal challenges and now they are renewing those legal challenges specifically because the Virginia Supreme court has kicked the can down the road. The Virginia Supreme court said that they were not going to rule before the redistricting referendum, perhaps in their mind, they were,00:52.00Sam Shiraziwondering if this thing won’t pass. And if it didn’t pass, that would bail them out essentially, and they wouldn’t have to rule on the redistricting referendum. However, it did pass. And now the Virginia Supreme Court is in the position where they said that they would rule if it passed and it passed. So now they have to rule.01:09.15Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll kind of walk you through what happened in the last few days in terms of the legal process and what’s going to be happening going forward. So after the redistricting referendum passed, the Virginia Republicans went back to the judge that had previously ruled for them in Tazewell County. This is a deep red county in Southwest Virginia.01:29.58Sam ShiraziBefore the referendum, that had caused a lot of legal questions, which the Virginia Supreme Court eventually just said, we’re going to have the referendum and then we’re gonna figure everything out after the referendum. So long story short, Virginia Republicans go back to the judge in Tazewell County. The judge in Tazewell County, not surprisingly,01:47.57Sam Shiraziruled completely for the Republicans and basically said the redistricting referendum was not valid and interestingly prevented has placed the injunction telling the Virginia Department of Elections that they essentially cannot certify you a district referendum because it is not a valid referendum.02:07.11Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, this is going to be appealed. Both the Democrats and Attorney General Jay Jones have said that they are going to fight this and take it to the Virginia Supreme Court. And we all know that the Virginia Supreme Court is ultimately going to make the final call. So none of that was really surprising. You saw some reporting saying, well,02:24.18Sam ShiraziThe redistricting referendum has been held to be invalid. We basically knew that judge was going to rule that way. He ruled that way before the referendum. It’s not a huge surprise. And we all knew that essentially the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be the one that is going to make the call because they are the highest court in Virginia. This is a complex issue of Virginia state constitutional law.02:44.83Sam ShiraziAnd and The next few days are going to be important because on Monday, there will actually be oral arguments on this case. Now, it’s not exactly on the judge’s order that he issued right after redistricting referendum. it’s It’s basically a preexisting case. But I can’t imagine the Virginia Supreme Court is not going to be talking about the merits of the case.03:03.04Sam ShiraziAnd ultimately, I expect them to just issue a ruling one way or another deciding this case. So there’s a lot of procedural stuff I don’t want to get bogged down in because ultimately, what’s going to happen is the Virginia Supreme court is just going to rule and they’re going say either. Yes. The referendum was valid or no, it wasn’t valid. And they can’t kick the can down in the road anymore. The reason they can’t kick kick the can down anymore is because,03:25.22Sam ShiraziThe filing deadline in Virginia for the congressional seats is May 26th. So if you’re a congressional candidate, you have to know which district am I running in because the districts look pretty different. That was the point of redistricting.03:37.22Sam ShiraziSo maybe under the old maps, you might run in district A, but under the new maps, you might run in district B. So, you know realistically, the Virginia Supreme Court does not have a whole lot of time. They have to rule by May 26th. And I anticipate that they will rule before that.03:51.24Sam ShiraziAnd the thing is, I don’t think they were just sitting around while the redistricting campaign was going on. I think they needed more time to really understand this issue and to be able to come up with a decision that makes sense. However, they didn’t have that right before the redistricting referendum. They felt like they were being kind of rushed into it. So I think now they took this time during the redistricting referendum to try to figure out, okay, what are we going to do with this case? So I don’t think they were just sitting around doing nothing. And I do think this oral argument is going to be important because it kind of shows you know what are they... It could potentially show what they’re thinking, and and they’re going to be asking specific questions to the lawyers.04:45.04Sam ShiraziSo we’re going to have the oral arguments in the redistricting case on Monday in the Virginia virginia Supreme Court. I’m sure we’ll get you know some insights into what’s going to happen. And then i expect in May at some point they’re going to issue their final ruling and make a decision one way or another. – so I have had previous episodes where I kind of went really into the weeds about the legal issues. I don’t want to do that this episode because I think there’s a lot and you know I previously talked about it. What I wanted to talk about in this episode was something a little bit different and it’s really the framing of legal issues because I think that’s really important and it’s something that is not often talked about you know even among lawyers. I think it’s really important but lawyers don’t even think about this stuff sometimes.05:28.52Sam ShiraziAnd what I mean by it is, how do you present an issue? Do you present it big picture or do you present it really into the weeds details? And I think lawyers are known for being sometimes very technical, very in the weeds, you know, quibbling over very minor things. And I think there is obviously that’s important in the law and you want to get the details right.05:49.60Sam ShiraziHowever, I think some of the best lawyers, the real ability is to make very complicated things actually rather simple and not to overcomplicate things. So what I wanna do with this podcast is to actually make things relatively simple and kind of explain in more layman’s terms,06:04.98Sam Shiraziwhat are the Democrats’ strongest arguments and what are the Republicans’ strongest arguments and kind of why they might win on either side. And I do think a lot of this comes down to framing and how does the Virginia Supreme Court look at this? Do they look at this more big picture, which is what the Democrats, I think, want them to do, is to look big picture?06:23.06Sam ShiraziOr do they want it, or do the Virginia Supreme Court look at these things more in the weeds, details, which I think is more what the Republicans want to do? And I think this question of framing is really important because when it comes to a legal issue, it’s not just about, the way you approach the facts and the law. It’s really about how you’re thinking about the issue. And, you know, I had mentioned this before. So, uh, I am an attorney and sometimes when I’m grappling with legal issues,06:49.60Sam Shiraziyou get kind of bogged down in something, but then you kind of reframe it and you think about the big picture and it kind of changes the way you’re looking at the legal issue. And so I will kind of do that with the redistricting refer referendum. And I’ll start kind of with the democratic case or what the Democrats are essentially trying to tell the Virginia Supreme Court.07:07.62Sam ShiraziAnd I think it’s really just big picture. Majorities of both the General Assembly and of the Virginia voters passed this thing. So if you think about what happened right before the election, the General Assembly, the Virginia House Delegates, the State Senate, majorities of those bodies passed this redistricting referendum. There was an election.07:26.98Sam ShiraziThe Democrats won that election. And then in January, the Democrats once again passed this thing with majorities in the Virginia House of Delegates in the Virginia State Senate. So twice in two different sessions of the Virginia General Assembly, this thing was passed with majorities. And then it was put on the ballot and a majority of Virginians, over 1.5 million Virginians, passed this thing and and voted for this thing. So essentially what the Democrats are arguing is the constitutional requirements have all been met big picture. If you look at the big picture, was passed in one session of the General Assembly. it was passed in another session of the General Assembly. A majority of the voters in Virginia passed this thing. So Virginia Supreme Court, do you really want to come in?08:05.94Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, from the, from the Virginia Democrats perspective on some, you know, supposed that technicalities throw out this entire process because of, you know, these in the weeds things that the Republicans are raising, is that really what you want to do? And do you think that’s really the best use of the the court’s resources? And do you think that’s makes sense in terms of separations of power? Because in the Virginia constitution, the primary power to pass, uh,08:32.32Sam ShiraziThese referendums to change the Virginia Constitution lie with the General Assembly and lie with the people of Virginia. The executive essentially has very little, if basically no power, other than trying to put the referendum on the ballot through so to funding the ballot initiative.08:48.20Sam ShiraziAnd the judiciary does have a role in reviewing the referendum, but there is no... David Pérez, Explicit role for the judiciary in the redistricting referendum process in Virginia. So essentially it’s kind of an argument about this thing was passed you as the court should not come in and overturn the will of the people, the will of the General Assembly. the Virginia Constitution gives these powers to the General Assembly, to the people of Virginia.09:13.77Sam Shirazithese these The body of the Virginia General Assembly passed this thing, the people in Virginia passed this thing. So you as a court, it would essentially be anti-democratic or you’d be an activist court if you came in and essentially on some legal technicalities overturned this thing.09:28.96Sam ShiraziThat would be kind of the democratic argument. And again, they’re kind of framing this big picture. If you look at the whole process, It worked. You know, you could quibble here and there. The Democrats should have done this. the Democrats should have done that.09:51.73Sam Shiraziand you will quibble with everything the Democrats did. And if you look at the lower court’s opinion, they kind of have a list of like 10 things the Democrats did wrong. It’s like, you should have done this, you should have done that, you should have done this, you should have done that. So that’s kind of what the lower court is saying. The lower court is saying you messed up a bunch of things in the process. And so, yes, in theory, General Assembly passed this, the voters approved it, but it doesn’t really matter because you didn’t do all the procedural steps you needed to do in order to get this thing passed. And again, I won’t go into the nitty gritty details because there’s a lot of them, but I’ll flag kind of the two big picture issues that I think are the most serious for the Democrats in terms of this redistricting referendum. One of them is that they were passed the the first time the redistricting referendum was passed through the General Assembly. It was right before the election.10:38.88Sam ShiraziI think traditionally in Virginia, these referendums are passed months before the election. And, you know, I’ve talked about in my previous podcast. There is a question about, do you have to post these notices for 90 days before the election?10:52.38Sam ShiraziAnd I think that’s one of the, essentially the argument that Republicans are making is that this was the first time this was passed, it was too close to the election and there wasn’t an an intervening election in between, or there wasn’t enough notice given give given in in terms of the election happening. And there was already a lot of early voting going on and all these things. So that’s essentially the Republican argument on that point. And I think the other thing that potentially the Republicans could make a point on is the ballot language. There was a lot of you know noise made by the Republicans about the ballot language being unfair. And specifically, it talked about restoring fairness. And I think from the Republicans’ perspective, this is the opposite of restoring fairness. It’s it’s making the maps unfair. From the Democratic perspective, obviously they’re saying it’s not fair that Virginia has to have nonpartisan redistricting while all the Republican states get to have partisan redistricting. So anyways, so essentially what the Virginia Republicans are trying to argue is the process was flawed. The voters weren’t given enough notice before the.11:52.49Sam ShiraziDavid Baird, Jr.: 2025 Virginia elections and even in the referendum itself, the voters were not given the fair language. And so while yes, this thing was passed with majorities. Baird, It was not done in a clean way. It wasn’t done in a way that was legally sound. And so you should look at the specific things that happened along the way and focus on that. And if you focus on that, you’ll see that the process and the law wasn’t followed.12:15.52Sam ShiraziAnd so don’t look at the big picture, look at the kind of nitty gritty details. And you know that’s kind of where I think this case is going to go. i expect the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be focusing on the details because they’re a pretty technical court. I think they’re pretty, you know they’re not going to just ignore some of these issues that Republicans are raising.12:33.63Sam ShiraziHaving said that, the fact that they’re exploring them or looking at them or thinking about them doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to strike down the referendum. And I do think, you know, we just have to wait and see what, how they’re going to approach this. And I could really see them going either way. a lot of people have said, you know, there’s no way the Virginia Supreme Court is going to overturn the will of the people, they’re not going to overturn a referendum where one point over 1.5 million people voted yes. I think that’s certainly possible. And as I mentioned before, these judges are human beings. so they are thinking about how is this going to look? They’re also thinking about, do I really as a judge want to overturn the will of the people?13:16.28Sam ShiraziSo I think there is a that is a legitimate argument that just from a practical standpoint, it is going to be very difficult for the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn this thing However, i do think the Virginia Supreme Court is the type of court where if they truly thought that there was a problem with the process and there’s legal issues with what happened, I don’t think that they would just let it go. i think they are you know a court that takes the law seriously, takes the Virginia Constitution seriously. And if they genuinely think there was a problem in the process, they are going to perhaps at at a minimum note that and13:50.46Sam Shiraziyou know they They might find a procedural way to get out of it, but I do think they are not the type of court that’s just going to ignore something or roll over and play dead because it’s politically convenient. I do think they’re willing to make difficult decisions. They’ve done it in the past.14:04.44Sam ShiraziOne example was in when Governor McAuliffe was governor, he started restoring voting rights to people who were convicted of felonies, and he wanted to kind of do that through a mass process where everyone would get their voting rights back at once. And the Virginia Supreme Court said, you can’t do that. It has to be an and individualized process. And I think that was an indication from the court that they’re not just gonna roll over and let the other branches of government do whatever they want. I mean, they are an,14:33.18Sam ShiraziJonathan Haidt, independent branch the Virginia government and their job is to put checks and balances on the General Assembly and the executive branch. And so I think Jonathan Haidt, if they’ve truly feel that the process was violated, think they would be willing to strike down the redistricting referendum.14:49.66Sam ShiraziAnd you know there’s really no way for me to tell you what’s going to happen. I think we just have to wait and see. Unlike elections where I can look at data and I look in my you know try to look in my crystal ball, you know courts are much more unpredictable. And I think it’s really, really hard for me to give you any sort of sense of what’s going to happen. I think we’re just going to have to wait and see. And it’s kind of funny. I think the Democrats are just kind of moving ahead, saying we won, the redistricting referendum is happening, the new maps are happening. And the Virginia Republicans are kind of the opposite. They’re like, no, there’s major legal issues. We think we’re going to win the legal case. we won at the lower court. And they’re kind of operating the assumption that the old maps are going to be in going to be in operation. And, you know, it’s funny, I think they’re asking the members of Congress, what are you going to do? And members of Congress for the Republican side are still saying, essentially, they’re running in their old districts. So one way or another, someone is going to be wrong, either the Democrats15:44.26Sam Shirazioverestimated how strong their legal position is. And that would be a pretty dramatic result if the Virginia Supreme Court strikes down the referendum and says, actually, this whole thing is not going to happen. The other alternative is that the Virginia Supreme Court upholds the new maps, and then the Republicans are in a very difficult spot because They didn’t win at the ballot box. They didn’t win in the courts.16:04.04Sam ShiraziAnd they’re going to have to deal with these new maps. And I think it’s going to be interesting to see what the incumbent Republican members of Congress do in that situation. So I think we’re just going to have to see what ends up happening. There’s a lot to unpack, no matter what the Virginia Supreme Court ends up ruling. I think the next thing after the Virginia Supreme Court will be the actual primary on August 4th.16:25.27Sam ShiraziAnd you know we’ll have to see, is it going to be the old maps, it going to be the new maps? I think there’s some interesting dynamics in those primaries if they end up going forward under the new maps. And we’ll talk about that once we get a little bit more clarity, but there’s a lot to kind of still unpack with the redistricting referendum. We got done with the vote, but in some ways that was the most straightforward part because we knew it was either going to pass or it’s not going to pass. Now we’re in this phase where we have to wait on the Virginia Supreme Court and then we’re going to see how did the primary shape up and16:55.80Sam ShiraziYeah, so lot to still cover in Virginia, even though the redistricting referendum is over and it was super interesting. And I appreciate everyone who’s been giving me some good feedback on some of the comments I made. And and I tried my best with the redistricting referendum to keep people educated.17:11.95Sam ShiraziThat’s really my goal. I’m going to try to keep people educated as this process goes through the courts. And then as we go through the primary, still a lot to cover in Virginia. I’ll be there with you as we go through the wild ride that is the Virginia election. So i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been Federal Fallout, and i’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Will Fall Out of Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the results of the redistricting referendum after the results came in on Tuesday night and it looks like yes is going to win by probably around 4% when all the votes are in.00:15.61Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, really interesting results. Honestly, kind of what we expected based off the vibes, based off the polls. So what I wanted to do is kind of break down the results, talk about them a little bit. I will do further analysis in other episodes.00:29.63Sam ShiraziBut I think the the thing that I wanted to note at the beginning is this podcast is called Federal Fallout. And people who have asked me, you going to change the name? And I thought about it. But, you know,00:39.74Sam ShiraziThere is still a lot of federal fallout going on in Virginia. i think this redistricting referendum is another federal fallout, not simply because President Trump started kind of asking Republican states to redistrict, which led to a response in Democratic states such as Virginia.00:55.88Sam ShiraziBut really, if you look at the results, the reason why YES won this campaign was in Northern Virginia. In all of Northern Virginia, YES did much better than the Harris margin 2024.01:07.67Sam ShiraziAnd given that this was a relatively close result, I think the reason you can say it passed was the federal fallout in Northern Virginia. Other parts of Virginia, like Southwest Virginia, no did better than even President Trump did in 2024. So there were parts of Virginia that were really upset at this redistricting referendum where the Republicans did well.01:27.58Sam ShiraziBut in Northern Virginia, a lot of votes, they just didn’t do that well. And I think the logical explanation is it’s federal fallout. People are still upset at what happened in D.C. last year and continuing into this year. Specifically, people are upset at Doge.01:42.68Sam ShiraziI think you know it was really toxic for the Republicans. That’s why they lost in 2025. And I think this redistricting referendum, while it was closer, certainly the Republicans ran a better campaign. I think they made they they did their best to try to make this a referendum really on the maps and gerrymandering. But at the end of the day, in Northern Virginia, a lot of those voters are just single issue voters and they’re gonna vote against the Republicans because they’re just upset at what’s going on. So I’ll kind of break all that down. I wanted is to talk about a few things before doing more of a deep dive into the federal fallout.02:17.20Sam Shiraziyou know Long story short, I think the early vote, the vibes and the polls were all on the money you know in terms of the early vote There was an indication that the more rural parts of Virginia were upset and they were turning out a higher number. I think the results here show that.03:05.07Sam Shiraziwith this result. And then finally, wanted to talk about the vibes. I think the vibes were very clear that yes had an advantage, but it was not overwhelming. We all had a sense that this was going to be closer than 25. had said in my last podcast that I thought the most likely outcome was a single digit yes win, and we ended up getting a single digit yes win. So not a lot surprising other than I would say the regional dynamics in Virginia in this election. And what I mean by that is really the blue parts of Virginia in Northern Virginia got bluer as compared to 2024. Most of the rest of Virginia got a little bit redder compared to 2024. And some parts of Virginia, like Southwest Virginia, got much redder. And I think, you know, there’s clearly an indication there was people upset in Southwest Virginia at the at this map.03:54.40Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think while The Democrats got a win and I don’t want to take anything away from them. A win’s a win. I do think it has hurt their brand in parts of Virginia.04:04.26Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, this kind of increasing polarization we’ve seen between rural and suburban areas has continued and this referendum has made it even worse. So I do think... you know not to rain on the Democrats parade, but they do get a temporary victory for this decade with these new maps. But I think going forward, it’ll be even harder to sell the Democratic brand in Southwest Virginia, other parts of rural Virginia, because I think a lot of those voters were clearly upset. And you could see that in the results and the turnout. So I don’t want to pretend like this is 100% great news for the Democrats. They didn’t get an overwhelming victory. And it looks like it’s going to be less of a victory than the attorney general race04:41.73Sam Shiraziin 2025, which was kind of my benchmark. I had said that if the Democrats got a bigger victory than the attorney general race, that’s a good night for them. I’d say, yeah i don’t want to say it’s a good night for the Virginia Republicans because they still lost, but I do think they did better than expected. I think at the beginning of this referendum campaign when really, you know, it looked like they had basically no shot and they made it competitive and they had a shot But look, in politics, coming up short is not good enough. Being close is not good enough. You have to win. And the Virginia Democrats won. And, you know, I don’t want to take anything away from them either.05:16.14Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, kind of going back to the the beginning of what I was talking about at the beginning of the podcast, you know, people that talk to me are going to change the name of the podcast. You’re continuing it. But, you know, it’s obviously things are different in 2025.05:29.01Sam ShiraziAnd I thought about it. One of the things I wanted to I was thinking about changing my podcast name to is one election after another, because i will talk about it probably in my next episode. But we will have a primary on August 4th in Virginia. So there’s going to be another election coming up.05:44.38Sam ShiraziBut I think the federal fallout concept is still valid in Virginia. And I do think, you know, we’ve gotten to this point where. The Virginia Republicans, you know, they are going to be very upset at Northern Virginia and they’re going to blame everything on Northern Virginia. And I get that. And I get that a lot of rural voters are upset at Northern Virginia. But I do think there should also be a little bit of self-reflection about why some of these counties voted so heavily against the Republicans again. And this is you know the second election and in a row where they very clearly sent a message that they were upset with the Republican Party.06:18.68Sam Shiraziyou know As I was looking, as the results were coming in, i had flagged Loudoun as really important. you know they get They report really quickly. And I was looking at the results in Loudoun and the final result seems to be about 61-39.06:32.68Sam ShiraziAnd as soon as I saw that Loudoun was going to be 61-39, I basically knew it was over because there’s no way the Virginia Republicans can win in Virginia if they lose Loudoun by 20 points. like Loudoun being 60-40 Democratic is not sustainable for the Virginia virginia Republicans. like They need to get that margin into the... you know they need to be in the 40s to be competitive in in Virginia. and And they just weren’t able to do it tonight. Even though in some parts of rural Virginia, they made up a lot of votes. They did better than I think people were expecting in parts of Virginia, but there just aren’t a lot of votes in these rural counties.07:08.76Sam ShiraziAnd so you can improve by 5%, 10% in some of these rural counties. But if if you’re not doing well enough in Northern Virginia, it’s not going to matter. Other parts of Northern Virginia, Fairfax County, biggest county, most populated in in Virginia,07:55.21Sam ShiraziIn 2021, Glenn Youngkin was able to keep these margins closer. For example, Loudon was about 55-45 in 2021. He did not write off Northern Virginia. That’s one of the reasons he won. He kept the margins close enough. He got the rural turnout.08:09.32Sam ShiraziI think the problem the Virginia Republicans have right now is they basically just written off Northern Virginia and they don’t even try to compete there anymore. and you’re just not gonna win in Virginia anymore if you do that. And you you know they could say, well, that’s not fair or whatever. I mean, at the end of the day, you know politics is about winning.08:25.85Sam ShiraziAnd you know unless the Virginia Republicans are willing to just completely write off Virginia, they have to figure out a way to compete in Northern Virginia. And you know things can change. I’m not saying it’s going to be like this for the rest of time, but I think during the Trump 2.0 era for the rest of his administration,08:44.76Sam ShiraziI think the Virginia Republicans are just in a really bad spot. And there was a lot of noise about Spanberger disapproval and Spanberger’s unpopular and all this stuff. And, you know, I think there that is true in certain parts of Virginia. Certainly in Southwest Virginia, there was anger in Shenandoah Valley. People are upset. There’s no doubt that There are parts of Virginia that are upset with the Democrats and they’re upset with Governor Spanberger.09:09.81Sam ShiraziBut I think the thing the Virginia Republicans don’t quite get is that there are other parts of Virginia, certainly very populated parts of Virginia, that are very upset at what’s going on in D.C. and President Trump. And they’re essentially single issue voters. Like they they will not listen to any arguments the Virginia Republicans make, similar to how maybe in southwest Virginia, the Virginia that the voters down there might not listen to the Virginia Democrats. We’ve just gotten very polarized.09:35.24Sam ShiraziAnd, you know you know, I don’t think it’s great for our country. I don’t think it’s great for the democracy and for Virginia, but that’s where we are. And and that’s what the results show. And I think one thing both sides really need to reflect on is how do they win in the other side’s territory? Because I think Spanberger did make some inroads in more in some rural areas, certainly in exurban areas. She made some inroads.09:56.72Sam ShiraziBut I think some of those areas are upset right now. And I think the Democratic brand has has taken a hit. So certainly the Democrats have gotten something out of this in terms of a win.10:08.21Sam Shirazifrom their perspective, hopefully they’ll get a 10-1 map. We’ll talk about the Virginia Supreme Court at another time, but hopefully they’ll get a 10-1 map for at least three three election cycles, 2026, 2028, and 2030. However, it it it comes with a cost. and in In politics, everything comes with a cost. And, you you know, I think at the end of the day,10:28.04Sam ShiraziThey have hurt their brand in rural Virginia. And so they’re going to also have to reflect on that. But again, Virginia Republicans, not in a good spot right now. i think they they put up a good fight. It was closer than I expected. i think they they certainly you know did a good job getting out their voters and spreading the message they wanted to spread. But as as I mentioned, I think a good chunk of voters, especially in Northern Virginia, are just unwilling to basically listen to anything the Virginia Republicans say because they’re so upset at what’s going on in D.C. And so that’s never a good sign if if a if a chunk of voters are are not open to your message.11:05.77Sam ShiraziAnyway, so a lot to unpack there. And I wanted to kind of give you my thoughts and and why I thought yes had passed. You know, it’s funny because people were asking me, you know, it’s looking like no’s ahead. are you sure that yes is going to pass? And I told them, like, look, you just got to wait for Northern Virginia. You got to wait for Fairfax.11:24.04Sam ShiraziYou know, once I saw Loudoun early in the night, you know, I knew it was over. And, you know, yes, it was closer than I expected. But I think...11:33.20Sam Shiraziit’s just one of those things like the numbers are the numbers and the votes are the votes. And if the Democrats in Northern Virginia are getting, you know, 70, 30 margins, and then in outer Northern Virginia are getting 60, 40 margins, combining that with the Richmond area and Hampton Roads, it’s just, there’s really no way for the Virginia Republicans to win. And, and you know, we saw that again in this election. And I had mentioned this in my podcast a a few nights ago. You know, I talked about how,12:02.53Sam ShiraziVirginia Republicans have the ceiling around 45, 46 percent. I think they they got higher than their ceiling. They may hit 48 percent this time. So in some ways, that’s an accomplishment. But, you know, they’re just the geography and politics of Virginia is such that it is so hard for the Virginia Republicans to get to 50 percent.12:20.18Sam ShiraziI think it’s going to continue to be hard for them. And it’s pretty amazing if you go back. really all the way to 2009. So, you know, over 15 years, the Virginia Republicans have only been able to win one stateide statewide election since 2010.12:47.16Sam ShiraziInteresting election for sure. I don’t want to kind of talk about next steps or what happens next in this podcast because, you know, I wanted to kind of just mainly talk about the election results. There’s a lot to unpack.13:00.89Sam ShiraziA major, major caveat to this election result is the Virginia Supreme Court. Perhaps after the Republicans, some of the most unhappy people in Virginia are on the Virginia Supreme Court because they are gonna be forced to rule on this issue.13:14.95Sam ShiraziThey clearly wanted it, not from a political standpoint, but but they were hoping, I think, from a legal standpoint that they wouldn’t have to reach the merits because if if no had won, they would just dismiss the case and say, there’s nothing for us to rule on. Now there will be something for them to rule on. They do have to reach the merits.13:33.19Sam ShiraziYou know, we’ll see how that plays out. I think there’s going to be oral arguments. We’ll have to see what the Virginia Supreme Court does. I think they’re truly nonpartisan, so I don’t think they’re going to be putting on their partisan hat, but they’re also human beings. And I think it is going to be a tough sell to the Virginia Supreme Court to tell right now there’s over one and a half million people who voted yes in this referendum to tell the you know Virginia Supreme Court to ignore those one and a half million people.14:00.89Sam Shirazion on very kind of technical legal grounds. i mean I do think there are some valid technical legal arguments that Republicans can make, but conceptually in 2025, the Virginia General Assembly, both the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia State Senate passed this thing with majorities.14:17.94Sam ShiraziThe Democrats won in 2025. The Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia State Senate again passed this thing with with majorities. It got put on the ballot, a majority of Virginians voted for it. I mean, is the Virginia Supreme Court really going to say, actually, you know, we brushed off the Virginia constitution and this, you know, something in in there actually prevents this from going into effect? Maybe.14:40.50Sam Shirazii don’t i don’t want to discount that possibility, but I do think these people are human beings and we just have to see what they’re they’re willing to do. And I think the oral argument is going to be really interesting. I’ll follow the legal stuff because I find it super interesting and I’ll keep you updated, but not a whole lot I can say now other than we’re just kind have to wait and see how that shakes out. August 4th will be a primary in Virginia.15:41.94Sam Shirazireally just a polarized election where, you know, the hardcore ne D’s voted yes, the hardcore no’s, hardcore Republicans voted no. You know, the independents probably slightly voted no, if I had to guess, but not overwhelmingly. And that’s why yes was able to get the win. You know, I’ll continue to unpack all this stuff up in my next episode and i will continue the podcast focusing on Virginia. As I mentioned, it’s going to be one election after another in Virginia.16:09.19Sam ShiraziI think, frankly, the primaries, if the new maps go into effect, I think the primary is going to be more interesting than general election. So that’ll be something to keep an eye on. But anyways, always fun times in Virginia elections. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I get good feedback on the podcast, get good feedback on my social media posts. I really appreciate everyone.16:30.71Sam ShiraziYou know, my goal is to try to inform people. I try to be as objective as possible. Sometimes I give you my hot takes, but, you know, I’m not... My main goal really is education and to give people a sense of what’s going on without too much spin. And I hope people you know feel that’s what I’m doing because I don’t really want to you know increase the partisanship because there’s so much partisanship as as there already is in in this country and and in Virginia. My goal is everyone can listen and get get something out of these podcasts.16:56.98Sam ShiraziSo again, thanks everyone who’s been listening. i will continue doing it. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. i’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Feroa Fall Out the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over the election day here in the Commonwealth of Virginia as voters go to the polls to cast their ballots in this redistricting referendum.00:13.62Sam ShiraziAnd then at seven o’clock, we will start to see the results. So certainly an exciting day and the culmination of a... an Interesting campaign that is something that was unique in Virginia history, a redistricting referendum in the spring. And first I want to go over the vibes, see where we are, and then I’ll talk about what to expect as the results start to come in this evening. Adam So to begin with the vibes, I think this has certainly been a vibes election. And what I mean by that is we haven’t gotten that many polls.00:40.70Sam ShiraziHonestly, in terms of the high quality polls that I trust, we only got two of them really with the ballot language. One of them was from the Washington Post-Shar school. The other one was from State Navigate. And they both roughly show the same thing about a five point lead for the Yes campaign in a likely motor likely voter model.00:59.86Sam ShiraziAnd I think that is kind of where the vibes are. The vibes are there’s a single digit lead for the Yes campaign. This isn’t overwhelmingly a slam dunk for Yes. I think it’s certainly closer than 2025 in terms of the governor’s race.01:15.45Sam ShiraziAnd so... I think the thing that’s been a little bit challenging as a political analyst is we don’t have a lot of data. I’m going to talk about the early vote a little bit, but obviously you like to get polls. You like to get multiple polls from multiple different sources to get a little bit of a range. And we haven’t gotten that. We’ve essentially got these two polls.01:33.71Sam ShiraziI think both of them are solid polls. We had Chaz Naticom on talking about State Navigate. State Navigate was obviously very accurate in 2025. And so I trust they navigate Washington post. Sure also has a solid track record in Virginia. There’s been other polls and I haven’t really mentioned them. a lot of them have kind of been, you know, partisan junk that’s been put out there. And so I don’t want to spend too much time on it because I don’t think they’re super trustworthy.01:58.90Sam ShiraziBut there are not a lot of polls to go off of. So that’s challenging. I think the other set of data that we have to go off of are is the early vote. And, you know, I certainly like looking at early vote in Virginia. But I think there’s a lot, as I said, often an over extrapolation about early vote. And the really the thing we don’t know about early vote is how is how is it breaking down? We have a sense of, OK, these people probably are Democrats. These people are are probably Republicans, but we don’t know, are they voting yes or no? They could be voting more for yes than we’re expecting. They could be voting...02:33.03Sam Shirazifor no more than we’re expecting. And there’s no way of knowing that until the results start coming in. So while I will talk about early vote a little bit, I am always hesitant basically every election to overanalyze early vote. So for example, in 2025, if I saw the early vote, I’d say, yeah that’s pretty good for the Democrats, but it didn’t look like a landslide purely off the early vote.02:54.82Sam ShiraziAnd so If you showed me the early vote and then you showed me the final results in 2025, I wouldn’t be able to predict that just off the early vote because it showed the Democrats were doing well, but not that they were going to get a 15 point win in the governor’s race. There’s really no way of extrapolating that from the early vote.03:10.95Sam ShiraziAnd again, there’s no way of really extrapolating what’s going to happen in this election off the early vote. I can give you some initial thoughts based on some modeling that State Navigate has done and that L2 has done in terms of the early vote.03:26.34Sam ShiraziAnd most people are comparing the early vote to 2025. And I think that’s a fair comparison. And I think there are some things you can learn from the 2025 comparison. However, I’m also a little bit hesitant because I think it is a little bit of apples and oranges. So i I don’t want to go too crazy with the early vote analysis. What most of the modeling has shown is that the early vote compared to 2025 is a little bit redder, maybe two to three points redder, at least if you’re just kind of purely modeling party ID.03:55.51Sam Shiraziyou know I think there’s a few reasons for that. i I do think the Republicans are more energized this year than they were in 2025. You can see that in some of these counties, like rural red counties in southwest Virginia, where there hasn’t been any change to satellite voting locations. And the early vote is up in those counties. So I think i the early vote, you can say there’s a little bit more enthusiasm on the Republican side compared to 2025.04:34.73Sam ShiraziAnd I think if you look at the turnout in some of the blue areas in Virginia, I think it’s pretty much matching 2025 with some minor exceptions. And I think those minor exceptions, for the most part, you can explain by changes in satellite voting locations. And you hear me talk a lot about the satellite voting locations issue because in some localities, it can make a big deal. So I’m going flag Chesapeake.04:56.74Sam ShiraziChesapeake is a locality in Hampton Roads, pretty big actually, even though you don’t always hear about it. Tends to be a swing county. Democrats did well there in 2025. There were a bunch of satellite voting locations in Chesapeake in 2025.05:10.71Sam ShiraziThere were zero satellite voting locations. There was only one early voting site in Chesapeake, which is a big county population-wise, big county geographically. And so naturally, we’ve seen a big fall in the early vote in Chesapeake this election.05:24.89Sam ShiraziThat doesn’t mean those people aren’t going to vote. It just tells me Because there were no satellite voting locations, those people are probably going to vote on election day. And so I think that’s where you start getting this apples to oranges type comparison where you can’t just purely compare 100% to 2025 because there will be in some places more election day turnout than there was 2025. So the fact that the early vote is a little bit redder than 2025. While I do think part of that is the Republican enthusiasm, I think part of that is also the reduced satellite voting locations. And another indication that might be the case is on Saturday was the last day of early voting. We got a lot of early voting, over 99,000 early votes Saturday didn’t quite hit the number of early votes we got in 2025 on the final day, again, because of the satellite voting location issue. But in a couple localities, I’m thinking about Arlington and Loudoun.06:17.68Sam ShiraziThose two locations, which are generally, Arlington is very blue and Loudoun leans blue. Those two locations had the biggest day of early voting ever. So that includes presidential elections. So Loudoun and Arlington had more early votes on a single day on Saturday than they’ve ever had before. And that is telling me there’s something going on with the satellite voting locations. And I think that is part of the story. And so long story short, I do think there is a possibility on election day, we see more more votes coming out of blue localities that didn’t have as much satellite early voting as they did in 2025.06:54.02Sam ShiraziI think when you when you take that all into account, I think the early vote is perhaps a little bit redder when you’re looking at some of these counties. There’s a little bit more enthusiasm for the Republicans. so But it’s not to the point where I can tell you who’s going to win or I can give you a confident number based on the early vote. I think we can say... It’s going to be closer than 2025 governor’s race. I can say that pretty confidently based on the polls, based on the early vote. It is going to be closer than 15 points, which is not a super surprise. and i And I think this is where the vibes analysis comes in.07:49.25Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, why do I say that? I will say this just kind of honestly. i think the Republicans are more fired up than they were in 2025. yeah you know For most of that year in 2025, the Republicans were in pretty bad shape. I think at the end with the Jay Jones story about his text, there was a little bit more enthusiasm, something a little bit more to wake up Republicans. But even then, i think it was it was not...08:12.45Sam Shirazithat great. And you could just tell the the Democrats in 2025 were much more energized, much more before i fired up. I think this time, the Republicans have more energy. think There’s more grassro grassroots kind of activism to try to push the no vote. so And you see that a little bit in some of these early vote in some of these rural counties being a little bit higher than 2025. So I do think in terms of pure vibes, the Republicans are doing a little bit better I think Democrats certainly have energy as well. The question becomes, you know besides the hardcore partisans, how excited are kind of the soft Democrats for this? and I think the Democrats have had to do a lot more persuasion. They’ve had to spend a lot more money. I think in 2025, Spanberger as a governor’s candidate was a pretty easy sell. I think she appealed to soft Democrats. She appealed to independents. I think it was just easy for someone to spamberger for someone like Spanberger to get a 15 point win in Virginia in 2025. I don’t want to say easy, but I could see how it happened because of her candidacy and the energy that was on the Democratic side. I think this time it’s a little bit of a harder sell to say we’re going to gerrymander Virginia.09:18.66Sam Shirazii think it was an easier sell for the Republicans to say don’t gerrymander Virginia. So I want to say that in terms of the vibes. I think that’s why we’re seeing a closer election than 2025.09:29.49Sam ShiraziAnd the question really becomes, how close is it going to be? Is this going to be five-point race? Is it going to be a one-point race? It seems like this is kind of a default election in Virginia. And what I mean by that is 2025 was a little bit of the anomaly where It was a blowout. And, you know, if you look at most Virginia elections, they tend to be relatively close.09:52.80Sam ShiraziThe last time it was not super close was in 2020 when President Biden got about a 10 point win in Virginia. And so even on a good night for the Virginia Democrats in 2020, it was a 10 point win. So if you think this is kind of a competitive election, maybe not, you the most competitive election ever in Virginia, but certainly a competitive election, it’s going to be less than 10 points just by default. Like Virginia is just not the type of state where you’re going to see these huge blowouts very frequently. I think that’s why 2025 was such a big deal because we did see a blowout and it’s pretty rare. Like if you think about 2021,10:29.02Sam Shirazitwenty twenty one Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia. He only won by two points. 2017, there was a bit of a blue wave, but even at that blue wave, it was a nine-point win for Ralph Northam. 2023, it was a close win for McAuliffe.10:43.97Sam ShiraziAnd really the last time the Republicans got a landslide in Virginia was in 2009. So you see that in in Virginia... It tends to be a middle of a road type state. And I think something like partisan gerrymandering is not going to have the landslide type of victory you saw in California. And the other thing I should say is Virginia is a pretty polarized state. There are a lot of rural areas, a lot of white working class voters. i think Chaz and Natico mentioned this. Parts of Virginia have voting patterns like the South that is very racialized voting. And so all that’s to say is like, it’s just hard for the Democrats to get these big wins in Virginia. And, you know, 2025 was a little bit of a perfect storm.11:37.75Sam ShiraziAnd so all that’s to say is I think the vibes most people’s gut is telling them it’s going to be a single digit victory for yes. You know, I think that is probably the most likely outcome based on the polls, based off the early vote, based off the vibes. So, you know, if I was betting, I would say that it’s going to be a single digit victory for yes. However, I think there is a universe where no could win.12:01.04Sam ShiraziI think what would have to happen would be really good election day turnout in rural areas and really bad election day turnout in more blue Democratic areas.12:11.79Sam ShiraziAnd then we would, on top of that, need to see a lot of persuasion, a lot of independence, and even some soft Democrats moving over to no. And essentially, it would be kind of a redo of what Glenn Youngkin was able to do in 2021, where he juiced up turnout in rural areas, and he kept the margin in suburban areas close, and he was able to get a two-point win.12:31.22Sam ShiraziI think it’s not out of the question we see that. I don’t think it’s the most probable outcome, but I do think there’s a path for no. Conversely, I do think there’s a path for yes, maybe not to get to 15 points, but maybe to get to 10 point win where we do break double digits. I think what you’d see is a lot of turnout on election day in more democratic areas, perhaps just kind of okay turnout in rural areas.12:54.76Sam ShiraziAnd then the final late deciders who are kind of the soft Democrats, they go towards yes. And so we see kind of a bigger than expected win for yes. I think that is also on the table. So so we’re seeing that range. And, you know, I don’t, there’s really no way of me telling you what’s going to happen. I think we’re just going to have to wait for the results. So I think, well, it’s interesting to look at the polls, look at look at look at at the early vote, look at at at the vibes.13:19.65Sam ShiraziI think at this point, you know, we’re going find out soon enough. So, you know, just wait and we’ll see what the results are on election night. Okay, so on that note, let’s turn over to what to expect on election night. You know, essentially...13:32.72Sam ShiraziIn my opinion, the nice thing about Virginia is that they report results relatively quickly. So I think we’re not going to be waiting around for weeks trying to figure out what happened unless it’s super, super close. I think we should have a good sense fairly early on what is going to happen. So polls will close at 7 o’clock.13:50.67Sam ShiraziThat first hour, we will start seeing results. Typically in Virginia, more rural counties, rural areas report first. So you may see some... David Buhlman- Lead initially for the no campaign and then later on, the more urban and suburban county counties start reporting. David Buhlman- want to give a shout out to Chaz Netticombe State Navigate and his team for their what’s called nav casts, so I would recommend looking at that i’m going to be looking at that on election night and what nav cast is essentially a program where.14:20.05Sam Shirazithey are inputting the data as it’s coming in, in terms of the results. And then based on their model, going to see which side is more likely to win. So, you know, even if, if, if no is winning a rural County, let’s say 60, 40, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing because perhaps the model had expected the rural County to be 60, 40. And so it’ll show, okay, yes, still has a 75% chance of winning or or whatever. So I’m just kind of making up numbers, but you see what I’m saying? It’s, It’s less anecdotal based on you know random reports and more based on a systematic analysis of all the reports coming into Virginia. So definitely give a shout out to NAVCAST.14:57.80Sam Shiraziim getting I typically like to look at the official results through the Virginia Department of Elections website because you can see where are the votes coming in, which counties are they coming in.15:08.70Sam ShiraziAnd then within the counties, you can see, okay, the votes are – early votes versus election day votes versus mail votes. and And all those are slightly different. And so it’s important in a county to realize where the votes are coming from.15:22.79Sam ShiraziSo you may have, and even within a county, there are some parts of the county that are red, some part county that are blue. So even if you see, for example, a county where no is up or yes is up, you have to kind of figure out where are the votes coming from. Is it election day? Is it early vote?15:39.36Sam ShiraziI will say, here are my expectations. I expect the in-person early vote to be slightly for the yes campaign. I expect the mail votes to be for the yes campaign very strongly.15:51.81Sam ShiraziAnd then I expect the election day to be slightly for the no campaign. and then So those are the things we will get on election night. And unless it’s super, super close, we should get a sense of who’s who’s won on election night. I expect we’ll get a good a batch of votes by eight o’clock. And then usually by 9, 10, I don’t know if officially it’ll be called by the AP, but it’ll be basically we all kind of sense of what’s going to be going on.16:15.51Sam ShiraziAnd then in terms of when are the final, final votes going to be counted, there are two batches of votes that get counted after the election, after election night. Those are the provisional ballots, which are typically same day registrations.16:39.41Sam Shiraziat the local election offices until Friday at noon, if they’ve been postmarked by election date. So you have those final batches of votes. Typically, they’re not massive amounts of votes, maybe in the tens of thousands, which obviously in a close election are going be really important.16:53.77Sam ShiraziBut if it’s not super close, we don’t necessarily have to wait for those votes to make the final call. And typically, those last batches of votes tend to be Democratic. So if it is super close, then we’ll have to keep a close eye on it. But my guess is that on election night, we should know And I’m guessing we should know hopefully by between 10 and 11, unless it’s super close. And if it’s super close, you know, it’ll really come down to some of those final votes.17:19.33Sam ShiraziI don’t anticipate it being that close of an election. And even in... 2021, which is an election that was within 2%, we were able to call that on election night. And even before the formal call, I think most people get a sense of, okay, we we kind of know where this thing is going. and And, you know, the nice thing about Virginia reporting so quickly is pretty quickly you have a sense of the night. And and I’ll talk about the infamous Loudoun moment in 2024, which was a bad news for the Democrats. And then in 2025, Loudoun’s results were good news for the Democrats. So in 2024, Virginia is one of the first states in the country to close its polls.17:58.00Sam ShiraziAnd there were some results that came in from Loudoun County that showed it, which showed President Trump doing better than expected. And I think Loudoun is usually pretty good for a big county and and somewhat of a swing county or at least a a somewhat competitive county. It usually reports pretty quickly.18:14.24Sam ShiraziAnd so I think once we get the Loudoun results, we’ll have a good sense. In 2024, we got the Loudoun results in. It showed that Harris was gonna win Virginia, but it was closer than I think a lot of people expected.18:26.09Sam ShiraziAnd I think that was an indication of how the night was going to go for the Democrats. Conversely, in 2025, we got Loudoun in relatively quickly and it was looked very good for the Democrats. Spanberger got a huge win and Jay Jones was getting a bigger margin than Harris got in 2024. And I think once Loudoun came in in 2025 for Jay Jones, I think we had a sense of he was going to win. And I could see something similar this time with Loudon, depending on how the number comes in for Loudon. And my benchmark for Loudon is about 60-40. I think if Loudon comes in sixty forty for the Yes campaign, that’s a good sign for them.19:02.44Sam ShiraziProbably that means they’re going a single-digit win. So if it’s 60-40, once the mail is in, once the early vote is in, once the election day vote is in in Loudoun County, I think I would be pretty confident in saying that yes is going to win.19:16.79Sam ShiraziIf it’s even bigger than 60-40, if we’re seeing 65-35 in Loudoun, that means it’s a very good night for yes and that it could be a double digit win for the yes campaign. Conversely, if it’s very relatively close in Loudoun, if we’re seeing fifty five forty five for the Yes campaign in Loudoun, I think that’s going to be a good night for the No campaign. And obviously, if if No even gets close to winning Loudoun, I think that’s a very good night for No and a very bad night for Yes. So keep an eye out on Loudoun. I think it’s an important county.19:45.95Sam ShiraziEveryone always looks for it. It reports pretty quickly. So keep an eye out for Loudoun. The other thing I’ll say is some of these big Democratic counties, Fairfax, Prince William, they take a while to report because they got a lot of precincts. They have a lot of voters.20:01.02Sam ShiraziIt’s different than a rural county that has, you know, a few thousand votes. Fairfax County is going to have tens of thousands of votes. And so it’s just going to take a while to process and and they’ll post later. And so I wouldn’t necessarily, you know, go crazy if the early votes are showing no up because,20:20.18Sam ShiraziThat is traditionally the trend in Virginia is the Republicans tend to do well at the beginning of the night and then slowly as the night progresses, the Democrats do better. And then by the end of the night, usually the Democrats end up winning Virginia. So I think as much as we all like looking at the results coming in, it is a little bit of a scattered results and they’re not really uniform. And so I wouldn’t go too crazy as the results coming in. Look at the Navcast, i kind of have some common sense. Okay, there’s no votes from Fairfax or, you know, just just kind of understand how votes are coming in. And I think one thing to keep in mind, like the New York Times, I often look at their elections webpage, and I think they do a good job for the most part, but they don’t always tell you, is it early vote that’s coming in? is it21:06.56Sam Shirazielection day. So for example, in a county, yes or no might be up, but that’s because, you know, maybe it’s only the mail vote or maybe it’s only election day. So I think you just really have to be careful.21:18.08Sam ShiraziAgain, I’m not going to dwell on it. I think pretty quickly we’re going to get a sense of how things are going. And, you know, every you see all sorts of stuff being posted and anecdotal stuff. And some of it drives me crazy and I can’t comment on everything on election night. So that’s why I’m kind of giving you this preview and and just you know I’ll give you some accounts to follow on election night to maybe not drive yourself crazy. i Definitely recommend my account. So I’m on the you know social media. So look look me up. Chaz Netticombe and his team at State Navigate have put a lot of thought and effort and work into the election. So definitely would would follow Chaz and his team at State Navigate. And there’s definitely other people who do really good job.22:02.97Sam ShiraziDon’t want to list them all because I’m going to leave someone out and I’ll feel bad about it. But definitely, you know, keep keep in mind when you’re seeing things online. some Some of it might be good. Some of it might be bad.22:13.65Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, I’ll i’ll do some bad podcasts to unpack the results. I think no matter what happens, it’s going to be a really interesting night. This has been a unique election. All eyes are going to be on Virginia.22:25.29Sam Shirazii think we haven’t had a competitive election in a while. yeah And so everyone’s excited about this one, even if you know No matter which which side you are on, I think if you’re truly just a interested in elections and people going to the polls and democracy in action, this is a really great election to watch. And yeah, so I’ve appreciated everyone who’s... Rouxet- Gone on this ride with me, which is a redistricting referendum.23:03.49Sam Shiraziyou know It never ends in Virginia. The elections go on and on. and yeah i mean it’s It’s always interesting following Virginia elections. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I will catch you on the other side of the redistricting refer referendum. and This has been Federal Fallout. and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the final days of the redistricting campaign and some of the dynamics we might see as the results start coming in on Tuesday.00:12.44Sam ShiraziBut before I get to that, I did want to talk about something a lot more tragic and that is the news that I’m sure many of you have heard about former Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.00:23.51Sam Shiraziand his wife. For those of you who are not aware, the former lieutenant governor shot and killed his wife, and then he took his own life. Obviously, a very tragic situation.00:34.68Sam ShiraziMy heart goes out to their children and the Extend family, and just a really, really awful news that came out this week. I did want to talk about it because, obviously, it’s an important event.00:47.21Sam ShiraziI’m not going to give you my commentary. There’s really nothing more for me to say other than It’s just a huge tragedy and I’m sorry that it happened and I wish everyone involved who knew them the best as they continue to process this this horrible event.01:02.68Sam ShiraziSo anyways, I will turn over to the redistricting referendum because it is coming up. It is going to be on Tuesday. All eyes will be on Virginia as the results start coming in. So on this Saturday, April 18th, this is the last day of early voting. Early voting will be going on across Virginia.01:19.54Sam ShiraziThe satellite voting locations are open. So we’re going to probably see the biggest day of early voting definitely so far. for this election and then possibly could be the biggest day of early voting for a Virginia state election in Virginia history. We’ll just have to wait and see on the final numbers.01:34.42Sam ShiraziI think, honestly, the early voting is pretty much what we expect or what it typically is in these elections where on paper, the Democrats have an advantage, roughly 60-40 advantage. That’s traditionally what happens in Virginia.01:46.84Sam ShiraziI think The caveat to that is the Democrats could be not doing as well as they did last year. And we’ll talk about some of those dynamics. But I think at the end of the day, I don’t think the early vote going to tell us a whole lot other than turnout probably going to be pretty high. I think we’re going to be approaching the turnout of 2025 and potentially we can get more turnout to hit 3.5 million voters, which is very high for a state election, also very high for an election that is not a general election. It’s a special election in the spring.02:15.58Sam ShiraziSo not going to turn talk about turn early vote so far until we get the final numbers. And then, you know, probably I’ll do one last podcast before the election and I’ll give you kind of my final hot take on Virginia early vote.02:27.38Sam ShiraziThis episode, I wanted to talk about a different dynamic, which is what I call the dynamic between the shy yes voters. versus the no skeptical independent voters. and what And I’ll unpack what all that means, but I think sometimes in elections, there’s just a complete focus on turnout.02:45.66Sam ShiraziAnd you know from what I’m seeing, I think turnout is gonna be high on both sides. I think Democrats are getting out their voters, Republicans are getting out their voters. That’s why it’s gonna be a high turnout election.02:55.88Sam ShiraziI think honestly, the Republicans are doing a better job than they did in 2025 in certain parts of Virginia. But that doesn’t mean they’re going win just off, you know, slightly better turnout because 2025 was a really bad year for them.03:08.36Sam ShiraziAnd while the turnout is up, unless something really, really crazy happens on a election day, it is not astronomical Republican turnout. And certainly compared to the Democrats, the Democrats are keeping up with the Republican turnout.03:19.14Sam ShiraziSo if we’re comparing this election to maybe the 2025 Virginia governor’s election, i Democrats won by 15 points. Perhaps Republicans will get some better turnout than they did last year. That’s really only going to give them a point or two. I can’t imagine that they’re going to overcome 15-point deficit purely on turnout. There just aren’t enough Republicans in Virginia to do that. So I think while the turnout dynamic is important, it’s part of the equation for the Republicans, I just don’t think turnout is is necessarily going to win it for them. And I think for Republicans, the turnout is sufficient, but not necessary. In other words, they need to get turnout, but just having good turnout not going to win it for them. And frankly, I think the Democrats have more upside in terms of turnout. Why? Because remember we talked about the satellite early voting locations.04:04.58Sam ShiraziA lot of places like in Northern Virginia, Richmond area, Hampton Roads, there were reduced satellite early voting locations. And so I think in theory, there could be a lot more Democrats coming out on Election Day, just purely based on that dynamic where there was less early voting this time. And I also think some of the voters, the Democrats...04:24.24Sam Shirazipotentially could get out or or some of the lowest propensity voters like young voters who typically don’t show up for an election like this. You know, it’s possible the Democrats get them out on Election Day. So I think in some ways, the Democrats have more of an upside in terms of the early vote, excuse me, in terms of getting out more turnout.04:40.32Sam ShiraziHowever, the Republicans certainly could drive up their rural turnout. And, you know, the thing with rural voters, a lot of them The counties are big geographically. There’s only one early voting location.04:50.49Sam ShiraziAnd for a lot of these people, it’s a lot easier to go five minutes down to your local polling place than it is to go all the way to the early voting location that could be 30 minutes away. So I think there’s a lot of unknown with election day turnout dynamics. I think the Republicans could have a surge. Democrats could have a surge. Both sides could be surging.05:07.10Sam ShiraziBut kind of bottom line with turnout, I just don’t think that the Republicans can win purely on turnout alone. They’re going to need persuasion. I think the good news for the Republicans is that they are getting persuasion more so than they got in 2025, which is again, not super surprising because 2025 was such a low bar.05:23.96Sam ShiraziBut what I mean by they’re getting persuasion is that the Republicans are winning more people over to the no side than I think perhaps people had predicted, at least according to some of these polls. We had Chaz Nadiqom on last time. He talked about how true independence, people who don’t lean one way or another, are breaking towards the no side. i think that’s good news for no.05:46.54Sam ShiraziSo I do think that no people are getting these persuasion dynamic on their side. And I think at the end of the day I talked about what I describe as kind of skeptical independents who are under leaning no. and And those are the true independents that Chaz Natikom talked about.06:02.70Sam ShiraziAnd i think that’s good a good thing for the Republicans and the no campaign. However, you have to keep all of that in context, because if you think about the no campaign, they’re winning over some of the independents. But the people who are probably less least likely to come out,06:18.70Sam Shiraziyou know, in terms of Democrat, Republican, true independent, I think are the true independents, because this really just seems like more of a partisan fight. fight. And so a lot of independents may just think like, and i don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t really care.06:31.49Sam ShiraziI don’t like gerrymandering, but I’m not going to bother go vote because I don’t like Trump or I don’t like the Republicans, whatever reason. So I think that’s kind of the challenge the No Campaign faces is that they have this pool of voters who are true independents who probably don’t like this idea of gerrymandering. But unless they’re very high propensity voters to begin with, they may not really love the idea of coming out and voting for this.06:54.95Sam ShiraziAnd I think the true independents fall into kind of two categories. One is the high propensity true independents, people like older people, wealthier people. I think those people are coming out and that’s helping the no campaign. i think the problem for the no campaign is that there are another group of people who are kind of low propensity, true independent voters. Those are typically more working class people, typically younger people. And those people, I just don’t think are going to show up for an election like this because they just don’t really care. They don’t care one way or another. This isn’t like the most important thing in their lives. And so I think that’s going to be the challenge the no campaign is going to have is they’re doing well on07:30.07Sam Shirazipersuasion, but can they turn out those true independent voters who aren’t kind of hardcore Republicans? And I think that’s where kind of turnout and persuasion intersect, where you have this dynamic of people who are probably going vote no, but they just don’t have a reason to show up because it’s just not a top priority for them.07:48.35Sam ShiraziAnd I think that’s going to be one of the dynamics to look for. And on the other side, in terms of the yes campaign, I think you may see a dynamic which I call in the shy yes voter. So what does a shy voter mean? A shy voter means someone who doesn’t love their voting for something, doesn’t they don’t want to advertise it to the world, they don’t want to tell pollsters, but at the end of the day, when they get in the voting booth, they’re going to vote yes. And I think we talked about this last year with the shy Jay Jones voter.08:12.93Sam ShiraziSomeone who doesn’t want to admit they’re voting for Jay Jones for whatever reason, but they end up voting for him. And I do think there was some of that going on in the attorney general race. And that’s why Jay Jones got a bigger win than almost all the polls were showing was because people ended up going to vote and they voted for Jay Jones, even though they weren’t telling the pollsters or they may have been an undecided, but they got into the booth and they just voted straight ticket D and I think that some of that could be happening because I think there are a group of people who08:42.39Sam ShiraziAgain, they’re kind of high propensity voters. They’re going to vote no matter what. They don’t like Trump. They don’t like Republicans. And when they get in the booth, they’re just going to say, you know, I don’t love either option. I don’t like gerrymandering, but I really think it’s important to perhaps send a message or perhaps to even the playing field nationally. So I’m going to vote yes. They may not you know be putting a sign out on their lawn. They may not be screaming it from the top of their lungs. They may not be telling pollsters, but when they get into voting, both they’re going vote yes.09:09.56Sam ShiraziBut again, there’s that turnout dynamic. So you’re going to see those shy yes voters, the high propensity ones, older, wealthier, those people are going to show up. But then you may, and I think this is the problem the yes campaign may have is you have the The low propensity shy yes voters. So these are people like I would say probably young people, people in college don’t really care too much about this either way. They’re just kind of out of it and they’re not going to vote because this isn’t the top priority in their lives. And again, they’re not you know living and breathing politics. So I think on both sides, you have the persuasion and turnout dynamics intersecting.09:43.55Sam ShiraziI think the question becomes, you know, who does a better job? Do the shy yes voters turn up? Do the skeptical, independent, no voters show up? Does all that happen all at once?09:55.04Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, Chaz Natico mentioned this. I mean, I think there is a possibility where Democrats just kind of plow through, they get the turnout they need, and they get to like 51 or 52%.10:06.33Sam ShiraziAnd it’s just, it’s not pretty, but at the end of the day, they get it to pass. I think that’s one dynamic. And most people seem to think that’s where things are leaning towards at this point. think the other dynamic is If things break one way or another, if there’s a lot more shy yes voters than we think, I mean, I think this could be close, not not that close at the end of the day and could be maybe a fifty five forty five result where you you even hit double digits.10:29.95Sam ShiraziI think if there are more us kind of skeptical no independents who turn up, this could be close. And I think in an ideal universe for the Republicans, I think there is a a way they they have a path to get to know. The path would be that Democratic turnout is down among low propensity voters, young voters.10:47.83Sam ShiraziRepublican turnout is high among the you know hardcore base, including their low propensity like rural voters. And then they’re getting a lot of persuasion on the no independence. And they’re also getting a lot of no independence to go vote because they you know, are able to to motivate those people to go vote because, you know, those people may not like gerrymandering. So I think a lot of things have to go right for the Republicans. Basically, all the Democrats need to do to go right for them is they just need to get out their base. And that probably gets them to 50%. I think a lot needs to go right for the Republicans to get to 50%. And I think there’s a common problem that we see in Virginia where11:25.39Sam Shirazithe Virginia Republicans, like it’s pretty easy for them to get into the 40s. It’s pretty easy for them to get up to 45%. We saw that with Miárez, but they just can’t overcome that hump of 45% for whatever reason, probably because, you know, the combination of suburban votes and African American votes, it’s it’s easy for the Democrats to get 50%.11:44.38Sam ShiraziJust the Republicans, they have that ceiling around 45, 46% in Virginia. And i think you know We’ll see if they’re able to cross it. The the one you know time they did cross it was in 2021 when Glenn Youngkin won, and he was able to get up to pretty much 51%. I don’t think that’s impossible here, but I also think it is a different environment than 2021. It’s a different environment than 2025. So 2021, we obviously had a Democratic president. It was right after the withdrawal from Afghanistan.12:16.72Sam ShiraziPresident Biden’s approval rating was going down. So I think it was just a good national environment for the Republicans and Glenn Youngkin and the Republicans in 2021 kind of seized the opportunity and won. Same thing 2025, Democrats, good national environment for them. They had a strong Democratic candidate with now Governor Spanberger. You had a relatively less strong candidate with Lieutenant Governor Winston-Marcel Sears. So Democrats were able to seize the moment, get a big win, a landslide. I think I mentioned this before, politics is about being president and 2026 is different than 2025. It’s different than 2021.12:52.55Sam ShiraziHow are things even between 2025 and 2026 different? i mean I would say the natural environment is actually worse for the Republicans right now than 2025 because you know oil prices have gone up, gas prices are up. you know There may be some news in the next few days about potential deal with Iran. But, you know, regardless, the prices are elevated and people are not feeling that great about the economy. The cost of living crisis has continued. So I think the national environment is certainly not great for the Democrats. But you have to kind of look at some space state specific dynamics here in Virginia. Specifically, Democrats now have a trifecta. They are in complete control of Virginia state government. You know, we’ve talked about Spanberger’s approval. There’s a lot of, you know,13:35.87Sam Shirazitalking points about Spanberger going left and the Democrats are you know passing all these taxes, which you know almost none of them actually passed, but that’s what’s getting into the media ecosystem. So I think At the end of the day, the democratic environment is not as great in Virginia compared to 2025, the state environment.13:53.92Sam ShiraziAnd I also think we’ve talked about this. I mean, the idea of gerrymandering is not as popular as Spanberger. So like in 2025, the person who was on the ticket for the Democrats was Spanberger. In 2026, what is essentially a proxy for the Democrats is let’s gerrymander Virginia.14:09.53Sam ShiraziCertainly some hardcore Democrats, they’re very happy with that and they want to gerrymander Virginia. A lot of other people, including a lot of the true independents we talked about, they don’t want to gerrymander Virginia. So I think 2026 is going to be its own thing. It’s not this kind of, you know, we do have 2025, have 2021.14:27.20Sam Shirazilot of people have mentioned that the closest election this is probably similar to is 2025 attorney general race. A lot of the same dynamics we talked about shy Jay Jones voters, skeptical independents.14:51.22Sam ShiraziYes campaign is able to do that this year, or if the no campaign is able to keep those skeptical independence as skeptical independence and they don’t go over into becoming shy yes voters. I think there’s a lot going on. This election, I think, is a lot harder to read than 2025. The vibes are different. There’s a lot fewer polls.15:08.74Sam Shiraziso i could i could see like a huge range of possibilities everything from a close night where no just pulls it out to a 10 point yes win and that really depends on how the turnout is looking even more so than turnout dynamics i think it’s really going to depend on the final persuasion you know people getting to the booth sides are making a push i’ll say that the democrats are you know doing their best to convince people that this is really a way to send a message on President Trump. And they brought in former President Obama, who’s done videos, and he’s trying to kind of persuade Democrats. On the Republican side, you have people trying to make this all about, you know, the unfairness of the maps, and then also similarly kind of attacking Spanberger and kind of using this election as a way to attack Spanberger.15:57.35Sam ShiraziAnd I think the one thing i’ll I’ll kind of end on is I don’t know if the Republicans’ strategy of making this a referendum on Spanberger necessarily is going to work because I think while there are people who are kind of upset at Spanberger, if you look at approval ratings, there are more people upset at President Trump than Governor Spanberger. And so the question becomes, does this become a referendum on Trump? Does become a referendum?16:18.81Sam ShiraziOn Spanberger, you know, we’ll see. It could be a referendum on both. I think if it if it’s referendum on Trump, I think the Democrats clearly they’re going are going to win that.16:29.66Sam ShiraziI think it’s a referendum on Spanberger. It’s going to be close. And so I think if we we see a close result at the end of the day, I think that’s an indication this became a referendum on Spanberger. I think if we don’t see a close election and the Democrats and yes, win by a fair margin, I think we can say that this has become a referendum on Trump. And it’s really kind of a crazy experiment. We don’t know what’s going to happen. There haven’t been a lot of polls. you know Everyone’s gut is like, yes, has a single digit lead.16:56.86Sam ShiraziBut, you know, we don’t know until the votes start coming in. So I think it’s going to be really interesting. I will probably do one last podcast before the election once we get the final early voting numbers, once we get any final polls.17:08.86Sam ShiraziBut really, this is the dynamic that’s going on. And I think, you know, just keep an eye out on the fact that people are not as vocal, I’d say,17:19.30Sam Shiraziabout this when you’re in the middle or you’re kind of an undecided voter. I mean, you you hear the people, on the Republican side, who are very loud and they are upset by this. And then you see people on the Democratic side who are excited about this. They want to send a message. They want to view this as a way to, you know, push back on D.C. and what President Trump’s doing. And you know those people are both loud. I think the people in the middle who don’t really talk about this, they don’t really want to, you know,17:45.95Sam Shiraziadvertise what their views are, I think those people going to really important. And it’s it’s hard to get a read on that because unlike a presidential election where you know a lot of those people may have opinions, something like this, that they’re going to be convinced probably in the last few days. And that’s why you’re seeing a lot of advertisements. I know there’s kind of jokes about all the TV ads and all the mailers. I’ve i’ve gotten a lot of mailers. I’ve seen a lot of TV ads.18:08.23Sam ShiraziCertainly a lot of money being is being spent on both sides, even though I’d say the Yes campaign had a slight advantage. Not a slight advantage. They they had more money. But the the no campaign got a kind of a late injection of money as well. So end of the day, we’ll have to wait and see. I think that’s what’s exciting about this election. We don’t know. I will certainly be here to cover it all. Obviously, once we get the results, I’ll kind of do the post analysis of all that. And then once the referendum is done, we’re going to have to think about legal challenges at the Virginia Supreme Court that still exist. We have to think about the primary that’s going to be coming up for the congressional seat. So a lot to still cover in the18:42.97Sam ShiraziVirginia elections, never a dull moment. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fall Out. And I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will have Chaz Netticombe back on, and it’s the perfect time because State Navigate has put out a new poll, and I really want to go over all the details with Chaz. So thanks for coming back on.00:16.60Chaz NuttycombeHey, Sam, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me on. You know, I think last time it came on, I was there’s less data to work with. And now there’s a little more data to work with now that I’m happy to talk about that our poll has fetched.00:27.94Sam ShiraziYeah, definitely. So your poll got a lot of attention. In 2025, you were, i would say, among the pollsters that polled every race in Virginia, you were the most accurate pollster. So I think definitely when you drop a poll, I’m going to be paying attention. And this one, i think, in some ways what was what we were expected expecting, but I think had some surprises in there, too. So do you want to kind of big picture go over the poll to begin with?00:52.51Chaz NuttycombeYeah, absolutely. And, you know, like what I will preface with is I have a saying, which is I don’t care who wins. I care about being right.01:01.97Chaz NuttycombeRight. It doesn’t matter. The candidate it doesn’t matter. This is the first poll we’ve done for like a issue. Right. For the constitutional referendum or referendum, whatever. So, you know, i care about being right. That is my job as a forecaster and as the executive director of State Navigate. and And, you know, also my co-forecaster’s job, right, Jack Kersting, is...01:24.99Chaz NuttycombeYou know, we and and a polling team committee, their job, you know, all our job is to just look, this is let’s let’s cut through the noise and and look at the signals. Right. and And let’s try and do the best work we can to let people know where things are heading.01:41.20Chaz Nuttycombeyou know what i will say is i i you know i guess kind of gut feeling is i’m not as confident in getting this one right right whether it be the poll or you know i i do think that the yes referendum probably has uh maybe like an 80 chance of winning thereabouts And that’s just because it’s been 100 years since 1928, not 100 years, but pretty 100 years since there’s been true blue constitutional referendum around this Right? Yeah.02:11.30Chaz Nuttycombesince you know there’s been a true blue you know a constitutional referendum had held around this time So this is a whole different beast and I’m kind of going off of what worked for us in that second survey. Right. Technically, the first survey was, you know, a little bit more accurate than that second survey. However, you know, i think we kind of got lucky in that when it comes to like who when it comes to like the raw responses we got in there. and We were very aggressive in this poll with trying to get a raw response electorate, you know, that was close to the target weights we have.02:53.18Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, like we did a great job with these raw responses. But yeah, so, you know, we there’s a whole bunch of interesting things in this poll. You know, it’s it’s maybe exciting, maybe not exciting. Right. If you saw all the GMU Sharpsville WAPO poll, maybe it’s not as exciting to you. You’re like, oh, OK, well, they’re in the same boat this time. Right. we, we were, first place last year, in Virginia, I think, uh, Sharskul Wapo was in third or at at least fourth. so they did pretty good. you know, I think they had Spanberger plus 12. We had Spanberger 13, but, you know, I think the big difference there was the attorney general race.03:31.45Chaz Nuttycombeso, you know, it, it, Like I was i was texting you know David Ramadan, you know professor at GMU, and you got to work a little bit on the pole that GMU, sharp school did.03:44.10Chaz NuttycombeAnd i said a I said something to the the tune of, you know we we win together, we lose together this time, right? i think I think nobody can ever accuse me of of hurting, right?03:57.23Chaz NuttycombeIf I were ever the one to hurt, that would have been like last year or something. You know, it’s like, I had what weights, you know, i had in mind looking at the 2025 election and 2021 and everything, you know, this electorate is a little bit different than 2025.04:21.56Chaz NuttycombeYou know, if you were to look at like, I don’t know, the, you know, like CNN exit poll or whatever, or just the exit poll.04:30.76Chaz NuttycombeIt’s not like C it’s, I think CNN is just one that pays for it. it’s, it’s similar to 2025, but little bit, a little bit little bit different. so, you know, and it, it, a big part is the partisan waiting here is, I think it was plus eight in, that survey, the late October survey, it’s plus 11 here.04:48.92Chaz NuttycombeWhy is that? Well, if you were to look at the second survey methodology stuff, I put a section of, look, this is the process is how we went with the partisan weighting, which is the most important part of your poll.05:01.19Chaz NuttycombeAnd the big part in short is the Gallup quarterly national party ID. And so,05:10.74Chaz NuttycombeYou know, the the in Q3 2025, it was plus seven Dem national. Well, it’s plus 10 now as of Q1. And I was really happy to where, you know, the that that I had this data available before we were I knew we had to go in the field.05:27.77Chaz NuttycombeI messaged the the wonderful people at Gallup like, hey, is this gonna drop? And then they responded as soon as it dropped. It was like maybe April 1st or 2nd or whatever. I was like, thank God, you know. So, you know, we’re using pretty much the same methodology that we did in that second survey.05:43.75Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, in, so getting to the results, let’s get to results here. Yes, it’s up five, right? That was what the likely voter model and the WAPO Schar School had, if I recall correctly.05:57.62Chaz NuttycombeAnd then it is for the governor’s approval, even. what’s What’s pretty interesting here before we get into like the the sexy parts, right, which are those two things, Trump’s approval is actually a point net approval and actually just approval rating is a point better than compared to that second survey.06:18.65Chaz Nuttycombewhich is really interesting because his national approval is five points worse. So there’s three potential things here. Either one, we’re going to be wrong and underestimate the Democrats again, maybe slightly, or maybe by a lot, who knows? Or the national polls are wrong.06:36.04Chaz NuttycombeOr, and I think three is the most likely culprit. There is a floor for Donald Trump and Republicans in Virginia, right? You know, especially with how I think Virginia is not as racially polarized as say Alabama, right? But we still have a level of racial polarization. And I, and I think that’s the thing. We are a Southern state, no matter how much people from further down the Mason Dixon line want to say we’re Yankee land, we still are a Southern state in so many cultural and demographic ways, right?07:09.72Chaz NuttycombeSo I think that is really the thing here is that there is a floor and it looks like, you know, maybe the low 40s is Donald Trump’s floor. So you’re not going to see like, well, it should be five points worse because that’s what the national point. of That’s what the national, you know, poll show. Well, it’s going to be a little bit different compared to like maybe like the Midwest where you have.07:30.26Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, a little more elasticity in the electorate, right? I mean, Corey Stewart still quote unquote only lost by 16, right? And the same thing with Winsome Sears winning by, or sorry, losing by 15, what, 15.3%, 15.4, whatever decimal was. I think the likely culprit here.07:46.67Chaz Nuttycombepoint four whatever the tenth decimal so i think that’s the likely culprit here but yeah. I just wanted to kind of talk about that cause I thought that was really interesting.07:58.15Chaz Nuttycombethe other, you know, getting into the top lines, yes, campaign, should be favored in this look. There’s financial advantage. Donald Trump is still in the white house and he is nationally increasingly unpopular. The black vote in the early vote has been very strong.08:13.34Chaz NuttycombeThat is somewhat offsetting, but not entirely offsetting. Very strong Republican turnout in rural areas and exurbs that were asleep at the wheel in 2025. But, you know, look, I mean, the elect the electorate is, or the early early vote is, what, maybe two or three points better than at this point 2025.08:36.61Chaz Nuttycombeprobably three points actually now, if not four, because as we’re recording, there’s this you know big thing on the reduction in satellite access being shown on our interactive, right? Because it updates every day.08:49.46Chaz NuttycombeSo I think the early vote is like at least three points redder than the overall early vote as we are recording, maybe four.09:01.12Chaz NuttycombeSo, and that’s sort of an interesting thing in our poll where, you know, the people who say that they are going to vote early in person and, or vote by mail, are bluer compared to what we had in our late, that that question is pretty much a bluer result compared to the October survey.09:22.36Chaz NuttycombeSo in the in the October survey, people who said they were going to vote early in person, they have not voted yet, but they plan to, you know, they were breaking for Jones by three points. This time.09:36.87Chaz Nuttycombeit is 10 points for vote early in person. And then it is five point swing when we talk about, you know, comparing like Jones and yes and all that sort of thing for for people who say they’re still going to vote by mail.09:52.20Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, and I think the reason why this is is because of the reduction in satellite access. I think this is this is probably of a good theory as why this is. so You know, a good signal, right, to watch for every day or the next few are over through, what, Sunday, Monday, when we get the final votes.10:16.49Chaz NuttycombeLet’s really say, or final early votes, I mean, you could really say Tuesday, I guess, because people are still counting mail maybe on Monday, or almost assuredly they are.10:26.35Chaz Nuttycombeis to watch our interactive and look at the model, which is not trying to figure out, it it’s not saying that yes is winning by almost 20 points, right? Dems are, it’ it’s using Lieutenant Governor results from last year and acts as a sort of partisan model because the Lieutenant Governor result was the closest to what we call in political science like a normal vote, right? Meaning like people how they normally vote for you know their party preference, whereas like a What is it? I’m trying to remember the of the opposite. I think it’s called an earned vote.10:58.91Chaz NuttycombeIt’s from a policy paper I read back in college, but just pretty much, you know, like an earned vote is is kind of like someone who’s getting something on persuasion, especially if they’re incumbent.11:08.95Chaz NuttycombeBut so we use that. So just check the interactive every day, especially after, so you know, the big super light saddle, sorry, satellite Saturday, super Saturday. Right.11:22.61Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, if the early vote is getting at least two points bluer, I think that is a good sign for our poll. And you can check the, you know, state navigate Twitter account for, you know, those updates starting, starting tomorrow.11:40.53Chaz NuttycombeBut yeah, so that’ll be a big thing to watch for. So, yeah, I mean, the early vote expected to be closer than compared to the early vote numbers in 2025. Yeah.11:58.23Chaz NuttycombeYeah,11:59.82Sam ShiraziWell, could I ask you a question about the poll?12:01.86Chaz Nuttycombeyeah shoot.12:02.97Sam ShiraziSo, you know, top line number, up five, kind of yes, up five makes sense. You know, that that’s kind of what where the vibes are.12:11.38Chaz NuttycombeYeah, everyone’s talking J.12:11.66Sam Shirazii did want12:13.34Chaz NuttycombeJones margin, J. Jones margin, right?12:15.28Sam ShiraziYeah, exactly. But I did want to note, you know, a tidbit in the poll where you had. 10% of the poll, 9% essentially of the poll being what I call like true independence and Noah’s winning them by 24 points, even though in your last poll in 2025, Jones was winning those by nine points.12:31.10Chaz NuttycombeExactly.12:36.29Sam ShiraziSo I guess the other question I had is, In exit polls, typically in Virginia, you see about 30 something percent of people describing themselves as independents.12:44.93Sam ShiraziIt seems like here you have a more strict definition of what independents are. So can you just explain how what independents are in your poll and why they’re breaking for no, in your opinion?12:49.58Chaz Nuttycombeexactly12:55.69Chaz NuttycombeRight. So this is the thing when we talk about party ID and and the way that pollsters do it. And this is also how Gallup does it. So, I mean, they do both. Gallup has both. And, you know, and we also show both. But we wait to the push.13:12.35Chaz NuttycombeWait to the push. What does that mean? Well, so when we ask, what party do you identify with? Yeah, there’s a lot of people who say they’re an independent. Okay. Well, you know, Americans are very independent minded and they don’t like the two party system.13:24.46Chaz NuttycombeBig whoop. Well, you still have a lot of those independents, you know, two thirds of those who say that they lean toward one party or another and they pretty much, you know, maybe 75 to 90% of the time, something like that. i don’t know. Depending on the state and the election and your electorate.13:42.54Chaz Nuttycombewill vote for their party preference, even though they say that they do not identify with that party, right? So about one in 10 Virginians are actually truly independent.13:51.99Chaz NuttycombeYou know, we follow up with people who say the first time we ask what party you identify with, they say neither. We follow up with, okay, we understand you’re an independent. Which one do you say you lean more toward? And then, you know, you get like,14:06.19Chaz NuttycombeYou know, typically the Dems have a advantage with that. The one exception is 2021. If I recall correctly, I don’t have those, you know, it’s it’s in the second poll from October, the late October survey, which is our final one.14:22.08Chaz NuttycombeBut I believe actually in that election, there were more people in Virginia who say they identified as a Republican than as a Democrat. And that’s because nationally, more people started to move toward identifying as a Republican than a Democrat when they voted in 2021. But either way, typically in each election, there’s about 10% of voters who say that they do not lean toward either side. These are true, actual, very persuadable voters who swing violently between, you know, probably every four years when there’s a Virginia governor election, right? 10% of the voters who actually pretty much matter when it decides to who rules Virginia.15:06.53Chaz NuttycombeSo, yes, in our late October survey, we had independents going to Jones by nine. Now, what I will say is... You know, that also includes probably some of those independents who voted for Jones before they knew about the stories.15:24.32Chaz NuttycombeSo I think if anything, that number is a little bit inflated. But if you were to take the Jay Jones number of nine points in 2025, you and then you, you know, looked at the no margin here, where no has a 24 point advantage.15:43.100Chaz NuttycombeAnd you take the margin and everything. That is a 33 point swing toward now. Now, in the CNN, or not CNN, they they sponsored it, but in the exit poll last year, right, which, you know, is pretty reflective after they weighed it after the election results of the 2025 electorate.16:01.26Chaz Nuttycombeyou would have, and you know, it’s it’s not perfect because it’s an exit poll. and There’s better ways to do this, but still, it’s pretty close, I think. You had Jason Mieris winning independents by 8%, right? So either way,16:15.42Chaz Nuttycomberight so either way twenty 20, 33 point swing or anywhere in between or whatever. i mean, that’s enormous. That is enormous ground that the Republicans campaigning as the no campaign have made since November.16:33.48Chaz NuttycombeSo, uh, that’s, that, that is a huge thing here. And the thing that is keeping yes up is because, you know, if you look at the quarterly party ID, is now D plus 10 rather than D plus seven, in Q3, right. When we were making our waiting decisions, you can read more in the article on that.16:55.93Chaz Nuttycombethe The thing that’s keeping yes winning is because, you know, their base is showing up, especially black voters. They’ve been targeting black voters a lot. And I said this during the, you know, the early voting process as we were looking at what areas were turning out more relative to the same day equivalent in 2025. Right.17:13.85Chaz NuttycombeSo, and and why are they targeting black voters? Well, pretty much black voters in this election are going vote pretty much partisan baseline. They’re not, can they’re not moving at all.17:23.55Chaz NuttycombeRight. Do it a little bit better. The no campaign is doing a little, a little bit better with black voters compared to like win some Sears, but win some Sears lost by 15 points.17:34.31Chaz NuttycombeYou know, the no black voters only 10% say they’re voting. No. you know, no campaign unless they have, you know, a strong election day turnout, which I think they are banking on.17:45.87Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, independents making up a larger share of the electorate and maybe probably also their Republican base coming out on election day, making up a little bit larger share of the electorate than compared to, you know, if you were to treat this as a gubernatorial election because of the turnout, what it would be. That’s something they’re also counting on, right?18:04.54Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, if they weren’t counting on all that, then they would need to have like 20% of the black vote, which they’re just, they’re just not getting, point blank period. So, uh, we’ll see how well that ages. Maybe it’s, maybe it’s not, but like, you know,18:18.43Chaz NuttycombeThey try, you know, there’s all these stories about them, you know, sending black voters mailers and trying to, you know, I guess get them to think it’s a Republican a thing if you vote yes or whatever. Right.18:32.57Chaz NuttycombeDoesn’t seem to have paid off. Excuse me. Paid off. Has not really been effective. Uh, so, you know, like that, that is a big thing. but again, you know, like, so the, the, the yes campaign is mainly targeting hardcore guns and they have been doing a good job at getting them out.18:53.85Chaz NuttycombeNow, that being said, i mean, I’m not saying this is 2021, but I feel like that was also, the the Terry McAuliffe strategy would suggest this is a base election. Let’s get out our base.19:07.19Chaz Nuttycombedon’t care about persuasion because they’re not winning on the yes campaign is not winning on persuasion in They know that people are upset with president Trump. And if they can get all these hardcore Dems and they’re, you know, sort of, let’s say a support score for Democrats of like a six to eight or six, seven, right.19:30.11Chaz NuttycombeTo come out and vote. Yes. Then they win. Right. I mean, it’s just this is a thing in Virginia elections. You know, this is a special election, whatnot, but probably at the end of the day, a majority of Virginians or sorry, a majority of registered voters in Virginia are going to be voting in this thing.19:48.27Chaz NuttycombeYou know, and i don’t think that all of a sudden we’re going to see an electorate that looks like 2021 where, you know, the party ID is going to be like R plus three to five. Right.20:01.33Chaz NuttycombeThis is still going to be a Dem leaning election. So, yeah, that’s just couple of things there.20:08.15Sam ShiraziYeah, yeah20:09.63Chaz NuttycombeYeah, I just want to talk about the income thing if you wanted to talk about that.20:13.68Sam Shiraziyeah yeah, go ahead.20:15.71Chaz Nuttycombeso, you know, and we’ll, we’ll talk about this in Spanburn approval, when we get to that, but you know, the, the areas when we talk about like what this coalition is going to look like, it’s, it’s, I think it’s good to look at the attorney general race, maybe a mix between baseline attorney general race and governor, uh, in terms of like what the, uh, not, not like, oh yes, it’s going to win by 15 points. But in terms of like, if you’re going to model this out,20:41.50Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, like the areas that had the biggest amount of Spanberger-Mieris voters were wealthy voters, right? Wealthy areas, Western Chesterfield, Western Henrico, you know, Cape Henry and Virginia Beach, around there in Jason Mieris’ old territory, right? Kind of wealthier part of Virginia Beach.21:01.24Chaz NuttycombeNorthern Arlington, you know, these wealthy areas in Virginia, right? are swinging heavily from the governor election to the, you know, the the no campaign.21:30.97Chaz NuttycombeYeah.21:32.67Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, let me let me pull out this graph here in the poll. So amongst income, people who make $150,000 more a year, and that’s what, this is self-reported, by the way.21:46.34Chaz NuttycombeSo sometimes people lie on these things. But still, people who make $150,000 and we’re using this recall, we asked about that in the poll they’re swinging People who make to a year,22:04.31Chaz Nuttycombeten point five percent the lowest income voters not moving so much moving to no by seven percent so I think it’s very similar to what we’re going to be seeing in the attorney general race versus governor race and and whatnot, in this election.22:20.65Chaz Nuttycombeso yeah, and, and there’s stuff to talk about with the the approval there, but we’ll get to that when we, whenever you want to move into it.22:27.56Sam ShiraziYeah, I did want to ask about that. But let me just ask one more question about the referendum, because I think, you know, it’s it’s essentially a state election because it’s a change of state constitution. And so we think about 2021 or we think about 2025.22:41.17Sam ShiraziHowever, i mean, I think there’s an argument that it’s essentially a proxy for a federal election. and is it you know Your number is basically similar to the 2024 number.22:50.93Sam Shirazilike Is this basically a rerun of 2024 or maybe like a rerun of 2024 combined with 2020? Is it maybe more of a federal or presidential type electorate in terms of partisanship?23:26.54Chaz NuttycombeIf anything, I think we are the catalyst of it. Right. so, and then it’s like, no, I mean, the, the electoral coalition is going to be different. you know, look, uh, my, my, we’ll see what happens. I feel good about our poll.23:42.58Chaz NuttycombeI don’t feel as good about this poll compared to 2025. And again, like it’s a special election. We haven’t had something like this in a hundred years, you know,24:15.10Chaz NuttycombeSo, Yeah, that’s that’s all I want to say on that. Yeah, we can talk about margin.24:18.94Sam ShiraziYeah.24:32.32Chaz NuttycombeBy top line margin, yeah, that’s what our poll shows. But, you know, like kind of what was getting at is my gut feels like this is going to be closer. I don’t know, man.24:52.66Chaz NuttycombeA lot of unknowns, especially election day, right? It was 55%, uh, sorry, 57% of 2025 overall Our poll would insinuate that that would be probably 47 or 48% of the overall vote if you were to account for normal response error that we had in that second poll in October. So,25:13.34Chaz Nuttycombeso You know, but, you know, we aren the team has worked very hard on this. I think we did an excellent job, especially with the raw responses.25:23.02Chaz NuttycombeSo we’ll see if it is closer. Or maybe we underestimate the Dems again, like I said, toward the beginning of the podcast. Got no idea. All I know is GMU, Shard School, WAPO, you know, them, we are both in the same boat.25:37.48Chaz NuttycombeSo we we we go down together or we win together. So...25:42.92Sam ShiraziYeah, well, I mean, that’s all really helpful in terms of the referendum itself. And I think we covered a lot. I mean, I wanted to just talk about the specific number with Spanberger because there’s just been a million hot takes about Spanberger and her approval.25:56.93Sam ShiraziAnd your poll found that Spanberger’s approval was even, even after she won by 15 points in 2025. You know, what is your hot take on the Spanberger approval? And like, why do you think it is even in this poll?26:10.66Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, i think Dwayne Yancey had a really good article on this. I think part of it is they’re, you know, Republicans have done a good job at getting Republicans angry and maybe some right leaning independents angry with the governor who voted for her.26:25.30Chaz NuttycombeI think they did a good job on that. you know We can quibble about like, oh, well, it’s all over. you know Mostly bills or only some part of bills that she hasn’t signed or haven’t gone into law.26:36.10Chaz NuttycombeYou could also make the argument is like, well, you know she’s gonna sign that gun bill. So in Republicans care about guns, this is a natural phenomenon in polling. I only know like half of of the saying, but pretty much Republicans boo louder when it’s someone or something that they do not like. You will see that in a survey. They will boo louder. And you can actually really see it, I think, in the questions where we show people the maps and we ask about, you know, you know, just individual questions related to, you know, the message testing that both campaigns have used. And I threw a little fun one in there about the college districts. They boo louder than Democrats who are much more ambivalent. Right.27:14.60Chaz NuttycombeThere’s a lot more soft approval of the governor than soft disapproval, right? Democrats are like, i don’t know, I kind of approve of the governor. So I think that’s a big part of this.27:26.42Chaz Nuttycombeother Other kind of things that, you know, are in in that Dwayne Yancey piece, which you again, I recommend are, I do think the redistricting thing has hurt the governor.27:36.19Chaz NuttycombeWhen we look at that swing with, you know the, the higher income voters. We also see higher income voters and, and the swing for like the referendum what I’m talking about.27:48.90Chaz NuttycombeWe also see like a big swing with a higher income voters with, how they voted, uh, in, uh, 2025, you know, in looking at our second poll, uh, they,28:04.23Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, are, are approving of the governor now. Right. It’s like, it’s, it’s double digit swings, but it’s not as big as the lower income one, which have larger swings,28:16.15Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, I think I think Spanberger became the face of affordability. Right. you know, she’s very much that campaign, the catalyst of what is probably the number one ad or number one word you’ll hear in Democratic ads, you know, now through November or but before then through November this year.28:35.17Chaz NuttycombeAnd this is this is just kind of like my pet theory. But look, man, I live in Churchill. And, you know, I get to see like some local TV stories and all that.28:46.47Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, i think that she got in the office, you know, what, you know, like people are getting the power bills in February for the January when that big snowstorm came through.28:59.03Chaz NuttycombeAnd everybody had a huge increase in and their energy bills compared to like, well, anytime ever. Now that being said, you know like like Dominion said, you know I think they had that one of their folks said this in a press release. you know they They truly, like like they pointed out like, you know this is the biggest or lowest temperatures since you know the 1950s for this point.29:23.85Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, the governor can’t control the weather, right? So that’s that’s why people had high energy bills. Because you got to, you know, you got to keep up with the the demand to keep people warm in in very freezing temperatures. My my pipes froze. That was new to me.29:40.29Chaz NuttycombeThat was that was the by fault. But anyway, it’s freezing cold and everybody got these high power bills. And it’s if you are kind of lower income and you voted for the governor and maybe you’re a swing voter who, you know, was like, oh, she’s talking about affordability. She’s going to get in there and fix it.29:57.71Chaz NuttycombeWell, shoot, you just saw your power bill go up and, you know, it’s so you’re maybe you’re blaming the governor, I think. That’s my pet theory.30:07.85Chaz NuttycombeSo, but you know, there we we don’t know, right? that like I’m speculating you here. Dwayne Yancey is speculating here.30:17.01Chaz Nuttycombethere’s There’s maybe some evidence that we all have our thoughts, but no single poll has actually asked people who disapprove of the governor, approved by the governor with a follow-up question, and maybe we should have done this, but you know i i just wanted... you know when I try and keep polls as short as possible, so that was really why.30:39.27Chaz NuttycombeBut nobody has asked the approvers and disapprovers, why do you approve? Why do you disapprove? And what’s especially going to be happen when you do that is, you know, people, you’re going to have a hard time getting those people who are like, maybe were Spanberger voters and are and are disapproving of her now.30:57.63Chaz NuttycombeRight. That’s a that’s a small, you know, section of your survey that’s much more independent minded and is not really as high propensity, maybe in terms of their voting behavior and just wants to be left alone and finish a survey as quickly as possible.31:12.84Chaz NuttycombeRight. so it’s difficult. so look, this is, this is all speculation. I mean, we can throw a whole bunch of stuff at the wall. Maybe it’s a gun bill, right? that’s the big thing. Like I, I haven’t even seen people talk about the gun bill, you know, on Twitter. It’s like, I was looking at, you know, looking at my website traffic today and all, all red is post amount is, is guns and, and like our slash Virginia.31:33.15Chaz NuttycombeSo it’s like, you know, I i think maybe media, like like people on Twitter, like you and me and like other you know journalists kind of have a thing of Twitter brain going on. I don’t know. But...31:45.05Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, so, so all this is speculation, but we don’t have any actual poll or survey research or anything for why people are, you know, disapproving, of the governor this much. Now, again, she’s even, uh, you can say, well, she’s not underwater. being said,32:01.88Chaz NuttycombeShe’s even in a likely voter survey that voted for her by 14 points. She is absolutely bet on it underwater with the overall adult population of Virginia and registered voters in Virginia, right? This is a blue electorate.32:18.89Chaz NuttycombeYou have a whole bunch of people who came out in 2024 who lean more Republican and are, you know, pretty much asleep because President Trump is in the White House and they’re going to come back in 2028. so, and, and even then, like if she has even approval, she’s definitely one of the most unpopular governors in the nation.32:36.45Chaz Nuttycombeuh, you know, like if you look at, but if there, we don’t have like a, a average of all governors approvals and everything using all the polls. Unfortunately, 538 is no longer a thing. and although I don’t even think they did it, that’s something we can do actually. I don’t know.32:52.45Chaz Nuttycombemaybe that’s something I should consider at state nav. but you know, Morning Consult, they do accordingly polling. i do think, you know, maybe the favorables are, you know, little bullish on the incumbents and everything.33:04.97Chaz NuttycombeSo i I noted that in the piece, you know, the the poll release. But she could be as high as the third most unpopular governor, or maybe she’s just in the top 10.33:14.96Chaz NuttycombeBut either way, she’s in the top 10, you know, least popular governors in the country. so, you know, people can quibble about, well, is it her fault? Is it not her fault?33:26.52Chaz NuttycombeLeave me out of this. Don’t shoot the messenger. Right. so, you know, I just like the data, want to present the data, let people know what we’re seeing.33:35.40Sam ShiraziYeah, well, definitely the poll was interesting. And i think both for the Spanberger approval and and referendum results, really useful to have as we we go into the closing day. So I’ll ask you one last question, because obviously we’ll have to see how early vote pans out.33:49.41Sam ShiraziIn terms of the no campaign, if, for example, we see a a rural surge on Tuesday on election day, or we see an our urban surge, I mean, do you think it’s within the margin where kind of those turnout dynamics on election day could matter? And I i wanted to see, are you going to be calling up all the registrars and seeing what the turnout is on election day?34:08.100Chaz NuttycombeYeah, absolutely. Look, the NAVCAST is back and back and better than ever. You know, nobody beat the NAVCAST last year. Goal is for nobody to beat it again. so the NAVCAST is going to be polling from the wonderful honor wonderful people at the Virginia Department of Elections who rely on the registrars to report their results.34:26.56Chaz NuttycombeAnd it will poll live and calculate the odds of margin of victory and overall odds of winning for yes and no throughout the night starting 7 Yes, we’re going to be calling up the registrars, myself, our elections coordinator, Michael Foley, and our data science chair in our political and data science committee, Charlie Kramer, who, you know, I meet with every week, you know.34:51.50Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, this so we were the three people calling up all the registrars. I will be doing a YouTube live stream. The only people who be able to get access to the sheet are the tier three subscribers for State Navigate. I’ll be talking a little bit and kind of posting on the Navcast in a chat on just a little bit of some of the numbers.35:13.79Chaz NuttycombeBut if you know you want the actual raw data and get to look at the spreadsheet and everything, you’ll need to become a tier three subscriber. But yeah, going to be live streaming. i’m i would guess... I don’t know. Maybe I am interested in if there will be more views on this thing than not. Especially if it’s close. So I would think there would be more views on the pre-poll closed live stream and everything compared to last year because this one is actually expected to be close. But although you know I think most...35:43.04Chaz NuttycombeI think most people outside of Virginia thought, or shoot, even people in Virginia thought the attorney general race is going close, and it wasn’t. Yeah, it’s close-ish, but not really, right? Especially compared to polls. So, but yeah, absolutely. You know, subscribe to your newsletter, go to satenavigate.org, go to Virginia, and go to our NAVCAST. And actually, in that poll release article, you have the NAVCAST link handy right there at the top.36:10.96Chaz NuttycombeMake sure you have that in front of you by you know, like 645 or 7, whatever you want to do And I will be, you know, posting or I’ll be talking on YouTube live, live stream about, you know, the what what we get as I dial up the red stars.36:29.41Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, I definitely encourage people to follow State Navigate, follow Chaz. I will be doing that on Election Day and definitely as a result start coming in. I’m going to be taking a look at that too. So I don’t have much more to add other than on Election Day and and through the Election Day, State Navigate, Chaz are going to be really great resources to see what’s going to happen. And yeah, Chaz, thanks for coming back on. And yeah, we’ll see what what happens in the end.36:52.48Chaz NuttycombeAwesome. Thank you for having me on, Sam.36:54.30Sam ShiraziYeah, so this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will first go over Super Saturday and the expansion of early voting that is happening today in Virginia. And then I wanted to also talk about Spanberger, Governor Spanberger’s approval rating and some commentary around that, and just wanted to share my thoughts because I’ve seen lot of hot takes about it, and I thought I would give you mine.00:24.22Sam ShiraziBut before we get to that, obviously redistricting referendums coming up. It’s not that far away. We are just around the corner in terms of election day. Election day is April 21st.00:35.64Sam ShiraziHowever, before that, there will be a lot of early voting. There has already been a lot of early voting. And there will be even more early voting in the final days. That’s typically when you see the most early voting is the last days of the early voting cycle.00:48.98Sam ShiraziAnd I really wanted to emphasize April 11th, which is today, Super Saturday. The reason I call it Super Saturday is because... It is the first day of early voting on a Saturday across Virginia. So everywhere across Virginia, there will be early voting.01:03.52Sam ShiraziBut then on top of that, it’s the first day that many satellite voting locations will be opening this cycle for early voting. I’ll kind of go through where they’re opening, where they’ve already been open, So let me break down early voting a little bit. So early voting, typically the way it works in Virginia is every city or county has to have at least one early voting location.01:23.60Sam ShiraziAnd that’s typically the registrar’s office, usually in the a government center where the the county has the rest of the government facilities. You can go there and do some early voting.01:35.18Sam ShiraziBut in some of the bigger locations across Virginia, big counties, big cities, they will have what are called satellite voting locations. These are secondary or other locations where people can go and early vote.01:46.02Sam ShiraziThere’s really no law that governs that in Virginia. You have pretty big counties in Virginia that only have one like early voting location. And then you have other relatively smaller counties that might have two.01:58.04Sam Shiraziso there’s really no law in terms of how many early voting locations a city or county has, other than obviously they have to have one. And then the other rule that governs early voting is that the last two Saturdays before the election, there needs to be Saturday early voting. Otherwise, there’s no real law. Some places have more weekend weekend early voting. Some places have less, but you have to have at least two weekends.02:21.19Sam Shirazitwo Saturdays before the election, you have to have early voting. And so typically what we see in Virginia, especially for general elections, is the satellite early voting locations tend to open up earlier in the cycle, probably a week or two before they have opened up right now.02:36.61Sam ShiraziHowever, because this is, I would say, a not a general election, it’s a special election, essentially, I think we’re seeing satellite early voting locations opening up later this cycle.02:47.56Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I I think maybe part of that was just the fact that there was less time to get prepared for this special election. And frankly, I think the but local county election officials might not have thought we were going to get it this much early voting. We have gotten a lot of early voting. They probably thought it wouldn’t be this busy.03:05.70Sam ShiraziAnd so they scheduled it for later in the cycle. But, you know, we are seeing a lot of early voting. So, you know, right now, going into Super Saturday, we are seeing – early voting that is almost matching how much early voting we had in 2025, which is really crazy to think about. And keep in mind in 2025, there are more satellite early voting locations open at this point.03:27.73Sam ShiraziSo going into Super Saturday, we are you know well over 850,000 early votes, which is just a lot of early voting in Virginia for an election that is not a general election. It’s in the spring.03:40.96Sam ShiraziWe typically don’t have elections in spring. So lot of early voting. And that is also telling me that we are going to see a lot of early voting on Super Saturday because we’ve already seen a lot of early voting. The other reason we’re going to see a lot of early voting on Super Saturday is because typically on weekends, there is more early voting because people a lot of people don’t have to work. And it’s just more convenient for them to early vote on the weekend.04:01.98Sam ShiraziAnd then finally, the final reason we’re going to see a lot of early voting, I think, on this Super Saturday is because so many places are opening up their early voting locations. And I’ll kind of go through the list of places that are opening up their early voting locations today.04:28.90Sam ShiraziCurrently, there are three early voting locations open in Fairfax County. And on Super Saturday, there will be 13 additional early voting locations opening up for a total of 16 early voting locations in Fairfax County. And a lot of people know that the early voting locations going to be opening up. So you may live on the other side of the county. You may be waiting for your early voting location to open up. So that’s why I think Super Saturday is going to see a lot of early voting because there’s a lot of pent up demand in terms of people who know that they were going to early vote. It’s just they were waiting for the early voting location to open up. So that’s in Fairfax County, big county, a lot of early voting locations opening up. So definitely one to watch on this Super Saturday.05:09.11Sam ShiraziOkay, the next county that’s going to have early voting is Prince William County. And as you can see, early voting on the Super Saturday is going be really important in Northern Virginia, because a lot of the satellite early voting locations are opening up in Northern Virginia.05:22.82Sam ShiraziOn Super Saturday, there will be six additional locations that are going to be opening up in Fairfax County, excuse me, in in Prince William County. So you’re going have seven total early voting locations in Prince William County.05:35.68Sam ShiraziAnd these seven locations are going to be open all the way through the end of early voting on Saturday. And that includes on Sunday. So Sunday, April 12th, Prince William County will also have early voting. And so we’re seeing a lot of early voting that’s going to be happening in Prince William County.05:50.69Sam ShiraziThis always happens. There’s a lot of pent-up demand for early voting and in Prince William County because the early voting location is around Manassas area. A lot of the population in Prince William County lives along the I-95 corridor, so they’re waiting for the early voting locations. I expect a lot of early voting in Prince William County.06:07.64Sam ShiraziOkay, another location that’s going see satellite voting locations are opening up. That will be in Loudoun. Loudoun’s a big county, typically leans towards the Democrats, but is somewhat competitive sometimes in these elections. So Loudoun always gets a lot of attention, important county.06:24.99Sam ShiraziOn Super Saturday, they will open up four more early voting locations. So Loudoun’s another really important area where we’re just going to keep an eye out to see how much early voting there’s going on.06:34.55Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll round up the satellite early voting locations that will be opening up in Northern Virginia in Arlington. Arlington currently has one early voting location and there will be two additional locations opening up on Super Saturday. So Arlington will have a total of three early voting locations.06:49.88Sam ShiraziBut that’s not all on the Super Saturday. There is also going to be more early voting locations opening up in Hampton Roads. The first place that will be opening it up is Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is a big area.07:01.63Sam ShiraziOn Super Saturday, they they will open two additional locations. Now, I did want to note, this is less than they had last year for the governor’s election. Typically, they have more early voting locations. They only got to have three for Super Saturday, but still important given that you know that’s going to essentially double or triple the amount of early voting locations that are going to be available in Virginia Beach.07:23.71Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll talk about one other location in Hampton Roads, and that’s Norfolk. Norfolk has has had one early voting location open this time.07:34.56Sam ShiraziBut on Super Saturday, it is going to be opening up additional early voting locations. There will be four more early voting locations opening up in Norfolk on Super Saturday, and those will also be open generally until the end of early voting. So that’s the thing with this first Super Saturday of early voting. It’s not that these satellite early voting early voting locations are going to be open just on Saturday. They’re going to be open on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And in some locations, specifically Prince William County, they’ll also be open on tomorrow, Sunday, April 12th. And in other places, for example, Alexandria will have Sunday early voting.08:14.94Sam ShiraziRichmond will have some Sunday early voting. So we’re seeing that the early voting is not necessarily uniform in terms of the hours and the locations across Virginia. And I should also not forget to mention, there are a lot of early voting locations opening up on Super Saturday, but there have been early voting satellite locations open up opening up this past week as well in places like Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield,08:43.00Sam ShiraziNewport News has been relatively less attention because there haven’t been as many of those opening up, but they have also been opening up. So as we can see, the end of early voting always sees a lot more locations opening up.08:56.39Sam ShiraziPeople obviously are going to be paying more attention to the election because it’s getting closer. And so more people vote at the end of early voting, especially with the they take advantage of the Saturday early voting.09:07.91Sam ShiraziAnd the other thing to keep in mind is typically the people who vote at the very beginning of the early voting period are the most highly engaged, most partisan people who pretty much know how they’re going to vote. So if you’re voting on the first day of early voting, you are probably not an undecided voter. You’re probably committed to one side or the other.09:26.89Sam ShiraziI think the thing that’s interesting is... Towards the end of the early voting period and up through election day, the people who vote at the end typically are either the people who are undecided, who don’t know how to vote, and so they’ve been waiting on it, thinking about it, or also people who are just kind of lower propensity voters who may be not that engaged.09:45.46Sam Shiraziindependents who you know just wait till the end to to hear all the arguments or people who just are not super engaged, they hear there’s an election, they go vote in it. And so the importance of that is those people can be really swing one way or another towards a towards a party or in this case,10:04.53Sam ShiraziYes or no at the end. And I think that’s really important. Sometimes we see in these elections, sort for example, in 2025, clearly a lot of the late deciders seem to have moved towards the Democrats. Democrats had momentum in the end.10:16.08Sam ShiraziThey got a big win in 2025 in Virginia. And the question becomes, you know, who has the momentum here in the closing days of the campaign? I think the Yes campaign is putting a lot of efforts to get out the vote in these two weekends of early voting. Typically, Democrats do well in early voting on the weekends in Virginia.10:36.12Sam ShiraziWhy is that? You know, you have younger people who tend to vote more on the weekends. You have people who are working during the week. So they they like to vote on the weekends. So we’ll just have to wait and see how much early vote the Democrats are able to get out this Saturday and then also next Saturday during the last day of early voting.10:52.88Sam ShiraziAnd we’ll have to kind of see is there kind of late momentum towards yes or no. You know, it’s it’s hard to tell. I think there’s a lot of different factors you have to look into. i think we’ll get some final polls that’ll be helpful to get a sense of where things are going. But anyways, I wanted to just kind of highlight Super Saturday. I’ve been pretty excited about it. I think it’s unique because most Virginia elections, a lot of these satellite early voting locations open up at different times. The counties don’t have this kind of uniform opening of early voting locations. I think this election is pretty unique. You’re going to have a lot of them opening up on Saturday.11:24.62Sam ShiraziSo I just wanted to flag that for everyone. Keep an eye out on it. Keep an eye out for the numbers. I think this Saturday, next week, and then the final Saturday of early voting is going to be really big. And I think the question is going to become how much early voting do we see?11:39.14Sam ShiraziCurrently, we by the end of this weekend, we will probably be close to a million votes. In 2025, we had just under 1.5 million early votes total.11:49.24Sam ShiraziI’m curious to see, do we hit 1.5 million early votes this time? And if we do hit that number or get close to it, does that mean that a lot of people have just kind of shifted their voting patterns from Election Day to early vote?12:01.03Sam ShiraziOr are we going to still see a lot of Election Day early vote? I think we’re going to see a lot of Election Day early vote. And the question becomes, do we get more turnout in this election than the governor’s election, which if you told me at the beginning that would happen, I would have really so doubted that. But it’s it’s plausible that we end up getting more total votes this election for the redistricting referendum than we got in the governor’s election, which is really kind of crazy to think about. And I think the reason for that is, I you know frankly, I think both sides are really...12:29.80Sam Shiraziengage Both sides are really trying to get out their voters. I think in 2025, certainly Democrats had some momentum. I think the Republicans weren’t as excited about their candidates, so they didn’t get as as many of their voters out. I think they’re going to do a better job getting their voters out this time.12:46.01Sam ShiraziWe had about little over 3.4 million votes in 2025. I wonder, are we going to hit 3.5 million votes in this referendum? So lot of stuff to look up for. I think early vote, I flagged this before, is typically not great at predicting elections because you don’t know who are the independents voting for. you know, you there’s a lot of trying to read the tea leaves. And I think that stuff’s a little bit over overdrawn, but what I think early vote is really good at telling you is turnout.13:11.90Sam ShiraziSo if you were heading towards around 1.5 million total early votes, that is telling me this is going to be a high turnout election. I think we’re going to get at least 3 million total votes and we can get close to 3.5 million early votes, which, you know, is really high for a non-general election in Virginia.13:29.60Sam ShiraziAnd anyway, so, Super interesting stuff. I won’t dwell too much more on Super Saturday, but did want to mention it. But now I will move on to a different topic, which is more so about Governor Spanberger’s approval. But I should talk about this poll that was put out by The Washington Post.13:45.08Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, last time I put I put my podcast out, I had recorded it. And then the next morning, Washington Post had put out this poll, so I didn’t get a chance to talk about it in the last podcast. I do want to talk about it this podcast. this post This poll from Washington Post came from the Schar School at George Mason University.14:04.17Sam ShiraziThey’re one of the pollsters that do polls in Virginia. I typically look for the GMU Schar School polls because I think they have a pretty solid track record. They were pretty on the money in 2025 in terms of predicting the winners in the election. And so I like the GMU-Schar school polls. I trust them.14:24.46Sam ShiraziObviously, there are other pollsters in Virginia. I think State Navigate’s working on the poll. That’s going to be super interesting. But I’ll go over the Schar school poll. And then I’ll talk a little bit about the Spanberger approval, because I think that’s what honestly got a lot of attention from this poll.14:40.56Sam ShiraziSo to begin with, in terms of the redistricting referendum, The Washington Post GMU-Schar school poll found that and in terms of likely voters, they are 52% yes, 47% no.14:53.42Sam ShiraziAnd if you look at registered voters, they are 53% yes, 44% no. And they also had the Trump approval at 57% disapprove and 40% approve.15:05.12Sam ShiraziSo I first want to talk about that number. I think pretty much that’s in line with the vibes. And what I mean by that is I think the vibes have been that the yes campaign has a slight advantage or an advantage in Virginia, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s not something where you can kind of a hundred percent be certain that the yes campaign is going to be winning. These aren’t the numbers we saw, for example, with Spanberger in, in polls around this time when she was winning by about 10% and everyone was pretty confident that Spanberger was going to win.15:34.88Sam ShiraziI think, uh, you know a five point lead among likely voters is not insignificant, but it’s also not that the kind of margin where you can be certain about the outcome. And I also think it’s interesting that there are people who disapprove of President Trump who are going to be voting no on the referendum, at least according to this poll. And I think certainly that’s going to most likely be independents, people who may not like some of the president’s policies, but they also don’t like what the Democrats are trying to do with this gerrymander. so long story short, I would actually say that GMU-Schar school poll was not super interesting in terms of the referendum results because it was kind of like what we were thinking about. It it was you know not super super surprising. When I saw that poll, I said, yeah, that that makes sense to me.16:20.46Sam ShiraziI think the thing that got a lot more attention in the Washington Post-Schar school poll was the Spanberger approval numbers. And I’ll just go over the approval first, and then I’ll talk about it. So Governor Spanberger’s approval, according to this poll, was 47% approve, 46% disapprove. And I think that was surprising because obviously Governor Spanberger got a big win, 15% last year. And so now, according to this poll, she’s only at 1% net approval.16:46.21Sam ShiraziTypically, we see in Virginia, at least at the beginning of their terms, Virginia governors have pretty positive approval ratings because you know state governors are usually less partisan. And I think people who may be more polarized with national politics aren’t as polarized with state politics. However, the Washington Post poll has found that Spanberger’s approval is lower than other governors at this point in their administration. And I think there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of commentary, a lot of reasons why people think this is what’s going on. The first thing I wanted to say, like right off the bat is it’s one poll. So as much as I think this GMU Schar is, is a good pollster, like you never want to base your entire worldview on one poll because for whatever reason, things could be off. And so I just put that caveat out there because think there’s a lot of commentary based on one poll.17:54.23Sam ShiraziSpanberger doesn’t have overwhelmingly positive approval. like If this was 20% positive approval, even if the poll was a little bit off, you could say, okay, she’s still pretty pretty popular. I think there’s a lot of things in terms of why Spanberger’s approval may not be as high as previous governors at this point.18:11.89Sam ShiraziRealistically, I think polarization has caught up to every politician. And I think we’re at a point where If you’re a Republican, it’s very hard for you to give a Democratic governor a positive approval and vice versa. I’m not saying that’s 100% true. We have seen more, you know, blue state governors. Sorry, we we’ve seen governors in Republican governors in blue states who have pretty decent approval. For example, Vermont’s a famous example where they have a Republican governor, but he has a strong approval rating because he’s...18:41.84Sam ShiraziViewed as not the typical Republican in Kentucky, we have a red state, but the Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, typically has a pretty positive approval. So I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I do think po polarization has caught up.18:55.03Sam ShiraziAnd I think specifically with Spanberger, the issue she’s having is she’s kind of becoming the face of the redistricting campaign, whether she likes it or not, because she is the most prominent Virginia Democrat now. Obviously, the gerrymandering that is going to be happening is being done by the Democrats.19:09.78Sam ShiraziI think the Republicans have done a successful job at kind of pushing that image that this is a very extreme gerrymander. And so I think they’re their voters, the Republican base, is very upset. And so they’re you’re seeing that being translated over into Governor Spanberger, where you know perhaps in the past you might have had some Republicans who who may have had positive approvals of a Democratic governor. I think that’s going to be very difficult in this environment.19:34.54Sam Shiraziwhen the Democrats in Virginia are pushing a pretty partisan gerrymander and Spanberger, while she doesn’t seem to be the person who is most behind this, wasn’t the person necessarily who who’s been driving this the most, I think she certainly has come out in favor of it. And as the most prominent Democrat in Virginia is going to be part of the the face of the campaign.19:54.89Sam ShiraziHowever, I don’t think it’s just a redistricting referendum because, frankly, according to this poll, the redistricting referendum is polling higher than Spanberger, or least there’s more people who are going to vote yes on the redistricting referendum than Spanberger. I think the Republicans have also done a good job of kind of weaponizing some of the bills that Democrats ended up proposing, but not passing.20:17.51Sam ShiraziAnd so there’s been a lot of commentary about all these bills and tax rises, and frankly, most of them didn’t pass. And so the Republicans made a lot of noise, but most of the things that they said are going to happen didn’t end up happening.20:31.35Sam ShiraziBut a lot of, you know, less engaged voters, they might have seen something online. They may not have realized it never got passed. So I think there’s been a lot of a sense that the Republicans are certainly trying to paint it as the Democrats are going far left. They, you know, Spanberger campaigned as a moderate. Now she’s super left.20:46.72Sam ShiraziAnd I think, you know, Spanberger is going to have to deal with that narrative that is being pushed by the Republicans. And frankly, I think you know maybe the next legislative session, I think the Democrats have to think about some of these bills they’re proposing. like If there’s really no way a bill is going to be passed, you know do you really need to propose it? like you know I get sometimes legislatures put in bills because they know it’s not going to pass, but they’re trying to get the idea out there. So maybe down the line it might pass. I get that. But at the same time,21:14.44Sam ShiraziYou have to think, how are the Republicans going to weaponize this bill? Is this the kind of best bill that we need right now in terms of getting our message out there? So, you know, I think i think there’s some some learning that Spanberger and the Democrats in the General Assembly can can do from this last session. I also think, you know, right now there’s a a really... Andy Combin feeling across the world, frankly, and it it goes all the way down to the state level. And I think that helps man burger a lot in 2025. You know, the Republicans were in charge of DC, they were in charge of Virginia. And so was easy for her to get up there, say, I’m change.21:47.35Sam ShiraziI’m running against DC, I’m running against Richmond, I’m going to bring something different to Virginia. And the voters like that because they want to change and there’s a strong anti-incumbency feeling and that’s why Samanberger got such a big win.21:58.70Sam ShiraziHowever, that’s a two-way street. And so once you’re in office, you are the incumbent, you are people are expecting you to make their lives better, or fix their problems. And you know realistically, a lot of what’s going on is being set in DC by policy in DC, but you as a governor are also accountable for people’s lives and they may feel that things are getting better, gas prices are high,22:21.23Sam ShiraziYou can say, you know, that’s because of the war with Iran, and that had nothing to do with Spanberger, and that’s almost certainly true, but at the end of the day, people are not feeling their lives getting better, and I think this is part of the challenge when, especially when you run on affordability, you have to end up delivering, and some of the changes you can make as governor are important, but they also might take time to implement. They may not, people might not feel them directly, so I think Spanberger is kind of dealing with that issue where once you’re in power, I think it’s easy for the other side to attack you and say, oh, things aren’t getting better. and And maybe, you know, the Democrat strategy is to just blame everything on Trump. And, and you know, that makes sense from their perspective, but it doesn’t. It also means that the Republicans are going to start blaming you because you’re in charge in Richmond.23:05.59Sam ShiraziSo I think I think there’s a lot going on with the Spanberger approval. I kind of caution everyone that it’s very early. There’s a lot that can still happen. It’s one poll. So I, you know, people need to talk about something. So there’s been a lot of commentary about it. i think, you know, Spanberger’s got a long time in office. She’ll be in office for you know almost four years left in her term. She’ll almost certainly have a trifecta for all four years. There’s a lot of things she can do that might boost her approval. There are lot of things that might she might do that might hurt her approval. Like, it’ll go up and down. We’ll just have to keep an eye on it. And I do think the last thing I’ll leave you a bit with is kind of tying this all back to the redistricting referendum.23:42.05Sam ShiraziI think the reason why the redistricting referendum is so important is it’s going to be viewed in a way as in some ways as a referendum, both on Trump and now I think on Spanberger. And I think winning can fix a lot of problems. Like there are, you see this a lot when a politician has a problems, but you win an election, you know, people will forget about it. They’ll move on.24:02.79Sam ShiraziYou might say president Trump is in that camp. He obviously had legal issues after he left office. He won the election and, you know, a lot of people have kind of moved on from that. And, and so winning can fix a lot of problems for politicians, no matter which side of the aisle they’re on.24:18.55Sam ShiraziAnd I do think if the redistricting referendum passes by healthy margin, I do think that will fix a lot of problems for Spanberger. She’ll be back in the news and she’ll kind of be the face of this redistricting referendum passing in Virginia.25:09.68Sam ShiraziPeople have asked me like, you know, what is your sense of the referendum? And I often point people back to the governor, so excuse me, the attorney general’s race in 2025, because it’s kind of the same dynamic. People thought it was going to be close. The Republicans seem more energized by the attorney general race.25:23.99Sam ShiraziAnd at the end of the day, Jay Jones almost won by 7% because I think people were just, you know, upset at what was going on in DC and wanted to send a message. Probably also benefited obviously from Governor Spanberger’s coattails, but long story short, it was a,25:37.79Sam Shirazithought to be a close election, one that even the Republicans might win in 2025, but Jay Jones won by 7%. So I think one scenario is like, this is kind of the we redo of the Virginia Attorney General race. It kind of looks close, or it looks like maybe the Republicans have a chance, but at the end of the day, it might not be close at all.25:55.20Sam ShiraziAnd the yes campaign passes easily. i think the other alternative is that, you know, this kind of becomes like 2021 all over again where you know The Democrats feel confident. They think Virginia is a blue state, but the Republicans are just able to mobilize, able to get their grassroots upset, able to win over independence and kind of at the end get a so a kind of a surprise victory or come from behind victory where they’re able to pull it off and win in Virginia, which is a difficult state for them to win in. So I think there’s also that possibility.26:26.02Sam ShiraziI’m kind of looking at the Jay Jones margin around six and a half to 7% as kind of the over under. I think if Democrats do better than the Jay Jones margin from 2025, I think that’s generally a good night for them.26:39.50Sam Shirazii mean, obviously, if it passes, a win’s a win, they’ll take it. But if it’s less than the Jay Jones margin in terms of the election being you know less than 6.5%, I think that’s a decent night for the Republicans. Obviously, if it doesn’t pass, that’s a very good night for the Republicans.26:54.53Sam ShiraziBut I think that’s kind of what I’m looking for in terms of the Virginia elections. And it’s kind of an interesting test because the national environment looks really bad for the Republicans right now. I don’t want to go into the ins and outs of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. 27:13.08Sam Shiraziand that was a race that in twenty twenty five was at least somewhat competitive even though it was a ten point win and in the past certainly has been very competitive so we’re seeing in a swing the kind of classic swing state of Wisconsin democrats or the liberal candidate is winning by twenty points even in Georgia there was a special election for a congressional seat the. The Republicans still won that seat, and that was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former seat, but there was about a 25% swing in terms of the overperformance by Democrats in Georgia. And so we’re seeing these like crazy overperformances by Democrats.27:46.66Sam ShiraziAnd yet, you know, Virginia doesn’t seem like a done deal. And I think there’s the possibility that there are more state local dynamics. The independents are not loving this idea of gerrymandering, perhaps.27:58.70Sam ShiraziThe debate is more about the nuances of the districts as opposed to is this a referendum on Trump. And so I think there is a possibility that this is going to be close and closer than people expect. There’s also the possibility that I think we’re all kind of underestimating how much of a anti-Trump and anti-Republican feeling there is in the country. And if people just view this as a straight referendum, the ability to send a message on President Trump,28:21.86Sam Shiraziand push back, then I think there is a possibility that this could pass by a pretty healthy margin. So we’ll just have to wait and see. I think it’s going to be super interesting. Keep an eye out for some of the numbers on Super Saturday. And then I’ll probably be doing a few more podcasts next week before the referendum as we’re starting to wrap things up. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening.28:42.58Sam ShiraziAnd I will join you next time on Federal Fallout. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia elections. This episode we will go over a vibe shift that has seemed to have happened with the redistricting referendum here in Virginia. And then I also wanted to talk a little bit about the potential areas to look for in terms of, you know, the important swing counties in this election. So the first thing I want to talk about is really just this vibe shift that has seemed to have happened in the past week or two weeks.00:26.90Sam ShiraziI think at the beginning, there was a sense that on the no campaign, there was some momentum. The initial early vote numbers look pretty good in terms of more red parts of Virginia coming out.00:39.13Sam ShiraziAnd I think there was a sense that, you know, and I had talked about this, that this referendum was not necessarily a a slam dunk. Virginia was not California. There were a lot of independents. So I think, you know, there was a sense that this was not necessarily a done deal in Virginia.00:56.34Sam ShiraziAnd while I think that’s still true to a certain extent, I don’t think it’s a done deal. I do think the last two weeks or so, there’s been a bit of a vibe shift. I want to talk a little bit about that. You know, right now we’re in kind of this lull of the campaign period where We’re in the middle of early voting.01:13.29Sam ShiraziIt has come down a little bit, but it’s still very high numbers. I expect well over a million people kept voting early and potentially one and a half million people voting early, which is just really, really high numbers for a non-general election.01:25.93Sam ShiraziAnd then the last 10 days of this campaign are going to be really big. because that’s when all the, most of the early voting locations, satellite locations are gonna be opening up. So I think the last 10 days are gonna be a sprint. And so we’re in this kind of holding pattern right now where there’s some consistent early voting happening. And then I think at the end, there’s gonna be this huge momentum to for people to come vote early. And I think in terms of the vibe shift right now,01:51.24Sam ShiraziI think there’s a sense both in terms of the early vote. I think it’s starting to look better for the yes campaign. And I think part of the reason for that is just fact that typically the longer early voting goes on, the better it typically is for Democrats because more male votes are added. And I think oftentimes the people who vote earliest are like,02:11.09Sam Shiraziolder people. And usually as the early voting period goes on, it starts to get a little bit younger, more diverse. So I think those are starting to show through some of the early voting data. And I think it’s going to get even better once we get the early voting satellite locations opening up for the Yes campaign. So I think The early voting is not as great as it was at at the beginning for the the No campaign. And there’s a couple of different outlets that do analysis of early vote. You know, in Virginia, there’s no party registration. So we don’t know what party anyone belongs to.02:41.25Sam ShiraziLike you can do that in some other states and do that type of early voting analysis. However, you can kind of model what the model party ID is. And one organization that does that, for they’ve and they’ve done it for a long time, is called L2. They’re just kind of a a data organization.02:57.82Sam ShiraziAnd their estimate is roughly that, you know, give or take, it’s about 60-40, the Democrats coming out in this election so far. You know, caveat that, but we don’t know how these people are voting. But typically, that’s what you see in Virginia early vote about a 60-40 advantage for Democrats if you take into account the mail vote. Chaz Netticombe, who was on last week, also did analysis through State Navigate. And he found or his team basically found the same thing, roughly sixty forty Democrats, you know, in terms of the early vote.03:27.92Sam Shiraziyou know I caveat all that by saying that we don’t know how these people are voting. We don’t know how independents are voting. Even if if model ID is 60-40 Democrats, it could be 50-50 yes-no, just because the no campaign is getting some persuasion.04:14.14Sam ShiraziI think in this election, I think you can assume most R’s are going to vote no. I think most D’s are going to vote yes. You know, what is the number? Is it going to be 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%? I think that’s going to be important.04:26.94Sam ShiraziWe don’t quite know how many D’s are voting against it. You know, it seems like there’s probably going to be more than voted for Earl Sears, but is it going to be a lot more or is it more anecdotal? and I think the real question mark are the independents. How do independents go?04:41.53Sam ShiraziObviously, Spanberger did really well with independents last year. That’s part of the reason she got such a big win. This year, I think I could see the independents definitely being more skeptical of the Yes campaign, just given the nature of it, given it’s a more partisan endeavor to gerrymander Virginia.04:56.83Sam ShiraziAt the same time, a lot of independents, their number one priority is maybe sending message to President Trump. So if it’s just a straight referendum on the president, I think that’s going to be better for the yes campaign in terms of independence. So still a lot of unknowns. Like I’m not comfortable saying, you know, definitely yes is going to win or no is going to win. I just think it’s not that type of election.05:14.53Sam ShiraziBut I am comfortable talking a little bit about the vibe shift. And the the reason I mentioned that is election like this. There hasn’t been a lot of polls, and there particularly has not been a lot of polls of, you know, specifically the question that’s on the ballot. I think there are some organizations that have put out polls, but they’re not exactly a question on the ballot.05:31.71Sam ShiraziI think hopefully we’ll get some more polls in the final days of the campaign. I think Chaz Naticombe mentioned that State Navigate is going to be doing a poll. I think we’re going to probably get a few other polls, but there there isn’t a lot of polling to go off of. There isn’t kind of a lot of...05:44.89Sam Shiraziprecedent for this in Virginia, you know, like we did with the governor’s election where, you know, okay, the party out the White House typically does well in the governor’s election. We just can’t really assume that because we don’t do this type of referendum in Virginia very often or ever. So I think a lot of the analysis so far has been on vibes. And and what I mean by vibes is just people’s guts, people’s like, you know, this kind of feels like, you know, the no campaign is doing okay or the yes campaign is doing okay. There’s not really a lot of logic behind it other than maybe some very, you know,06:13.41Sam ShiraziBroad interpretation of early vote data. So all of that is to say, basically, we are not going to get really good data on on this election until but maybe the end when we get the final polls. And so a lot of the analysis has been based based on vibes. I think certainly the No campaign and certain movements, certain people within the conservative movement have been very loud and I think they’ve made their voices heard. And I think that has perhaps informed the vibes in terms of, well, the No campaign seems like they have some moment momentum, seems like they’re doing well.06:45.28Sam ShiraziSo I think that was kind of the initial vibe reading in Virginia, at least once the early voting started. I think the last two weeks, you know putting aside the early voting data, I think just given the national environment, I think things have gotten harder for the Republicans.07:22.13Sam ShiraziAnd so if you think about this referendum, you know what are people going to be doing when they go into the voting booth? Are they going to be thinking, you know, really nuanced questions about gerrymandering and trying to think through, you know, should Virginia gerrymander to counteract Republican states? I mean, is that really the calculation or is it just going to become, you know, I want to send a message. I don’t like what’s going on in D.C., so I’m going to vote yes on this campaign. Certainly the yes campaign wants that to happen.07:48.01Sam ShiraziObviously, the no campaign is trying to make it a Virginia specific campaign. The yes campaign is trying to make it a national campaign. And you may have remembered that is the same dynamic that happened in Virginia in 2025. Almost always with these state elections, the party that’s out of the White House wants to make it a national election. The party in the White House wants to make it a state election. And you’re seeing those dynamics again.08:10.70Sam ShiraziThe Yes campaign wants to make this about President Trump and national politics. The No campaign wants to make this about state-specific election in terms of gerrymandering these seats.08:36.36Sam ShiraziSo we’re seeing all those dynamics play out. I mean, I think part of the analysis in terms of the vibe shift fives shiftft is just, you know, national politics is more in the news, especially now with gas prices, with the war in Iran.08:48.55Sam ShiraziIt’s just... You know, people are not thinking about the nuances of gerrymandering. They’re kind of thinking about how am i going to pay for gas and groceries and all those things. And so the more that becomes the dominant issue in the news leading up to April 21st, I think the more difficult task the no campaign is going to have. I think interesting question is going to be, you know, we’re about. a little, about two and a half weeks out from this referendum, you know, what is going to be happening on April 21st? Is there going to still be a war going on in the Middle East?09:19.26Sam ShiraziAre oil prices going to continue to be elevated? You know, right now, that seems very you know possible that that could be happening on April 21st. Although in theory, you know, things could wind down.09:29.23Sam ShiraziThere could be the end of the war that could cause, you know, stocks to go up. That could cause oil prices to come down. You know, in theory, there are these kind of dynamics that could change in these next 20 days or so But I think the reality is, even if that happens in the best case scenario for the Republicans, I think, you know, these things are kind of baked in at this point. And it’s it’s pretty hard to move the national politics that much. And so long story short, i think it’s just interesting to think through where we are in Virginia right now.10:00.11Sam Shirazii you know... I’m just kind of giving you an update in terms of what I’m seeing out there. I don’t personally think the dynamics have changed that much either way. i think a lot of this is just kind of commentary and, you know, we got to talk about something. So we’re going to talk about no doing well or yes, doing well.10:16.97Sam ShiraziI would really like to see some, Polling, I think the State Navigate poll is going to be great. Hopefully you get some more polling as well. I also think the the final early voting numbers will be great because I think, you know, the first few days early voting may be skewed. I really look for early voting almost at the end. I mean, you really have to wait because of the satellite voting locations.10:37.76Sam ShiraziI’ll probably do a whole episode about... what I call Super Saturday, but I will preview it for you here. So Super Saturday will be on April 11th. The reason I call it Super Saturday is that’s the first day we we’ll have weekend Saturday early voting across Virginia.10:52.44Sam ShiraziAnd a lot of places will be opening up their satellite voting locations, including Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun, Prince William County, Virginia Beach, lot of big places typically more democratic voters in those areas are going to be opening their early voting locations that’s later than they usually open. And so I think this Saturday on April 11th, I think we’ll see a lot of early voting because there’s been a lot of pent up demand with people waiting for their satellite early voting locations. So,11:19.13Sam ShiraziLong story short, I mean, I think it’s too early to really use early voting to predict what’s going to happen. I think maybe at the end you can use it. I think at the end you’ll also get more polls. The polls will be closer and time to the election.11:30.72Sam ShiraziAll the advertisement money is going to be spent. So I think more so than a typical election, this is really one you’re just going to have to wait till the end to make a formal prediction. I mean, to be perfectly honest, like I didn’t do this in the governor’s election in 2025, but I probably could have. I mean, I think as soon as Doge happened, I mean, I was pretty confident that Smanberger was going to win the governor’s election. There was really no other way the Republicans could come back from that, no matter how good of or bad of a campaign Earl Sears ran. It didn’t really matter. I think I was pretty confident in saying that.11:58.81Sam Shirazii you know I didn’t say it on here because I didn’t i didn’t want to you know jump to conclusions, but that was you know in the back of my head. Here, you know I certainly think the Yes campaign has the advantage, but it’s not the same where I can say with 100% confidence, it’s definitely going to happen. I just think it’s just not that type of election, given the kind of unique circumstances that has...12:18.51Sam Shirazithat has given a rise to the election and, and just the unpredictability. You don’t know how many Democrats are going to end up voting. No, you really don’t know how many independents could be voting. No, I think there’s a wide range.12:29.65Sam ShiraziIt could, it could be much more than we’re expecting in theory. And so just want to be a little bit cautious, but I did want to note the vibe shift that has been happening. Okay, so last thing I want to talk about just briefly is just some of the areas to look for in terms of the redistricting campaign when these results start coming in. Because I think one of the question marks that that I flagged are independents, and especially independents in kind of ancestrally Republican areas that have become blue. And so I’ll i’ll talk about a few counties that Spanberger did well in in 2025, places like Stafford, Chesterfield, you know, these are in13:03.33Sam Shirazikind of suburban parts of D.C. or Richmond where traditionally they’ve been red, but they’ve been becoming more and more blue. I think there was a dynamic where Spanberger did well in those areas, but Jay Jones was was running further behind there and then other parts of Virginia. And that’s just because you have people who have traditionally been more comfortable voting for Republicans.13:22.08Sam ShiraziSo they might have liked Spanberger, but they were willing to vote for Miárez. I think you could see a similar dynamic where in some of those counties, people who voted for Spanberger, they just you know This rubs them the wrong way, either because they don’t like one party rule, they don’t like one party trying to maximize its power. They may just you know traditionally be willing and sympathetic to Republican arguments, so they’re willing to hear the no side campaign more than they would otherwise. So those are some of the interesting counties that I’m looking for.13:51.43Sam ShiraziAnd then the other counties, and that’s really on the persuasion side. so that’s in terms of, you know, are people going to vote for the no campaign, even though they voted for Spanberger? I think that’s kind of those are the types of places to look for, in know, more higher income, wealthier, educated areas where, for whatever reason, they may have traditionally been Republican and they’re willing to vote no for Spanberger.14:12.71Sam ShiraziThe campaign. i think the other dynamic to look for is just turnout. You know, what is turnout looking for looking like in the Democratic areas, for example, areas with more black voters and more young voters on how are Democrats doing in those areas in terms of turnout, because probably if people end up voting.14:31.04Sam ShiraziThey’re probably going to vote yes in those areas. I think the Democrats, frankly, in the early vote data have done a pretty good job with black voters in places like Hampton Roads, where sometimes they struggle with those voters. I think here they’re certainly keeping up with 2025.14:44.79Sam ShiraziAnd I think for Democrats, they have to be happy about that because obviously, I think the more black voters that come out, the more it’s likely they’re going to vote yes. So I think Democrats are doing well or the yes campaign is doing well in terms of getting out those voters in those parts of Virginia.14:59.15Sam ShiraziI think the real area where Democrats or in the yes campaign could struggle is potentially college towns, places with young voters. You know, we saw that the Democrats did well in places like Blacksburg in 2025. That’s how Lily Franklin was able to flip a seat. I think.15:26.95Sam ShiraziI think the challenge the Yes campaign is going to have in this election is just – A lot of college students, younger voters, they may not really understand what’s going on. is there referendum? What is redistricting? What is gerrymandering? I mean, it’s just it’s just a different thing that they might not quite get and they might not be as engaged.15:44.71Sam ShiraziAnd so I think that’s just one thing to keep in mind. you know There may not be as much youth turnout because it’s just a different type of election as opposed to a governor’s election. However, I think if they’re able to kind of persuade people or at least you know make the case that this is more a referendum sending a message on President Trump, I think there’s certainly a possibility those yes voters can come out for for Democrats who are younger.16:05.87Sam ShiraziOn the Republican side, there’s a similar dynamic with with Turnout in terms of rural areas like Southwest Virginia. I think part of the reason there was this kind of optimism about the no campaign was places like Southwest Virginia, which typically doesn’t have great turnout in state elections because it’s more of a working class area, but very red.16:24.04Sam ShiraziThose areas had pretty good early votes so far. The problem is, you know, it’s not, you know, super crazy high. Like it’s it’s good relative to 2025, but given 2025 was pretty bad. It’s just not this like crazy, crazy high level of turnout. And I think the no campaign will just need really, really high turnout in places that are very red because obviously the red, you know, they’re going to vote no you know, rural areas where, you know, they may be affected by the gerrymander. They’re going to be voting no.16:52.46Sam ShiraziThe question is, do they get kind of like, OK, turn out maybe a little bit better than 2025? Or did he get like really through the roof turnout? Again, we don’t really know until Election Day. A lot of those places probably people prefer to vote on Election Day. So we just really have to wait and see. And I think the fundamental problem that no campaign going have is even if they get a lot of low propensity Republicans out.17:12.97Sam ShiraziSo, you know, this type of election. It’s just, you know, if even if they get their voters out, if it’s generally a high turnout election and the Democrats are getting their voters out and they’re getting their low propensity voters out, I mean, Virginia leans blue. So what the no campaign really needs is high turnout in rural red areas and low turnout in Democratic areas. It seems like they’re getting pretty good turnout in the red areas. They’re just not getting the low turnout in the Democratic areas. And so I think that’s part of the challenge that no campaign has. So long story short, we’ll just have to wait and see how that all happens, how that all plays out. You know, I’ll be covering it all as we get more early vote data. I’ll i’ll give you more analysis on that as we give more.17:52.14Sam ShiraziPolling, i’ll I’ll give you kind of more information about that. But I think right now we’ll just have to wait and see where things are. i did want to mention the vibe shift. And, you know, I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I’ll keep covering the wild ride that is the Virginia elections. And I’ll join you next time on Federal Fall Out. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

00:00.60Sam ShiraziHi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the Virginia Elections. This episode, we I am really excited to have Chaz Nuttikome back on. He is the Executive Director of State Navigate and Chaz, thanks so much for coming back.00:13.42Chaz NuttycombeHey, Sam, thanks for having me back on. Good to hear you Good to hear from you.00:16.90Sam ShiraziYeah, so to begin with, just wanted to see how you’re doing. How are things at State Navigate? It’s been a while since we talked last year and how how are things been going for you?00:26.22Chaz NuttycombeYeah, I know. I think it’s been maybe since like right after the election, you know, after we had a really good a year for our polling. So, you know, been been working on some projects. You know, we launched in Michigan in January.00:40.45Chaz NuttycombeWe’re looking to launch in, I think, Colorado and Texas, our next targets. Trying to get up there next month. And we have like a jam. We have jam-packed content, you know, over...00:53.02Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, the next like quarter in the states of Virginia and West Virginia and and Utah. So those are kind of our our three main states right now through the second quarter. And again, working to launch in Colorado and Texas, hopefully next month.01:12.06Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, we’ve got some more exciting news coming out next month as well. You know, I think, a you know, a couple days or maybe a week after this podcast, we’ll hopefully have this big announcement. But yeah, it’s going great. It’s going great.01:26.58Sam ShiraziWell, awesome. And yeah, i definitely recommend everyone check out State Navigate. And it was really amazing to see all the resources you put out last year for the Virginia governor’s election. And you have a lot of great stuff already for the redistricting referendum. We’ll get to all that, like the the early vote tracker.01:43.54Sam ShiraziBut before we kind of dive into the details of the redistricting referendum, you know, big picture, what are you seeing right now as we are less than a month until Election Day?01:54.46Chaz NuttycombeWell, yeah, I mean, just real quick, going talk about the features, you know, just in case your audience doesn’t know. So, yeah, we have like an early voting tracker that compares to the same day equivalent in 2025 from 2026, right? So 2026 divided by 2025, same day votes, whether it be early in person or male. We have scatter plots and we’re going to add correlations to those soon now that we’re you know, like two weeks in and we got a lot of votes in, pretty much everybody is reporting mail.02:24.53Chaz Nuttycombeobviously males counted at different paces, right? Sometimes they count it slower. Sometimes they count it faster each year. you know, we’re kind of the mercy of registrars, but what’s nice is that early in person is, you know, pretty consistent.02:36.31Chaz Nuttycombeand they pretty much update, update that daily and in pretty much every locality. And then, you know, what what I was really proud, I was very proud of the State Navigate team when the maps dropped because we had spent the entire day, our creative director, Jack Hirsting, myself, and our elections coordinator, Michael Foley, to where when those maps dropped, we had an interactive ready to go.03:01.30Chaz Nuttycombeand so it’s it’s really fun to see you know like a lot of people posting our interactive map of the you know proposed uh uh you know democratic gerrymander you know i think especially conservatives are using it and uh you know it’s just nice to see our work you know be be used by uh used by the public i guess my only my only complaint is that sometimes they don’t include the state navigate logo that’s in the header so it’s like Well, at least you know, it’s like that’s that’s kind of killing our potential traffic, man. So, you know, if you’re if you’re one of those people, i would appreciate, you know, just include the state navigate logo in there. You know, we want to build our audience and help people learn about state government and state legislatures to to get to your question on, you know, kind of like what we’re what we’re looking at.03:45.65Chaz NuttycombeI mean, you know, I was I was talking with, you know, the Times yesterday and, you know, it’s it’s a shame because my grandfather ran track and I should like know a little bit about this. But, you know, I kind of described, you know, like where we are in early voting as like we’re in the first quarter mile of a.04:03.22Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, mile long track. And, the you know, he was like, you know, we’re at the first quarter mile and we don’t really know where the markers are. Right. In terms of like, you know, like what we, what we got coming up.04:16.44Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, look, I mean, right now, I think these, these first two weeks have been, have been crazy when we’re talking about the early voting. I mean, if, if you had told me two months ago that like,04:29.38Chaz Nuttycombewe would be seeing early and like overall early voting on like being even or right now, as of this recording, when we’re talking about yesterday’s early voting, yesterday being March 24th on Tuesday, you know it was there were more votes cast on you know the equivalent day 2026 2025 early voting.04:52.24Chaz Nuttycombeyou know it’s like a hundred two percent of early in person Right. And then it’s what is it for mail? Mail-in ballots versus 2025. 102%. Yeah. yeah So, I mean, we’re at like 102% thereabouts of, you know, gubernatorial same day turnout.05:09.03Chaz NuttycombeThis thing is going to be like incredibly high turnout, looks like. I mean, we’re we’re at least looking at 50% turnout. When I was like thinking about when we started to see like high turn in the first you know few days, it’s like, okay, first few days, you know first week, a lot of people come out from this thing, right? And then we we typically get to like a slump point. And right now it’s kind of like where we typically are are in a slump point, but we’re not.05:33.70Chaz NuttycombeIt’s just continually turnout, turnout, turnout. More and more people are voting in this thing. To the point where, you know, when all is said and done, we may see more votes cast in this election than there were in 2025.05:47.92Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, if there are more votes, I’m going to take a guess and and say that the people who are, you know, who didn’t vote in 2025, who are already voting for this thing, are probably skewing Republican.06:00.62Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, Michael Foley, our elections coordinator, has been doing, you know, a little bit of of rough modeling, you know, down to the precinct level. And, you know, we’re looking at an electorate that is probably...06:13.90Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, probably two points, maybe up to three points, right. When we’re comparing to 2025. Now the, the main thing is pick your own path or universe whatever. When we talk about persuasion, right. You know, Abigail, Spamber did really well on persuasion.06:31.75Chaz NuttycombeAnd so she won by 15 points. the sort of generic race was the Lieutenant governor race where Gazzalajami won by 11. And then, you know, Jay Jones did terrible on persuasion, lost a lot of college educated whites around Western Richmond and parts of Nova and especially the beach.06:49.39Chaz Nuttycombeuh, and so it’s like, well, this is not a partisan election, right? There’s no RRD on the ballot. So what is your persuasion baseline?06:57.81Chaz NuttycombeIs it the AG race? Because if it’s AG race, we’re looking at a nail biter. and, You know, I, if, if I had to pick like what I think the baseline is, I would say it’s probably closer to the AG race.07:09.86Chaz Nuttycombebecause I think that Dems are having a little bit of a hard time convincing their like soft Dems and especially independence on giving them a 10 to one gerrymander this year. Right.07:22.98Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, I know like. like just off the top of my head, like three people who did not vote for Kamala Harris, but voted for Abigail Spanberger, and all of them are going to be voting against the amendment.07:36.75Chaz NuttycombeAgain, that’s like anecdotal. But, you know, it’s, I think that, they’re having a hard time with, with those college educated whites.07:47.06Chaz NuttycombeAnd they really have to put in the work, the, the yes team. Right. So, i mean, it’s just kind of crazy when we talk about, you know, just, just two months ago, like if you had told me again, like turnout this high,08:17.54Chaz NuttycombeWe’ll see if things change by election day. I don’t know whether I’ll do like a a final, you know, throwing something on the dartboard or whatever, because there’s not going to be a model because you can’t really model something like this. We haven’t had a a general election in April since the 1950s. We have constitutional amendment outside of November since November.08:38.74Chaz Nuttycombeor at least in April, I think in like a hundred years, I know Jeffrey Skelly at like DDHQ put something together on this. So maybe I’m i’m wrong there, but I know it’s something like that. So like, you know, there’s not much history to work with here, whereas there’s a lot of history to work with in Virginia. So it’s kind of easy to model or or Virginia gubernatorial elections. So those are easy to model, honestly, you know, relative to this at least.09:03.61Chaz Nuttycombeso, you know, I, I think that, look, we’re, we’re going to go into the field, on, on April 10th and that’s when the satellites open up thereabouts.09:13.27Chaz NuttycombeAnd I think that’s really like the week before the election, we’ll have a little bit of an idea where things are. You know, I think the key thing here is persuasion. And I think Republicans know that, but they’re still trying to get out their base, which I think they are, but they, you you know, there’s different people at the helm trying, you know, this time around compared to when, you know, Sears was leading the charge.09:36.62Chaz Nuttycombeand these are, you know, people at the helm on the Republican side who know that they have to convince soft Dems and independence to their side. Right. so yeah.09:47.14Sam ShiraziYeah, i mean, that’s all super helpful. I mean, one question I had, because unfortunately, not going to have the model as much as it would be great. I understand why it’s pretty much impossible to do it in something like this. But it sounds like the good news is you will be doing some polling. And just to plug for State Navigate in 2025, you put out some polls that were showing the Democrats up. And I think a lot of people super skeptical, especially at the AG race. And you proved the haters wrong because you were pretty much right on the money with the State Navigate polls.10:17.58Sam ShiraziHow are you going to try to pull this year, given that it’s such so much more complex with turnout and independence? Like, what is that pulling going to look like? And what lessons that you learned in 2025 are you going to apply in 2026?10:31.20Chaz NuttycombeI mean, like, i this is kind of the thing, you know, I mean, the main thing that’s going to change anytime you wait a poll is going to be like the partisanship. So I emailed Gallup today because Gallup’s quarterly party ID was very, very helpful in figuring out Virginia last year.10:48.42Chaz Nuttycombeand and look you know it’s i mean yeah there there are people who who gave me s**t but it’s like at the end of the day you know my my job is you know like like i like to say i don’t care who wins i care about being right right like i don’t have a side i root for i’m an independent i have mixed political views uh my you know whole job not i mean i have a lot of jobs who things i need to do as as executive director of you know state navigate right but you know, as a forecaster, it’s just like following, you know, just sticking your finger in the air and seeing where the wind’s blowing. Right.11:25.07Chaz NuttycombeBut yeah, I mean, this this is sort of the thing I’m interested in what Gallup has in the quarterly party ID. The quarterly party ID was one point bluer in Q4 than it was in Q3 last year.11:36.33Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, we’re at the end of Q1. So I’m hoping that, you know, by the time I get to wait this poll, I get to see what their, you know, quarterly party ideas for Q1 2026. That’ll be something I definitely look at.11:51.68Chaz Nuttycombebut you know, I’ll, I’ll be kind of looking at early voting as well. I think that we’re looking at a, a wider electorate. you know, last year was about 71% white. I would say we’re probably looking at 73 if I were to guess.12:06.02Chaz Nuttycombeat the moment we’ll see how things land when these satellites open up and if that kind of helps us some, uh, a little bit of minority turnout, and some of these localities. That being said, I, you know, as a sidebar, I think black turnout in Hampton roads is is pretty good relative to 25.12:22.62Chaz Nuttycombekind of honestly impressed there. you know, at this point it but it wasn’t there in like, uh, in the first week, but like now it’s like picking up, but you know, we’ll see if that maintains. but you know, I’ll be looking at a little bit of early voting and I’ll be looking at, you know, Gallup and then kind of following a little bit the same methodology we had last year.12:39.58Chaz NuttycombeYou know, what what I will say is, you know I know that there are people in the field who are doing private stuff. right you know Maybe there will be another college poll, maybe two.12:52.59Chaz NuttycombeBut you know i mean this may be like the only poll public poll right that you know one, ask the ballot language like right up front. you know I’m just going to say that. We’re going to ask the ballot language up front.13:05.31Chaz Nuttycombein all likelihood, you know, I still to meet with the polling committee and whatnot. I’ve got like a draft together. you know, we’ve got a couple ideas that we’ve kind of shot back and forth today.13:15.06Chaz Nuttycombemeet meet, meet next week and kind of finalize things. but yeah, so, you know, it’s, it’s, uh, I, I don’t think I have, have, um,13:25.76Chaz NuttycombeYou know, I, I don’t know. It’s like when, when the primaries are rolling about, I kind of just threw a dart and like, you know, privately, when people are asking me and still, you know, it’s pretty much right.13:38.85Chaz NuttycombeThought Hashmi, if I had to pick was going to win. and then, you know, Jones in that primary, I think those are tough contests to predict.13:48.20Chaz Nuttycombeyou know i don’t i don’t think I have like a mandate of heaven or whatever, though. right it’s it’s you know I could very much see you know this this being hard to oh wait right when we talk about waiting a poll.14:04.76Chaz NuttycombeAnd it could be wrong. I have no idea. like This is probably, think, in my... this is probably i think in my you know, what, nine years?14:15.80Chaz NuttycombeYeah, nine nine years. It’ll be nine years this August of predicting Virginia elections. I think this one is just the toughest to model, right? Because there’s there’s no partisanship and it’s a general election in April.14:25.99Chaz NuttycombeSo we’re going to give it our best shot, but it’s like, I’m not going to guarantee that it’s like, hey, I have, like, I feel as confident as I did in 25 years. or 21 or 23 or whatever right like there’s there’s a low confidence threshold in that this is a totally different kind of beast that we’re we’re trying to tame when we talk about you know just like in a political science way you know of of trying to pull this so we’ll give it our best shot and and hopefully hopefully we’re right you know14:55.37Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think this is a tough election to read. And I am definitely going to be looking to your poll because I think it’s one of the ones that I will trust. There’s a lot of random polls out there, but I think your track record in 2025 shows that you have the methodology.15:10.13Sam Shirazidoesn’t mean it’s going to be 100% correct, but you’re thinking this stuff through. So definitely looking for that. I did have a question.15:15.02Chaz NuttycombeAnd can I make a quick plug, Sam?15:16.50Sam ShiraziYep.15:17.16Chaz NuttycombeSo if if anybody wants to like help us with the cost of the poll, I think we’re about at like 13,000 or sorry, or from like donors right now.15:31.48Chaz Nuttycombewe gotta to hit like the three thousand mark you know we’ll well you know If we have to use a little bit of StateNav’s general operation funds, well we’ll do that to make it happen.15:42.87Chaz NuttycombeAnd a little bit of like some other polling fund money that we’ve gotten before. But you know if if anybody wants to donate, just go to my pinned tweet, you know at ChazNodicomb on X or Twitter, and you can make a tax-deductible donation to our polling fund. We greatly appreciate it if you’re able to help us with the cost offsetting that.16:02.84Chaz Nuttycombeahead of April 10th, which is when we are i hopefully going to be in the field.16:08.93Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, that’s definitely a important to do if if you’re able to to keep these polls coming. And i hopefully you’ll have more after these. I did have a question about the early vote because I think, you know, there’s different things you can look at here. We don’t have a lot of polling. I feel like this referendum especially has a lot of vibes and some of the vibes have been informed by the early vote. And as you mentioned, it’s very early in the early vote.16:33.64Sam ShiraziMy sense was The really kind of hardcore, high propensity Republicans were upset and they really turned out strong the first couple weeks.16:41.74Chaz NuttycombeMm-hmm.16:41.71Sam ShiraziAnd the Democrats took a little bit longer, but it seems like the Democrats are starting to turn out. Early voting starting to even out a little bit more than it looked like at the beginning. I guess my question is, like do you think that’s true? And then what is the point of looking at the early vote this early if like really all you can – I think it’s great for turnout, but like at some point you just got to wait for all the early vote to make a final determination because like I feel like it’s it’s constantly changing every day as they can see in your tracker that you have.17:12.76Chaz NuttycombeYeah, I mean, look, I absolutely get what you mean when we talk about, you know, as as as terminally online as as both of us are, right? You know, I think being being being on X and and seeing, you know, kind of conservative outrage at Abigail Spanberger over and and the Democratic trifecta and that, oh, it’s because they’re angry that, you know, there’s there’s high turnout.17:22.08Sam ShiraziYeah, that’s true.17:37.18Chaz Nuttycombeyou know and maybe there might be credence to that you know like i think there could be absolutely credence to that if we are seeing higher republican turnout you know so uh i think there’s absolutely credence but here’s the thing you know i think yes uh but when i’m in first week i’m sorry that what yes the the When people, this this is sort of the thing i keep seeing journalists do. That that annoys me, which which is like, oh, they look at like, oh, highest, highest you know, most votes are cast in the Republican districts and least are in the Democratic districts. It’s it’s it’s such a lazy way of of of looking at all this. I’m sorry.18:20.09Chaz Nuttycombeit’s it’s It’s very, very lazy when I see people do that. it’s it’s It’s fun and all, but like it’s it’s not really getting deep into, like especially when we’re talking like raw votes here, right?18:33.40Chaz Nuttycombeso So that’s why when we were deciding how we wanted to track early voting, it’s like, okay, well, we should really be comparing to the same day, to you know election, and then you’re actually able to figure out like, okay, is this is looking like a little bit redder or a little bit bluer compared to that. So,18:49.35Chaz Nuttycombeso Yes, in 2025, like absolutely, the the Republicans were like, you know, they had like a good start, I think, especially in the beginning. And that was mainly because of their high props. It was pretty much all of their high propensity voters were coming out that, you know, are we’re already 100% going to be voting in that election, right? They were just moving more and more toward EV.19:09.50Chaz NuttycombeWhereas like this time, Sam, I mean, we’re seeing Buchanan County at, 156.6% of its same day, you know, equivalent votes. Scott County at 200%, uh, for all early voting, uh,19:25.19Chaz NuttycombeLee County at 201%. If we just say like, okay, well, male, maybe they’re counting male little bit faster. No. Scott County, 242. Lee 221. Buchanan at 171. So like the coal fields are coming out. These are like low propensity, poor poor areas that are you know very, very Republican.19:44.94Chaz NuttycombeThe Valley’s coming out, right? Like when we’re talking about like the Republicans that were coming out for this thing in the beginning, it was really like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like... James City and Goochland, right? You know, like where, and maybe like Mechanicsville or whatever, when we talk about like, oh, the kind of Republicans are coming out, right? You know, they have a college degree, they got money and they’re like, okay, I’m going to be voting. Let me just go ahead and go early.20:11.26Chaz NuttycombeI’m retired and everything, right? Whereas like the the deep rural areas in you know, the West are coming out. It looks more like, kind of like 2021 ish kind of map when we talk about like areas that are turning out more relative to like previous patterns i’m not saying like this is going to be a 2021 red wave or whatever but i’m just talking about in terms of like comparing one election to another and like the richmond region is also lacking and i don’t think that’s going to pick up i i think that you know spamburger20:43.74Chaz Nuttycombereally did a good job as well as Ghazala Hashmi, mainly Spanberger though, and in getting a lot of Richmond liberals out and winning over a lot of independents without her really here campaigning and everything. You know, she’s cutting ads and everything, but she’s not campaigning, right?21:00.99Chaz NuttycombeI don’t think they’re really going to come out as much for this. You know, Richmond is kind of an anomaly in terms of how much it it made of the composite of the electorate last year. Now, like Fairfax is lacking and I think that’s gonna pick up toward the end here.21:16.49Chaz NuttycombeAnd you know Hampton Roads looks like it’s it’s pretty good for Dems. so, you know, I, I think that like, i mean, areas where Republicans funny enough are, you know, maybe struggling a little bit when we talk about like their, their weak points, Roanoke County is, you know, I’ll put in quotes here only at 101% of its same day equivalent turnout Hanover at 98.21:40.53Chaz NuttycombeWhile the, uh, you know, statewide is 102. so those are like, you know, and like, you know, Washington County at 104, right? Whereas like some of their other rules are just like much higher or even like Pennsylvania is much higher, right? At 128.21:57.11Chaz NuttycombeSo, I mean, it looks like they do have some work in some of these like suburban ex-urban counties. But it looks like, know, they’re doing good in Bedford. They’re doing good in Campbell right now at 108 or sorry, 109% in those.22:10.62Chaz NuttycombeThat was very important for Glenn Youngkin in 2021. So, you know, I mean, I i would be surprised. We’ll see what happens when the satellites open. But I think we’re, if I had to guess, I think we’re looking at an electorate that’s slightly redder than 2025.22:26.60Chaz NuttycombeBut again, it’s it’s like pick your own universe in terms of like, what is the baseline for persuasion? AG, LG, or Gov, right? We need talk about comparing to 25.22:36.25Sam ShiraziYeah, no, i agree with you. I think those are all good points. And I think some of those counties you highlighted, I think there is indication that perhaps more low propensity Republicans are turning out, which obviously would be good for the Republicans.22:46.62Sam ShiraziI did have kind of a question on the persuasion side, because obviously a lot going on in the country, lot going on in the world. Gas prices going up, generally not good for the Republicans. I think there’s a sense nationally, like big picture,23:00.99Sam ShiraziThings are looking better and better for the Democrats, like midterms are looking better and better for the Democrats.23:03.32Chaz NuttycombeMm-hmm.23:05.43Sam ShiraziAnd so it’s kind of interesting that in Virginia, it looks like things are, I mean, looking better for the Republicans doesn’t mean they’re gonna win, but it’s not like a totally blowout type environment.23:15.51Sam ShiraziSo do you think that’s just because Virginia is like a purple state and this just looked like a power grab from the Democrats or you think it’s it’s Because the Democrats are doing so well, people don’t feel that freaked out about Trump, where like in California in November of 2025, like people were freaked out because it seemed like maybe, I don’t know, he could he could try to get all these seats through redistricting. views You just think the the vibes have kind of changed, at least on the redistricting front.23:44.49Chaz NuttycombeI mean, it’s it’s I mean, there’s a couple of things you I feel like you just asked. Right. I mean, like, look, I think i mean I do think the Republicans are going to get put out to pasture this year nationally. I think we’re looking at a a midterm environment that is going to be a taller blue wave in 2018. Now there won’t be as big of a sink get seat gain because 2018 was kind of part of this a little bit of realignment. when We talk about the suburbs. Right. You know, there’s a whole bunch of like Clinton carried Republican districts in 2016, whereas there weren’t, there are not many Harris one Republican districts now.24:20.90Chaz NuttycombeRight. So, you know, Democrats may be getting to somewhere in the two thirties for the house of representatives would track or like maybe low two forties. I think they got two 40 in 2018 off the top of my head.24:33.29Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, in in terms of like, I, I mean, yes, like the the environment is awful for Republicans. National environment? Yeah, like Trump’s approval is awful.24:43.81Chaz NuttycombeYou know, it’s it’s it’s in the to deep in the toilet to where it’s like even a plumber can’t fix it, right? it’s It’s done. It’s over. And then, you know, the, yeah, like the gas prices going up. I mean, who knows if that’s going to be continuing for election day.24:58.26Chaz NuttycombeYou know, like, but but here’s the thing. I don’t know that like, a A yes or no question on gerrymander is is something that people want to use to stick it to Trump in the way that like, oh, I’m going to go vote for a Democrat.25:15.87Chaz Nuttycombeyou know If I’m like an independent or something, right? or I like lean Democrat something, you know like let’s say i I voted for Joe Biden 2020, I voted for Glenn Young in 2021, right? But and I disapprove of Trump.25:27.85Chaz NuttycombeLike, let’s say I’m that person. i think you’re going to have that the the Dems are going to have a hard time. Trying to push a honestly a very, very ugly map, right? You know, I think the seventh is you know, I still think it looks like a scorpion. People say it’s a lobster, whatever.25:47.15Chaz NuttycombeBut like, when people look at the map, I think that that is like the biggest threat to Democrats on whether they can pass this gerrymander or not. I think they i don’t know that like, those independents and lean Dem people are 100%26:06.78Chaz Nuttycombeimplementing, you know, the, the biggest gerrymander in the country that just narrowly, yes, does be out North Carolina. So in a way it kind of counteracts North Carolina. but they also don’t know like insider baseball and everything on like, Oh, this is going to counteract this or that. Right.26:21.96Chaz NuttycombeI do feel like, you know, in, in California, I mean, there’s a few things here. i mean, it was like immediately after Texas redrew, it’s like, okay, Texas redrew, we have to redrew. We got to go get out and vote. you know, on the Dem side and also like Gavin Newsom made it his thing, right? Like the dude wants to run for president, like point blank period. He, that was his launch platform.26:42.39Chaz Nuttycombewhereas like Abigail Spanberger’s launch platform for her, you know, whatever she wants to do, whether she wants to run for president or just, you know, succeed Tim Kaine, if he retires or whatever, her launch platform was like last year. She just got off an election.26:57.45Chaz Nuttycombeyou know It’s like, I don’t think that we’re seeing on the Dem side, like this big, you know, sort of energy for like passing this to stick it to Trump.27:11.22Chaz NuttycombeMaybe I’m wrong. That being said, you know, it’s like anecdotal, but it’s like, I i live in like probably one of the most liberal parts of of of the richmond metropolitan area now right i grew up in hanover now i’m a mountain church hill and you know i don’t see any of the you know like oh vote yes signs or anything out here but i’ve seen like a no sign you know may now i’m getting anecdotes with yard signs and whatnot, but like, you know, just, just point being, I think that it’s, this is a tough sell.27:44.91Chaz NuttycombeI think it’s a tough sell when we talk about these like independence and lean down folks, who overwhelmingly like 80, 20 voted for Abigail Spanberger. Right.27:55.78Chaz NuttycombeI think that it’s a tough sell. But, you know, i mean that’s that’s the goal. of The yes campaign is to make this a partisan election. There is no R&D on the ballot, but you they have to convince their base that this is a partisan election, that voting no means Republican voting. Yes, means Democrat.28:14.32Chaz NuttycombeIf they get that job done, they win. it’s It’s just as simple as that. So because I don’t think that, you know, we’re going to see a very, very lopsided Republican electorate.28:25.44Chaz NuttycombeRight. I mean, even the electorate in 2021 voted for Joe Biden by three points. Right. Republicans still had to win a persuasion. so, you know, and the, and the 2025 electorate was Harris plus 11.28:39.24Chaz Nuttycombeso, you know, Republicans have to wane that down and win on persuasion. while Democrats, you know, on the yes side just need to, you know, just, just convince their base like, Hey, yes equals good.28:52.83Chaz NuttycombeNo equals bad. Right. That’s their job. So.28:56.70Sam ShiraziAll right. Well, well I appreciate you you coming on. If people want to learn more about State Navigate’s work, how would they do that?29:03.03Chaz NuttycombeYeah, go to satenadvocate.org. We have a lot of content in Virginia. you know We have you know ideology of legislators. I don’t think we’ve done it for this session yet, now that I think about it, but we’ll hopefully get that out this quarter for the ideology of the new General Assembly. You know, we have early voting tracking. We’ll be doing some election night coverage similar to what I did in 2025 with the team.29:33.51Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, we have a lot of content in Virginia over the next, you know, month. So definitely go to state and advocate.org, subscribe to our newsletter, you know, hit the Virginia button to to get like weekly updates for our like weekly news roundup newsletter that we just launched, you know, about a month or so ago for the states that we’re operating in.29:54.85Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, if you want to help support our work, you can go to state navigate.org slash donate and make a tax deductible donation. You can attribute attribute it to any state you want, whether it be Virginia.30:06.36Chaz NuttycombeBut, you know, we have our Virginia funding covered thanks to Dominion Energy. But if you you know want to help us get a surplus there, that’s it’s more than fine. And. But if you want to do it for another state, you know, we’ll open up there a little bit faster.30:21.11Chaz NuttycombeSo it’s up to you. And, you know, we’d love to be your tool for navigating state legislatures.30:28.55Sam ShiraziWell, I definitely recommend that people check out State Navigate. And I really appreciate Chaz coming on. This has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over a special election in the 98th House of Delegates District and talk about what that might mean for the redistricting referendum.00:12.92Sam ShiraziNow, I want to caveat that first by saying special elections are definitely special and you cannot read too much into them because they’re very unique circumstances, really depends on the district, depends on the night.00:24.84Sam ShiraziSo I don’t want to go too crazy with the special election analysis, However, I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about this district because I think people were a little bit surprised. Generally, since President Trump was elected in 2024, Democrats have been doing well in special elections. Most special elections Democrats overperform. And what does overperforming mean? Typically, overperformance is measured against 2024 results in the district. So, for example, if Trump won a district by 10 points in 2024, but the Democrat wins a district by five points in the special election, that would be a 15 point overperformance.01:01.86Sam ShiraziAnd across the country, we’ve seen Democrats doing really well in special elections. Most special elections, Democrats overperform. And earlier this year, there have been a bunch of special elections in deep blue seats in Virginia. And almost all of those special elections, Democrats have also overperformed.01:17.58Sam ShiraziSo there’s a sense that Democrats are doing well in these special elections. And I think people were looking at this special election in the 98th house district to see what would happen because while it is a pretty red district it is not overwhelmingly red in 2024 uh president trump won this specific district by about uh 15 points however in 2025 spamburger carried excuse me spamburger still lost the district but it was a little bit closer she only lost it by about six and a half points01:49.02Sam ShiraziHowever, this district generally is known as more of a Republican district. It is in the most Republican part of Virginia Beach, which is kind of the southern part of Virginia Beach, includes even some rural areas and as well as some suburban areas.02:03.54Sam ShiraziAnd in 2025, the delegate who won that election was Barry Knight. He won by about 13%. So he overperformed Spanberger and did better than the top of the ticket.02:15.99Sam ShiraziAnd so, you know, When you look at this district, it’s kind of a Republican-leaning district, but not overwhelmingly so. Now, Delegate Knight unfortunately passed away, and so that’s why you had a special election for this seat.02:29.18Sam ShiraziAnd again, people were looking at this seat, seeing what would happen. Would it be close? Would the Democrats be able to overperform again? And it looks like Democrats have not done that. They are not going to overperform. This will be a rare instance where the Republicans actually overperform.02:43.10Sam ShiraziAnd I want to caveat by saying we do not have all the ballots yet. So in Virginia, the mail ballots can be received up until Friday at noon if they have been postmarked by Election Day.02:54.22Sam ShiraziSo we don’t have all the ballots in. And basically, it’s impossible to know how many mail ballots are still out there. Typically in special elections, there tend to be more late ballots than usual because the early voting period is shorter.03:07.30Sam ShiraziPeople get their absentee ballots later, and so they have less time to return it. So you usually see more late mail in special elections. So I caveat all about saying the the vote totals are not final. However, i think the outcome pretty clear. Certainly the Republicans are going to win the seat.03:24.05Sam ShiraziAnd it looks like they are probably going to overperform Donald Trump’s margin in 2024. So as of the time of recording, the Republican in the 98th House of Delegates seat, Andrew Rice, got about 62.5% of the vote, the Democrat, Cheryl got 37.5% of the vote.03:40.63Sam Shirazithat’s about a 25% margin for Republicans.03:45.08Sam Shiraziso that’s about a twenty five percent or margin for the republicans you know That’s probably going to come down a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to come down that much. And so if you think the district being a 15% Trump district in 2024, almost certainly the Republicans are going to overperform in this special election, unless there’s like a crazy amount of late mail that will be added, which seems relatively unlikely.04:08.36Sam ShiraziSo in the grand scheme of things, Republicans had a good night with the special election. They overperformed. And so the question becomes, what does all this mean? So I think a few things were at play here. One, obviously, when a delegate passes away, it’s it’s very unfortunate. And I think it was kind of a circumstance where it didn’t exactly lend itself to the Democrats having a big overperformance. It’s not like a situation where someone resigns in scandal. So I think the reason for the special election often is important.04:40.15Sam ShiraziAnd then if you look look at this district, It’s in more of a kind of white working class part of Virginia Beach. So typically Democrats have a harder time overperforming in districts with white working class voters.04:52.74Sam ShiraziThere are suburban portions of the district, so I want to pretend, you know, it’s just a classic white working class district. But it certainly has some rural areas where I think it’s just very difficult for the Democrats to overperform in a district like that.05:05.09Sam ShiraziI also think the elephant in the room is the redistricting referendum. And so I want to talk a little bit more about that, because I think one explanation of what happened is the Republicans are fired up and they’re upset about the redistricting referendum.05:18.76Sam ShiraziPotentially, they could also be generally upset at what’s been going on in Richmond since the Democrats took over in January. So perhaps they’re upset with some of the bills that have been passed.05:29.71Sam ShiraziAnd so I think generally the Virginia Republicans are more fired up than they were in 2025. Now, having said that, I mean, 2025 was a really bad year for the Virginia Republicans. So it’s basically as low as they’ve been in a long time. So the fact that the Virginia Republicans are doing better than 2025 doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing great, but it definitely was the lowest point they’ve been. And I think they’ve a little bit started to dig themselves out of the hole. And how have they done it? i mean, I think At the end of the day anger is a very strong motivator to vote. And obviously in 2025, Democrats were angry at what was going on in D.C.06:04.36Sam ShiraziAnd so they were very motivated to vote. They were motivated to talk to their friends, convince them to vote for the Democrats. Democrats got a big win. After that big win, Democrats came into Richmond. They did a lot of things.06:16.24Sam ShiraziAnd specifically, with redistricting that upset a lot of Republicans. And so now you see the opposite reaction where Republicans are upset and perhaps they are starting to organize, whereas last year they were a little bit at asleep. And this is kind of a common thing we see in Virginia.06:31.41Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, that all goes to show you in in politics, you know, for... every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so democrats get a big landslide in 2025 uh they start doing all these things including redistricting you would think that the real reaction on the republican side and it kind of goes back to one of the things i’ve talked about that in politics one of the hardest things is to be present you know it’s easy in politics to one that we live the last election for the rest of time republicans want it to be 2024 forever Democrats want to be 2025 forever.07:01.04Sam ShiraziThe reality is the world moves, things change. And I think 2026 is 2026. And the environment is different than 2025, than 2024. And I also think it’s important to kind of think about regional dynamics in elections. Like perhaps the Democrats are doing really well nationally.07:17.68Sam ShiraziNational environment is definitely behind the Democrats. But perhaps in Virginia, Things are not as blue as they were in 2025, partly because the redistricting, partly because Democrats got a trifecta.07:29.14Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, so I mean, I don’t want to overread what happened in the Virginia special election as meaning, you know, Democrats are definitely going to lose the redistricting referendum. That’s certainly not the case. I think it’s just an indication that maybe the Republicans have woken up a little bit since 2025.07:46.18Sam ShiraziI won’t go and do this kind of deep dive early vote analysis right now. I think it’s too early. But, you know, there have been some indications that Republicans generally are turning out more than they did in 2025 for early voting. Again, I think it’s very early to read too much into that.08:00.100Sam ShiraziAnd again, 2025 Republicans did pretty bad. So the fact that they’re doing better than 2025 is not necessarily saying a whole lot. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to win.08:12.04Sam ShiraziBut it does show that I think perhaps 2025 was kind of a low point for the Virginia Republicans. And I do think they’re going to start rebuilding a little bit in 2026. Having said that, I mean,08:23.40Sam ShiraziThey were in a 15 point hole for the governor’s race. And so to dig out of a 15 15 point hole in the governor’s race is a lot. And let’s say the Republicans do like 10 percent better than they did last year at the governor’s race.08:34.64Sam Shirazii mean, they’re still going to lose by like 5 percent. So I think it’s important to have some perspective, even as the Republicans are doing better. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to win. Now, having said all that, I also wanna have some humility and just kind of think this through because one of the things I noticed with, as I was thinking through the California, Virginia comparison.08:54.10Sam ShiraziSo in California, the redistricting referendum passed overwhelmingly. And I think that gave Democrats in Virginia some confidence that this redistricting referendum was going to pass. And it kind of reminded me of something that happened in 2021. And not to give Virginia Democrats some bad memories, but I did kind of come to my mind. So 2021, obviously, there had started to be a backlash to the Democrats as President Biden came into office.09:19.85Sam ShiraziAnd there was a recall referendum. in California for the governor, Gavin Newsom, and he was able to successfully fight that off. And that was before the Virginia elections in 2021.09:32.22Sam ShiraziAnd I remember when Gavin Newsom won the recall, I think there was a sense among Virginia Democrats, it’s not that big of a deal. We’re okay. And obviously in 2021, the Republicans were able to win with Glenn Youngkin.09:45.74Sam ShiraziAnd so I guess what I’m getting at is just because the rejection referendum passed by a lot in California doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily going to be a slam dunk in Virginia. And so I do think it’s important for the Virginia Democrats not to take anything for granted.09:59.92Sam Shirazii think the Republicans are more fired up than they were last year. i think certainly independents, some of them who voted for Spanberger going to be a little bit skeptical of this proposal. i think the idea of gerrymandering kind of sits wrong with them, even if they understand that President Trump was the one who’s kind of started the redistricting wars.10:18.56Sam ShiraziI think they understand that, you know, in their mind, maybe two wrongs don’t make a right. On the other side, obviously, Democrats are generally upset at what’s been going on in D.C. And that has continued into 2026. And they understand that this redistricting referendum in Virginia is a way to kind of fight back in their minds.10:34.82Sam ShiraziAnd there’s certainly a lot of independents who perhaps they don’t like gerrymandering. But their number one issue is also sending a message to President Trump. We saw this in 2025 with the attorney general race where Jay Jones was able to win with a pretty comfortable margin because ae a lot of independents basically said, I would rather send a message to President Trump and vote the Democrat than to vote for Jason Muir as a Republican.10:57.80Sam ShiraziAnd I think you could see something like that here where some independents may not like the concept of gerrymandering, but they want to send a message to President Trump. So all that’s to say is like, I think at a minimum, the redistricting referendum is going to be closer than the governor’s race in 2025.11:11.90Sam Shirazitwenty twenty five Now, that’s not saying a whole lot because Spanberger winning by 15 was the biggest margin that Democrats got in Virginia in a long time. So it’s not a huge surprise to say that the redistricting referendum is going to be closer than 2025.11:23.74Sam Shirazitwenty twenty five But the question is, is it going to be Within 10 points, within five points, or are we kind of entering a territory where the Republicans could actually win the redistricting referendum? I think that still kind of seems unlikely at this point, but I do think the special election, some of the early voting data suggests that Republicans do have some momentum compared to the Democrats at this point.11:44.84Sam ShiraziHowever, and I always caveat people with early vote because it’s way too early to draw big conclusions with early vote. Why mail mail ballots take a time a while to process.11:55.40Sam ShiraziIt takes a while for them to be sent to the voters, for the voters to to read to get them, to fill them out, to send them back in, to have the... paperwork process for a mail ballot. So I think mail ballots are going to continue to be added to the system. And those typically tend to be overwhelmingly democratic and they come from overwhelmingly democratic places.12:13.78Sam ShiraziAnd then the other thing is just the satellite voting locations. Most satellite voting locations are located in democratic localities and those tend to open later in the early voting cycle. And I think especially this time, there is going to be less satellite voting compared to 2025. So I think The Democratic early voting might be less than 2025. There might be more early voting on Election Day just because the satellite voting locations have reduced hours and in some places reduced locations as compared to 2025. So all that’s to say is it is still very early. There is still over a month until the redistricting referendum. I don’t think either side can really take it for granted. i don’t think either side can confidently feel like they’re 100 percent going to win.12:59.46Sam ShiraziI do think it’s a little bit of a different vibe than 2025. 2025, I think for most of that election, at least at the governor’s level, almost everyone kind of had a gut feeling that Spanberger was going to win. I don’t think it was a huge surprise when Spanberger won.13:11.36Sam Shirazithink we all had a feeling that was going to happen. Here, I think most people feel that Democrats have an advantage in a redistricting referendum, but it’s not necessarily this overwhelmingly slam dunk. You know, there’s no way the Republicans can win.13:22.100Sam ShiraziSo all that’s to say is I think it’s important to always be paying attention to the pulse of what’s going on and not necessarily go off the last election or to kind of go off what know you think should happen, given the NYMEX in California and with the redistricting referendum. Every election is unique. You really have to kind of keep your pulse on it.13:44.50Sam ShiraziAnd I do think the Republicans have started to kind of right the ship a little bit in Virginia relative to 2025. Keep in mind that they had a very bad 20, 25 and the Democrats, you know, I don’t think that they’re in that much trouble.13:58.36Sam ShiraziHowever, when you get a big election win like 20, 25, there often does get tend to be a sense of complacency, a sense of, you know, obviously Virginia is a deep blue state now and we’re to, you know, we don’t have to work anymore. And I think, I think that’s just not the case. Virginia turned blue during the first Trump administration,14:16.90Sam ShiraziAnd then it turned back into, at least at the state level, a more purple state. And I do think here there is a possibility, even if President Trump’s in the White House, that the Virginia Democrats still need to work on this redistricting referendum.14:31.40Sam ShiraziAnd I guess the last thing I’ll i’ll say about the redistricting refer referendum is... you know My sense is the the hardcore Republicans and the hardcore Democrats understand what’s going on.14:41.52Sam ShiraziThey’re really motivated. They’re going to vote. The question becomes kind of the low propensity Democrats, the low propensity Republicans. In 2025, Democrats did a better job getting out their low propensity voters.14:52.85Sam ShiraziI think there’s a possibility in 2026, perhaps the Republicans right now are doing a better job getting out or at least and educating their low propensity voters. voters And so I think the Democrats also have to think about not just their highly engaged voters, but the low propensity voter, you know, the working class voter that’s, you know, perhaps in Hampton Roads or the college student, you know, are those people who voted in 2025 going to come out again in 2026? And I think it’s a little bit of an open question. Some of those early voting data hasn’t been great for the Democrats.15:24.36Sam ShiraziBut the good news is they still have a lot of time over over a month left to get out those voters. And then also Democrats have a financial advantage. So I think that’s certainly going to help them.15:34.83Sam ShiraziThey have you know heavy hitters like President former President Obama has been supporting the redistricting referendum. So I think there are a lot of things going right for the Democrats. I’m not necessarily trying to. freak them out or say that the Republicans are going to win. I’m just trying to kind of lay it out as I see it, that things are not necessarily as much of a slam dunk as 2025.15:55.30Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, anytime an election is going to be within single digits, which I think there’s a possibility this election is going to be single within single digits, it’s hard to confidently say, you know, one side or another is definitely going win. So I think we’re going to keep an eye on it. I will keep doing these updates on the redistricting referendum. I wanted to do a podcast this time that’s really in the weeds about Virginia elections because my last podcast was a little bit less focused on Virginia, but I want to get back into it, especially now that the redistricting referendums been heating up. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out of Virginia Elections. This is a special episode where we will go over the impact of the conflict in the Middle East, specifically the conflict between Israel, the United States, and Iran, and see how it is going to impact the elections here in Virginia and across the country And I was waiting to do this episode because I wasn’t sure how long things would continue. The conflict has gone on for over two weeks now and doesn’t seem to be like there’s an end in sight. So I thought it was a good time to maybe talk about it.00:31.29Sam ShiraziTalk about the impact both in Virginia and across the country. And the reason I thought it made sense to talk about it in this podcast is obviously the podcast is called Federal Fallout. And this is going to be an important federal fallout both in Virginia, across the country this year in the elections, the midterms, because really.00:49.50Sam ShiraziSo there’s both the impact domestically in terms of the economy, and then we’ll talk about some of the international implications of what’s going on. So I thought it would be an interesting time to do a little bit of a different podcast. Obviously, I’ve been focusing a lot on Virginia redistricting referendum.01:04.27Sam ShiraziI’m not going to talk about it too much in this podcast because I don’t think it’s going to have a direct impact of what’s going on in Middle East. It’s going to have direct impact on the redistricting referendum. However, once the referendum is over, obviously, we’re going have the midterms here in Virginia and across the country. And I do think the conflict has gone on long enough now that there will be an impact that will be felt all the way even in November, even if the conflict conflict ends relatively soon because of some of the impacts to the national and global economy. So anyways, I thought it’d be interesting to do a little bit of a different podcast, something that’s not exactly hyper-focused on Virginia, but still back impacting Virginia. And I think just an interesting topic in general.01:45.99Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, i try to stay in my lane, talk mainly about Virginia elections. However, i also know a decent amount about the Middle East for various reasons. One, I studied Middle East foreign in as a foreign affairs major at the University of Virginia. So I’ve spent some time studying the Middle East, specifically Iran. And, you know, full full disclosure, my family originally, we come from Iran. So I generally have a good sense of what’s going on in the country. i have kept an eye on things for a while. Don’t really talk about it a lot on this podcast because usually it’s not super relevant, but now obviously it is relevant and I thought people might be interested in my perspective.02:24.87Sam ShiraziSo I’ll try to keep it, you know, not focused on my specific experience, but more what the conflict in the Middle East is doing globally in terms of the economy, how that’s having an impact here domestically and what it might mean for the midterms this year in november So to begin with, I want to talk a little bit about just like the practical domestic impact of what’s going on in the Middle East. And obviously the big thing that’s been on the news domestically has been the impact on gas prices. Obviously, Middle East, Iran, countries that order it are big companies. oil producers.03:03.68Sam ShiraziAnd the big thing that’s happened since the conflict began, Iran has tried to essentially close the Strait of Hormuz. So the Strait of Hormuz is a narrow part of water that connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the ocean. And obviously oil that’s coming from places like Iran, Iraq, Kuwait have to go through the Strait of Hormuz to reach global markets.03:27.80Sam ShiraziAnd I think Aaron has pretty effectively essentially shut down shipping through the strait, and that is causing oil prices to go up a decent amount. And the price of oil has hit almost roughly $100 a hundred dollars barrel.03:43.09Sam ShiraziAnd anytime oil hits that number, about $100 a barrel, I mean, that’s going to have significant significant impact both here and internationally. And just practically, I mean, everyone has seen at the the gas station that the price of oil, sorry, the price of gas has gone up and people are paying more. And obviously, Americans don’t like that. That was a big drag on President Biden when that happened. And it was probably a big reason why the Democrats lost the election in 2024, even though gas prices had come down from their highs in 2022. So 2022, Russia invades Ukraine. That causes another oil shock.04:19.02Sam ShiraziThe price of gas goes up. And it never really came that down to the pre-war levels until I think recently. And so even though the initial jump in prices in 2022 caused a huge shock, it still had an impact years later on.04:37.71Sam ShiraziAnd The thing is, it’s not just gas. I mean, most Americans have cars that use gas, and so they feel that when they’re filling up the pump. But if you notice, if you look, the price of diesel has also gone up a lot. And diesel, while most of us don’t buy diesel, it’s important for shipping. So think a lot of things run on diesel, like most big trucks that transport goods runs on diesel trains, a lot of things run on diesel. And so when the price of diesel goes up, that means that the price of transporting a lot of goods or almost every single good will go up a lot. And that was one of the things we saw in 2022. mean, I think there’s been, there was a lot of talk about, oh, inflation was high when, when Biden was president. And that’s true. But05:20.49Sam ShiraziPart of the reason for that and a big part of it was because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that caused an oil shock that caused the price of gas to go up. It also caused the price of diesel to go up. And so once the price of diesel goes up, the price of almost everything else starts going up. And I do think the longer this goes on in the Middle East, the longer that there’s a risk that there will be inflation, inflationary shocks.05:41.71Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, the thing with inflation, it usually takes a little bit of time until we really see it, especially in the formal data in terms of the inflation rate. And so we saw that in 2022.05:52.52Sam ShiraziThere was kind of initial jump in prices. And then eventually that kind of got reflected throughout the economy. And I do think that there is going to be something similar happening in the next couple weeks, potentially a couple of months.06:05.74Sam ShiraziAnd even if the war ended tomorrow, I mean, these shocks are still going to be felt in the system. Obviously, the sooner it ends, the less likely it’s going to have as big of impact. But I do think already we’re starting to see the immediate impact with the gas prices. And I do think next few weeks there’ll be a broader impact on on other goods throughout the economy.06:25.58Sam ShiraziSo you know I talked about this previously in my podcast. Most people, they’re most the the most important issue is the economy. People had been struggling before the conflict had began. The affordability crisis has been going on for several years.06:39.07Sam ShiraziAnd that was one of the big reasons that Donald Trump got elected in 2024. And I think people expected him to fix that issue. And I think a lot of people have felt that that had not gotten better.06:49.31Sam ShiraziThat was one of the big reasons. Now, Governor Spanberger got a big win in 2025. She focused a lot on the affordability issue because people had a sense that things were not getting better, even though the Republicans had come in and and, you know, there have been a lot of different policies that necessarily didn’t necessarily make things better in terms of affordability, such as the tariffs.07:10.01Sam ShiraziAnd I do think now with this conflict, there is going to be another round of potential rises and costs for the American people. And I think that’s obviously not going to be great for the Republicans if that happens and they will potentially be facing an even harder November where where they were already facing a hard November. I think it’s going to make their lives that much harder, specifically because, you know, if inflation at least starts rising again, probably won’t get up to like the 10 percent that it got under Biden. But even if it goes up to four or five percent, I mean, I think you draw a clear line where you say, you know, President Trump’s decision to go to war in the Middle East, that has07:49.43Sam Shirazidirect impact on the economy and and the Democrats will certainly make that argument that his decision to go to war has increased the cost to the American people. So even if most people are not spending all day you know focusing on what’s going on in the Middle East and what’s going on with the Strait of Hormuz, we are all going to feel the impact when we go to the gas station and eventually when we start buying things at the grocery store because of this conflict that is so far away.08:16.96Sam ShiraziNow, I also wanted to talk a little bit about of the political implications in terms of President Trump’s decision to start this war, because yeah obviously there are are a few catchphrases President Trump had during his campaigns. Probably his most famous one is make America great again. But I do think one that is also pretty famous is America first. And I think that was Originally, his main foreign policy ideology was American first. I think it’s a pretty you know vague statement. And you know people had a sense, OK, that means focus on America.08:49.71Sam ShiraziBut what did it actually mean in terms of foreign policy? And we saw during his second term, particularly after what happened in Venezuela, when the president when President Trump ordered American troops to go and seize the president of Venezuela and bring him to the U.S. for trial,09:07.12Sam ShiraziThere was a little bit clearer articulation of what America First meant, at least in in terms of kind of an ideal ideology that was somewhat consistent. and And basically what that meant was, according to this kind of idea of America First, the idea was...09:23.40Sam ShiraziAmerica was going to move away from this post-World War II idea that it’s going to be the policeman of the world, that it will kind of ensure this global liberal you know free trade order that wasn’t really what America should be doing, shouldn’t be you know subsidizing all these countries’ defenses like in Europe.09:41.97Sam ShiraziWhat America was going to do is look out for its own interests. So and specifically what that meant is America was going to look out for the Western Hemisphere because in President Trump’s view, America is the leading power in the Western Hemisphere. And that is kind of its sphere of influence. And so it’s in America’s interest to protect itself and to protect its interests in the Western Hemisphere. And all these other things going on in the rest of the world really aren’t America’s problems.10:05.71Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, you may disagree or agree with that, but I think at the end of the day, it was somewhat consistent or at least somewhat coherent. And so while Venezuela, what President Trump did was certainly intervention overseas, he could kind of defend it as saying, like, look, we’re looking out for what’s going on in our backyard. And that’s why I went into Venezuela. And I think President Trump had been critical, obviously, of various foreign entanglements the United States has gotten itself into.10:33.46Sam ShiraziAnd I think his worldview is, for example, something like the war in Ukraine. It’s not really our problem. You know, Eastern Europe, maybe that’s more of Russia’s sphere of influence. Let the Europeans deal with it. You know, the EU, their sphere of influence is Western Europe and Central Europe.10:48.52Sam ShiraziIf they have a problem with Russia, they should deal with Ukraine. It’s not really America’s problem. you know China, their sphere of influence could be maybe East east Asia, India will have a sphere of influence in South Asia.11:02.74Sam ShiraziAnd then the Middle East, it had seemed that maybe he was basically arguing you know Israel and the Gulf states, you know they can have a sphere of influence in the Middle East and the Middle East isn’t really America’s problem anymore. and That seemed to be kind of the America fair first ideology.11:18.96Sam ShiraziAnd so I think a lot of people were puzzled when President Trump decided to start this war with Iran, because it in some ways it kind of goes totally against that. You know, President Trump in 2016. One of the reasons he got the Republican nomination is he was one of the only Republicans to basically say the Iraq war was a mistake. He wanted to the US out of the Middle East. I think that’s what a lot of people voted for him.11:38.93Sam ShiraziThey believed in this idea that the US had spent all this time and money and energy in the Middle East and was not paying attention enough to what was going on in America.11:49.29Sam ShiraziAnd so I think it was a kind of an odd decision now that President Trump decided to launch launch this you know relatively large scale war with Iran because it kind of goes against all that. you know It’s in the Middle East, very far from America.12:02.46Sam ShiraziIt’s you know in an area where you have other strong states like Israel, Saudi Arabia, that you know even if Iran really is a problem, those states could maybe deal with it and it’s not really America’s issue anymore.12:15.92Sam ShiraziAnd so I guess the question now becomes, you know why did President Trump decide to to do this at this point? i mean, I think my sense was after what happened in Venezuela, when the US went in and took the Venezuelan president Maduro, they took him out and they were able to work with his vice president and set up, while not a totally different regime, certainly a more favorable government towards the United States. I think President Trump felt really good after that.12:41.53Sam ShiraziAnd you know who knows what some of his advisors were telling him But he felt that maybe he could do something similar in Iran. Obviously, the United States joined Israel in that conflict. Israel was able to kill the Supreme Leader or the former Supreme Leader, Khamenei.12:57.58Sam ShiraziAnd maybe President Trump had a sense of, well, we can bring someone else who might be more reasonable into power in Iran, and then that will solve a foreign policy crisis in the Middle East. I think it’s not exactly played out that way, and we can kind of talk about why. But I think that’s part of the the challenge that is is happening right now, because perhaps President Trump thought that once Khamenei was out of the way, there would be a better government in Iran. I think most people who understand Iran knows that that was unlikely to happen. i think Iran is very different than Venezuela, for example. And it didn’t really make sense that you could kind of come in overthrow just the supreme leader, and all of a sudden the government will get a lot better.13:42.01Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, just talk a little bit about Iran for for a moment. i mean, I do think a lot of the Iranian people have turned against the government generally over the past few years because it is a very repressive government.13:56.63Sam ShiraziThe economy has not been doing well. So I do think there were a lot of Iranians who were against the regime. I think the challenge is the regime is very entrenched, it’s very powerful, and it’s just hard to overthrow through something with like airstrikes. And I do think once Khamenei was taken out, there wasn’t really...14:16.77Sam Shirazigoing to be someone else who could come in and be a moderate in that situation. Obviously, the country had just started, had just been bombed. Even in Venezuela, the United States didn’t kill Maduro. They were able to seize him take him to the United States, and are going to put him on trial. You know, killing another country’s leader, it’s going to be pretty hard for the other leaders in that country to all of a sudden say, okay, we’re actually going to work with you now once you killed our leader. I think the natural response from the Iranian regime is that they’re going to start attacking the Middle East. And a lot of people are kind of surprised, I think, that they started attacking not just Israel, but countries like Qatar and Kuwait and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. But I think from the Iranian regime standpoint, their mindset is that they are going to cause as much trouble as possible. They are going to hurt the economies of those countries. They are obviously trying to hurt15:10.62Sam Shirazithe global economy with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. And so I think from their perspective, their idea their idea of fighting this war is they know they’re not going to win militarily because Israel the United States has has a much stronger military, but they’re going to cause a lot of economic harm.15:28.12Sam ShiraziAnd the pain that that causes will cause primarily the United States to eventually just stop and not no longer want to fight the war. Now, that hasn’t happened yet, but we’ll see where it goes. And I do think From their perspective, a lot of the Gulf states are getting nervous because places like Dubai and Doha, you know, in Qatar, they their economy is now geared more towards tourism, more towards banking, being kind of a center of commerce. And I think the conflict has really hurt that image and has hurt their ability to do that. And so certainly I think behind the scenes, they are trying to get this conflict resolved. It seems like Israel, on the other hand, because they’re more far removed from much of the consequences, wants to kind of see this through and and try to end the conflict. And ideally, from their perspective, end the regime, even though that seems pretty difficult to accomplish.16:18.22Sam ShiraziSo the question becomes, you know, what is the United States going to do? How long will President Trump continue this conflict? Most people seem to have thought that he would eventually just say, know,16:29.86Sam Shiraziessentially declare victory. you know We took out their leader and the regime is weaker. And so we won. Most people still think that’s going to be the end game. But I think the markets are starting to realize this is going to drag out longer. And I think that’s why the cost of oil has started to go up more and more. And I think at the end of the day,16:48.18Sam ShiraziYou know, that there’s this idea that in an ideal world, the Iranian people would rise up, overthrow the regime. I think the challenge with that is if you put yourself in the place of the average Iranian, you know, their country is being bombed. The U.S. s and Israeli military are telling civilians to be careful. The regime has very explicitly said that, you know, anyone who is caught, you know, protesting, they will just execute them essentially because it’s a time of war and they’ve essentially declared martial law. And even before the war, if you were caught protesting, you might be killed. So the idea that people in this environment are going to be willing to go out and protest, I think is unlikely. And a lot of Iranians are just you know hunkering down, trying to survive. And so I think it’s a little bit unrealistic to think that the regime would be overthrown in this environment. And so we’re kind of left in this situation where17:40.64Sam ShiraziThe regime domestically, I think, feels like it isn’t under huge pressure. Its military is being battered, but it still has these asymmetric abilities to strike back with drones and missiles.18:16.46Sam ShiraziAnyway, so we’re kind of reaching a point where... the longer the Strait of Hormuz is closed, the bigger the impact to the global economy, the more difficult it will be for things to get back to normal. And I think the Iranian regime knows that, and they’re trying to put the pressure, especially on the United States,18:34.83Sam Shirazito eventually just wrap this up. and And they’re essentially just trying to wait out Trump. And and their their sense is, oh, he’s just going to get bored of this. He’s going to move on. And you know that might be the case. However, I do think President Trump is also the type of person who doesn’t like it when he doesn’t win and he doesn’t get what he really wants.18:53.29Sam ShiraziAnd so there’s also a possibility that he will just continue to do this. And the longer it goes on, the bigger the impact both to the global and American economy.19:03.84Sam ShiraziSo kind of tying this all to back to kind of the midterms and what it means, I mean, I think at the end of the day, this is just another thing that is probably going to help the Democrats this November for various reasons. One, we’ve talked about the economy.19:18.69Sam ShiraziTwo, we’ve talked about this idea that people don’t want the United States to be in another war in the Middle East. I think most Americans have been exhausted after what’s been going on. with Afghanistan and Iraq, that they don’t want another you know forever war.19:33.84Sam ShiraziAnd there’s also just kind of a sense that the war is not necessarily going the way that we had hoped that it would be quick and the regime would fall and there’d be a new, better government in Iran. And I think that hasn’t happened and there’s not any indication that’s going to happen anytime soon. So for those reasons, I think it’s generally going to hurt the Republicans in November.19:55.66Sam ShiraziNow, having said that, it really depends when it ends. I think if it ends, you know, late March, April timeframe, perhaps by November things have basically moved on. Not that many people remember it. There’s been an impact to the economy, but the economy has been able to basically take it. And at the end of the day, it’s not going to be a huge factor in November. I think that’s one possibility. And the other possibility is, especially if it continues, I do think there’s this risk that the war will, you know, continue to drag the Republicans down. And, you know, you know I think,20:29.68Sam Shiraziwhen you’re thinking about midterms, you’re always looking at comparators. And I think obviously the comparator for Trump is the 2018 midterm because that’s when Trump was last in office. But I do think perhaps there’s another comparator, which is 2006. Now, the economy was doing pretty well.20:46.97Sam Shirazi2006, the economy wasn’t doing that great. it was you know We were starting to see the first signs of what would eventually become the Great Recession. And obviously, 2006 was the height of the Iraq War. And I think both those things really hurt the Republican Party.21:01.13Sam ShiraziIt allowed the Democrats to have a comeback. Democrats were able to win both the House and Senate in 2006. And so in some ways, the blue wave in 2006 was actually bigger than the blue wave in 2018. because I think it was more of a national blue wave. We saw it blow both in blue states and red states. And I do think that that the longer this war goes on, the bigger the impact of the economy. I do think we could be entering more of a 2006 type environment as opposed to maybe a 2018 type environment, because i I just think at some point,21:32.36Sam ShiraziThe war, I think the problem the Republicans have is both the practical impact of the war in terms of the cost of the economy, and then also the kind of political or ideological divisions is creating in the MAGA movement, if you want to say that, in terms of some of some parts of the movement, particularly the more pro-Israel sides of the movement, support the war. But then you have people on the other side who are more on the America first side of things who think that this is not really in America’s interest. And so you’re you’re seeing how these ideological divisions within the Republican Party, and then you’re seeing the economic impact of the war here domestically.22:10.06Sam ShiraziAnd I guess the last thing I’ll leave you with is is maybe more of a Iranian perspective or Iranian-American perspective, because I think that is often lost in this type of conflict when there’s obviously focus on so much going on, both in terms of the domestic economy, world economy, Strait of Hormuz, gas blockage, you know all these things that you hear about, but you don’t necessarily hear about the perspective of Iranians both in Iran and around the world. And you know i I think the thing that I hear over and over again is a lot of mixed feelings. I think a lot of Iranians do not like the regime. i think that’s an understatement.22:47.32Sam ShiraziCertainly the Iranians that left Iran, they did so because they did not like the regime. They did not support the regime. Some of those people outside of Iran are some of the biggest supporters of the war because they feel like this is the only way to get rid of rid of the regime.23:01.82Sam ShiraziA lot of Iranians outside of Iran, however, also oppose the war because they feel that this is not the right way to get rid of the regime. And if anything, it’s going to strength strengthen the regime, at least domestically.23:14.46Sam ShiraziSo I think there’s a lot of mixed feelings, conflicting feelings. And then I think people in Iran... probably are feeling the same thing. Some of them were probably happy when they heard that the Supreme Leader was killed.23:26.01Sam ShiraziAnd they were they were hopeful that maybe this could lead to a different direction for Iran. But I think one thing that I have felt... Having studied the Iranian regime for a long time, is it is more versatile and more adaptive than I think people give it credit for.23:44.76Sam ShiraziI think there’s an image of it as some sort of backward Islamic theology theocracy, and obviously it has those components, but at the end of the day, it is also...23:55.55Sam Shirazia very strong repressive state and it has been able to maintain power for 45 years with large portions of the population not supporting it. And I think part of the reason it’s done that is it has created ways to survive and has both the military and political strength to survive a lot of internal uprisings and a lot of pressure from the outside in terms of sanctions. This has been the first time it has really faced significant military pressure from the outside since the Iran-Iraq war when Saddam Hussein invaded the country and launched an eight-year war that was, and he was unable to defeat the regime24:42.36Sam ShiraziUltimately, I think it’s really important in these situations to be realistic. As much as I don’t like the regime and I wish that it would change as much as a lot of Iranians don’t like the regime, as much as obviously many people in the region and around the world don’t like the regime, I think you have to be realistic, understand the nature of the regime, understand how it’s able to survive, how it is able to adapt and do things that make life difficult for everyone. And so ultimately,25:08.100Sam ShiraziI guess what I’m getting at is it’s important to be realistic in this situation and not necessarily just wish away the regime or wish that will fall or wish that there will be regime change. Anything is certainly possible. It’s an unpredictable situation. I certainly hope for the best in terms of a better direction for the Iranian people so that they could live in freedom and democracy. That’s my hope. That’s my hope.25:32.71Sam Shirazifor a long time. And i hope it comes true one day. But I am also realistic that I’m not sure this sort of conflict is the environment that will cause that to happen. And so we’ll just have to keep an eye on it. Ultimately, it is going to have an impact in Iran, in the region, around the world, in America, certainly going to have an impact on the Virginia elections.25:55.81Sam Shirazion the midterms generally this November. So that’s why I thought I’d do this episode. And yeah, I mean, i’m I’m curious to see how long this goes on. I may do some more specials on Iran and give some more information about the conflict. This was kind of my beginning episode to give people a little bit of better sense of what was going on. If it continues, I will do more episodes.26:17.38Sam ShiraziI still obviously want to cover Virginia elections, want to cover the redistricting referendum, certainly very important. But I thought I’d do a little bit of a different thing this episode and talk about what’s going on in the Middle East.26:29.19Sam Shiraziso this keep paying attention. I think I will do my best to cover it all. Federal fallout, I’ve enjoyed doing it. i think sometimes you do have to cover the actual federal fallout about what’s going on because this has obviously been driven by a decision that President Trump did at the federal level.26:45.48Sam ShiraziAnd I will continue to cover it. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. So this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over a ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court and then also preview the start of early voting this Friday in the redistricting referendum.00:14.71Sam ShiraziSo the big news that came out on Wednesday was that the Virginia Supreme Court had issued a ruling. We had been waiting for it. And finally, it had issued a ruling. Unfortunately, didn’t give us the final answer on Virginia redistricting, but did give us an answer on whether the referendum was going to move forward. And the Virginia Supreme Court said that the redistricting referendum itself, the voting can take place. So the court was very clear that the Redistricting referendum is going to happen. Early voting was going to start on Friday.00:45.94Sam ShiraziHowever, there’s an important caveat where they put some language in there basically saying that this is not the final order. we have not made our final decision. And so we’re going to let people vote. And then after that, we will give you our final say on whether this was legal or not. And so I think that’s leaving a lot of uncertainty in the air.01:04.36Sam ShiraziBut we did get some kind of short-term answers. People will start voting on Friday. And then obviously there’s going to be a campaign. And then on April 21st, we will have election day and we will see whether the registry referendum passes or not. So a lot to talk about. The first thing I wanted to do was kind of break down the Supreme Court decision and kind of explain what happened. And I think a lot of people were a little bit confused about why the court is kicking the can down the road.01:30.37Sam ShiraziSo to give you some background, the Virginia Supreme Court had previously said that the redistricting referendum could go forward. However, there was a new lawsuit and a judge in Tazewell County in entered a new temporary restraining order basically saying that the referendum couldn’t go forward. So it was pretty clear that the Virginia Supreme Court was going to have to say something because at least Tazewell County was unsure whether it could actually start the holding the referendum and having early voting start.01:57.64Sam ShiraziSo it was very clear that Supreme Court, we were expecting that they were going to do something, but it took a while. And I was kind of surprised. It almost went at the last minute, two days before start of early voting, they gave their decision.02:09.51Sam ShiraziAnd it’s an interesting one. so So one of the things the court said was this was not really a temporary restraining order. It was actually an injunction. An injunction is basically a more long term thing, whereas a tmporary restraining orders in more short term. So the Supreme Court like was like, this is a big deal. What the court did was a big deal. So we have to rule on it. And I think what was interesting is they were grappling on what to do. They were grappling on whether to make the final decision now or basically wait until after the referendum.02:39.61Sam ShiraziSo the Virginia Supreme Court really emphasized this court case from 1912. And this court case is called Scott versus James. And they kept citing this court case. So I think this was really important. And they felt like they really had to abide by this decision.02:53.27Sam ShiraziAnd this decision basically said that you first have to let the people vote, and then you can decide on the legality of it. And you can tell in the Supreme Court decision, they’re really grappling with this. I think they they don’t really like this outcome, but they feel like they have no other choice. They feel like for various reasons, it’s not within their power to really stop the election. And it it would be basically undemocratic for the judicial branch to basically say to voters, you can’t vote. However, they also said, well, once the voting is done, then we can decide what ends up happening.03:26.78Sam ShiraziAnd I think it creates this odd scenario where hypothetically the redistricting referendum could pass and then the Virginia Supreme Court could say, actually, this is not legal and so redistricting is not going to happen.03:39.94Sam Shirazithe court was very explicit that it will not rule if the redistricting referendum is not passed. Because the the court basically said that it’s going to be a moot issue. There’s no point in us ruling.03:51.56Sam ShiraziHowever, the court did open the door and very was explicitly said that they could overturn the referendum if after they hear all the arguments and they think about it, they decide that this was not legal.04:04.23Sam ShiraziAnd I think really you could tell in this opinion, They didn’t want to rush the decision. They really wanted to think this one through. They knew it was important. Obviously, the clock’s ticking. Early voting is going start.04:15.04Sam ShiraziThey knew they had to put something out there. And so I think their ultimate call was that they are going to allow the redistricting referendum to go forward, and then they’re going to make the the final call later. And essentially, it’s kicking the can down the road again. They kicked the can down the road last time, and this time they again kicked the can down the road.04:32.74Sam ShiraziAnd I think the other part of the opinion that got a lot of attention was towards the end. So they basically talk about, okay, there’s all these issues that parties have raised, that this was done without enough notice, that the notices were not posted, that the language of the referendum is biased. So, you know, Republicans have raised a lot of arguments, and the court kind of summarized them all.04:54.69Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, at the end, The court put the sentence in there and it said, quote, these issues are of grave concern to the court. And I think I’m a lawyer. Anytime you’re a lawyer and you hear a court saying something is of grave concern, that is going to trigger you because you’re that that’s telling you the court’s grappling with something.05:18.32Sam ShiraziAnd so... The exact language is important. So the court said these issues are of grave concern. Not we have grave concerns. They said these issues of of are of grave concern.05:30.97Sam ShiraziAnd I think you can read this two ways. One of them is grave concern just basically means like it’s super important. Like we get it. Like this is an important issue. We’re going to take our time. We’re going to think this through.05:42.57Sam ShiraziWe’re going rush it. So it’s a grave concern and we don’t want to you know come up with something you know right before early voting. We want to think this through. I think the other way you can read this, and this is certainly how the Republicans want to read it, is grave concern means they have grave concerns and they’re really worried about this. They just felt like it was not the correct procedural posture to strike down the referendum.06:05.09Sam ShiraziBut they’re leaving the door open and so they’re kind of you know this is put in the opinion to show that they’re actually you know skeptical of what the Democrats are trying to do. They just couldn’t stop it right now. I mean, I don’t know. I think you can read it both ways. We’re ultimately going to get the final answer after redistricting referendum, if it passes, when the Supreme Court will have to make their final call. you know I think the the last one of the last lines of opinion, it says, issuing injunction to keep Virginians from the polls is not the proper way to make the decision. So I think really the court...06:35.98Sam ShiraziBottom line, did not want to be rushed into it. I think the the Virginia Republicans, when they filed the second lawsuit and got the the judge in Tazewell County to issue the injunction, they were trying to get the Supreme Court to make a final decision very quickly. They were trying to force the court’s hand.07:22.01Sam ShiraziMy gut was the court was not going to have its hand forced. basically where these important decisions are made in this posture, like right before a deadline and the court makes the ultimate decision. I think the Virginia Supreme Court didn’t want to be put in that position. i think they didn’t really appreciate having to rush their decision. And so I think at the end of the day they kicked the can down the road.07:39.88Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, the Democrats, they’re going to take that. They want to live to fight another day. They want to see the referendum happen. They think they’re going to win the referendum. And so Democrats were generally happy. i think, you know, in an ideal world for Democrats, the entire issue would have been resolved and they don’t have to worry about it anymore, but they’ll take it. I think Republicans obviously were disappointed because they didn’t want to fight the redistricting referendum.08:03.50Sam ShiraziBut they’ve accepted that it’s going to happen. I think they have a little bit of hope with some of this language in the opinion that maybe the court is actually very skeptical and they will end up striking it down. Although,08:14.97Sam ShiraziI think the thing I’ve heard from a lot of people is if the state goes through this whole process of having a referendum and then potentially, you know, two million plus Virginians are going to vote and then it passes. i mean, is the Virginia Supreme Court in you know May really going to say, actually, this whole thing was illegal. It shouldn’t have happened.08:36.44Sam ShiraziAnd we’re just going to throw it all out. I mean, in their opinion, the Virginia Supreme Court said we reserve the right to do that. And so I think you can’t discount the possibility that that can actually happen.08:48.44Sam ShiraziHowever, you also have to think about these judges. They’re human beings. They understand the optics of that. I think perhaps in their mind, they think that the redistricting referendum is not going to pass.08:59.07Sam Shirazior at least there’s a chance it’s not going to pass. And so that will really fix the problem for them. Maybe that’s wishful thinking because I think, you know, more likely than not, my gut is telling me it’s going to pass. So I suspect we’re going to be right back here.09:13.79Sam ShiraziAnd there’s going to be a there’s goingnna decision is going to have to be made after the referendum if it passes. Because remember, let’s assume it passes. you know Filing deadlines are coming up.09:25.08Sam ShiraziPeople need to know, are they are they running in the old maps or are they running on the new maps? And so as much as the Virginia Supreme Court like kicking likes kicking hat the can down the road, at some point they are going to have to make a decision.09:37.47Sam ShiraziAnd give the candidates running an answer. Are they running in the old maps? Are they running in the new maps? I think right now most people are assuming that the new maps are going to happen because of that you know the unlikelihood that the Virginia Supreme Court is going to say, actually, we’re just going to throw out the referendum and it should never should have been run.09:58.03Sam ShiraziAnyways, a lot of really interesting legal stuff. you know I think at the end of the day, you know we all wish that the Virginia Supreme Court would you know give us the final opinion. But I respect the their thought process. And you know no matter what you think, like they do not want to be rushed into this. and And I understand that. And it’s it’s an important decision. And I guess the last thing I’ll say about the Virginia Supreme Court, I mean, every once in a while, they they’re in the news.10:21.22Sam ShiraziBut these kind of very weighty constitutional issues do not come up that often at the Virginia Supreme Court. It’s not like the United States Supreme Court where all they do is constitutional issues and really important cases.10:32.55Sam Shirazii mean, there are also normal Supreme Court cases, but there’s also like you know every term there’s going to be one or two really big cases. Virginia Supreme Court’s really not like that. And so I think they’re a little uncomfortable being in this position.10:44.02Sam ShiraziThey don’t love the idea that they are going to have to decide this really important issue. They know no matter how they rule, one side is going to be upset at them. And so I think at the end of the day, like they don’t like it, but you know, they’re the highest court in Virginia. They get paid the big bucks to make these decisions. they’re They’re going to have to make the call one, one way or another, unless the referendum doesn’t pass. And then I guess they’re off the hook, but either way, we will find out what the Virginia Supreme court does. And I’ll obviously follow, follow, um,11:12.43Sam ShiraziAll that and you know update you as it goes along. So let’s move to early voting because 100% early voting is going to be starting this Friday across Virginia.11:22.90Sam ShiraziAll parts of Virginia, there there is going to be in-person early voting. Anyone who’s a registered voter can go down to their local election office and cast the ballot. And then also this Friday, absentee ballots are gonna be mailed out. Primarily, this is gonna be people who are on the permanent absentee list.11:42.87Sam ShiraziI’ve talked about this before. The permit absentee list tends to be very Democratic. So lot of Democrats are going to start getting mail ballots. you know Realistically, I don’t know how many people are going to early vote on the first day or the first week in person, but the mail ballots are going to be going out. And I think that’s one of the advantages off the bat that Democrats are going to have is You know, people are going to be getting ballots in the mail and then they’ll realize, oh, there’s a referendum.12:09.23Sam ShiraziYou know, I think information is a big deal. Like Virginia typically does not have these referendums in the spring. A lot of people probably don’t know that there’s a redistricting referendum.12:20.98Sam ShiraziAnd so. I think both sides are trying to educate their voters, trying to say, why are we doing this referendum? For the Democrats, who trying to explain why people should vote yes, why this is necessary. For the Republicans, obviously the opposite. They’re trying to explain why they people shouldn’t vote for this.12:35.76Sam ShiraziThen there’s the people in the middle, the independents, who have to be convinced one way or another. And then you know there’s going to be a lot of spending by both sides. I think the Democrats right now seem to have the financial advantage And, you know, they seem to be more fired up, have more momentum. I’ve seen a lot of comments about I can’t believe how many ads there are on the yes side of the referendum. Why aren’t there more ads on the no side from people who don’t support the referendum? So I think, you know, there’s a lot going on.13:04.95Sam ShiraziI suspect early voting is not going to be super heavy at the beginning. I think we’re not going to be seeing. Governor level early voting numbers, if I had to guess, this is going to be less, maybe more, maybe not even like a midterm, maybe like closer to 2023. So 2023, Virginia had state elections just for the state Senate and the House of Delegates. I think we might see that level of turnout for early voting. Although, you know, who knows? I think one of the interesting things will be to see how much early voting there is.13:33.17Sam ShiraziCan you extrapolate how much turnout there might be? You know, there’s going to be the over and overananalyst analysis of early voting, which always happens. Are red counties voting or blue counties voting? You know, that stuff kind of gets a little bit old. But at the end of the day, you know, but we’ll have some data. I’ll try to give you my input when we get a little bit of it.13:53.44Sam ShiraziOverall, it’s going to be kind of an interesting campaign. I’ll try my best to cover it all. And yeah, I mean, it’s it’s a little bit up in the air how things are going to shake out But we’re going to just you know take it one day at a time. I think the other crazy thing about this redistricting referendum – so so on on the one hand, you have the referendum stuff and the yes and no campaign and early voting and all that.14:17.10Sam Shiraziyou know Behind the scenes, I mean the candidates are going to have to start announcing and some have already announced and start running in these new seats potentially. with this uncertainty that maybe they’ll be running in the old seats if the if the referendum doesn’t go through or if the Virginia Supreme Court steps in at the last minute after the referendum passes.14:34.99Sam ShiraziSo in the background, there’s going to be all these primaries, and I haven’t even talked about that because like there’s been so much else to cover. So you know it’s going to be interesting to see how those candidates are doing it. you know are they running are going Are they going to wait till the referendum’s over and then really go into high gear?14:51.50Sam ShiraziSome of the candidates are really already hitting it hitting the trail, doing all the things they need to do. So you have a lot going on both with the referendum, but a parallel to referendum, there’s going to be primaries on the Democratic side. The Republicans have a lot of problems on their end in terms of trying to fight the redistricting referendum.15:10.67Sam ShiraziAnd then some of their incumbents or all of their incumbents are basically threatened either in the primary or the general election. So a lot, a lot, a lot to talk about in Virginia. I guess the last thing I should end on, you I should note that obviously you know this past weekend,15:26.10Sam ShiraziThere was the start of military operations in the Middle East against the Iranian regime. That is taking up a lot of energy and news and focus. And so I don’t know how many people are thinking about the redistricting referendum versus what’s going on there. So I think that’s going to Greg Foncannon, grab a lot of the headlines and and in some ways, perhaps distract from the redistricting referendum, I don’t really know which side that helps, I would say. Greg Foncannon, To the extent that Republicans need more focus on the redistricting referendum about why it shouldn’t happen.15:59.51Sam ShiraziBecause I think the Democrats generally, they’ve had the leg up for the most part. i think the challenge the Republicans going to have is they have to, one, inform the voters that there’s a redistricting referendum and then tell them, two, to not vote for it.16:13.95Sam ShiraziAnd I think when there’s all this other stuff going on or it’s just not in the news, I think it’s going to be harder. And we’ve talked about this like in other contexts where you know the more a race kind of becomes – the focus of things and the republicans can get out their base the better the more a race is kind of under the radar that’s actually going to be better for the democrats because the democratic base is more i would say engaged these days because they’re so upset at what’s going on in dc so a lot of interesting dynamics like it’s kind of an interesting time to have a redistricting referendum everything going on in the world everything going on in the country it’s spring people aren’t expecting an election this is the only thing on the ballot there’s no16:56.29Sam Shirazicandidates running right now. So you know I’ll do my best to cover it all and you know give you the updates both on the legal side and on the election side. I mean, obviously the election is going to take precedent for the next few weeks. Then I can turn to the legal side of things. The last thing I’ll i’ll mention before I close out this podcast is I talked about At beginning, I said this is federal fallout, the Virginia elections. I’ve kind of dropped the 2025 because we are going to have another election, the redistricting referendum special election. So I think I’ve kind of moved into the next phase of Virginia elections, so to speak. And then after the redistricting referendum, we’ll do the redistricting.17:35.63Sam Shiraziprimary and then there’ll be the general election. So still a lot of fun stuff to cover in Virginia. I think for the next few weeks, there’s going to be a lot going on. April 21st is going to be a big date.17:45.39Sam ShiraziThe political world is going to be focusing on Virginia on that date because that’s when the referendum results will start coming in. So I’ll give you the updates as we start getting them in terms of polls and you know early voting numbers and all that good stuff. So I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I will continue to do this as the wild ride that is the Virginia elections never seems to stop. And, you know, maybe one day we’ll finally get the the final Virginia Supreme Court decision on whether this whole thing is legal. But for now, early voting is starting. Make sure you go out and early vote if that’s what you’re interested in doing. And or you can wait till election day. But definitely if you’re in Virginia, plan to vote by April 21st in the redistricting referendum. So,18:26.71Sam ShiraziThis has been Federal Fallout, and i will join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi Everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout. This episode we will go over the fun that is Virginia redistricting as it continues to unfold and how there a lot of twists and turns, and different things happening. So I want to cover everything that happened this week wtih redistricting. And it’s a little bit of deja vu all over again because a couple things happened that were big. First, the court in Tazewell County entered a temporary order to block the referendum from going forward, and we’ll cover that. And then there was some changes made to the map that we’ll talk about specifically in the second district. So this week is like all over again. We are just talking about the same thing, legal challenges to the redistricting. We’re talking about the maps slightly changing. So A lot of stuff still in flux, even though in theory, if everything goes to plan for the Democrats, early voting is supposed to start on March 6th, which is not too far away.01:00.71Sam ShiraziAnd so obviously there’s a lot going on. And it just kind of goes to show you that I guess nothing’s really finalized until it’s finalized. And we just have to wait and take it one day at a time with the redistricting stuff. So the first thing I’ll talk about is the court order that came out of Tazewell County. So if you remember, there was originally a court order from Tazewell County that seemed to suggest that there were some legal challenges the Democrats had with the referendum.01:26.03Sam ShiraziThat lawsuit made all made its way all the way up to the Virginia Supreme Court. The Virginia Supreme Court essentially said, the thing the court ordered was not that specific, so we’re just going to you know punt this to after the referendum.01:38.82Sam ShiraziObviously, the parties were paying attention to that because very quickly, the Republicans filed another lawsuit in the same county with the same judge.01:49.77Sam ShiraziAnd this time, they asked for a lot more and they named a lot of defendants other than the local county clerk. They named people like the head of the Department of Elections.01:59.94Sam ShiraziAnd the goal, really, from the Republican standpoint was this judge already ruled with us. He agrees with us on the law. If you remember my podcast on the Supreme Court ruling, really the issue in the original court order that that got its way up to the Supreme Court was that the order was very narrow. All it ordered was that the Tazewell County clerk with posts, the referendum notices. It didn’t say the referendum can’t go forward.02:24.33Sam ShiraziAnd the Supreme Court kind of seized on that and says, look, we don’t have to make a decision because this order is so narrow. Well, I think the judge and the parties learned their lesson. And this time the judge made very specific instructions and he made very specific instructions to specific people.02:39.35Sam ShiraziSo essentially the Virginia Supreme Court can’t find a procedural way to get out of this. It seems like they will have to rule on it. But before I talk about the Virginia Supreme Court, I wanted to talk about the order the judge issued itself. And I won’t honestly go that much into the legal details because, frankly, it’s pretty much the same arguments that we’ve been talking about. Really what changed in this decision, the most important thing was the actual thing the lower court ordered. And that was the main problem for the Republicans in the last time they went to Supreme Court is the order was too narrow. And so this time the ne the order is a lot more broad and covers a lot more things, but it’s still a temporary order. And we’ll talk about why that’s important.03:20.82Sam ShiraziOkay, so here is what the lower court in Tadswell County ordered. He said, quote, all defendants temporarily restrained in their official capacities from administering, preparing for taking any action to further the procedure of the referendum or other otherwise moving forward with causing an election to be held on the proposed constitutional amendment.03:43.73Sam ShiraziSo very broad. And this applied to a bunch of people, including on the Department of Elections. And so essentially what the court is saying is you guys can’t do anything to move the referendum forward.03:55.79Sam ShiraziAnd I thought it was interesting that. The court went even so far as to say that they can’t prepare for the referendum, which I think is really important because obviously early voting is supposed to spark on March 6th.04:07.51Sam ShiraziSo the fact that they can’t even prepare for the the referendum certainly is putting a lot of limits on these people. And I think, again, I think the judge learned his lesson is that you have to be very specific in what you are ordering someone to do.04:21.27Sam Shiraziwhen you issue this type of order. And you know the other thing I wanted to really flag about this order from the Taswell court was that it’s it’s what’s called a temporary restraining order. So you might commonly hear that as a TRO.04:35.56Sam ShiraziSo there are different types of things that courts will issue called equitable relief. So equitable relief is that basically any sort of non-monetary relief. And you can get a TRO, a preliminary injunction, a permanent injunction. So but the TRO, temporary restraining order, as its name implies, is temporary.04:54.61Sam ShiraziAnd it really is kind of an emergency kind of thing, like something, time is of the essence. The court can’t sit around on this for months. It has to rule quickly. Obviously, from a Republican standpoint, they made the argument, this is very urgent. Early voting is going to start. We need to stop this, nip it in the bud, because it’s illegal. That was a Republican position.05:13.13Sam ShiraziAnd the the lower court agreed here. But importantly, TROs, I mean, they’re supposed to be temporary. I mean, they’re called temporary restraining orders. This isn’t going to last forever.05:23.05Sam ShiraziAnd the lower court itself put an end date to this specific TRO, which was March 18th. So this specific order is essentially going to expire on March 18th. Obviously, before then, probably the court will issue what’s called a preliminary injunction or permanent injunction.05:39.18Sam ShiraziBut this isn’t supposed to be forever. However, early voting starts March 6th, so obviously it will accomplish much of its goal of maybe stopping a referendum if the the early voting doesn’t start on March 6th. And ultimately what the judge will issue is either a preliminary injunction or a permanent injunction.05:57.60Sam ShiraziSo a preliminary injunction is kind of like a TRO, but it’s a little bit more serious, and it usually doesn’t have an expiration date. That’s kind of at the beginning of a case you issue a preliminary injunction. Then at the very end of the case, you can issue a permanent injunction.06:10.37Sam Shirazioften i mean, it’s it’s pretty rare to get a preliminary injunction and not get a permanent injunction eventually. So the real distinction is between a TRO and a preliminary injunction. And this was a TRO.06:21.62Sam ShiraziAnd I think the legal significance of that in this context is that typically the appellate courts, they tend to review TROs, temporary restraining orders, much more quickly because in theory,06:34.05Sam ShiraziIt was usually granted without much argument. There isn’t much time for the lower court to think about this because something is happening that requires immediate attention. And so that will that means it’s going to get appealed really quickly. Attorney General Jay Jones has said he’s going to appeal this.06:52.84Sam ShiraziSome people had even speculated that on Friday we would get some sort of order either from the Intermediary Court of Appeals or even from the Virginia Supreme Court. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. This weekend, but perhaps on Monday, we will get an immediate order.07:07.64Sam ShiraziBut long story short, I mean, clearly, this is for the time being pause the Democrats plans. But I think this is the type of thing that would certainly be fast tracked by the intermediate court of appeals and potentially just go straight to the Virginia Supreme Court to make the final call.07:24.74Sam ShiraziAnd I think the Republican strategy here is to just force the Virginia Supreme Court to make a final ruling. I mean, clearly last time the Virginia Supreme Court essentially found a procedural way to avoid ruling before the redistricting referendum and kind of punt the final ruling till after the redistricting referendum.07:42.05Sam ShiraziThe Virginia Republicans... are trying to force the issue. They’re basically telling the Supreme Court, we’re not going to let you wait wait it out. You have to decide before the the referendum whether this is legal or not. Now, you could argue that’s going to backfire. You may not want to put the court in that position, but the Virginia Republicans felt like they had no choice.08:01.28Sam ShiraziAnd the thing is that after this goes up for the appeal, there’s a lot of different ways the Virginia Supreme Court can handle this. They could essentially rule 100% for the Republicans and say, yeah, the lower court’s right, we’re going to keep this temporary restraining order in place. And that might be pretty much be the end of the redistricting referendum if that happens. However, that, you know, it’s it’s risky because I think there’s another alternative where the Supreme Court doesn’t do that and and makes kind of a quick decision to basically stay the lower court order and just say, you know, we’re not taking this right now and just issue a very short order. 08:39.81Sam ShiraziThere’s something called the shadow docket. So the shadow docket is typically talked about with the US Supreme Court. So what the shadow docket is, is that you know traditionally when you have a case before the Supreme Court, the parties will file briefs, there’ll be an oral argument, there’ll be months of kind of deliberation from the justices, kind of very thoughtful, long process to get to a decision on the merits.09:00.88Sam ShiraziHowever, in these kind of emergency situations where something has happened or something that requires immediate attention, parties will go to the court and try to get immediate relief. We’ve seen that a lot recently in the last 10 years or so with executive orders being issued and lower courts would issue stays or block the executive order.09:22.96Sam ShiraziAnd then that would get to the Supreme Court very quickly. the Supreme Court would have to rule pretty quickly. And they would issue with what are called shadow docket rulings. So these are not full rulings on the merits, but essentially quick orders the Supreme Court’s doing. And kind of the criticism of them is that really this is what the case is going to be decided upon. So sure, we could wait six months to see what the Supreme Court’s finally going to do with this. But we all know... If the Supreme Court rules a certain way, it’s almost certainly going rule that way in the future. I think there’s been a few exceptions, but generally whatever happens on the shadow docket ends up usually happening in the final version of the case.09:56.24Sam ShiraziAnd so there’s this term that has come up called the shadow docket. And, you know, I think the Virginia Supreme Court is going to have to do that whether it wants it or not, because this thing’s going to be decided one way or another. And no matter what the Supreme Court does, like the Supreme Court could ignore it and just do nothing.10:10.80Sam Shiraziwhich obviously means that the lower court order would happen. The Supreme Court could overturn it. The Supreme Court could affirm it. I mean, no matter what the Supreme Court does, it will have an impact and it’s going to be important. And so we’re we’re kind of seeing this Virginia Supreme Court shadow docket essentially And very clearly, the Republicans wanted it to to go this way because they weren’t satisfied with what the Virginia Supreme Court did the first time.10:34.58Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I mentioned the importance of this being a temporary order, temporary restraining order. You know, typically courts are hesitant to give these kinds of TROs. And I think appellate courts are more willing to kind of step in and think through the yeah TRO because the order itself talks about this. TROs are typically supposed to maintain the status quo.10:55.33Sam ShiraziAnd so I think the question here is what is the status quo? Because the Virginia Supreme Court has said the referendum can happen. So obviously, Virginia Supreme Court is the highest court in Virginia. So you kind of have to listen to them.11:06.62Sam ShiraziSo if the Virginia Supreme Court is saying the referendum is happening on April 21st, Isn’t that the status quo? Isn’t that what has to be maintained? Or as the Republicans and the lower court judge are arguing, well, the status quo is no referendum because the referendum is not valid. So it’s going to actually hurt the parties if the referendum goes forward. So we’re going to do the status quo, which is actually no referendum. And I think there’s arguments you could make on either side. I don’t know if that’s ultimately how the Virginia Supreme Court is going to decide it.11:36.29Sam ShiraziI suspect we’re going get a ruling next week because obviously we are coming up on the start of early voting and the Virginia Supreme Court needs to give The party has enough time to kind of get this thing going one way or another. I mean, honestly, if if it’s not going to happen, the Virginia Supreme Court should just say that and save everyone the hassle and the time. If it’s going to happen, the Virginia Supreme Court is going to need to go quickly so that the early voting can start on March sixth. And I guess the last thing I’ll end on the legal side of things is just, you know, to be perfectly honest, the fact that Virginia Republicans are going all in on the legal stuff is telling me, you know, they don’t really want to run this referendum.12:14.18Sam ShiraziThey don’t really have a plan. They don’t really have the money. i think they are pretty realistic about where things are right now in terms of the political side of things.12:25.00Sam ShiraziThey definitely think if this is going to go down, the only way it’s going to go down is down the legal avenue. And so that’s why they’re spending so much time and money an effort to try to get to go down the legal avenue. And, you know, it was interesting. This lawsuit was actually brought by the National Republicans and a couple of the congressmen and definitely brought a more full throated case against the redistricting referendum.12:49.31Sam ShiraziThe original lawsuit was filed all the way back right before the Democrats voted on this. And a lot of that was tied up in like technical stuff in the House of Delegates13:00.58Sam ShiraziIt was kind of a different legal issue at that point. The referendum hadn’t been passed. And so that’s part of the reason why the original relief that was granted was so narrow. And so now when you bring this lawsuit, you have a lot more meat to the bones because obviously we’re kind of close to the end of the process.13:16.84Sam ShiraziAnd so the judge learned the lesson from his previous order and definitely made this one have a lot more teeth. And the Democrats certainly felt it when the issue, when the order came out.13:28.58Sam ShiraziHowever, it’s not the end of the day. And I do think ultimately, this is going to be decided by the Virginia Supreme Court. Okay, a lot of legal stuff. So I will move on to more kind of practical political stuff. And I wanted to talk about the second big news event of the week.13:44.86Sam Shiraziwhich was the changes that were made to the proposed map by the Democrats. And, you know, when the Democrats released their original map, everyone thought, okay, you know, this is it. The Democrats said they’re going to be releasing their map.13:56.60Sam ShiraziAnd it almost was, but they released a new map on Thursday. And essentially it didn’t make a whole lot of changes, but it did make a couple changes.14:08.74Sam Shirazibig ones that you know I think is worth talking about here. and And just so people have the kind of procedural background on this, essentially the original map was kind of coming out of the House of Delegates. And you can kind of tell that because definitely of the the rumors behind the scenes about which map was working its way through the system, this definitely looked like a map that was more drafted by the House of Delegates.14:32.96Sam ShiraziHowever, as we all know, a bill has to pass both the House of Delegates and the State Senate. And so the bill moved forward in the House of Delegates, then it went to the State Senate, and the State Senate was able to amend the bill kind of normal legislative sausage making.14:47.87Sam ShiraziAnd it made not a huge change, but it made a little bit of a change that i do think is important. So essentially what the... Virginia State Senate did was it made the second district bluer. And I think most people thought that the biggest problem with the maps that the Democrats have proposed was that the the second district was not blue enough. And and most people on the Democratic side, obviously the Republicans had a lot of problems with it, but on the Democratic side, I think the biggest issue that people had was that the second district wasn’t bluer. So the second district in the original map was about15:25.68Sam Shiraziplus two Harris district, which is bluer than it was now, but certainly not as blue as it could be. And the new version of the second district in this map is actually a Harris plus five district.15:38.10Sam ShiraziAnd it did that by making the third district a little less blue, but honestly, it’s still very blue. So the third district in the new map is about a Harris plus 27 district. So it doesn’t you know really affect that much. Still very blue district.15:52.54Sam ShiraziAnd the changes that were made were kind of interesting. Essentially, they were just precinct swaps in the city of Chesapeake. So Chesapeake is a city in Hampton Roads, a kind of interesting city. Some precincts are pretty red. Some precincts are pretty blue.16:04.73Sam ShiraziSo just kind of swapping precincts here and there can actually change the district a lot. And that’s what the Democrats ended up doing. You know, overall, the second district kind of looks the same, but just has those swaps in Chesapeake.16:18.14Sam ShiraziAnd I also think the other interesting thing was You know, everyone kept thinking, OK, the second district was going to have part of Norfolk because in the old version of the second district, it had part of Norfolk. Elaine Lurie is from Norfolk. So it’s like if going to change the second district, you would think it would include parts of Norfolk.16:32.57Sam ShiraziBut that’s not what happened. There was no changes to Norfolk. It was just Chesapeake. So long story short, second district got a little bit bluer. I think for this year, it’s not super important in the sense of, honestly, even the old version that the Democrats originally proposed. I think that was going to flip in 2026, no matter what.16:51.39Sam ShiraziBut it certainly makes life easier for the Virginia Democrats, and they may not have to spend as much money to flip the second. And I think what’s really going to be important is 2028 and 2030. So 2028, obviously, could be a more neutral environment. Typically, presidential elections are more neutral.17:07.47Sam Shirazior more neutral, less drastic as compared to midterms. So I think that’s going to make Democrats’ life easier in 2028. And certainly in 2030, I think that’s the really big deal is 2030. Because 2030, obviously, we could have a Democratic president by then.17:24.38Sam Shirazithe In midterms, the party in the White House typically struggles. so I think the idea behind this new version of the district was potentially Democrats could still win this in 2030, even if there is a pretty good night for the Republicans. Whereas I think the old version of the district, most people thought, you know, if the Republicans have a good night, it’s going to be flipping in 2030. So anyway, some interesting changes in the second district. And and that bill to to pass this new map,17:52.30Sam ShiraziThat has passed both the House of Delegates and the State Senate. So now it’s up to Governor Spanberger and all indications are that she’s going to sign it. So the legislative side of things is moving, but we still have to wait on the legal side. I did want to kind of note a couple other things before i sign off for the week. There was a not super surprising development in the 7th Congressional District, and this is the new version of the 7th Congressional District, which is kind of the lobster district that goes from North Arlington, and then part of it goes out into Western Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, and part of it goes down into like the Richmond area.18:29.61Sam ShiraziAnd the reason I call it as a lobster district is if you look on it on a map, like it kind of looks like a lobster, and everyone calls it the lobster district. So this is kind of the open seat if the maps go through. There is no incumbent that’s going to be claiming it, but it’s a pretty blue seat.18:44.19Sam ShiraziAnd so the expectation is that maybe more people will be running. But the person who went announced this week was Delegate Dan Helmer. Obviously, he has run for Congress twice before.18:55.17Sam ShiraziI think there’s a sense that he was interested in running again for Congress. And you know some people speculate that this district was drawn specifically for him. And so I think he’s definitely going to have probably an advantage in this race. And I would call him the front runner right now, although we’ll just have to wait and see who else runs. Currently, the other person running He is a former prosecutor who worked under Jack Smith.19:18.79Sam ShiraziHis name is JP Cooney. So he is also running. I could see some other people potentially jumping into the race. We’ll have to see. Or it’s also possible that Delegate Helmer essentially clears the field and it won’t be that competitive at the end of the day. And he might be able to kind of coast his way to the nomination.19:35.99Sam ShiraziWe’ll have to wait and see. That’s all going to happen after the... Legal stuff has to play out after the referendum. So definitely not guaranteed any of that. And we’ll just have to wait and see how that goes. A couple other pieces of things I wanted to talk about. So it was announced that Governor Spanberger would be giving the Democratic response to the State of the Union. I think that’s, it’ll be interesting to to see. I think in recent years, there has been kind of the sense that the response to the State of Union is kind of a thankless job.20:07.39Sam ShiraziAnd at certain times, people have even been mocked for various reasons. But i think I do think there have been times where it has been well received. A couple examples are when Governor McConnell in 2009 gave the response to the State of Union, and he actually gave that in the Virginia House of Delegates. And I think that was overall pretty well received at the time.20:30.64Sam ShiraziThe last Democrat, Virginia Democrat, to give the response to the State of the Union was in 2007. That was Jim Webb right after he got elected. And again, I think that was generally well received.20:42.86Sam ShiraziAnd also in 2018, Delegate Elizabeth Guzman, she gave the Democratic response in Spanish to the State of the Union that year. And Delegate Guzman is back in the House of Delegates now. And so, you know, I think overall, it certainly lifts your national profile. I do think...21:01.62Sam ShiraziIt’s a risk and reward. You will get a lot of eyes on you and it’ll it’ll raise your profile, but there’s also a risk that if something goes wrong, then maybe it won’t go so well for you. So pressure’s on, I guess, for Governor Spanberger, but she certainly fought a good campaign last year and made it out with a big 15-point victory, so she knows what it’s like to be under pressure. So we’ll just have to wait and see how that goes. And one last thing to note, which is a sad piece of news, is that the delegate from Virginia Beach has passed away.21:36.86Sam ShiraziThat’s Delegate Barry Knight. I just want to send condolences to his family and friends and colleagues. He had been on the House of Delegates for a while and I know was respected on both sides of the aisle. So sad news whenever he someone passes away, especially one person who’s given good chunk of their life to public service. So wishing Delegate Knight family and friends and colleagues the best in this difficult time.22:04.66Sam ShiraziSo, yeah, I mean, other than that, not a whole lot else. I’m kind of kidding because obviously very, very busy. And and I was thinking about it as I started the podcast at the top of the hour. I talked about the fact that this is still called the 2025 Virginia elections federal fallout. And i may change that title at some point. I don’t know. We’re still living in the shadow of the 2025 Virginia elections in many ways.22:29.82Sam ShiraziHowever, obviously things are are moving forward. Very, very busy, time in Virginia politics. It seems like there’s never a dull moment. I’m hoping finally we will get some clarity in the next couple of weeks. Is this referendum actually going to happen? And once it happens, that’ll be certainly fun to cover. So a lot going on. I will try to do my best to keep everyone updated. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court about redistricting and the fact that they allowed Virginia redistricting to go forward.00:16.02Sam ShiraziHowever, they also left open the possibility that after the redistricting referendum, they might make a final ruling. This was basically an interim ruling or interim order.00:26.74Sam ShiraziAnd so I kind of want to unpack all that. And then I want to talk about the redistricting referendum. But long story short, the short version is the Virginia Supreme Court allowed the redistricting referendum to go forward on April 21st.00:41.72Sam ShiraziEarly voting will start on March 6th. So really right around the corner. And so I think overall, you have to say this is a good outcome for the Democrats, at least in the short term, because in theory, the Virginia Supreme Court could have said the redistricting referendum couldn’t go forward or could have made a very complicated legal decision where really left open the doubt about whether the redistricting referendum is going to happen.01:04.82Sam ShiraziI think the Virginia Supreme Court was very clear that the redistricting referendum is moving forward. I think after that, they’re a little bit less clear about what’s going to happen. But I think for now, the Democrats will just take that. They’re going to run the redistricting referendum, and then we’ll see what happens there.01:20.70Sam ShiraziAnd ultimately, there’s still some legal questions hanging around. So it’s not like 100% certain the Democrats have won the legal case. But in the grand scheme of things, they certainly got the better end of it.01:33.02Sam ShiraziAnd I think after this order came from the Virginia Supreme Court, I think Democrats were feeling pretty good. Republicans were a bit demoralized. And so I want to kind of unpack first all the legal issues, like what the Supreme Court actually said, why it said it, what it might do.01:50.26Sam ShiraziAnd then after that, I’ll talk about the redistricting referendum itself, because that’s 100% going to move forward. So just to give you a little bit of background, the reason this has gotten to the Virginia Supreme Court is because a lower court in Tazewell County entered a ruling which on the merits mainly ruled for the Republicans, but significantly had a very narrow relief for the parties. And I’ll go through all what all that means, all that legalese stuff.02:20.41Sam ShiraziBut I guess my point is, that there there was a lower court ruling and made it to the Virginia Supreme Court. And I guess when I did my podcast on that ruling, I kind of neglected to spend time on the actual thing the court ordered. And I want to spend more time analyzing that now because I think it’s really important to understand why the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the way it did.02:41.44Sam ShiraziAnd I think part of what I’ve been thinking about, the more I thought about the lower court decision, over the past couple of weeks, the more I kind of had a feeling this Virginia Supreme Court might go down the route they did. And i’ll kind of explain why that’s the case and i’ll kind of unpack that.02:57.76Sam ShiraziSo what the lower court found in the actual ruling, like on the merits of the case, you know, was the redistricting referendum process correct or not. So very clear the lower court found the Democrats didn’t follow the right process. However, I think the really strange part of that opinion is the order act the order the thing that it ordered or the actual relief that Republicans got was very, very narrow. And so you had this kind of big opinion that basically said the Democrats did everything wrong.03:29.88Sam ShiraziBut then the actual relief that the lower court ordered was very narrow. So I’m going to read what the lower court So, ordered in terms of the actual relief. So it said the court hereby grants a temporary and permanent injunction requiring the clerk of the circuit court of Tazewell county to pose to post the proposed constitutional amendment at least ninety days before the next ensuing election of the members of the house of delegates election so Basically, the the only thing the lower court said was the local clerk in Tazewell County has to post the redistricting referendum notices.04:08.12Sam ShiraziThat’s all the court said. The court didn’t say Tazewell County can’t hold a redistricting referendum, didn’t say the state state of Virginia can’t hold a redistricting referendum. Nothing applied to the Virginia Department of Elections. like it literally just told the local clerk, you have to post the notices.04:24.60Sam ShiraziAnd I think the Virginia Supreme Court really latched on to the fact that this was a very narrow order in terms of what was actually the relief the Republicans got. Because the Virginia Supreme Court said, given the limited scope of the injunctive relief issued at the circuit court’s order, and then it it reads the circuit court order, it says, the denial of motions to say has no effect on the referendum scheduled on April 21, 2026.04:54.17Sam ShiraziSo what that basically means in a lot of legal language is the April 21st redistricting referendum is allowed to move forward because the lower court didn’t say anything about the redistricting referendum itself.05:06.90Sam ShiraziAnd you know it’s kind of odd that that the lower court issued such a very narrow relief in terms of what the Republicans were trying to get. So I wanted to just kind of break that down for the non-lawyers out there. So i mentioned this before, I’m an attorney, and so I like to think about legal issues.05:26.49Sam ShiraziAnd one of my favorite classes in law school was called Remedies. And Remedies is basically what do you get after you win a lawsuit because you can win something on the merits. So you might be right legally, like, yes, your position is correct. You win on the law.05:42.16Sam ShiraziBut then the rubber hits the road in what you get. And so in some things like a car accident, it’s pretty straightforward. You’re going to get money. If you get in a car accident, you get hurt and you win your lawsuit, you’re going money. And that’s not super complicated.05:57.26Sam ShiraziI think where it gets complicated is in non-monetary cases and what are called equitable cases where the Virginia Republicans are going to the court and are asking for something. And I think as a lawyer, it’s very important, one, to make sure you ask for the right thing, and two, to always keep in mind what did the court give you. Because what happened in the Tazewell County Court is that the judge basically, in the opinion, said all these things. Yeah, the Republicans are right.06:26.67Sam ShiraziDemocrats did everything wrong. But at the end of the day, he didn’t give the Republicans that much. He literally just told the local clerk, post the notice. And what the Virginia Supreme Court is saying This is being appealed. We’re taking the appeal and we’re going to create a scheduling order for when we’re going to get briefs and all that.06:45.25Sam ShiraziBut there’s nothing about the redistricting referendum itself that we need to rule on right now because the lower court didn’t make any sort of finding about the redistricting referendum. So whatever we’re ruling on today in this order, it does not stop the redistricting referendum. And you can make an argument.07:03.03Sam ShiraziThat’s because the Virginia Supreme Court is basically saying, like we don’t have the power to stop the redistricting referendum because that’s not what’s before us. But what before what’s before us is the lower court order. Lower court order is ordering the Tazewell County clerk to post the notices.07:16.76Sam ShiraziWe’ll review that, but we’re not reviewing the actual referendum itself. And so we have no power to say yes or no to the referendum at this stage. However, I think the other odd thing about the Virginia Supreme Court opinion was at the very end, they put the last sentence of this ruling. It said, nothing in this order shall prevent the parties from raising the underlying arguments and issues as this matter goes forward. And so that kind of vague statement is telling me Virginia Supreme Court’s leaving the door open.07:46.20Sam Shirazito kind of a final ruling after the redistricting referendum. And if you look at the the briefing schedule that the Virginia Supreme Court has laid out, basically the briefing will be done a couple days after the redistricting referendum.08:00.91Sam ShiraziSo basically, the Virginia Supreme Court is saying we’re not going to be rushed into this. We’re going to let the redistricting referendum happen. And then we’ll get some briefs. And if we want oral arguments, we’ll ask for oral arguments. But basically, expect a ruling from us sometime, probably in May.08:16.91Sam ShiraziAnd we’ll let you know later. And we’re not going to stop the redistricting referendum. So again, overall, I would say good news for the Democrats, but they’re not 100% out of the woods yet because the Virginia Supreme Court has left open the possibility about a final ruling.08:31.37Sam ShiraziAnd I think there are essentially three possibilities about how the Virginia Supreme Court. One possibility is the redistricting referendum is not approved by the voters. And that’s kind of the easy case for the Virginia Supreme Court, because if the voters don’t approve it, they can just say the case is moot.08:47.50Sam ShiraziYou know, there’s no point for us to rule because this isn’t going happen and there’s nothing for us to rule on. I think where it gets more complicated is if the voters say, yes, we approve this referendum.08:59.21Sam ShiraziAnd then the Virginia Supreme Court has to make a final call. I think they could say, be basically buy all the Democrats’ arguments. The Democrats are right on the law and everything was valid with the redistricting referendum and there’s no problem.09:11.18Sam ShiraziI think that’s one way it could end. the other. The other way it could end is kind of a trickier version of that, which is essentially, yeah it’s futile, the redistricting referendum was already granted, or approved, so there’s no point in us, you know, striking it down at this stage, it’s basically too late.09:28.45Sam ShiraziSo what the circuit court ordered was essentially so narrow that there’s really nothing for us to do. We can’t, on appeal, you know undo the referendum. I think that’s also a possibility. They basically just find a procedural way to get out of it, and or they just kind of lean on the fact that the voters approved it, and we as a court, we’re not going to come in and overturn what the voters approved.09:50.92Sam ShiraziI think that is a possibility as well. I think the last possibility, which is kind of the Hardest one to imagine, but I don’t think the Virginia Supreme Court has foreclosed it, is that they say basically the Republicans are right, the redistricting referendum never should have happened, and so we’re going to declare it null and void.10:08.52Sam ShiraziI think that’s going to be really – you know Unlikely in some ways, because I think it’s just going to be so strange for a court to allow referendum to go forward that costs millions of dollars and then to just say, actually, we shouldn’t have allowed it to go forward or it shouldn’t have been held.10:23.45Sam ShiraziNot saying that it’s impossible that that would happen because the Virginia Supreme Court did leave open that possibility. However, I think most people rightly assume, you know, the Virginia Supreme Court, if if they really thought that this referendum was illegitimate and invalid, they would have stopped it from happening.10:41.92Sam ShiraziAnd it’s kind of unfair to the voters to make them go through this whole hassle to vote, potentially approve it. And then at the end, the Virginia Supreme Court basically says, you know what, we were kidding. The referendum shouldn’t have happened. And so that was a complete waste of time.10:55.95Sam ShiraziI mean, I don’t want to say that’s impossible, but I think it seems somewhat unlikely that the Virginia Supreme Court would do that. So long story short, we’re just going have to wait and see. I think the legal stuff for now is going to take a backseat because obviously redistricting referendum is going to happen.11:11.62Sam ShiraziAnd that’s going to be the main focus of what’s going to be going on forward. So anyway, super interesting stuff. I mean, i think me for me as a lawyer, I find it interesting thinking about this stuff. Most non-lawyers are probably thinking, you know, this is all a little bit crazy. The the lower court opinion with such a narrow relief granted to the Republicans, the Virginia Supreme Court punting all this to later until after the referendum.11:36.88Sam ShiraziBut I do think, you know, I’ll stop talking about legal stuff in a second. But the last point is just really, it is really important to think about what is the relief that is being sought? What is the relief that is being granted? Just because you win a case on the merits doesn’t mean you’re going get what you want.11:53.62Sam ShiraziAnd there’s a lot of ways, both at the lower court and the appellate court, courts can use kind of procedural things or all these different tactics to kind of get to a ruling eventually, even if they don’t rule on the underlying case. So I think the Virginia Supreme Court may be playing a little bit of that game here. And, you know, at the, at the US Supreme court, there’s something called the shadow docket where basically the Supreme court is making rulings without hearing the entire case. And I do think this was a little bit of Virginia Supreme court shadow docket ruling where they didn’t make the final decision about the case, but I think,12:30.59Sam Shiraziit’s a signal letting the redistricting referendum going forward that maybe they are more likely to vote to side with the Democrats because I think if they thought the Republicans had a really strong case, you know, you would imagine they might try to stop the referendum.12:45.29Sam ShiraziBut again, courts are unpredictable. I think this was, kind of an unlikely outcome that happened in this interim ruling. And so it goes to show you, we don’t know what the Supreme Court’s going to do.12:56.84Sam ShiraziI think there’s a lot of different ways this could go. And so we’ll just have to keep an eye on it. But I do think in the short term, things are definitely going to be shifting away from the Virginia Supreme Court and to the actual redistricting referendum itself.13:09.09Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s turn to the politics of the redistricting referendum. Because Now we know for certain there will be a redistricting referendum on April 21st. And we also know that early voting will be starting on March 6th. So that is very soon. That’s definitely coming up and not a whole lot of time for both sides to organize, to educate their voters, to convince voters, to get out their voters.13:33.46Sam ShiraziThis isn’t like a general election where everyone knows this is happening, you know, months and years beforehand. We’ve known basically since the end of October, this might be happening.13:44.57Sam ShiraziBut I think the Republicans particularly had been waiting for the ruling for the Virginia Supreme Court. I think they really didn’t want to run a redistricting referendum. I think when the ruling for the Virginia Supreme Court came out, I think it was pretty obvious the Republicans were pretty demoralized.14:01.19Sam ShiraziDemocrats were happy. Now that might be short lived, but at least in the short term, very clearly Republicans are not happy. They don’t want to run a redistricting referendum. I think they know it’s going to be very difficult for them.14:13.30Sam ShiraziAnd so I kind of want to game out. you know what is the Democratic path, path what is the Republican path? I think the Democratic path is pretty straightforward, and I think it’s probably the one that the side that has the advantage right now. I would say the Democrats have an advantage. And you know there was some polling that suggested that a majority of Virginians supported the redistricting referendum. And I think it’s a pretty straightforward playbook for the Virginia Democrats.14:41.91Sam ShiraziYou basically, from their perspective, turn this into a referendum on Trump. You know, if you don’t like Trump or you want to send a message to Trump or you don’t like redistricting in other states, vote for the referendum. Yes.14:54.68Sam ShiraziAnd that way, Virginia Democrats will redistrict and that will be a way to push back on Trump. And I think that’s a very straightforward message. Donald Trump’s never won Virginia.15:21.96Sam Shirazi You can debate whether it makes more sense to focus it on the redistricting angle versus just generally making it about Trump. But I think very clearly that’s a Democratic strategy. And given the results last November where Democrats got big win, blue wave came to Virginia, I think you have to say the Democrats right now are in the driver’s seat for the redistricting referendum.15:42.99Sam ShiraziHowever, doesn’t mean the Republicans have no path whatsoever. I think the Republican path is pretty straightforward from their perspective in terms of what they have to do. Not to say that it’s easy, but I think that the the plan is pretty straightforward in that you have to get out your base. You have to fire up your your your Republican supporters, get them out.16:02.86Sam ShiraziI mean, on a really good night, that might get you close to 45%. And then, you know, you just have to convince enough independents in the middle that you know you might not like Trump, but this is you know politics at its worst, and the Democrats are trying to steal these seats and rig the elections and change the maps that are fair maps. And so you make all those arguments and you hope you can get up to 50% based on just getting a good margin with independents.16:30.06Sam ShiraziAnd not to say that’s impossible, but I think the Republicans just fundamentally have two problems. One is I think the Democrats are going to have a turnout advantage. I think they’re really fired up. They really want to send a message to Trump. And the Republicans after last year’s elections in Virginia have been pretty demoralized, pretty, you know, shell shocked, for lack of better word. So it’s going to be hard for them to turn out all their supporters.16:52.49Sam ShiraziAnd then with the independents, mean, I think certainly some independents are going to vote against this because they just don’t like the concept of gerrymandering. But I think a lot of independents, I mean, their top priority is Trump and maybe sending a message to Trump. And so for those independents, you know, they’re they’re going to vote for the referendum.17:11.04Sam ShiraziAnd I think, you know, I talked about this before, know, this could be something similar to the attorney general race where that was Jason Miyares strategy. Jason Miyares’ strategy was I’m going win all the Republicans and then win enough independents and win.17:22.44Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, he did better than the top of the ticket. But at the end of the day, like most independents didn’t want to vote for Jason Miyares or at least enough of them didn’t want to vote for Jason Miyares because they wanted to send a message immediately.17:34.42Sam Shiraziabout Trump. And so that’s why Jay Jones was able to win the attorney general race in a pretty comfortable margin. And it really wasn’t that close at the end. And so I could see something like that happening again. Another example we have is the California redistricting referendum. So last year, California did the same thing that Virginia Democrats have done. The California Democrats wanted to redistrict.17:53.04Sam ShiraziThey needed a referendum because they had they needed to change the state constitution. And, you know, at the beginning of that referendum, it it looked like maybe it’s going to be close, but by the end, it was just complete blowout. And,18:04.43Sam ShiraziCalifornia Democrats won by a bigger margin than Harris won in 2024. Now, obviously, California a very blue state. So you could make the argument that Trump’s even more unpopular and in California. and But at the end of the day, like that referendum became a referendum on Trump. And I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to say the Virginia redistricting referendum, there’s decent chance it’s just going to become a referendum on Trump.18:27.66Sam ShiraziAnd I think the Virginia Republicans just have to be honest about them with with themselves about how are they’re going to convince people. Because I think there’s this elephant in the room about Trump and they don’t want to talk about it And they didn’t want to talk about it in 2025. It didn’t work in 2025.18:42.66Sam ShiraziAnd I saw something interesting from Delegate Tom Garrett, who used to be a congressman, which is kind of interesting. He used to represent the 5th District. He made a political comeback and is now a delegate in the Virginia House of Delegates. So he’s obviously still involved in Virginia politics. And I saw him basically say something along the lines of, you know, tell me why we should support this redistricting referendum without mentioning Trump and without mentioning any other states.19:08.18Sam ShiraziAnd I think that’s sometimes this rhetorical device that people use, but it’s like not that convincing because it’s like, yeah, okay, well, the reason we’re having this is because of Trump and because he asked other states, Republican states, to gerrymander. And so like if you don’t want to have that conversation like and you as a Republican and you just kind of want to say the Democrats are bad and it’s not fair they’re doing this, like that’s fine, but that’s not going to convince anyone because if someone is in the middle and they’re like,19:36.73Sam ShiraziI don’t like Trump. I don’t like he told Texas and North Carolina and Missouri they’re gerrymandering their maps. Like, I don’t want to just sit here in Virginia and do nothing. And if you’re the Republicans and you’re like, we’re not going to talk about Trump, we’re not going to talk about other states.19:49.45Sam ShiraziWe’re just going to say the Democrats are bad and we’re going to say that this is not fair. That’s not going to convince someone who’s like, yeah, I’m worried about Trump. What are you doing to convince that person? And I don’t think the Republicans really want to admit that that’s the fundamental problem they’re facing. They don’t want to admit that’s what the referendum is going to be about. And I don’t really know what defense they could make other than, you know, Virginia is different. It’s more of a middle state. It doesn’t it’s it’s not fair or i mean, I think the only thing I’ve heard is this gerrymander is like even more extreme than a Republican ones, because20:22.59Sam ShiraziIt would create a 10-1 map and basically Virginia is kind of this middle of the road state. So it doesn’t make sense to have a 10-1 map in the middle of the road state. But then there’s other middle of the road states that the Republicans in the past have gerrymandered.20:35.11Sam ShiraziAnd so I think it’s just a difficult argument. Like North Carolina is also a middle of the road state and it was already gerrymandered to begin with. And then the Republicans gerrymandered again to try to get one more seat out of North Carolina.20:49.03Sam ShiraziLike, you know, you can make in this argument that in North Carolina is basically a light red state and like Virginia is a light blue state. In 2024, know, the state,20:59.24Sam Shirazivery narrowly for Donald Trump, but the House said the the house of Representatives seats, the Republicans won 10 of them, the Democrats only won four of them. And you know you could argue maybe the that de the Virginia gerrymander is even more extreme than that. But at the end of the day, like it might not be that convincing or the people in the middle might not feel that sympathetic to the Republican position because they’re just like, look Republicans have gerrymandered these other states. And for sure, Democrats have also gerrymandered certain states like Illinois. And you know I get that there is this sense of you know we don’t like gerrymandering. People are sick of gerrymandering. But at the end of the day, like I think the fact that this is temporary, what I hear from a lot of people is21:39.93Sam Shiraziwho who are leaning towards supporting this is just like Virginia Democrats need to do something and they can’t just allow these other states to be doing this. And anyway, so I do think it’s a difficult position.21:51.38Sam ShiraziAnd I do think just kind of sitting around all day saying this is not fair without addressing why the Virginia Democrats are doing this, what’s going on in other states, what’s going on with Trump. Like I do think that’s going to be a losing strategy for the Virginia Republicans. It, it,22:06.92Sam ShiraziThat’s what kind of what they tried in 2025. They just didn’t want to talk about Doge. They didn’t want to talk about the federal cuts. They didn’t want to talk about Trump. And it’s like, look, at the end of the day, like there’s an elephant in the room. In politics, you have to talk about it. You can’t just ignore it. You can’t just wish it away. You can’t put your head in the sand.22:24.25Sam ShiraziThat’s kind of what Winsome Earle-Sears did. And it didn’t really work out for her. And she lost by 15 points. So I do think there’s a world where the Virginia Republicans just ignore the fundamental problem and the reason why the Democrats feel like they need to do this, then you know i think that I think there’s a good chance they’re going to lose. I don’t know if they’re going to lose by 15 points but or maybe just closer to the governor number, sorry, the attorney general number, about 7%.22:49.57Sam ShiraziBut I do think it’s hard for the Virginia Republicans to get 50.1% of Virginians to vote against this. If all they’re talking about is this this is unfair. I mean, you know, and I get it. I get it from a Republican perspective.23:02.18Sam ShiraziThis seems unfair. But I think from my what the Republicans may be missing is if you’re a Democrat or you’re middle the road voter who’s sitting in Virginia. you know You might be thinking, i don’t want to do this, but we kind of have no choice because of what Donald Trump did in Texas and Missouri and North Carolina by asking these other states to redistrict.23:24.80Sam ShiraziAnd you know I think it’s not that much of a leap to say if Texas and Missouri and North Carolina didn’t redistrict, Virginia wouldn’t have redistricted. I mean, there are valid arguments to be made, but just ignoring the problem and just saying you know this is 100% the fault of Virginia Democrats, I think is just missing the bigger picture. And and I don’t think it’s going to be persuasive at the end of the day. And I and i really do think that23:48.65Sam Shirazithis is you know going to be a very important redistricting referendum. I think both sides know that. I think there’s going to be a lot of money being poured in. you know I think it’s going to be interesting to see how the campaign plays out, what arguments both sides make.24:03.78Sam ShiraziBut at the end of the day, you know this could decide the House of Representatives. I mean, my sense is Democrats are doing pretty well. And so I don’t know if they strictly need the additional seats from Virginia, but it definitely pad their margins, make it easier to take back the House, make it easier for Democrats to flip these seats and spend less money in Virginia than they would have otherwise.24:25.54Sam ShiraziSo I think from their perspective, they definitely want to do this. And I think from a Republican perspective, it’s going to be pretty demoralizing if this passes, if the Virginia Supreme Court allows it to happen. I don’t think in Florida there will be enough seats that the Florida Republicans will be able to gerrymander to kind of make up for Virginia. And so it’s possible at the end of the day, after all the redistricting fights in all the states play out, it’s possible the Democrats could come out ahead, which is kind of crazy to think about when this all began. And I think specifically for the Virginia Republicans, it’s going to be very demoralizing if after what happened in 2025,25:01.62Sam ShiraziThey lose probably four seats in the House of Representatives. That’s going to be really, really demoralizing. And then in 2027, they’re going to have to face another state Senate and House of Delegates elections where they’re going to be pretty low, low and feeling like they’re not a lot of things are going their way. So right now things are going well for the Virginia Democrats. Not to say that things can’t change in the future.25:25.75Sam Shiraziand I do think the Virginia Republicans will remember this and potentially down the line. I don’t know if they’ll try something similar, but certainly I think they feel very bitter at what the Virginia Democrats are doing.25:37.75Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, probably for as a country, it would be best if both sides kind of come together, come up with a solution, basically end the gerrymandering wars. I don’t think that’s going to happen in the short term, but maybe in the medium and long term.25:51.87Sam ShiraziThat might be able to happen. But anyways, long story short, Virginia redistricting referendum is going to happen April 21st. We will have to wait and see what the Virginia Republicans end up doing in terms of a campaign. We’ll see what the Virginia Democrats end up doing. Then we’ll have to wait for the final election.26:11.07Sam Shirazia ruling for the Virginia Supreme Court. I’m sure that will be really interesting. if If the maps go into place, then we’ll have to do the primary and then the general election. So still a lot, a lot of stuff to cover. I enjoy following all this stuff. Hopefully people have enjoyed my commentary on it.26:26.56Sam ShiraziI will probably in the next few episodes talk more about the redistricting referendum, talk about some of the dynamics, See what I’m, you know, explain what I’m seeing out there. And yeah, we’ll have to start it all over again in terms of a statewide campaign. Should be really interesting. Never a dull moment in Virginia election. So I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been a Federal Fallout and i’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal of Fallout, the 2020 by Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over the new map that has been proposed by the Virginia Democrats after they have undergone the process of potentially doing redistricting this year in Virginia. Now, caveat all that with first, they have to make sure that they...00:19.57Sam Shiraziovercome any legal challenges the Republicans are bringing, then there will have to be a referendum on April 21st, and the voters will have to approve redistricting this year in Virginia. But if all of that happens, then potentially this map that the Virginia Democrats have just released will be the maps that will be used in 2026. And there’s some really major changes in some districts. Other districts, there aren’t that many changes. So what I thought I’d do is I’d go district by district and kind of explain the changes, explain who won, who lost, why the districts look a certain way, and what were some surprises that we saw in this new map.00:54.62Sam ShiraziAnd so anyways, I’ll go district by district. I wanted to say big picture. what this district What this map does is essentially give Democrats a 10 to 1 delegation for it likely in 2026. So what that means is the Democrats will be able to elect...01:12.08Sam Shirazi10 Democrats in Virginia versus just one Republican. Currently, there’s a 6-5 map. That means there are six Democrats, five Republicans. Not every single district is deep blue. And potentially in a competitive election cycle, the the Republicans could win some seats that under this map.01:29.64Sam ShiraziHowever, the goal, I think, for the Virginia Democrats is really to get in 2026 and probably in 2028.01:38.41Sam Shirazi2030, lot of things could be different. We could have a Democratic president by 2030. And so it’s it’s possible the Republicans will win some seats under this map in 2030. But I don’t think the Virginia Democrats are too worried about 2030 because that’s the last election these maps will be used. They’ll be redistricting again because of the new census data. So this map is really for 2026 and 2028. And I think it does what it needs to do, it it seems like. And then I’ll go district by district.02:05.40Sam ShiraziAnd really the way the Virginia Democrats redrew the map, the main change was that they basically cracked Northern Virginia. There’s two ways of gerrymandering. You either crack or you pack. And cracking is often thought of as you crack...02:20.25Sam Shiraziin an area to disadvantage the other side, but you can also crack an area to advantage yourself. And obviously Northern Virginia is very blue. And so you could have a few very blue districts in Northern Virginia, or you could crack Northern Virginia and get a bunch of blue districts. And that’s basically what the Democrats have done. They’ve also packed in a couple of districts. So in the ninth district, they basically packed all the Republicans in this in the Western part of the state in the ninth district.02:49.75Sam ShiraziThe sixth is technically a kind of a pack, although it’s a pack of Democrats. So the Democrats have basically found a bunch of different areas in Virginia where there are Democrats and they kind of pack them together. So long story short, I will go district by district because I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on.03:07.10Sam ShiraziAnd so I will start off with the first district. So the first district is currently represented by Rob Whitman. It’s basically a Richmond area seat and then it kind of scoops down and goes into Hampton Roads.03:17.82Sam ShiraziUnder the old map, Trump won the district by about five points in 2024. The new map, Harris won it by about seven and a half points in 2024. So obviously we’re going from kind of a light red seat to a light blue seat. And I think in 2026 environment, it’s going to be pretty likely the Democrats are going to be able to win this seat. The current incumbent, Rob Whitman, he is going to be one of the losers of Virginia redistricting because his district has gotten a lot... bluer And he doesn’t even really live in this new first district and we’ll talk about it. And so I don’t even know if he’ll run in the first district if it ends up happening.03:55.78Sam ShiraziSo the new first district is is kind of an interesting looking seat. It kind of goes from all the way from Fairfax And then it kind of goes down I-95 all the way down to the Richmond suburbs. So it’s basically kind of like an I-95 district from Northern Virginia down to Richmond.04:17.20Sam ShiraziAnd honestly, I think this is the district that Eugene Vindman, who currently represents the 7th district, I think Vindman is going to run in the 1st district. because his home of Prince William County, like the Woodbridge area, most of that is in the first district. And so I think Vintman’s probably going to run in that district if I had to guess. And, you know, both for the primary In the general election, I think Vindman would be the favorite. Now, obviously, they could, someone could run against him in the primary, depending on, you know, what happens. But I do think Vindman overall is is a winner of redistricting.05:19.05Sam ShiraziOkay, let’s go to the second district. And honestly, the second district was one of the biggest surprises of the night. Why? Because it didn’t change that much. And you know you would think this is one of the seats the Democrats are trying to win in Virginia, flip.05:32.52Sam ShiraziSo you think they want to change it a lot, but they actually didn’t change it that much. So it went from kind of a very marginal Trump plus 0.3 district in 2024 to now it’s about a plus 1.3 Harris district. So about, you know, one point or so bluer.05:49.96Sam ShiraziAnd obviously that helps Elaine Luria, but the Democrats could have done even more. And the district really didn’t change that much. I was expecting the district to include parts of Norfolk.06:01.17Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, have a kind of a Norfolk, Virginia Beach district. I don’t think it includes any of Norfolk and it actually includes part of Chesapeake. So it’s kind of swapped some parts of Chesapeake.06:12.98Sam ShiraziDidn’t really expect that. I thought the second was going to change a lot more than it did. And, you know, there’s a lot of speculation about why that is. It’s potentially because the third district, Bobby Scott, he’s the dean of the Virginia delegation. It’s possible that he has some influence and he didn’t want his change his district changed that much.06:29.73Sam ShiraziI don’t really know. But regardless, I think the second district, Luria, still comes out ahead because it’s a bluer district. I think she’s not going to face any serious primary challenger.06:40.51Sam ShiraziSo I think Luria is in the driver’s seat for the second district. You know, Kiggins, at the end of the day, the current incumbent, Jen Kiggins, like she could have gotten a much worse gerrymander against her. And so I guess in some ways, you know, things aren’t that bad for her. But I still think in 2026, she’s going to be the underdog.06:56.88Sam ShiraziThere’s been a lot of federal fallout. Hampton Roads has felt a lot of that. So I do think In the second, Luria is favored, although it was a bit of a surprise that the district didn’t change that much. And it basically kind of looks like the same district with a little bit of changes here and there.07:11.04Sam ShiraziSo I would say, you know, second district, Elaine Luria is, you know, the favorite, but not necessarily a slam dunk for the Democrats.07:21.64Sam ShiraziSo I talked a little bit already about the third district. So the third district, the incumbent is Bobby Scott. The district goes from about a 34.5 Harris district in to about 31.5 Harris district. so honestly, not a lot of change.07:37.93Sam ShiraziBobby Scott’s probably one of the biggest winners of the redistricting because his district is basically the same and it’s as blue as it was before or just slightly less blue. So he’s, you know, in a pretty safe position. And so anyways, not a whole lot to say about the third district in that sense.07:56.06Sam ShiraziAll right, now let’s move on to the fourth district. So the fourth district is currently represented by Jennifer McClellan. It was about a 32.5 Harris district in 2024. And the new district is going to be about a 16 point plus Harris district. So still pretty safe blue seat in Virginia.08:17.06Sam ShiraziI think the changes in this district were kind of on the margins. You basically got – she gave up some of the some parts of Richmond and Henrico and got a little bit more of Southside. So that’s why her district got less blue. But at the end of the day, like Jennifer McClellan still came out on top because she’s got most of Richmond, which is her base.08:40.43Sam ShiraziAnd then the district is still you know pretty blue. And so I don’t really anticipate her her having many much problems in the the primary or the general. So fourth district, not a whole lot to talk about.08:53.24Sam ShiraziI will move on to the fifth district because this district district changed a lot. So the current incumbent is John McGuire. And the district is about 12-point Trump district from 2024.09:05.81Sam ShiraziUnder the new lines, it’s almost a nine-point Harris district. So big swing. Democrats are going to be pretty safe in that seat. And the way it’s changed is the the fifth district currently is kind of a Charlottesville Southside district.09:19.21Sam ShiraziAnd actually, it doesn’t include any of Charlottesville. And it’s been shifted over to the Richmond suburbs. So it’s basically like the Richmond suburbs and then parts of Southside. And, you know, John McGuire is in a pretty tough spot because I don’t really think he can run in this district.09:34.32Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, in the primary, it’s always possible that different people would run. But I do think Shannon Taylor, who’s already announced, is going to run. So even though Shannon Taylor is announced for the first district, I do think she’s going end up running in the fifth district because of her base of Henrico and the Richmond suburbs is going to be in the fifth district. So I think, you know, anything, anything’s possible. But I do think in the fifth district, Shannon Taylor’s potentially the front runner and John McGuire is in a pretty tough spot.10:01.59Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s move on to the 6th Congressional District, which saw a huge change as well. So this went from basically being a Trump 24 district and in 2024 to now it’s a Harris plus three or so district in 2026 if these new maps stay. And so the thing is,10:22.98Sam ShiraziIn terms of this district, I think you know the current Congressman Ben Cline is in a really tough spot. Obviously, his district has been basically eviscerated. And this new district has been created that is essentially, people have called it a Collegetown District because it goes from Charlottesville and then it goes up to Harrisonburg and Staunton.10:42.18Sam ShiraziAnd then it goes down to Lynchburg, goes down to Roanoke and Salem, and then goes all the way to Blacksburg and Radford. So it’s It’s taking a bunch of college towns in Western Virginia and basically grouping them all together. So you could kind of say that the Democrats have packed a bunch of Democrats into this seat so that the they get a pretty blue seat. Not super blue, but I think in 2026 should be blue enough. And, you know... The current front runner, if I had to guess, would be Tom Perriello. He’s announced in the fifth district, although I think he’ll end up running in the sixth district. And I think given you know he was previously a congressman in the district, I think he will probably be the favorite both in the primary and in the general election. So if I had to guess, I think Tom Perriello is in a good spot for the sixth district.11:29.66Sam ShiraziOkay, let’s move on to the 7th district. So the current 7th district was about a Harris plus 3 district 2024. And now it’s going to be about a Harris plus 8.5 district. Now, as I mentioned, the current Congressman Eugene Vindman, I don’t think he’s going to end up running in the 7th district. I think he’s going to end up running in the 1st district.11:51.13Sam ShiraziAnd so that means the 7th is basically kind of a wide open seat with no one really claiming it, in in my opinion. There’s been a lot of rumors that Dan Helmer, Delegate Dan Helmer, will want to run in the 7th.12:04.39Sam ShiraziHe is currently in the House of Delegates. He represents Fairfax. He ran for Congress in 2018 and 2024. In 2024, he ran in the 10th district, came really close, but lost in the primary. And it’s going to be of a free-for-all potentially if Helmer’s not able to clear the field because this district is really oddly shaped. It goes...12:24.79Sam ShiraziAll the way from North Arlington, then it goes into Fairfax, and then it goes near Manassas, goes down to Culpeper, and then it goes way about into the Shenandoah Valley. And so just scoops up a lot of different areas. Obviously, most of the population and the the Democratic base is going to be in the Northern Virginia part of the district.12:43.80Sam Shiraziand Fun fact, that this is actually my district, so if if these maps happen, I will be in the new 7th district, and I will make a bold announcement here that I will not be running in the 7th district because I don’t want to take time away from podcasting. I’m kind of kidding, but anyways. So 7th district is going to be really interesting, going to be one to watch, and I’ll be curious to see you know what potentially happens in a primary and one of the districts that it’s just not clear who the front runner would be.13:16.57Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s talk about the eighth congressional district that’s currently represented by Don Beyer. Very blue seat currently, it’s about a Harris plus 49 district.13:27.58Sam ShiraziUnder the new lines, completely kind of watered down to Harris plus 18 district. So still very blue, But not as blue as it currently is.13:37.77Sam ShiraziAnd I think this district has been like totally changed. So it basically goes from South Arlington, Alexandria and Northern Virginia, all the way down the Potomac. So it just kind of flows along the Potomac and goes all the way down to Hampton Roads, you know, basically to the Yorktown area. So.13:56.01Sam ShiraziYou know, this district has become this totally different district, still kind of the base, Democratic base is Northern Virginia. i think Don Beyer, you know, all indications is he’s going to run for reelection. And I think if he runs for reelection, it’ll be in this district, you know,14:12.77Sam ShiraziIn theory, you know could he face a primary challenger now that the district is totally different? Like, yes, but there aren’t a lot of Democrats in the other part of the district, to be honest, because it’s kind of a mix of more rural areas. And you know at the end of the day, I think Bayer does have a good shot of winning the primary because it includes all of his base of Alexandria and includes part of Arlington. So I do think even though the district has changed a lot, I think Bayer still is the favorite in this district.14:40.74Sam ShiraziAnd so that’s the 8th district. Let’s go down to the 9th district. This is the one that has actually gotten redder. So the 9th congressional district, currently the congressman is Morgan Griffin. It was about a 44 plus Trump district in 2024.14:55.30Sam ShiraziAnd it has now become about a 49% Trump district. So this is essentially just a Republican pack. So Democrats just pack all the Republicans in this district. So include Southwest Virginia, parts of Southside Virginia, parts of Western Virginia. So just packing a lot of Republicans in this district.15:13.25Sam ShiraziAnd i think the the question mark is who runs in this district? I assume Morgan Griffith, the current incumbent, will want to run here. Does Ben Klein want to run here, who’s in the sixth district right now? Does John McGuire, who’s in the fifth district, want to run here? And potentially if all three of them run, that would be a pretty crazy primary.15:31.57Sam Shiraziso we’ll see. but But obviously this is the one seat the Republicans will be able to win no matter what Okay, let’s go back up to Northern Virginia for the 10th district. So the current incumbent is Suhas Subramiam. It was about an 8-point Harris district in 2024, and now it becomes a 13-point Harris district in this new map. And essentially, it’s kind of the old 10th district. So the 10th district...15:58.68Sam ShiraziBack for the last decade was essentially a Loudoun-based seat that went into the Shenandoah Valley, included parts of Fairfax. And it’s kind of become that again. And I think Suhas Subramiam is in a strong position. All of his base of Loudoun is in one district held together.16:14.60Sam ShiraziSo I think in the primary, he’s going be favorite. In the general, he’s going to be favorite. So I think Suhas is is you know in pretty good shape in 10th district. And we’ll wrap things up in the 11th district. So the 11th district currently very blue about a Harris thirty plus 34 district in 2024, and it has become a Harris plus 14 district in 2024. The current congressman is James Watkinshaw.16:39.81Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, in theory, he might face a primary just because the district has changed a fair amount. Right now, it’s currently 100% in Fairfax County and Fairfax City.16:50.86Sam ShiraziThe district now is basically, you know, McLean, Northern Fairfax down to Fairfax City. And then it goes all the way out along I-66 out into the Shenandoah Valley. yeah.17:03.52Sam ShiraziWalkinshaw’s district’s been changed a lot. I still think given that you know most of the district is based in Fairfax County, I still think he has a pretty good shot of winning the primary. And then if he wins the primary, he’s going to be a strong contender in the general election.17:16.56Sam ShiraziSo anyways, that’s kind of the the district by district analysis. you know Long story short, I think most of the incumbents, are the Democratic incumbents are in pretty good shape, potentially potentially Beyer or Watkinshaw could face a primary. Obviously, the Republican incumbents are in pretty bad shape, except Morgan Griffith, kind of his district was kept, but he could face a primary with Ben Cline or John McGuire.17:45.83Sam ShiraziAnd at the end of the day, like, you know, people have had various comments, but I do think the map basically does what the Democrats needed to do. It gets them to 10-1 in 2026, probably gets them to You know, if there’s a red wave in 2030, if there’s a Democratic president, you know, conceivably they would lose some seats. But at that point, the House was probably going to be lost anyways.18:09.50Sam ShiraziAnd so I think the map for the Democratic perspective, you know, is pretty good. i think the main issue I’ve heard people comment on is the fact the second district could have been bluer. And again, that was a kind of a surprise that it wasn’t bluer. But at the end of the day they should be able to flip it.18:26.75Sam ShiraziYou know, the other thing to note is the map doesn’t look that clean. This is very clearly a gerrymander. I mean, sometimes you can kind of do a stealth gerrymander that looks clean and you’re like, you know, it doesn’t look that bad. This is not one of those. i mean, this is definitely, you know you look at it and it’s pretty obvious that it’s a gerrymander.18:44.96Sam ShiraziI think the Democrats attitude is like, it doesn’t matter because obviously the Republicans in Texas, for example, gerrymandered. and their map doesn’t look good. And their attitude is, you know, people are not going to be looking at the nuances of this of the districts. I mean, they may take a look at the map, but that’s not what the debate is going to be about. The debate is really about Donald Trump, his, you know push of getting Republican states to gerrymander and Democratic states need to respond. And just even beyond the kind of gerrymandering debate, it really is is kind of a more bigger picture debate about19:19.72Sam Shirazidemocracy and the threat to democracy. and And really above that, it’s basically, do you like Trump or do you not like Trump? Or do you want to send a message to Trump or you don’t want to send a message to Trump? Okay, so what are the next steps? So the next steps are there’s going to be a legal challenge. That legal challenge has basically been fast tracked to the Virginia Supreme Court.19:38.70Sam ShiraziSo the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be hearing that legal challenge. We’ll see how that goes. I mean, as I mentioned in my previous podcast, both sides feel pretty confident that they’re going to win the legal challenge. Obviously, only one side is going to be right. Either the Virginia Supreme Court is going to let the referendum happen or they’re not going to let the referendum happen.19:56.07Sam ShiraziAnd you know there’s really no way of knowing that until we get the ruling. So I don’t want to dwell on it too much right now. But let’s assume that the Virginia Supreme Court lets the referendum go forward. There will be the referendum campaign. The election will be on April 21st. I think most people assume that the Democrats are going to be able to pass that referendum if it if it goes to the voters.20:21.85Sam ShiraziAnd actually, we got a new piece of data since the last time I had a podcast, and that is a new poll that came out from the CNU Christopher Newport University Wason Center.20:35.32Sam ShiraziAnd you know that was interesting because it was the first basically poll this year or public poll that gave us information about the current referendum campaign.20:47.22Sam ShiraziAnd that poll showed that for redistricting, 51% support it and 43% oppose it. And so I think, you know, that’s one data point that is is giving you the sense that maybe this thing is going to pass.20:59.90Sam ShiraziThe other thing is, honestly, it’s going to be kind of a proxy of partisanship or do you like Trump, you don’t like Trump. And you know most indications are that Trump has negative approval in Virginia. That same CNU poll had Trump’s approval as 62% disapproved, 34% approved.21:18.66Sam ShiraziNow, I don’t know if his disapproval is that high in Virginia, but even if it’s you know in the 50s, that should be enough where the Democrats are going to be able to pass this referendum. So let’s assume the referendum passes. then the General Assembly will have to do some work in order to implement the new maps and then to change probably the primary date because the filing deadline coming up and you know you obviously need to give time to the candidates to be able to file in the districts. You need to give them time to, you know at the end of the day, run their campaigns for the primary. and they they Right now, you don’t really know which districts you’re going to be running in because potentially the legal challenges will strike down the referendum. Potentially the referendum doesn’t pass, although it seems likely that it will. So anyways, the primary day has it changed.22:09.07Sam ShiraziThe candidates will have to run in the primary. The primary will happen. And then obviously the general election will happen. So still a lot of things have to go right for the Virginia Democrats in order for these new maps to be implemented. But I think they’re really excited that it was at least finally revealed. I think the Democrats had gotten to the point where we just want to get the maps out. There was a lot of kind of information being shared about backroom deals and sausage making and kind of rumors. And I think most people just wanted to see the map and, you know cut to the chase. Let’s look at the maps. Let’s not kind of dwell on all the backroom dealing and wheeling. And so the maps have come out. They are what they are.22:45.11Sam ShiraziI think for the Democrats purposes, they serve them. i do think it was I don’t think it was a surprise that it was 10-1. But, you know, at the end of the day, the Democrats did go ten one There was a question whether they go 9-2. They went ten one I know there was you know there was some reporting that Spanberger was hesitant about 10-1, but she’s basically come out and said, you know we can implement a 10-1 map. She didn’t really come out against this. So it seems like she’ll go along with it, especially if the voters end up endorsing it in the referendum. And so I think i think for the most part, things are on track for the Virginia Democrats. Frankly, the biggest unknown for them is just the legal challenge. The Republicans are talking a lot about the legal challenge.23:27.54Sam ShiraziI do think that they may be overestimating or overplaying their hand because you know courts are unpredictable and you know Generally in Virginia, the courts are hesitant to get too involved in the political process.23:40.29Sam ShiraziAnd given that these are not the final maps yet, the voters still have to endorse the referendum process in the referendum process. I do see there’s i could see a world where the Virginia Supreme Court just says, you know, we’re not we’re not going to get in the middle of this, like let the voters decide. It’s it’s ultimately up to them.23:57.63Sam ShiraziAnd if that’s the case, that’s not going to be great for the Virginia Republicans. But maybe they’re right and maybe the Virginia Supreme Court will will buy some of their arguments and none of this will even matter. And all this work has been for nothing because the referendum won’t happen. Either way, we’ll find out hopefully sometime in February.24:17.33Sam Shiraziyou know I do encourage everyone to go look at the maps. They’re interesting. you know I’ll probably have more insights on them down the line, but that was kind of my first impression, and I wanted to kind of go through district by district.24:28.63Sam ShiraziHopefully people found this interesting. I will continue to cover things. I do think the primaries are going to be interesting. Potentially some of the general elections might be interesting, although I still think no matter what, the Democrats probably are going to get a 10-1 in 2026.24:42.29Sam Shiraziunder these lines if they happen. But yeah, I mean, certainly a big day in Virginia politics when the maps came out and, you know, I’ll continue to cover everything. And I appreciate everyone who’s who’s been been following me on this long ride. You know, these maps are going to be important in 2026 and they’re only really happening because the Democrats won in 2025. So 2025 is still very important, even though we are in 2026.25:07.03Sam ShiraziWe’ll just have to wait and see what happens with the redistricting referendum in Virginia. But I did want to go over the map and I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out of the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over a big decision that came out in Virginia at the lower court level where a judge ruled in favor of the Republicans and basically said that the...00:16.15Sam Shiraziprocess the Democrats used to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot for a referendum was not valid. So obviously a big ruling. However, keep in mind that the Virginia Supreme Court will have the ultimate say in this case, and it’s going to be appealed obviously. So as important as the decision as this individual judge made, it is not necessarily the end all be all.00:38.46Sam ShiraziAnd we’re going to have to wait to see how the Virginia Supreme Court ends up ruling on it. But I’ll kind of give you the background and then I’ll talk a little bit about this specific opinion by this judge.00:48.65Sam ShiraziI did do my last podcast on this exact topic and really went into the weeds. So if you’re interested, listen to that podcast. And then this podcast, I’ll do a little bit more on the decision and then I’ll talk a little bit about the implications. I should note that. Basically, this is the whole issue in this case it revolves around the 2025 Virginia elections. And so this podcast, even though we’re in 2026, the long shadow of the 2025 Virginia elections is still with us.01:17.16Sam ShiraziAnd basically, the issue is whether the Democrats correctly passed this proposed referendum right before the election, if that’s valid, or if they had to do it earlier in the year, last year. And that’s essentially the main issue in this case. So it all goes to show you 2025 was a really important year in the Virginia political world, obviously, and it’s still with us. And these questions about did everything go correctly with this referendum process are still with us. So I’ll kind of go over the opinion, then talk about the Virginia Supreme Court.01:54.12Sam ShiraziAnd so at the end of the day, the Republicans clearly had a strategy. They filed this lawsuit in Tazewell County, which is deep red Virginia. I think they clearly thought that this judge and this court would be sympathetic to to their arguments. And during the oral argument, it was very clear that the judge was skeptical about the Democratic position. And this opinion basically ruled almost entirely for the Republicans and against the Democrats and basically said, you know, the process the Democrats used to push forward with this constitutional amendment to have a referendum was not valid.02:38.25Sam ShiraziSo the first thing the judge found was the legislature didn’t really follow its own internal procedures. And I won’t go into the ins and outs of it, but essentially the Democrats had to do this in a special session.02:50.44Sam ShiraziAnd there’s kind of some questions about whether they follow their own internal procedures. So it’s essentially, did the legislature do everything it needed to do from a process, stand legislative process standpoint? And so that was the first thing the judge found. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I have a hard time believing this will be upheld on appeal. I think this is the least likely grounds for the decision to be upheld, if it is upheld, because typically courts are very skeptical to get into the legislative procedure. They kind of leave that to the legislature. I think there’s a big separation of powers issue.03:27.92Sam Shiraziif the judiciary starts telling the legislature, you know, you have to do this and you have to do that. And you said you were going to do this, but you didn’t do that. Typically, the judiciary just gets involved once the law is passed. You know, if the legislature passes something, then the judiciary will review it. But to kind of review the process by which a bill became law, I think would be pretty unusual.03:50.44Sam Shirazifor each a court to do that. And, you know, at the end of the day, both these, both the state Senate and the House of Delegates passed this twice with majority votes. And so for a court to come in and be like, oh, actually, you shouldn’t have done that, or or you didn’t do the the correct, but you didn’t pass it in the majority vote in the correct way. I think is a little bit odd and, you know, might be viewed as both a separation of powers issue and a kind of anti-democratic principle in the fact that, you know, you’re not even getting to the substance of the issue. You’re really looking at the process behind getting majority votes.04:23.28Sam ShiraziAnd again, I think the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be pretty hesitant to go there and pretty hesitant to decide the case on those grounds. So, We’ll see. But that was kind of the first reason the judge ruled for Republicans. And again, I think that’s probably the most shaky ground of this opinion.04:41.82Sam ShiraziThe second reason why the judge ruled for the Republicans, he basically looked at the Virginia state constitution and looked at the phrase after the next election And he essentially said the election was underway when the Democrats passed the proposed constitutional amendments. Early voting had been going on for a long time. And you know this is a criticism the Republicans had of the whole process. And the judge basically agreed with that.05:08.64Sam ShiraziAgain, I’m a little bit skeptical if the Virginia Supreme Court is going to uphold that. The reason is did it may be a valid policy point that it’s not fair to the voters for early voting to have started and then the Democrats sprung this redistricting referendum.05:25.66Sam ShiraziHowever, I don’t know if that’s necessarily against the what the Virginia Constitution says, because the Virginia Constitution says it has to be passed after the next general election. It doesn’t say, you know, three months before the general the Virginia general election, it has to be passed. It doesn’t say you can’t you can’t pass it after early voting started.05:45.18Sam Shiraziso a lot of that is being read into the Virginia constitution when it’s not there. All the Virginia constitution says is it has to pass once before the election. And then after the next general election, it has to get passed again. And so I think there is a lot of reading being done into the Virginia constitution by making the decision that way.06:07.81Sam ShiraziSo anyways, I have a feeling maybe the Virginia Supreme court’s not going to go there either for the second reason. The court, I think kind of understands that because they, they basically said for the third reason, they’re like, even if the first two reasons aren’t, you know, are okay. And the Democrats followed the proper procedure, they, the main issue they have, or or perhaps the biggest issue they have,06:27.46Sam Shiraziis this third question that the court court ruled on. And I do think you know this is probably the one where the Virginia Supreme Court will have to decide, and it’s perhaps the closest call.06:40.14Sam ShiraziAnd the question was essentially about the state statutory provision. So it’s not part of the state constitution, it’s part of the state law. It says that after this General Assembly session, the clerk of the House of Delegates will send a notice to each of the courts in Virginia basically saying that there have been proposed constitutional amendments. The clerks of each of those courts, the law says, shall post these notices three months before the election.07:09.02Sam ShiraziSo obviously that didn’t happen here because the election was basically less than a week away when the Democrats passed this. So I think from a just pure text of the statute issue, this is probably the strongest issue that Republicans have. And I think if the Virginia Supreme Court ends up ruling for the Republicans, I suspect it will be on these grounds because there’s specific language in the Virginia law that the court can point to. As I mentioned, the other two things I think are more...07:41.38Sam Shiraziare kind of shakier and and have a lot of assumptions built into them. This one, you can just kind of look at the law and say, hey, the notices weren’t posted for three months before the election, so this is not valid.07:53.03Sam ShiraziI explained this in my last podcast that the Democrats argued this is essentially a quirk in the law. The Constitution was changed. This three-month requirement was removed from the Constitution, but it was never removed from the state law.08:07.30Sam Shiraziyou know i think you know that might be the case i could also see the virginia supreme court saying like you know, it is what it is. Like, it’s still part of the law and we can’t just ignore the statute. And so what do you do with this statute? I think clearly the judge that ruled for the Republicans, he basically said, you know, it’s pretty clear. You have to post this three months before the election. It was not posted three months the before the election.08:46.89Sam ShiraziAnd I could see it going going both ways. However, it is important to note that the statute itself does not impose any requirements on the General Assembly. So the statute is basically about the duties of these clerks. And so You could argue that this is just kind of, even if you put aside the fact that it should have been removed from the the code and it’s basically a dead letter, if you assume it’s still a valid part of the law, you know the argument is, okay, this imposes some requirements on the clerks for the circuit courts.09:18.24Sam ShiraziBut it doesn’t impose any sort of requirement on the General Assembly. If there was some sort of broad requirement on the General Assembly that these had to be posted for three months before the election, that has to be written down somewhere. it has to be written down in the state constitution. At a minimum, it has to be written down explicitly in the state code.09:35.56Sam ShiraziAnd this idea that this random provision what you really should interpret it from this random provision is actually the general assembly has to pass this three months before the election.10:03.39Sam ShiraziYou know, it is what it is. Like the law says that it has to be posted three months before the election. And these were not posted for three months before the election. And, you know, the Democrats are out of luck.10:13.79Sam ShiraziPerhaps they should update the statute now they have a trifecta. But, you know, as for now, they are not going to be able to move forward. So now I basically have to look at my crystal ball and try to predict what the Virginia Supreme Court will do. you know I’m not going to do that. I think it’s very difficult. I could see them ruling either way on this matter. i you know Both sides feel confident. The Republicans feel like they’ve been vindicated. They feel like... We knew that the the Democrats didn’t do the correct procedure and this judge ruled for us and he basically endorsed all of our arguments and this is a very clear cut case. So that’s a Republican position.10:48.36Sam ShiraziI think the Democrats, they are confident this is gonna be overturned on appeal. Their position is essentially that this judge was handpicked by the Republicans to rule in this case. He was obviously gonna be favorable to them and that once it gets the Virginia Supreme Court,11:03.79Sam Shiraziwho has you know a reputation for being pretty nonpartisan, they are gonna see this pretty straightforward that the Democrats did follow the procedures.11:14.51Sam ShiraziSo both sides feel confident. And ultimately, this is probably gonna decide the issue. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I think if the referendum does happen, the Democrats will have a big advantage right now. And so ultimately, the justices of the Virginia Supreme Court are probably the ones who are going to decide if redistricting is going to happen this year in Virginia. And that’s pretty crazy to think about because These are the same justices who drew the maps that are the current congressional lines. Now they they got two special masters to do most of the work. However, they they blessed and endorsed and signed off on the final map. So it’s pretty crazy to think about that essentially the Virginia Supreme Court in some ways has been the most important player in Virginia redistricting this decade.12:01.61Sam ShiraziThey drew the congressional maps. They drew the entire General Assembly maps and the General Assembly maps are gonna stay no matter what. the the This redistricting is just about the congressional maps.12:12.04Sam ShiraziSo the Virginia Supreme Court has already drawn all the maps. And now that the Democrats are trying to redistrict and put this referendum on the ballot, the Virginia Supreme Court is going to decide whether it is legal for the Democrats to do that or not. And so, you know, as much as the Democrats have been They won a lot in 2025. They have a trifecta. They have a lot of power.12:35.44Sam ShiraziYou know, there is also checks and balances and the judiciary has its own ability to review things. And the Virginia Supreme Court is going to have to play its part as a co-equal branch of government. Now, having said all of that,12:50.74Sam ShiraziI do think the Virginia Supreme Court tends to be pretty deferential, especially in political things, to the elected branches of government. And so, you know, either explicitly or implicitly, I could see them saying, you know, at the end of the day, the legislature did this. It it was passed in two separate sessions of the General Assembly with majorities.13:10.36Sam ShiraziAnd do we really want to come in and strike this down, especially when this is not the final say? Ultimately, the final say, if the referendum goes forward, is with the voters in Virginia. So the voters are the ones who ultimately have to approve this. And in theory, they could vote it down if you know the Republicans make the arguments that its it shouldn’t go forward. And so, you know, as much as I don’t think the justices of the Supreme Court are thinking about R versus D, red versus blue.13:40.10Sam Shiraziyou know Do we rule for the Democrats or do we rule for the Republicans? I do think they are trying to think this through from a legal standpoint. I also think from more of a practical consideration, they are thinking you know is this the type of issue where we, the Virginia Supreme Court, want to step into this and stop the process and stop the voters being able to make the ultimate call?14:01.26Sam ShiraziAnd you know I don’t know how they’re going make the decision. I suspect it’s going to be pretty based on the law and whatever interpretation of the law they end up having.14:28.30Sam ShiraziSo all that’s to say is redistricting in Virginia is a little bit in a limbo and it’s kind of an interesting time for that because the maps are supposed to come out any day now. I thought this week I would do a podcast on the maps when they came out, but instead I’m doing a podcast on this opinion and we’ll have to see what the maps look like. And obviously I’ll provide commentary once those come out.14:51.84Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think the last thing I’ll say is, you know, what happens if Virginia redistricting does not move forward? I think we’ve all kind of assumed that it would happen this year, but now there’s a little bit of a question mark. You know Democrats still seem very confident that Virginia redistricting is going to move forward. And so I don’t think they’ve changed their fundamental assumption that the maps are going to be redrawn. and we’ll see we’ll see if they’re right that that’s what’s going to end up happening.15:18.96Sam ShiraziBut if the current maps are in place for the November general election, it’s not like the end of the world for the Virginia Democrats. It’s not like the sky has fallen out and all of a sudden the Virginia Democrats are in in a tough spot.15:33.26Sam ShiraziI think they have a decent... if not a very good opportunity to flip one, if not two seats this year in Virginia. Obviously the second district is kind of the perennial swing district. Almost every election it’s competitive and it tends to flip in midterms.15:48.59Sam ShiraziSo I think the second district certainly is going to be a top pickup opportunity for the Democrats. And the Democrats have made a lot of noise about wanting to compete in the first congressional district. It has trended towards the Democrats for a while now.16:02.80Sam ShiraziAnd they think in this environment, this is the type of seat that can flip. The the first also voted for Spanberger. So in theory, Democrats could pick up two seats under the current map. And you know if that happens,16:14.82Sam Shiraziyeah especially if the first district is flipping, I think there is a very decent chance the Democrats are going to have a majority in the House of Representatives. So all have to say is the Democrats don’t need redistricting necessarily in Virginia. They don’t need it to flip the House in 2026. I do think, obviously, from their perspective, they would prefer to have redistricting, one, because that means they probably have to spend less money in Virginia because those flips are going to be more certain.16:41.78Sam ShiraziAnd two, because depending on what the final proposed map looks like, they want to flip at least one, if not two more seats in Virginia with the fifth district and potentially with the sixth district. So obviously, if you’re the Democrats, you want redistricting to move forward.16:56.46Sam ShiraziBut I don’t want to make it seem like it would be the end of the world for the Democrats if redistricting doesn’t happen, because I do think at the end of the day, the Virginia map it has two seats that Democrats could pick up. And then the national picture, given that Republicans, a lot of their redistricting efforts didn’t move forward in a number of states. I do think it hasn’t been the huge gain that they thought it would be. And at the end of the day, you know, the House looks like the Democrats currently are favored to win the majority, although obviously a lot can happen between now and November. so17:31.24Sam ShiraziAll that’s to say is like this is a very interesting legal case. There’s a lot going on, both politically and the legal side. But it’s not necessarily the make or break moment for the national Democrats or even the Virginia Democrats. I think it would be a setback for the Virginia Democrats.17:47.74Sam ShiraziI think you know they’ll be disappointed. Some of their base will be disappointed. The Republicans will feel like they finally have gotten a win in Virginia after such a demoralizing defeat last year.17:58.65Sam ShiraziBut I don’t think it fundamentally changes the fact that there are two good pickup opportunities for Democrats. And, you know, at the end of the day, we’ll have to wait and see what happens. I do think it’ll be interesting to see what the different members of Congress end up doing, what the candidates who are running do. I mean, they’re essentially just waiting. We’re all waiting for the Virginia Supreme Court to rule. I do think The Virginia Supreme Court will be relatively quick in its review. I mean, a I suspect they’ll try to get an opinion out in February. They probably have to get some briefing on this issue. I don’t know if they’ll want to have oral arguments.18:39.50Sam ShiraziIt is essentially going to be a very quick decision that they’ll have to render. And oftentimes, you know, that can lead to the lower court being affirmed if the court doesn’t want to get involved. But I think with a case like this, which is very time sensitive, very complicated, Virginia constitutional law issue, very big, high profile case, I mean, I think the Virginia Supreme Court is one is going to want to come in here and essentially just make the call and be the one that decides and not necessarily defer to the19:11.24Sam Shirazilower court. So overall, you know really a little bit of a surprise in the sense that I think most people have thought this thing was going full steam ahead and this is a little bit of kink.19:22.67Sam ShiraziHowever, to be perfectly honest, I think both sides at least with this lower court judge, had a feeling that the ruling would probably go against the Democrats. And now both sides, I think, are very confident at their position with the Virginia Supreme Court.19:36.20Sam ShiraziAnd so it’ll be interesting. I think one side will be really disappointed at the Virginia Supreme Court, depending how it goes. And I think if The Democrats end up losing at the Virginia Supreme Court. you know They’ll be disappointed, but I think they’re just going to you know roll with the punches, you know be double down on their efforts in the second district and the first district, and try to pick up the two seats in Virginia.19:59.36Sam ShiraziI do think the Republicans are in a really tough spot if they lose at the Virginia Supreme Court, because now their hopes are kind of up. Oh, yeah, we were right. The Redistricting referendum it wasn’t valid. Democrats didn’t follow the proper procedures.20:12.90Sam ShiraziIf the Virginia Supreme Court comes back and lets the Democrats do the referendum, and you know in all likelihood, I think that the Republicans are just going to roll over and play dead. And I don’t think they’re going to even really seriously contest the referendum. I think the referendum would pass.20:26.98Sam ShiraziYou know, we’ll have to see what the final map is. i think that Republicans wouldn’t really even try to save the incumbents because, you know, the maps are going to be drawn in a way that probably wouldn’t help the incumbents. And, you know, at the end of the day, it’ll be it’ll be bad, I think.20:41.100Sam ShiraziIt’s kind of you know crazy to think that the Republicans had such a bad 2025. Now they feel like they have something going their way. i do think the air is going to come out of the balloon pretty quickly if the Virginia Supreme Court rules against them. 2026 is going to look really rough for the Virginia Republicans after a rough 2025. 2027 is going to be rough for the Virginia Republicans in all likelihood. 2028, we’ll see, will probably be rough as well.21:07.82Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, even if redistricting, like I said, doesn’t end up happening this year in Virginia, I think 2026 could be pretty rough for the Virginia Republicans. You know, I don’t want to speculate too much, but, you know, I i would say right now in the second district, even on the under the current lines, Elaine Luria, who used to represent that district, might be the slight favorite just because of the impact of the federal cuts to Hampton Roads and the fact that that district just swings so much from election to election, midterm to midterm. So that district, it flipped in the 2022 midterm, it flipped in the 2018 midterm, it flipped in the 2010 midterm, it flipped in 2008 during the blue wave. So it’s a district that flips a lot.21:51.17Sam ShiraziAnd I do think there’s a decent chance that the Democrats are going to be able to flip that no matter what. First district’s a little bit different because you have stronger incumbent. You have a district that’s a little bit more Republican.22:02.07Sam ShiraziAnd we’ll see. I think the Democrats definitely have a shot there, but I think it would be a tougher lift for them to be able to flip the the first district. So all that’s to say is like either way, you know i’ll I’ll be covering it all. If the redistricting happens, that’ll be interesting in its own way. If the redistricting doesn’t happen, it’s going to be interesting in its own way. Both sides feel confident in their legal position, and we’ll just have to wait and see. so You know, the wild ride, which is the Virginia elections, never ends. So I will keep covering it all. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And i I’ll do my best to keep covering it. And this has been Federal Fallout. And I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

00:00.47Sam ShiraziHi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will dive into a lot of legal issues, specifically with redistricting and just to see what is going on with some of the legal challenges the Republicans are bringing to redistricting.00:15.48Sam ShiraziSo to set the stage, the Democrats in the General Assembly are full steam ahead in terms of trying to have a referendum this year in Virginia on redistricting.00:25.85Sam ShiraziThey have proposed a bill that would set the date of the referendum as April 21st. And they have also... given their proposed language for what should go on the ballot in terms of the question for the referendum. And the question is, quote, should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census. So clearly they are, you know, the Democrats have phrased the question in a way that they think is more likely to get people to vote for it. I think the Republicans think the phrasing of the question is unfair and obviously skewed from their perspective.01:15.06Sam Shiraziagainst the Republican position. And you know I’m not sure if there’ll be any legal challenges to that, but that is the bill that the Democrats are proposing. So have a referendum on April 21st, have that as the question.01:27.95Sam ShiraziAnd you know if that gets passed, then the next step would be to actually enact a new map in Virginia, including moving the primary deadlines so that the elections could happen this year under the new maps. The one thing that we are still waiting on from the Virginia Democrats is what their proposed map is going to look like.01:48.69Sam ShiraziAnd it seems like that map will be coming out next week.01:52.86Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, when that happens, I will do a podcast because that’s going to be a big deal. But before we get to that, I wanted to talk about the Republican strategy and really they’re the Republican legal strategy.02:03.93Sam ShiraziAnd we’ll go into kind of the ins and outs on of that. But before I get into like the specific legal stuff, I wanted to just talk about kind of where the Republicans are at. Because I think in terms of running a redistricting referendum campaign in basically three months, the Republicans are not in a good place. I think they know that. I don’t think they really or have a plan if they have to run a referendum campaign.02:28.26Sam ShiraziAnd it reminds me of a quote from the classic movie Rocky III, So a reporter is asking Clubber Lang, who was about to fight Rocky, a question about what’s his strategy.02:40.33Sam ShiraziAnd Clubber Lang’s response is don’t need any. And I think in some ways, maybe that’s the Virginia Republicans position in that they don’t think they really need a strategy for the referendum campaign because they seem pretty confident in their legal position in this lawsuit that they brought. And you know honestly, it could be wishful thinking.03:00.14Sam ShiraziMy sense is it could also just be they have nothing else. They really are just hoping that the lawsuit works out. They don’t have to run a referendum campaign because I think if the referendum is happening, I don’t really see a way where they’re going to be able to mount a a strong campaign. It’s going to be in April. You’re going to have Democrats really fired up.03:19.21Sam ShiraziSo I think it’s going to be a really uphill climb for the Virginia Republicans if they have to have a referendum. They seem to kind of understand that. And that’s why they’re basically going in all in on this legal case that they brought. And I kind of want to set up the Republican argument, the Democratic argument, I can kind of give you my personal opinion.03:37.57Sam ShiraziI don’t often go into these like super detailed legal analysis. From my training, I am an attorney, I attended the University of Virginia. I don’t always talk about it on here because most people are pretty bored about legal stuff. But I thought it was kind of interesting To give people, if you’re an attorney, you might find this interesting. If you’re not an attorney, you’ll kind of get a sense of how attorneys analyze legal questions.03:59.57Sam ShiraziAnd so I’ll kind of do quick rundown about what’s going on and what the courts might interpret in this case. I did want to say, you know, this is kind of standard preference that lawyers like to give, you know, I’m not giving legal advice. I’m not telling people what arguments they should make. I’m just laying out kind of what I’m seeing in the legal landscape just for people’s analysis. And, you know, they can come up with their own conclusions in terms of with what they think is going to happen. This is kind of my personal opinion about this legal issue, but obviously it’s complicated. And, you know, just because I’m04:37.74Sam ShiraziYeah, I’m not saying the case is going to go one way or another. I think it is an interesting legal question. It really boils down mainly to Virginia state constitutional law. There might be a small federal angle to this, but generally this is more of a state issue.04:51.99Sam ShiraziI think the highest court that will hear it is the Virginia Supreme Court, and it’s unlikely to really be decided by the federal courts. So I’ll talk about some of the legal issues going on.05:02.58Sam ShiraziThe Republicans have brought a lawsuit in Tazewell County in Southwest Virginia. That’s a deep red county. I think clearly they did what’s called forum shopping. They wanted to pick where they thought they’d have the strongest chance of winning.05:15.38Sam Shiraziat the lower court level. You know regardless of what happens at the lower court, the reality is this case is almost certainly going to go to the Virginia Supreme Court to be ultimately decided because it’s such a significant legal issue. It’s such a thorny constitutional state constitutional issue. So I think you know one way or another, the Virginia Supreme Court is going to have to sort this out. And you know essentially the question is based on the state constitution and then a specific provision of the state law under the state constitution. So I’ll kind of go through the different provisions and kind of, you know, go through that analysis. So I think, you know, the Democrats initial position is that the state constitution is pretty clear. And I’m going to read the,05:59.27Sam Shirazilanguage from the state constitution. This is Article 12 of the Virginia Constitution, Future Changes, and it’s section one about amendments. So it basically says, you know any amendment has to first pass the House of Delegates and the state Senate in one session.06:14.21Sam ShiraziAnd then it says that amendment will be referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.06:26.76Sam ShiraziAnd those that that phrase, after the next general election, is really the crux of this legal issue. Because what the Democrats are arguing is that language is very clear.06:38.66Sam ShiraziYou pass it one in one session, and then you have’t after the next general election, you pass it again in the next session. And so the logical reading of next general election is literally election day. So you have an election and then the next session after that election, you can vote on it again. And that’s basically what happened. You know, the Democrats, they passed this bill essentially the week before election day.07:02.23Sam ShiraziElection day happened, they won. And then in January, they passed it again. And so the logical reading of this without any sort of overthinking about it is. You pass it before the election, and then you pass it after the election. And that’s kind of the plain reading of the state constitution. It’s pretty clear about that.07:17.63Sam ShiraziI think that’s a decent constitutional argument just from the text. But the Republicans make a bunch of arguments that basically...07:24.52Sam Shiraziyou know, the election was essentially already underway. Early voting had been going on. The purpose of this provision is to give voters a chance to vote if they want to reelect the House of Delegates and and to allow this sort of amendment to go forward. And so you’re kind of really undermining the purpose of the requirement that it be passed in two different sessions with an election in between.08:14.74Sam Shirazi00:00.47Sam ShiraziHi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will dive into a lot of legal issues, specifically with redistricting and just to see what is going on with some of the legal challenges the Republicans are bringing to redistricting.00:15.48Sam ShiraziSo to set the stage, the Democrats in the General Assembly are full steam ahead in terms of trying to have a referendum this year in Virginia on redistricting.00:25.85Sam ShiraziThey have proposed a bill that would set the date of the referendum as April 21st. And they have also... given their proposed language for what should go on the ballot in terms of the question for the referendum. And the question is, quote, should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarilyily temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census. So clearly they are, you know, the Democrats have phrased the question in a way that they think is more likely to get people to vote for it. I think the Republicans think the phrasing of the question is unfair and obviously skewed from their perspective.01:15.06Sam Shiraziagainst the Republican position. And you know I’m not sure if there’ll be any legal challenges to that, but that is the bill that the Democrats are proposing. So have a referendum on April 21st, have that as the question.01:27.95Sam ShiraziAnd you know if that gets passed, then the next step would be to actually enact a new map in Virginia, including moving the primary deadlines so that the elections could happen this year under the new maps. The one thing that we are still waiting on from the Virginia Democrats is what their proposed map is going to look like.01:48.69Sam ShiraziAnd it seems like that map will be coming out next week.01:52.86Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, when that happens, I will do a podcast because that’s going to be a big deal. But before we get to that, I wanted to talk about the Republican strategy and really they’re the Republican legal strategy.02:03.93Sam ShiraziAnd we’ll go into kind of the ins and outs on of that. But before I get into like the specific legal stuff, I wanted to just talk about kind of where the Republicans are at. Because I think in terms of running a redistricting referendum campaign in basically three months, the Republicans are not in a good place. I think they know that. I don’t think they really or have a plan if they have to run a referendum campaign.02:28.26Sam ShiraziAnd it reminds me of a quote from the classic movie Rocky III, So a reporter is asking Clubber Lane, who was about to fight Rocky, a question about what’s his strategy.02:40.33Sam ShiraziAnd Clubber Lane’s response is don’t need any. And I think in some ways, maybe that’s the Virginia Republicans position in that they don’t think they really need a strategy for the referendum campaign because they seem pretty confident in their legal position in this lawsuit that they brought. And you know honestly, it could be wishful thinking.03:00.14Sam ShiraziMy sense is it could also just be they have nothing else. They really are just hoping that the lawsuit works out. They don’t have to run a referendum campaign because I think if the referendum is happening, I don’t really see a way where they’re going to be able to mount a a strong campaign. It’s going to be in April. You’re going to have Democrats really fired up.03:19.21Sam ShiraziSo I think it’s going to be a really uphill climb for the Virginia Republicans if they have to have a referendum. They seem to kind of understand that. And that’s why they’re basically going in all in on this legal case that they brought. And I kind of want to set up the Republican argument, the Democratic argument, i can kind of give you my personal opinion.03:37.57Sam ShiraziI don’t often go into these like super detailed legal analysis. From my training, i am an attorney, I attended the University of Virginia. i don’t always talk about it on here because most people are pretty bored about legal stuff. But I thought it was kind of interesting To give people, if you’re an attorney, you might find this interesting. If you’re not an attorney, you’ll kind of get a sense of how attorneys analyze legal questions.03:59.57Sam ShiraziAnd so I’ll kind of do quick rundown about what’s going on and what the courts might interpret in this case. I did want to say, you know, this is kind of standard preference that lawyers like to give, you know, I’m not giving legal advice. I’m not telling people what arguments they should make. I’m just laying out kind of what I’m seeing in the legal landscape just for people’s analysis. And, you know, they can come up with their own conclusions in terms of with what they think is going to happen. This is kind of my personal opinion about this legal issue, but obviously it’s complicated. And, you know, just because I’m04:37.74Sam ShiraziYeah, I’m not saying the case is going to go one way or another. I think it is an interesting legal question. it really boils down mainly to Virginia state constitutional law. There might be a small federal angle to this, but generally this is more of a state issue.04:51.99Sam Shirazii think the highest court that will hear it is the Virginia Supreme Court, and it’s unlikely to really be decided by the federal courts. So I’ll talk about some of the legal issues going on.05:02.58Sam ShiraziThe Republicans have brought a lawsuit in Tazewell County in Southwest Virginia. That’s a deep red county. I think clearly they did what’s called forum shopping. They wanted to pick where they thought they’d have the strongest chance of winning.05:15.38Sam Shiraziat the lower court level, you know regardless of what happens at the lower court, the reality is this case is almost certainly going to go to the Virginia Supreme Court to be ultimately decided because it’s such a significant legal issue. It’s such a thorny constitutional state constitutional issue. So I think you know one way or another, the Virginia Supreme Court is going to have to sort this out. And you know essentially the question is based on the state constitution and then a specific provision of the state law under the state constitution. So I’ll kind of go through the different provisions and kind of, you know, go through that analysis. So I think, you know, the Democrats initial position is that the state constitution is pretty clear. And I’m going to read the,05:59.27Sam ShiraziLanguage from the state constitution. This is Article 12 of the Virginia Constitution, Future Changes, and it’s section one about amendments. So it basically says, you know any amendment has to first pass the House of Delegates and the state Senate in one session.06:14.21Sam ShiraziAnd then it says that amendment will be referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.06:26.76Sam ShiraziAnd those that that phrase, after the next general election, is really the crux of this legal issue. Because what the Democrats are arguing is that language is very clear.06:38.66Sam ShiraziYou pass it one in one session, and then you have’t after the next general election, you pass it again in the next session. And so the logical reading of next general election is literally election day. So you have an election and then the next session after that election, you can vote on it again. And that’s basically what happened. You know, the Democrats, they passed this bill essentially the week before election day.07:02.23Sam ShiraziElection day happened, they won. And then in January, they passed it again. And so the logical reading of this without any sort of overthinking about it is You pass it before the election, and then you pass it after the election. And that’s kind of the plain reading of the state constitution. It’s pretty clear about that.07:17.63Sam ShiraziI think that’s a decent constitutional argument just from the text. But the Republicans make a bunch of arguments that basically...07:24.52Sam Shiraziyou know, the election was essentially already underway. Early voting had been going on. The purpose of this provision is to give voters a chance to vote if they want to reelect the House of Delegates and and to allow this sort of amendment to go forward. And so you’re kind of really undermining the purpose of the requirement that it be passed in two different sessions with an election in between.I think there are some policy arguments about why that might make sense. I think the challenge Republicans have with that argument is that the text of the provision doesn’t talk about early voting, it just literally says after the next general election. 08:14.74Sam ShiraziAnd I think if that was it, if that was the entire case, it would be pretty clear cut and it wouldn’t be super complicated. However, it gets even more nuanced because there is a provision of the state law, not the state constitution that kind of throws a wrench into everything.08:32.08Sam ShiraziAnd I think this past week, There was a hearing in Tazewell County where the Republicans brought their lawsuit. And it sounded like the judge was you know skeptical of the Democratic position.08:43.72Sam ShiraziIs that because you know he thinks it’s a strong legal argument? you know Perhaps it’s because he’s a more Republican-friendly judge, I think. you know Very clearly, the Republicans were doing some forum shopping. I don’t want to question his independence. I’m just saying you know this is maybe a judge that might be more sympathetic to the Republican argument for whatever reason than perhaps another part of Virginia. And so anyways, long story short, it sounded like the the judge was sympathetic.09:09.100Sam ShiraziIt’s hard to read the tea leaves during oral arguments. Sometimes you think, oh, yeah, the judge is definitely going to rule against the party. And then you find out that they rule for the other way. So you can’t read too much into oral arguments. And again, as I mentioned, regardless of how the judge rules, whether he rules for Democrats or whether whether he rules for the Republicans, it’s going to get appealed. So this individual judge is not the final say. And I think ultimately we have to think about the Virginia Supreme Court as deciding this.09:35.66Sam ShiraziOkay. So what did the judge, you know, well why was he somewhat skeptical of democratic position? Well, there’s this provision in the state law that, that basically says that the clerk of the House of Delegates at the end of the session will compile a bunch of stuff, and that includes the proposed constitutional amendments, and then he will send the constitutional amendments to the individual courts throughout Virginia.10:02.54Sam ShiraziAnd then I’m going to quote from the statute. It says, quote, every clerk of the circuit court shall complete the posting required not later than three months prior to the next ensuing general election of members of the House of Delegates, end quote.10:16.78Sam ShiraziSo what that means is essentially that what the statute says is the house the clerk of the House of Delegates will send to all the courts a notice that there is a proposed constitutional amendment, and then the clerk of those court of that court will post 90 days before the election each of those referendum notices.10:35.98Sam ShiraziAnd so I think... what the Republicans essentially arguing is like, this is pretty clear in the state law. Like you can’t just pass a referendum at the last minute because the state law says you have to post this thing for three months before the election. And I think Obviously, the clerks at the courts were not able to do this because the Democrats did this essentially the week before the election.11:02.30Sam Shiraziand And so there is some tension here where it looks like the state law is maybe in conflict with what the Democrats were doing.11:11.98Sam ShiraziHowever, it gets even more complicated. And as you can see, when you’re a lawyer, things tend to get up complicated and one side will pick something up and then the other side will pick something up. So I went back and I looked at the old Virginia Constitution.11:26.10Sam ShiraziSo Virginia changed its constitution in 1971. So the current version of the Virginia Constitution comes from 1971. The old version of the Virginia Constitution comes all the way back in 1902. So that was the constitution Virginia used from 1902 to 1971. It’s actually kind of an interesting story about why that happened. Honestly, part the main reason the constitution was changed was The 1902 Constitution was kind of from the Jim Crow era era and had lot of things that were, you know, basically institutionalizing racism. 1971, right after civil rights movement, there was a feeling that Virginia needed a new Constitution.12:01.95Sam ShiraziSo the current version of the Virginia Constitution comes from 1971. But I went back and looked at the text of the 1902 Constitution. And in the part about amendments, it’s pretty similar to the 1971 Constitution, except it has a little bit of a difference that’s super important. And I’m going to read that section.12:20.83Sam ShiraziSo again, this is the 1902 Constitution. It says that the General Assembly, each house, shall pass and a proposed amendment. And then it will refer it will be referred to the General Assembly at the first regular session held after the next general election election of members of the House of Delegates.12:39.75Sam ShiraziAnd this is the important part, quote, and shall be published for three months previous to the time of such election. And so if you notice, that language is in the 1902 Virginia Constitution, but that language is not in the 1971 current version of the Virginia Constitution. So clearly, that three-month requirement was removed from the Virginia Constitution and it is no longer there.13:04.95Sam ShiraziHowever, it is still in the state law. And what the Democrats are arguing is you know that random provision of the state law, which is kind of buried in the state code, it’s basically about the duties of the House of Delegates clerk and the local circuit court clerks, that essentially was not supposed to be in there. was honestly just a mistake that it was not removed because no one updated the code after the constitution was changed.13:31.93Sam ShiraziAnd so it’s really essentially a dead letter, if not just something that is not a requirement on the House of Delegates. Like even if you and interpret the state law as the clerks of the county court have to post these things three months before the election.13:48.13Sam ShiraziThat’s only a requirement on the county clerks. That is not a requirement on the General Assembly. It doesn’t say the General Assembly has to pass this thing three months before the election. It doesn’t say you know anything about the General Assembly. It essentially just says the clerk will send these proposed amendments to the clerks. And obviously, if the clerks can post them, the the clerks will post them. But it was not possible for the clerks to post this thing a week before the election.14:13.74Sam ShiraziAnd the Democratic position is that’s fine. Like the clerks, you know, they didn’t publish it, but it’s not like a fatal flaw in the redistricting process. Because again, if you look at the plain text of the current Virginia constitution, the Democrats did everything they needed to do.14:29.71Sam ShiraziAnd this other kind of thing that’s buried in the Virginia law is not really what’s controlling. What’s what’s controlling is the state constitution. Because remember, like this is just basic legal principle. The constitution is always higher than the law.14:43.17Sam ShiraziAnd so if there’s some inconsistency or there’s some tension, the constitution will trump the law. And so if the law is saying, well, the clerks have to post this for 90 days, But the state constitution is saying the General Assembly, all it has to do is pass it once and then an election in between and pass it again.15:01.34Sam ShiraziGeneral Assembly did that. And the fact that the clerks weren’t able to post the notice for 90 days, I mean, that’s that’s on that’s not a something that binds the General Assembly. That’s just something that the clerks have to do.15:12.80Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, according to the Democrats, you know it shouldn’t even really be in the Virginia Code. I don’t want to go too much into the legal weeds, but there were some things the Democrats are trying to do where they’re trying to retroactively change that provision and basically say, you know, that was always a dead letter. And so just ignore that part of the law.15:32.29Sam ShiraziThey’re also trying to they’re also trying to move the lawsuit that Republicans brought from Tazewell County to Richmond County, Richmond City, excuse me. And basically the argument is that is that Richmond is the proper place to bring this type of lawsuit, because obviously most of the election administration is done in Richmond.15:49.26Sam ShiraziAnd so it was not, you know, the the Republicans lawsuit shouldn’t be brought in Tazewell, should be brought in Richmond. You know, the Republicans. seemed somewhat upset at this, understandably, and they argued that it’s a violation of the US Constitution, the ex post facto portion of the US Constitution. I don’t want to go into it too much, but there is this small hook where, in theory, you could see them bringing a federal challenge if that becomes the crux of the issue.16:17.38Sam ShiraziLong story short, I’m going to focus just based on the tension between the state constitution and the statutory provision. i can kind of give you my personal opinion and my personal analysis.16:28.20Sam Shiraziyou know i’m I’m trying to just think through how is the Virginia Supreme Court going to interpret this legal issue? Because I’ve talked about it before. Virginia Supreme Court, I would say, is a pretty nonpartisan court.16:41.04Sam ShiraziIt is known for being little c legal conservative. So they are not by any means, or the Virginia supreme Supreme Court is not known as a liberal court by any means. But at the same time, i don’t think the judges on the Virginia Supreme Court are hacks. I don’t think they make their decisions based on political preferences.16:58.63Sam ShiraziYou know, some state Supreme Courts are super political, especially the ones that are elected. And basically, you could say this person is going to rule this way because the Democratic or Republican judge.17:10.48Sam ShiraziVirginia is not really like that. I do think the... Judges in Virginia tend to be small c legal conservative. And what that means is they tend to be very textualist. So textualism is this idea that you should really just focus on the text of the constitution and the statutes.17:26.56Sam ShiraziYou shouldn’t really look beyond that. You shouldn’t be looking too much at intent of why a law was passed. And so I think that cuts a lot of different ways. In this case,17:37.78Sam ShiraziIn my opinion, if you’re a textualist, the state constitution is very clear. The Democrats didn’t need to do this you know three months before. If you’re just looking at the state constitution, all the state constitution says is you pass it in one session,17:51.50Sam Shirazithere’s an election, after that election, you pass it again. And so it’s pretty straightforward from a state constitution standpoint that you can just do this you know right before the election and then there’s an election and then you do it after the election.18:05.20Sam ShiraziI think what makes it much more complicated is this state provision, state state legal provision, the the statutory provision. And you know the the interpretation of that is you know, if you want to post, you you have to, the clerks have to post the the notices 90 days before the election.18:24.99Sam ShiraziI think what’s what’s complicated about that is It doesn’t say, again, the General Assembly has to do this. it doesn’t you know It’s not in the state constitution. It’s kind of buried somewhere in the Virginia code. And it’s kind of a big deal if the General Assembly had to pass this 90 days before the election. You would think that would be in the state constitution, or at least you would think the state code, the state statutory code, would be very clear about that and say the General Assembly needs to pass this 90 days before the election.18:53.01Sam Shiraziyou wouldn’t think that just kind of randomly buried in the state code, it says that the county clerks have to post this 90 days before the election, and that actually means that the General Assembly has to pass it 90 days before the election. So I think you really have to stretch the statute a lot.19:08.30Sam ShiraziI’m not saying Republicans don’t raise valid policy arguments, But the Virginia Supreme Court tends not to be very policy oriented. They’re not super sympathetic to policy arguments. They tend to want to just stick to this to the statute.19:22.10Sam ShiraziAnd I could see the Virginia Supreme Court writing an opinion where they’re basically like, This is a little bit ambiguous. There’s some tension here. We’re going to go with the language the state constitution because clearly the state constitution was changed from 1902 to 1971.19:37.78Sam ShiraziI do think You know, it’s perhaps a more cleaner argument, just given the change in the Constitution between, you know, 1902 and 1971. But, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see.19:50.83Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I could also see, you know, for the Republican side, if the Republican Virginia Supreme Court really wants to be hyper textualist about the text of the statute, they could say, yeah, well, yeah, maybe the Virginia Democrats complied with the Constitution, but there’s also the statute and you know the clerks had to post it for 90 days and they weren’t able to post it for 90 days. Again, i think there’s a possibility they could rule that way. i think it’s It’s a bit of a stretch because it doesn’t say the General Assembly has to pass this 90 days before. and And so to say that a clerk having to post this for 90 days is the same as the General Assembly has to definitely pass this 90 days before the election, I think is reading more into the Constitution that than is there and is reading a lot into a state provision that arguably, as the Democrats argue, shouldn’t even be there.20:42.94Sam ShiraziYou know, the Virginia Supreme Court can say, like, it’s the law, like, we have to interpret it, it’s there. i do think given the change between the constitutions, perhaps the Democrats have the stronger argument.20:54.96Sam ShiraziBut ultimately, we’re goingnna have to find out what the Virginia Supreme Court says. And at the end of the day you know, i don’t want to make a prediction. i do think the Republicans are really hopeful that this is going to get them out of it. Essentially, they’re hoping the Virginia Supreme Court bails them out and they don’t actually have to run a referendum campaign.21:11.84Sam ShiraziYou know, you you may argue that’s wishful thinking. you may argue the Democrats are overconfident and that they didn’t think through all the legal implications, you know, I wouldn’t worry about it one way or another because eventually the Virginia Supreme Court is going to rule on it. And, you know, if they rule for the Democrats, wouldn’t be a huge surprise and things will just kind of go full steam ahead. I think if they rule for the Republicans, that would be a pretty big shocker and I think would reset the midterms in Virginia. And obviously I’d do a podcast about it and kind of,21:41.28Sam Shirazitalk about all the implications. But anyways, so that’s that’s kind of the Virginia redistricting challenge. Hopefully people found the legal analysis interesting. You may either really be interested in the law now or really think the law is super boring. So either way, you got a little taste of it.21:58.53Sam ShiraziAll right. Well, I wanted to end on one other note, and that is a separate legal issue, but one that’s like super fascinating and kind of ties into another referendum, and that’s about restoring voting rights to people convicted of felonies. So I’ll just quickly give you an overview of this legal issue. So in Virginia, it’s one of the only states that...22:18.40Sam ShiraziIf you are convicted of a felony, you are barred for voting for the rest of your life unless the governor restores that right. There’s obviously a referendum that would give people back the right to vote automatically once they leave prison. That’s going to be on the ballot this November in Virginia.22:51.70Sam ShiraziHowever, there has been a pending lawsuit where people have challenged that provision of the Virginia constitution because they are arguing the act that allowed Virginia rejoin the union after the civil warIt barred Virginia from disenfranchising people except for certain common law felonies. And these are kind of like the big felonies like murder. And you know the the lawsuit talked about or was based on the idea that a lot of people convicted of drug felonies are being prohibited from voting the rest of their lives.23:09.04Sam ShiraziWhen really at the time that the Virginia was re-admitted to the union, The felonies they were thinking about were really like murder and rape and like the super serious felonies. So long story short, that was the legal argument is that Virginia, Virginia is violating the federal law.23:24.78Sam ShiraziAnd a judge, a federal judge this week agreed with the plaintiffs who brought that lawsuit and basically said, you’re right. Virginia cannot prevent people from voting who were convicted of felonies, except that There’s a certain kind of common law felonies that Virginia can prohibit people from voting, but like a drug offense, that’s a felony that that is not good enough to prevent someone from voting.23:51.12Sam ShiraziAnd another interesting thing is that the previous attorney general, Jason Meares, was fighting that lawsuit. and defending the Virginia law. And we’ll see what the current attorney general, Jay Jones, does. He hasn’t yet indicated whether he’ll appeal.24:06.82Sam ShiraziIn theory, he has the power not to appeal. And if he doesn’t appeal, then unless someone else intervenes, that ruling is going to be on the books. And while it’s similar to the constitutional amendment that’s coming up, it’s slightly more nuanced because with what the the judge said was essentially people convicted of these you know newer non-common law felonies, you can’t take away the right to vote to begin with. They can register to vote. So if you’re convicted of a drug felony, you can still register to vote in Virginia according to this judge’s ruling.24:41.38Sam ShiraziHowever, what the constitutional amendment is going to do is you you still lose your right to to vote under the constitutional amendment. It’s just once you get out of prison, you will get that automatically restored. So it’s a little bit of a different question.24:54.09Sam ShiraziIn some ways, solves the crux of the problem, but I don’t think the lawsuit would be automatically moved even if the constitutional amendment is passed because there’s slightly different legal issues.25:04.84Sam ShiraziAnd so all that’s to say is like there’s a lot of interesting stuff In these legal cases, especially this case, it brings up a lot of things about reconstruction. you know Why was that law passed that prohibited Virginia from disenfranchising people? Clearly, the people who allowed Virginia to come back to the union were worried that Virginia would start disenfranchising people.25:27.59Sam ShiraziAnd the concern was probably that they that they would disenfranchise Black people. And so they made part of the law that Virginia couldn’t disenfranchise people except for certain common law felonies.25:40.23Sam ShiraziAnd all all the way now in 2026, we are still talking about this. It’s still the the subject of a court case. And we’ll have to see where the court case goes. We’ll have to see where the redistricting referendum goes. But y all it goes to show you, I mean, part of the reason i like law is it it does involve a fair amount of history and you go back and you have to analyze, you know, why were certain laws passed?26:00.14Sam ShiraziWhat do they say? And I thought it was a creative legal argument from the people who brought this lawsuit because they found this old law that basically no one remembers and tried to apply it in the modern day. And I think a lot of people initially were skeptical, but this judge agreed with them. You know, we’ll see if Attorney General Jones decides to appeal it. You know, in theory, maybe someone else could try to come in and appeal it, even if it’s The attorney general’s office doesn’t want to appeal it.26:23.48Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, so super interesting stuff. Don’t always go into the ins and outs of all these legal nuance arguments, but I thought it’d be interesting because you will be hearing more about the redistricting lawsuit for sure.26:38.62Sam ShiraziAnd I just wanted to give people a little bit of sense of what the lawsuit’s even about and the likelihood that it may or may not succeed. We’ll just have to wait for it. i think my next episode will almost certainly be on the proposed maps the Democrats are trying to roll out in Virginia. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the transition of power that will happen today in Virginia as the inauguration of the new governor and lieutenant governor and attorney general happened today in Virginia.00:17.36Sam ShiraziAnd then we will go over some news in terms of what’s been going on with the redistricting referendum, which aside from the transition of power, the big news in Richmond is a lot of speculation about how things are going to be going with the redistricting referendum. And we got a little bit more clarity this week, so I’ll go over that. But first, I did want to talk about the inauguration, obviously historic inauguration for governor as we will the Virginia will have its first woman governor.00:46.26Sam Shirazifor Lieutenant Governor, another historic inauguration for her because Ghazal Hashmi will become the first Muslim person and the first South Asian person elected statewide in Virginia.00:57.15Sam ShiraziAnd Jay Jones will become the first Black Attorney General in Virginia history. Now, every time there’s an inauguration like this, either at the presidential level or at the state level, I often think about the beginning of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration speech, in my opinion, one of the best inauguration speech speeches in American history. and There’s kind of the a quote that i always remember.01:22.24Sam ShiraziIt doesn’t matter if the Republican or Democrats being inaugurated. I remember this quote from John F. Kennedy. He said, quote, we observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing in an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. And I think that captures...01:40.82Sam ShiraziYou know, the fact that, you know, these inaugurations, while obviously they’re celebrating one person winning the election, it really is a celebration of the fact that there is democracy in this country, for elections, freedom. And I think that’s ultimately what we’re celebrating because a lot of parts of the world don’t have don’t get the opportunity to do that. Obviously, there’s been. a lot of unrest going on in Iran, for example, and you see that people there are really struggling for their freedom.02:09.82Sam ShiraziAnd it’s nice to see here in Virginia that we will see a transition of power from a Republican to a Democrat. And, you know, there had been some tension between outgoing Governor Glanionkin and an incoming Governor Spanberger over the search for the UVA president. And there were some letters that went back and forth. But at the end of the day,02:31.22Sam ShiraziThis week in Richmond, they have seemed to patch things up and we’re all friendly with each other. And that’s nice to see in the sense of, you know, it’s important that there’ll be orderly transition of power.02:44.07Sam ShiraziAnd anyways, so... We will see the inauguration today, and then obviously Governor Spanberger and the other elected officials will be hi the hitting the ground running with their new administration trying to implement the agenda that people elected them to do, primarily focusing on the cost of living issue. I think Governor Spanberger, that will be her first priority because she knows that was what a lot of people voted for her to do is to try to make things more affordable. And so I’m sure that will be one of her top focuses as governor.03:17.97Sam ShiraziAnd I think, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see how things go in terms of the General Assembly, what kind of bills they send her. And yeah, anyways, I mean, in some ways, the inauguration is kind of the culmination of the election that happened last year in Virginia. It’s kind of the final Final moment that officially marks the transition of power as we saw the blue wave that came into Virginia last year come into office as the Democrats will have a trifecta for the first time since Governor Northam left office.03:49.42Sam ShiraziAnd it’s the first time, I think I mentioned this fact before, it’s the first time an incoming governor will have a trifecta in Virginia since Doug Wilder all the way way back after the 1989 election. So definitely historic election here in Virginia, historic inauguration. And, you know, I’m sure it’ll be interesting to see what Governor Spanberger says in her inauguration speech. So i don’t want to dwell on it too much. i think we’ll just have to wait and see how everything plays out. I did want to shift focus to a slightly different topic.04:19.06Sam Shiraziwhich is the redistricting referendum. Because as much as there is a lot of focus on affordability and things that, you know, more bread and butter issues, I think in terms of the pure politics of it, the redistricting referendum in the short term is going to take up a lot of oxygen for the General Assembly as they work to pass that through.04:39.62Sam ShiraziAnd then the other big thing that will have to happen is the campaign for the redistricting referendum will happen in the winter and spring. And that’s already starting to take shape. And just this week, we got more clarity about what the redistricting referendum is going to look like.04:56.62Sam ShiraziSo just for some context, the General Assembly actually so met on Wednesday before the inauguration of the new governor and lieutenant governor. and Attorney General. And so you had this you know three-day period where the executive branch was still controlled by the Republicans, yet the legislative branch was controlled by the Democrats. It was interesting to see Lieutenant Governor Earl Sears, she, in her final days in office, still presided over the Virginia Senate because she is still the Lieutenant Governor.05:24.10Sam ShiraziAnd I think you know she did that job. I’m sure it’s not easy after a tough campaign and and having a loss like that, but she came in and did her job and you know, at the end of the day, the Democrats are were in control of the state Senate and the House Delegates. And so typically what happens is they are trying to get the redistricting referendum going as soon as possible because they know that the clock is ticking in terms of trying to get that done this year. So really, the first thing the Virginia Democrats have done is try to move forward these constitutional amendments with redistricting getting the most attention. However, it’s important to remember redistricting is not the only referendum. There are three other referendums that the Democrats are trying to pass this year in Virginia.06:06.86Sam ShiraziThose are on reproductive rights. trying to enshrine that in the Virginia Constitution, trying to rep repeal the ban on same-sex marriage and enshrine the right to same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution, and then also restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies once they leave prison. So those are all also happening, but obviously the big national attention is on the redistricting referendum.06:29.33Sam Shirazithat is going to happen in the spring. And I wanted to update kind of a couple of things on the legal side of things and then on the political side. So on the legal side, there is a court case that is working its way through the system.06:41.08Sam ShiraziThe Republicans challenging the redistricting referendum, basically on kind of procedural grounds that they Virginia Democrats didn’t properly follow the Virginia constitution. The lower court didn’t stop the Democrats this week from moving forward with the redistricting referendum. And that’s not super surprising. Typically courts don’t want to get involved in the middle of a legislative process. Once everything is finalized, then the court might come in. And that’s basically what the lower court said. They basically said it was too early for us to get involved and we’re not going to tell the legislature what to do. Once they pass whatever they want to pass, then we can take a look at it. So the case is not settled.07:21.10Sam ShiraziI think once the final votes are in and and the referendum is going to be placed on the ballot, I think the Republicans will then go to the courts and try to block it. We’ll see what the lower court says. We’ll see if it eventually gets to the Virginia Supreme Court. So just keep in mind, there is that legal process in the background going on.07:38.86Sam Shiraziyou know As I mentioned, I think courts are often hesitant to get too involved in these political questions, particularly in Virginia, where you have a less political court system. So we’ll see if the you know legal challenges will go anywhere. But you know for now, let’s assume that redistricting will move forward. I think we got some clarity from the Virginia Democrats this week about what the redistricting referendum is going to look like.08:02.12Sam ShiraziSo the big question that we’re still waiting on is whether the map that will finally be passed if the redistricting referendum is successful, will there be a 10-1 map or a nine two map? Will there be a map with 10 Democrats and one Republican, or will it be nine Democrats and two Republicans? We still don’t know the answer to that, but we got a little bit of a clue about when we might get an answer because the Virginia Democrats basically said they will release the maps before the redistricting referendum and they said they would do it by January 30th. And so we’ll see what happens. I mean, i assume it’s going to be one map and they’re going to say, you know, vote for the referendum and you’ll get this map. It’s possible they release a few maps and say, well, one of these will be the maps.08:49.01Sam ShiraziWe’ll just have to wait and see. And I think that’ll answer the big question 10192.08:54.81Sam ShiraziI think there’s a lot of speculation about which one it’s going to be. Obviously, we’ll just have to wait and see. And once the maps come out, I’m sure I’ll do a podcast and do a whole episode on you know what the maps look like, what what happens if it passes.09:09.54Sam ShiraziAnd this week, we also kind of saw the beginnings of the redistricting campaign. I think the Democratic side or the yes side started putting out its first ad. And we can already see that both sides are going to have campaigns, yes and no.09:24.64Sam ShiraziThe National Democrats and National Republicans are going to fund both sides. So I think... that will be something that will be happening in the next few weeks and months in Virginia. And you know I wanted to kind of just think through what is the likelihood that this referendum will pass? I think on the side saying it will pass is basically the idea that if they be if the Democrats are able to make this a referendum on Trump,09:48.86Sam ShiraziI think there’s a higher likelihood it’s going to pass because you know the the actual question about redistricting and the maps, I think most people aren’t going to get into the nuances of that. They’re basically going to say, you know this is a way to maybe stick it to Trump or this is a way to stick it to the Democrats. you know if If you want to stick it to Trump, you’ll vote yes on the referendum. If you want to stick it to the Democrats, you’ll vote no on the referendum. I think that’s ultimately what the referendum is going to become. And if and if it does become that, that’s going to be good news for the Democrats.10:16.70Sam ShiraziI also think the Democrats are better organized. I think, you know at least in the short term, they kind of have to plan. they’ve beene They want to execute this. The Virginia Democrats are kind of riding high after the election results. And so they’re in a good place to try to run a campaign.10:31.87Sam ShiraziI think on the side of no, you know what do they have going for them? I think it’s basically Virginia is not that blue of a state. And so all you would need is basically all the Trump supporters to vote no. And then you just have to peel off some independents.10:48.66Sam ShiraziYou know, people who, you know, they might not like Trump, but they don’t like the idea of redistricting mid-cycle. i think there is a chance that could happen. But, you know, that was basically Jason Meyers’ strategy in the attorney general race. His strategy was, you know, I’ll get all the Republicans to vote for me and then I’ll peel off independence.11:05.12Sam ShiraziAnd he really wasn’t able to do that because the attorney general race, again, kind of became a referendum. Do you like Trump or you don’t like Trump? And so I think the Virginia Republicans do have a challenge. What they have going for them, like I said, is Virginia is not that blue of a state. I mean, Harris only won it by 6% in 2024. Obviously, Spanberger had a big landslide last year by 15%. And again, you know, what is the turnout going to look like?11:30.20Sam Shiraziyou know If it’s a lower turnout, that’s probably better for Democrats because they’re more fired up. They have more high propensity voters. So I think the lower the turnout, frankly, the better for the Democrats in the redistricting referendum.12:12.36Sam ShiraziSo I think it’s going to be a really interesting campaign. you know Virginia typically doesn’t have these one-off referendum campaigns. When there are referendums in Virginia, they’re usually on the general election ballot.12:26.66Sam ShiraziAnd so I think this is a pretty unique election for Virginia. pretty That makes it unpredictable because we don’t really have a lot of previous precedent for this type of thing. And yeah, so it’ll be it’ll be really interesting.12:39.64Sam Shirazito see how the campaign plays out. I think we got a little bit more clarity about what might happen. i think the maps are the really big question mark at this point, and we’re just going to wait and see what it looks like.12:52.92Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to kind of explain some of the dynamics between 9-2 and 10-1. So I think the people pushing 10-1, that means 10 Democrats and one Republican, I think the logic from that side of the Democratic aisle is basically After California, Virginia is the only other state that’s going to redistrict mid-cycle. And we don’t know what the Republicans are going to do in Florida. it’s It’s possible they’re going to try to gerrymander Florida to the max even more. I mean, Florida is already gerrymandered and it’s possible they’re going to gerrymander to the max in Florida. And so we in Virginia need to gerrymander as much as we can because we’re basically the only state that can gerrymander at this point. And so the logic being, you know, we got to push this 10-1 and, you know,13:37.56Sam ShiraziIf some incumbents aren’t happy, you know it is what it is. If the Republicans aren’t happy, you know whatever. like It does ultimately doesn’t matter. This basically has become a referendum on Trump. And no matter what map we propose, if people are upset at Trump, we’re going to win the referendum campaign. I mean, that’s kind of the logic behind 10-1 map.13:55.54Sam ShiraziI think, and so the people, you know, my sense is the people supporting a 10-1 map are more the national Democrats. You know, it kind of logically makes sense that Hakeem Jeffries and the House Democrats will want the Virginia Democrats to go maximum.14:07.62Sam ShiraziI think you’ve heard certainly State Senator Luis Lucas, who is the president pro temp of the Virginia Senate, being very vocal about wanting to be 10-1, and even Speaker Don Scott in the House of Delegates. He has also been open to the idea of a 10-1 map. So you you kind of have, it seems like the General Assembly is,14:25.56Sam Shiraziwants to do more of a 10 one type map and even David Bussi, M.D.: people who you wouldn’t necessarily think of as supporting a 10 one map like state Senator Skylar Van Valkenburg, who was a big supporter of the redistricting amendment back in 2020 David Bussi, he has said he’s open to a 10 one map because I think This essentially seems like a very unique situation, kind of an exception because of what happened in Texas and potentially Florida and and North Carolina and some of these other states. So that’s kind of the 10-1 side of things.14:53.91Sam ShiraziI think on the 9-2 side, they’ve been less vocal. you know this is just me maybe reading the tea leaves. My sense is Spanberger potentially could be more supportive of a 9-2 map.15:05.34Sam ShiraziPartly, I think that’s kind of her political temperament. She’s less partisan, I would say, than some other Democrats. Partly, I think she’s also maybe being realistic. A 9-2 map would be more likely to win in a referendum because if you if you show someone a 9-2 map,15:20.32Sam Shiraziand say, will you vote for the referendum? you know They might be somewhat favorable to that, like an independent voter. But if you show them a 10-1 map, they might have some doubts because it seems too extreme. So I think there’s kind of this pragmatic argument that you know while you know whatever, 10-1 in the ideal world might be best, I think we should be safe, do 9-2. That way, the referendum is more likely to pass.15:42.20Sam ShiraziI can see Spanberger potentially you know making that argument. And then, you know I’m just again speculating, I think some of the incumbents you know may prefer a 9-2 map because you can draw a 9-2 map where basically most of the incumbents are protected. they won’t Their districts look roughly the same as they are right now.16:02.66Sam ShiraziAnd essentially all you would do is make the fifth district a Charlottesville to Roanoke seat, and that only hurt really hurts the Republicans. Whereas if you draw a 10-1 map, I think all the incumbent Democratic Congress people will have to have slightly different maps, and some of them will have to have very different maps. And I think they’re going to be hesitant to do that just because that opens them up to primary challenges. you know I’m just being realistic about the nature of how people you know politicians think and and their main concern. So you know you kind of see this dynamic that maybe Spanberger and the Virginia House des congressional Dems might be16:38.78Sam Shirazimore in favor of a 9-2 map, and then you have the General Assembly and the Hakeem Jeffries trying to push a 10-1 map. And, you know, I guess the one other thing I should say is you often hear things like, oh this is all within the General Assembly. you know, Spanberger doesn’t play a role. I mean, generally it’s true that referendums to the Virginia Constitution are completely within the General Assembly. The governor doesn’t play a role putting them on, at least getting them passed initially in terms of potentially having a referendum.17:08.58Sam ShiraziHowever, the mechanics of having a referendum, putting it on the ballot, funding a referendum campaign, and then the mechanics of actually having the new maps in 2026, for example, changing the primary dates, that all requires legislation. So Spanberger does have a role You know, theoretically, if we had a Republican governor, this wouldn’t be happening because the Republican governor could just veto everything.17:31.59Sam ShiraziI don’t anticipate Spanberger vetoing this, but I think behind the scenes, maybe she’ll be using some of her influence to try to and see what the final maps look like. And, you know, at the end of the day,18:25.56Sam ShiraziIt was done by the Virginia Supreme Court because the redistricting commission was not able to draw the maps. So the person who probably got hurt the most by Virginia redistricting was a Elaine Luria. So her district became somewhat more red and she ended up losing in 2022. But I think the second biggest loser of Virginia redistricting the last round was Spanberger because one, her district kind of shifted from central Virginia and the Richmond area up to northern Virginia.18:52.40Sam ShiraziAnd then two, you know her district, while it did become bluer, I think was still a competitive seat and in territory that she was not super familiar with. She decided to run in that district. She didn’t face a primary challenge.19:06.90Sam ShiraziAnd then she won the general election in a pretty competitive race. So I think Spanberger has gone through the redistricting process. She knows what it’s like to have that uncertainty.19:17.14Sam ShiraziSo it’ll be kind of interesting to see a governor who has also served as a member of Congress, has gone through redistricting, knows what that’s like. And I think she’s kind of the biggest wild card here because she has power, she has influence. I don’t think she’s going to you know, in public go out and say a lot about redistricting, but I do think behind the scenes, it’ll be interesting to see the role she plays. So, yeah, I mean, i i kind of wanted to kind of explain what I’m seeing with Virginia redistricting right now. I will have more info and more speculation as we get more info. I think the big the big unknown is just19:52.04Sam Shiraziwhat do the proposed map by the Democrats look like? We got a little bit clarity, because I i wasn’t sure if the Virginia Democrats were actually gonna release the map before the referendum. They’ve confirmed that they’re gonna do that. They said that they’re gonna do it by January 30th.20:04.70Sam ShiraziSo that’ll be a big date when they do release the new maps. I’ll probably do a podcast immediately after that. And so anyways, I will continue to cover things in Virginia, always interesting.20:17.73Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fallout. And i’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode we will look at the shadow of 2025 in 2026 and just what all the election fallout will be after we saw the Democratic blue wave in Virginia that happened in 2025.00:19.89Sam ShiraziSo to begin, I hope everyone had a good holiday, New Year. Obviously, I took a little bit of a break and there was still things going on, but there wasn’t as much to cover over the holidays. I did want to get back and just kind of give a preview of what this year would look like and also just talk about how 2025 fits into 2026.00:40.97Sam ShiraziObviously, the name of this podcast, it really was focused on the 2025 Virginia elections. But I do think that there is a justification to continue it into 2026, because really Virginia in 2026 is going to be defined by 2025. I think 2025, the story in Virginia was the federal fallout, everything going on in DC. That defined both what was going on in Virginia and also the election ultimately. And I think 2026, a lot of the story in Virginia will be the shadow of 2025, the fallout from 2025.01:13.23Sam ShiraziI think while there’s obviously a lot going on in D.C., it’s unlikely Republicans are going to be able to pass any sort of major bill like they did in 2025. I think while there’s still major changes going on to the federal government, I think the initial kind of shock and awe of both Doge and the changes that Trump administration have made have kind of settled in, for lack of a better word, and things have stabilized to a certain extent in the federal government. And I think the people who left, for the most part, had kind of departed. I’m sure there will be more departures, but most of the departures happened last year from the federal government.01:47.59Sam ShiraziSo I think in that sense, things have somewhat stabilized. Obviously, the hit to the Virginia economy is still going to be a major story in 2026. But I do think a lot of the story of this year in Virginia is going to be the Democratic trifecta, the amount of power that they have now, given the scale of the wind that they got in 2025, and really, you know from their perspective, the mandate that they got in 2025. So I kind of wanted to talk about a few things that are going to be happening this year in Virginia.02:13.83Sam Shiraziwith the caveat that a lot of it is shaped by what’s going on in 2025. And, you know, 2026, it’s a midterm. Those elections are kind of independent of the state elections. Those are federal elections. But I do think, particularly because of redistricting, they’re going to be shaped a lot by what happened in 2025.02:29.40Sam ShiraziSo we can go ahead and get started with that. I guess at the beginning, I don’t want to go into all the ins and outs of it because there’s a lot of special elections coming up. You know, just an immediate fallout of what happened 2025. There are a lot of special elections at the beginning of 2026. A lot of people are leaving to join the Spanberger administration.02:47.66Sam ShiraziJust this week, there was an announcement that State Senator Adam Ebbin, he will be resigning in February to join the Spanberger administration. so there’s going to be a special election for his state Senate seat in Arlington and Alexandria.03:01.13Sam ShiraziAnd then current delegate Elizabeth Bennett Parker has announced that she’s running for Eben’s state Senate seat. I think there’s a decent chance she will end up winning that. And so she will do resign in her House of Delegates seat. So there’s probably going to be another special election in the House of Delegates. And that doesn’t even count the other three House of Delegates special elections that are coming up.03:20.62Sam ShiraziThere were two special elections on January 6th that the Democrats easily won in Richmond, in the Richmond area for the state Senate and House of Delegates. So long story short, there are going to be a lot of special elections in Virginia.03:33.09Sam ShiraziNone of them are super interesting just because they are very deep blue seats. There’s not really any risk the Democrats are going to lose any of these seats. Some of the Democratic nomination fights for those seats might be interesting, but there’s You know, they’ve most of them have passed and there’s only going to be two more nominees going to be determined for those Northern Virginia seats that I just mentioned. So long story short, lot of special elections. I’m not going to go with the ins and outs of them just because they’re not super interesting from the standpoint of being competitive, but just shows you that a lot of what’s going on in Virginia in 2026, like these special elections are because Spanberger won in 2025. They’re kind of the fallout from that. And we’re going to continue to see that throughout the year in Virginia.04:16.00Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to start with perhaps the biggest unknown in Virginia this year, and that’s redistricting. So next week, the Democrats will come back and the Republicans will come back to Richmond, but the Democrats will have a big majority in the House of Delegates. They will have 64 seats.04:30.81Sam Shiraziout of 100. In the state Senate, they still have a relatively narrow majority of 19 to 21, sorry, 21 to 19 majority in the state Senate. However, they now control the lieutenant governor’s gavel. And so that means they have extra power because the lieutenant governor presides over the state Senate. So both in the House of Delegates and the state Senate, the Democrats are going to have more power and they’re going to be starting to flex their muscles next week in Richmond.05:16.16Sam ShiraziSo, So what happens now? So the first step is in the House of Delegates and the state Senate, the Democrats need to vote on the redistricting amendment again. Presumably that will pass.05:25.99Sam ShiraziAnd then there will be a there the’ll need to be a process to set up a referendum. That will face a legal challenge. And so in theory, the Republicans will try to block it in the courts and we’ll see if that goes anywhere. These are mainly state legal challenges based on kind of procedural things and just kind of specific language of the state constitution, did the Democrats you know follow all the procedures that are required to get a referendum on the ballot? you know We’ll see how it plays out. My gut is telling me that the courts don’t want to get super involved in this and that they would prefer the voters to make the decision. So they’ll let the voters do the referendum and whatever that happens, happens.06:21.24Sam ShiraziIf the referendum passes, then the Democrats will then have to do some legislation to potentially change the date of the primary because you know realistically the June primary date is coming up. The filing deadlines are coming up. and if you’re going to have completely new maps, you’re going to need to give people time to run. you’re goingnna have to change some of those timelines. So There’s a lot of legislation that will still have to happen even once the redistricting amendment passes in terms of getting the the lines going in Virginia.06:53.42Sam Shiraziyou know i think if the redistricting referendum happens in the April timeframe, that will dominate you know the first half of the year in Virginia because there will be there’ll be a referendum campaign. There’s going to be a yes side, a no side. i assume the National Party is going to come in, fund both of those efforts.07:11.54Sam ShiraziThere’s going to be money and ads. And so going to have this whole election basically in the spring revolving around the referendum. I think, you know, Democrats feel pretty good about it. They want to...07:24.51Sam ShiraziThey want to make this essentially a referendum on Trump. If you like Trump, then you’re going to vote no. If you want to send a message and vote against Trump, you will vote yes on the redistricting referendum. That’s kind of the clean way to just, you like Trump, no. You you you don’t like Trump, yes. you know The reality, it’s going to be a little bit nuant more nuanced than that. But these things tend to just become referendums on the incumbent president. We saw that in California.07:50.22Sam ShiraziAnd so that’s kind of the redistricting fight and the referendum that’s going to happen. Assuming the redistricting passes, which you know is not 100 percent. And I will you know i will do a another podcast at some point on the redistricting referendum itself. But assuming it passes, then you know you’re going to have brand new lines. The question becomes, do the Democrats go maximum and try to get 10 Democratic seats out of 11 in Virginia or they go nine two They try to get nine Democratic seats out of Virginia.08:18.71Sam ShiraziA lot of unknowns. We’ve heard kind of some mixed messaging about that from Governor Spanberger versus the House of Delegates and the State Senate. So a lot of unknowns. you know we’ll We’ll just have to wait and see what ends up happening with redistricting. But I think it’s going to be a really important discussion.08:34.91Sam Shiraziconversation that’s going take up a lot of the political space in Virginia in the first half of the year. And I do think it’s it’s going to be interesting to have that referendum because typically in Virginia, every once in a while we’ll have kind of a partisan contested referendum, but Virginia is not like California where like every year there’s 20 referendums. Referendums are relatively rare.08:57.56Sam ShiraziThere are nonpartisan or bipartisan referendums that happened. The last referendum, I believe, was 2024, was basically was basically on the a tax credit or tax deduction for veterans who were, or widows of veterans who who died in action. And so it was very nonpartisan.09:17.13Sam ShiraziAnd so this is really going to be one of the first really hot button events Jr.: referendums we’ve had in a while in Virginia that is very clear, you know, Dem versus Republican type referendum. So that’s going to be a really interesting fight this year in Virginia. Don’t want to forget the other constitutional amendments. The Democrats have been working on these for a while. One of them is to enshrine reproductive rights in the Virginia constitution.09:40.46Sam ShiraziThe other one is to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage and protect same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution. And the final one is to end the automatic disenfranchisement of people convicted of felonies for the rest of their lives.09:54.60Sam ShiraziThis would re-enfranchise people once they serve their their prison sentence. you All those, I think, are going to relatively likely going to pass. I’m I haven’t really heard, are those going to be on November or are they going to be in April? I think that might be a question mark. I’m sure at some point the Democrats will make a decision about whether they want those referendums to be on the April ballot or the November ballot. I think it’s probably cleaner to do it in November because the April referendum will just be on one topic and it’s not going to get mixed up with all these other things. So i I’m guessing they’re going to do redistricting in the spring.10:30.18Sam ShiraziSo those are the constitutional amendments, and that’s already a lot. And none of that could have happened unless the Democrats won the House of Delegates in 2025. And not only did the Democrats win the House of Delegates, they got a landslide in the House of Delegates. So all that’s to say is we’re already seeing these constitutional amendments, they’re happening because the Democrats won the House of Delegates in 2025.11:32.14Sam ShiraziThe question becomes, you know, how far do the Democrats go? My gut is telling me this first General Assembly session, they are not going to be pushing too much. They’re not going to be going too too fast, going too progressive just yet. I think a lot of it will be more pragmatic things, things focused on cost of living, more... things to maybe speed up housing and do some sort of just kind of kitchen table type bills that are not necessarily super controversial. You know, there there will be a lot of political minefields with things like an assault weapons ban, right to work. you know There’s a whole conversation about that. I think that is all going to get worked out. I’m not sure if this first General Assembly session, every single bill is going to be worked out. Remember, Spanberger is going be in office for four years. And in all likelihood, I mean, given the way 2025 happened, 2027 is also going to be a a good a good year for the Democrats. So it’s it’s almost certain that12:31.25Sam ShiraziSpammerger is going to have a democratic trifecta for four years. So there’s a lot of time to pass the legislation. I suspect all the Democrats know that. I don’t think they have this feeling they have to get everything done this year. so and And typically what you see in the General Assembly is there’s an attitude of, oh, let’s do a study. Let’s you know sit on it for a year. So I do think some of the more hot button topics, there may be some delay. There may be kind of initial...12:57.20Sam Shiraziyou know, kicking around ideas and then they eventually will become law, but maybe not this first go around. So long story short, a lot of legislation that’s potentially going to come down the pipeline. And I think that’s where, again, the the fallout from 2025 is going to be felt in 2026.13:15.02Sam ShiraziThe other thing I should mention is the attorney general’s office is going to be changed. And, you know, the new attorney general, Jay Jones, you know All indication is he is going to start joining these lawsuits against the Trump administration.13:26.26Sam ShiraziThere are going to be a lot of different things that he’s going to have a very different position on than the current attorney general, outgoing attorney general Jason Meares. So again, another fallout from 2025 where we’re going to have a totally different attorney general’s office in Virginia.14:09.28Sam ShiraziAnd then the house the the House of Representatives races in Virginia are all going to be defined by redistricting if it passes. And there’s a possibility, you know, as much as I like competitive elections, there’s a possibility, you know, the reason why you redistrict, the reason why you gerrymander is so you don’t have competitive elections. And no matter the final number, 9-2-10-1,14:31.26Sam Shirazithe Democrats are pretty much going to draw these seats, at least for 2026, to be pretty safe. So as much as we love, you know, these elections that could be toss-ups, I don’t really see that happening if the maps change in Virginia, because there’s really no reason to draw a toss up toss-up districts if you’re the Democrats. You know, potentially some of the primaries might be interesting, in theory, in some of these districts, although,14:55.76Sam ShiraziIn the second district, it looks like Elaine Luria is in the driver’s seat for the nomination. In the first district, it looks like Shannon Taylor is in the driver’s seat. In the fifth district, it looks like Tom Perriello is in the driver’s seat. So, you know, even the primaries might not be super interesting next year this year, excuse me, in Virginia. so you know, all that’s to say is that is all because of what happened in 2025.15:16.80Sam Shiraziyou you know A lot of people were surprised by the redistricting announcement that was made at the end. And I do think that the Democrats wouldn’t have done that if unless they were confident and that and they were they were confident that they were going win big. And it didn’t really matter if they went ahead with redistricting. And you know I spent a lot of time on this podcast kind of talking about you know who’s up, who’s down.15:38.76Sam Shiraziyou know I suspect the Democrats were getting some of their internals back and and they knew that it was going to be a... pretty big wave. And so they said, you know, why not? Let’s let’s just go forward with redistricting.15:50.32Sam ShiraziAnd it was the right call from their perspective because they won the election big and now they’re in the position to do redistricting. So all that’s to say is, you know, as I will cover a lot of what’s going on this year in Virginia, but a lot of it was already decided in 2025. Like if, especially if redistricting passes, I mean, if redistricting passes, like the 2026 midterms are not going to be super interesting in Virginia, unless for some reason the Democrats decided to draw a toss up district because,16:19.74Sam ShiraziO’ already been kind of decided what Virginia will look like in 2026 and you know these maps if they pass. David they’re going to be our maps in 2028 and 2030 because the redistricting doesn’t happen until 2031 when Virginia gets its new census data so in some ways, the 2025 elections might be with us all the way.16:41.87Sam Shirazithrough 2030, even past the next governor’s election in 2029. So they really were significant elections. I spent so much time last year on the Virginia elections because i you know I knew they were important and I knew that potentially they would have a long-term impact on Virginia. And we talked about the three other constitutional amendments besides redistricting. Those will go into the Virginia constitution And it’s very hard to change the Virginia Constitution. So I think there’s a good chance those will pass. They will have long-term implications on the Virginia Constitution.18:05.59Sam Shiraziyou know they are gonna want this to be 2025 for the rest of time. To be honest, I think for the rest of trump the Trump administration, I think the Virginia Democrats are probably in a pretty good spot in terms of their ability to win elections.18:21.02Sam ShiraziI think 2027, as I mentioned, they’re gonna in all likelihood hold hold the House of Delegates and probably gain seats in the state Senate. And so the question really becomes,18:32.47Sam Shirazifor the Democrats, you know what do they do long term? And I know Don Scott, the Speaker of the House, has kind of thought about this idea. And so has Dan Helmer, Delegate Dan Helmer, who was the campaign chair for the Democrats. How do they have long term power in Virginia? Because what we saw last time Trump was in office, the Democrats Matt Bolian, M.D. made lot of gains like they in 2025 but then in 2021 they kind of lost a lot of those gains and they had to go back to rebuilding because they didn’t really structure it in a way that was long term, and I think. Matt Bolian, There’s a possibility now that the democrats are going to try to.19:10.22Sam Shirazicreate a more long-term blue Virginia, so to speak. I do think it’s a challenge because Virginia does tend to swing so much. And 2029 is going to be really interesting.19:22.06Sam ShiraziAnd I think in the back of the minds of Speaker Scott and Spanberger and State Senate Majority Leader Scott Servo is kind of this idea about how far do we push things you know If we go too far, then perhaps there will be a backlash in 2029.19:38.19Sam ShiraziNow, realistically, most of that will probably be down to the presidential election. Do the Democrats win the presidential election in 2028? I think if the Republicans win the presidential election in 2028, almost certainly Democrats are going to continue winning the local state elections in Virginia in 2029.20:28.14Sam ShiraziThey are not gonna mount a serious challenge to Mark Warner. And so it’s possible that they could lose you know two to three more members of Congress or even more than that if redistricting happens. So they’re not in a good place. I don’t really know what the rebuilding is gonna look like on their end.20:48.38Sam ShiraziI really think the only thing that will really start bringing them back is if the Democrats win the presidential election in 2028. and they can kind of do what Youngkin did in 2021 and try to rebuild. you know That’s not a great message or for Republicans in Virginia, and you’re trying to get your people back organized. But at the end of the day, you know it is what it is. i think politics is very cyclical, and especially in Virginia, things are really tied to national politics. Now, hypothetically, if the term but Trump becomes a lot more popular. His administration is doing a lot of things that boost his approval rating. you know21:23.80Sam ShiraziCould the Virginia Republicans make a comeback? Sure. But I think right now it’s just unlikely. And you know the reality is we’ve kind of entered a a phase where it’s very hard to be an incumbent government in any part of the world. you know Joe Biden find and count Kamala Harris found that out. I think you know we’ll see how the midterms shape up. But I think Donald Trump and J.D. Vance might find that out because people are you know struggling economically and it’s hard to make you know immediate big changes to people’s lives. And I think it’s’s it’s hard to be in power. And that’s a long way of saying Abigail Spamberger may also find that out because you know she’s made affordability a big part of her campaign.22:01.91Sam ShiraziShe will try to do her best, but there’s only so much you can do at the state level versus the federal level versus, you know, some of these are just big intractable problems. And we’ll see how she ends up doing as governor. I do think Virginia governors tend to be popular for whatever reason. They’re usually have net positive approval ratings. We saw this with Governor Youngkin for most of his term. He had a positive approval rating. We saw that with Governor Northam, Governor McAuliffe, Governor McDonnell. Most Virginia governors tend to have positive approvals. Even if the president of their own party is struggling, they tend to have positive approval. So all that’s to say is you know I think it’ll be interesting to see how Spanberger does as governor.22:42.76Sam Shiraziwhat her priorities will be, how she works with the General Assembly. Does she try to moderate the General Assembly? is she going to be you know Are the progressives going to be maybe a thorn at her side? Is she going to be able to to manage that relationship? So a lot going on in Virginia, a lot of interesting dynamics.22:59.46Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, going back to the theme of the podcast, at least this episode, a lot of those dynamics are shaped by 2025 and the scale of the Democratic victory. The fact that they, you know, not that they just won, but they just got such a big victory that it’s kind of indisputable that they’re going to come in and make big changes.23:16.12Sam ShiraziWe’re going to see how that plays out. I think it’s going to be really interesting year. As I mentioned, I’m not going to do as many podcasts. I think There’ll be some interesting things that will happen along the way that i I will definitely highlight. I will definitely do the redistricting referendum if it happens. I will do the congressional primaries. I’ll do the congressional general elections. But again, because it was such a big Democratic landslide in 2025, I don’t know how many competitive races there will be in 2026 in Virginia. So a lot of interesting stuff. Virginia politics is always you know fun and we’re always going to have an election and I’ll do my best to cover it and23:52.58Sam Shiraziyou know I appreciate everyone who listened in 2025. I appreciate everyone who will be listening in 2026. I will try to do my best. And I will, you know again, not do as many podcasts as I did last year, but I’ll try to keep up with it. And yeah. So anyways, I appreciate everyone who’s listened to me. This has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

00:00.44Sam ShiraziHi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode we will first go over just some updates about special elections that will happen early next year in Virginia. And then I wanted to kind of wrap up the year with some of my final thoughts on 2025 and give you a little bit of a sense of what I might be doing in the new year with the podcast.Sam ShiraziSo before we get to that, the first thing I wanted to go over was the special elections. In the beginning of the new year in Virginia, I wanted to just give you an update about the nominations for the three House of Delegates special elections. The first special election will be on January 6th. That will be House District 77. The current incumbent, Mike Jones. He is resigning to run for the state Senate in the seat that Ghazala Hashmi has resigned. So in that House of Delegates district, there was actually kind of a surprise in the firehouse primary where the expected front runner Michelle Mosby was not able to win. Instead, former ACLU attorney Charlie Schmidt won the nomination. And I think that was a pretty big surprise because Michelle Mosby had a lot of endorsements, including from Mike Jones, the delegate who was about to resign. And I think it just goes to show you, you never really know what’s going happen in these firehouse primaries. These tend to be very low turnout elections because they’re party run primaries and it’s just less well known than the regular primaries and regular elections. And this one, you know, I think it just goes to show you if so if a candidate runs a good campaign and is able to get out their supporters,01:36.60Sam Shirazithey’re going be able to pull out the upset. So that’s what happened in this House of Delegates district. The other two House Delegates districts, they were not surprises. I think the front runners, the people we expected to win, did end up winning. So in House District 23, this is where current incumbent Candi King is resigning to take a place in the Spanberger administration. Margaret Angela Franklin won the nomination as expected. And then in House District 11,02:15.28Sam ShiraziSo a lot of just kind of quick updates on the special elections next year. The House District 77 special election will be on January 6th. The two other House Delegates special elections will be on January 13th. I haven’t yet heard of any more special elections, although in Virginia there will always be elections coming up. Obviously, New Year, I talked about redistricting, there’ll be midterms, so a lot to cover in the New Year.02:41.29Sam ShiraziBefore I kind of shift to what 2026 might look like, I did want to just kind of have some reflections on 2025 and look back on the year and some of the lessons.02:51.52Sam ShiraziAnd they aren’t necessarily like as the exact thoughts that I’ve expressed the entire podcast. I kind of wanted to do a little bit bigger picture stuff and a little bit more, you know, looking forward to what 2025 in Virginia teaches us about elections and politics.03:06.96Sam ShiraziOne thing I wanted to note, so the name of the podcast, Federal Fallout, I think at the beginning when I started this, I had a feeling that there was going to be a big impact on to what was going on in D.C. and Virginia, and that ended up happening.03:18.88Sam ShiraziI want to give a shout out to Blue Virginia Lowell Feld, who runs that site, put together a list of what he considered to be the top political stories in Virginia in 2025.03:30.29Sam ShiraziAnd he listed number one, not the election itself, but he listed federal fallout as the number one Virginia political story. Now, I wish I could say that the number one political story was the podcast, Federal Fallout. He didn’t necessarily mean the podcast, although he did mention it. He really meant the concept of Federal Fallout, the idea that what happened in D.C. with the federal cuts and everything else going on DC was going to impact the Virginia elections. I think that really was the big picture story of the year in Virginia. The elections were kind of a consequence of that. I mean, obviously there was kind of candidate specific dynamics that we saw in the governor’s race and the attorney general race, but kind of the overarching theme of the election was really what was going on in DC. You could also argue, I think in hindsight, the issue of affordability and economic issues and cost of living04:22.94Sam ShiraziI think that was also important. You know, obviously they’re kind of intertwined to what’s going on in D.C. And and so I think that’s all kind of what happened this year in Virginia. And kind of in hindsight, I mean, none of it was really super surprising that that’s what was going to happen given what was going on in D.C. And I think specifically with DOGE,04:41.74Sam ShiraziI mean, I think when DOGE happened, it was pretty clear what was going to happen this year in Virginia because of just the scale of it and the impact that it had in Virginia. And so that’s kind of what gave me the idea for Federal Fallout. That’s why i did the podcast.04:56.90Sam ShiraziAs you can tell, It was a bit of a labor of love for me. I just did this because I thought it was interesting. I thought it’d be interesting to talk about the Virginia election, have some guests on.05:07.33Sam ShiraziI didn’t make any money off of the podcast as much as I you know, enjoy doing it. It wasn’t something that was I was doing for money. No one was telling me what to do on the podcast. No one was, you know, feeding me lines or anything like that. I really did it because I felt partly it was kind of a something I thought I could give back to people and and give them context to what’s going on in Virginia. I know I’ve gotten good feedback from a lot of people and I appreciate that.05:33.38Sam ShiraziPart of it was also just my personal interest in the election. It allowed me to really dive deep, allowed me to really think about the election, think about what was going on. And I think one of the challenges when you are a political analyst, when you’re doing these podcasts, especially when you’re trying to be objective, is to try to figure out what is going on.05:52.84Sam ShiraziAnd I think particularly in this election, I think it was important to really just kind of not overthink things and just look at the reality of what was going on in Virginia with the Federal Fallout, with the economic situation, with a lot of what was going on in D.C. And it kind of reminded me of a quote from George Orwell. It’s kind of a famous quote, but it says, he said that to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. And I think that’s kind of a good summary of and of what the challenge in politics is to kind of figure out what is right in front of it your face. And I think so sometimes it’s so easy to get tied up into what’s going on in social media or tied up on, you know, the latest story that you kind of lose sight of the bigger picture.06:38.56Sam Shiraziand you know, in this election, i think it was... kind of clear when you had so many stories about the impacts on Virginia that that was going to be a big part of the election this year. And I think part of the challenge when you are the political analyst trying to figure out what’s going on is to really focus on the present. And I think the present is really hard to get your mind around. And you know I think the past is pretty easy. You can kind of go back and figure out what happened in past elections.07:07.26Sam ShiraziThe future is kind of hard to know. It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. you know. The present is really the challenge. it’s you know It’s knowable, but it’s also difficult to know. And you know the reason I say all this is I think the Republicans, and and this is this happens every party that wins a presidential election, they’re stuck in the presidential year. They are stuck in 2024.07:27.24Sam ShiraziThey want it to be 2024 forever. But obviously things change. And I think the Democrats have to be careful not to fall into a similar trap about 2025. Like, you know, the Virginia Democrats, they’re going to want it to be 2025 forever. You know, this was a great year.07:42.08Sam ShiraziThey did really well at the top of the ticket. They flipped so many House of Delegates seats. They want to make it 2025 for the rest of time. We saw this with the Virginia Republicans after 2021. I think this was one of the problems Glenn Youngkin fundamentally had during his time as governor. He just kind of always felt like it was 2021. He never really shifted from 2021. And I think...08:01.42Sam Shiraziand you know I think Spanberger, it’ll be interesting to see what she does. My sense is she’s pretty good at gauging public opinion. And I don’t think she’s the type of politician that’ll be stuck in one moment for the rest of her time in office.08:15.56Sam ShiraziAnd so all that’s to say is just because 2025 ended up one way, just because 2024 ended up one way, it doesn’t mean future elections are going up like that. 2026 is going to be different than 2025.08:27.69Sam ShiraziAnd that’s why I’m saying like being... connected to the present in politics is very difficult to get the kind of current pulse on the electorate, on what’s going on, the issues that are important.08:39.12Sam ShiraziIt’s just, it’s a challenge. And I think what this election kind of showed is that, you know, the issues that were hot in 2024, some of them are still hot, some of them are not hot. And the issues that are going to be hot in 2025, some of them going to relevant in 2026, some of them are not going to relevant.08:55.32Sam ShiraziAnd so I think it’s just really important for all politicians and all of us to kind of not get sucked into kind of one time frame for the rest of time. And it’s a challenge. And I think it requires a lot of work. I mean, this podcast, and it I tend to not have a lot of notes, so i’m not it doesn’t take me necessarily a long time to prepare for the podcast.09:16.62Sam ShiraziBut to kind of follow everything, to think about everything, to kind of synthesize everything in my mind, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort. As much as I love doing it, it is you know pretty challenging to try to to balance that with everything else I got going on.09:33.16Sam ShiraziAnd so that’s a long way of saying to to kind of shift to 2026. Virginia is going to be interesting. Obviously, redistricting is a big unknown. Frankly, if redistricting passes, I think the midterms might not be super exciting because we might know what’s gonna happen. The districts are basically going to be like drawn to a elect a certain number of Democrats, a certain number of Republicans.09:55.51Sam ShiraziI think if the district lines don’t change, it could be a little bit more interesting in the second and the first district. But, you know, obviously, those are probably going to be the main districts that will be competitive in Virginia if the lines don’t change.10:10.62Sam ShiraziAnd so all that’s to say is, you know as much as I’d like to kind of do the same amount of podcasting for 2026, I just don’t think it really makes sense in Virginia because there just isn’t necessarily a lot to cover for the midterms beyond the redistricting battle.10:28.46Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll do my updates. I don’t intend to do zero podcasts in 2026. I think I will do some podcasts every once in a while if there’s a big moment like redistricting, or maybe the primaries, but they’re going to be less frequent.10:42.05Sam ShiraziAnd I don’t think I really kind of had the bandwidth to do as many guest interviews. And and so as much as, you know, it pains me to say, I’m not going to have as much podcasting in 2026 as in 2025. You know, I had thought about maybe doing a general midterms podcast, like nationwide, but you know To be honest, just as like you know candor to the listener, i don’t know if I have the expertise and or the ability to spend the time to really synthesize 50 states’ elections.11:13.38Sam ShiraziI’m pretty good in Virginia. There’s a lot of great people out there. I’ve had some of them on as guests. I feel pretty confident when I talk about Virginia elections. Other states, obviously, I follow what’s going on. I know other states, but I’m not the same sort of expert in other states. And I don’t really just want to...11:29.56Sam Shiraziyou know say things that I’m not pretty sure about. So all that’s to say is I don’t think I’m going do some sort of midterms podcast. I think what I’m going to be doing is focusing on Virginia in 2026, as I have been more so on social media. So if you follow me on social media, you’ll keep seeing my posts.11:47.64Sam ShiraziI think the podcast is helpful in certain instances where there’s a lot of news or there’s something I want to share. But I don’t think I’m going to do the weekly podcast every Saturday morning. i don’t think I’m gonna have you know as many interviews just because, to be honest, it’s just it is a lot of work. And 2025, there was a lot of material. Virginia elections, really interesting. 100 House of Delegates, three statewides. you know Not to say that the midterms in Virginia going to be interesting, just a little less.12:17.10Sam ShiraziAnd it’ll be interesting to see how the Democrats govern. You know, I’m not, I’m more of a political person, less of a policy person. So I don’t necessarily have the expertise to talk about all the different policies the Democrats might bring into the election. you know My focus is going to be more on the redistricting side, more on the elections.12:33.67Sam ShiraziThere’s also going to be those three referendums not related to redistricting. It’s easy to forget about those, but those are also going to be happening. So all that’s to say is you know it’s been a really fun ride doing the podcast. I appreciate all the guests who have come on. I appreciate all the good comments I’ve gotten.12:48.75Sam ShiraziI appreciate all the listeners. I’ve tried to do my best to educate the public about what’s going on in Virginia, what’s going on you know, in terms of the different races and what it means. And, you know I’ve tried to, you know, see all the different angles of it. I’ve tried to be objective.13:06.88Sam ShiraziI think most of my assessments were pretty accurate in terms of some of the stories that that got a lot of social media play weren’t necessarily as important in the real world. I think some of the things that happened while they made the election interesting, the fundamental dynamics of the election were kind of shaped a long time ago by the thorough fallout. I think that kind of premise really ended up being correct. And, you know, when you start the podcast called Federal Fallout, you’re you’re assuming that it’s going to happen. But it was interesting to see the results as they came in, particularly northern Virginia.13:40.94Sam ShiraziYou know here was a big shift in 2024 against the Democrats in Northern Virginia, and then 2025, Northern Virginia came back to the Democrats in a big way. And I think a lot of that was a federal fallout. And so it was kind of interesting to see it happen when you know at the beginning of the year, you kind of have this feeling that there is going to be a federal fallout. And then a lot of different things happen during the election cycle.14:01.90Sam ShiraziBut at the end, you see it kind of come to fruition. And you know on the Democratic side for them. And you know there was obviously the shutdown. That was like another thing that was going on during the election. And it’s kind of crazy that there was a shutdown on election day, looking back on it.14:14.98Sam ShiraziSo a lot of interesting stuff. I think you know I talked about the lessons that Democrats and Republicans can learn. But I think the big picture takeaway, kind of going back to what I said you know towards the beginning,14:26.92Sam Shiraziis you really have to think about what the voters care about right now. And I think what the voters were telling both parties in 2024 and 2025, I mean, there were a lot of other issues going on.14:40.50Sam ShiraziBut I think a lot of Americans are struggling economically, trying to just make ends meet. And there’s this feeling that you’re constantly falling behind. Young people, they feel like they can’t buy a house.14:52.04Sam ShiraziOlder people, they’re kind of worried about their retirement and worried about you know being able to pay all the bills, take care of their kids. And, you know, there’s just a feeling of economic insecurity.15:04.06Sam ShiraziA lot of that is tied to affordability, but there’s a lot of other issues. And i’m not a policy expert. I’m not going to pretend to know all the magical formula. It’s going to fix all these economic problems. But I do think, you know, that was a big reason the Republicans won in 2024.15:18.32Sam Shirazito the extent people don’t feel like things are getting better in 2025. I think that’s part of the reason Democrats have momentum. It’s part of the reason why the Democrats did well in Virginia and New Jersey. And so I think going forward, we’re really going to have, we’re kind of at a time when this issue is kind of defining politics.15:36.29Sam ShiraziI will be curious to see, know, my sense is the Democrats are probably going to be stuck a little bit in 2025. And in 2026, they are going to want to,15:44.96Sam ShiraziSo they’re going to want to run the same playbook they did in 2025 and 2026. We’ll see. Maybe the voters have moved on. I suspect the economy is still to be a really important issue. But maybe the Republicans are going to come up with a better plan to deal with the economy, get more messaging on the economy. Maybe it’s going to work. Maybe it’s not going to work. So anyways, long story short, I think every election is unique. Just because one thing happened in 2035 doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in 2026. But it’s it’s been an interesting journey. I hope everyone’s enjoyed it.16:13.92Sam ShiraziAs you can tell, i think for this year, I’ve kind podcast as much as I could. I will take a break for the holidays. You’ll probably get podcasts every now and then from me next year, but less than this year, just because there’s less to cover compared to such an exciting state election in Virginia and really a historic one, considering the scale of Democratic victory.16:36.03Sam ShiraziThe fact that we had the first woman governor elected, the first South Asian and Muslim a person elected statewide in Virginia for lieutenant governor, the first black attorney general elected in Virginia, a lot of new delegates, a big Democratic majority, and really just a lot of historic things happened this year in Virginia, a really special election. I know for the Democrats, it was definitely a good feeling when they won the Virginia elections really big. I know the Republicans, you know, were pretty down after the outcome.17:08.20Sam ShiraziYou know, I’ve been through politics for a while. I’ve been through elections for a while. I mean some elections you you win, some elections you lose. I think Virginia tends to swing back and forth. So I don’t think Democrats should get too confident. Republicans shouldn’t get too down in the dumps.17:22.50Sam ShiraziCertainly things can change. And, you know, we saw 2021 Glenn Young got a big win. Even though was relatively close, he still won, which was you know a big deal for a Republican in Virginia. 2025, Spamberger gets a really big win for a Democrat in Virginia, and we’ll see what 2029 has to to hold in store in four years. So anyways, i know I’m kind of going on and on about kind of the reflections about the podcast this year.17:47.74Sam Shiraziit was special to do it for me. I thought, you know, I hope everyone’s enjoyed it. And, you know, like I said, I’m not completely done with it, but I think it’s going to be scaled back a little bit just based on everything going on.18:01.60Sam ShiraziSo I really appreciate everyone who’s listened. It’s been really special to do it. Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to listen and to come on the show. it’s meant a lot. And I hope, you know, to continue doing it in a more limited form next year.18:17.28Sam ShiraziAnd so all that’s to say is I appreciate everyone. I hope everyone has a great holiday season. We’ll see you back in 2026 in Virginia. There’s always election every year of election year. So that’ll be exciting. But for now, this has this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will look at some upcoming special elections in Virginia that will be happening in the new year. And then i also wanted to preview the midterms that will be happening next year in Virginia and what is going on with the really competitive races and potentially with redistricting.00:37.74Sam ShiraziSo there will already be one special election for her state Senate seat, and the Democratic nominee has already been chosen. That will be Delegate Mike Jones, and in all likelihood, he will be the next state senator because it’s a very blue seat.00:51.12Sam ShiraziAnd so that special election will be taking place January 6th. So that’s one special election already for the state Senate seat, the Ghazal Hashmi. is resigning from. Now, Mike Jones has already indicated that he is going to resign from the House of Delegates next year because in all likelihood, i think he’s pretty confident that he’s going to win that race. And so that means his House of Delegates seat is also going to be up for election because there’s going to be a special election and the firehouse primary to pick the nominee in that district will be this Sunday. So this Sunday, the nominee for the district that Mike Jones currently represents, which is the 77th house district will be this Sunday, a firehouse primary.01:31.21Sam ShiraziI would say the front runner is Michelle Mosby. She ran for Richmond mayor last year, and she has also been on the Richmond city council. Okay.01:41.84Sam Shirazithere is There is also another candidate, a community activist and former ACLU attorney, Charlie Schmidt. So I think we’ll see who the nominee is in that district. And the special election for that House of Delegates seat will be on January 6th as well.01:57.36Sam ShiraziSo we’re going to have two so two special elections on January 6th, both in the basically the same area of... South Richmond, Chesterfield County, and that’s because there’s the special election for the state senate seat that Ghazal HaShmi currently holds, and there’s a special election for the state for the house of delegates seat that Mike Jones currently holds.02:17.93Sam ShiraziSo those are the January 6th special elections. But we’re not done yet with the special elections in Virginia because there will be two more, at least two more special elections, and those will be on January 13th. January 13th, the week after the January sixth special elections, there will be special elections in two House of Delegates seats. And the reason they’re to be those special elections is because Governor Alex Manberger has made a couple of appointments to her cabinet from the Virginia House of Delegates. So first...02:49.13Sam ShiraziShe appointed Delegate Candy King to be the Secretary of the Commonwealth. So that means she will have to resign from the Virginia House Delegates. And obviously there will be another special election to replace her.03:01.54Sam ShiraziThere’s going to be a firehouse primary to pick the nominee in that district. I think the frontrunner is Margaret Angela frankl Franklin. She has been endorsed by Delegate King. And so I think she’s probably the frontrunner in that district. This is in Prince William County area, another deep blue seat. All these seats are very blue, and so I don’t expect any of them to flip.03:22.52Sam ShiraziSo that’s one special election on January 13 for the seat currently held by Delegate Candy King. And there will be one more, at least one more special election on January 13. And that will be for House District 11 in Fairfax County. Not the Congressional District 11, but the House of Delegates District 11, and that is currently represented by Delegate David Bolova.03:44.21Sam ShiraziAnd Governor-elect Spamberger has nominated him to be the Secretary of Natural Resources, so he will be resigning from the House of Delegates. Again, there will be another firehouse primary to determine who the nominee will be for the Democrats in this deep blue district, and that firehouse primary will be this Tuesday.04:02.22Sam ShiraziAnd the frontrunner for that firehouse primary is... Delegate Bolivar’s wife, who is Sharon Bolivar, and she got a bunch of endorsements. And so we’ll we’ll see if if anyone else is able to take her on. I think there’s a few other candidates announced. So long story short, there are a lot of special elections early next year in Virginia.04:22.56Sam ShiraziNone of them are that exciting because I think they’re very blue seats and very unlikely that any of them are going to flip. I’ll be curious to see if we get any other special elections because conceivably, Governor-elect Spanberger could announce more members of her cabinet being drawn from the General Assembly. And you see this from time to time when There are changes in administration. The new administration will pick members of the House of Delegates or state Senate to serve in their cabinet.04:51.30Sam ShiraziI think in this situation, particularly on the House side, I think Spanberger feels pretty confident just plucking people because they have such a big majority. And it doesn’t really matter if if you know there’s all these special elections going on. We’ll see on the state Senate side. you know Obviously, Ghazal Hashmi is already going to have to resign. And so we’ll see if Governor Alex Bamberger wants to pick anyone else from the state Senate. But long story short, there’s a lot of things going on in Virginia state politics that as a result of the administration transition transition, and especially when you go from one party to another, there’s going to be more drastic changes. So anyways, kind of interesting things to be on the lookout for. It’s going to be a little bit of a shakeup in the new House of Delegates because05:33.97Sam ShiraziThe people who are leaving are generally more senior. They’ve been around. And so we already have a large class of new members in the House of Delegates. And it’s going to get even bigger because there will be at least three more delegates in the House of Delegates who are coming in because of these special elections.05:49.84Sam ShiraziAll right. and But Virginia is not done with elections in the new year. That is because obviously 2026 is a midterm year. And so all 11 congressional districts in Virginia will be up for election. The big question is,06:04.12Sam ShiraziWhat are the lines going to be? Because the Democrats have proposed these referendum in order to see if the voters want to change the maps in Virginia for the congressional districts.06:15.40Sam ShiraziThat still has to be voted again in January. In all likelihood, given the Democratic majorities, that is going to pass. So that’s not really a big deal. I think there’s two possibilities about... things that could stop the new maps from happening. One is the referendum itself. So the voters have to vote on this. It’s not just automatic that the maps will change.06:34.50Sam ShiraziIt will need to get approved by the voters. I think most people think that Democrats have a good shot of passing this but because the voters, they’re going to make this into a referendum into Trump because if you like Trump, you’re going to vote against this referendum. If you don’t like Trump, you’re going to vote for the referendum. You’re Essentially, you’re going want the maps to change. We saw this in California.06:55.74Sam ShiraziAnd so, you know, as we saw in the election this year, President Trump has generally a negative approval in Virginia. And so you would think that that would mean the maps would be able to be changed. However, you know, you never know with referendums and you don’t want to assume anything. Virginia is not necessarily as blue as California. So I don’t think it’s necessarily 100% guaranteed that the referendum will get passed. But I do think the Democrats have a good shot.07:20.28Sam ShiraziKeep in mind, there are legal challenges. So it’s possible that the Virginia Supreme Court or some of the lower courts are going to try to stop the referendum if the Republicans are successful in some of their state lawsuits.07:32.82Sam ShiraziYou know, to be perfectly honest, I think In Virginia, the courts tend to be pretty nonpolitical, unlike some other states where you see really activist kind of political judges on either side. In Virginia, the judges really try to be nonpartisan. And so for that reason, my sense is that the court is going to just kind of defer and let the referendum happen. If the voters pass it, the voters pass it. They’re not going to necessarily try to inject themselves too much into the process.07:58.54Sam Shiraziyou know That’s my personal opinion. Obviously, judges, you know they they will have to interpret the law and make the decision, but that’s kind of the backdrop to all of this in Virginia. so I think essentially there’s two scenarios. One scenario is the map changes and the Democrats draw a map that they want.08:14.88Sam ShiraziThe other scenario is the maps don’t change and we use the existing maps. I think regardless, we’re getting some clarity about how things are going to look next year in some of the most competitive districts. So I’ll go kind of the most competitive to the least competitive on the current map, although the caveat that all of this could change.08:31.62Sam ShiraziSo the first district I’ll talk about is the second congressional district. This is based in Hampton Roads, particularly the city of Virginia Beach. The current representative is Jen Kiggins. She was elected in 2022 by defeating the then representative Elaine Luria. However, Elaine Luria is now back for a comeback. So she has announced and she pretty much cleared the field that had already been announced for this year.08:58.72Sam Shiraziseat. She, in all likelihood, will be the Democratic nominee. All the other major contenders dropped out as soon as she entered the race. And so I think it’s, and Luria has gotten a lot of endorsements. I think it’s very clear that the Democrats view her as the strongest candidate. So frankly, even if the seat the lines don’t change, I think there’s a good chance that Elaine Luria could win this seat. Why? Because this district flips back and forth between the parties.09:24.62Sam ShiraziThat’s why it flipped in 2022. That’s why it flipped in 2018. And this is one of my favorite facts. The second district, the party that has won the second district has been the majority party in Congress in in the House of Representatives in every election going back till 2008. that means for nine elections in the row, the party that’s won the second congressional district has become the majority party in the white house in that in the House of Representatives. excuse me So you can see why both parties really care about the second congressional district. I think the Democrats particularly really, really want to win this seat.09:55.68Sam ShiraziThey want Elaine Luria back in the House of Representatives. I think if they win this seat, I think there’s a good chance they’ll get to the majority. And that’s even before any of the lines change. So I think there’s a good chance the lines change. But even if you don’t change the lines, I think there’s a decent chance the Democrats are going to win this seat. This is a seat that Spanberger won pretty comfortably, I think around eight or nine points.10:15.48Sam ShiraziAnd so I think it’s just it’s one of those things where if there’s a seat flipping in Virginia, I think the second is is definitely the number one seat most likely to flip. And I guess the other thing I should add is if if there is redistricting and the lines change, I think the way this district is going to change is...10:34.04Sam ShiraziIt’s probably going to keep the Eastern Shore. It’s probably going to keep Virginia Beach. It’s just going to become more of a inner Hampton Road seat. So it’ll go Virginia Beach and then parts of the city of Norfolk.10:45.52Sam ShiraziCurrently, it doesn’t include any of the city of Norfolk. It kind of goes under, has parts of the city of Chesapeake, and then it goes to Suffolk, and then it goes all the way past Suffolk. So I think it’s going to...10:58.66Sam ShiraziSo it’s going to have less rural areas and more urban areas areas in Norfolk. Obviously, the rural areas are more red. The urban areas are more blue. So the Democrats are going to try to make this a more blue leading seat. But as I mentioned, I don’t even know if it’s really necessary, at least for this election, in order for the Democrats to flip it. So definitely a seat to keep an eye out for in the second.11:19.94Sam ShiraziAll right. Now let’s go to the next most likely to flip seat. And that is the first congressional district. The current representative is Congressman Rob Whitman. He has represented that district for quite a while.11:33.23Sam ShiraziHowever, he is facing a very serious challenge from Henrico County Prosecutor Shannon Taylor. I think, you know, there’s other candidates running, but realistically, I think most people have... I have a feeling that Shannon Taylor is the frontrunner to get the primary and she’s gotten a lot of endorsements. So it looks like Shannon Taylor is set to face off with Rob Whitman. The question becomes is how much does the district change? Because the current district voted for Trump, although in 2025 it voted for Spanberger.12:04.40Sam ShiraziSo this is a Trump-Spanberger district. on the current lines. And I think it’s going to be very interesting. I think Whitman traditionally has been more popular in the rural parts of the district in the northern neck part of Virginia.12:17.23Sam ShiraziHowever, the other parts of the the district are trending towards the Democrats, particularly the Richmond suburbs, Henrico and Chesterfield. And then the other part of the district is more towards Hampton Roads, places like Williamsburg,12:31.28Sam ShiraziYork County, James City County, those areas are also trending towards the Democrats. So I think Shannon Taylor, even under these lines, has a decent chance of winning this seat. I think it’s going competitive. Rob Whitman’s a strong incumbent. He overperformed Trump.12:44.54Sam ShiraziSo I don’t want to assume it would automatically flip under the current lines. But I think, you know, Shannon Taylor got in before it was obvious that Virginia Democrats were going to redistrict. And I think that’s because she had a feeling this this seat was going to be potentially competitive. And then, you know, throw into that the fact that this district might actually change under.13:05.40Sam Shirazia new map that might be drawn. And I think this could really become a very good pickup opportunity for the Democrats. How would it change? I mean, my guess would be that some of the rural areas in, you know, Northern Neck, that part of Virginia, that’ll be connected to a Northern Virginia seat.13:22.19Sam ShiraziAnd so it’s just essentially going to become a bluer district because again, you’re going to swap out, uh, more rural areas for more suburban areas closer to Richmond. So anyways, interesting seat with the first district. I think even if the lines don’t change, I think this is likely a very competitive seat in 2026.13:40.95Sam ShiraziNow, before the lines changing, I mean, I think those were the two districts that Democrats, both in Virginia nationally, thought that they had a decent chance of flipping. However,13:52.37Sam ShiraziThe point of of changing the lines was not just for the 1st and 2nd District. It was potentially to get more seats out of Virginia. And I think the big debate among Virginia Democrats is probably going to be what kind of map do they want? And we’ve heard we’ve heard a lot of rhetoric about wanting a 10-1 map. So what does 10-1 mean?14:11.93Sam ShiraziThat means the Virginia Democrats would re-write a map so that the districts in Virginia would elect 10 Democrats and one Republican. Currently, there are five democrats there are five Republicans and six Democrats, so we have a six five map.14:46.06Sam ShiraziCurrently in the 5th Congressional District, the Congressman is John McGuire. He was elected in 2024 after he defeated the incumbent Bob Good in a primary, and that was a very... a competitive primary, but John McGuire was able to pull it out. I mean, realistically, John McGuire is a pretty, know, right wing member of Congress, uh, for a district like this.15:05.82Sam ShiraziHowever, it’s not, ultimately it’s kind of a light red district. And even, uh, in this election in 2025, Earl Sears carried this district. So Spanberger didn’t win it.15:16.29Sam ShiraziAnd I think realistically, yeah know, unless there’s like a really crazy blue wave, Under the current lines, I think the Republicans have a decent shot of of retaining the seat.15:25.62Sam ShiraziAnd it you know it could be in single digits potentially, but I think it’s very hard. you know Obviously, in 2025, there was a blue wave in Virginia. Even under that scenario, Spanberger wasn’t able to carry the district. So I think it’s it’s kind of hard to imagine the current lines Democrats being able to flip this seat. However, we may not be under the current lines in 2026. Why is that? Because obviously Democrats may want to change this district. And I think there’s a lot of different ways you can redraw it You could kind of make it a Charlottesville to Roanoke district and kind of just include some urban areas.15:58.75Sam ShiraziAnd then the rest would just be, you you know, the rural areas would be put into the other Republican districts the Democrats are willing to keep. But the fifth would just become a essentially a blue sink. You put all these like blue areas together and you create a blue leaning district. It probably wouldn’t be overwhelmingly blue, but I think it would be blue enough that the Democrats would win. And I think that possibility was enticing enough that a former congressman has decided to run again, and that congressman is Tom Perriolo. He was first elected in 2008 in the blue wave that carried a lot of Democrats across the line across the country in 2020.16:35.87Sam Shirazitwo thousand and eight However, he lost in 2010 after the red wave in 2010. And the district was redrawn a little bit. And I think ever since then, there’s been a couple times where Democrats have tried to win it, but it’s essentially become a red seat.16:49.02Sam ShiraziHowever, I think former Congressman Perriello is very interested in the comeback. And again, he’s gotten a lot of endorsements. I think pretty quickly people are getting behind him. And so, again, this is one of those districts where it seems like Perriello has a good shot of winning the primary. and i think it’s going to be interesting if the district changes. You know, I think Perriello certainly has a good shot of winning this primary and potentially the general election, depending on how how the lines look.17:16.19Sam ShiraziAnd I will just tell you a little bit about a fun fact about myself. I was actually in Charlottesville in 2008. And I saw how Tom Perriello’s campaign was run back then. It was a good campaign. i think he outran the top of the ticket and he was able to flip that race in in a really close race. And I think most people didn’t expect him to flip it. And so I think it was really interesting watching that race in 2008. And now here we are all the way back in 2025, 2026. And we could have Tom Perriello back in Congress.17:43.77Sam ShiraziWhy? Because when he was elected the first time, he was relatively young. And you know he’s not too old even today, even though he was a congressman. 15 years ago. So definitely interesting seeing a couple of these comebacks, both in the second and fifth district. And I think those three districts, you know I don’t want to say it’s impossible for someone else to win the nomination, but I think the nominees are starting to get set to a certain extent in those districts. I think in the second district, Elaine Luria seems like she has the best shot of winning the nomination. In the first district, it seems like it’s Shannon Taylor.18:15.27Sam ShiraziAnd in the fifth district, it’s Tom Perriolo. All right, so here’s the big wild card. The big wild card is the 6th District because there’s a lot of different ways it could be shaped if the maps change. Currently, the member of Congress is Republican Ben Klein, and this is a pretty red district.18:34.20Sam ShiraziI think... No matter how big of a blue wave, it’s almost impossible for the Democrats to be able to flip this seat because it’s just currently as it’s drawn, it’s a lot of red areas. i mean, there are some blue pockets, but really it’s it’s a pretty red area. And so I think under the current maps, the Congressman Klein would be pretty safe.18:51.07Sam ShiraziHowever, obviously, if the Democrats go all in, and they say, you know what, we’re going to draw a 10-1 map, that means 10 Democrats, one Republican, the sixth could become a Democratic-leaning seat. And I think that’s really interesting because i don’t think it has a clear front-runner in terms of who would be the nominee if the sixth district...19:11.84Sam Shirazibecame more of a Democratic-leaning district. I did want to throw out some names of people who may run. So Sam Razul, he’s a delegate from Roanoke. He has already announced that he’s exploring running for Congress. He basically left it open. He’s like, I don’t know if I’m going to run in the 5th, the 6th, or possibly another district. So I think... Sam Razul would be an interesting candidate from Roanoke.19:33.40Sam ShiraziThere’s talk that a former delegate, Wendy Goditas, potentially could be running for Congress. and i And if I had to guess, she would probably be running in the 6th District. so And she comes from more northern Virginia, kind of closer to Winchester area.19:47.48Sam ShiraziSo it’d be the other end of the Shenandoah Valley. So that would be kind of interesting if she decided to run. There’s another candidate, Beth Macy. She was known for being a journalist and an author, and she wrote a book called Dope Six. So I think she’s she’s also gotten a good amount of coverage in terms of her run. And so I think the Six could be a really competitive primary, again, depending how the lines are drawn.20:09.26Sam ShiraziAnd so I think that’s kind of the wild card right now. You know, the first, second, fifth, we kind of know what’s going to happen. The sixth is, you know, totally unpredictable. And, you know, I think i think the question really comes down to how aggressive did the Democrats become in drawing the lines. And the reason there might be some tension is...20:27.52Sam ShiraziYou know, my sense is the House of Delegates and the state Senate Democrats are pretty, pretty ambitious. You know, you you heard Speaker Don Scott of the House of Delegates say that he’s looking into a 10-1 map.20:39.28Sam ShiraziState Senator Luis Lucas has been very vocal about wanting a 10-1 map. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the General Assembly starts drafting something that looks close to 10-1. I will be curious to see how Governor Spanberger fits into all this. I think she has been a little less vocal about being you know super pro- changing the lines. I think she’s been a little bit more measured. My sense from her is that she’s basically going to say, you know, let the voters decide. We’re going to do a referendum. If the voters say yes, I’ll respect it. If the voters say no, i I’ll respect it.21:25.18Sam ShiraziAnd I think that, you know The question is going to be, do the Democrats release the map before the referendum? Because I don’t think they’re under any legal obligation to release the map. They’re basically telling the voters, what you’re voting on is, should the General Assembly have the power to draw new maps?21:41.38Sam ShiraziYes or no? And if the voters say yes, I mean, the the General Assembly can draw the maps after the referendum. And you know I’ll be curious to see how much does... Governor Spanberger get involved? Does she just kind of defer to the General Assembly? Does she just end up saying, you know, whatever they they come up with is fine with me? You know, I think that’s all going to have to get worked out. I’m sure the National Democrats are going to be pushing for as many seats as possible out of Virginia because the Democrats don’t have that many opportunities to be able to pick up seats through redistricting. And so it’s just like a lot of interesting dynamics next year for the midterms. And, you know, Virginia is is going to be on the front lines because a lot of these states, you know, frankly, either because of22:25.72Sam Shirazigerrymandering or because of these independent commissions, I mean, there aren’t that many competitive races next year. I mean, there are some, obviously, but the map is not what it used to be. I mean, in certain years, you might have dozens of seats seats that might be up for play.22:39.82Sam ShiraziI think this next cycle of the midterms, I think given redistricting and gerrymandering and all that, I mean, we could be seeing a relatively smaller playing field and Virginia could be a decent chunk of the playing field.22:52.63Sam ShiraziAnd depending on how the lines are drawn, I mean, some of the districts might not even be that competitive. I mean, if if you really wanted to start gerrymandering, it’s possible the second district is not going to be that competitive. And, you know Democrats don’t even really have to try that hard. I mean, I’m sure they will still work to win that seat, but it makes your life a lot easier when you’re able to draw the lines the way you want them to.23:13.11Sam ShiraziAnd so I think there’s a lot of unknowns about the midterms. Does Virginia redistrict? Does it not redistrict? If it redistricts, how much does it redistrict? These are all kind of unknowns right now. I think behind the scenes, you know, the big movers and shakers are trying to figure out their next moves. You’ve already seen all these announcements. We may get more announcements.23:33.46Sam ShiraziAnd I think all that is kind of building up to a really exciting midterm for Virginia because it’s going to be one of the top focuses for the house battleground.23:43.73Sam ShiraziYou know as I noted, there’s a state Senate, there’s this a U S Senate seat up for election in 2026 with Mark Warner. i think realistically, that’s probably going to be pretty uncompetitive. given the environment and given Mark Warner being an incumbent. So not super interesting for the Senate side of things, but I think in the House side next year in Virginia, it’s going to be really, really interesting. It’s going to be one of the top states people will be talking about.24:06.38Sam ShiraziAnd particularly if we have the referendum, think it’s going to be a really interesting campaign. Obviously, the Republicans are going to and be totally against it. The Democrats are going to go all in. try to win these, the referendum so that they can win some more seats.24:20.45Sam ShiraziAnd so, yeah, all that’s to say is Virginia, the elections never stop. We just, you know, it’s hard to believe that it’s been, you know, less than two months since we had the election this year. And we’re already talking about primaries and special elections and referendums. And, you know, it just never ends in Virginia. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening to me this year. I think,24:40.27Sam ShiraziI’ll have an episode next week. I’m starting to kind of wind down the podcast, at least for this year. i will have one more to just kind of give you final thoughts before the holidays. Hopefully people have found the podcast interesting. You know, I’m Virginia elections. Obviously it’s one of those things that, You never know what’s going to happen. And I think we’re going to have a fun 2026 in store for everyone. Serious. I mean, it’s fun to to kind of follow everything, but it’s obviously very serious too, because these are going to decide really important issues. So anyways, appreciate everyone who’s listened to this episode. This has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will have an interview with State Senator Danica Roam. She also is the Executive Director of Emerge Virginia. So thank you so much, Senator, for joining me.00:15.29Danica RoemHey, it’s great to be back, Sam. Thanks so much.00:17.82Sam ShiraziYeah, so I wanted to have you back because obviously i had you on before the election and you had some really good insights. And i think you had a sense that maybe the Democrats would have a good night. But were you surprised by the scale of the Democratic win?00:29.79Danica RoemBluntly, yeah. and I think not that they all won with the statewide. not that we expanded the House majority. My number was about 60 that I thought we were going to get. you know I was really telling people, hey, you know dream big. This is really good.00:45.90Danica RoemI think I’m not the first person to say this. It’s really just that of those 13 originally targeted seats by the house, there was of course the 14th that was added on later for all 13 of them to go.00:59.59Danica RoemDemocratic that was in like, And even the closest one was like by 1.8 points. you know it’s just like it was It was a surprise that every single one was just falling right into place on the targeted list other than that 14th seat that is anchored over in Harrisonburg. And at the same time, even with that one,01:23.80Danica Roemover at James Madison University, coming down to 257 votes. That’s the sort of race that we saw a couple of Merch two years ago lose by, you know, like Lily Franklin, who just won, who’s now delegated out of Blacksburg. Then you had Kimberly Pope Adams, you know, who was another one of my alums who nearly lost in 2023. Both of them lost by recount margins. And this is a recount margin. The difference is...01:50.43Danica RoemThis is outside of the 0.5% in which the state picks it up if it’s within that. If it’s between 0.5% and 1%, then the candidate has to pay for it. And that’s typically why you don’t see too many candidates you know opt for a recount, even if they do technically qualify at that level. But 257 votes, that’s the sort of thing where if you’re in the House Democratic Caucus, granted, I’m in the Senate, but you know I served in the House for six years, you’re looking at the 2027 map and you’re going, okay, we’re going to have some seats we have to play defense on. Where are our expansion opportunities? If you want to get to that super majority, all eyes in the Commonwealth in 2027 are going to be firmly locked on Harrisonburg in Rockingham County.02:39.44Sam ShiraziYeah, and I do want to get to 2027 in a moment, but I did want to just finish up on 2025. I mean, why do you think the Democrats got a big win? And, you know, you came in during the wave in 2017 into the House of Delegates.02:49.75Danica RoemMm-hmm.02:51.29Sam ShiraziArguably, this was a bigger wave, it’ certainly at the top of the ticket. And in terms of the seats that were flipped, you know, why do you think the Democrats got such a big win?02:59.01Danica RoemOkay, so it’s interesting because in 2017, we flipped 15 seats red to blue for the House of Delegates. And, you know, and then keep mind, you know Shelley Simon’s seat came down to it. That was a tied race, you know, with the, you know, with the ball drawing in Newport News and all. And we had another couple that were very, very close at the time. One and based in Chesterfield, another that was based in Stafford, Fredericksburg area at the time. and even won Western Prince William County.03:27.50Danica RoemDemocrats in 2017, because we didn’t dream big enough, we left about four or five seats on the table where we could have probably won up to 20 to 21 red and blue flips that election. But the idea was, hey, Hillary Clinton had won 17 of these seats that Republicans were holding. Let’s go win all 17, like even you know Ralph Northman talked about at the time. And we won, you know, 15 and then, you know obviously came down to a drawing and for now delegate Shelley Simon seat. But in this election, I think...04:04.30Danica RoemThe difference is number one larger margin of victory at the top of the ticket you know from Governor-elect Spanberger compared to 2017 where Governor Northam won. you know A really good margin, too, to be clear.04:17.32Danica RoemBut at the same time, when you’re in double-digit territory like she is and you’re surpassing what Gerald Belial was able to do in 1985, that style, this is the sort of election that goes on the... annals of blowout territory like you saw of for the 2009 gubernatorial race, for example, right? But what was interesting in 2009 is all three of the Republicans who won statewide that year won by double digits. This time, two of the three Democrats won by double digits with Abigail Spanberger, and Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazal Hashmi, but even Jay Jones with all the things that happened with him, for him to pull out an almost seven-point victory in this, I think it says a lot, not only about the strength of the top of the of the ticket for the Democrats, but also one of the underspoken things is it also just that05:12.91Danica RoemJason Mears never really a just appealed to Democrats or even to a lot of you know kind of left of center, independent voters to lose an election you know to that margin.05:26.23Danica RoemHe you know really went in all in on some of the MAGA stuff. you know He was campaigning with Donald Trump you know in 2024, being on stage with him and everything. And i think if there’s message that comes out of this election in particular, just like the first one, it’s that, hey, look, Virginia is not a Trump state. There are a few congressional districts, the ninth, the sixth, and the fifth, that certainly fall into that category. And you could argue the first district currently, even though even that it’s kind of getting a lot tighter now. But really, really do think that people got to understand that06:02.82Danica RoemIf you are firing our workers, the aka federal fallout, if you are going after our economy, there will be you know a you know response to that. And our people showed up. At the same time, Abigail’s margin was so significant. I don’t even think she needed Northern Virginia to win at the end of the day. Northern Virginia just patted the margins.06:24.71Sam ShiraziYeah, well, the one thing that was not up for election was the Virginia State Senate, and that will be up for election in 2027. And I know that seems like a long ways off, but when you are planning campaigns, you have to get started now.06:37.48Sam ShiraziAnd the Democrats currently have a 21-19 majority. If they pick up six seats, they will have a super majority of 27 out of 40 seats. Do you think that’s realistic? And how ambitious should the Virginia State Senate Democrats be?06:50.54Danica RoemNumber one, yes, that is realistic because you’re talking about these are, you know, Abigail seats, right? You know, so Governor-elect Spanberger, think she carried either five of the six or all six of those that are in play. At the same time, we also know from the last election in 2023, given that the two closest seats that were won by Democrats, number one was mine, where I won by 3.83 points,07:17.05Danica RoemIn a district where you know Governor-elect Spanberger just broke 60% of the vote. And the other one was in Loudoun County and Fauquier County where Russet Perry, you know where she won by like just under more of a point than I did. After that, when you start looking at, you know, Skyler and Valkenberg seat, Aaron Rouse’s seat, it’s kind of like our three and four on the democratic depth chart for vulnerability. Those seats are now, you know, those, they won by almost 10 point margins themselves back in 2023. And has swung so heavily democratic07:53.44Danica RoemAnd keep mind, this is not even like Navarre’s seat. you know She’s delegate-elect for Western Henrico and Goochland County now. Schuyler’s seat does not have Goochland. It’s just running up the score and in Henrico. And so you know I’m really kind of looking at this and thinking like,08:11.34Danica RoemYeah, Democrats will have to play some defense for sure. you know you You don’t write off districts. And for example, two of the seats that flipped red to blue, John McAuliffe, who’s now a delegate-elect for Western Latin and Falkier, that seat largely overlaps with Russell Perry’s seat for the state Senate.08:30.51Danica RoemAnd then in my district... I have a little bit of overlap with a delegate like Guzman who’s coming back to the House of Delegates after having served three terms there. like My district overlaps in the Gainesville and the Bristow area. And so you know because you know you’re going to have you know delegates who just flipped seats red to blue, you’re going to have two of the most competitive Democratic-held Senate districts there.08:53.99Danica RoemI do expect that the Republicans will play offense there at the same time. They are going to be having to play defense from Fredericksburg on down South.09:04.56Danica RoemAnd what that means is that they have to really look at where do we want to put money into when we’re dealing with different media markets, because that district that Tara Durant currently represents, that state Senate district, that’s in the DC media market. And Loudoun County, Falk Air County, Prince William, Manassas, Manassas Park, all of this is, you know, DC media market. So then the Republicans have to ask themselves the question, would you rather get more bang for your buck playing defense in Roanoke? And in that area, it’s right between Southside and Hampton Roads, or in Danny Diggs’ case, you know along the peninsula, or in Chesterfield, in Glenn Sturtevant’s case, Democrats just have a lot of targets. And as this election showed, a significant financial advantage to be able to do that in the first place. And so you know if Democratic fundraising remains really strong, And i think it will considering who’s in the White House right now. And, you know, the president’s certainly not going anywhere anytime soon.10:12.43Danica RoemI would certainly suspect right now that Democrats are going to be much more interested in playing offense than just trying to preserve the status quo. I think, you know, there are definitely seats to be made. And if we had a super majority in both chambers, yeah, that would, that that’s in the realm of possibility. Absolutely.10:31.83Sam ShiraziWell, we’ll certainly see how how competitive all those races end up being in 2027. I did want to talk about Emerge Virginia and its role this year in getting candidates elected. a lot of the candidates that you had worked with and endorsed got elected.10:46.36Sam ShiraziJust wanted to ask you about that generally, and then if there were any surprises among the candidates who ended up winning.10:52.19Danica RoemYeah, sure. So happy talk about so So in my role as executive director of Emerge Virginia, yeah my job is to recruit and train Democratic women how to run for office. And of the 41 Emerge alums who were on the ballot this year, 32 them won. And keep mind, some of them were in very hard rural areas, like Joy Powers, for example, who was running in an area in rural part of Bedford County and some other areas. That was a seat that was always going to be far upheld climb.11:22.03Danica RoemBut it was really important that we were having someone running as hard as she could in a district like that to make sure that we had all 100 districts covered. She absolutely helped the top of the ticket, no doubt about it. And now she’s you know launched a congressional race. Good for her. and you know like Really glad to see that you know she got a platform you know after having the courage to put her name on the ballot. But of the 13 House delegate seats that flipped from red to blue this year, Democratic women won 10 of them. And of those 10, Eight of them were alums from Emerge Virginia. And I personally trained a number of them. So if you just go through, i actually, I trained five of those eight myself between Willie Franklin, Kimberly Pope Adams, Stacy Carroll, Casey Carnegie, and Nicole Cole. you know They all did outstanding work, out so absolutely outstanding time after time. They were so disciplined. They stayed on message and they did all the basics. They made sure that they were knocking their 5,000 plus doors. They were making sure that they were raising, that they not just raising money, but they they were doing consistent call time with a good hard ask. They were staying on the issues that were connecting with voters at the doors, especially on economy affordability.12:41.02Danica RoemI have to say just of those, I knew Lily Franklin and Kimberly Pope Adams were going to win. like There was no question my mind after how close they had come you know the time before. It was just like, all right, let’s go.12:52.74Danica RoemAt the same time, Casey Carnegie, I had i had a discussion with Don Scott late last year right before the signature program started. And he was telling me about how important that then Baxter NFC was. And he’s like, you know, that’s really important. See, we got to have it. And I said, you know, like, you know we’ve got a candidate with Casey now, like, you know, i’ll I’ll train her up, make sure that you know she’s in good shape. And I’ll tell you, Casey came around so incredibly well from being a you know local attorney who just wanted to do good by her lifelong home community. to winning every precinct in her primary after reallocation of votes for our early vote and mail-in ballot stuff and provisional back to, well, actually not even provisions back then, but just reallocation of votes back to the precincts.13:38.58Danica RoemAnd when you look at the response, what she did on the doors, while the other side was going all in on anti-trans messaging about sports and stuff, Casey was talking about affordability, talking about the economy, talking about, those issues day to day. And when I asked her, I said, hey, i want to know, like, I know your district is kind of the Hampton Roads equivalent of suburban Norfolk, for a lack of better words, even though, you know it’s cities and such. was just like, you know what’s how was the how are the you know, how much are you hearing about the doge cuts? How much are you hearing about the federal spending cuts and everything else? And she’s like, Danica, I’m hearing at it about the at the doors every day.14:30.47Danica RoemAnd Casey fit the mold of that district. She campaigned like she knew the district because she did. And that was really important. And then, i mean, the talk of the town after the this election of for down ballot was Nicole Cole to take on the Dean of the House of Delegates and who had been first elected in 1989 to win that seat. I know on Dwayne Nancy from Cardinal News has written up, you know, kind of an explainer about, you know, how have Caroline County and Spotsylvania County changed. And there lots of people have different takes and stuff.15:04.77Danica RoemNicole Cole was so disciplined throughout that campaign. And she took the training that we did really seriously. She asked a lot of great questions. Just today, I was actually rewatching part of the fundraising training that we put her through back in January. And, you know, was looking at some of the, you just like watching some of the clip of that, that from questions she was asking.15:26.38Danica RoemAnd she just ran this, I mean, flawless campaign. She just did everything right. And was was so interesting was we knew that even though Delegate Oroc knew a challenge was coming, I don’t think he understood the breadth of what was what he was going to have to face. Because when he’s out you know donating money to other candidates, which he was doing as of you know like late spring, early summer,15:58.07Danica RoemThat to me reminded me of what happened with then delegate Jackson Miller in 2017 when he was out donating to other candidates because he didn’t think that he would be upset by you know Lee Carter that fall. And then he was.16:11.99Danica RoemAnd It’s just, you know, I called Nicole the next day and I said, welcome to the club of Democratic legislators in Virginia who’ve unseated someone who’s been in office for a quarter century or more.16:24.40Danica RoemAnd, you know, like when I defeated former delegate Bob Marshall in 2017, he had been in office for 26 years. And in Nicole’s case for her coming from the Spotsylvania County School Board, where she was in her first term in office to unseating the dean of the house.16:42.11Danica RoemI don’t think everyone’s really understood what that means for Virginia right now, because what that means is that where we typically associate the end of planning district eight, Northern Virginia, of Prince William, Manassas, Manassas park, Loudoun, Fairfax, Fairfax County, Falls Church, Alexander, Arlington,17:04.12Danica RoemYou go into Stafford and Fredericksburg, yes, those have been emerging battlegrounds. Yes, Joshua Cole did a phenomenal job in his reelection campaign. I was happy to you know campaign for him down there. And then Stacy Carroll, who I also, who’s part of my boot camp this year, she took on Paul Mildy. Paul did not put in his own funding to the degree that a lot of us thought he might be able to do.17:27.17Danica RoemAnd Stacey was up on every mode of broadcast communication. I was listening to her ads on WTOP, you know, when I’d be driving my car in the morning. So Stacey did a phenomenal job, you know, as a, you know, someone who serves in the West Virginia National Guard and someone who really understands foster issues and everything else in that community.17:46.91Danica RoemBut for the end of the excerpts to not end at Fredericksburg, to continue into Spotsy, into Caroline, I remembered...17:58.94Danica RoemAfter, I think it was around the 2019 election or so, when I was in the House, I had told the caucus once, keep an eye on Spotsylvania.18:11.22Danica RoemIt’s an emerging locality for us. I’m not saying it’s there yet, but it’s going to be there. And here I am six years later remembering this and being like, Spotsy’s finally come around. I mean, it went Democratic for governor for the first time since the 80s. I mean, this is...18:27.50Danica RoemSpotsylvania County coming around really should be a five alarm red flag or whatever else that you want to say for the Republicans at that point. Because I, to be honest with you Sam, I don’t know what their path to victory is for having majorities or statewide or anything. If they’re losing Spotsylvania County, if they’re losing Spotsy and Caroline, I mean, like good night, game over, drive home safely.18:53.45Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, especially Spotsylvania was known as a really Republican core county. And, we you know, we’ll see we’ll see if it becomes more blue and continues that trend over time.19:05.33Sam ShiraziI did want to ask just specifically about the upcoming session. We’re obviously going to have a bunch of new delegates, many of whom your organization has helped. You know, what kind of support do you think they’ll continue to get? And, you know, what is it going to be like when you have such a new big class in the House of Delegates?19:21.98Danica RoemOh, sure. So of the new House of Delegates coming in for for that, of the 100 members, one quarter of them will be Emerge Virginia alums, which is an incredible tally. You know, when I was running in 2017, there were only two Emerge alums who were in the House at the time, Jennifer Boisko and Kathleen Murphy, who had both flipped seats red to blue. And Jennifer Boisco now serves in the state Senate with me. And Kathleen Murphy, she retired after her last term in 2023. But to see those numbers grow at the time from two, and then we had nine Emerge alums win 2017, went 11. And then we got up to 17 after 2023. And now here we are going into, you know, January 14th and we’re going to have 25 merge lums in the house. That’s, it’s, it’s just a testament to not only the work that we’ve done since I took over on, know, in 2022, but my predecessors, Vina Lothi,20:22.76Danica Roemand Julie Copeland, the jobs that they did. you know Julie was the founding executive director of Emerge Virginia. She’s who taught me how to run for office. And the continuity that we had where you know my fundraising trainer back then was Jamie Menoscalco. And Jamie just came in to help train the next cohort that we had. She flew in to Richmond this past weekend on to help us out. And that was... you know like The current class that we have right now, I’ve got 20 folks you know ready to go, and they just completed their second of five months right now.20:56.41Danica RoemAnd so you know they’re getting ready for 2026, 2027, and beyond. And I’m really, really stoked to watch where they go because I think... They get to see come January that of the more than 300 Emerge Virginia alumni, 61 of them will be in office come January of next year.21:17.22Danica Roemthat’s That’s really special. It’s a really special part of the network in particular. And i just want to say it’s not just you know me, not just even the you know my predecessors as executive directors, it’s what the executive directors from Merge across the country have done you know in their states. you know they’ve just they They pour everything that they have into these trainings and you know you just see the complete utter success that we’ve been having in Virginia and beyond.21:47.90Danica RoemIt’s so encouraging. It just really, really, really is. And so what they can expect, obviously, they’re going to you know have complete access to me anytime, but it’s not just those who are in General Assembly and getting alumni support. It’s also our locals.22:01.67Danica RoemHere’s one thing that people don’t necessarily realize. Yes, Abigail Spanberger is an Emerge alum from 2017 and she won. Yes, we won big for the House of Delegates. All 17 of our House alums earned re-election and we are adding in another eight on top of that.22:19.07Danica RoemAll six of our local candidates won, including a school board special election in Danville with Trina McLaughlin. And Lucy Pullen is now going to be my new commissioner of the revenue for city Manassas Park. So I’ll actually be one of her constituents and she’ll be one of my constituents, which is really cool.22:37.63Danica RoemAnd, you know, we had other like Blythe Scott winning reelection. We had Antoinette Irving, the sheriff of Richmond winning reelection. It’s just, it’s really, really exciting to see that it’s every level of government. Keisha Evans and Stafford’s another one who just every level of government where we have that representation.22:59.17Danica Roemi think it matters for your development, for the Democratic bench in general. And at the same time, you know, the House Democratic Caucus is,23:10.05Danica Roemis strongly women. We have 37 Democratic women in the next House of Delegates. There are 36 total Republican delegates in the next House of Delegates. I mean, that’s just, that’s never happened to before. you know And Virginia’s you know government’s been around for 406 years. and so you know and so that’s pretty incredible.23:32.95Sam ShiraziYeah, certainly a pretty crazy statistic and definitely a lot of Emerge Virginia alumni will be in places of power next year and in Virginia.23:56.80Danica RoemNow it’s what do you do once you won? And i yeah I’m really, really excited to see some of the policy proposals coming to the table. Some of the alums have actually reached out to me and saying like, hey, want to, you know, just I get some questions, I get some ideas I’m trying to, you know, work off of blah, bla blah.24:13.18Danica RoemI love to see it. I’d love to see that they’re diving into policy head for it first. I think some of them are going to be incredibly, incredibly effective legislators.24:20.26Sam ShiraziYeah, so to that point, I mean, what do you think the General Assembly is going to look like come January for the new session? And I mean, I imagine the Democrats have a lot of bills they want to pass and a lot that they want governors like Spanberger to sign.24:34.18Sam ShiraziYou know, how do you kind of balance wanting to get a lot done, but also making sure that some of the priorities that people have in terms of cost of living and affordability are are addressed? Yeah.24:45.46Danica RoemWell, so I think they’re one and the same, right? I think there’s a lot of people who campaigned on affordability, who’ve campaigned on a cost of living, and now we need to go past bills for that, right? And so like HB1 and SB1 is raising the minimum wage.24:59.83Danica RoemI think, you know, making sure we get up to $15 an hour and then indexing that, that’s really, really important. At the same time, we also know... There’s going to be a fiscal impact to the state for that because the Commonwealth is a very large employer for a lot of minimum wage workers once you get into like you know public work and such and so and clerical staff. And so I think it’s really important that people are able to afford to live in the same communities where they work.25:26.85Danica RoemThat’s huge. And here’s the way I’ve kind of phrased it in the General Assembly. I’ve said this in the House. I’ve said this in the Senate. If you work, you put in your 40 hours a week, you should be able to afford a studio apartment and you shouldn’t need a second job in order to do it.25:40.88Danica RoemNo matter what your job is, if you’re putting in your time, you should be able to afford a home. And What the definition of that is might change region to region across the Commonwealth. but The fact of the matter is in 2025, $15 an hour, or even that it’s really hard to qualify to even get into an apartment for one $15 an hour job. You still need like multiple people in order to do that. It’s just, it’s just so hard to you know pay rent or let alone even like have the idea of a mortgage for that. So you know we’ve got to i think sometimes legislators who haven’t worked minimum wage jobs in a long time can be a little bit detached from that.26:25.52Danica RoemAnd certainly of the arguments that I’ve heard. But Sam, but I’m a little different than some of the other legislators in many many respects. But my last minimum wage job wasn’t even a full decade ago. it was in 2016 after I had transitioned. It was really, really hard for me to find full-time work. And, you know, I was working for 30 hours a week for $15 an hour for a newspaper, you know, over the bridge in Maryland the Montgomery County Sentinel during the weekdays. And then on the weekends, I was working for $5 an hour plus tip out of my 92 Dodge Shadow delivering information. You know, kebabs throughout Northern Virginia, well, really Arlington and into parts of DC, you know, lost money at that job because, you know i had so many car repair bills on a car that old, that old. And so i have a different perspective than some other folks do. And living here in Manassas park, if I go up the street, if I’m seeing a studio apartment going for 16, $1,700 that to me, you know, a month that to me says, how on earth is someone going to qualify with their first job out of college or assuming they even went to college in the first place? How are they going to qualify for this? This just means you’re having more and more people having to put off homeownership, having to put off expanding and having families, for example. I think there’s a lot to be said here on an affordability agenda that goes beyond just the cost of housing. But then, you know, we’ve got my bill, which is SB4, that would have universal free school breakfast for all kids. So there’s no, you know no cost and kids go in, they get their grab and go breakfast in the morning, have a nice day, make sure every kid gets fed, saves parents hundreds of dollars per school year, streamline stuff administratively.28:14.70Danica Roemfor the school system. So it’s really, really win, win, win. That’s an affordability thing right there right then and there. And it’s targeted financial relief for parents who need it the most. And I think that’s really good policy. I’m really, really pleased to see that the Senate caucus actually prioritized it. I think your listeners might get a quick laugh out of the fact that in my going nine years, this will be at my ninth session in offices, the first time I’ve ever had a low number bill. Typically, you spend a lot of time working on fixing roads, feeding kids and fighting data centers for all your bills don’t get a lot of low numbers. But, you know, I’ve passed 60 bills into law for my time, you know, all bipartisan support. So I’m still pretty good at it. But, you know, it’s really nice to see it being prioritized. That’s for sure.28:58.36Sam ShiraziYeah, well, I imagine you will hopefully get some bills passed and signed because of the trifecta. so So certainly something to look forward to. Another thing that the Democrats have said that they were going to do is redistricting.29:31.73Sam ShiraziYou know, you obviously voted for the referendum. I mean, why do you think it’s necessary? And if it passes, you know, I’ll ask you, you may not be able to tell me, do you think it’s going to be a 10-1 math, 9-2 math in terms of the proposed map, like when we might see it and and just move it?29:48.09Danica RoemYeah, so I served briefly on the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee before going, oddly enough, back to the AC&R Committee. So I started the 2024 session on one day on the i started my twenty twenty the the twenty twenty four session on one day on ag And then I went to P&E, and then I went back to Ag.30:11.77Danica RoemSo that kind of got weird. But I’m not going to be on the committee that’s going to be dealing with those lines at the end. So we’ll see you know what the lines are. For your listeners out there, I have as much of an idea as your listeners do about what the lines are going to look like, which is to say, no one knows. like just The lines have not been drawn yet. there’s there There is no map. You know there’s a lot of maps that have been floating around on social media and such. None of them are official maps. So we’ll see what ends up happening.30:41.24Danica RoemAt the same time, here’s thing. Okay. Supreme Court says Texas’s gerrymandering is fine. And then you’ve got California to offset Texas.30:51.61Danica RoemOkay. Okay. If those two were the only two states in the entire country where that happened, maybe you go, well, okay. Red state gets redder, blue state gets bluer.31:04.31Danica RoemLeave them alone at that. But what happened? The Trump administration started putting on pressure for states like Indiana to do this, where even one of, you know, a Republican operator from Virginia has been very outspoken against the Indiana legislators who didn’t want to go forward with this. So you’re seeing Indiana proposing a 9-0 map right now. What have you seen in North Carolina this year?31:29.47Danica RoemThey’ve now, you know, gone ahead with, uh, legislation to get rid of, Don Davis’s district or to make it a lot more, uh, Republican anyway. But that comes after they had already eliminated three other democratic districts. Right. So that gets into like, okay, who’s going to offset North Carolina. Who’s going to offset Indiana, Indiana.31:52.01Danica RoemAnd sure, the you the thing out of Utah got kind of weird. And so Democrats benefit from that one of like a plus one. But you’re still down nationwide at that point. So who’s going to offset those losses? Well, here comes Virginia.32:08.10Danica RoemAnd when a border state of ours, North Carolina, has had four seats swing because of gerrymandering, and you’re seeing other Republican let states across the country, you know, going at this one after the next, after the next, after next, then they cannot expect a passive response.32:27.32Danica RoemIt’s just not going to happen, you know? And so we’ll see what the numbers end up being, you know, we’ll just, we’ll, we’ll see what happens when the time comes. But, you know, I certainly, you know, as Senator Sherville said, you know, it’s full steam ahead, you know, no question.32:40.42Sam ShiraziAll right. Well, we’ll keep an eye out for that. I don’t want to take up too much your time. Did want to ask you kind of one catch all question at the end. You know, what is something that people should be looking for in 2026 in Virginia, either the General Assembly or redistricting or the congressional races? kind of what What is one thing they should be keeping an eye on?32:57.68Danica RoemI’ll try to answer a whole bunch of those real quick. So legislatively, one thing you should be looking on, I’m going to be crossing my fingers and everything, hoping that this is finally the year that we actually pump the brakes on reckless sprawl for the data center industry, where the JLARC report has said this is not sustainable. We’ve seen PGM’s independent watchdogs say that this not sustainable. And we’re going to have a lot of legislative proposals to start dealing with this multi-trillion dollar industry that is consuming massive amounts of power, water, and land. And maybe, maybe, maybe this will finally be the year that we start seeing a couple of bills or at least, you know, some with with some actual significance get signed. So legislatively, that’s definitely a thing to look out for. in terms of in terms of the next elections, to start dealing with this multi-trillion dollar industry. I think everything’s going to depend on what the new lines look like, right? like I think that’s going to be where everyone’s a focus is going to be.34:00.00Danica RoemI expect you’ll start seeing some candidates announcing for office in January if they haven’t already or if they’re forming exploratory committees. But it very, very well could be that we just have, you know, it could be until spring before you start seeing a whole lot of people come out because they want to see what those lines are going to be. so you know, whether we, you know, pass lines early or whether we wait until after a referendum, you know, or however the process works. stay tuned because there’s going to be a lot of activity you know really, really quickly. And then lastly, big thing to mention is the other constitutional amendments that are going to be up. So we passed on first reference the ones for reproductive rights, the ones for marriage equality, the ones for34:46.95Danica RoemAutomatic restoration of voting rights. Those are now going up for second reference. They absolutely will pass both chambers, no question. And those will be going up for statewide referendum as well. And, you know, I expect all three of them to do just fine. hopeful Hopefully, anyway. And the thing is, this will mark the 20th anniversary of the Marshall Newman Amendment that...35:34.11Danica RoemI still remember hitting the no button on that. And it was like a 5743 in favor outcome. It was really heartbreaking. It’s even at a time where we had a Democrat like in Jim Webb winning this, you know, US Senate election against George Allen. You know, the state just wasn’t there yet on marriage equality. And now, I think we have an overwhelming majority of voters who are going to be ready to support that. and So, you know, it really says a lot to make sure that people understand that the more people who come out and the more people who are vulnerable enough to be visible in the first place, the more, you know, people say, hey, it’s not just a concept. This is my friend. This is my family. This is my neighbor. This is my colleague. And they really humanize us and recognize that we’re real people. And, you know, we deserve our rights to be protected as much as anyone else.36:26.24Sam ShiraziWell, that’s a good reminder about those amendments, and I think that’s a good place to leave it. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time. Super interesting, and best of luck in the next General Assembly.36:35.71Danica RoemHey, well, thank you for making the time for for me, Sam. Thank you for the invitation back. It’s really good talk to you36:40.65Sam ShiraziYeah, no problem. This has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hey everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, I wanted to go over some lessons from Governor Youngkin’s time in office and just talk about what the incoming governor, a governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, might learn from that.00:17.24Sam ShiraziBut before I get to that, I did want to talk about two pieces of things that are in the news. One is redistricting and some redistricting news, both nationally and in Virginia.00:27.83Sam ShiraziAnd then it is another special election. So Virginia, there’s always an election going on and there is going to be a special election.00:35.35Sam ShiraziThis is for the state Senate seat that Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazala Hashmi will be resigning from. And so that’s going to be the special election that will coming up. So we’ll talk about that. So first, i want to talk about redistricting, both nationally and in Virginia. Nationally, there was some news specifically from Texas. So Texas, a lower court had found that The attempts to redistrict in Texas was a racial gerrymander and had put the maps on hold. That was appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court issued its ruling in that case and basically, long story short, allowed the Texas maps to go forward, which means Texas will be using the new maps that were drawn this year in the elections next year for the midterms.01:19.83Sam ShiraziSo that most people expect the Texas Republicans are going to be picking up seats because of that. So overall, in a way, it’s good news for the Republican Party. But... I think it does have important implications here in Virginia because in Virginia, we obviously are going through our own redistricting process.01:38.07Sam ShiraziThe Democrats have said that they will, again, in January, vote to put a referendum on the ballot in the spring to do redistricting. Given that the Democrats have majority in the General Assembly, it’s almost certainly going to pass.01:49.33Sam ShiraziSo increasingly, it’s looking like there will be a referendum in the spring on redistricting in Virginia. That’s assuming none of the legal challenges the Virginia Republicans are bringing are going to work. But let’s just assume the referendum is going to happen. I think this this Texas ruling increases the likelihood that there will be a redistricting referendum passing in Virginia.02:10.90Sam ShiraziBecause in theory, like let’s say the old maps were used in Texas, then there was an argument, you know, we don’t need redistricting in Virginia. It’s not necessary. Now I think the Democrats are going to come back and say, look, We did the redistricting for a reason here in Virginia because we’re trying to counter what the Republicans did in Texas and other states.02:28.60Sam ShiraziSo I think this increases the likelihood that Virginia is going to redistrict. And I think it also increases the likelihood that assuming the redistricting referendum passes in Virginia,02:38.75Sam Shirazithe Virginia Democrats are going to start really pushing perhaps a 10-1 map. Now, there was some news. The Speaker of the Virginia House Delegates, Don Scott, had floated during an interview with Larry Sabato that he may want to push for a 10-1 map. Certainly, the President pro temp of the Virginia Senate, State Senator Louise Lucas, has been very vocal about her belief that there should be a 10-1 map.03:03.68Sam ShiraziSo 10-1 means that instead of the current map, it will be drawn in a way that will elect 10 Democrats and one Republican. I think, you know, there’s a lot of things you have to look at. you have to look at the incumbent Democratic congresspeople and whether they would be okay with their districts being changed that much in order to get to a 10-1 map.03:23.68Sam ShiraziIt’s also possible Virginia could go for a 9-2 map. i think I think given the rhetoric, I think it’s likely that at a minimum it’s going to be a 9-2 map. The question becomes, do the Democrats really push for a 10-1 map?03:35.74Sam ShiraziAnd i think the other question is just, let’s assume the Democrats you know are able to get the referendum on the ballot. there’s The legal challenges don’t work. Do the Virginia Democrats unveil their map and before the referendum? Or do they kind of keep it a surprise and tell the voters, you know,03:51.97Sam Shirazijust vote for the referendum because we need to do redistricting and we’ll figure out the maps later. i mean, obviously the Virginia Republicans are going to use that against the Democrats and just tell the voters, you should just assume this is going to be a 10, one map because the Democrats aren’t even willing to show you the map that they’re going implement should this pass. So a lot of interesting stuff with Virginia redistricting, a lot of unknowns in terms of potential legal challenges, potential what the map’s going to look like. But I think, think, um,04:19.10Sam ShiraziLong story short, I think the Texas ruling increases the likelihood that Virginia is going to redistrict. And so that’s something that we’re going to be looking for in 2026. And you know the way that this ties back to the Virginia elections this year is obviously Democrats had to win the Virginia elections in order for redistricting to happen. I also think at the end, because the Democrats looked like they were going to do so well, they had the confidence essentially to go for redistricting and they didn’t feel like doing it last minute was going to upend the elections because Frankly, they probably had a feeling that it was going to be a landslide anyways, and obviously it did turn out to be a landslide. So that’s enough on redistricting. I just want to give people quick update on that.05:11.39Sam Shirazishe will have to resign in order to become lieutenant governor so she will be resigning from the state senate next year at the beginning of the year so that means someone has to replace her and there will be a special election the and the date of the special election was announced for january 6th so that’s when the democrat versus republican special election will happen in state senate seat that gizal hashmu is vacating however Before that that, the parties have to pick their nominees. And this is a very blue seat. And so unless something really crazy happens, in all likelihood, the Democratic nominee is going to be the next state senator from this district. And there will be a firehouse primary this Sunday. So Sunday, December 7th here in Virginia, there will be the firehouse primary in that part of Virginia. There are, we’ll see who all the candidates are, but there are essentially two candidates.06:05.20Sam Shirazifrontrunners for this state Senate nomination. There are two delegates in neighboring districts. There is Delegate Mike Jones, and then there is Delegate Deborah Gardner. Mike Jones comes more from the Richmond side of the district. Deborah Gardner comes more from the Chesterfield side of the district. So I think there’s going to be some of that dynamic.06:23.09Sam ShiraziOf note, Ghazal Hashmi has endorsed Mike Jones. So I think that’s a big endorsement for Jones. And we’ll see how far that takes him. The thing is, there’s not a lot of time to really organize. i mean, obviously, we all knew that this special election was going happen. But I think the date of the Firehouse primary was pretty quick in terms of when it was announced. And yeah, so just keep an eye out for that. We’ll have to see who wins the nomination.06:47.67Sam ShiraziAnd then once the nominee is determined, obviously, we’ll have to wait for the January 6th special election here for the state Senate seat because all Hashmi is vacating. Okay, now let’s turn to the main topic of the podcast, which is...07:01.72Sam Shirazifour lessons from Governor Yunkin’s time in office. And I did four lessons and that’s one lesson per year of when he’s been in office. And frankly, these are more lessons. I don’t want to say they’re lessons of what not to do, but more lessons learned from Governor Yunkin. I think, you know, I’m not going to go into all of the accomplishments Governor Yunkin had. i think probably the place that i think he made the most progress was in education, particularly kind of non- controversial things that you don’t often hear about. I talked about it a little bit with Todd Truitt about some of the standards and things that are a little bit more technical. I think there was some bipartisan agreement and Governor Youngkin was able to get a little bit done. i mean, obviously there was a lot of culture war stuff with the schools as well that kind of, you know was more of what the media covered and what both sides wanted to talk about. But I think there was some progress made on the education front. that frankly, I think Governor-Elect Spanberger is probably going to follow and there’s not going to be too much change on some of these technical standards.08:03.77Sam ShiraziHowever, you know i think I think there’s a lot that Governor Youngkin wasn’t able to do. and And a lot of that was because he never had a trifecta. The advantage Abigail Spanberger has is she’s going to come in with a trifecta on day one. So on day one,08:15.27Sam ShiraziThe Democrats in the General Assembly are going to start passing bills and they’re going to send them over to Governor Alex Manberger. And I imagine, you know, there might be some changes made to some bills, but for the most part, these bills are going to get signed. And I don’t anticipate Governor Alex Manberger having to veto as many bills as Governor Youngkin because she’s going have a trifecta. And we’ll get to that in the second year of the Youngkin administration. But I wanted to start with the first year of the Youngkin administration.08:39.96Sam ShiraziSo obviously 2022, Governor Yunkin has just been elected in 2021. It was a big, don’t i don’t know if it was an upset because i think at the end it was kind of clear that Yunkin had the advantage, but certainly took the political world by storm when Governor Yunkin won in 2021. And he was kind of the fresh new face on the scene for the Republican Party. Came in in and January 2022. He was sworn in. He had a lot of momentum. He obviously had a lot of things on his side. And that’s typically what happens. Typically, when you’re first elected, you’re the most popular and you have the most momentum and you have the biggest mandate to do things because...09:17.02Sam ShiraziThe voters have just elected you. And frankly, we’re seeing that with Governor-elect Spanberger. She had a much bigger win than Youngkin, but obviously Virginia is a relatively bluer state. And so I think we’re seeing that kind of the honeymoon period, as they call it. Governor-elect Spanberger is now in her honeymoon period, and she’ll probably be in that for some time after she takes office.09:57.18Sam ShiraziThe General Assembly will be new, you have to work with the General Assembly, you to figure out laws, there’s just a lot of kind of governing. stuff that is, you know, doesn’t always make the news, but it it takes up a lot of time if you’re a new administration. And I’m not saying that Governor Youngkin didn’t do all that stuff, but, you know, pretty clearly he had his eye on national politics as well. And this is something that we’ve seen a lot in Virginia. When you see these governors coming in with big or historic wins, there’s often talk at the national level about, you know, they could be a future president, future vice president.10:30.21Sam Shiraziin 2009 when Governor McDonald came in. He got a big win, kind of like Spanberger got a big win. And you know he was he looked like he could be a potentially good candidate. Now, obviously, he had some issues later on that quieted some of that. But you saw that in 2009. Mark Warner had a similar thing when he was first elected in 2001. There was talk that he might run in 2004. We saw it with Doug Wilder when he was elected in 1989. So this is something that often happens with Virginia governors because the governor election in Virginia is the only game in town in these off years along with New Jersey. So they get a lot of attention. And so I think i think the issue Governor Youngkin had11:07.85Sam Shiraziwas, you know, he quickly kind of hit the road. And there was kind of a joke that he was spending so much time outside Virginia. And I remember in the run up to the 2022 midterms, he kind of did this tour across the country. He went to Arizona, he went to Maine, he went to Oklahoma, I think he he went to Oregon and a bunch of places, s stumping mainly for Republican governor candidates.11:29.29Sam ShiraziAnd I think his advisors were probably telling him after 2021, this is going to be a red wave. You’re going want to campaign for all these people. And when they all win, you’re going to get you know a lot of the credit because you you went and campaigned with them. I mean, unfortunately, like for the Republicans, it wasn’t a red wave in 2022. And I remember, for example, in Arizona, Minnesota, Maine, these kind of purplish states that Youngkin went and campaigned for.11:53.50Sam Shirazithe Republicans lost in all those states. I mean, really the only states where Youngkin was able to help the candidate win was in some of the red states where they were going to win anyways. And so I think it was a bit of a letdown for Governor Youngkin. And there was also a sense that he was maybe spending too much time out of state. He took his eye off Virginia, particularly in that first year, because you’re a brand new governor.12:14.62Sam ShiraziAnd he kind of very quickly started hitting the road. There was a sense that he was really kind of keeping an eye on 2024. he didn’t really you know, care that much about the day to day governing of Virginia. So I think for Governor-elect Spanberger, I think there’s a temptation to want to kind of focus nationally and, you know, go on all the talk shows and all that. I mean, and, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but I do think the voters don’t like it when you take your eye off the ball, particularly when they just elected you, they want you to focus on the job. So I think that’s going to be an important lesson and we’ll see how Governor-elect Spanberger does with that.12:47.72Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s move on to the second year of the Yunkin administration, which was 2023. And this was a very important year because there were also the General Assembly elections. The entire state Senate and the entire House of Delegates was up for election. And Governor Youngkin pretty much went all in to try to get a trifecta. He needed a trifecta in order to pass the laws he wanted to pass. In 2022, he was able to pass a couple but bills that he wanted. But for the most part, the Democrats in the state Senate had blocked most of his agenda. And he basically went all in, raised a lot of money, campaigned a lot,13:21.86Sam ShiraziIn order to get majorities in the state Senate and the House of Delegates. And he came pretty close at the end of the day. But in politics, you know winning or losing by a close amount is not necessarily that important if you’re not able to win. And he was not able to get majorities in the Virginia General Assembly.13:39.78Sam ShiraziAnd in fact, the Democrats were able to flip the House of Delegates. so the Democrats got a 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates, and they got a 21-19 majority in the state Senate, which means they could basically block all the bills that Youngkin wanted to pass.13:52.88Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think the good news for Governor-elect Spanberger is this is much less likely to happen to her in 2027. Why? Because Donald Trump’s going to be in the White House. And so...14:03.52Sam Shiraziyou know We saw what happened in 2025. I think it’s very unlikely that the Democrats are going to lose their majorities in the state Senate and the House of Delegates. If anything, at least in the state Senate, they’re going to grow their majorities and they could even grow their majorities in the House of Delegates. So I think there’s a good chance Governor-elect Spanberger is going to have a Democratic trifecta for four years, which obviously for her is good news. But I did want kind of one thing to to learn from what Youngkin did that The main issue that he had problems with and the Republicans had problems with in 2023 was the abortion issue. Because 2022, there was the Dobbs decision, obviously, that overturned Roe v. Wade.14:57.83Sam Shirazihe essentially wanted to kind of unlock the key of how do you deal with the abortion issue for Republicans? And his proposal was to come up with this 15 week abortion.15:08.93Sam ShiraziHe called it a limit. Democrats called it a ban, but he basically said at 15 weeks, there would be some sort of limit on abortion with some exceptions for life of the mother and rape or incest. And so I think, I think that was what he wanted to run on. And his plan was if I get majorities,15:26.22Sam Shirazieven when I’m running on restricting abortion a little bit, that will show that I’m able to do this. And again, maybe he was looking towards 2024, but the problem is the Virginia Democrats very easily were able to seize upon that. And because any change to abortion law, which, you know, the Republicans and Governor Youngkin were admitting that they were going to do, it opens it up to this accusation of you’re going ban abortion in Virginia and,15:48.56Sam ShiraziThe Democrats very clearly wanted to make the 2023 elections a referendum on the abortion issue. And you could argue, given some of the districts they won in places like suburban Henrico and suburban Loudoun and suburban Prince William County, you could argue that in those critical swing suburban counties, the Democrats were able to win the day on the abortion issue.16:10.42Sam Shiraziand Governor Duncan was not able to get his trifecta. And I think the lesson there is sometimes you can’t run out too far ahead of the voters. Like if the voters are telling you, we don’t want to change the abortion laws, you just kind of have to accept that. And, you know, the reality was if the Republicans in 2023 had said, we’re not going to change the abortion laws in Virginia. And if anything, if the Democrats win, they’re going to, you know, make abortion much easier. And, you know,16:36.21Sam Shiraziyeah all the things that they want to argue, that might’ve been a different conversation. But when you opened the door to limits, it it allowed the Democrats to just say, you’re going to have an abortion ban. And I think it’s important for the Democrats now that they have this big trifecta,17:17.65Sam ShiraziAll right. Now let’s fast forward to 2024, the third year of the Yunkin administration. So in 2024, Democrats have control of the entire General Assembly. So Governor Yunkin obviously understood that his legislative agenda was not going to get through.17:31.28Sam ShiraziAnd you know he had to veto a bunch of bills because the Democrats now were able to pass a bunch of bills, given that they controlled the House of Delegates and the State Senate. So kind of legislative activity was not going to work for Governor Yunkin.17:43.31Sam ShiraziSo what he did was he wanted to shift to something that was perhaps more within his power and within the bully pulpit of the governor. And and that was the arena. So the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals, they have... to play in an arena. And traditionally they had been playing in downtown DC at the Capital One Arena, but it’s kind of an older facility. And Glenn Youngkin really wanted to lure that arena across the river and put it in Alexandria in a kind of a prime spot of real estate in Alexandria.18:17.73Sam ShiraziNow, I think these types of projects are often exciting for politicians because they get a lot of press attention. And it’s it’s a big accomplishment that I think Governor Youngkin wanted to get done.18:29.82Sam Shiraziyou know Arguably, in many ways, it didn’t make sense because one, that part of Alexandria you know doesn’t have the best access to all the metro lines. There is a metro there, but it’s only one line of the metro versus downtown DC. All the metros converge there.18:47.82Sam ShiraziThere’s going to be a lot of traffic. Frankly, Alexandria at that time, the economy was pretty strong. So it didn’t really need this new economic thing. And, you know, sometimes people sell arenas as a big job creator. I mean that part of Alexandria is relatively more well off. It didn’t need a lot of, you know, more lower paying jobs that arenas sometimes bring. And so it just logically made more sense for the arena to be in D.C.19:14.43Sam ShiraziBut having said that, I think Governor Youngkin was very persuasive. He was able to kind of push it through pretty far. The problem for him was he hadn’t necessarily done all the legwork in the Virginia General Assembly because there there was going to be some tax incentives and other things. And so you couldn’t just do it through the executive branch. The legislative branch also had to pass a bill. And think the problem Governor Youngkin had was that The Democrats were kind of skeptical of this proposal. And there was one person, the state Senate, that kind of blocked this proposal.19:47.17Sam ShiraziShe was the president pro temp of the state Senate. She was also, the I think, the chair of the finance committee. And that was State Senator Louise Lucas. I think she tried to meet with Governor Yunkin. She wanted kind of something in return and in order to get this done. And Governor Yunkin was really never, you know, my understanding was really not necessarily that engaged with her. and And it was more of a negotiation with the government.20:10.98Sam Shiraziana owner And I think that just didn’t work because you did need the legislature to be involved. And so I think obviously the arena didn’t end up happening. The owner of the arena in DC said he’s going to stay there. He’s going to renovate it. He got some incentives from DC. So you could argue maybe he was trying to play both sides and see who would give him a better deal.20:31.08Sam ShiraziBut at the end of the day, I think the lesson here for Governor-elect Spanberger is you really need to work with the legislature. And you as the governor, you may think you’re you know have a lot of power, and you do.20:43.17Sam ShiraziBut Virginia’s legislature, General Assembly, is is a pretty powerful General Assembly. And there’s sometimes been said it’s one of the most powerful state legislatures in the country. And there’s a lot the state state legislature can do for you. It’s a lot they can do against you. And it’s it’s obviously easier when you have a trifecta and your your party’s in power in the General Assembly. But I still think it’s important for Governor Lex Manberger to do the personal relationships, to make sure that her agenda can get through, that they’re on the same page, that there isn’t this kind of tension between the executive and legislative branch, because just the the reality of power is sometimes there is that kind of tension. And so long story short, short you know i think21:22.99Sam ShiraziGovernor Alex Spanberger herself was a member of a legislative body. She was a member of Congress. And so I think she understands what it’s like to be in the legislature. And so it’ll be interesting to see how she works with the General Assembly.21:35.09Sam ShiraziAll right. Now let’s turn to the last year of the Yunkin administration, which was obviously 2025. And the lesson here is you really have to figure out what’s going to happen with the election because you as the incumbent world governor cannot run for reelection. So you are still kind of the leader of your party in the state because you are the top executive official in Virginia. And I think governor Youngkin, you know, to, to defend him or to kind of give him credit. I mean, as soon as Donald Trump was elected, it was going to be very difficult for the Republicans to win in Virginia. And I think that’s just the reality. It didn’t really matter.22:12.25Sam Shirazifrankly, who the Republican nominee was, I think they going to lose no matter what. Having said that, I do think there were some things that Governor Youngkin did that maybe he could have done differently. The first, and I’ll talk about the John Reed thing. So in around April, he called for John Reed to not be the Republican nominee because of what had come out, you know, supposedly about this Tumblr and John Reed denied that it was Tumblr. Long story short, Glenn Youngkin asked John Reed to drop out. John Reed said no. He kind of stood up to Glenn Youngkin and he remained the Republican nominee.22:45.28Sam ShiraziI think that created kind of a tension in the Virginia GOP. It kind of showed that Youngkin wasn’t necessarily in charge of the Virginia Republicans. It also you know frankly, kind of showed he was basically a lame duck at that point because he wasn’t able to get his way. And so I think that was kind of a blunder and it didn’t necessarily want to have have to happen.23:04.89Sam ShiraziNow, to defend Governor Yonkin, the story kind of reemerged in the fall, but it wasn’t as big of a deal because it had already kind of been aired out in April. So you could argue maybe Governor Yonkin’s strategy was to kind of air this stuff out in April so that when it came out in the fall, it wasn’t that big of a deal.23:21.44Sam ShiraziMaybe. i mean, I don’t know if that was the grand strategy, but, you know, either way, that was not necessarily the the greatest thing that happened. And then kind of the bigger issue was Winston Earl Sears, Governor Youngkin endorsed her.23:33.95Sam Shirazihe was She was her his lieutenant governor. And so obviously, you know, he was trying to let her run her own campaign. And, you know, he didn’t want to get too involved.23:45.24Sam ShiraziBut around the summer, it was pretty obvious that the Winsorne-Rose Sears campaign was not going to be able to run this thing like effectively. And a lot of people basically told Governor Yunkin, you have to come in and kind of either provide money or provide some organization. And I think he did that to a certain extent, but it was, it was not the same as when he was running in 2021. And I think he certainly could have earlier in the year done a better job, you know fundraising, organizing, trying to do more,24:11.20Sam Shiraziyou know Again, the reality is the Virginia Republicans are going to lose no matter what, but there’s a difference between a 10-point loss and a 15-point loss, particularly for the House Delegates candidates.24:22.38Sam Shiraziyou know It’s hard to tell how much of it really is ultimately Winston Earl Sears’ fault versus Governor Youngkin’s fault versus the federal Republicans’ fault, but You know, we’ll have to see what Governor-elect Spanberger does in 2029.24:35.18Sam Shirazitwenty twenty nine The biggest wild card is who’s going to win the presidential election in 2028. I think if the Republicans win in 2028, that’ll make the Democrats’ job in 2029 in Virginia pretty easy because I suspect they’re going to have a good shot of winning. I think if the Democrats win in 2028 for the presidential election, that will make the 2029 Virginia elections, very interesting because, that’ll be, to a toss up type race. And so anyways, you know, those were kind of the four lessons, of the Yunkin administration I wanted to go over.25:08.04Sam ShiraziI think, you know, it’s easy when you’re not in office, when you’re not in power, hindsight to say, oh, he should done this. He should have done that. you know, I’m not necessarily trying to pick on governor Yunkin. It’s,25:17.35Sam ShiraziYou know, politics, there’s things you get right, there’s things you get wrong. That’s kind of the nature of it. But I did think it was going to be, I thought it would be interesting to do this, mainly to just preview what Governor-elect Spamberger has to deal with. And frankly, she has she has an easier job, mainly just because she has a trifecta. So i I anticipate next year she’ll be able to sign a bunch of bills. She’ll be, you know, holding bill signing ceremonies saying, you know, I got so much done with the Democrats and the General Assembly.25:43.50Sam Shiraziperhaps redistricting will be an interesting thing that she’ll have to deal with. But, you know, generally I think she’ll have an easier job than Governor Youngkin. And that’s just kind of the reality of the political situations they both had to take over. So anyways, hopefully people found this episode interesting. I think I have a few more episodes in me, at least for this year before the holidays, still trying to figure out long-term plans for the podcast. I know people asked me about that. I’m I’m still figuring out. I think at least for the holidays, i’m going to take a break, but you know we’ll we’ll see what 2026 holds. And yeah, anyways, I really appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I will continue to do this, at least for till the holidays. And I hope everyone enjoyed this episode. And this has been Federal Fallout. And I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special bonus interview with Kevin Holst. He is the executive director of the Democratic Lieutenant Governor Association, and I wanted to get have him back on to talk about what happened in Virginia and then look forward to the midterms in 2026. So, Kevin, thanks for joining me.00:20.66Kevin HolstThanks for having me back on.00:22.34Sam ShiraziYeah, so i wanted to start kind of big picture, your takeaway from the elections in 2025, Virginia, New Jersey, because obviously Democrats had a good night. you know Why do you think Democrats had a good night and what can they learn from that election for 2026?00:36.62Kevin HolstWell, I think it’s twofold. One, the environment was incredibly favorable to us in both Virginia and New Jersey. Virginia uniquely you know, I, if I wasn’t a professional Democrat and true believer in all these things, I, you know, would almost, I couldn’t paint a better environment than having Donald Trump just come at Virginia’s core economy. When you have one third of Northern Virginia that is a federal government employee or contractor, and the first thing you do in office is to lay them off or to come directly for their livelihoods that obviously sets up an environment that is very unfavorable to republicans donald trump continued to crater in popularity throughout the year and the republican party seemed to just go belly up and not put up a fight the01:25.30Kevin Holstamount of investment that national Republicans had in the gubernatorial LG and then state legislative races was really close to nothing until very late in the election. And for those of us who do elections for a living, and we know that early money is like East. It helps make the dough rise. And it also helps with planning and budgeting. So by the time Republicans had some fantasy that they had a shot in Virginia, it was far too late. The other thing is we had incredible candidates that stepped up who were laser focused on a few key issues, affordability being one of them. You know, it’s not a helpful campaign message for Republicans to say, we laid you off from your job.02:43.05Kevin Holstcompletely in outer space in terms of how people were trying to sample the electorate. There was a coalition of people that were not likely to turn out by historical comparison that were so motivated to show their disapproval of Republicans, of Donald Trump, and to show how they believe that Abigail Spanberger, Ghazala Hashmi, Mikey Sherrill, and Dale Caldwell were the leaders that they wanted in this moment.03:13.15Sam ShiraziYeah, and that’s a good kind of big picture overview. I wanted to kind of talk specifically about Virginia and specifically about the lieutenant governor’s race, because obviously that was the race that you were focused on. And, you know, just as a summary, Ghazal Hashmi ended up winning by about a little over 11 and a half percent.03:23.39Kevin HolstYes.03:29.29Sam ShiraziShe won by almost 400,000 votes. So certainly a healthy win, not necessarily as big as Abigail Spanberger, but obviously bigger than Jay Jones for attorney general.03:40.28Sam ShiraziAnd I think there’s been kind of this discourse that, you know, Spanberger was, you know, a strong Democrat and she won by 15 percent. And Jay Jones was kind of a weaker Democrat and he won by less. And so Ghazal Hashmi was like the generic Democrat and John Reed was a generic Republican.03:55.45Sam ShiraziDo you think that’s accurate or do you think it’s more complicated?03:58.81Kevin HolstI think it’s a lot more complicated than that because Ghazal Hashmi is a history making candidate and we see that history making candidates tend to underperform. She is the first Muslim woman ever elected to a statewide position in the country.04:14.56Kevin HolstThere, she, we, as I’ve said to her, you’re the first, not the last, but she was enduring daily, just vicious racist attacks, not just by John Reed, but by governor Youngkin and other Republicans, you know John Reed called her Mondami and heels pro Hamas and Islamist. He, if I’m remembering correctly, he might even say she has some jihadist ideology. And said that she wants to impose Sharia law on Virginia. And when he was hit hit for that, he was like, oh, I’m just asking questions. So there were some really vicious attacks on someone that the state did not really know.05:44.07Kevin HolstRoy Cooper won twice as governor and a Republican lieutenant governor was elected. So when you have voters who had traditionally voted Republican in the past that say to themselves, I will vote for the Democrat for governor, but I want to check on them. There is no office that invites that permission for them more than lieutenant governor, which is what we’ve seen in a couple states throughout the country. You know,06:09.25Kevin HolstIn Vermont, there was a Republican governor and Democratic lieutenant governor up until the 24 elections in North Carolina. Opposite situation, Democratic governor, Republican lie lieutenant governor again until we flipped that seat for the first time since 2008 and 2024 with Rachel Hunt. So Ghazala was an undefined candidate just because there hadn’t been resources spent on her behalf. So I wouldn’t say this was a generic Dem race where they said, oh she has a Dean extra name. John Reed is a generic Republican because he also isn’t. He’s also a history making candidate. He was the first openly gay Republican nominated to statewide office in Virginia He was incredibly telegenic from his radio career. He got into a fight with Glenn Youngkin, which depressed more moderate Republicans to turn out for him. So this was a very complicated race. And at the end of the day, when both candidates communicated, we saw a strong win for Gazala. If this was a generic Dem race, she would have07:14.68Kevin Holstperformed basically at the same margin as Spanberger because there was no negative hits against Gazala other than just the vile racist attacks that Reed and his allies were hitting her with on a daily basis.07:28.92Sam ShiraziYeah, I wanted to follow up specifically about the kind of attacks that John Reed and others made about Ghazal Hashmi and trying to link her to Ma’am Dhani.07:40.04Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to just get your thoughts about whether you think that actually may have helped Hashmi in the sense of I heard anecdotal reports about South Asian Muslim voters, places like Loudoun that saw a big swing.07:54.39Sam Shiraziyou know they don’t They didn’t necessarily like that type of attack on Hashmi and would have been would it have been smarter for the Republicans to maybe just stick to the issues.08:05.04Kevin HolstYeah, I mean, Reid couldn’t defend his positions on issues. He sided with Donald Trump on doge cuts. I mean, the one person I said I felt worse for this entire campaign was Reid’s partner because, you know, Reid was...08:20.30Kevin Holstagainst protecting marriage equality in the Constitution. So it’s sort of like, he won’t marry you, my dude. And then his partner also had a federal job that was impacted in round one of layoffs in Doge. So not only did he side with Virginia, it didn’t even side with his own multi-year partner. So I don’t think voters...08:38.96Kevin Holstcould really place their trust in him when he was running a campaign that was completely contrary to what Virginians wanted was to you know have someone that put Virginians ahead of Donald Trump.08:51.21Kevin HolstAnd John Reed had built his career off of just being a zealot for Trump and pushing Trump talking points on the radio. So he ran a campaign that was just Trump based issues, which was very unpopular voters. Ghazala Hashmi had an insane margin in Loudoun County. i remember seeing that and being in disbelief where she won 62 percent to 37 percent for John Reed. And obviously there’s a very large growing South Asian community where we spent a lot of time yeah it was another fancy world that john reid was living in calling her hide and hash me because gazala was on the road every single day meeting with voters and loud and specifically our lieutenant governor for maryland aruna miller did south asian outreach with gazala to turn out the vote and in a really great only in america story09:41.60Kevin HolstSo Aruna Miller, our Democratic the lieutenant governor for Maryland, and Ghazala Hashmi, our incoming Democratic lieutenant governor of Virginia, were born in the same city in India, six months apart.10:03.59Kevin HolstBut the racist attacks, we did see it backfire and it reminded voters of what they hated most about Donald Trump. And it showed that the Trump style of politics does not define Virginia in the modern era.10:16.32Sam ShiraziWell, that’s certainly an interesting fact about Ghazal Hashmi and the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland. I did not know that, so always learning something new. That’s a certainly interesting fact there. I did want to ask about John Reed, one last thing about him specifically. So there was a story about his Tumblr that came out, and he denied it, and it didn’t seem to pick up a lot of traction. Maybe that was because the Jay Jones stuff came out, and you know the media wanted to focus on that.10:42.87Sam ShiraziBut were you surprised that you know John Reed... you know That story, specific especially because Governor Yunkin had asked him to drop out because of it, that it never really took off.10:53.37Kevin HolstYeah. So John Reed denied it was his Tumblr, which, you know we hear a lot of some some crazy made up things in politics, but if you were to go to court and say, prove this isn’t your Tumblr more likely than not, the court would find it is because Who in 2012, 2014 was like, you know, I’m going to create an account with the same location, ip addresses, and username that John Reed has for every other account and just post things that are of interest to him. And why would the account be deleted the day Governor Yunkin...11:33.87Kevin Holstcalls John Reed to tell him to drop out before it was leaked to the press three days later. It’s it’s really just, it shows, this is was a great example of how Virginians just couldn’t trust him because you know he couldn’t accept that the account was his.11:49.42Kevin HolstHe fought with the governor over it. So that became the bigger story because obviously Governor Youngkin was the leader of the Republican Party. And it was kind of amazing how reided won that fight and damaged Youngkin’s ambitions and showed him that he never really controlled the Republican Party or really had the sway that he thought he did with Virginia voters.12:11.66Kevin HolstI think what did become a big story in some constituents media, the LGBTQ press was huge on this, was the Nazi fetish porn stories that came out in the fall. There were other things happening in Virginia that major outlets were covered rather than this story. But we saw in LGBT media media throughout the country that this was a recurring story. And our press clips, we got this almost every day.12:40.98Kevin HolstSo it might not have been in the Washington Post or of the newspapers in Richmond, but it was definitely a story that got out there.12:48.10Sam ShiraziWell, at least we know that the voters in Virginia, at least they decided to to back Ghazal Hashmi and made their own judgment on all the stuff that was discussed during the campaign. And I wanted to just kind of finish the Virginia part of the discussion, just what it was like on your end, you know, day to day doing the campaign, particularly when As you said, you know the lieutenant governor’s race, I feel like got squeezed between all the attention paid to the governor’s race. And then obviously with the attorney general race, the Republicans went on all in on it.13:20.67Sam ShiraziWhereas the lieutenant governor race, I feel like on both sides was a little bit of more of a sleeper race. i mean What was it like on your end trying to you know be be involved in that race?13:31.34Kevin Holstyou know We worked very closely with the coordinated campaign and had great relationships with the other statewides. I think one thing that we always forget now that we’re we’re focused on the general election past was just how close the primary was. i generally have a good idea of whom the nominee will be in a particular race. The DLGA multi-candidate primaries does not take a position in primaries typically.13:54.90Kevin HolstAnd I remember doing a poll on the LG primary week before, and the three candidates were at 29, 28, and 27. And I thought to myself, what a waste of money. This will be like 2021. One candidate is going get 40% and win by margin of 10%.14:13.12Kevin HolstThen turned on my polls pretty accurate when Gazzala was ahead by 5000 votes and then LeVar was 1000 votes ahead of Aaron Rouse. So she entered the campaign broke. All the Democratic primary candidates were broke because they were fighting to win the nomination. So, you know, we made a very large investment. We gave her a million dollars the day after the primary, which I think helped set a level of level of seriousness for the campaign where John Reed Had this opening where they’re like if there is a damaged Democratic nominee, maybe we can drop winsome and try to boost read and hold the AG seat But it caused a lot of people to say there’s no point in even trying to help read it’s time to coalesce around the artists because He was never going to catch up with us on fundraising John Reed Said that the DLJ’s donation was you know15:09.32Kevin Holstfar-left Soros pro-Hamas money. i can tell you George Soros has never donated to the DLGA, nor has Hamas or anyone connected with Hamas. We are proud of our donors throughout the country who contribute $5, $10, $25 to our efforts.15:24.81Kevin HolstBut it was great getting to know Ghazala. She loves to say she’s a mild-mannered English professor, but she is really in this for the right reasons. And we’re really fortunate to have someone like her step up. mean, she got into politics because of Trump’s Muslim ban and her daughter calling her saying, should I carry my passport around? Her daughter was born in the US, but being brown, being Muslim, she was like, rather than sit by and hear the fear of my daughter’s voice i’m gonna do something about this and she just has a core moral conviction in what she’s doing to make life better for everyone that is really unique in politics today especially as we have so many people throughout the country dismayed about our leaders and their motivations it’s just it was really great to be able to16:20.62Kevin Holstspend time and get to know a leader like Gazala, who is in it for the right reasons. She’s data driven, she’s always thinking about how government can improve the lives of everyone across the state.16:33.56Sam ShiraziAnd so now that she’s been elected, she will obviously become the lieutenant governor. The main role is to be presiding over the Virginia Senate. You know, what do you think she will be like as lieutenant governor? And what do you think some of her priorities will be?16:46.70Kevin HolstI mean, she’s a key player in state government now, because as you know, we had a blowout election in the House of Delegates, but the Senate wasn’t up. We still just have a one seat majority and we cannot always count on every Democrat in the Senate to be unified on any issue.17:04.33Kevin HolstSo if we want Governor Spanberger’s agenda to pass swiftly, it’s going to fall on Ghazala Hashmi to ensure that they are building the coalitions necessary in the state Senate and be that tie-breaking vote, which is inevitably going to occur at some point throughout session.17:23.84Kevin HolstI know she she ran on lowering costs, fully funding public education and creating opportunity. I know she has a pretty robust transition team right now, which is focusing on her policy priorities in that area. But one thing I’ve learned about Gazala is that if she makes a promise about something, she comes through with it. And so I can imagine that’s going to be the bulk of her policy focus in the next session.17:48.28Sam ShiraziGot it. Well, yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how she does as lieutenant governor and 2026 will be interesting here in Virginia. and speaking of 2026, did want to kind of shift focus to the midterms of for the end of the discussion and specifically about kind of big picture Democrats’ goals for the midterms, your organization’s goals, and kind of the question of how ambitious should they become? Because I think after you win in New Jersey and Virginia, like the Democrats did, there’s a temptation to want to go big.18:18.46Sam ShiraziBut obviously, you know, just because one election happened one way in 2025 doesn’t mean it’s going to happen the same way in 2026. So kind of what are your thoughts on that?18:27.35Kevin HolstWe have a lot of opportunity, but the midterms were historically better for Democrats in 2022 and obviously 2018. We all have our own priorities and fights among our fights being like, I’m taking the fight to Republicans the 10 governors, DTRIP to Republicans in Congress.18:46.99Kevin HolstFor our sister committees, I have 31 races for lieutenant governor next year, and i have some top pickup opportunities like in Nevada. We’ve recruited an incredible candidate, Sandra Howdy, who is the state assembly majority leader in Nevada, daughter of immigrants.19:03.95Kevin HolstShe is a survivor of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting and turned her grief into action and is the author and champion of every major piece of gun violence prevention legislation in Nevada. She will be the only Latina on the statewide ballot in Nevada next year. And she was endorsed by Sanders Cortez Masto, Rosen, Attorney General Ford, who is the front runner for the Democratic nomination for governor right now. Vermont is another interesting pickup for us where a Republican won that election in 2024.19:38.25Kevin Holsttwenty twenty four People think Vermont is Bernie Sanders socialist blue, but Phil Scott is the most popular governor in the country. He’s a Republican with an 80% approval rating in Vermont. So that is going to be interesting for us next year. and We have a some states that we need to hold, like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas. And then what’s unique about us at the DLGA is we don’t just flip seats from red to blue. for our Lutang governors. We support our Lutang governors throughout their political journey.20:12.68Kevin HolstAnd so we have some Lutang governors who are running for higher office right now, whom we have endorsed, and some of which we’ve made financial commitments to. Our Lutang governor in New Jersey just announced today, we’re recording this on Tuesday, that she’s running for Congress. The DLGA has endorsed her. We have our lieutenant governors in Illinois and Minnesota running for U.S. Senate. We’ve endorsed and made financial commitments in Wisconsin. Our lieutenant governor, Sarah Rodriguez, is running for governor, and we will be spending $2 million dollars in her primary to ensure that she’s the Democratic nominee for governor.20:46.27Kevin HolstSo I will be running around with my hair on fire because i have 31 races for UTank governors. I have a bunch of others running for higher office, but i think we have an opportunity.20:57.75Kevin HolstTrump has overstepped. He has said that he was going to lower costs and many voters voted for him in 2024 based on the economy and saying that he could bring prices down. Things have only gotten more expensive.21:09.84Kevin HolstAnd then his tariffs have caused it to become even more expensive on top of that. We’re seeing some sectors deal with double digit and sometimes even triple digit price increases. And so Republicans fundamentally are not governing.21:26.16Kevin HolstTheir idea of governing is just whatever Trump’s daily whim is and whatever he posts on truth social and that’s not a serious governing coalition or party. So it’s on us to talk about how we are actually going to improve lives for Americans across the country And it’s a very different message at the federal level because, of course, we need to take back the House. We need to do everything we can to have a good shot of taking back the Senate. But at the state level, state politics is very different and voters think about it differently. State and local politics affects your life immediately, while most things at the federal level can take months and sometimes even years for it to be felt. So people know whom their governor is. They know whom their mayor is. And they care about are their roads paved? Is their trash picked up on time? Are their kids going to good quality schools? And that’s why we’ve been able to see22:20.91Kevin HolstPeople like Laura Kelly and Lieutenant Governor David Toland win as Democrats in Kansas, in a state that hasn’t gone for a Democrat at the federal level, think, in over 100 years. That’s why we’ve won in very tough places, and have good shots in states like Iowa next year, and why we’re primed to flip Nevada next.22:43.72Kevin HolstAnd so i think we should be ambitious, but we also have to be very clear headed with our candidates that we get the right candidates and that they’re running on the right messages that resonate with voters.22:56.66Sam ShiraziWell, I wanted to talk about one race because it’s kind of interesting to me, and it specifically talks about the issue about how state elections are different than federal elections, and that is in Vermont. So a lot of people don’t know this, but Vermont has a Republican lieutenant governor. I think you mentioned that when you were discussing it. And I wanted to just kind of get your sense of, you know, when these types of races happen, how do you kind of deal with those kind of quirks in states that are not necessarily going to be a federal election is really going to be a much more state oriented election.23:29.25Kevin Holstyeah So many people really don’t appreciate that Vermont kind of had a red wave in 2024. Of the 150 seats in the House Representatives, Republicans picked up 19 seats and Democrats had a super majority before and lost that. And then in the state Senate, there are 30 seats in the Republicans won six and got to 13 seats. So like really had headline of sight almost at tying with the, with Democrats. And we saw, know, we lost the 10 governors election 2024. Phil Scott endorsed Kamala Harris. He’s not your average Trump Republican. has an 80% approval rating. his approval rating among Democrats might actually be higher. My native state of Massachusetts, we saw that Charlie Baker, when he was Republican governor, had a higher approval rating among Democrats than he did Republicans.24:25.51Kevin HolstSo i say a lot of this is personality-driven. There was a backlash to property tax increases that the legislature imposed in Vermont 2024, which Phil Scott, you know, hugged the Republican Lutang governor nominee and all down ballot candidates and his popularity translated into big wins for them in 24. It’s to be determined if Phil Scott runs again. he’s His first election was in 2016.24:55.44Kevin Holstyou know He will go on 10 years as governor, which is a very long time. He doesn’t make his announcement until May, usually, which is when the Vermont session wraps up.25:06.21Kevin HolstIf he does not run for re-election, we’re going to flip the governor’s office and lieutenant governor’s office. No questions asked. It will happen. If he runs for election, it becomes harder. But at the DLGA, we still have a clear line of sight to take out the Republican lieutenant governor, John Rogers, who is kind of a gun nut and doesn’t really focus on anything of note. He’s a former Democrat who switched to Republican to run for lieutenant governor 2024. He will probably run for governor if Phil Scott does not run for reelection, but he will not win. It’s going to be a pretty active primary. We are speaking to all of the candidates. It’s a very late primary. It’s August 11th in Vermont. Imagine Virginia, if we were still going through our25:57.17Kevin Holstprimaries in August rather than June. So whomever the Democratic nominee is in Vermont, the DLGA is fully behind them and we’ll be focused on making sure we can flip the seat and take it back.26:10.99Sam ShiraziWell, it’s certainly going to be an interesting race. I did want to ask one last question, kind of on a lighter note, because, you know, we obviously went through a long campaign here in Virginia and it doesn’t seem like it, but campaign folks are also human beings. And, you know, I just wanted to get a sense of what you’re, you don’t really have that much downtime, but what you did kind of decompress from the election and if you took any time off or did anything fun to get a, take a break after the Virginia elections and New Jersey.26:40.45Kevin HolstEvery year is an election year at the DLGA. Some are crazier than others. We had two this year, and like I said, I have 31 LG elections and a couple for higher office next year. So unfortunately did not get any time off, but we will be visiting my in-laws in Mexico for the last two weeks the year. closed the DLGA offices for the last two weeks to...27:05.00Kevin Holstsort of force my team to have some downtime and recharge because you know this is a very intense business that can lead to a lot of burnout so i will happily be in mexico for the holidays yeah thanks for having me on sam27:16.52Sam ShiraziWell, I hope that you’re going to be able to relax a little bit and everyone can relax over the holidays. Kevin, I really appreciate you coming on and talking about the LG race in Virginia.27:27.85Sam ShiraziAll right. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, Ben Tribbett will be joining me again. he is a Democratic consultant at his firm Pocket Aces and I wanted to bring him back because we had him earlier in the year and I think he had some really good insights. So Ben, thanks for joining me.BenHey, thanks for having me, Sam.Sam ShiraziYeah, so as I mentioned, you were here in April, one of the first guests on the podcast. And I still remember you were saying some things that I think ended up happening. So I wanted to do one quote from you in April when you joined our podcast. You said, quote, so far it feels bigger than 2017. The wave we are likely to catch this year’s this year feels like it will be absolutely massive. So Ben, what did you see coming in April and why did it end up happening?BenYeah, I think that the for the for the Democrats, the big question of the year was, is this going to be an election that is fought on Virginia issues, or is this going to be an election that is fought on what’s happening at the federal level?01:10.70BenAnd the one thing that has been consistent in the Trump era, since he first started running and 2015 and then 2016, 2016, is a huge spike in civic engagement. I joking jokingly call him the greatest president in history for civic engagement because voter turnout has gone through the roof in every election that he’s been involved in because he brings out both supporters and opponents to his agenda.01:41.46BenAnd when you’re looking at a state that is a narrowly blue state to begin with, that could be the focus of some of his attacks, particularly on the federal workforce.01:53.97BenThe way the election was shaping up was this was going to be something that was fought on the federal issues and the environment that you would get from that versus just fighting it out on on state issues. Let’s say like the example of that being like the 1997 race for where Jim Gilmore ran on no car tax, right, was something that was fought on Virginia issues.02:17.29BenAnd every time the Republicans tried to shift the focus from federal to state, they failed spectacularly because Donald Trump just won’t allow for anyone anything else to get oxygen besides what he’s talking about.02:33.87BenHe’s going to take actions and do things that just suck the life out of anything else happening in the world to where he’s the only thing being discussed on the news.02:45.69BenAnd that was really just a disaster for both Winsome Sears, but the entire Republican ticket throughout the year, because every time Trump was on the news, he was doing something that was vastly unpopular, not only nationwide, but even more so unpopular in Virginia.03:01.94BenAnd so at that point, You know, the question is, do you have a candidate that can run an error-free campaign that can pick up voters as that’s as there’s availability and possibility, but but otherwise can get across the finish line with as broad of a coalition as possible?03:21.33BenAnd i don’t think you could build a better candidate for an environment like this than Abigail Spanberger because she was disciplined. She stayed focused on her message.03:31.42BenAnd she never allowed herself to get knocked off of that message while voters just flocked to her for the stability and sanity that she was offering.03:41.84Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, I think that that’s a helpful explanation about what happened. And, you know, obviously, there was a reason the podcast was called Federal Fallout. I wanted to kind of unpack some of that. So on Election Day, you were doing a lot and posting a lot about how turnout was looking really great for the Democrats and Republicans were a lot of trouble.03:59.88Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think some people were like, oh, he’s just saying that. But then obviously, when the results came in, it was pretty obvious what was happening. Were you surprised by the scale of what happened? Or was this kind of what you were thinking was goingnna end up happening even even before Election Day?04:14.14BenYeah, you know, I was i was thinking at ballpark 400,000. So she beat my number by a little more than 100,000. So it was a little bit bigger than what I was expecting. But I think when I when i said 400,000 online at one point, people thought that was hilarious.04:29.79BenSo I think 400 was probably a much higher number than than most people kind of had in mind. You know, there’s a few factors that, you know, go into that of,04:41.01Benof how does she get such a big margin. and you can see them on election day because there are precincts that over represent certain voters or types of voters, that tell you a lot in how they’re behaving on election day, in the turnout numbers, but also if you have people standing there that, giving you feedback of,05:06.30Benwhat people are saying at those polls, right? And so, you know, firstly, i thought one of the things that jumped out at me on election day was there was kind of an Asian revolution going on where you could tell early on on election day and and some of the early vote numbers had had hinted to watch for this, but you never know until election it’s happening.05:29.73Benthat some of the exodus of the that came from the Democratic Party in 2024 of Asian voters was coming back really, really strong, both in turnout and in the percentage of voters coming home.05:43.05BenAnd some of that you know is in 2024. Obviously, the Democrats had some numbers lost amongst the Muslim community because of what was going on with foreign policy.05:55.55BenI think Kamala Harris, despite being Indian, did not necessarily inspire a record Indian turnout in support of her candidacy. I think there’s a bunch of things that could be explored as to why that is. But so, you know, there’s precincts like, for example, in Loudoun County, where there’s one that jumps my mind, I can’t remember the name of it, where in the when we had a lieutenant governor’s primary,06:21.71Benand it was Anish Chopra against Ralph Northam, Anish got 98% of the vote because the precinct is so overwhelmingly Indian. And so the neighborhoods around there are telling you a lot about what the South Asian community is doing. Obviously, they’ve elected now both Suhas to Congress and Cannon to the state Senate. So they’re successfully electing people from the community that You can look at those elections to see what precincts are kind of spiking in support of of those candidates.06:51.48BenAnd so when I start hearing early on in the morning that there’s lines out the door of minority voters in those precincts, it’s telling me a lot of information about what’s to come on election day, right? And the same way that if I want to know what’s going on with senior citizens,07:13.29BenI’m gonna take a look at a precinct like Greenspring in South Fairfax County because it votes in a senior a senior center that 100% of the voters live on campus and and they vote in the cafeteria at lunch, right?07:27.72BenAnd so in primaries, I’m always looking at Greenspring for, sometimes the candidates will get 95, 96% of the vote there that are the older establishment candidates because it really runs like a a machine and it tells you a lot into what’s going to happen there. i It’s probably a longer answer than what you wanted, but like you know i think of like you know the 2017 primary when we had a governor and a lieutenant governor’s race.07:56.64BenWhen Greenspring reported in you could tell a lot about how the election was going to go because Ralph Northam was north of 90% over Tom Perriello at Greenspring. What that tells you is is that, well, that’s all senior citizens.08:12.52BenEvery other precinct in Fairfax County has 20%, 30%, 40% of the electorate, depending on which one it is, that are senior citizens. And if they’re breaking 9 to 1 for Ralph, that’s going to tell you that it’s going to be virtually impossible for Perry Eller to win almost any precincts in Fairfax County, And if he does, it’s going to have to be a place like in Centerville with extremely low turnout that he just nips by, right?08:38.53BenAnd so that told you right then and there, Northam was going to be your nominee for governor. Susan Platt carried Greenspring by five votes or something over Justin Fairfax. I’m trying to remember the exact results. But that came in, and it’s very clear that Susan’s from Northern Virginia, Justin’s getting a huge vote downstate in the African-American community.08:58.80BenSo if if the best that Susan is accumulating is a five-vote margin at a senior center, she ain’t going to make up Richmond, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, downstate, right?09:11.18BenAnd so a lot of times these precincts really give you different clues. If you’re looking for what’s happening in the, you know, we’ll call it the kind of Karen community Democrats, look at what the turnout is in in North Arlington.09:23.63BenIf you’re looking for what’s happening with young people, you look to what’s happening on the metro line in Arlington, or you look to the silver line running out to Fairfax. And so what I was seeing in the in the early returns as the you know numbers were coming in from where there was turnout was you were seeing huge spikes in all the places where different types of Democratic voters were overrepresented. And that’s why I kind of kept live tweeting it throughout the day of adding on new pieces of, I started with, well, it looks like there’s a huge Asian turnout. Then it was like, no, the young voters are really coming out. Well, we were hearing from college campuses that at 1, 2 p.m., they were coming at the number in which they had in the last gubernatorial and were on pace to hit the same number they had in the presidential. okay like10:12.78BenThat tells you a lot about what’s going to happen at that precinct that day, unless you want to you know, sit there and just say like, well, it’s possible that there’s a huge conservative revolt on campuses for the Republicans.10:27.18BenYou know, like nobody saw that coming. No one who is standing there saw it happening on the polls. So you kind of get a feeling of, okay, the Democrats are surging among young voters. They’re surging among Asian voters. They had higher participation rates in their early vote.10:41.59BenArlington is performing really well. They’re doing very well with the with kind of the middle-aged people in in in Fairfax County and those precincts that are sort of the suburban middle-class precincts. Downstate, you’re hearing that the black turnout is doing very well. The people that are at the precincts and the kind of swingy areas are all reporting that, you know, Fredericksburg around there, like Stafford and Spotsylvania, people at the polls are saying, I feel is really competitive. I’m seeing more minority voters than I normally see. All those things go into11:11.61Benyou know the The factor of being able to see everything here lines up with what you see in a democratic sweep. And so that’s the stuff that I see on election day where it’s not necessarily – people think of it as anecdotal. But when it follows a pattern, it’s not anecdotal. It is a it’s it’s it’s a precursor to what’s goingnna happen.11:30.72Sam ShiraziNo, that’s a really good explanation. And I think kind of is a good breakdown of what election day looks like and why sometimes you can tell what was going to happen based on election day.11:41.55Sam ShiraziAnd so I want to.11:42.92BenSam, can I jump in and just say like in 2021, 2021, the reports I was getting was they were running out of ballots in all the rural precincts in Southwest Virginia.11:50.60Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, that didn’t happen this this time. And I think, you know,11:53.84BenYeah. And it I think it told us all, like, I think you could know what was going to happen, right? Like it wasn’t, where the where the was Southwest Virginia showing up in massive numbers to, you know, come back to its ancestral home of the Democratic Party?12:05.20BenSure. I could have argued that on election day, but I think it was pretty obvious what was going on. And And in this case, same thing this year.12:11.80Sam ShiraziYeah. Yeah. No, I mean, and the results certainly i made that clear. Well, I did want to follow up about something more so about the midterms, because I remember last time you were on, you kind of talked about how 2017 was really helpful for Democratic campaigns to message and target in 2018 because they found out what worked in Virginia And we’re able to use that in 2018. You know, what lessons do you think the Democrats can learn for the midterms? You know, is it targeting Latinos, Asians, you know, young voters trying to bring them out? Or is it trying to win over the moderate suburban voters? I mean, what do you think campaigns in 2026 learn from12:49.96BenYeah, so we certainly made gains in almost every group. So, I mean, that was really positive for the Democrats of no matter what kind of district you’re running in 2026 around the country, you probably could find some positive signs that came out of Virginia.13:03.90Beni think two things happened to the federal midterms that helped tie it to the Virginia elections. One is candidate recruitment. In most states, the filing deadline hasn’t passed. And so candidates are looking at these Virginia results and frankly, New Jersey also.13:18.12BenAnd if they’re wondering, should I go put my throw my hat into the ring into this Harris plus two district or this Trump plus three, and it seems marginal, they’re looking at our results going like, yeah, I should.13:30.62BenThis is absolutely in play. So it’s going to help recruit more candidates and a higher level of candidates, which obviously you saw with Spanberger this year, candidate quality does matter.13:42.47BenI think you probably win the gubernatorial election by a substantive margin. with any of the Democratic candidates that could have run this year. I’m not sure that anyone would have won by as much as Abigail did.13:53.58BenYou see that she way overperformed in suburban areas around the state where they really connected with her. She did a good job of bringing out younger voters, much more so than other Democrats have been able to do. I think that that partly factors into being a very reasonable,14:11.76Benmom type of candidate, like that’s her brand. I think that actually has some appeal to a lot of mainstream younger voters. You saw her overperform in her two congressional districts, and I say two, because while she was numbered the seventh district in both of them, those districts only overlap by a handful of precincts.14:32.54BenAnd so, whether it’s the 95 corridor precinct that she represented in 2022, or whether it’s the Richmond based district that she represented in 2018 and 2020, you can look at a map of where she overperformed and it had a heavy overlay with those districts. So, you know, she added a lot as a candidate. If you, if you were saying like, well, how do we measure that?14:57.96BenThe, the scientific way to kind of measure it is to look at it and say, what is your sort of median Democrat doing versus what is Abigail doing?15:08.38BenAnd what I found was, I’m looking at the results, the House of Delegate candidates tended to track, with the exception of the ones that were against incumbents that might have been slightly behind this, about where the LG race was.15:21.27BenSo it felt like the LG race and the delegate races kind of became generic D versus generic R. that the AG’s race became a place where the Republicans could overperform a little bit with some crossover, some lack of vote for Jay, but not nearly by the numbers needed to win.15:39.27BenAnd that that margin between what you saw in the LG’s race and the Gouvernot Troll race is probably what you got as added bonus for having Abigail Spanberger as your candidate, which by having that expanded margin...15:54.55Benopened up a lot of doors in a lot of places.15:56.92Sam ShiraziYeah. And I mean, to to follow up on that, I think it was a surprise how many seats the Democrats flipped in the House of Delegates. I guess, one, did you think they were going to flip 13? And in terms of the midterms, do you think there could be these unexpected pickups that, you long term incumbents, you heard a lot about Bobby Oroch. Oh, there’s no way Bobby Oroch is losing. He’s been there forever. Obviously, he went down. So do you think that can be replicated in the midterms?16:23.14BenSure. So I had two different predictions for the house races. I had one that was public that I said 61. And i had one that was private that I said 62. So both of those were a little bit short of the number.16:35.60BenAnd I decided to say 61 publicly couple days before the election while I was telling people professionally 62 because honestly, some of the people on Twitter are a little annoying. And I knew the moment that I put up a number, they were going to want me to break down each one individually one by one by one.16:51.73BenAnd I was like, I’m just going to keep this number slightly more generic. It’s already going to kind of blow people’s minds to say 61. And I’m just going to like, you know, for purposes of my sanity of having to to kind of respond to all of them, I’ll keep it there.17:08.97BenI thought 62 was really the number we were going to hit. And I felt like it’d be 62 because I felt like 65 to 66 were in I felt that... i felt that five or six were almost certain pickups, putting us that at a 56 to 57 range as a minimum, and then kind of split the difference in the competitive races of some breaking our way, some breaking theirs.17:32.55Benand And the reason for that is is that when you have a wave like this, kind of the definition of a wave is that the water is going to be a little bit higher in certain places than in others.17:44.58BenSo calling each individual race is harder because it’s going to vary a little bit. And what you saw that variance happen in was a big overperformance in those areas where there were some specific types of voters that really liked Abigail Spanford.18:01.66BenAnd we just went through what those are. And so Bobby Orrick is the perfect example of he is a 95 corridor Republican. who heavily overlapped with Abigail’s two congressional districts. A little bit of it overlapped with the old 7th. A lot of it overlapped with the new 7th.18:19.64BenI think he might even have a couple precincts that were in both versions of the 7th. But he’s right on the line where people would kind of know her from all of the campaigns. And then you combine that with that the 95 corridor for the Republican vote is very heavily military,18:36.46Benthere’s a lot of people that work at the Pentagon or in defense contracting that are Republican voters that live in the 95 court or that were negatively impacted by the shutdown and by what Trump was doing. I mean, let’s not forget contractors when there’s a shutdown don’t get paid when they come back.18:53.73BenAnd so there were a lot of them that if their employer was not agreeing to eat those costs were went for a month without pay during that shutdown. And you could see the Republicans. So those two factors happening simultaneously was enough to go crater the numbers in his district for him to lose, where Democrats came up a little bit short in the Valley District in a really narrow contest because there probably were a lot less people that were affected by the specifics of that shutdown that you know they got very close with the JMU vote, but19:27.97Benthe Republican vote was slightly more solid than it stayed in those areas, which was just enough for that candidate to hang on, right? And so, you know, how does that affect 2026? I think that you’re you’re looking at, no matter where you’re running, there’s some positive news.19:45.22BenI would want to be in those so emerging suburban districts, the exurbs, because they look like places that might have voted for Trump in 2024, but probably will vote for somebody different in 2026.20:00.72Sam ShiraziYeah, and that makes sense. And I wanted to follow up specifically about one group of voters because this is called, the podcast is called Federal Fallout, specifically military voters like Hampton Roads. You mentioned them in House District 66. I won’t name the person, but you you had a little bit of a a previous discussion with someone about how I think Republicans often think of Federal employees as, you know, all Democrats. Obviously, if you’re in the military, you’re technically a federal employee, or if you’re a contractor, you were ex-military, your your your job is tied the federal government. A lot of districts across the country have heavy military presence.20:36.24Sam ShiraziHow do you think that’s going to play in the midterms?20:39.26BenYeah, so we’ve seen a split in recent years. I think there was some really good polling on this in 2020 where enlisted members of the military are now pretty overwhelmingly Democratic and officers are fairly overwhelmingly Republican still. And I think that also plays into, are you talking about retired military communities, places like you know, where you’d see a lot of people retire to?21:23.93BenBut if you’re a Spotsylvania dad that works at Northup Grumman and, you know, your contract isn’t paying while while they’re on while they’re out and and that and so the company’s notified you that, like, all the members of your team, you know, aren’t going to be paid until the government reopens because you can’t report to work,21:48.66Benyou’re not going to be real enthusiastic about coming out to vote for the Republicans in this election. And so, you know, voters like that, the Republicans just miss out. that’s It’s a huge part of their base. right I’ve been doing politics here for a long time and That is Northern Virginia Republicans.22:07.18Benyou know The activists are one thing, but their actual vote, I would say there’s no group that’s more important than the military. In the rest of the state, I think that social conservatives make up the core of the Republican Party.22:22.59BenBut I would say in Hampton Roads in Northern Virginia, it’s the military. And so I think the more that they see that chaos, you see that the military is becoming very much a swing a swingier vote overall.22:36.37BenBut, you know, i don’t think that you’re going to get the kind of Republican turnout that you would want from those. Officers that, you know, and and part of the the reason that there’s such a difference between officers and enlisted is there’s a huge demographic difference between officers and enlisted also that’s partly driving that.22:55.38Beni don’t think you’re going to get those Republican-leaning voters to be real enthusiastic about voting Republican when the Republicans are failing to deliver for them things that make their quality of life better either for them, their families, or their communities. And I think that fundamentally is you know makes Jen Kagan’s job to get reelected very hard. It makes Rob Whitman’s job to get reelected very hard.23:19.74Benbecause they have their districts are packed full of exactly those kinds of voters and and probably makes eugen Eugene Vindman’s chances of getting reelected a lot easier.23:28.38Sam ShiraziWell, you got to my next question, which was going to be about the midterm, specifically in Virginia. So you mentioned those districts. I wanted to talk about kind of redistricting You know, if you think the Democrats are still going to go through with it, let’s say, let’s assume Texas Supreme Court doesn’t intervene and Texas gerrymander doesn’t happen. do you still think Virginia Democrats move forward? And, you know, under that scenario, do you still think it will pass in a referendum? Because I think Democrats think, oh, it’s a slam dunk.23:58.01Sam ShiraziYou know, theoretically, if the facts on the ground change, people might not want to move forward with redistricting. But as you mentioned, a lot of this stuff just becomes federalized and they might view it as a way to vote against Trump.24:08.43BenYeah. So starting with Texas, I don’t know if there’s new news on Texas, but the last that I read a couple days ago was the Supreme Court had lifted the stay on the new districts, meaning that as filing is opening there, they are in the newly redistricted Texas.24:27.56BenThey’re moving forward with those new districts as of right now.24:31.51Sam ShiraziYeah, I think that’s technically correct. I mean, it’s it’s a lot of kind of legalese stuff, but I think, long story short, I think the Supreme Court will make a a final decision. Like that was kind of a temporary one to let it go forward, but like it’s it’s possible like they’ll make the final decision that yes or no. and And that was, this was kind of like a temporary decision, if that makes sense.24:49.40BenYeah, I think that though would i the way I view this stuff when it involves elections is that the filing deadline is really important because people have – when you disqualify all the candidates who have already filed to a filing deadline that’s closed, there’s a lot of legal problems with that. And so I think that because they’ve now opened the filing for the new districts, the window for the courts to come in and and say, no, we’re going back to the old districts, is really the clock is ticking before that filing closes.25:29.62BenAnd you have a lot of people that have legally qualified themselves for Congress who you’re going to have to tell you’re no longer eligible to run in the district you filed in. And obviously Congress is complicated in this because people can choose to file in any district in their state that they want.25:48.06BenAnd so you’re not really a candidate for Congress unless you have picked a district. There’s no way to file at the federal level that says, I’m a generic candidate for Congress. You just have to say, I’m a candidate in blank district.26:03.70BenAnd so, so long as the new districts exist, I think the case for them in terms of overturning them, it gets stronger by the, each time these deadlines pass, right?26:16.09BenSo my feeling was that by keeping this open for right now, that the Supreme Court is really limited and needing to act fast if they’re going to strike down these districts. Right.26:26.50BenNow, how will that affect Virginia? The Virginia Constitutional Amendment, as it was proposed and passed before the election, said that Virginia can institute this if any state moves forward with a midterm redistricting. Well, we know that certainly there’s a bunch of them that are doing so.26:43.36BenSo I would assume that the General Assembly is going to pass that a second time in in January. and that what voters are going to get an opportunity to weigh in the, let’s say, March, April, May referendum, whatever that is, is going to be what’s happening in the rest of the country, and do you want to give legislators the opportunity to counteract that?27:06.41BenSo I think of the Texas thing as being less of something that people would... I saw Marcus Simon was on a podcast where he was talking about, like, well, maybe this will pull people back. I think... I think he was kind of you know bloviating a little bit there of like, you know, speaking out of both sides of mouth, like, you know, well, maybe that could happen. I haven’t heard anyone say they’re interested in that happening. i think that’s really something that’s more up to the voters in the referendum as to whether they think it’s justified.27:33.52BenI don’t see the members of the General Assembly going through all the work they did and then just saying in January, crumbling it up and saying, eh, not enough people are doing it. We’ll take it off the table.27:44.69Sam ShiraziYeah, I think ultimately, you know, it’ll be up to the voters. and i I suspect that’s going to be the Democratic line. Like, you know, we’re we’re moving along. The voters get to decide. And, you know, it makes sense because in most of the Republican states or all the Republican states, there hasn’t been an equivalent referend referendum. I did want to ask, like, let’s assume the voters pass it.28:03.62Sam ShiraziObviously, there’s a lot of talk about what the masks will look like. Currently, Virginia has a 6-5 delegation, so six Democrats, five Republicans. you know I’ve seen a lot of numbers thrown around. i think I’ve heard i’ve seen you know they’re going to go for 7-4. I think logically...28:21.16Sam Shirazi9.2 is probably the cleanest way of doing it If you really want to go kind of crazy, you can go 10.1. You know, there’s all sorts of different formulations. What do you think the maps would actually look like if it passed?28:35.78BenWell, first of all, Sam, I know we’re probably all going to go down to the inaugural in January in Richmond. And for your safety, don’t say that in front of Senator Lucas. Because she’s...28:46.63Sam ShiraziThat’s why I’m asking you because you have the inside scoop, right?28:50.23BenI mean, like, if she hears you talking about 9 to 2, like, she’s going to get thrown out of a window. But in all seriousness, I think the... Here’s kind of how I see the maps playing out.29:01.62BenAnd going to use another state as the example to what’s happened around the country and then how that might get unpacked in Virginia. So in the 1990s, Georgia had 10 members of Congress.29:15.58BenThey had Newt Gingrich as a Republican, John Lewis as a Democrat, and eight fairly conservative Democrats that represented districts with decent-sized African American populations that had been put in their districts.29:32.46BenSo they had a nine-to-one delegation of Democrats. when districts first got drawn under the Voting Rights Act to create more majority-minority districts.29:43.12BenBy 1994, 1994, Georgia had picked up one seat in redistricting. They had gone from nine to one Democratic to eight to three Republican, and the delegation now was three black Democrats and eight white Republicans.30:00.63BenAnd Republicans across the South sort of took advantage of this moment. It’s a lot of the reason why the whole South fell to Republicans on a legislative level, because the placement of black voters into their own districts was essentially a dilution of black voter influence in a majority of the districts.30:24.78BenAnd so, yes, it sent more black elected officials to the legislature, but it really didn’t allow for black voters to play a meaningful part in creating majorities or coalitions that would allow the legislators they were sending to be part of governing groups.30:43.98BenAnd you saw this happen all over the South. And so, you know, in Virginia at one point, we got as far as, I think when Jerry Connolly narrowly won re-election in 2010 by like a thousand votes, had he lost, it would have actually been nine to two Republicans.31:01.52BenSo packing all those minority voters downstate into a district was devast had a devastating impact to the Democratic Party as a whole.31:13.92BenAnd the Black Caucus continued to argue for this nationally for quite some time after it was pretty obvious that it was diluting their influence. And I’d give a big shout out here to Bobby Scott, who I think was the first and the most vocal voice in the Black Caucus nationally as this was happening to, say,31:51.99BenHe had lots of African-American voters, but he he went and was able to pull together a coalition and get himself elected. And then when the district was district was drawn in 1992, it was not a super-packed black district. It was a district with a lot of black influence. I think it might have been majority black district, but it was not gerrymandered to just include black voters.32:14.57BenIt wasn’t until the second iteration of that district in 2002 that which was drawn to take him into Southampton Roads in addition to decimate the black voter influence in the fourth district, which had been held by Norm Sosisky, and the second district, which had been held by Owen Pickett, that the Republicans taking all those black voters and stuffing them all into one district created a period of The fourth district stayed Republican until it was redrawn by court order in 2016. And the second district was Republican that entire period, other than one one term that came down ballot from President Obama in 2008, all the way until Elaine Luria won it in 2018, was Republican all the way through.33:00.87BenBecause they removed all the black voter influence in those districts. So what I think you see now, what has changed in our politics in the last 20 20 years, is that white suburban voters will no longer vote against a candidate because the Democrats put up a black candidate.33:20.11BenIn fact, there’s a lot of evidence that black candidates overperform in swing districts. If we look at this year’s House of Delegates election, how many of those pickups were African-American candidates?33:31.75Benand quite a number of our swing seat pickups were were black candidates, right? So you you look at it and and see that now and say, okay, we don’t need a super-packed district in order to have the black community, one, have an influence in who’s elected, and two, even be able to elect a candidate of their choosing from their community in that district.33:55.26BenIt’s not just necessarily going to produce a white Democrat to have a district that’s 30% black. And I think the reason for that is it’s a mathematical thing. If your district is 30% black, it’s probably majority black in terms of the primary electorate.34:13.93BenAnd so if you have willing white voters that are willing to vote for Democratic candidates in the general, which is what we’ve seen the change in the last 20 years of of those suburban voters being willing to do that,34:25.57Benand in primary electorates, the black voters are getting the biggest say in who the nominee is, that allows for you to have much more diverse districts and so and ensure that black voters have influence in more seats.34:40.43BenThis fundamentally is what produces more Democratic elected officials. Republicans require gerrymandering to win seats,34:52.19BenDemocrats require communities of interest to be drawn together. And I think this is why the Democrats will be successful in court if they do have to redraw these seats. Because you look at some of the different districts, and if it’s okay with you, Sam, i’m gonna could I just go into a little bit of detail on that?35:08.28Sam ShiraziYeah, sure.35:09.17BenSo like the 2nd District of of Virginia. You know, the special masters who drew that map, and I used to have respect for the the one guy who was the Republican in that, I forget his name, but I’ve seen him on social media. and Prior to him being selected as that special master, I used to think this guy is a reasonable person who had reasonable takes.35:31.58BenI’ve not said a positive word about him since he had that role because what he did to Hampton Roads was to try to determine the outcome instead of allow the community to have a voice in who they wanted.35:47.05Benby that I mean you have the eastern shore in Virginia Beach, which comprises about 75% of a congressional district. The city of Norfolk, which, by the way, is divided by rivers and bays from the peninsula and Western Hampton Roads. You know, like you drive from Norfolk to Portsmouth in a tunnel, you go to the peninsula in a tunnel, and so would have actually made up a perfect-sized congressional district.36:16.21BenThey share, Norfolk and Virginia Beach share all sorts of economic things. Lots of people on the beach work in Norfolk, vice versa. It’s an obvious, easy community of interest, right?36:29.09BenAnd instead of allowing that to be the district, district, the special masters determined that they wouldn’t like the political composition of what that looked like. So they’re going to draw Norfolk into some other seat that it has nothing in common with, that people generally don’t even, has no commuting pattern in common with, nothing.36:48.09BenAnd they’re going to run the 2nd District to exclude as many black voters as possible through the Great Dismal Swamp, through only include the parts of the city of Chesapeake that are white, not allow black voters in the city of Chesapeake to be included in this either,37:05.01BenAnd then run out through Suffolk, the city of Suffolk, all the way out to peanut country to try on the other side of Suffolk to include as many white people as possible and exclude as many black voters as possible.37:18.40BenAnd what I called it then was the Klan district. And I called the Klan district not to insult people that live there, but to say, if you had the a white supremacist drawing a district to say, how can I best exclude black voters?37:33.09BenThat’s what they would have drawn. okay And the idea that that’s what the special masters came up with and presented to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court didn’t tell them to F off and fire them and get new special masters, is an absolute disgrace.37:48.23Benthat that’s the district. And you have these communities together that are not do not comprise a core community of interest. So is it political gerrymandering to say that the city of Norfolk should be with Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore where there’s a bridge that connects those two?38:07.28BenOf course not. And in fact, if you go through the history of of congressional districts in Virginia before we started this ridiculous computer-based gerrymandering, that was always the core of the second congressional district.38:21.23BenAnd the fourth congressional district historically was Chesapeake-Portsmouth and would go westward where there’s a land connection through Suffolk and west and north.38:32.80BenAnd the 3rd District would cover the peninsula and would go up the peninsula towards Richmond. So you know when Bobby Scott won that seat in 92, they basically kind of split the peninsula to have some of it in the 1st and some of it the 3rd to get him up towards towards Richmond. But he never came across...38:52.91Benthe waterway because you don’t want to cross major waterways when you’re drawing a district because the people on either side of them probably don’t have commuting patterns that are similar, that they interact in a community of interest kind of way, right?39:09.74BenSo when you think about what does a 9-2, 10-1, whatever you want to call it, map look like for the It actually gets to good numbers by just bringing back the old congressional districts that we have had for, in some cases, have hundreds of years of history, right? And because they’re logical based on geographic boundaries,39:37.56Benand that would produce Democratic districts because the reason that produces Democratic districts now is that the suburban areas actually share commonality with the urban areas in terms of their political interest enough so that they’re not offsetting each other the way that they were 30, 40 years ago.39:56.73BenSo, you know, another district, for example, that existed historically was prior to the 11th district getting plopped down in the middle of Northern Virginia in 92, 92, you had two congressional districts in Northern Virginia.40:12.61BenOne ran from Alexandria south down the Potomac into Stafford. One ran from Arlington up the Potomac into the Shenandoah Valley.40:22.100BenThose places have enormous historic commonalities. Right? And restoring those two districts to be in Northern Virginia and then figuring out what you kind of do in that middle core of where the new seats had been created.40:37.08BenAgain, those are likely to produce Democrats. That’s not political gerrymandering. there’s a lot of community of interest along the Potomac River. It’s a major waterway that feeds into the Chesapeake Bay. There’s a lot of environmental issues that overlay. And the last time I checked, a lot of the food supply in a place like Arlington,40:58.49Bencomes from the Shenandoah Valley, right? So this idea that these are like places that are completely different foreign lands that need to be kept separate, that’s a Republican idea. That’s a Republican gerrymander.41:11.67Bento run districts along the Potomac River and then have interior NOVA districts would make complete logical sense. And again, likely might produce Democratic elected officials, but that’s not because they’re gerrymandered. That’s because Republicans lack the appeal to be able to go win those districts. And if you drew a seat that went from Winchester to Arlington along the Potomac River,41:34.85BenWould that seat likely produce a Democrat? Yeah, because Republicans have failed to appeal to voters in Arlington. If you look at the historic numbers of what Republicans did in Arlington when they actually talked to those voters and tried to win them over with a message, that seat was always historically Republican and held by Frank Wolf.41:53.14BenArlington was represented by Frank Wolf the entire first 10 years he was in Congress because he’d go to Arlington and talk to those voters and represent the federal workers who live there and go score 45% of the vote, which was enough for him to win the district, right?42:08.23BenAnd so when Republicans say, well, this is gerrymandered, no, it’s’s it’s not gerrymandered to include voters in there that you have intentionally shut out and not spoken to for... decades, that’s on you.42:19.71BenAnd if you don’t like the fact that you’re getting low numbers in the black community, well, you know, Republicans have started to try to do some outreach there. They should try to do some more because those districts could flip Republican if they could get more than 10% of the black vote, right?42:34.50BenBut if they refuse to talk to the voters in those districts and then they can’t win them, that’s on them. And I think that producing a a map that would produce a lot of Democrats would actually look like a map that represented a lot of communities of interest.42:49.68BenThat 10th seat that people are talking about, whether you were to draw it in that way or not, would likely be whether or not you lumped all communities in the Shenandoah Valley together the way it is now, whether they are have commonalities or not into a generic district that produced a Republican, or whether you put together all the different communities in the Shenandoah Valley that are more similar.43:13.47BenI’m talking about the college towns, Harrisonburg, Blacksburg, past Roanoke and Radford, the city of Roanoke, the city of Charlottesville. You put all that together and you’re probably having a narrowly democratic district.43:43.56BenAnd so that’s really what I hope that the the Democrats will be aggressive in doing in this, is put back together these communities of interest. Don’t listen to the Republican whining and let the Republicans go try to compete in these communities that they’ve refused to compete in.43:58.65BenAnd they can produce Republican elected officials when they can successfully talk to voters across Virginia.44:04.79Sam ShiraziWell, you certainly are passionate about redistricting and, you know, we’ll see what the Democrats choose to do if they are able to move forward with redistricting once the referendum happens. And it was helpful to get that background because I think a lot of times you just kind of hear things, but you don’t get kind of the perspective why.44:35.20Sam ShiraziBefore it it would ever be built, and there would be a referendum because I think that’s the only way we would pass the General Assembly. Do you think that bill is going to happen either this session or during the four years when Spamberger is governor?44:48.43BenYeah, I’m really hoping. i mean, you know, I’m a big advocate for this. I think we’re seeing a couple of different reasons why I think it could be successful this year. One is the state and the county are having tough budget years that demonstrate a need for revenue diversification and new sources of money to be able to make those investments that Democrats really care about.45:07.41BenAnd I think the second reason that you would see some movement towards that this year is there’s been a real exodus from Tyson’s Corner in recent years. The vacancy rate is rising.45:19.12BenThe utilization rate is much worse than the vacancy rate. And the utilization rate tends to be something that’s a precursor to a vacancy rate because people enter into long-term leases. And so if a company has leased 600,000 square feet of space and they come back in a report and say, we’re only using 150,000 right now and our lease runs out in three years,45:41.20Benguess how much space they’re going to lease in three years, right? That’s why the utilization rate tends to be such a good precursor. And I’ve heard numbers that the utilization rate may be under 50% in Tyson’s Corner right now, which is obviously an epic disaster that’s coming for both the county and state economies that are driven probably no place more than if you were talking about the economic center of Virginia, it would be Tyson’s Corner.46:06.50BenAnd so I think that helping stand that up with New developments that are going to bring young people there that are going to attract a different industry that might attract some tourism money into Virginia would be a huge net benefit to the state and the county.46:25.24BenAnd so I think for those reasons, I think it’s likely to be successful. You know, you don’t want to prejudge what a new governor might do, what her position is. Obviously, There’s a lot of gaming issues coming up this session that are besides the Tyson’s Casino.46:39.47BenAnd she’s going to have to decide what her policy is going to be on the skill games, on iGaming, on a gaming commission. So I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it might be in a package that’s blessed by the governor.46:52.74BenBut I think that, you know, i think you what you will see if I was predicting this is that Abigail Spamberger has not been shy during this campaign about being assertive to crafting things in the way that she wants to see them done.47:05.59BenI mean, she showed a lot of courage standing up to the AFL-CIO when she said she didn’t want to do right to work. i I personally not sure I agree with her on that. But I respect the fact that she was willing to stand up and and say that and be the first Democratic candidate in quite some time not to be endorsed by them, to stand by her guns.47:25.60BenSo I think based on how I’ve seen her leadership before, i think you’ll see her come out and strongly articulate what her views are. And I bet that what Abigail wants to have happen probably is what will become law.47:38.67Sam ShiraziWell, we’ll have to see what how that shaped up. And I agree there’ll be a lot of gaming issues. So that’ll be one of the hot topics in January for the General Assembly. Okay, one last question that I wanted to ask you about. It has to be on social media because I know you know you are one of the experts, one of the original people to use Twitter that is now X. So I wanted to set this question up about...47:59.79Sam Shiraziis Twitter X really valuable for Democrats anymore? Because, you know, first there was the trans stuff and the sign lady in Arlington. Then there was the Jay Jones stuff and the Republicans kept posting all day on Twitter and they’d get, you know, hundreds and thousands of retweets.48:15.89Sam ShiraziWho knows how many of them were bots, but obviously they were getting a lot of engagement on X and Twitter. Whereas Bamberger, she would be posting, but usually she’d get ratioed and there’d be all sorts of crazy stuff in response to her posts.48:29.19Sam ShiraziSo I guess my question is, you know, X doesn’t seem like it’s real life. Is there still value for Democrat Democratic candidates, I would say, to still be on there? And, you know, is there is that kind of does this election show that, you know, basically X is not real life and it’s not really worth spending too much time or efforts on there?48:47.93BenYeah, well, certainly X is not real life, and and that’s been the case in a lot of elections. I find it to be really useful couple fronts. One is the media is still overwhelmingly on that, and so if you’re getting your message out, you know, I’ve worked with them with Senator Lucas for 25 years, helping her with some of her media outreach stuff, and I don’t think she’s issued a press release from her office in, I don’t know,49:16.86BenWe’re probably coming up on quite a number of years. It might even be a decade. She doesn’t really issue press releases anymore. She goes out and puts it out on social media and gets the word out that way. And frankly, that has been more successful than what any other Democrats doing in the state in terms of getting their message out there. I feel like people would say that you know if they were to cite one person that they know, it’s Senator Lucas. Right.49:59.99BenI look at a place where there’s a lot of opposition as an opportunity, not just for education of them, because you know some of them are just trolls, but more so for if your message can’t survive those attacks on social media, better that you find that out on a tweet than stating it in a debate.50:26.54BenAnd you know I don’t mean to you know call out a particular person. like i’m just using this as the example. But I think if Kathy Tran had spent more time on social media personally prior to her introducing that abortion bill that caused all the outcry and in 2019, and committee being able answer those questions,50:50.04Benin in in committee not being able to answer those questions To me, what struck me when that happened was it felt like she had never had someone ask her those questions before, and that’s why she was unprepared. I don’t think that she was incapable of answering them.51:08.67BenI think she just had never had it framed that way. In the same way that if you only talk to Democrats and you only hear the term pro-choice,51:21.46Benand anti-choice, you know, the term pro-life might come as a little bit of a shock to you, like, what’s this term that the other side’s using? Or, you know, like, or they call you pro-abortion.51:33.13BenYou might be like, no, I’m pro-choice, right? They use a different language. They come at it a different way. And so, you know, someone who’s been like an observer of the legislature and campaigns over a long period of time, I didn’t find the questions that Todd Gilbert was asking her that surprising. It’s sort of what he had been talking about in floor debates for years.52:15.49BenAnd that whole snowball all started out of that one hearing. So I, i as a political consultant, love it to see our clients get into a place where they can hone their message, where people are being hostile to it. Because some of the hostility you can look at and say, yeah, I don’t agree with that. You know, i don’t care if you say that because I don’t agree. Other times someone might make a point in a way that you’re like, okay, I need to craft this a little bit differently. I need to think about this.52:45.47BenYou know, when we... had the special election this year and the 11th district. I saw a similar situation when they were first putting together the rules of it that, you know, they like they convened a conference call of the committee members people could observe and,52:59.81BenThe first proposal came out of like, this is what we’ll do, how we’ll run the process. And it was going to have no early voting and there were just going to be one day to vote on a Saturday. And one of the members raised a question of, well, how can you only have one day of voting on a Saturday?53:15.85BenObservant Jewish voters wouldn’t be able to participate because their Sabbath is a Saturday. And you could kind of tell that there were a bunch of people on that committee that either didn’t know that or hadn’t thought about it, right?53:30.55BenAnd then when it got raised, we’re like, oh, we need to do something. And then I think someone made a comment to try to, before they realized that it was kind of the momentum had changed on that, that they said, well, why do we have to have an election that like is about Jewish voters?53:45.40BenAnd I was like, God, I’m really glad the press wasn’t on this call. You know, because like that’s the that’s the shot that could be heard around the world on Fox News that somebody is like a Democratic official saying like, why do we need to worry about Jewish voters?53:58.54Benbeing able to participate in our process. And the committee eventually figured it out and got to a point where they were like, okay, we’re not going to just have a Saturday election. We’ll have other opportunities to vote. But I think that having it in these these forums in which you have to hear from a perspective that is not your own is really enlightening for elected officials. It’s really helpful for party officials if they’ll get on it.54:20.26BenSo the long answer to your question, Sam, is is like what I recommend to people, going on Blue Sky. If you want to get a bunch of compliments and people telling you how great you are go on to Blue Sky. If you want to win an election and be an effective communicator, go on X and learn how to fight it out.54:37.74Sam ShiraziWell, I think that’s a good way to end it I know you will continue to be on X and it’s always good to get a different perspective. So I think that’s, and you don’t want to be in an echo chamber. So I think those are some good tips. And anyways, I appreciate you coming on. Certainly interesting. we covered a lot of ground and yeah, I’m sure it’ll be a fun year in elections for 2026 as well in Virginia.54:59.02BenAwesome. Thanks for having me Sam.55:00.63Sam ShiraziYeah. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. i’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will be interviewing Ashley Lanz. She is the Brady Packs Executive Director. So thank you so much for joining me.Ashley LantzThanks, Sam, for having me.00:14.90Sam ShiraziYeah, and I appreciate you coming on because I wanted to talk about a little bit more policy issues now that the election in Virginia is over. Obviously, next year, at the beginning of the year, the Democrats will have a trifecta and they will start to be passing bills. And there’s going to be a lot of different policies that they will be considering. And one of them obviously will be gun safety.00:35.62Sam ShiraziSo I wanted to kind of ask you some specific questions about that in Virginia and then maybe some general questions about gun safety in the political context. But before I do that, I wanted to just get a sense of you know what your organization does, both on the policy side and on the political side.01:04.26Ashley LantzWe identify, support, and elect bold leaders who will champion gun violence prevention policies in every corner of this nation.01:14.35Ashley LantzOn November 4th, Brady-Pack supported candidates in New Jersey and Virginia. We won 100% of those races and elected a new majority of gun violence prevention champions to those legislatures. Those are among the champions who will now lead a new era of public safety in Richmond.01:31.09Ashley LantzOn our policy side at Brady, we work with Congress and in states to promote common sense gun safety measures. And in Virginia, those are numerous. Virginia has fortunately passed a number of common sense gun safety laws already, including enhanced background checks and extreme risk protection orders. But there’s still work to be done.01:53.09Ashley Lantzin the next session the Legislature will be considering a number of bills, including those to ban ghost guns, a gun industry accountability measure that’s being led by Senator Adam Eben and Delegate Dan Helmer, measures on secure storage, and hopefully law to ban assault weapons as well. So we’re very excited. The sky is the limit going into this next session. And we believe that02:19.04Ashley Lantzthese candidates who were just elected on November 4th will meet the mandate that they were given to keep Virginia’s communities safe.02:26.16Sam ShiraziThanks. So, I mean, that’s a helpful background and and I appreciate all that. so I kind of want to unpack that a little bit, you know, in terms of the election and kind of lessons from the election, i mean, to be perfectly honest, you know gun safety didn’t really come up a whole lot. I don’t know if it was, you know, the main issue on voters’ minds. Obviously, the economy was important. And and so, you know, what do you think, what role do you think gun safety played and, you know, what lessons are there from the election in terms of this specific issue?03:15.95Ashley LantzWe heard from youth across the state through our efforts. We mobilized in the field with young voters. And we heard that they believe that gun violence isn’t inevitable and more must be done, including through stronger gun laws.03:29.80Ashley LantzYouth are not afraid to turn out the polls, and particularly when they’re frustrated and discontent with how elected officials are handling issues, including gun safety. And we really saw that in this election. We had our youth grassroots on the ground. And we also had paid organizers working across the state focusing on engaging voters around the and issue of gun violence prevention. And that really paid off well.03:55.72Ashley LantzSo we have heard about this in the field. I think you know there were a lot of issues that were going on in this election and being talked about. This was certainly one of them. And we heard a lot of voters talk about this being a repudiation of Glenn Youngkin’s actions, including the deadly vetoes of more than 30 gun violence prevention bills in the last two years alone.04:16.100Ashley LantzAnd Abigail Spanberger made gun violence prevention a top issue, a real central issue from the very beginning of her campaign. She wasn’t afraid to talk about it. She met with people about it. And that all had a very powerful result. And I think, you you know, when gun violence prevention is the number one killer of our kids in America, Virginians care quite deeply about this issue.04:39.26Ashley LantzPublic and opinion in Virginia for a long time has shown that gun owners and non-gun owners alike support common sense measures. And I think, you know, there are other takeaways from this election that I would point out as well. One of them being that there’s really immense value in forcing gun extremists to defend themselves in every single race, on every single turf. And for decades, gun extremist candidates who have been bought and paid for by the gun industry have been able to cherry pick their battles and in Virginia and in other states as well. And they’ve been able to dominate the electoral map.05:15.09Ashley LantzThis cycle, Speaker Don Scott and campaign chair Dan Helmer ran a bold and brilliant strategy of putting up candidates in every House district. And now we have this powerful majority of 64 seats, and they are going to work to pass meaning meaningful reforms that save lives.05:32.30Ashley LantzAnd this election clearly also showed the dissatisfactions of Virginians with the current direction of our country. It was really a repudiation of the extremist policies that make us all poorer and certainly less safe.05:44.84Ashley LantzAnd candidates with pragmatic solutions like Abigail Spanberger won the day.05:49.74Sam ShiraziYeah, and you know i think it’s a good point, but oftentimes it might not be in the news, but I think for a lot of people, it’s an important issue. And could you talk about your organization or or other grassroots organizations that are focusing on this issue? Because you know you don’t really see it necessarily every day in the news, but I just know personally people who really do care about this issue, and it’s something that might not grab all the headlines, but is something that a lot of voters are thinking about.06:16.70Ashley LantzAbsolutely. Gun violence prevention organizations are certainly active and certainly active in elections. I can talk about what we did in this last election in particular. As I mentioned, we really focused heavily on turning out the youth vote.06:29.90Ashley LantzWe have a program at Brady that we partner with called Team Enough, which are youth leaders. They are led by survivors of the Parkland shooting. And we turned out those youth volunteers to knock doors, hold phone banks, hold text banks, and train individuals who were in the field on talking about gun violence prevention. And we really heard from voters of all backgrounds, all ages about this issue. And it was just phenomenal.07:00.89Ashley LantzWe were certainly engaged in this election and making sure that we could have leaders in Richmond who would take decisive action. Some of that was protecting leaders like Michael Fegans and Nadarius Clark and electing new individuals like a longtime gun violence prevention activist, Lindsay Dougherty and Jessica Anderson.07:32.04Sam ShiraziYeah. and And so kind of moving on to the General Assembly session in January, where obviously there will be a number of bills introduced. Could you kind of walk through what you think are the most likely bills to pass and you know why they’re important?07:46.29Ashley LantzAbsolutely. Lawmakers must use this mandate to protect safety. That is certainly clear. Every Virginian deserves to feel safe in their community. And that means we also have to keep illegal guns from flooding our streets. We should be doing everything we can to help law enforcement keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals and not pad the gun industry’s profits. So the sky is really the limit, but we think that there will be a number of bills considered, particularly because Glenn Youngkin vetoed every gun violence prevention bill that was put before him. including almost 20 in and the last session. So we are hoping that there will be a secure storage a measure, the measure to ban ghost guns, and one of our top priorities, which is holding the gun industry accountable.08:47.78Ashley LantzAnd we also will be working on a permit to purchase bill in addition. So we have a long list of priorities. We think that this assembly is ready to take up all of them and ready to act on this issue.08:59.94Sam ShiraziYeah, and i wanted to follow up specifically about the assault weapon ban, because I think that one often gets a lot of attention. There’s often rhetoric about, you know you’re going to come and take people’s guns. Do you have a sense of if it’s just going to be a ban of future purchases of these weapons? And do you think a a Governor Spanberger would sign such a legislation if it came to her desk?09:22.72Ashley LantzGovernor-elect Spanberger has been a longtime champion on this issue. she will sign gun violence prevention legislation. i think that, you know, you have to keep in mind that this this assault weapons ban has to be on the table, but so do other priorities. An assault weapons ban is not a standalone solution. There are many solutions that must be addressed, including those that I mentioned, the ghost guns ban, secure firearm storage, gun industry accountability. So it’s one piece of the puzzle.10:05.02Ashley LantzAddressing the proliferation of these weapons is the most direct way to mitigate the risk of high fatality shootings in public venues and in our schools. And legislators know that. They know that when assault weapons are large capacity magazines, are used in a shooting, there are 155% more victims compared to incidents using other types of firearms. So this this ban must be considered, but also in the context of the many other solutions as part of a comprehensive framework in Virginia.10:38.51Sam ShiraziAnd what do you say, I’ve already seen, you know, Republican members of the House of Delegates use rhetoric like, well, the Democrats are going to come and take our guns, you know, this is going to be on their agenda, they’re going to come take our guns. And you hear that kind of rhetoric a lot. i mean, how would you respond to that?10:55.36Ashley LantzNo one’s taking guns. We are trying to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a danger to themselves or to others. That is a common sense measure. Common sense measures like secure storage, we’re trying to enact that. That is simply asking people to use a gun lock or a gun safe.11:13.68Ashley LantzEvery responsible gun owner will tell you that they believe in secure storage. So the idea that we can’t have any gun violence prevention reform is simply absurd. And it’s not what the voters want.11:58.51Ashley LantzIt’s just absurd. So these are all common sense policies that voters frankly want. And despite what the gun industry says, we know the truth. And the truth is that they are to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals.12:14.48Sam ShiraziAnd I also wanted to just push on something that I anticipate Republicans will say in response to some of these measures is, you know, the Democrats got this win because people wanted them to focus on the economy. And now, look, they’re focusing on all this other stuff. And, you know, could you kind of talk about why this is, you know, in some ways something that people care about because of what they’re going through their everyday lives? And it’s not some distraction, like maybe the Republicans would argue.12:43.91Ashley LantzAbsolutely. This is a kitchen table issue. And we can walk and chew gum. In fact, we can address affordability and cost of living. And we can do everything possible to keep our children and our community safe. They’re non-exclusive issues.12:59.96Ashley LantzAnd parents will tell you time and time again of the fear that they have in dropping their kids off at school or wondering if their kids will be shot that day. We see that issue with parents. We also know that firearm suicide, particularly among veterans in rural communities, is on the rise.13:20.89Ashley LantzAnd the candidates who won on November 4th know that they must address them.13:26.04Ashley LantzWe can do all of these things with the new majority. We don’t have to choose. And we can have leaders who reflect the will of the Virginia people.13:35.42Sam ShiraziAnd mean I think that’s really helpful in terms of some of the policy and debates going to happen probably in January in the General Assembly.13:43.72Ashley LantzMm-hmm.13:43.71Sam ShiraziI wanted to maybe move a little bit more big picture nationally. We’re obviously coming up into the midterms. And I think one thing the Democrats are kind of struggling with is how to win back some Trump voters who they need, particularly in the Senate and some of these more rural and more working class states.14:02.88Sam ShiraziAnd so often what you hear from you know certain people who are who are thinking like pundits basically saying, yeah, the Democrats need to moderate a little bit on the gun an issue so that they can win you know places like Ohio or Iowa.14:16.92Sam Shiraziwhat do you What’s your response to that kind of argument?14:37.76Ashley LantzRural voters are overwhelmingly supportive, including gun owners and Republicans, of responsible gun I can talk about Virginia, but let’s also take a look at Maine, for example.15:04.12Ashley LantzSince Trump took office, state candidates have caused significant upsets in heavy Trump-won districts and from 2024. while supporting gun violence prevention. That includes Pennsylvania Senate District 36 with James Malone, Mike Zimmer in Iowa, and Sam Sutton’s victory in New York State.15:24.18Ashley LantzThat was an upset that in an area that Trump carried by 55 points in 2024. So it’s no surprise, Sam, that rural voters don’t want to see children shot shot in school any more than you and I do, And across rural counties in the United States, suicide rates and gun death rates are creeping up higher than in urban counties. The biggest lesson that we can take away is not that Democrats or even Republicans, for that matter, need to move away from gun safety. It’s that they need to stay strong and message clearly on highly popular solutions that ensure the safety of all communities, including rural ones. Safety is a core American value that no political party should ever abandon.16:04.80Ashley LantzIf the takeaway of either party from the 2024 and 2025 elections is that it needs to abandon gun violence prevention and crime prevention, then those candidates should be prepared to lose many, many future elections. But I do hope by now that Democratic candidates realize that they can walk and chew gum, that they can address significant and understandable affordability concerns that we all share,16:29.92Ashley Lantzand also deliver on everyday concerns such as gun violence prevention. The real political liability right now is extremism run amok. It’s really about Republicans who are out of touch with their constituents’ desire for safety and who kowtow to the corrupt interests of a gun industry that’s more interested in their own profits than our lives. And that’s shown in the opposition of extremists to even the most basic of gun safety protections like secure firearm storage. And that’s a real vulnerability that we should all be paying more attention to and talking about.17:06.50Sam ShiraziYeah, I think that’s a good point, specifically about the Maine election. i think I think it didn’t get enough attention that Maine overwhelmingly passed that measure to increase gun safety. So I wanted to maybe pivot less from on the kind the political side of things to kind of the persuasion side about trying to not just to win elections, you know, convince people, but really kind of a hearts and minds change the direction of this conversation? Because I think often it’d be, you know, it’s often kind of this binary between you’re either pro-gun or you’re on the other side.17:44.18Sam ShiraziCan you kind of explain how, you know, you may try to reach voters who, own a gun or come from a hunting culture in rural areas, but you want them to kind of come over to your side and not necessarily believe all the things that they see about perhaps people taking their guns away and and all that, all that stuff.18:04.97Ashley LantzAbsolutely. Rural voters in particular, they’re not oblivious to the dangers of gun violence. They are especially concerned about preventing domestic violence and firearm suicide among veterans in particular.18:18.26Ashley LantzWe’re leading a first-of-its-kind effort at Brady to both deeply engage and elevate the voices of gun owners, particularly those in rural areas. we’re working with gun owners very closely.18:29.19Ashley LantzAnd what we’ve found and what we remind people is that rural gun owners are not a monolith. Most are responsible individuals who in turn support responsible gun ownership and public safety. what we found in this effort of working with gun owners quite quickly is that they not only support common sense measures to protect public safety and promote responsible gun ownership, they also have significant frustration with an extremist run political party that opposes every single gun safety action while our children continue to be gunned down in schools. And that’s really the source of tension on this issue, not opposition from voters, not opposition from gun owners, not opposition from rural voters.19:12.36Ashley LantzIt’s really that our the extremism in this process and the fact that our leaders are doing the bidding of the gun industry. So we’re not really working to convince rural voters or gun owners so much as they’re actually pretty decided on this issue. But we are empowering them to turn out and vote to speak about this issue in public, to hold their elected officials accountable and make sure that gun safety measures that they support pass.19:45.31Ashley LantzSo this is not an issue where we have to convince people. We don’t need to convince rural voters or, gun owners because they actually back these policies in polling.19:57.30Ashley LantzOften at rates that are very similar to urban and suburban voters and to, to non-gun owners. So there’s years and years of pulling on that around universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders in particular.20:11.57Sam ShiraziWell, you know, speaking about voters, obviously this year they they had their say and it was a good year for Democrats. And we’ll see kind of policies they start to implement because of that. But next year with the midterms, there are a lot more elections, a lot more states.20:30.15Ashley LantzWe are very focused on the midterms already. We’re already endorsing candidates and we’re beginning to you know plan our efforts to get in the field in 2026. At the federal level, we will be focusing on taking back the House of Representatives with a large majority. We believe that there are a number of gun violence prevention champions who are already on the ballot or are about to be on the ballot who will help lead change, much needed change in Congress. We’ll also be working on some Senate races as well.21:31.94Ashley LantzAnother thing that i’ really focused on at Brady Pack is this youth voter piece that I spoke about. We are going to work on building a youth mobilization arm.21:43.74Ashley LantzI really believe that it’s the youth who have lived through this experience, known as Generation Lockdown, who will bring about the change on this issue.21:54.35Ashley LantzAnd that one day they will say enough is enough. And we will have young leaders in Congress who will take on this issue. So we’re going to be doing everything possible to turn out grassroots, to turn out young voters across the country, and really show the political power of youth.22:13.91Sam ShiraziWell, that’s all really interesting. I appreciate you coming on and kind of giving your perspective and your organization, giving more information about your organization. How can people find out more if they’re interested?22:24.91Ashley LantzYou can go to BradyPAC.org to learn more about our organization.22:30.88Sam ShiraziAll right. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on. And yeah, we’ll we’ll all keep a close eye as the General Assembly convenes and see what type of actions they take in the new year.22:41.63Ashley LantzThanks, Sam.22:42.60Sam ShiraziAnd this has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will have Chaz Nuttycombe back on the podcast to talk about State Navigate and what they got right this election, and then talk a little bit about what he learned and what the parties can learn from the Virginia election. So Chaz, thanks for coming back on.00:24.06Charles NuttycombeHey, Sam, thanks for having me back on.00:26.10Sam ShiraziYeah, so I guess before we get into the substance of it, how has it been post-election? Were you able to relax a little bit and and enjoy some time off?00:33.82Charles NuttycombeYeah, it took a few days off, played a new Pokemon game. I feel like that’s kind of a tradition I have. is like it like Election time when I was in college would sit like Like right after midterms, if I recall correctly. So like election would be wrapped up, midterms are wrapped up, and I would just kind of sit and and play whatever new Pokemon game is out.00:56.66Charles NuttycombeThe new one’s okay. it’s I feel like it wasn’t worth the 60 bucks, but c’est la vie. And yes, it took like we the team had five days off and now we’re getting back into the group of things and we’re about to launch in Alaska, North Carolina, Michigan. Just working on those. Alaska, hopefully out in a couple of days from now.01:23.06Charles NuttycombeBut we’re working out some bugs and making sure that we got all our ducks in row first.01:27.59Sam ShiraziNice. Well, it’s it’s a good tradition to have after you Pokemon go to the polls to go play Pokemon.01:33.44Charles Nuttycombedamn it i shouldn’t know you’re going to say that01:37.21Sam ShiraziYeah, yeah. I’m old enough to remember when that actually happened.01:38.87Charles NuttycombeThat was good.01:40.89Sam ShiraziSo anyways, so so let’s talk a little bit about State Navigate. your your You had State Navigate, obviously had a good election. i think a lot of people doubted you. There were skeptics, but you proved everyone wrong. So I guess we’ll start with the polling side of things.01:57.98Sam ShiraziObviously, you had a couple of polls that showed the Democrats were going to do well. And frankly, it was pretty close to almost exactly right. I think you were pretty much the best pollster out there, particularly of the pollsters that polled every single race. So what do you think you got right in this election and and polling that maybe some of the other organizations didn’t?02:20.70Charles NuttycombeYeah, absolutely. So, yeah. So the state navigate forecast would have been very, very accurate if polling was as good as state navigates. What’s funny is that our fundamentals model and the fundamentals only looks at presidential approval.02:38.81Charles Nuttycombeand most recent election results uh and uh you know the economy like unemployment inflation uh that sort of thing right and it had span burger 15 but That doesn’t, that’s not all of the model, right? We still take it to other people’s polls when we’re doing our forecast. So we had Spanberger 11, so she did about four points better.03:18.67Charles Nuttycombewhich was not the goal. The goal was 97, but I decided to open the scotch anyway, given how good our poll was.03:31.12Charles NuttycombeAnd, you know, we were we were so close. and you know, there are plenty of other people who probably had poor nights in the house of delegates. So mac matter of fact is, uh, state navigate is, is still, uh, on top for forecasting, uh, Virginia elections. elections. Um,03:48.32Charles NuttycombeSo in our poll, I think what like worked the best for us was honestly it just like a very simple understanding of Virginia history. Like, you know, I had talked about this before on the polls were probably gonna get bit in the butt for weighing their polls to 2021 and 2024, which would be a good year for Republicans. I also noted that you know If there is a larger democratic wave than what our poll and what our forecast was expecting,04:24.21Charles Nuttycombethat it would be with high election day turnout that would benefit Democrats with low and mid propensity Democrats coming out, particularly more minority Democrats. And they came out. So that’s how Spanberger, you know, in the final forecast, I had noted in the article that her floor was nine and her ceiling was 15. And she got past that ceiling by what? 0.3, 0.4%, something like that.04:46.18Charles NuttycombeSo it’s kind of similar to 21 because Youngkin was 0.06% away from that two-point ceiling I gave him. so But that’s what floors and ceilings are for.04:57.18Charles NuttycombeAnd you know i think at the end of the day, i mean, all you had to do was just know the fact of life that Virginia governor elections are always...05:10.05Charles Nuttycombebeneficial to the party out of power from the White House. And but that those benefits include a turnout advantage point blank period. And so you had pollsters that were weighing only to of maybe maybe a electorate as blue 24 or and and thus a couple points bluer than 21 or maybe only a hair bluer than 24.05:36.26Charles NuttycombeAnd I think if they were doing that, it would be largely based on the early vote or something. But you know, we use like AP vote cast data and Gallup and vote hub and catalyst and all this sort of stuff to just look at that. The party ID was probably go to be like D plus eight D plus nine, something like that.05:58.54Charles Nuttycombeis what happened. so, you know, spam murder just did like 2% better because think the unders undecideds broke her way. And, I think we just barely weighed Republicans too much and should have weighed independents a little bit more. We’re talking like 41 versus 40 versus versus or something in that final so yeah I think, and you can go to our site and you can see like a great breakdown from, our data manager, Mary Radcliffe, i for, you know, how pollsters did amongst, uh, various categories, uh, to see, you know, who did well, who didn’t. And yes, as for any poll that asked for governor, Lieutenant governor, and attorney general, had the smallest error.06:47.80Charles Nuttycombeand, You know, there were some polls that I think had suffered from the Jay Jones, shy Jay Jones stuff. I think ours did too, right? In our our second poll, we had Jones up by three and a half.07:01.32Charles NuttycombeI think typically there’s usually like a two or 3% bias, I guess, where where candidates with scandals overperform their polling. And that’s, you know, that’s what happened this year in the attorney general race. But even without that, I mean, Jones, if if polling was still right and the end,07:22.16Charles Nuttycombelike ours was for you know that turnout advantage. I mean, that was what was going to get Jones across the finish line. It’s just a matter of the margin. So, you know I mean, I had texted with people who...07:34.71Charles Nuttycombeuh, you know, kept asking me privately, like, you know, do you, do you really think Jay is going to win, Republicans and Democrats? Just a lot of them asked me that.07:44.54Charles NuttycombeAnd I just kept saying, yeah. you know, I didn’t really have, and didn’t waver in Jack and I’s Jack Hirsing, our development director and co-forecaster and I’s ability to forecast.07:58.04Charles NuttycombeAnd felt good about what we had in front of us and felt good about of our understanding of Virginia history and that there was going to be a polling miss of some sort of caliber.08:08.79Charles NuttycombeAnd that Jones was, you know, I mean, there was always a path for Mieras. You know, we had given him a one in three chance of winning pretty high.08:20.25Charles NuttycombeAnd he underperformed because of a polling miss. So, yeah.08:25.72Sam ShiraziYeah, i mean, all super fascinating stuff. I mean, I had one specific polling question, and I also want to get to the forecast. But in terms of the polling, you know, I think there’s this kind of old school understanding of polls, like you call a thousand people and then you see who they’re voting for. And, you know, nowadays, the weighing is so important. And obviously, like Republican pollsters will like weigh it to be more Republican friendly. And so I guess what I’m getting at is, you know, are polls almost like quasi models where you’re getting some input from,08:54.52Sam ShiraziYou know, the the poll takers in terms of like where independence, but essentially much of polling is just modeling who’s going to show up. And it’s less about like the answers that the people are giving you, because obviously like the Democrats and Republicans are usually pretty behind their their team. And you’re just kind of trying to figure out maybe where the independents are.09:14.07Charles NuttycombeI think there’s there’s some truth to that. you know You have to be able to weight your poll appropriately to make sure that you give each side its fair share of the electorate, and you determine that by looking at what the current environment is.09:31.42Charles NuttycombeAnd you have to use previous data to try and figure out what the current environment is. I think Republican pollsters in in my understanding, kind of let their party ID float, meaning that they didn’t really change much compared to what they had in the raw data.09:50.04Charles NuttycombeThat’s not what we we did. we waited, we tried to get a sample, especially in our second poll that was as close to our targets as possible and not in like the, the democratic kind of thing, right? Like, oh, let’s, let’s say like our first day is like two Republican or something, but more so like in the demographics, demographics, um,10:09.01Charles Nuttycombei mean there are definitely tricks you can do like i think trafalgar and their polls right had uh you know uh harris plus six electric which is yes how virginia voted but you can get a poll to say anything if you know how to toy around with the numbers in in my experience when you know we were trying to figure out uh our our weights uh like you know when looking at the ap vocast data try and get it as close to the actual result as possible uh so you know i think like trafalgar they had like five percent of respondents say that they are other in their race for example right and i think10:55.12Charles NuttycombeI want to say Signal also had that issue. I don’t remember. I know that it was noted in the article. We have a table on it. But like the other group for when you when you when you’re getting with those demographics.11:08.10Charles Nuttycombepeople that select other are more likely to be Republicans who don’t want to tell pollsters like, you know, anything about themselves. And whereas like the actual, you know, I guess let’s just say people who are racially ambiguous in an actual election results are overwhelmingly Democratic.11:28.69Charles Nuttycombeso they, and, and, and the reason why i bring up, it’s like, they made it 5% in the Trafalgar poll is like, they really only make up 1% of the electorate pretty much every time.11:39.36Charles Nuttycombeso they gave it much more weight to try and get a more Republican result. I talked to somebody on the Republican side, and they said, that Robert, Robert, whatever his name, I like, I just like to call him bow tie boy.11:54.62Charles Nuttycombebow tie boy said, you know, what do you want me to get the poll to say? Right. and And look, I think something that separates State Navigate from the rest of the pack is, is we don’t really have a a team to root for.12:07.70Charles NuttycombeWe don’t have anybody to please, you know, it’s like if somebody sponsors our poll, it’s like, okay, but it’s like, you know, we’re we’re publishing. what we have, regardless of whether you like it or not. It’s not like a sponsor will be like, oh, we want to pull say this. It’s like we’ve never had that. And if somebody said that, I’d be like, you’re better off putting your money elsewhere because we care about accuracy and we care about just being able to put out good data there.12:31.21Charles NuttycombeSo, you know, at the end of the day, and another thing is like pollsters are they have clients, right? They have a clientele. and And in some cases, they usually have have one preferred party.12:46.06Charles NuttycombeAnd they have to keep them satisfied. They got to keep their clientele because that’s what keeps the lights on. What keeps the lights on for State Navigate is just like as long as we have our bare minimum funding, those House of Delegate District polls cost $900 to I want to say like maybe the most we spent was like $1,300 for a pretty good sample size, like in like the $300 range or I think in in the House District 783 poll is like closer to $400. So yeah.13:11.75Charles Nuttycombeso Whereas, you know, in context, those that would probably cost at least twice the amount if you’re paying an actual pollster. And so as long as we just have our bare minimum funding, it’s kind of like our Costco hot dog, right? It’s it’s a loss leader.13:27.92Charles NuttycombeIt’s like, yeah, we had to spend a lot of time on it, but it’s like we do this for love to gain. We don’t do this to like. push a narrative or like say, we want this person to win, let’s let’s go have him up by a lot. Or we want this person to be in a close race, let’s let’s make this race close, which I think like some like internals and whatnot do.13:49.62Charles NuttycombeWe don’t like, I think just one thing that kind of separates us compared to pollsters, particularly those who are like, who, you know, or are actual polling firms versus like a college, right?14:03.28Charles Nuttycombeis that they they have a clientele, whereas we do not.14:08.15Sam ShiraziYeah, and you know I’ll give a pitch to anyone who is looking for worthy causes to donate. You may want to consider State Navigate because, you know as you as you mentioned, I think it’s hard to get good political data that’s nonpartisan, that is really just trying to be accurate. And there’s so many different organizations out there with various agendas, and they don’t always disclose it. So I i think having State Navigate was really...14:28.89Sam Shiraziawesome in this election and, you know, helped me understand a lot of what was going on. So just the pitch for state navigate. So turning from the polling to the forecast side of things, in terms of the forecast, you know, it was kind of interesting. You mentioned that almost, it would almost have been better if you didn’t put the polling in there. And, you know, is that kind of reflection that the environment drives so much of these elections? And there are a lot of these partisan polls that are trying to push various views, like, is it just better to kind of almost ignore the noise and be like, look at presidential approval and just look at the environment versus, you know, every single check every every single poll that comes out obsessing over15:07.39Charles Nuttycombewell Well, first, before I answer that, I will say i very much appreciate the kind words. And I will know, quite frankly, I mean, State Navigate has its funding through the end of January.15:17.24Charles NuttycombeAs of this moment, I’m back on the fundraising grind in my jobs as executive director. So there’s any of your listeners who want to support our work as we expand nationally and expand our content for our 501c3 nonprofit, you can shoot me an email. This is chas at statenavigate.org.15:34.79Charles NuttycombeSo with the the question on weighing polling and in a forecast, I mean, look, in in the fundamentals model we had, it only went back to 2005 for building that model. So the end is pretty small. So that was why we gave polling as much weight as we did. because you know we just didn’t really have that high of a confidence interval in it but hindsight is 2020 maybe 20 years of uh you know of data i guess in in a way is is useful being able to predict at least virginia elections and16:13.13Charles Nuttycombewe’ll see if we want to try and do that same fundamentals model and weigh the fundamentals a little bit more in these statewide forecasts and which are of course closely tied with the how you the state, let us say the forecast in each state going into 2026.16:29.44Charles NuttycombeSo, i mean, look, you know, yeah it I noted this in the piece that Mary and I worked on is that, you know, a good data should be a right. And I think that includes polling.16:41.79Charles NuttycombeYou know, I think that we are all in the same boat and I think it’s a scientific miracle that we we have the capability to see in real time what public opinion is, right? G. Eliot Morris has a great book and and he kind of talks about, i think in the in the last chapter,17:05.62Charles Nuttycombeon how, you know, when Lincoln was president, Lincoln would make decisions on on public opinion by by who would be able to come and visit him at the White House.17:19.86Charles NuttycombeThose are going to skew more more wealthy and and elite and people probably older who had the time to go try and talk to the president, right? But now we have the technology to where we can just ask the average Joe.17:34.07Charles NuttycombeAnd and I think that you know the only other way for our elected officials to know what the people want is, of course, via elections.17:45.99Charles NuttycombeBut the elections are only every so often. And I think that you know the trying to help polling as much as we can, I mean, that’s why we did our our article on like, here’s what we think other people did wrong.18:02.99Charles Nuttycombehere’s what we did that we think can help like we had an article on like we did this experiment on putting all lowercase in your text it works really well trying to get 18 to 29 year olds to respond right we we want to help the polling industry we want to help the average joe understand state government we want to help professionals be able to easily access and download data because at the end of the day, data should on state government should be a right and and not a privilege.18:35.07Sam ShiraziWell, I think that’s certainly a very worthy goal, and I hope you you keep at it as we move on to the midterms. And you know speaking of the midterms, I wanted to kind of talk about a a little bit about kind of the lessons from Virginia and what you’re seeing in the midterms. Because obviously, anytime there are big wins like there were in Virginia and New Jersey, there’s kind of this idea, oh, yeah, the Democrats are doing really well. There’s going to be a blue wave in 2026.19:00.51Sam ShiraziI think that happened after 2021 and everyone thought there’d be a red wave 2022. Now, obviously there was the overturning of Roe and you could argue that changed the dynamics, but I mean, i don’t want to make any assumptions, but is your sense like unless something changes, there’s probably going to be a blue wave in 2026? Yeah.19:17.08Charles NuttycombeYeah, pretty much. I mean, unless President Trump gets a lot more popular, i think President Biden’s popularity may have improved a little bit in 2022 compared to 2021. But yeah, I mean, it was it was it was Dobbs that changed the kind of the trajectory of the midterms then, quite frankly.19:42.64Charles NuttycombeBut still Republican tilting. And yeah, so I want to say that like 2018 was like D plus seven in its like estimated generic ballot when, you know, accounting for uncontested districts and all that sort of thing. Right. I think that’s like the floor we’re looking at. Yeah.20:02.89Charles Nuttycombefor like what the mid 2026 is going to look like. So this is probably best case scenario in the generic ballot going to look like 2018 for Republicans. But that’s probably not really going to be as much of a bloodbath as 2018 was. Reason why is because there aren’t really as many endangered Republicans in these like you know seats that voted for Kamala Harris, right? There’s fewer of those kind of incumbents.20:48.12Charles NuttycombeSo, I think the the highest wave scenario when we’re talking about environment is t plus 10. So like what that translates to in Congress, you know, I don’t know. I’m i’m retired from federal forecast because it’s not really something I care about.21:06.99Charles NuttycombeI think, you know, people look at me like I’m crazy when I say I don’t care who the president is and that I really only care about who is in the state legislatures for a variety of reasons. One, bigger impact on your day to day life. Two, I think it’s more interesting.21:24.70Charles NuttycombeBut so so that’s what, you know, we’re looking for is like when we talk about like what the likely environment is and how we should build our forecast is just really going to be for state government in 26.21:40.27Charles Nuttycombeyou know but But let’s also keep in mind that i think i think there’s been, and i think I’ve been kind of in that boat of of kind of extrapolating too much from the Asian and and Latino stuff this year. Yeah.21:57.45Charles NuttycombeSo Democrats definitely won back some Trump voters who are Asian and Latino that you know from 2024. I don’t think it was a whole bunch. Most of them stayed home, those Latino and Asian voters, whether they be firmly Republican-leaning or whether they be independents.22:18.50Charles Nuttycombewhich we were kind of seeing an early vote and it looks at like that’s what happened on election day. We put out, I put out a map on Twitter of just like, you can see in parts in the areas of Nova,22:30.61Charles Nuttycombein like Centerville or Manassas or Eastern Loudoun or Bailey’s Crossroads or going into Richmond, like Southside Richmond, which, you know, are very Asian and Latino, that these voters didn’t really come out.22:45.33Charles NuttycombeSo I think that, Trying to extrapolate like for like a presidential election is just too difficult to know, like, you know, what whether those folks are going to come out in 2028 or whether Republicans have the same issue that Democrats had in 2024, where a lot of their base doesn’t show up because they’re not happy with them.23:06.35Charles NuttycombeAre we in a much shorter timeframe of intense thermostatic public opinion, la UK, instead of, you know, the traditional 20th century it takes eight years for the party to change the White House.23:20.33Charles NuttycombeSo, you know, it’s where I like to say Virginia elections are a mile long racetrack. We’re at the second, we just finished the a second quarter mile.23:34.94Charles Nuttycombe2026 is the third quarter. 2027 is fourth quarter. And then we’ll have a better idea of who’s going to win in 2028.23:45.78Sam ShiraziYeah, it’s certainly a a little bit too early to know for sure, but interesting stuff we can get kind of glean from the data. I did want to ask you, because one thing I’m interested in, and it doesn’t get talked about a lot. So, you know, in terms of Virginia, obviously, some parts of Virginia, the Republican turnout was down, like in Southwest Virginia. but Just looking at the data, it didn’t seem like Spanberger made that many gains relatively with like white working class voters. And I think that’s been the problem for Democrats since Trump was elected in 2016. They just haven’t been able to figure out how to win back white working class voters.24:17.70Sam ShiraziIs that kind of what you saw this year in Virginia? And like do you think there’s any way the the Democrats can can win those voters back? Because obviously it’s a big deal for for many districts at the state level and in the federal level.24:28.76Charles NuttycombeI mean, that’s a good question. i mean, she won some, but when you talk about, I guess, trends, like it’s it’s not something like, oh, there’s this big reversion relative to the statewide swing, right?24:43.100Charles NuttycombeI mean, really Democrats had a large turnout advantage and and gained back some ground in a sort of reform as they are kind of reforming the old Biden coalition of, you know, working class minority voters, or really you could say the Clinton coalition because because Latinos and and Asians got more Republican in 2020. But if I recall correctly, and just, you know, we’re all,25:09.06Charles Nuttycombeonly a few weeks away from this election, there’s going to be people who are much smarter than me who are going to be able to put this data together. But I don’t think on on how the minority voters broke down that they were as blue as they were and on the presidential level in 2020 when we were talking about Asians and Latinos.25:24.10Charles NuttycombeBut yeah, we talk about the white working class. I mean, yeah, I don’t think Spamber really did much in Southwest. Southwest didn’t trend leftward. There were only like 23 localities that trended leftward.25:38.12Charles NuttycombeRelative to the from from 2024 presidential to 2025 governor, 11 of which were in northern Virginia. So I think that is because of the shutdown and because of the groups that make up for the Virginia, which are this is a very diverse region, right, racially.25:55.36Charles NuttycombeAnd, you know, then you had like, what, five college towns or six college towns. Democrats actually did pretty well with young voters. They had pretty pretty good turnout, especially in some of these campuses, even somewhere like VCU, which I was kind of surprised. But yeah, so, you know, I think that while there, I think that, uh, you know, there are areas that Spanberger did worse than Tim Kaine.26:28.58Charles NuttycombeThere was a precinct in, uh, in Russell County that i want to say Tim Kaine won that Spanberger lost handling. It’s a very small precinct, but, You know, I don’t think she really campaigned for ancestral Democrats. She played to her strength, which is the suburbs and in areas that she has represented before.26:46.24Charles NuttycombeAnd she won. And she won by the largest margin pretty much since black people for for a Democrat running for governor, since black people have been able to vote truly in Virginia when we became a two party state in the 1960s after the Civil Rights Act.26:59.26Charles NuttycombeSo it was a effective strategy and it paid off for her.27:04.00Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, in terms of that specific race at the top of the ticket, you know, I think 15% was certainly top of everyone’s, or at least I thought it was theoretically possible, but I think most people didn’t expect it. And, you know, that level of victory, do you think...27:20.30Sam ShiraziIt was really the environment versus candidate quality. you know There’s been a lot of talk that the lieutenant governor’s race was kind of the generic D versus R, 11%. And did Spanberger kind of get the 4% extra just because her candidate quality versus Earl Sears?27:34.51Charles NuttycombeYeah. Yeah. So I think like when, when we talk about, I mean, the, the, this election was probably like Harris plus 11, in, in the electorate this year. and there’s a few things with that.27:46.54Charles NuttycombeThat’s just kind of a ballpark estimate based on, uh, precinct turnout and the state navigate polls, as well as just for the, the house delegate results and Lieutenant governor result.27:59.21Charles NuttycombeYou know, there wasn’t much money spent in the LG race that and and the result between like what the estimated popular vote was was, which was D plus 11.6 was pretty much identical to the margin for lieutenant governor. That’s the generic Dem race versus generic R.28:16.28Charles NuttycombeAnd then, yeah, when we talk about a poor Democratic candidate and a strong Republican candidate, that’s the attorney general race and then vice versa for governor. So that’s why you had that, you know, those those differences between LG and gov and gov versus AG.28:34.65Charles NuttycombeSo, yeah, I think that, you know, there I mean, To talk a little bit about the house, if if our forecast had been plugged into a D plus 12, just about house delegates environment with a Spanberger 15 victory, we we would have got a 99 out of 100, so three more seats right.28:58.67Charles NuttycombeThe biggest upset at night is just absolutely Nicole Cole beating Bobby Oroc and by a comfortable margin, frankly. I mean, the the effect and this is kind of my thing as a Richmonder is like, you know, I was wrong on how much the shutdown had an impact on this election. It had a big impact. And and the question is whether those gains that Republican or sorry, Democrats have made because of the shutdown are going to hold in 2027 beyond or whether.29:26.72Charles NuttycombeYou know, you have like maybe two or three percent of voters in northern Virginia who were in these swing districts who were just mad at Republicans over the shutdown are going to go back to their ways in 2027. They’re showing out and vote Republican.29:40.05Sam ShiraziWell, I did want to ask about 2027 because I know you and a few other people think about 2027, even though probably no one else is. Obviously, Virginia will have the state Senate and the House Delegates up for election, all of it in 2027.29:54.37Sam Shiraziand think state Senate is going to be rough for the Republicans. Do you think in the House of Delegates, the Democrats are basically like at their peak or do you think they can keep making gains?30:05.31Charles NuttycombeNo, there were, what, three or four Republicans in Spanberger districts. Ann Farrell-Tata, Rob Bloxham, Mike Cherry, and Tony Wilt.30:17.42Charles NuttycombeTony Wilt, was proud i would if you had to make me pick, I think Tony Wilt probably loses. There wasn’t as much investment at JMU versus Virginia Tech.30:26.73Charles NuttycombeSo that’s probably going to change. And, you know, that seat, I think, is probably their best pickup opportunity for the Dems. Maybe college soon out college student turnout won’t be as high, though.30:37.71Charles NuttycombeThere was a drop-off at Virginia Tech from 2017 to 2019. Then again, I want to say that jane the the old equivalent, when you know Wilt was running in whatever number it was in the old Harrisonburg district and Rockingham district, got closer in 2019 than in 2017. That’s just because Democrats actually targeted it.31:02.48Charles Nuttycombeand Wilt won by like, what, just under a point. Uh, so that’s a pretty decent pickup opportunity for them. i think Republicans have some pickup opportunities.31:13.21Charles Nuttycombeuh, you know, I mean, uh, looking looking at the results here, if if I can get it in front of me. Let’s see, in the margin, like, yeah, I mean, maybe house district 30 69, 73 is probably not gonna come back. And the reason why, even though it’s like, well, you know,31:33.08Charles Nuttycombeearly only lost by 3.7% is because that’s going be two years from now. And that district was probably about Harris plus five this year. It’s probably goingnna be closer to Harris plus 10 in its electorate in 2027.31:44.83Charles NuttycombeToo many Yankees, too many people from Nova moving down to Chesterfield. That’s a safe Democratic district for virtually. Maybe like a one in 10 chance Republicans can flip that back with a a very moderate Republican, kind of Kerry Coiner-esque.32:00.12Charles NuttycombeBut it’s it’s very unlikely. Probably 66 could be an interesting one to watch. The one that Bobby Orrack just lost. If there’s, you know, that win was inflated by anger of the federal government shutdown.32:15.15Charles Nuttycombe74 is going to be interesting with Mike Cherry because it’s kind of the now, I think, the equivalent of House District 73 where you’ve got Yankees moving in. The development there is not as fast as in like the mid-low area, but it is still moving leftward.32:31.62Charles NuttycombeCherry won by five points. Spanberger won his district. Yeah. And, yeah, so I think Democrats are they’re probably not going to gain many seats in the House next time, maybe a seat or two, if I had to guess. But, you know, this is two years from now.32:48.29Charles NuttycombeSenate, yeah, it’s going to be a bloodbath for Republicans. Glenn Sturdivant is pretty much dead on arrival. He’s not coming back. And then i would say, i think that it’s it’s probably about the same odds as, you know, like like a one in 10 chance, maybe, that Danny Diggs can win.33:10.95Charles NuttycombeMaybe eight in 10, or a one in 10 chance, I’m sorry. if I said that right, that Danny Diggs can win in on the Peninsula Sea and then in State Senate District 2017, in 17, I’m sorry, in Southside with Emily Jordan, maybe like a two in 10 chance. Southside, Democratic Black turnout always flops.33:35.54Charles NuttycombeBut, you know, you still have like Portsmouth and Suffolk, which comes out pretty strong. And then... Tara Durant’s seat is probably flipping.33:45.07Charles NuttycombeAnd, you know, if I had to guess, I would say probably sewer line seat flips. Democrats had like an OK candidate there and she only lost by five.34:00.08Charles Nuttycombein in a very Republican friendly year. And the thing is like the, the, when you think about 2019 and 2017, right? Like the state legislative environment didn’t really change much. It got like maybe half a point bluer in 2019 versus 2017 as, you know, Democrats.34:16.98Charles NuttycombeAnd this is like talking about the, you know, estimated popular vote. As Democrats got an incumbency advantage in 2019 and only increased by like half percentage point.34:28.18Charles NuttycombeSo like this isn’t going to be like, oh, oh, yeah, it’s going to like 2023 where it’s like D plus two. No, it’s it’s more likely than not going to be like, don’t know, generously to Republicans like D plus nine.34:39.86Charles NuttycombeAnd, you know. Probably generously to the Democrats, D plus what, 12 and a half. If I were to say that’s probably the range for the environment for the state legislative stuff in 2027, that’s what I would say.34:53.00Charles NuttycombeSo, you know, the question is, are Democrats getting super majorities in each chamber? It’s going to be unlikely that they do so.35:02.41Charles Nuttycombebecause it runs through Trump’s fan burger districts where they have not really tried beating some incumbents before who have a strong incumbency advantage.35:13.20Charles NuttycombeSo, yeah, I mean, that’s that’s just kind of the question is it’s it’s kind of like 2015 in a way where it’s like, you know, one party’s on the precipice of either keeping, or I guess, you know, losing their super majority and people are just looking at the super majority. Nobody’s looking at the odds of majority, right? Both chambers are safe democratic. It’s, it’s virtually 100%, that Democrats keep their trifecta in 2027.35:38.83Charles NuttycombeBut the question is like, do they get a super majority for the first time since what the nineteen eighty s If I were to kind of ballpark, it’s probably in like the 30 to 40 something percent range.35:52.66Charles NuttycombeLow 40s, I would say. But, you know, it’s we’re not going to work on a forecast until, you know, summer or like, you know, beginning of 2027 release in the summer like we did this year for 2025.36:09.54Charles NuttycombeBut yeah, so Democrats probably pick up. on a bad night for them, four seats, a good night, six for the Senate.36:21.74Charles NuttycombeAnd then I guess on a good night for them in the House, it would be picking up four seats. Bad night would be probably losing maybe two or three seats.36:36.71Charles NuttycombeBut, you know, it’s, it’s two years from now. We’ll, we’ll see what changes over the next, uh, you know, quarter mile the racetrack.36:46.21Sam ShiraziYeah, it’s kind of crazy how much the environment really affects these elections in Virginia. And so we’ll just have to wait and see what 2027 is like. i you know As we kind of start to wrap up, I wanted to just see what you were thinking about doing in 2026 in the midterms, what state navigate is going to do, and kind of also maybe pitch why people should care about the state legislative elections in 2026. Because frankly, I think most people are going to be hyper-focused on the House and the Senate. But as you mentioned, I mean, so many important decisions. Even things like redistricting are really done at the state legislative plus level.37:18.22Charles NuttycombeWell, you know, I think there’s a whole, but so for for what state Navigate is working on next year, you know, we’re looking, we’re opening up in five states right now. the first nine months of our development was focused on getting a framework to where it’s going to be easy to cut copy paste.37:32.99Charles NuttycombeSo now it’s only going to take one to three weeks to get out in each state. Like one, like one to three weeks per state, not like all 50 states within one to three weeks from now so Alaska is just about to come out and North Carolina and Michigan, not far behind.37:48.42Charles NuttycombeAnd so that’s what we’re working on. And, you know, we’re going to be, I think we might dabble in trying to do like some primary state, let us say a primary analysis in some of these states like West Virginia, maybe Wyoming, because that’s pretty much where the general election is. Not sure if we would do a forecast itself or what.38:11.48Charles NuttycombeWe would like to hire a polling director if we’re able to have the money. Otherwise, we’re probably probably not going to be able to do much polling. Just because, I mean, it’s with with the amount of time that Michael, our elections coordinator, and i are going have spend. it’s I mean, we’ve got to focus on getting states out and getting content out.38:30.74Charles NuttycombeWe can’t be dealing with polling and all that. So that’s what we have coming up. So make sure you subscribe to our newsletter and keep up in the loop. Just go to statenavigate.org go to get connected and sign up for our free newsletter.38:46.62Charles NuttycombeAnd then what what was the other part of your question?38:49.62Sam ShiraziJust like why people should care because I mean people going be focusing on the Congress congressional races.38:51.91Charles NuttycombeRight. Yeah, I mean, i think that first of all, state legislatures are more much more interesting than Congress. You know, we talk about on a data perspective or just like the kind of characters, right? It’s a rarity where you get like a child molester a wife beater and in in a race in Congress, where it’s like, I just i saw both of those things in 2024 for people who were running and one of them won, the wife beater won.39:21.98Charles Nuttycombeby a single vote. So, you know, there’s more interesting stuff there, more interesting data in terms of ticket splitting. And look, I mean, the state lets the state government affects your day to day life more than like what President Trump does if you’re an American, right?39:41.58Charles NuttycombeKeyword, if you are an American. So, so you know, I mean, there’s going a whole bunch of stuff probably changing with the new democratic trifecta, which hasn’t occurred since 2020. that’s much more liberal than the old, older try. Well, not much more liberal, but, definitely more liberal than the old trifecta, Northam.40:01.90Charles NuttycombeRight. So if you don’t like that, then hey, get involved. If you like that, hey, get involved, right? Pay attention to what’s going on your state government.40:12.26Charles NuttycombeAnd look, if you want to figure out like, okay, where should I spend my time and resources and money? I guess you go to State Navigate. You look at the data that we collect in each state and we put these forecasts together so that we can help you navigate what’s going on in state governments around the country.40:30.83Charles NuttycombeSo, you know, we provide a whole bunch of of resources, including aggregating news, calculating ideology of legislators using their floor roll call votes, every single one in relation to one another, forecasting the outcomes of state legislatures, polling districts and statewide stuff for horse races and issue polling, putting together a demographic data by district and pulling together lists of candidates, all that sort of thing. So.40:54.91Charles NuttycombeAll that being said, you can find it all at statenavigate.org.40:59.90Sam ShiraziAll right, well, one last question, just to kind of end on a fun note. What do you think was the most fun part of the Virginia elections for you this year?41:09.66Charles Nuttycombethat’s That’s a good question, actually.41:12.83Charles NuttycombeI mean, honestly, Benny’s Pizza in Richmond kind of sucked. It’s not as good as Blacksburg. So that was kind of a disappointment for me, and frankly. But c’est la vie. There’s better pizza around here. I’m living in Churchill now.41:28.96Charles Nuttycombeyou know it was It was fun seeing the I mean, you know i streamed on election day, calling up the registrars and and just kind of shooting the s**t with them, which was fun. you know they They do such tremendous work. They’re saints.41:45.08Charles NuttycombeAnd especially for those I was able to get data from, God bless them, for county level, precinct level stuff. It was really fun just like seeing how well the NAVCAST did. i mean, if if you didn’t have the NAVCAST in front of you, you were behind. And then that’s what I was saying is that if you don’t have this in front of you, you’re going to be behind on knowing who won.42:06.04Charles NuttycombeSo we beat, you know, we were the first to call the race for governor. We called it when polls closed. And because we had saw what was going on in turnout and that we knew Spanberger was going to win and by a comfortable margin, a very comfortable margin.42:19.96Charles Nuttycombeand, uh, then we’re also the first group. I think, I think we beat DDHQ by a minute for the race for attorney general. and, uh, you know, it was, it was, uh, Ben, Ben Tribbett, who has, has been a mentor, uh, to me, I think, especially in the beginning of my career.42:40.96Charles Nuttycombeand I very much look up to him. It was pretty much just him and I doing, uh, you know, uh, or, you know, like myself and and Jack and and Michael and Ryan Bruhn, who’s our our race call team.42:53.72Charles NuttycombeIt was us versus him. And I, I, I think we beat Ben on like getting the race calls out a little quicker. And, but you know, i mean, it’s, it’s at the end of the day, when we beat the AP and that’s just what matters as, as an organization.43:13.64Charles Nuttycombeyeah, but Yeah, and and Ben, you know, did fantastic stuff that night. And yeah, just, I mean, seeing the NavCast especially, I think, was the most fun.43:31.17Charles NuttycombeLike seeing how well it worked, especially in comparison to other folks kind of live modeling. to where you’re able to see the odds of who’s going to win. i mean, people were putting out our race calls before us because the NavGas had like 98% chance of a Dem win or 99 or something.43:49.52Charles NuttycombeAnd we’re like, you know, we’re trying to get, maybe like we’re focusing on trying to get this one call or like, Oh, the model, like there these new results posted, it’s now 99. Let’s go check, you know, and make sure that this is right. Okay. Is this here? Is this here? Anything out? Okay. Let’s do it.44:05.24Charles NuttycombeSo, yeah, I think Jack did an amazing job on the pages. You know, he’s is’ very brilliant. And, you know, Ali was here in my office, office, my apartment with me.44:20.01Charles NuttycombeAnd, you know, I would just say, cue that up, cue that up. This district, this person, go tweet it out. Like it’s it in and on election night, like any whatever room I’m in especially in Virginia, turns into a war room, quite frankly.44:39.70Charles Nuttycombeso so it’s very fun probably the most fun i’ve had i guess since 2021 in college i think that’s always still going to be my favorite election night i think that’s always going to still be my favorite election night that’s when the pizza tradition began and very laid back and you know, it was, it was, it was very fun.45:03.26Charles NuttycombeSo I think this was my second favorite election night that I’ve, I’ve worked on in, in Virginia throughout the last eight years.45:13.34Sam ShiraziWell, I certainly appreciated everything that you did, especially on election day and election night. i Obviously, I was going to stay navigated as my go-to source for info. So I really appreciate everything. And yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for coming back, Chaz, and giving people’s perspective up after the election on how everything went.45:30.82Charles NuttycombeYeah, Sam, day thank you so much for having me on.45:33.26Sam ShiraziYeah, and this has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fall Out the 2025 Virginia elections.This episode we will have Joe Szymanski.He is going to help walk us through perhaps the Republican reaction to what happened in Virginia, maybe lessons they can learn and things that could potentially change for them ahead of the midterms, because obviously both parties are going to be trying to figure out what they can do differently or the same to to do as best as possible or during during the midterms. Joe, I follow you on social media. I always appreciate your takes. I think you’re pretty objective and you’re pretty realistic in your assessment. So it’s good to have you on.00:38.35JoeI appreciate it, Sam. Thank you very much for having me back.00:40.63Sam ShiraziYeah. So, I mean, to begin, i think, you know, whenever there’s an election like this, the party that loses, there’s kind of soul searching and kind of questioning of what happened. You know, how much of this do you think was just the environment, given what happened in New Jersey? So how much do you think what happened in Virginia was the environment versus kind of the specific campaign dynamics?01:01.24JoeWell, i think I think it depends on what race you’re talking about. you know I think, obviously, when you look at the fact that Abigail Spanberger won by 15 points, you know significantly higher than there are other statewide compatriots. Ghazala Hashimi only won by about 11.5. You had Jay Jones, obviously, only winning by about 6.5 points.01:26.20JoeSo, you know, Abigail Spanberger winning by around 15.3%. That, you know, that’s a big difference. Obviously, that’s a, I think that’s a Spanberger-like thing, the fact that she was able to get that high.01:38.51JoeBut if you, I think the Hashmi-Reed race, I talked, I put out a post about this a couple of days ago. That seemed to basically be kind of the the set generic R, generic D race. That was the race had the least attention.01:50.67JoeThat was the race that just kind of seemed to be, I think, where if we’re just talking about baseline where R’s and D’s were in Virginia this year, that seemed to be the place right there. And I think when you look at the races in the House of Delegates, I think that kind of tracks pretty well with the seats that we saw flip or get close. You know, I think in general, I think that sits pretty well with what we are looking at statewide. But certainly, I think in the case of, you know, how relative in terms of compared to the other two statewide races, how relatively close to the AG race was. and how you know far apart the governor’s race was, I think those were candidate-based. But I think when you get down to, I think, some of these has of deal a lot of these House of Delegate races, and I think the lieutenant governor’s race as well, it just showed just general blue wave that I think fell over the parts of the country that held elections two weeks ago.02:40.43Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, I think that’s a good point. Like if you look at the lieutenant governor’s race as kind of the generic ballot, D.R. and the Democrats win by 11.02:48.38JoeUh.02:48.71Sam ShiraziI mean, if you compare to that to 2017, that’s a bigger win than the governor’s race or the lieutenant governor’s race in 2017 in Virginia. So how much do you think, you know, Virginia, New Jersey,02:59.18Sam Shiraziwas kind of a flashing signal to the Republicans because some Republicans have said, well, those are bluer states, so there’d probably be more of a backlash in those types of states. you know how How big of a deal do you think the elections were?03:12.30JoeI think certainly certainly they’re a big deal. And certainly when you, I think, underperform expectations like Republicans did, you know, not just in Virginia, but across the country.03:22.89Joetwo weeks ago, that’s going to be a huge problem. That can send red red flashing lights, I think, for everyone. You know, Republicans didn’t do well in New Jersey, like you said. They didn’t do well. There were some very key races in Pennsylvania that brought forth a lot of money. The Republicans didn’t do well there.03:37.91JoeThere was a lot of local stuff in many states that did not go Republicans’ way. That was a lot of problems. Obviously, the big red, flashing light, I think you look at the legislative elections in both New Jersey and Virginia, where Republicans you know failed to failed to make, you know either limit their losses, like I think the hope was Virginia, or potentially to make some gains, like I think they were quite honestly hoping to do in New Jersey. you know and Republicans basically had their worst night possible, losing 13 seats, basically all the seats that were04:09.88Joerated toss-up or even the few that were lean Republican by the end of the night were in the Democratic column. You know, you had upsets, you know, you had Chad Green losing, Paul Mild, Bobby Oroch, you know, those are kind of the three seats that I think people going into the night were, you know, kind of thinking that Republicans probably had a slightly better than 50% chance in. And then, you know, Democrats win all three of those seats with, honestly, with some relative ease. None of them were within a point in the closest seat.04:39.60Joethat Democrats won was actually Gary Higgins’ seat, which some people thought may be not as close as it was. But there there should be a lot of red flashing lights here. I think obviously with Virginia, you know you have to take the government shutdown into effect.04:54.13JoeCertainly that’s what happened in 2013. But you know now you have a government shutdown happening that really ticked off a lot of Virginia voters. Well, you’ve got a Republican president you know who is not popular right now. If you go by the polling data, he’s not a particularly popular person right now.05:10.28JoeAnd it’s certainly not surprising that he’s not he was not popular in a lot of these deep blue pockets that Virginia has around Richmond, you know, the D.C. suburbs, of course, and then around, you know, Hampton Roads area, Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, Portsmouth, even the inner parts of Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, you know.05:29.80JoeIt’s a very clear sign that the people who are turning out to elections right now are upset and Republicans need to take notice and maybe I think recalibrate some of the messaging that we hope to have 2026.05:40.13Sam ShiraziYeah, and and I’ll get to the midterms and kind of what the Republicans can maybe change. I did want to just spend a moment just on the House of Delegates because you know you you obviously know know knew those races really well. And I think you know pretty much no one expected Democrats to pick up the 13 seats.05:55.71Sam ShiraziAnd I think the question I have kind of... about the Virginia elections in this context is more, do individual candidates matter at this point at the kind lower parts of the ticket? Because I feel like most people don’t even think too much about the House of Delegates candidates anymore. In 2013, Terry McAuliffe won the governor’s race and the Republicans won like 66 House of Delegates seats. It just seems like people don’t do that anymore. And I mean, do you think there’s gonna be any ticket splitting in the future or is just we’re kind of done with that?06:30.22JoeWell, mean, we still did see some evidence of ticket splitting. You know, you go to via eighty six district. AC Cordoza did, I think, significantly worse than most of the top of the ticket.06:42.20JoeWe had Carrie Coyner in 75, even though she still lost, do significantly better than Republicans at the top of ticket did in that seat, even though she still ended up losing by just about six points there. So I think i think when you look at some of these races, there is still some signs of ticket splitting for some favors to to incumbents, but you know,07:01.80JoeYou look at, I think, people like Mark Early Jr., who was, you know, knocked out by over three points. You look at David Owen, who who had a very moderate voting record and in Henrico County in what became a very blue seat. He got trounced. I think Ian Lovejoy, I think, in HD22 and Prince William, I think that’s the biggest one. Ian Lovejoy.07:42.60JoeI think that showed the partisanship more than maybe any race throughout the cycle, the fact that people did not care that Ian Lovejoy was a relatively moderate Republican delegate. He just where he had an R next to his name, and the people in Northern Virginia were not going to elect any Republican this year.07:59.01JoeThat’s the fact they weren’t going to do it. and you know, that’s what happened now. I mean, Northern Virginia is completely blue the house level now. Jerry Higgins is gone. Ian Lovejoy is gone. If you want him to count Paul Mildon there in that middle Stafford seat, he’s gone. And even if you want to go as far as Bobby Oreck, you know, he’s gone now, too.08:17.81JoeSo, you know, I think certainly there is a good chunk of it that was anger. There’s certainly still, I think there’s still some ticket splitting you can see here, but certainly it’s becoming less and less, you know, it’s becoming less and less common, becoming less and less a decider. You know, we might be seeing it a point or two, but we’re not seeing it by the 10, 15-point splits that we would see a decade ago.08:36.62Sam ShiraziYeah, and and that makes sense. And, you know, it it is, I think sometimes when there’s these waves, whether it’s a blue wave or red wave, it kind of takes people with them and there’s not a lot you can do. And so looking towards the midterms, I guess, before we get to what Republicans can do or learn, Do you think you’ll see a similar dynamic where some of these incumbents, you know, maybe in the past they’ve been safe? i mean, obviously, the biggest name is Susan Collins. After 2020, there’s this assumption she’s very hard to beat. But do you think maybe if there’s this wave that some of these incumbents could actually be pretty vulnerable?09:11.11JoeI mean, that’s I think that’s the case with every wave, potential wave of election, quite honestly. i mean, if you go back to the conversations in 2022, there was a lot of that the Republicans could knock off. some historically song strong Democrat candidates. Now, obviously, that year didn’t turn out like like it had been previously hoped, but you know that was certainly part of the thinking there. And if you want to consider 2024 wave election in some circumstance, you had Republican president, Senate candidate winning the popular vote in Donald Trump, Republicans making gains in both houses of Congress and in state legislators across the country.09:44.09JoeYou know, you i think Bob Casey. I think if you want to consider 2024 to be a certain type of wave, you have Bob Casey, who was considered one of the stronger candidates in the country. you know, kind of just get eliminated out of nowhere, truly by partisanship. So, you know you know, I think Susan Collins can’t wet rest, certainly, I think, compared to lots of candidates.10:04.17JoeShe’s done a better job at portraying her brand. She has a longtime brand. we see see We still see those longtime people survive. But, you know, if to make the Virginia connection, you’ve got someone like Bobby Orrick, who had been there for 30-plus years, you know, getting absolutely swamped.10:20.12Joeknow, it’s very clearly starting to matter less. And if people are mad, and if those people are voting, then, you know, I think, Connie, you’re out of luck there, quite honestly.10:30.50JoeIt’s going to be tough for of these people imagine. But, you know, the the old days are almost dead when it comes to stuff like this. and those those days that we have, those major ticket splits, don’t really exist anymore. Now, we like this like we’ve said, like I’ve said, we’ve had some still some stragglers. And some of those stragglers are still going to exist, I think, after the 2026 election.10:50.60JoeIt’s just going to continue to be less and less than what we’re used to in this nation.10:54.100Sam ShiraziYeah, and I think it’s a good point about Bob Casey, because I think that was one where I was surprised in 2024. And it’s just a good reminder that can’t take any you can’t make any assumptions in any election. So we’ll just have to wait to see how the midterms go. I did want to ask about kind of lessons to be learned or or things that could potentially change, because, you know, obviously on the Democratic side, there’s a sense of, yes, Virginia and New Jersey proved our theory that you know Democrats are going to come back and there’s going to be a blue wave in 2026. I’m kind of hesitant to all make these big assumptions because obviously 2022, there was a lot of talk about a red wave. and It didn’t really happen, even though the Republicans made some gains.11:39.89JoeYou know, I think the read is that Democrats are probably favored. You know, obviously, I think it is little bit too early. Obviously, we had the ruling on the Texas redistricting yesterday. We’ll see how that appeal goes. You know, if that gets flipped back to the redrawn Texas districts, then that will – kind of, I think, rechanged some priors again. You know, we’ve had obviously so much, you know, mid-term, mid-cycle redistricting, you know, that’s not good for our country, quite honestly.12:08.93JoeIt’s bad for democracy. It’s bad for this place. You know, it’s bad in Texas. It’s bad in California. It’s bad in Missouri. It’s bad in North Carolina. You know, it’s bad. It’s bad in Virginia, with Virginia looking you like to do with it I think that’s bad, obviously. And, you know, i you’ve got Indiana looking do it. You know, this Illinois going to go one farther. You know, Maryland, there’s a lot of pressure in Maryland to try and eliminate Andy Harris in that last Republican seat there.12:36.60Joeit’s it’s just kind of this coalition of a lot of things that are occurring at one time and just a lot of partisan anger at each other that in truth is not good for our country. It’s not healthy for our country. and It’s a lot of lot of negative thoughts and feelings, I think, that are going right now with that. And i think we’re going tonna have to see and wait how how that kind of ends and develops.12:55.92JoeYou know, I think we’re going to have to and candidates, you know, who’s going to get primaried. Republican anger has sometimes led in some seats to nominating in swing seats of very partisan candidates. Now, I don’t think it would be the same type of partisan candidates for Democratic primaries, but certainly do you get maybe these – – someone made the point to me, maybe these, you know, Carr Eastman – Jamie McLeod Skinner, if you know those names, then you’re impressive. But these very left wing, but also academic types, who kind of are notorious for turning off swing voters.13:25.62Joeyou know Do Democrats maybe get a couple of those in swing seats? you know do they blow those there? We don’t really know the the real extent of democratic Democratic anger yet that I think we could see in some of these primaries. I’m very fascinated to see how that develops.13:39.38JoeAnd I think that will make a lot of calls. But I think certainly right now Democrats are favored to retake the House. And I think there will be questions about the Senate. I think the Senate could be very close, but just because of the seats that are up, I do think Republicans are a little bit favored to, I think, keep control there.13:55.50Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, that that seems to be the what it looks like right now, but obviously year is a long time. And so given that there’s still time until the midterms, you know, any party after an election like what happened in Virginia, New Jersey, they’ll take some time to reflect, try to figure out, OK, what went wrong?14:11.96Sam ShiraziIt seems like the main issue the Republicans had was the economy and they didn’t talk enough about it. We’ve already seen a little bit of changing, I think, in some of the messaging for the Republicans. But do you think there’s like anything the Republicans can do in terms of changing the messaging or just the economy have to get better? And that’s really the only thing that can maybe help the Republicans for the midterms.14:32.12JoeYou know, obviously the economy getting better it would be the change of all change. It certainly wouldn’t be to the level the Roe v. Wade ruling being overturned by the Supreme Court, but certainly an improvement in the economy would help Republican chances. it would certainly, I think, lessen the size of the wave that they could face, for sure.14:53.88Joethink that’s undeniable if the economy approves. But I also think Republicans just have to talk more about what they’re trying to do with the affordability crisis. There is an affordability crisis in this country. You know, I’m 24.15:28.11JoeI believe, as a Republican, I think that Republicans can be far better. think in terms of, you know, I think unleashing the free market for a housing industry. And, you know, that’s something that i’m I’m increasingly passionate about and believe that I think Republicans can need to message more affordability because I believe they are doing some strong things. And I believe it’s trying to focus on affordability and what they’re trying to do to help people in their pocketbook.16:02.57Joenot what people are worried about right now. People are worried about affording rent, and they’re worrying about trying to buy their first home, and they’re trying to worry about food putting food on the table. think Republicans have to reconstruct themselves through affordability crisis, and I think if we do that, I think we can certainly, if we can message it well, think we can certainly avoid a super wave that would knock out the lots of candidates in seats that we should not be losing, that we might be losing under the terms of a massive wave.16:28.83Sam ShiraziYeah, and I think that’s a good point about you know the messaging.16:30.99JoeThank16:31.94Sam ShiraziAnd it’s not super complicated, but obviously the Republicans have to work on that for the persuasion side of things. I did want to talk about turnout because in some parts of Virginia, like Southwest Virginia, turnout wasn’t as strong as it was in 2021. You often hear about low propensity Trump voters. They don’t show up for the midterms. That’s going to be a problem for the Republicans.16:51.26Sam ShiraziMy sense is some of the trans stuff is to try to motivate those people to show up, which, you know, I don’t know if that really works. But how do you think the Republicans can deal with that issue of their low propensity voters?17:02.61JoeWell, it’s certainly a question that’s hard to do. I think a lot of Republicans look to groups like Scott Pressler’s Early Vote Action. To be totally honest, I think Early Vote Action does a very good job the first step, which is getting people to register to the vote.17:17.60JoeI don’t think they’re particularly very good at the second and third step, which is educating them on where to vote and making sure they get out to vote. I think they’ve not done a very good job at that.17:27.93Joethat’s a frustration I have with the group that I think we’re taking maybe too many opinions of how we should run our local campaigns. But that’s, I think, a topic for another conversation another day.17:39.45JoeBut I think Republicans, like I said, I think they have to talk to people’s pocketbooks. I think we have to, you know, again, i think we have to hit on what we’re doing to focus on the affordability crisis and what we’re doing to help people’s pocketbooks and make sure that we know the the people know that we’re fighting for them and that we give them a reason to turn out. If we do not, I think a lot of people and the parties in power don’t,18:02.23Joedo a very good job of this. I think Democrats certainly struggled with it during Joe Biden’s term. Republicans struggled with it a bit in Donald Trump’s first term. I think Democrats suffered with it significantly more in Barack Obama’s eight years as president and those off-year elections of giving them a reason to turn out. The only reason that Joe Biden, think they not suffer terrible midterm losses is because Roe v. Wade being overturned gave lots of Democrat voters and activists reason to turn out.18:32.10JoeRepublicans aren’t going to have something like that, so we have to fight for it ourselves and message in that way to give them a reason to turn out for us and you know you know try and keep our majorities as much as unlikely as that may be in some circumstances.18:44.17Joecircumstances18:45.36Sam ShiraziWell, that’ll make sense. And, you know, we’ll see how the midterms go. i did want to shift things back to Virginia to talk about perhaps something that will be happening in the spring, because obviously the Democrats have proposed redistricting.18:59.52Sam ShiraziNow there’s some legal challenges. We’ll see how that goes. Democrats, in theory, would have to vote for it again, which seems like likely that they would.19:05.63JoeThank you.19:07.12Sam ShiraziSo let’s say there’s a referendum in the spring. I think the assumption among Democrats, at least, is, oh, this will be a slam dunk. You know, look what happened in California. And, you know, we’re going to get this redistricting referendum passed. I mean, do you think there’s a chance it might not pass? Because obviously, Virginia is not California. And, you know, the polling, it looks like slight majority might support it. But, you know, in theory, especially if Texas redistricting goes down, there might be this world where,19:34.90Sam ShiraziThe voters might say, you know, this isn’t really necessary anymore.19:37.91JoeYeah, I think if the Texas Rediscerating stays down, that could change things tremendously. Personally, you know, I think it takes away a big chunk of the argument that Virginia Democrats have.19:50.37JoeLike you said, it’s certainly, it’s not California, you know, 15 points is my Abigail Spamberger is, you know, it’s a miracle. It’s, it’s such an incredible result. One of the best results for Democrats ever in the modern age. If a candidate for governor won by only 15 points in California, you’d have people like freaking, freaking out. in that state, if I’m being honest. You’d have mass panic among Democrats in California if they only won by 50 points.20:38.76Joeyou know i you know And like you said, if it’s going to happen in the spring on an off year maybe a little bit, Democrats going to have to try harder. you know yeah The rural black vote and even I think the urban black vote in Virginia has always been has always been a consistent problem for Democrats in non-presidential years. That’s something they’re going to have to work on too, especially if Republicans maybe can get their voters turned on on this. And maybe if, again, if Texas isn’t back, Democrats are then going to have to continue to find a reason.21:07.87Joeif they can’t find a reason then that’s really where uh republicans and no activists can step in and uh you maybe defeat the referendum here which would be very interesting to see21:17.67Sam ShiraziYeah, so let’s assume for whatever reason the the maps aren’t changed. Just for now, we obviously don’t know what potentially new districts would look like. Could you kind of talk a little bit about what you are seeing in the second district in a Kiggins-Loria rematch and in the first district with a Whitman-Taylor matchup?21:37.85JoeYeah, those are going to be two of the, I think if the map stays the same, are going to be two of the more interesting races. in the in the country. I think certainly those are going be the two most interesting races in Virginia.22:10.63JoeYou know, if you have Elaine Luria back in the second, if you have, you know, you’ve got Shannon Taylor in the first, who has a lot of momentum after her strong primary performance against Jay Jones, you know, there’s still certainly going to be, you know, there are still primaries for both. You know, I think Taylor,22:27.57Joeis a sure thing. I i i think Lurie will end up being a sure thing. You know, there are still a couple of candidates in this race that I’m still maybe a little bit interested in you know, seeing and what they might do here. You know, they’ve raised a couple of, they’ve there’s been some candidates who’ve raised some decent money for starter for new candidates. So I’m interested to see maybe what goes on there, but I think certainly...22:48.18JoeIf the districts stay the same, we’re going to have Luria versus Kiggins 2.0. two point zero I think we will have Shannon Taylor versus Rob Whitman. Certainly, Rob Whitman will be the harder candidate to take down. I think the question is how overwhelming Western Henrico and Chesterfield is compared to the rest of the seat.23:05.71JoeYou know, does Whitman overperform in, you know, the Northern neck portion of the district where he’s represented his whole career? How much does that help him there? You know, that’ll be question. I think it looks very, it looks tough right now. I think for Jen Kiggins, and it just seems like that seems like a district that just, you know, it’s one of those districts that just swings back and forth and back and forth the way it’s drawn right now. And, uh,23:27.96JoeI think she would certainly have a very tough time going against Luria, though I will always say it’s always, I think, more of a risk to run a candidate again after they lose in the general election versus a newcomer. I think that comes with different types of risks.23:42.09JoeYou’ve already had, you know, these races be able to run against that candidate. But, you know, I think certainly I would think I think in the end, Elaine Luria would probably favored there. and I think it would be very, very tight between Rob Whitman and Shannon Taylor.23:54.17Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to ask about the Senate race, because, you know, realistically, I don’t think Republicans are going to target it I mean, Mark Warner is going to the election, right?23:59.81Joewow24:01.29Sam ShiraziI guess, you know, in 2018, we have a similar dynamic. Tim Kaine got a big win. And frankly, towards the end of that, he just spent his time basically campaigning for the congressional seats. Do you think Warner, if he gets like a Spanberger type 15% win, it could have influenced the House seats?24:16.41Joei think I think absolutely. I think Tim Kaine’s big win absolutely did so for Democrat House candidates and in 2018 for Democrats, a thing that helped out there.24:26.72Joeyou know i You know, obviously there’s no Corey Stewart, it looks like, this time. that That will be a big difference. Corey Stewart was much of you know... as you know Tim Cain was a good candidate. Stewart was as much of a drag of a candidate.24:42.52JoeYou know, it’ll probably come, you know, Bryce Reese is running. There’s been some talk around this David Williams, a U.S. Marine reserve reservist who just announced, you know, it’ll probably be one of those two.24:53.60JoeI bet at that point, you know, you never know if an outsider can. But Bryce Reeves is not Corey Stewart. If it’s Bryce Reeves, I think there’s potential. He could keep it below a Spanberger-level blowout. You know, I think, I don’t know if that makes sense. You know, it’s like a difference between a 13-point Warner victory and a 15-point Warner victory. I don’t think does much for... Jen Kiggins, I think that could be very big for Rob Whitman, that top of the ticket. I think when you’re talking about that seat, that’s where maybe some difference could lie. you know If Warner’s maybe winning by 10 or 11 points, that’s where I think Whitman i think has a better chance of surviving than I think Kiggins would. I think you know you get to the double-digit races, I think Jen Kiggins is a lot of trouble then down the ballot.25:42.44Sam ShiraziYeah, that makes sense. And you know obviously we have to wait to see what the lines are in next year in Virginia. Well, I did want to leave on one note, which I’m sure the Republicans probably aren’t looking forward to, which is 2027 in Virginia because the the entire state Senate and the entire House of Delegates is up for election.25:54.63Joeand25:58.25Sam ShiraziI mean, obviously state Senate, i think Republicans have a... are in trouble in some of these districts and some of their incumbents and may go down or retire. So first on the state Senate and then also on House of Delegates, do you think, you know, do you think it’s realistic that Democrats are going to pick up more seats or can have they kind of hit their peak in the House of Delegates?26:19.43JoeI think certainly in the Senate, I think they’re going to pick up at the bare minimum, you know, three seats. I think Danny Diggs, I think Glenn Sturdivant, and I think, I believe that Tara Durant’s seat.26:33.82Joethink they’re picked up. I’m a little bit less sure. I think Republicans would have a better chance with Dave Suterlein and Emily Jordan. Those are just more Republican seats in general. And i think they could have a better chance to survive there. You know, Bill DeStef, Abigail Spanberger won that seat.26:51.49JoeNorthern Virginia Beach there. But, you know, again, i think that those three are maybe slightly more reaches. I think when you’re talking them the House, you know, it’s very tough. Obviously, the closest one was I think you have Tony Wilt’s seat.27:03.73JoeAnd then I think it becomes significantly harder harder for Democrats to gain more than that. And I think when you’re looking at 2027, at least at the moment, I think you’re going have to expect Democrats to actually have to spend money defending some of these seats.27:16.53JoeI certainly think House District 30 is going to be one tough to defend. I think they will you know take a shot at House District 69, the one that Mark Downey knocked off Chad Green in. I think that is one where Republicans will actually look to spend and look to attack.27:56.07JoeDemocrats will have to, I think, cover. I think that makes gating any more than maybe one to two seats difficult because i think they’re going to have to play a lot of defense in in some of these seats. I think certainly much more than they had to this past cycle.28:08.80Sam ShiraziAnd I guess the last question about the Virginia Republicans is, you know, how do you think they start rebuilding? Because I think there’s obviously a huge hole that they’re in. And, you know, they got three more years of the Trump administration, which is probably not going be easy to rebuild in that environment. Or they just have to kind of see what happens in 2028 and basically wait for 2029 to have a realistic shot of, you know, perhaps coming back?28:32.08JoeI think just to have to be a ride the wave type thing. You know... redoing the messaging, start the process, but I think they’re going just try to ride the wave through 2027 and then kind of go from there, which is kind of what Virginia Republicans did in 2019. They kind of rode that wave, had to ride that wave, and then kind of post-2019 and post-2020 started to figure themselves out little more and try to reset.28:54.54Joeyou know i think going to have to try and be a similar thing here. It’s It’s going to just continue to get more and more difficult. you know I think Virginia is just it is what it is. It’s an increasingly blue state.29:04.97Joeand’m going to find it difficult, I think, for Republicans to really maybe ever get back to the levels they want were once were. Those days are gone. I think the best they can hope for is there are majorities, and it seems very difficult to believe that that’s necessarily going to be coming back anytime soon. So you have to kind of just build from the bottom and try and figure out your pathway from there.29:24.89Sam ShiraziYeah, well, it’s, you know, I think after 2017, you know, most people thought Virginia Republicans were done for a while. And then obviously in 2021, they won. So I think Virginia goes back and forth. I think that’s the main lesson as opposed to, you know, Democrats had some huge victory. So anyways, I appreciate you taking the time to come on. And yeah, if you if you want to let people know how they can find you and, you know, follow your stuff.29:48.10JoeYeah, I’m on X at Joseph Samansky. I’m also on sub Substack.29:52.58JoeElections by Ski on Substack. It’s a free Substack. So if you want to subscribe to me there, I’m also there if you want to follow me along with my election takes. I’ve been very busy the last couple of weeks, so i haven’t done anything yet, but more should be coming soon. And Sam, as always, I appreciate you having me on today.30:07.26Sam ShiraziYeah, thanks so much for coming on. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over some of the really granular data in the election results in Virginia to see what it might tell us about the midterms and potentially what lessons each party can learn.00:18.08Sam ShiraziSo obviously, big picture, Democrats had a good night. And so if we want to look at some of the data really close up, we can try to figure out why they had a good night. And conversely, for the Republicans, we can try to figure out what went wrong, why do they potentially have some issues going into the midterms next year.00:35.08Sam ShiraziNow, to begin, i think the the first interesting way to look at the election data is through the five basic different types of election results that are displayed on the Virginia Department of Elections website.00:47.53Sam ShiraziSo if you go into the governor’s race and you go to any county or city, it’s basically broken up into five different types of vote. There is early voting, which is implicitly it’s saying in-person early voting. So it’s people who go vote in person.01:01.17Sam ShiraziThere is election day, which is obviously people who go vote on election day. There is mailed app absentee, which are people who send their ballots back. There is provisional, and we’ll I’ll talk more about that. And then finally, there is post-election, which is basically post-election mail. So that’s mail that’s received by noon on Friday after the election if it’s been postmarked by Election Day.01:24.57Sam ShiraziI did want to note after all the votes were added, including the provisionals and the the final mail ballots, Spanberger is going to eventually win by more than 15%.01:35.97Sam ShiraziSo this was you know a huge landslide at the top of the ticket. And and with these final votes, Spanberger is going to be able to cross that 15% threshold and just really more than what anyone ever thought was possible.01:48.95Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to spend a little bit of time on the provisional ballots because I think they’re super interesting in this election. Now, what are provisional ballots? I’ve explained this before. Provisional ballots are essentially votes that are cast that are not counted on election night. They are set aside.02:03.18Sam ShiraziTypically, the reason for that in Virginia are same-day registrations because the registrations have to be checked. And essentially, these are votes that are cast because people are not in the system registered to vote.02:15.65Sam ShiraziAnd this is a way for someone to vote, and then their eligibility will be determined later And then if they’re allowed to vote, the vote will be cast counted. And it usually takes a few days to do this because it’s a rigorous progress process. They have to review all the election information to make sure the person’s able to vote.02:35.19Sam ShiraziAnd the thing with provisionals, as I said, the vast majority in Virginia are same-day registrations. And if you think about someone who same-day registers, it typically skews younger. So you think about college students, you use same-day registration a lot.02:48.60Sam ShiraziAnd it’s also people who are just less engaged in politics. They forget about the voter registration deadline. They wake up, there’s an election. They go down to their local polling place. They want to vote. kind of If you think about basically the lowest propensity voters, people who...03:03.98Sam Shiraziyeah for lack of better word, are not with it enough to register ahead of time, don’t necessarily you know live and breathe politics. These are typically the least engaged voters who vote same-day registration.03:15.17Sam ShiraziI mean, obviously, there’s some exceptions and people reasons why people would same-day register, but most of the time, it’s just younger people who are less engaged and who vote at the very end. So in terms of the provisionals, Spanberger won those 73.5%.03:29.76Sam ShiraziAnd that is not, it wasn’t super shocking in the sense of Democrats tend to do well with provisional ballots. So if you look at most elections in Virginia, Democrats typically win the provisional ballots.03:42.21Sam ShiraziHowever, I was really looking for the paris provisional ballots this election because of what happened in 2024. And one of the things that really surprised 2024 in Virginia was...03:55.14Sam Shirazithe margin by which Harris only barely won provisional ballots. So in 2024, Harris only won Virginia provisional ballots by 52.6% of the vote.04:06.97Sam Shiraziso and And Trump got a decent amount of the provisional ballots in Virginia. What what what that was telling me in 2024 was that the Republicans... were doing relatively much better than they usually do with younger voters, with less engaged voters, and the Democrats were not doing well.04:23.57Sam ShiraziAnd so I think that was a big warning sign for the Democrats in 2024, that they were struggling with younger and less engaged voters. Fast forward to this year, and the Democrats are doing much better with the provisional ballots. And that is an indication to me that Democrats are doing much better with younger and less engaged voters.04:42.56Sam ShiraziAnd so you you look at some of these critical counties like Loudoun in 2024. Harris, again, barely won the provisional vote in Loudoun in 2024. 2025, Spanberger gets a big win in the provisionals in Loudoun.04:55.77Sam ShiraziPrince William, same thing. All these critical counties in Virginia... the Democrats this year are doing much better with the provisional ballots. And so I think that’s a big warning sign to the Republicans because in 2024, part of the thing that they were happy happened, the Republicans were happy about was that younger voters, less engaged voters, they skewed towards the Republicans.05:16.59Sam ShiraziAnd then this year, that was not the case. I think very clearly from the provisional data, younger and less engaged voters were skewing very heavily towards the Democrats. And I think there’s a lot of reasons you can think about that. I think the most the easiest explanation just the economy.05:33.42Sam ShiraziThose people are feeling perhaps the sting of high prices and other issues in the economy. So They’re willing to go with the Democrats this year. And then the other thing I should mention, so this is kind of moving away from the provisionals, but related to provisionals are young voters. And and you know the provisional data is telling us they that Democrats did well with younger voters.05:53.65Sam ShiraziAnd then the precinct data at some of these universities is telling us that Democrats did well with younger voters. I already talked about House District 41. Democrats got a big win in that race because Lily Franklin was able to bring out students in Virginia Tech.06:07.24Sam ShiraziAnd it’s not just the fact that you brought out the students. The students at Virginia Tech overwhelmingly voted for the Democrats. So if you look at some of these precincts that are specifically the Virginia Tech precincts in Montgomery County, where Virginia Tech is located, some of these precincts, Spanberger is winning them 80%, 86.75%, 80% again,06:27.81Sam Shirazijust really high margins in these campus precincts at Virginia Tech. Same things, similar story at UVA, JMU, William & Mary, just a lot of these college campuses.06:39.71Sam ShiraziI mean, it’s not a huge surprise. Yes, Democrats do well on college campuses. I think the thing that was surprising was in 2024, these margins were a lot smaller for Democrats. So I think if you compare a lot of these precincts from 2024 to 2025, Democrats have made a lot of yeah gains in specific precincts where there a lot of younger voters, college voters.07:00.62Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, there was a lot of talk in 2024 about young men and how, for whatever reason, because of podcasts or whatever, young men had moved towards the Republicans. I think with these results, you cannot be getting these margins if it’s just women.07:14.92Sam ShiraziIt’s clearly that young men have also moved towards the Democrats, perhaps not as much as young women, but certainly Democrats won young men this year in Virginia. Okay, now, that’s kind of the young person side of things. I wanted to move on to another really critical demographic for 2026, and that is Hispanics.07:36.14Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, to be perfectly honest, New Jersey has more interesting data about Hispanics because there are more Hispanic people in New Jersey, and some of the precinct data is much clearer. But... And so just quickly talk talk about New Jersey for a second, it’s very clear that Democrats made substantial gains with Hispanic voters in New Jersey.07:54.57Sam Shiraziand And I think one of the shocks in 2024 was Trump gotten what got really close in New Jersey within six points, which is much closer than any Republican has gotten in New Jersey in a long time, partly because of his gains with Hispanic voters.08:07.72Sam ShiraziI think at least in this election, it’s very clear that Hispanic voters pretty much reverted to their pre 2024 voting patterns.08:15.85Sam ShiraziAnd so I can talk about one city city in Virginia. Again, Virginia doesn’t have a huge Hispanic population, but there are certain areas with more of Hispanic voters. One of them is Manassas Park City. So this is a city right next to Manassas City, which so it’s kind of funny. There’s Manassas City and then Manassas Park City, both relatively smaller cities, uh,08:36.14Sam ShiraziKind of an exurban part, suburban exurban part of Northern Virginia outside D.C. good Good amount of Hispanic voters here. Why? Because relatively lower cost of living. So you have more working class people here. But obviously, Northern Virginia still expensive. These people are feeling the economic squeeze as well.08:55.51Sam ShiraziSo in Prince, sorry, in Manassas Park City, Spanberger got 71% of the vote. You compare that to 2024, and in Manassas Park City in 2024, Harris got 58.5% of the vote.09:10.45Sam ShiraziSo again, we’re seeing this huge swing towards Spanberger in this part of Virginia, and more than the overall swing that she’s getting in other parts of Virginia. And I think part of the reason for that, again, Hispanic voters...09:22.57Sam Shirazimoving towards the Democrats. And I think this is a big warning sign for the Republicans because young voters, I think most people thought, you know, young voters tend to be kind of anti-establishment. Whoever’s in charge, they tend to vote against. So I think most people expected young voters to swing back towards the Democrats just because they tend to be much more fluid in their voting patterns.09:41.95Sam ShiraziI think what the Republicans were really hoping for in 2024 and after 2024 was that these Hispanic voters would switch to them long-term, similar to how white working class voters switch to Republicans. So after 2016,09:57.65Sam Shiraziand 2016 and twenty sixteen then onwards, we saw a huge swing of white working class voters from the Democrats to Republicans, and they’ve really never gotten back. And the Democrats haven’t really ever figured out how to win back white working class voters. It’s just been very difficult.10:11.06Sam ShiraziSome elections, they make marginal gains with them, but they just aren’t able to get this wholesale reversion back. And and we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But Hispanic voters, you know they tend to be a little bit going back and forth.10:23.48Sam ShiraziI think the Republicans were really hoping that 2024 was this like massive sea change and Hispanic voters would go to them long term. I think what 2025 potentially is telling us that maybe some of the movement in the Hispanic community was more about economics and less about cultural issues.10:38.75Sam ShiraziAnd I think if the Hispanic community doesn’t feel the economy’s working for them under Republicans, they are more than willing to vote for the Democrats. And frankly, it might be easier for them to vote for the Democrats because they traditionally have voted for the Democrats.10:51.45Sam ShiraziAnd so all that’s to say is I think the Hispanic issue is a big one for the Republicans. Why? Because Hispanic community is growing. I think a lot of Trump’s gains in 2024 came from Hispanics.11:02.83Sam ShiraziPart of the reason... he was able to win pretty convincingly in 2024 was because of how much he gained with Hispanic voters. So if the Republicans lose all that, I think that’s a really big issue for them. Conversely, if the Democrats are able to win back those voters, it’s a really big deal. And I think part of the reason the Democrats were so shell-shocked in 2024 was just this feeling like, wow, how could we have done so poorly with Hispanic voters?11:26.31Sam ShiraziAnd now they feel like they’re getting back and... being able to win some of these voters. And the one thing the last thing I’ll say about Hispanic voters ahead of 2026 is that a lot of the Republicans’ hopes for gerrymandering, specifically in places like Texas, was built upon the assumption that they were going to be able to maintain these gains with Hispanic voters.11:48.83Sam ShiraziNow, maybe they might. Hispanic voters aren’t a monolith. Virginia Hispanics are different than New Jersey Hispanics, who are different than Texas Hispanics. So it’s possible you know the Texas Republicans are going to do fine with Hispanic voters in 2026. It’s also possible we see this movement back towards the Democrats in Texas. And I think that’s where it’s going to get really interesting to see, do the Republicans you know actually gain all those seats they were hoping to gain in Texas?12:13.94Sam ShiraziI guess the last thing I’ll put on this point about redistricting and Hispanics in Texas is, you know, after the 2020 election, you could argue the Texas Republicans maybe were a little bit too safe in the map that they drew purely from their own partisan perspective. They drew too many safe seats and and could have been a little bit more aggressive.12:31.30Sam ShiraziI think after the 2024 election, they felt like, yeah, let’s go on the offense. And they might have learned the wrong lesson. The lesson is not, you know, do your gerrymander over again. The lesson is elections swing a lot.12:42.54Sam ShiraziAnd so maybe would they would have been a little bit smarter to leave the maps alone and or do some sort of kind of incumbent protection map. Yeah. Anyways, I still think that the Texas Republicans are going to gain seats next year in the midterms. The question is, do they gain as many as they thought that they were going to gain?13:00.16Sam ShiraziAnd at the end of the day, do the California Democrats maybe gain more seats from their gerrymander? So anyways, long story, that’s a lot of other things not super related the Virginia elections, but I just wanted to talk about that because of the importance of Hispanic voters.13:14.10Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s move over to another demographic that shifted a lot in the 2025 election. And these are specifically South Asian, Indian, and also maybe Muslim Middle Eastern voters.13:28.04Sam ShiraziBoth of those groups of voters, Democrats struggled with in 2024 for different reasons. I think part of it was just you know cost of living, same issue that a lot of other groups...13:37.92Sam Shirazimove towards the Republicans on in 2024. And then specifically with the Muslim and Middle Eastern community, I think there was the issue of Gaza in 2024, which hurt the Democrats. and And this was part of the reason in 2024 Loudoun shifted so much and why the when the results came in in Loudoun in 2024, everyone knew the Democrats were in for a tough night because it was so much redder than people had anticipated.14:01.64Sam ShiraziHowever, this year when Loudoun came in, it looked very different. And I think some of these specific precinct data results kind of explain why the Democrats were able to do better this year in Virginia and specifically with South Asian, Indian, and Muslim voters. So I’ll go over a specific precinct that I like to look at in Loudoun to kind of gauge where those voters are.14:28.18Sam ShiraziOkay, so I will go over the Dulles South precinct. So Dulles South, is as its name implies, it is near Dulles Airport, has a lot of very diverse community. In 2024, Kamala Harris got 55.5% of the vote in this precinct, which you know is not horrible. She won it, but I kind of explain why it’s not a big deal.14:49.66Sam ShiraziIt was a big deal because of what happened in 2025. So in 2025, in the Dulles South precinct, Abigail Smehberger got 70% of the vote. So again, we’re seeing this huge shift from 2024 to 2025, more than in other parts of Virginia.15:04.60Sam ShiraziWhy? Because Indian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Muslim voters are willing to go back to the Democrats. Maybe some of these issues that were a big deal for them in 2024 are not as big of a deal in 2025. Maybe there’s some backlash to What’s going on with the Trump administration? Maybe there’s federal fallout.15:21.50Sam ShiraziWe saw similar things in parts of New Jersey. And I think it’s just another indication that some of these gains that Republicans made with non-white voters are not going to necessarily be there for the for them in the midterms. And if they were counting on these gains to kind of sustain their long-term majority, that’s a very shaky assumption after what happened in 2025.15:43.34Sam ShiraziAll right. I just wanted to talk about a couple other things. I’ve talked about black voters before. i mean, realistically in 2024, Trump didn’t make that many gains with black voters. I think that his gains with Hispanic and Asian voters was much more dramatic.15:56.93Sam ShiraziI often talk about black voters. The issue for Democrats is more turnout. I’ve talked about it before. I think Democrats made good inroads in terms of getting turnout with black voters this year in Virginia in this off in these off year elections.16:09.78Sam ShiraziSo, Just wanted to kind of emphasize that again, that, you know, Democrats, they can’t take it for granted. They need to work on turnout with black voters. But this year in Virginia, that looked pretty good.16:21.18Sam ShiraziOkay, so a couple of other things I wanted to mention was white voters, because I think oftentimes there’s a lot of focus on non-white voters, which makes sense because those demographics are interesting.16:34.36Sam ShiraziBut still, the majority of voters in Virginia and you know most states are white voters. And I think that that is a much more complicated part of the electric, because a lot of the the white vote depends on college education. i think that’s a big dividing line between college educated white voters and non-college educated white voters. A lot of it is cultural between evangelical white white voters and non-evangelical white voters.16:59.50Sam ShiraziSo I kind of wanted to like explain what happened in Virginia with the white voters and then things that potentially could be good for the Democrats and maybe good for the Republicans. So in terms of the white vote, specifically in the suburbs, kind of wealthier college educated,17:18.26Sam ShiraziI think that trend of the Democrats continuing to gain with white voters who have college educations will continue. Northern Virginia, we’ve talked about federal fallout. I mean, Northern Virginia has been blue for a long time.17:29.42Sam Shirazii think, again, this election, a lot of... I think interesting is places like the Richmond suburbs...17:43.13Sam Shirazicertainly they the democrats probably still made some progress there i think what’s really interesting is places like the richmond suburbs And Hampton Road suburbs, I think Democrats made inroads with some of those traditionally kind of country club Republican tripe type of places that have white voters with college education who traditionally voted Republican. I think Democrats have continued to make gains and they will continue to make those gains in the Trump 2.0 era in those areas.18:10.39Sam ShiraziSo I think certainly... That is just another place where that demographic is continuing to move towards the Democrats. I think the challenge the Democrats have, and you know this is maybe the one thing the Republicans, if you want to look at any of the good news for them in Virginia,18:27.60Sam Shiraziare white working class voters. So voters who are white, who don’t have a college education. I think there are certainly parts of Virginia you could point to where Spanberger made some gains with those voters. But frankly, that was probably the place where she made the least gains.18:41.93Sam ShiraziSo there are still parts of Virginia where, you know, the Republicans are just overwhelmingly dominating White working class voters, specifically like Southwest Virginia. I mean, some of those counties, Earl Sears got really big margins, and they were pretty close to the 2024 margins. So I think Democrats still have an issue. They haven’t really quite figured out how to...19:04.40Sam Shiraziappeal and win over white working class voters. I mean, there’s a lot of factors you can talk about. I think the reality is some of those cultural issues are just more important for those voters than the economic issues. And I think while Hispanic community, obviously cultural issues are also important, perhaps they are more movable on the economic issue than some of these white working class voters are in parts of Virginia. And you know I think the the one thing I would flag for the Republicans, though, is we I talked about this before, particularly Southwest Virginia, turnout wasn’t that great.19:36.22Sam Shirazilet me just kind of flag some areas where the Democrats may potentially have opportunities 2026 in the midterms. Okay, and I’ll talk about this in terms of the Senate, because I think there’s a lot of House seats and some of the House seats are still in flux, so I don’t want to kind of go House seat by House seat.19:52.27Sam ShiraziBut right now in the Senate, the Republicans enjoy a 5347 majority. And that makes it very difficult for the Democrats to win the majority in 2026, because obviously they have to flip four seats.20:03.04Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, the Senate map doesn’t look super favorable to them. But there are a few pickup opportunities for the Democrats, and I wanted to talk about that. So i’d I’d say probably the best pickup opportunity for the Democrats is in North Carolina, where there is an open Senate seat.20:16.98Sam ShiraziAnd North Carolina, kind of similar to Virginia. You have a large black population. You have traditionally, I would say, a more conservative-leaning white population, but a lot of white voters with college education who used to perhaps be Republicans may be open to voting for the Democrats. So I think...20:36.14Sam Shiraziand And there’s been a lot of talk about this, that you know North Carolina is the next Virginia. It hasn’t ever quite gotten there because I think North Carolina is a little bit more Southern. And I think some of those voting patterns are hard to break.20:47.63Sam ShiraziBut I do think this year there’s a potential where if the Democrats can get black turnout in North Carolina and they can make gains with white white college educated voters in North Carolina, I think there’s an opportunity for the Democrats to definitely pick up North Carolina in 2026 at the Senate senate level So after North Carolina, I think the best pick up opportunity for the Democrats is in Maine.21:09.23Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, Maine, Susan Collins is a strong incumbent, and she won in 2020, even though everyone thought she was going to lose. But having said that, Maine also has a decent college-educated white population.21:23.43Sam Shirazii think if Susan Collins is really struggling with those voters because, you know, they you know at some point voters might not care that she’s Susan Collins. They might just be so upset at the Trump administration, they just want to send a message.21:35.41Sam ShiraziI think there’s a potential where the Democrats could pick up that seat. However, Maine also has a large white working class population that President Trump has done well with.21:44.08Sam Shirazithose voters stick with the Republicans, then Maine could still be a difficult seat for the Democrats, particularly if Susan Collins still has her special appeal in Maine. All right.21:54.70Sam ShiraziNow, but let’s just assume the Democrats pick up those two seats because you know they’re making gains with those demographics. That gets them to 49 seats, and they still need two more seats to win back the Senate in 2026. I think most people think the best opportunities are Ohio, Ohio.22:11.01Sam Shiraziiowa texas and alaska and i’ll talk quickly about a few of those races ohio democrats got sherrod brown to run again he was the senator from ohio that lost in 2024 but he has this kind of special appeal to working class voters if democrats can perhaps start winning back some of those white working class voters maybe because sherrod brown has a special appeal And they’re able to improve their margins with white college educated voters because Ohio is the type of place that still has a decent amount of white college educated voters that vote for the Republicans.22:57.66Sam ShiraziYeah.22:59.83Sam ShiraziI’ll talk about Iowa. So Iowa has been this, you know, Democrats keep trying to win Iowa. They tried in 2020 to win that Senate race, put a lot of money into it. And again, white working class voters have been really difficult for the Democrats.23:13.67Sam ShiraziIowa especially has more white working class voters than the national average. And you know it’s just one of those things. If the Democrats can’t break that issue, then they’re not gonna win those Senate seats. So we’ll see if they’re able to do that in Iowa.23:28.22Sam ShiraziQuickly wanted to talk about Texas and Alaska. but Texas, similar story where the Democrats keep trying to win in Texas and they’ve been coming up short. 2024 was really bad for the Democrats in Texas. However,23:39.38Sam Shirazithere is going to be a messy primary for the Republican Senate nomination in Texas. So that presents Democrats an an opportunity. And again, if for whatever reason, the Republicans really collapse with the Hispanic vote voters and Democrats make inroads with white college educated voters and they’re winning, mate perhaps they’re going to get decent turnout with black voters. I mean, in theory, you could see a scenario where there’s this perfect storm in Texas,24:06.80Sam ShiraziSo I’ll just talk about Alaska quickly because potentially if the Democrats get a good recruit like the former representative, Mary Peltola, perhaps that will be a competitive race. Alaska is kind of interesting state, a lot of mix of different groups. So little bit different than what we’ve been talking about. a Hard to make big kind of demographic demographic conclusions about Alaska. But I guess my main point is the election showed a lot of groups the Democrats are doing well with.24:36.44Sam ShiraziThey’re doing well with Hispanic voters. They’re doing well with young voters. They’re doing well with college-educated white voters. They’re doing well with black voters. That is all good news for the Democrats. Those are all really important groups. They need them.24:47.26Sam ShiraziThey need them to do well in the midterms. I think what the election still leaves an open question mark about is how well can Democrats do with white working class voters? And I think since 2016, the Democrats have lost a lot of Senate seats because they have not been able to do well with white working class voters. And some of these states like Iowa, Ohio, Texas, other places like that, you have to be able to be somewhat competitive with white working class voters. And the Democrats have just not been able to do that.25:17.16Sam ShiraziAnd I think while the Democrats, there was a lot of good news for them, I think that is the one thing that they have to figure out. And we’ll see. We’ll see potentially with some of these economic issues if the Democrats are going to be able to do well.25:30.02Sam ShiraziThe one thing they were able to do in 2006 was they were able to win decent amount of white working class voters because they won Senate seats in places like Montana and Ohio and Missouri because various factors, there the Iraq the economy was not that great.25:46.64Sam Shirazithere There were a lot of things going on in 2006 that kind of created this perfect storm storm for the Democrats. And we’ll see if perhaps with the economic issue, the Democrats, if they’re able to make those gains with white working class voters, we’ll see if 2026 is a repeat of 2006, which was 20 years ago.26:05.51Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think most people think the Democrats are somewhat favored to flip the House, but the Senate, I would say most people think the Republicans are favored. And that was also the case for most of the time leading up in to the elections in 2006. And we’ll see if 2026 potentially going to be a repeat of history. But anyways, lot of interesting stuff in the Virginia elections, a lot of stuff you can kind of figure out from the data. I hope people found this interesting.26:30.37Sam ShiraziGoing into the weeds a little bit more in this episode. And yeah, I appreciate everyone who’s listening who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus episode where we will go over some things that have happened in the Senate regarding the shutdown and a possible end to the shutdown and see how the Virginia Elections may or may not have played a role in all00:17.87Sam ShiraziSo to begin, just to give you kind of a rundown of what’s been going on, obviously the government shutdown has been going on for a while. The elections on Tuesday, Democrats did well. So a lot of Democrats felt like their approach to the shutdown had been vindicated.00:31.39Sam ShiraziBut then Sunday evening... News came out of the Senate that there was a compromise among some of the senators to come up with a deal to perhaps end the government shutdown. Now, there’s still a lot of procedural stuff that happens in Congress before the Senate can finally pass it and the House passes it.00:48.23Sam ShiraziBut long story short, it looks like the shutdown should be over sometime this week, depending on exactly when Congress votes on the bill. And I think there’s a lot of Virginia connections to what’s been going on, because one Obviously, the Virginia elections went well for the Democrats. I think some Democrats viewed that as, well, we were right to shut down the government. We were correct to stand up.01:11.77Sam ShiraziAnd we did the right thing. And we were rewarded at the polls by the voters. And so we got to stick to it and not give in on the government shutdown. But then Sunday evening, one of the key senators who came out in favor of this bill to reopen the government,01:27.24Sam Shiraziwas Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia. And honestly, as soon as I saw that Tim Kaine had come out in favor of this, the bill was going to pass the Senate. And I think a lot of people were questioning, well, why did Kaine do this? Why have some of the Democrats decided to vote with the Republicans?01:44.62Sam ShiraziI think most Democrats in the Senate and in the House are probably going to vote against this. So it’s really just kind of this so group of senators on the Democratic side that voted for it. So there’s a lot of kind of confusion about exactly what happened. and And I wanted to share some of my thoughts and my initial reaction. So first, i think a lot of people were confused about what ended up happening and why the Democrats ended up, or at least some of the Democrats ended up voting for this proposal.02:12.41Sam ShiraziI think one thing this has made clear is the Democrats really need to work on communicating to their base about decisions they’re making, deals that are happening. I think a lot of people were surprised by this. They were not expecting this.02:23.28Sam Shiraziand think that was part of the reason for the... you know, shock that the Democrats ended up doing this. Now, they had kind of been signaling for a few days that they were going to probably try to compromise. But I think kind of the speedway which had happened was surprising.02:36.93Sam ShiraziAnd I think, frankly, the other thing, too, is the scale of the Democratic victories for the first time really since President Trump won in November 2024. think Democrats felt good.02:47.57Sam ShiraziThey felt good about what happened in Virginia. They felt good about what happened in New Jersey, California, New York. So Democrats felt like finally, We are making some progress. We are starting to get things in order.02:58.77Sam ShiraziAnd that only lasted a few days because by Sunday night, a lot of Democrats were upset. And there’s this phrase that is kind of a meme about Dems in disarray. So for a few days, Dems were united and felt good.03:10.12Sam ShiraziBut now, again, they are back to fighting each other, pointing the finger, some people blaming Senator Schumer, some people blaming Senator Kaine, just a lot of you know upset people. And and I think in in Virginia specifically, I saw a lot of Democratic activists really upset at Senator Kaine and other senators who voted for this compromise because they felt like they didn’t really get anything out of it. Why are they doing this?03:32.53Sam ShiraziThey gave up on the Obamacare subsidies issue. And I kind of wanted to go through and explain it from different perspectives, maybe you know why some of these Democratic senators decided to do what they did, and then why the base is so upset.03:45.41Sam ShiraziNow, first from the Democratic senators who voted for this proposal’s perspective. I think from their perspective, the government shutdown, there was no end in sight. I mean, i think some people have floated, well, the Republicans can just get rid of the filibuster. It didn’t seem like the Republicans were willing to do that.04:01.84Sam ShiraziAnd I think the government shutdown had gotten to the point where The federal employees had missed two paychecks. They obviously holidays are coming up. There’s going to be a lot of expenses. People want to buy gifts to their families, et cetera. And federal employees were definitely getting to the point where they might not be running. They might be running out of their savings.04:20.98Sam ShiraziSo think that was one issue. Obviously, FAA, air traffic, flights, there were a lot of issues. Thanksgiving’s coming up. There was a pressure building that this needs to get resolved before Thanksgiving. So I think from that perspective, there was a sense of we need something to be done.04:35.80Sam ShiraziAnd realistically, the Republicans are never going to compromise or give us anything on the Obamacare subsidies. So we have to see where we can get compromise or get something from the Republicans elsewhere. So there are a couple of things that the Democrats pointed to in this compromise, so to speak.04:51.34Sam ShiraziOne was SNAP benefits. so this committed to pay spen SNAP benefits or for the rest of the fiscal year. So I think that’s going to not necessarily be as big of an issue. Obviously, it doesn’t address the health care issue, but SNAP is important in order to get people food.05:06.60Sam ShiraziSo I think that was part of the formula of what the Democrats chose to do. I think the other thing, and this was specifically with Senator King, because I know that he was essentially the big the key swing vote. And that if he had voted for it, then it’s going to pass. And I think he was pushing back on the rifts, the reductions in force that happened since the shutdown.05:24.42Sam ShiraziSo what he was able to do is in this bill, there cannot be any more reductions in force for as long as this bill lasts, which is until January. The reductions in force that happened since October 1st are going to be reversed.05:36.82Sam ShiraziAnd also the federal employees who have not been receiving a paycheck, they will get back pay. I mean, that was already kind of the law, but this just kind of emphasizes that again. And, you know, from I think Senator King’s perspective is this was a way to protect some of these federal employees.05:52.83Sam ShiraziTo be perfectly honest, this is the first time really the Congress has placed any sort of limits on the Trump administration since he came into office on January 20th. So Congress is essentially telling the president you can’t do more riffs for at least a limited amount of time.06:06.97Sam ShiraziMight not seem like the biggest deal in the world, but I think symbolically it’s important that Congress is pushing back a little bit. And also practically, this is like a few thousand jobs that were threatened to be riffed that won’t, at least in the short term.06:18.12Sam ShiraziNow, I’ve heard from some Democrats basically saying like, you know whatever, Trump’s going to ignore this. He’s never going to actually you know honor the agreement. And you know that’s possible. But I mean, at the end of the day, like if you are a member of Congress, the most you can do is write a bill essentially and hope that the president honors it. And if they don’t honor it, you know you can go to the courts, et cetera. you know I think that was the perspective from Senator Kaine and those who voted for this bill.06:44.39Sam ShiraziAnd I think also practically, you know there’s a big question mark of what the elections meant this year. I think one way to view it, and I’ll get to the kind of more Democratic activist perspective, one way of viewing the elections is like the Democrats stood up to Trump and they’re getting rewarded for it. And what the American people want to see is people standing up to President Trump and the Democrats fighting and fighting for these things that are important like healthcare.07:08.86Sam ShiraziI think that’s one perspective. I think the other perspective, and frankly, You know, Congresswoman Spanberger, former Congresswoman Spanberger, now Governor-elect Spanberger, she also said that the shutdown needed to end. And so I think there is this other perspective that really what the voters rewarded the Democrats for on Tuesday was really more pragmatism.07:30.31Sam Shirazifocusing on issues people care about, like cost of living, et cetera, and not being so ideological, not focusing on the trans issue, which we talked about where Winston Merle-Sears just spent too much time on that issue.07:41.75Sam ShiraziSo really what the Democrats were rewarded for was for being, focused on things people caring care about and actually listening to the concerns people had. And so one argument, and this is maybe what Senator Kaine and those who support opening the government say is like, look,07:56.52Sam ShiraziPeople expect the government to work. They don’t want to miss flights. Federal employees need to get their paychecks. This has gone on long enough. We tried our best, but at some point, the Republicans were never going to compromise, and we can’t keep the government shut down forever.08:11.23Sam ShiraziEventually, people are going to start blaming us, especially if it doesn’t look like we’re trying to compromise. And as much as we get that people are upset, they want action. Ultimately, we are the minority in Congress.08:23.51Sam ShiraziWe tried our best to get the Republicans to move. They’re not going to move. Now the American people are going to see if their Obamacare subsidies, Obamacare premiums go up a lot. Democrats can say, we warned you, we tried to fix this. The Republicans didn’t care. And I think that’s kind of the mentality of, you know, we essentially did the most we could. But at this point, right before Thanksgiving, federal employees, they need to receive paychecks eventually. The flights need to be somewhat normal. Like people have to get SNAP benefits. Like we can’t keep the government closed forever. And realistically, the Republicans, that was their plan. they They want to close it forever and there’s nothing we can do.09:00.25Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, we have to be a little bit more responsible, I think. so So that’s kind of on one side. You know, I’ve heard from a lot of Democratic activists that like, look, at the end of the day, the Republicans are in charge. And so if they wanted to get Democratic bill votes for their bill, they have to actually offer something concrete. And these, you know, half measures about the riffs and the snaps is just not what the point of the shutdown was. The point of the shutdown was over Obamacare subsidies and the Democrats have just not been able to get anything out of that.09:31.02Sam ShiraziAnd it’s not about, you know, who wins or some kind of ideological battle. It’s really about people’s premiums are going to go up. And so, People can now afford health care. That’s what we fought this shutdown over. That’s why on Tuesday, people gave us a mandate to fight.09:46.05Sam ShiraziAnd now the Democrats look like they are not fighting and that they are giving up. And so that’s their perspective. I think that’s from the more Democratic activist base. and And it’s tough because I think and think specifically the ones in Virginia, heard a lot of them say things like, look, I spent all year working for the Democrats, trying to get a big win. We got a big win. We sent the country a message. We hopefully sent Congress a message.10:19.47Sam ShiraziWe are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, which Democrats tend to do. I mean, that’s the mentality. I know it’s more complicated, but I’m kind of trying to articulate some of the mentality people have from the more Democratic activist side of things.10:32.75Sam ShiraziAnd essentially, there’s this this feeling that the Democrats are unwilling to fight, unwilling to kind of go to the mat. And sure, they shut down the government for a while. But as soon as the going got tough, the Democrats just gave up and decided to move on.10:45.84Sam Shirazibecause they just didn’t feel like fighting anymore. And, you know, it’s it’s it’s tough. I think, you know, at the end of the day, I don’t, this is something that’s going to have to play out within the Democratic Party. And I think the question of how much they’re going to stand up to Trump, on what terms do they stand up on Trump?11:01.62Sam ShiraziWhen is it too much? When does it not make sense? I mean, these are all strategy calls. And I think the reality is the Democratic Party that is somewhat leaderless. There’s no one person that runs the Democratic Party like there is in the Republican Party where the Republicans have Trump. They all look to Trump, whatever Trump says the Republicans are going to do The Democratic Party is not like that. It’s much more coalitional.11:20.34Sam ShiraziObviously, there’s no one singular person who’s like the president right now on the Democratic side. So I think they’re much more divided. And it’s kind of the reality when you’re an opposition party. And, you know, the thing I will say, you know, regardless of which side of the divide you fall under, maybe the more pragmatic side where we have to make a deal to reopen the government, or maybe the more activist side where you’re like, we really need to fight as hard as we can for these things that the American people care about. I think the one thing that is a little bit, you know, in my personal opinion, indisputable is just the communication side of things on the Democrats. I mean, this was just not rolled out well.11:57.10Sam ShiraziI think people were surprised. I think people were confused about what happened. And I think if the Democrats are going to do stuff like this, they really do have to communicate it better and and it communicate what the end goals are, communicate why they are taking certain steps. And the problem right now is the Democrats are super divided. So you have this kind of a smaller group of people who were willing to vote for the bill. And then there’s this larger group who are still saying no, including some pretty moderate members of the Senate. So for example, Mark Warner, who’s also from Virginia, obviously, he he’s going to vote he no on the bill. And he’s more generally thought of as more moderate than Tim Kaine. it was kind of interesting that Tim Kaine voted for the bill, but Mark Warner didn’t vote for the bill.12:38.93Sam ShiraziAnd so there’s all this kind of Confusion about what’s going on. And, you know, all that’s to say is like last few podcasts been saying, oh, everything’s great for the Democrats. Good Democrats had such a good night. And it just shows you in politics, things are complicated.12:53.81Sam ShiraziYou know, nothing good will ever last in politics. Unfortunately, you will have a good night. And then pretty quickly, you’re going to hit road bumps. I think the Republicans found this out. They thought, oh, yeah, we got this huge victory in 2024. Everything’s great.13:06.11Sam Shiraziyou know Tuesday night in Virginia and New Jersey was a wake-up call for the Republicans that they are not entitled to power. No one’s ever going to keep voting for them forever. That was an important message the Republicans got. And I think the Democrats are starting to learn, while you will have good nights, it’s easier being in opposition from an election standpoint. It’s harder when you’re in opposition to be united, to come up with a coherent strategy.13:30.17Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see how all this goes. I mean, my sense is This bill will pass. Government will reopen. But this issue is not going away. and And there will be another government shutdown fight in January. We’ll see if there’s a shutdown then.13:44.26Sam ShiraziWe’ll see what happens with the Obamacare subsidies. How much of a deal, big deal will this be for the midterms? is Is there a possibility that Democratic activists get really frustrated? They give up. They don’t do as much as they did this year in Virginia for the midterms because they just don’t believe in the Democratic brand.13:59.73Sam ShiraziI mean, I think just to be super cynical, I mean, I think part of the calculation of the Democratic leaders who voted for this or the Democratic senators who voted for this, they’re going to say, like, look, at the end of the day, people are going to eventually forget about this, even if they’re upset about it now. And Trump is just going to make these people make our base so upset that they’re going show up no matter what. They’re going to support us no matter what.14:21.41Sam ShiraziAnd I think that’s true to a certain extent. But I do think it’s important for Democratic elected officials to not take their base for granted and not take the activists for granted. I mean, i saw it in Virginia. They worked really hard this year in Virginia. They’re expecting results.14:34.23Sam ShiraziThey’re not expecting, you know, kind of wishy-washy things from the Democrats. They worked hard and they got a big win for Democrats in Virginia, virginia New Jersey, other states. And they are expecting something in terms of results for the, from their perspective, the fight against President Trump.14:51.76Sam ShiraziAnd I guess the last thing I should say is, you know, the midterms are the big question mark. The midterms are really going to you know determine a lot. And I think there’s a year away. And just because the Democrats did well this year in Virginia doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to do well in the midterms, particularly if some of these divisions keep keep causing issues for the Democrats.15:08.59Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, I mean, I guess all that’s to say is there’s there’s a lot going on. I think the shutdown was a big deal in the Virginia elections. It seems like it’s going to be over soon and we’ll just have to see where things go from here. But, you know, obviously Democrats came off a bit of a high after what happened in the Senate.15:26.70Sam ShiraziAnd it just goes to show you politics is complicated. Things are never as good or bad as you you think they are. I think President Obama once said that. So anyways, that’s just want to do a quick recap of everything that happened. I will continue to do a few of these episodes just to kind of cover what’s going on in the news in the Virginia elections and continue to unpack everything. But for now, this has been Federal Fall Out and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over the flips the Democrats made in the House of Delegates and kind of go race by race to see why the Democrats were able to flip the seats and what lessons could be learned from each district. And the reason I wanted to do this, i think there’s been a lot of interest in the specific...00:21.63Sam Shiraziflips the Democrats made, the number of gains they made, and some of them were pretty surprising. And, you know, my last episode, I talked about a few of them, but I wanted to give an overview of every single flip.00:32.46Sam ShiraziAnd the way I’m going to do this, I’m actually going to go from the most surprising flips to the least surprising, because I think usually the way you do this, you go from most likely the flip to least likely the flip.00:42.87Sam ShiraziNow, that’s before the election. After the election, you know the results. We can kind of go back and try to think through, okay, how did the Democrats flip these seats? What does that potentially mean for the midterms and maybe lessons the Democrats can learn in each of these specific seats?00:57.32Sam ShiraziOkay, so I will start with off with House District 66. So this is south of Fredericksburg along I-95 Spotsylvania County and Caroline County.01:09.99Sam ShiraziAnd this, I think, was the biggest shock of the night. The reason you had an incumbent, Bobby Oroc, who had been there for a long time. He was first elected to the House of Delegates in 1989. He was the dean of the Virginia House of Delegates.01:22.87Sam ShiraziAnd he was defeated by Nicole Cole, who is on the Spotsylvania County School Board. And she flipped the seat by about 4%, which you know is not even super close at the end of the day. I mean, this one, Democrats did a good job.01:38.03Sam ShiraziThis was a Trump district. They won it by 4%. And I kind of want to think through, okay, what happened in this specific district? we What you see here, this this is south of Fredericksburg along I-95, and this has seen a lot of growth because people are looking for Affordable housing, lower cost of living.01:57.96Sam ShiraziThey’re in the kind of it’s on the outer edges of northern Virginia, exurban area. Traditionally has been more rural, more Republican. i think this is the type of district where working class voters, particularly working working class voters who are not white. So the district, I think, is about 20 percent African-American.02:14.54Sam ShiraziThe affordability issue, I think, is important for them. The Democrats were able to make gains on that. And also, I think Nicole Cole was able to bring out black voters in this district. And that was an important part of her success.02:26.24Sam ShiraziSo we’re seeing when we’re thinking about the midterms in 2026, we can kind of think through, okay where can the Democrats make some gains? And I think in kind of exurban working class areas where people are feeling the pinch in terms of cost of living, that’s the type of gains they can make. So and if you think about 2018 when the Democrats flipped the house, they made a lot of gains in wealthier suburbs, kind of historically Republican areas that were wealthier suburbs.02:54.57Sam ShiraziNow, most of those seats have flipped. So there isn’t as many opportunities for the Democrats to flip seats in wealthier suburbs where the Democrats may have more of an opportunity are in more working class exurbs that are diverse, maybe have black population, Asian population, Hispanic population.03:12.23Sam ShiraziThose types of areas I think are going to be really interesting to watch in 2026. twenty twenty six And these are kind of outside major metro areas. So for example, this district is outside D.C.,03:24.01Sam Shirazikind of further down I-95. And obviously federal fallout, the district is also impacted by what’s going on with the federal cuts in DC. So I think that was part of the equation in this district. So anyways, I spent a little bit more time on this district because i think it was really interesting thinking about an exurban district and can the Democrats build on some of those exurban gains they made 2025 in 2026. Yeah.03:49.11Sam ShiraziAll right, now let’s move down to a different district. I would say this is maybe the second most surprising flip of the night, and that is House District 69. This is in the Hampton Roads area around Yorktown.04:01.08Sam ShiraziThe incumbent, Chad Green, was unopposed in 2023, but he ended up losing to Democrat Mark Downey. And we had Dr. Downey on my podcast earlier in the year, and you can go listen to that episode if you’re interested.04:16.06Sam ShiraziI think a few things to think about this district. You know, when he was on the podcast, Dr. Downey, he talked about being a doctor. And I think doctors generally are strong candidates for either party because they’re known in the community and people just trust doctors. So I think that was an advantage the Democrats had.04:32.50Sam ShiraziAnd he ended up getting about a 3% win in this district, which I think was pretty surprising because again, this is a Trump district the Democrats were able to flip. And I had flagged all the way back in 2018 my podcast with him that there’s this kind of weird thing in the district where it goes across the river into Gloucester and Gloucester is this red part of Virginia, whereas most the district is more in the blue parts of York County.04:56.53Sam ShiraziLong story short, I think Dr. Downey got a big win in York County. York has a lot of military installations, again, federal fallout. You know, the Republican did well in Gloucester. It just wasn’t enough to overcome the federal fallout in the military area.05:11.97Sam ShiraziAnd again, listen lessons for 2026. Military dependent areas traditionally tend to be Republican because obviously a lot of people in the military are more conservative leaning.05:23.79Sam ShiraziBut they may be feeling the impact of some of the federal fallout. And so if the Democrats are able to kind of tap into that sentiment with work with military voters, I think that’s going to be a big advantage potentially in the 2026 midterms.05:38.92Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, as the midterms come up, we don’t know what the final maps are going to look like in Virginia, but... The first district and the second district both have a lot of military presence. And, you know, whatever the final outcome looks like in those districts, I think that’s going to be a big opportunity for the Democrats to flip those seats based on potential gains with military voters.06:00.70Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s go to a different type of district. This is House District 73. This is in the Richmond suburbs in Chesterfield County. The incumbent, Mark Early, he lost re-election to Leslie Mehta.06:14.51Sam ShiraziAnd the final margin will be around 3% in this district, a little over 3%, maybe closer to 4%. And I think what was interesting about this district is this part of Chesterfield has been traditionally a very...06:28.73Sam ShiraziRepublican area. And I think what the Democrats were able to do here they were able to get a lot of Spanberger voters at the top of the ticket to vote for Leslie Mehta at the House of Delegates level. So there wasn’t enough ticket splitting where the Republicans could win in this district.06:44.45Sam ShiraziAnd I think the lesson here is for 2026, the Democrats in these suburban districts are doing well. We all know the Democrats have made a lot of gains in the suburbs, in the Trump era.06:55.30Sam ShiraziThere are still some suburbs that are still... Republican leaning, but I think in this second go round of the trump and the second Trump administration, I think there’s a possibility that a lot of those districts start becoming more and more Democratic because obviously Democrats are doing well with college educated, wealthy voters.07:14.36Sam ShiraziAnd I think specifically for this district, I think it’ll be interesting to watch in 2027 when the state Senate is up because there is a very potentially competitive state Senate district in this area in Chesterfield County that again has traditionally been Republican.07:29.51Sam ShiraziAnd we’ll see if the Democrats are able to flip that state Senate seat in 2027. So again, Democrats doing well in the suburbs, not a huge surprise. I think the thing that was surprising about this race was everyone kind of have a feeling at some point this district was going to flip.07:43.73Sam ShiraziA lot of people in the back of their head kind of thought, okay, is this the year that the district flips? And yeah, it ended up being the year07:50.89Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s head back up to Northern Virginia in House District 30. This is where the incumbent Gary Higgins was defeated by Democratic challenger John McAuliffe. he McAuliffe is going to win by around two points when all the votes are in.08:06.89Sam ShiraziAnd we also had John McAuliffe on earlier this year on the podcast, actually pretty recently. So if you want to go ahead and listen to that episode, I think it’s pretty interesting.08:17.90Sam ShiraziOkay, so this is in Western Laod and Western Fakir. Obviously, there was federal fallout. That was part of the formula in this district. I talked about in my last episode the kind of outreach to Indian voters and South Asian voters in this district, the kind of eastern part of the district that...08:35.19Sam Shiraziis becoming more suburban, has seen a lot of growth. I think that was part of the equation. But the thing I wanted to talk about this district specifically was data centers. So John McAuliffe, he made data centers a big part of the campaign.08:46.86Sam ShiraziYou’re hearing more and more about data centers because they’re taking up a lot of land. They’re taking up a lot of energy. And I think specifically the Democrats, I think are going to increasingly be running against data centers because it it touches them on a lot of issues like affordability,09:02.55Sam ShiraziI think John McAuliffe ran a really smart campaign, specifically not just, you know, this is driving up your energy bills, although he did talk about that. He talked about kind of trying to keep farms together and talking about kind of more rural issues in this district that is still kind of rural. So I think he ran a smart campaign in a district that slightly voted for Trump.09:21.26Sam ShiraziAnd I think it’s it’s one of those districts where the Democrats, if they’re looking how to win in kind of an exurban slash rural district, in 2026, I think there’s a lot of lessons they can learn from John McCaulough.09:33.18Sam ShiraziAll right, let’s stay in Northern Virginia for another seat. This is House District 64. The incumbent, Paul Milday, lost to Democratic challenger Stacey Carroll by about 5%. And I think this was surprising because...09:48.44Sam ShiraziMost people thought this district election would be close, but Stacey Carroll won by a comfortable margin, and she was another candidate that we had on the podcast. so if you want to go listen to that episode, a little bit similar to House District 66 in that kind of more outer edges of Northern Virginia.10:05.59Sam ShiraziI guess the thing to emphasize with this district, kind of suburban, exurban district, pretty diverse. So traditionally, this district has been thought of as a very so kind of safe Republican area.10:17.66Sam ShiraziBut increasingly, people are coming here for affordability reasons, diverse community, large black population, large Hispanic population. And I think Stacey Carroll, she focused on getting out those voters who maybe don’t show up a lot in these elections, particularly the state elections. Maybe they’ll show up for a presidential election, but they don’t always vote for...10:34.91Sam Shiraziin the state elections. I think sta Stacey Carroll ran a smart campaign targeting those voters who don’t traditionally come out. And I think it’s a lesson to the Democrats for 2026 you you know If the Democrats are able to get out these mid and lower propensity voters, they might be able to flip some unexpected seats because the voters traditionally don’t come out in midterms. But if if they do, you can flip a lot of seats quickly if you can get all your voters out. So another lesson for the Democrats for 2026.11:05.59Sam ShiraziOkay, we might as well wrap up Northern Virginia while we’re at it with one more House seat. This is House District 22. This is in middle Prince William County. The incumbent Ian Lovejoy lost to Democratic challenger Elizabeth Guzman, who makes a comeback and will be back in the House of Delegates.11:21.91Sam ShiraziAnd I think the big surprise in this district was Guzman’s margin. So I think when all the votes are in, she’s going to be winning by more than 9%. And I think that was a really big surprise because I think most people thought, okay, maybe Guzman will win, but it’ll be a close race.11:33.84Sam ShiraziBut I mean, this was not really that close at the end of the day. And think there’s a lot of factors you can look at. Federal fallout for sure hit this district. I also think Elizabeth Guzman, I talked about it in my previous episode, she did a good job getting out and reaching out to the Hispanic community.11:48.58Sam ShiraziSimilar kind of dynamic where a diverse district, but maybe those voters don’t always come out. And I think it just goes to show you that having a candidate who has maybe a more diverse background, able to speak the language of some of the voters in the district can help.12:04.21Sam ShiraziSo I think that was an interesting dynamic. And I guess the last thing on this district, I had flagged previously that Elizabeth Guzman certainly comes from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And I think there is a kind of thought among the Democratic establishment, for lack of the better word, or maybe the consulting class that if you have a swing district, you just got to get the most generic, moderate person you could possibly find to run.12:28.06Sam ShiraziI think what Elizabeth Guzman proved in this district that you can be a you can be a progressive, you can be from a different background, immigrant background, and win in a very competitive district. And you can win big. Like this wasn’t close at the end of the day. And so I think, you know, every district’s different. You don’t want to necessarily...12:49.13Sam Shirazido one playbook for every single district. But I think this fear that some Democrats have running progressive voters, at least in this district, didn’t come to fruition because Elizabeth Guzman was able to win.13:01.08Sam ShiraziAnd now you can argue, well, that’s just the top of the ticket. People are just voting straight ticket. And I’m sure that was part of it. But at the end of the day, like, The fact that she was a progressive didn’t seem to hurt her in this district. And maybe you could argue it helped her reach some more diverse voters. And so anyways, very interesting race in Middle Prince William County.13:19.18Sam ShiraziAll right. Now let’s go down to the New River Valley in Southwest Virginia with House District 41. The incumbent, Chris Obenshain, lost to Democratic challenger Lily Franklin.13:31.86Sam ShiraziNow, at the time of recording, the same-day registrations in this district have not been allocated, but I think Lily Franklin will probably end up winning between 4% to 5%. which is a pretty healthy victory in this district, given that it was a Trump district. So I think Lily Franklin did a really good job in this district, getting out students. I talked about that before.13:52.71Sam ShiraziI think the thing that Democrats can learn is that in order, if you have a college in a swing district, you need to get on the ground quickly and organize.14:02.71Sam ShiraziThere are Democratic groups that can organize on campuses. So for example, there’s NextGen America that does a organization and registering voters on campus. So I think that’s an important part of the equation.14:16.54Sam ShiraziI think if a candidate is younger, like Lily Franklin is younger, she can reach those voters. She kind of knew what it was like to be in college. She knew how to connect with the local college Democrats at Virginia Tech, use them to register voters, get them out.14:30.93Sam ShiraziAnd I think the thing that was really... flagged this in my previous episode, but I talked about... Virginia has same-day registration. And same-day registration is a good tool if you are not registered to vote and you need to go on election day and register to vote.14:44.59Sam ShiraziBut it is not... the same as registering to vote ahead of time and voting a regular ballot because same-day registrations are provisionals. The other thing with same-day registrations, they take a lot of time on election day because someone’s got to go there.14:57.84Sam ShiraziThey got to fill out an extra form. they have to fill out the voter registration form. The election worker has to review it. I mean it just slows down the system. And so... I think what was smart that Lily Franklin did is she didn’t just say, all right, well, we’ll just get a bunch of same-day registrations on Election Day and everyone will go vote on Election Day. I think she and her campaign knew that they needed to register people ahead of time. They needed to get certain voters to go vote early so the lines aren’t crazy on Election Day.15:24.81Sam ShiraziAnd I think the big payoff for her was she was able to win on Election Day. You know, she didn’t have to wait until all the provisionals were counted. So all that’s to say is I think, you know, there’s a lot of lessons Democrats can win about campus organizing in some of these swing districts in 2026.15:39.18Sam ShiraziMaybe the campus is going to be the deciding factor in some of these really close races. And they’re often this kind of untapped pool of voters who don’t usually show up in a midterm. But if the Democrats can get them organized and get them to vote, I think that be a important thing for the Democrats to do in the15:53.71Sam ShiraziAll right, now let’s go to another district in the Richmond area. This is House District 82. The incoming Kim Taylor was knocked off by Democrat Kimberly Pope Adams in a race that didn’t end up being that close at the end. I think when all the votes are in, Kimberly Pope Adams will probably win by close to 8%.16:11.87Sam ShiraziAnd this was a very close seat in 2023, but Kimberly Pope Adams got the bigger win this time. I talked about this district last time. Getting out Black voters in this district was something that the Kimberly Pope Adams campaign focused on.16:26.36Sam ShiraziAnd I think... It’s important for Democrats not to forget black voters and how important a part of the Democratic coalition they are. I think it’s, you know, you’re often trying to chase the swing voter or trying to win back white working class voters from Trump.16:41.57Sam ShiraziAnd obviously that’s important. You don’t want to forget any voter. You want to reach out to every single voter. But Consistently, the the group that is the most loyal to the Democratic Party are black voters. And every voter you get out, I mean, usually Democrats go 90% plus for the Democrats. So every you know if you get out black voters, those are just margins you are racking up for the Democratic Party. And I think sometimes...17:07.47Sam ShiraziThere is kind of this failure to appreciate that the challenge with those voters is not that the Republicans are going to be be able to win their votes. It’s just that they might not show up. And I do think i’ve I’ve heard in the past, there’s this mentality that and Democrats only show up on Election Day. They don’t they take our votes for granted.17:24.28Sam Shiraziand i think the Democratic Party should not take the Black community for granted. And in Virginia, I think because of a lot of organization, like the Black Caucus, both in the state Senate and the House of Delegates is going to grow, partly because Ghazal Hashmi is going to be resigning. And so likely the her successor will be...17:42.90Sam Shirazianother black state senator. So and then the House of Delegates, a bunch of black House of Delegates members will be coming in. So I think in Virginia, the black caucus is becoming and has been is is going to become a more powerful force in the General Assembly.17:58.14Sam ShiraziAnd it’s just important for Democrats to remember all parts of their coalition. I think especially there was this temptation in, I guess, when the Democrats were making these huge gains in the suburbs to just be focusing on kind of wealthier college-educated suburbs. Like that’s where the Democrats need to rack up the votes. And obviously that’s important. You don’t want to take those voters for granted. But frankly, most of those voters end up showing up on midterms.18:20.18Sam ShiraziBut you don’t want to forget, you know, black voters are important. They are important in a lot of swing states, lot of swing districts and for the midterms. They might be deciding some of these elections. So just important for the Democrats not to forget that either.18:33.34Sam ShiraziOkay, let’s move over to another district. This is House District 75, the neighboring district from House District 82. The incumbent, Carrie Coyner, she was defeated by Democrat Lindsey Daughtry by about 6%. And I think this was an interesting scenario because...18:51.21Sam ShiraziMost people thought Kerry Coiner was this really strong incumbent. And I think there was a sense that there’s going to be a lot of ticket splitting. Like, sure, Spanberger is going to win the district. But Kerry Coiner, you know, she’s got a brand in the area. She’s going to survive. Like, there’s no way the Democrats can knock her off.19:06.35Sam ShiraziAnd at the end, it didn’t end up being that close. And I think the lesson here... perhaps for the midterms, is you know there’s no giant that can’t be slain necessarily in a tough environment.19:16.27Sam Shiraziyou know i will think about I’ll talk about Maine, Susan Collins. There’s you know a lot of trauma from 2020 when the Democrats were not able to defeat her. a you know If there is a really bad environment for the Republicans, I think a lot of incumbents could potentially lose and and potentially strong incumbents.19:32.10Sam ShiraziAnd so... you know If you are voting straight ticket or you are voting to send a message, if this becomes a referendum and the only thing on your mind is I want to vote against Donald Trump, you don’t really think too much about the specific individual. And I think it’s important for the Democrats to not necessarily fear any sort of incumbent as undefeatable in an in an environment potentially like 2026 could become. Because I think if the 2026 environment is like 2025, I think there are potentially incumbents that have not faced competitive elections in a long time who could be in danger. And I think it’s important for the Democrats to target seats where20:08.07Sam Shirazithey haven’t traditionally targeted it. And you know the 75th district in 2023, the Democrats kind of half-heartedly targeted it it. This time, obviously, it was a top-tier battleground. And the results showed that you know at the end of the day, like either the top of the ticket or the national environment was more important than any sort of specific candidate in this district.20:26.86Sam ShiraziAll right, let’s go down to Hampton Roads for House District 86. This is where incumbent A.C. Cardoza was defeated by Virgil Thornton. the The final margin was probably going to be around eight points. So definitely a big win for the Democrats in this swing district in Hampton Roads.20:47.87Sam ShiraziYou know, frankly, in 2023, again, the Democrats didn’t really contest this seat too seriously. This time they poured in a lot of money. I think here, An important lesson was, so AC Cardoza, he was first elected in a wave in 2021, and no one expected him to win in 2021. So there was not a whole lot of effort spent researching him.21:07.100Sam ShiraziAnd then in 2023, again, the Democrats didn’t really target the seat. They kind of half-heartedly tried. But the lesson here is, you know, you could potentially have a weak incumbent, even if the last few elections, the incumbents won.21:20.86Sam ShiraziIf they’re in a tough environment and the Democrats have never really targeted that incumbent, there is a potential that target that that incumbents pretty weak. And I think at the end of the day, AC Cardozo was a pretty weak incumbent.21:31.18Sam ShiraziThat became obvious. The margin makes it clear he was a pretty weak incumbent. And so I think, again, it’s important for the Democrats to think about. Not just the strong incumbents that they could potentially knock off in 2026, but kind of the weak incumbents that they haven’t taken a close look at.21:45.16Sam ShiraziMaybe 2026, it might make sense to take a closer look at some of these seats where potentially there’s a weak All right, almost wrapping things up. A few more districts. I will go to House District 89. This is, again, in Hampton Roads.21:57.56Sam ShiraziThe incumbent retired, so the Republican was Mike Lamine, but he was pretty soundly defeated by Karen Robbins Carnegie, who will win this race by almost 10%.22:08.12Sam Shiraziten percent Pretty pretty big result there for Carnegie. And, you know, this was the only open seat in a competitive election This year in Virginia. And I think the lesson here is open seats provide big opportunities.22:23.90Sam ShiraziNow, Baxter Ennis, you know, to be honest, wasn’t necessarily the strongest incumbent, but incumbents, people know them, they have better fundraising. And I think anytime you see an open seat on the table, it’s going to be a pretty strong target.22:36.57Sam ShiraziAnd so I think for the Democrats 2026, obviously, there’s going to be open seats. Focus on the open seats. Not a huge surprise, not like rocket science, but I do think this district showed that in an open seat, there is a lot less ticket splitting and people just end up voting straight ticket if there’s not an incumbent.22:51.92Sam ShiraziOkay, one last seat in Hampton Roads area, and this is House District 71. The incumbent, about Amanda Batten, ended up losing to Jessica Anderson. when all the votes are set in When all the votes are in, I would say that Jessica Anderson will win by about 6%.23:08.44Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think the one thing with Jessica Anderson is... She was very persistent. We’ve had a few candidates who ran in 2023 and lost and then ran in 2025 again. And so one of them was Kimberly Poe Adams. We talked about that seat. One of them was Lily Franklin.23:22.83Sam ShiraziAnd Jessica Anderson was another candidate in 2023. Frankly, I think given that it was a tougher environment for the Democrats, they didn’t take that seat seriously. But Jessica Anderson in 2023, she took the seat seriously.23:36.18Sam ShiraziShe kept it pretty close. She only lost by about 2% in 2023. so I think this time, Proof is in the pudding. She was able to show that this seat it was going to be competitive. The Democrats took it seriously.23:46.53Sam ShiraziJessica Anderson got a pretty healthy win in this district. I should have mentioned that Jessica Anderson came on the podcast very early at the beginning of the podcast. So if anyone’s interested, she can they can go and listen to her appearance on the Federal Fallout podcast.24:00.52Sam ShiraziAnd I think, you know, I guess at the end of the day, it’s just... the fact that she was persistent. And I had mentioned this in my interview with her. Jessica Anderson’s very good on social media, different platforms, things like TikTok.24:12.82Sam ShiraziI think Democrats can learn a lot from her about how to present yourself in public, maybe reach people where they are, not necessarily be... so guarded about different social medias. I mean, I know a lot of Democratic politicians who, you know, they don’t understand TikTok. Frankly, I don’t really understand TikTok. I think it’s for younger people, but, you know, you either get your staff or you try to figure it out because there are a lot of younger voters on TikTok. This district had William & Mary, lot of college students. They ended up showing up and voting. So again, i think it’s important for the Democrats to reach voters where they are. And I think Jessica Anderson did a good job in this district.24:49.67Sam ShiraziAll right, last district, and I appreciate everyone who’s stuck with me as we’ve gone through every single district the Democrats had flipped, and this is House District 57. So the incumbent David Owen lost to Democrat May Navar in perhaps the least shocking result of the night, and May Navar is going to get a big win at the end of the day.25:08.63Sam ShiraziShe is going to win by over 11%. I think the lesson for this district, I mean, not to take anything away from May Navar, she ran a good campaign. She was a strong candidate. At some point, yeah you know, the district is going to be the environment’s tough. a Certain districts are just gone.25:35.85Sam ShiraziI think the one thing, maybe a lesson for the Republicans, i haven’t talked a lot about what the Republicans can learn, is you have to be realistic. like you know You may want to save an incumbent, but if it’s not there, the district is gone. There’s no point in spending money in this district. and you know i I don’t want second-guess the Republicans, but they should have triaged David Owen. i mean David Owen did his best. He ran his campaign, but there was no way he was going to win this year.26:01.64Sam Shiraziand I noted in the last finance report that the Republicans were still spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on David Olin. Didn’t make a whole lot of sense. You know, you could argue like at the grand scheme of things, like if if they shifted some money to other races, it probably wouldn’t have mattered.26:17.28Sam ShiraziAnd that’s probably true. This wasn’t like millions and millions of dollars they spent on this race. But if you’re talking about 2026 Senate or congressional races, I mean, you are going to be spending millions of dollars potentially on incumbents.26:29.07Sam ShiraziAnd if if they can’t win and there’s no viable path, you have to be realistic. You cannot just kind of say, well, you know, let’s let’s you know but let’s try to save the seat. I mean, at some point, the environment is what it is and you have to be realistic. And I think it’s important...26:44.52Sam Shirazifor the Republicans to understand sometimes where things are. And I think the the Virginia elections, new Jersey elections were a bit of a wake up call. We’ll see how much the Republicans change their strategy, which districts they’re focusing on.26:57.60Sam ShiraziBut very clearly this district was going flip no matter what. So anyways, that is the House of Delegates flips. that happened in Virginia. It’ll be interesting to see all these new delegates coming in what they’re going to do in the new General Assembly and how they are going to fill out the different committees.27:15.84Sam ShiraziI guess the one thing I should note, there’s already been talk about 2027, and i know it’s hard to think about. think the Democrats are not done trying to flip seats. I think they are going to go on the offense in 2027, maybe get some of these seats that were close this time, but the Democrats didn’t fully invest in But one thing I should say, I mean, some of the seats I’ve talked about are probably going to be off the board. Like, for example, House District 57, I don’t think is going to be competitive in 2027.27:40.54Sam ShiraziAnd I don’t think Republicans are going to target it. But some of these seats obviously could be. And some of them were pretty close. And so... 2027 in Virginia is going to be interesting. Democrats are going to have to play defense, but they’re also going to go on the offense. This year, the Democrats were pretty much 100% on offense because they didn’t really need to play defense.27:56.77Sam ShiraziI think 2027 potentially could be a different environment. May not be as blue. We’ll see. Also, there’s no governor’s race. So it’s possible some of these lower propensity voters, the Democrats got out, may not show up in 2027.28:10.13Sam ShiraziSo definitely a long ways off, but House Delegates, super interesting. had flagged that for most of the election, most people were not following the House Delegates. But because Democrats got such a big win, they flipped 13 seats. i think at the end, everyone kind of took notice of the Virginia House Delegates. And I’m glad they got the attention it deserved because these races are important.28:29.27Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, anyway, so... A lot going on in the Virginia elections. I will keep going with the podcast. i don’t Like I said, I don’t think I’m going to keep it on forever, but a lot to unpack, and I’ll continue unpacking it, and I may have some guests on to see what makes sense in terms of just debriefing the election. i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This is Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over some lessons that both parties can learn from the Virginia elections this year, because obviously, after the results came in, it was clear that the Democrats had a very good night in Virginia.00:16.72Sam ShiraziAnd so when you have a big election like this with a big swing towards one party, the party that wins can certainly learn some lessons that they can apply to future elections. And the party that loses can also learn lessons more what not to do. So I want to kind of go over what the Democrats got right this year in Virginia and perhaps what the Republicans got wrong.00:37.41Sam ShiraziAnd before I go into those details, I did want to say like national environment, state environment, a lot of that is very difficult for a campaign to change. So as I’ve noted in Virginia, almost every single governor election, the party out of the White House wins.00:54.10Sam ShiraziAnd so that’s just to say the Democrats had a lot of advantages structurally built in. Republicans had a lot of challenges. And so as much as we kind of microanalyze every part of a campaign,01:06.15Sam ShiraziSometimes the environment carries you a long way. I will say, though, given the scale of the Democratic victory, I think it’s clear that this was not just the environment. Because it was the environment, you’d expect, okay, maybe Spanberger would win closer to the Northam number of 9%.01:21.62Sam ShiraziInstead, given the scale of her win, it’s clear that her campaigns did some things right and the Republican campaigns did some things wrong because you just don’t see that level of a win unless something went right and something went wrong.01:33.83Sam ShiraziSo I will go over some lessons that Democrats can learn for 2026. Conversely, obviously things that Republicans might try to change before then. Now, before I get into it, one last thing, and I wanted to talk about turnout and persuasion. And I’m going to talk about those in different sections. So, you know as I mentioned, there’s often this debate about turnout and persuasion, which one’s more important, which one caused the victory.01:56.27Sam ShiraziYou need both. And typically when you see huge swings like this, it’s both. So that means the party that wins has persuaded voters in the middle to to go over to their side.02:07.75Sam ShiraziAnd they’ve also brought out their core supporters. So I think in this election, there was clearly both turnout and persuasion. Democrats got better turnout and they did better job persuading the voters in the middle and getting them to vote for the Democrats this year.02:22.48Sam ShiraziSo I just kind of wanted to lay that out there because sometimes you hear things like, oh this was all about turnout. The Democrats had good turnout and the Republicans had bad turnout. I think the reality is both in Virginia and New Jersey,02:33.28Sam ShiraziThere were people who voted for Donald Trump, who voted for the Democrats this year. There were people who perhaps didn’t vote in 2024 that came out for the Democrats. So the Democrats were able to win voters that traditionally are not Democratic voters.02:48.54Sam ShiraziSo first, I’ll talk about the Democrats, what they did right. And I wanted to start with persuasion.02:53.71Sam ShiraziSo persuasion, again, is the idea of reaching those voters in the middle. And I think the advantage Spanberger had is she and her campaign probably knew the Democrats were going to come out because they were upset this year in Virginia. So she could spend a lot of time on persuasion trying to convince the voters in the middle.03:11.01Sam ShiraziAnd there’s been a lot made about her message and talking about cost of living and all that. And I thought, and mean I mean, that all makes sense. I mean, I think her focus on cost of living economy, that was clearly the top of mind issue.03:22.37Sam ShiraziHer message was clear. She was opposing what President Trump was doing in terms of the federal cuts. She was opposing the tariffs. And I think the link to the economy was the key for her.03:33.42Sam ShiraziSo see she didn’t just say, you know, Trump is bad. Trump is doing all these horrible things. She’s saying Trump is doing these things that are hurting our economy and are hurting your pocketbook.03:43.72Sam ShiraziAnd The federal cuts are are hurting Virginia in terms of job losses. The tariffs are increasing costs. So I think tying President Trump and the Trump administration to specific economic policies that are hurting people is a strong message.03:57.66Sam ShiraziAnd it’s a stronger message than just saying Trump is bad. And I think that’s part of the success that Spanberger had. Which, you know, it makes sense and it’s not necessarily super complicated.04:07.97Sam Shirazii think the thing that was underappreciated about the Spanberger campaign was her message discipline. And message discipline is very difficult. And it’s very difficult, particularly when you have someone like President Trump and kind of the Republican Party now that has become kind of shaped by President Trump. And the reason I say this is the Republicans tried a lot of things to get Spanberger off message.04:32.18Sam Shiraziyou know We talked about it in the summer. They went all in on the trans issue, and it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. But eventually the polling showed that. But at the beginning, you know you don’t know. i think Democrats were certainly nervous about it Given the results in 2024, they didn’t want to take anything for granted.04:51.54Sam ShiraziSo I do think Spanberger, you know, she she addressed it when she had to, but she did not want to make the election a referendum on the trans issue. Because I think, you know, we’ve talked about this before, and some of the way, depending on how you frame it, it’s possible the democrat the Republican position is stronger.05:08.06Sam ShiraziBut the salience of the issue is not that important. And I think the Spam Worker campaign understood that and and understood that, you know, if you just stick to your message about the economy and Earl Sears all day is talking about the trans issue, most people are going to say, like, look, my concern is the economy. So I don’t know why you’re talking so much about the trans issue.05:27.16Sam Shiraziand then the other thing I want to talk about message discipline was obviously what happened with Jay Jones and the text. So that was kind of the October surprise and the thing the Republicans wanted to talk about the entire campaign for the, when the story came out.05:42.36Sam ShiraziAnd I think obviously Spanberger had to address that. She tried to take this position where she didn’t fully endorse Jones. She didn’t necessarily disown him. It was a kind of a tough balancing act for her.05:54.38Sam ShiraziBut she didn’t want to make the entire campaign about Jay Jones because she understood that was not going to be good for her. She wanted to keep the focus on the economy. So she addressed it when she had to, but she didn’t lose track of what was going on and she wanted to focus on the economy.06:09.83Sam ShiraziAnd so I think that is just a very difficult thing to do. I mean, it’s easier said than done. Obviously, message discipline. Yeah, it’s important. Talk about the economy. Yes. But in the day to day, when all these stories come out or President Trump every single day is doing something, he’s posting something every single day is doing something. It’s a little bit different trying to throw the Democrats off.06:30.96Sam ShiraziAnd I think for a long time, the Democrats would take the bait. Every every single post Trump did. They felt like they had to push back on it. And I think the lesson of the Spamberg campaign is you just have to have your message discipline and just focus and hammer the issue. If your issue is economy and you’re saying President Trump’s making the economy worse, just hammer that issue and don’t necessarily get sidetracked by every single thing that President Trump is doing.07:20.29Sam ShiraziI did want to talk about the turnout side. So turnout is different than persuasion in that you know that these voters, they’re going to vote for you. It’s just a challenge to get them out because they may be low propensity voters.07:32.15Sam ShiraziAnd these typically fall into different categories. usually they’re younger. Usually they are more working class. And For the Democratic coalition, this tends to be non-white voters who are working class and younger voters like college students. And, you know, it’s very tricky in non-presidential years to get these voters out.07:53.71Sam ShiraziAnd I think often in Virginia, the Democrats don’t do a great job getting these voters out in the state elections. But I think that there were specific examples where the Democrats did a good job. And I’m going highlight yeah maybe four different examples with four different groups.08:08.54Sam ShiraziSo the first is in Loudoun. Loudoun County always gets a lot of attention. the media always focused on Loudoun. Spanberger did really well in Loudoun. It reverted back to kind of the traditional, you know, advantage Democrats had in Loudoun before 2024.08:24.57Sam ShiraziAnd a lot of that was, I think, getting out and persuading you know South Asian Indian voters and also Muslim voters to go back to the Democrats to come out and vote for the Democrats.08:34.82Sam ShiraziAnd I heard things on the ground like they were trying different approaches, for example, kind of person to person contact through the Telegram app. So the Telegram app, some people use it, I think, in immigrant communities, it’s more popular.08:47.63Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, it’s different than a normal text message that, you know, maybe a text messaging service will send out for elections. You kind of have to know the community. The community needs to know where it’s coming from. They have to trust the the the message. So I think the Democrats in Loudoun were able to kind of organize that way. And I think it’s a really important way for Democrats to reach the immigrant community in certain parts of the country. And I think it’s something that Democrats can learn for the midterms in 2026.09:16.08Sam ShiraziOkay, wanted to talk about a different group that Democrats did a pretty good job getting out. And those are black voters in different parts of Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond area. And there were certainly a few House of Delegates seats that were decided by this. And the Democrats, part of the reason they got a big blue wave in the House of Delegates, they were able to get out the black voters in the critical House of Delegates seats.09:37.24Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll just flag one, House District 82, it was 45% Black, very kind of polarized district. Most of the Black voters are Democrats, most of the white voters are Republicans. So it’s kind of who can get out more of their base.09:48.87Sam ShiraziKimberly Pope Adams won that race because she was able to get out voters, particularly in the city of Petersburg. And, you know, it’s it’s just one of those things. Democrats spent a lot of time on that. you know She had been running, Kimberly Pope Adams ran in 2023. She basically kept running after that race.10:05.59Sam ShiraziAnd it takes... months, years to kind of build a campaign to do that. And I think oftentimes you hear in communities, you know, the Democrats come on election day, but they’re never there otherwise. I think in order to get those voters out, you need to be in the community for a while.10:19.98Sam ShiraziAnd Kimberly Pope Adams, she put in the time, she put in the effort. She was able to get those voters out. That’s why the Democrats were able to flip that seat. you know, if those voters didn’t show up, it wasn’t going happen in that district. And and honestly, I was, you know, it was very hard for me to predict because I think there’s a temptation to say, the Democrats will never get the voters out in that district. And so Kim Taylor will, the incumbent will win because the Democrats can’t get their voters out. I think a lot of people were kind of thinking that maybe in the back of their head.10:47.38Sam ShiraziBut as the results came in, Kimberly Pope Adams was able to get out those voters and she was able to win. So again, i think you have to, you can’t just go there on election day. it has to be weeks and months of organizing in order to do that.10:59.85Sam ShiraziOkay, give you another example of how you need to do that. And that’s what college students. So college students are notoriously difficult to get out. Again, you need weeks and months of organizing to get them out.11:11.40Sam ShiraziAnd I will use the example of House District 41. This is in Virginia Tech area, Blacksburg. Lily Franklin was able to do that. And she just, you know, she another candidate that lost in 2023, it was very clear she was going to run again.11:26.66Sam ShiraziAnd she spent, frankly, two years trying to figure out how to get the college students out in Virginia Tech. She and her team went out and organized. They registered students. They tried to get them go vote early.11:38.52Sam ShiraziThey got them out on election day. They used same-day registration. The thing that was amazing about this race, I mean, I think most people thought, okay, Lily Franklin’s probably going to win this time. But she didn’t even have to wait for the same-day registrations because the same-day registrations are provisional ballots. They take some time to count.11:53.42Sam ShiraziBut Lily Franken did such a good job registering voters and getting them to vote on election day or before that she won an election night. And I think probably in hindsight, that’s probably her goal because she wanted to win an election night, and she did.12:07.22Sam ShiraziAnd again, the lesson is it takes a lot of time in organizing. You cannot just show up on election day and expect a bunch of college students to vote. At those universities, you have to be organizing weeks, months in advance. You have to be registering them in advance.12:22.01Sam ShiraziEven if Virginia has same day registration, it just takes a long time to get students to do same day registration on election day. The polls, the lines of the polls are going to be super long if you don’t.12:32.97Sam Shiraziand get enough voters registered ahead of time. So you can’t just rely on saving registration to save you. You really do have to organize ahead of time. I think Lily Franklin knew that. And that was part of the reason that she won that race. Okay.12:44.87Sam ShiraziWanted to talk about one other community really quickly. And that is the Hispanic community. I’ll talk about how twenty two house district house district 22 that is in middle Prince William County.12:56.43Sam ShiraziElizabeth Guzman, she was able to win in a very healthy margin, much more than I think most people expected. I think a lot of people thought that race is going to be really close. She won with, I think, around like eight points. Very strong win for Elizabeth Guzman.13:10.38Sam ShiraziShe is known for organizing, knocking doors. And I think, obviously, she comes from Hispanic community. That district had a decent amount of Hispanic voters. Kind of notoriously, they don’t necessarily show up for the state elections. And I think the other issue is In 2024, Democrats lost a lot of ground with Hispanic voters. There was a lot of talk about, you know, can Democrats do well, both in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats did well with Hispanic voters.13:34.23Sam ShiraziI think the lesson here is... you know, don’t give up at any group of voters. I think there was a little bit of despair after the 2004 election about why did Hispanic voters go over to Trump? It doesn’t make sense. You know, obviously Trump is doing all these things on immigration that are going to hurt the Hispanic community.13:51.63Sam ShiraziI think Democrats, you know, they went through the process and worked to win back those voters and win back the trust of those voters and get those voters out. I think it it worked both in Virginia and New Jersey. So long story short, i mean, I think As much as you want to focus on persuasion and reaching the voters in the middle, and that’s important, you also have to think about all these different communities that make up the Democratic coalition and try to get out each different part of the Democratic coalition. And they may all require different types of messaging.14:22.80Sam ShiraziAnd it’s hard. It’s not easy. But in order to win elections, you have to do all of it. And you know I’ll just end on one note with Spanberger. There was this clip that was kind of... And interesting, at the closing days of the campaign, she held a Hispanic outreach event.14:39.14Sam ShiraziAnd at the event, she spoke Spanish. And I think a lot of people were surprised because they weren’t necessarily expecting Spanberger to know Spanish and to speak it. And i I heard anecdotally that that clip was kind of sent around the Hispanic community.14:50.84Sam ShiraziNow, obviously, not every candidate is going to speak. be able to speak the language of every community. But I do think having kind of native language material and videos and information for voters, reaching them where where they are, frankly, just making an effort.15:05.23Sam ShiraziI mean, a lot of these voters, you know, they know that, you know, they probably know English, but they’re trying to, they appreciate it when you make the effort and you try to speak in the language that they may speak at home. And I think,15:18.27Sam ShiraziAll that’s to say is there’s a lot that goes into a campaign. And when you do all these things right, you get a big win like the Democrats got on Tuesday night. All right. Now.15:28.46Sam ShiraziLet’s go over what didn’t work and what didn’t go right for the Republicans in Virginia. i will go through the same kind of thing about persuasion versus turnout.15:39.28Sam ShiraziOn the persuasion side of things, I think the Republicans need to have a little bit of soul searching about the message they had and this year in Virginia. And I wanted to talk about a phrase that i maybe have used before, but I wanted to bring it up again. And it’s called X is not real life.15:56.21Sam ShiraziSo as I mentioned and in the previous iteration of xs known as Twitter, there was an expression, Twitter is not real life, because there was a sense that progressive activists were spending too much time on Twitter and their entire world worldview was shaped by Twitter and they were losing track of what was going on in the real world.16:12.17Sam ShiraziI think once Elon Musk bought Twitter X and turned it into X, a lot of people left X and it has become a very right leaning site.16:23.97Sam ShiraziNow, am still there and I think, you know, I find there’s a lot of interesting people in it and there’s a lot of value in X, but there’s certainly increasingly a lot of random crazy stuff on there, a lot of trolls, a lot of bots.16:36.63Sam ShiraziIt’s hard to really use it sometimes because it is so kind of filled with that stuff. So my point is, and you may be saying like, why are you spending so much time on X? Not that many people are on X and it’s it’s kind of this niche thing.16:51.58Sam ShiraziTo be perfectly honest, there are still a decent amount of political journalists. And I think the real important problem for the Republicans is a lot of political consultants and Republican kind of political elites get a lot of their news, a lot of their time and energy is spent on X and and maybe Truth Social. To be honest, I’m not on Truth Social. Maybe that’s part of the problem, too. But I do know on X there is a lot of...17:14.25Sam Shirazikind of groupthink and a lot of time spent on X. And I think the problem that Winston Earl Sears campaign had and this is kind of a basic problem they had, was they tried to reboot things in around July. And I think they my sense was they brought on some consultants to change some of her messaging.17:32.39Sam ShiraziAnd those consultants basically measured success with X social media engagement and maybe engagement on other platforms.17:41.47Sam ShiraziBut as I mentioned, X is not real life. And I think certainly on the trans side of things, X was not real life. I mean, i I would see a lot of stuff about the trans issue on X. I talked about the sign in Arlington. So I’ll talk about Arlington because I live in Arlington. There was an incident with the sign in Arlington.17:58.98Sam Shiraziin August, obviously inappropriate sign. It shouldn’t have happened. This is when Earl Sears went to a Arlington school board meeting, talked about the trans issue, and then someone held up an an inappropriate sign outside.18:10.11Sam ShiraziNow, to be perfectly honest, it was a random person holding up a sign. They shouldn’t have held up that sign, but you know you know the Republicans tried to make it like this huge deal and wanted to make the entire election, at least in those few weeks, about this sign. And it’s like, look I get it. You’re trying to run your campaign. You’re trying to get your voters somewhat engaged.18:30.54Sam ShiraziBut like no one in the real world cares about this stuff. I mean, they care about their own lives. They care about putting food on the table, keeping their job. you know In terms of education, to the extent they care about education, it is they want their schools to be good. They want to have the teachers having the resources.18:47.77Sam ShiraziI mean, that is what people care about. And you know the fact that you... Earl Sears would post over and over about the trans stuff. It just was really odd. And I think I got comments from a lot of people, not necessarily Democrats, like it’s just weird how much she’s spending on this one random issue. And and I think part of it is just the hyper kind of fixation of stuff on X. The last thing I would say about this is just, you know, there was a there was an ad that Earl Sears made and, you know, it was basically an attack ad against Spanberger on the trans issue.19:20.09Sam ShiraziAnd there was line, they basically used a video of Spanberger and the quote was essentially, you know, are what Spanberger said was our LGBTQ neighbors have the same legal rights as the rest of us.19:31.43Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, to me, it was very odd that they would use that ad in Virginia as an attack ad, because frankly, most Virginians probably agree with that statement. And so I just don’t know where they were thinking this was a good idea.19:45.93Sam ShiraziSo anyways, that was enough on the... The trans issue, the last point about persuasion I want to talk about was the Jay Jones text. Obviously, that’s a different type of story. It was the candidate directly.19:57.38Sam ShiraziIt did have an impact on the AG race. I think that the challenge the Republicans had was they kind of gave up on any sort of message at the end other than the Jay Jones text.20:08.47Sam ShiraziAnd it reminded me of what the Democrats did in 2021 in Virginia with Trump. So in 2021, The Democratic message was essentially Trump is bad. you know, don’t vote for going on because that would give you Trump a win. and And every single time, like the response of the Democrats was Trump, Trump, like, you know, in 2021.20:26.33Sam ShiraziArguably, it worked in 2025 because that’s Trump is the president. But. I saw the Republicans kind of trying to do that with Jay Jones this time. So like every time, anytime something came up, they would just say, oh, but Jay Jones is bad or Jay Jones texts are bad.20:39.14Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I get it. Like you’re you’re on the other side. You’re trying to use that against the Democrats. But like it just didn’t work. And, and you know, Jay Jones himself won because, again, at the end of the day, like most people – they might If they look at those texts, or like, those are not good texts. I would not want you know someone to send those. And you know that’s not a great thing that Jay Jones did.21:02.63Sam ShiraziBut again, i care about putting food on the table, my kids’ school. I care about you know these types of normal issues. I’m worried about losing my job. And so if all the Republicans are talking about are the Jay Jones texts, you’re not talking about the actual issues people care about.21:19.14Sam ShiraziAnd so I kind of closed the persuasion section for the Republicans. with a warning that you know you really need to keep a pulse on what the average person is thinking and maybe spend less time on X.21:32.18Sam Shiraziyou know That is not the way the world thinks necessarily, just because there’s a bunch of people on X who are saying things. And frankly, you know the way I understand X works, there are a lot of bots. I don’t know if they’re foreign. I don’t you know i have no idea, but like you just cannot base your worldview on what’s going on.21:48.39Sam ShiraziOn X, I think that’s also good point for the Democrats, you know to the extent that they’re spending too much time on social media, it’s generally not a good idea. It’s usually a better idea to go and talk to the voters.21:58.42Sam ShiraziOkay, one last thing on Republicans. So Republicans, they did have a turnout problem this year in Virginia. Certain parts of Virginia, particularly Southwest Virginia, did not come out at the same rate as other parts of Virginia. And in terms of the low propensity voters, I’d say Democrats did a better job at getting out their low propensity voters.22:16.63Sam ShiraziAgain, This is part of the dynamic about the party out of the White House. It’s just easier to motivate your voters if they’re angry. It’s easier for your voters to get complacent if you are already in power in D.C.22:28.35Sam ShiraziSo I don’t necessarily fault the Republicans too much for the turnout side of things because it is just always the dynamics you see in these off-year elections. You know, and and frankly, neither party has really unlocked this issue of what do you do when you’re in power? How do you turn out your voters? Because Typically, anger is a very strong motivator.22:51.63Sam ShiraziI would say the closest success either side has had was probably in 2022 and maybe 2023 in Virginia, where the Democrats, they were in power in D.C., but they were able to somehow get enough voters out to not get blown out because i think that was unique with the Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe. There was enough anger at that directed at the Supreme Court. The Democrats were able to get decent turnout.23:17.63Sam ShiraziBut you know it’s just a problem that the party in power has. you know To the extent the Republicans, again, were maybe trying, i think part of the issue with the trans issue and then the Jay Jones text, it was more so trying to persuade people to get off the couch and go vote as opposed to trying to persuade voters in the middle.23:40.22Sam ShiraziIt was to try to motivate their voters. And you know you could argue maybe if they didn’t do that, fewer people would have showed up on the Republican side. I don’t really, you know i don’t have some magic formula about how do you get out these low propensity voters.23:53.88Sam ShiraziI do think the Republicans have to think about that because I think that’s going to be an issue again in the midterms. i My sense is they’ll probably use Trump. I think he’ll try to do more rallies. But the problem like.24:05.53Sam ShiraziThat was a problem in Virginia. Like if Trump came and did a big rally in Virginia, that would probably get a decent amount of attention and, you know, might enthuse some of his supporters to come out. The problem is, you know, Trump was not a popular figure in Virginia during this election, so he really couldn’t do that. Maybe next year in the midterms in some of the rather redder states, maybe Trump can come out. But obviously, the Democrats are going to use that against Trump.24:29.64Sam ShiraziTrump and they’re going to attack Trump. So long story short, I mean, I do think it’s a challenge for the party in the White House. And you know I’d be curious to see if anyone comes up with some magic formula, because I will warn the the Democrats about this, because eventually they will probably be back in power in DC, and they’re going to have this problem again. So as much as I like to think about 2025, Democrats had a good year, but I’m just talking about hypothetically, let’s say in theory, Democrats win 2028 presidential election.24:59.29Sam ShiraziThere will be a governor’s election in 2029. And if they are in power in D.C., they are going to have the problem the Virginia Republicans had this year. And so i I may be thinking way too far ahead, but I do think the Democrats down the line have to think about what are they going to do in the future when they’re in power? Because obviously in 2021, they got a little bit complacent. They thought Virginia’s a blue state. We’re going to win the governor’s election.25:24.58Sam ShiraziAnd there was a huge swing. And Glenn Youngkin was able to win. So all that’s to say, i think the Democrats also have this turnout problem when they’re in power. It’s just this year they didn’t have that problem because obviously they’re not in power.25:36.58Sam ShiraziAnd I do think, yeah you know, this is not the last Virginia governor’s election. And just because the Democrats got a big win in 2025, nothing’s predetermined doesn’t mean they’re going to get a big win in 2026. Doesn’t mean they’re going to get a big win 2027, 2028, 2029. So I think certainly an interesting election in Virginia lessons for both the parties.25:55.80Sam ShiraziBut I do think Democrats shouldn’t get complacent. They should try to replicate some of what they did and build on it. Republicans, they should probably learn some of the lessons and try to maybe shift, if not their messaging,26:10.17Sam ShiraziI guess this is the last thing i’ll I’ll leave the Republicans with, you know, obviously you can shift the messaging and all that, but perhaps the voters were also sending a message about the way the Republicans are governing. And typically i will say, I’ll just be honest, both parties in in DC don’t really change that much because of the Virginia elections.26:27.05Sam ShiraziI think the media and maybe outside observers, they take a lot away from the Virginia election, but it’s kind of interesting. party in power typically doesn’t change, you know, in 2021, know,26:38.97Sam ShiraziDemocrats went ahead. They did you you know various bills in 2022, like the Inflation Reduction Act and other things, even though they didn’t do well in the Virginia elections. 2017, obviously, Republicans kept doing what they were doing in D.C. after the Virginia elections in 2018. So long story short, I think the Virginia elections are a little bit of a warning to the party in power, typically.26:59.56Sam ShiraziAnd we’ll see if the Republicans listen. I think at a minimum, they’re going to shift some of their messaging, if I had to guess. There’ll be less trans stuff in 2028, excuse me, in 2026. Democrats are just going to keep doing what they’re doing, try to link Trump to the economy and hope that works in 2026. And obviously we’ll find out. But hopefully this was an interesting episode. Wanted to kind of do this lessons of the Virginia elections for everyone. i will, again, keep doing the podcast for a little bit longer, at least have some guests on, hopefully to kind of go over the results. I appreciate everyone listening. And this has been Federal Follow-up and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over election night and the blue wave that came into Virginia on election day.00:12.95Sam ShiraziSo this is the moment that we had all been waiting for when the polls closed at seven o’clock. We saw the results come in. And I would say it was pretty surprising. i mean, we all knew that the Democrats were going to do well at the end. I think that was pretty obvious to both sides.00:28.24Sam ShiraziBut I think the scale of the victory was certainly at the top end of what was possible for the Democrats. And basically, it was a I would describe it almost as a blue tsunami more than a blue wave because...00:40.57Sam ShiraziAt the top of the ticket, Abigail Spanberger, she is going to win that race by over 15 points when all the votes are in. And that’s just, you know, a really large margin for the governor’s race, pretty much more than any of the polling had found.00:56.10Sam ShiraziAnd the biggest victory that a Democrat has gotten in the governor’s race in a long, long time. yeah. Definitely big night at the top of the ticket for Abigail Spanberger. She will become the first woman to become governor of Virginia.01:10.44Sam ShiraziFor lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hashmi also got a very large victory. She is going to be winning by more than 11%. She will become the first Muslim person and the first South Asian person elected statewide in Virginia.01:25.64Sam ShiraziSo another big win for the lieutenant governor’s race. I think perhaps the most shocking result of the night was the attorney general race, because honestly, it didn’t end up being that close when all the votes came in.01:36.31Sam ShiraziIt looks like Jay Jones will win by more than 6%, probably closer to 7% when all the votes are in. Obviously, there was a fair amount of ticket splitting, about, it looks like about 8% ticket splitting, which honestly is kind of what I thought it would end up being. 8% sounded about right to me.01:55.81Sam ShiraziI think the thing that was really surprising was just the fact that Spanberger won by so much. So 8% ticket splitting could have been a big deal had it not been for the fact that Spanberger won by by so much at the top of the ticket.02:08.23Sam ShiraziAnd so Jay Jones, he will become the first black attorney general in Virginia history. Obviously the voters voters gave him a second chance and were willing to go with him because it seems like they wanted to send a message that they were unhappy with what was going on with the Republican Party.02:25.81Sam ShiraziAnd I think the other big shock of the night after the attorney general race was the House of Delegates. So the Democrats are on track to win 64 seats in the House of Delegates. They are going to be flipping 13 seats in the House of Delegates.02:40.19Sam ShiraziAnd that is almost every single seat that they targeted. Really a huge night for the Virginia House of Delegates Democrats. They were very ambitious and they were correct to be ambitious because they were able to flip a lot of seats, including Trump 2024 seats.02:57.66Sam ShiraziSo clearly, and they were different parts of Virginia. Northern Virginia, Richmond area, Hampton Roads, a seed in Southwest Virginia. So it’s just a complete Democratic victory in Virginia.03:09.72Sam ShiraziAnd you know I’m going to do the full analysis in my subsequent podcast. This is more just kind of a quick summary of everything that happened. I don’t plan on wrapping up the podcast anytime soon. I think I want to do a few episodes to explore what happened, why it happened, individual races, what happened, and the special dynamics.03:29.62Sam ShiraziBut I think i wanted to kind of share some big picture thoughts that I had. I think big picture, there’s an argument that really... there was nothing the Virginia Republicans could do to avoid a loss this year in Virginia. i think realistically, once the scale of what was going to happen in DC on after January 20th became obvious, specifically with Doge, I think that was pretty much the end of the Virginia Republicans this year in Virginia.03:57.30Sam ShiraziNow you could argue, you know, if, if Earl Sears had ran a better campaign, maybe on the margins, it could have, the outcome could have changed a little bit, but the reality is, you know, I think what was going on with Doge was just so toxic, specifically in Northern Virginia. And we saw huge swings in Northern Virginia.04:15.97Sam ShiraziThe Democrats picked up four seats in the Northern Virginia region in the House of Delegates. just Doge, I mean, I live in Northern Virginia. It was just really, really toxic for the Virginia Republicans.04:28.94Sam ShiraziAnd there was really nothing they could do to come back from that. I mean, you know once Doge kind of went away for a little bit, you know And arguably, the Virginia Republicans were trying to mount to comeback.04:40.48Sam Shiraziyou know I think the shutdown and specifically the rifts that were threatened during the shutdown and that were attempted to be implemented, but eventually were mainly stopped through court court cases.04:52.85Sam ShiraziI think that kind of brought a lot of that back to the forefront. And most voters in Northern Virginia, it just turned them off. And there was really nothing the Virginia Republicans to do could do to win those voters back. so you know There’s a reason the podcast was called Federal Fallout. i mean I had a feeling when I started this podcast, there was going to be a lot of federal fallout. And I think you know this election has basically proven that that that’s the case. now you know Every election, there’s a lot of things going on. I think Spanberger at the top of the ticket was a strong candidate.05:24.85Sam ShiraziI think, obviously, there was issues with cost of living and you know the fact that inflation has not necessarily gotten that much better from 2024. So there’s a lot of things going on, but I do think the federal fallout, and I also think specifically the shutdown was an important issue, even though it didn’t really get that much attention on the campaign trail.05:44.84Sam ShiraziSo those are some of the... My initial thoughts. I also think, you know, another thing that I wanted to talk about was what this all means for Virginia. and And I’ll do more episodes to break this down. But essentially...05:58.85Sam Shirazithere are going to be there’s going to be a trifecta in January in Richmond, which means Spanberger is going to be able to pass laws and the General Assembly is going to be able to pass laws pretty easily. And so I think it’s going to be important for Spanberger to work with the General Assembly, think about what laws she wants, and and the General Assembly has to think about what laws it wants to spend Spanberger because when you have a trifecta, it’s better for the governor and the General Assembly to work together so that there isn’t too much, you know,06:25.74Sam Shirazitension or too much conflict out in the open. You want to kind of figure that stuff out behind the scenes. So think that’s going to be an interesting dynamic. The other thing I’m looking at are these constitutional amendments.06:36.00Sam ShiraziSo obviously redistricting got a lot of attention. Redistricting is going to move forward now, given that the Democrats won the House of Delegates. It’s possible some of these court challenges might slow it down or might mess up the Democrats’ plans. But you know redistricting is obviously on the agenda.06:51.05Sam ShiraziI think the other thing to keep in mind is the Democrats had already proposed three other constitutional amendments for November 2026. One would be on reproductive rights to enshrine in the Virginia Constitution, certain reproductive rights. There was also a amendment on marriage equality to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution and to protect same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution.07:13.86Sam ShiraziAnd then finally, there is an amendment to restore automatically restore voting rights Two people convicted of felonies once they are released from prison. So those will all be on the ballot in November 2026. I think in almost all likelihood, those are going to be passed.07:28.25Sam ShiraziSo those changes to the Virginia Constitution are going to happen. And I also think there are the national implications of these elections. Obviously, there was also what what happened in New Jersey. New Jersey, Democrats did well. They did better than expected. it really wasn’t that close, even though people thought New Jersey was going to be close.07:43.67Sam ShiraziObviously, Democrats did well in Virginia. And I do think there is kind of a message the voters are sending to the Republicans in D.C. to maybe think about the scale of what they’re trying to do.07:54.62Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think after every presidential election, and There is a sense by the party that wins that you know my worldview has been endorsed by the American people and they 100% agree with everything that we want to do.08:07.74Sam ShiraziDemocrats felt that way after 2020. Republicans felt that that way after 2024. I think the reality is most Americans have you know different views. They don’t always agree with a party on everything.08:20.36Sam ShiraziAnd a lot of voters will lend their votes to certain parties in different elections because whatever reason in 2024, probably because of the cost of living inflation. And it doesn’t mean you necessarily agree with every single thing a party is doing. And I think it’s important for the Republicans and the Democrats to remember that, that you know they have their specific issues, they have their verr worldview, and the voters may agree with some of it, but they don’t necessarily agree with all of it. And I think it’s important for the Virginia Republicans to and realize that. And I also think it’s it’s frankly important for the Virginia Democrats to realize that.08:54.82Sam ShiraziAnd I think one of the lessons... of the Virginia elections is things swing swing back and forth. Every four years, pretty much, there is a very dramatic swing in Virginia.09:05.48Sam ShiraziAnd I think obviously 2021, Republicans had a good year. Now 2025, Democrats have a good year. There was a huge swing. and And so I guess what I’m trying to get at is I get that the Democrats feel like they have this huge mandate.09:18.100Sam ShiraziThey’re going to come in. you know Everything is you know behind them to make major changes in Richmond. you know They should also keep in mind that I think a lot of voters probably also lent their votes to the Democrats this election because they want to send a message about the Republicans. It became a referendum on Trump and they sent a message.09:36.21Sam ShiraziBut doesn’t necessarily mean they always endorse every single position the Democrats have. So I think it’s important for both the Republicans and the Democrats to have a little humility when it comes to these elections.09:47.49Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, I think in 2021, the Virginia Republicans kind of misread the mood and the environment in Virginia. they had kind of thought after 2021 that, you know, we’re going to make Virginia red state again. And, you know, we’re going to totally change the culture in Virginia back to what it was maybe 20 years ago.10:05.05Sam ShiraziAnd the reality is, i think voters, while... They probably wanted some change in Virginia in 2021. It was still fundamentally a light blue state. And I think the Virginia Republicans probably governed and Glenn Youngkin probably governed a little bit too far to the right for Virginia.10:23.98Sam ShiraziAnd probably some of the backlash was also in 2025 to that, that the Virginia Republicans never really tried to Governed like they were in a purple state. A lot of it was kind of more red meat meat stuff for the base. And, you know, in theory, you could see them trying to govern maybe something closer to like Larry Hogan in Maryland. And that probably would have been pretty successful. successful But I think they just kind of went a little bit too far right.10:49.67Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, Virginia is a complicated state. A lot of the places that Republicans come from, you know, pretty red. So I kind of get why they did that, but I think it’s important to remember fundamentally Virginia still is kind of a middle road state. And I also think it’s important for the Democrats to remember that because obviously most of the Democrats come from very blue parts of Virginia.11:07.89Sam ShiraziThere are very red parts of Virginia. While Spanberger got a big win, there’s still a lot of people who voted for Earl Sears. And I think it’s important for the Democrats to remember that. And it’s it’s important not to maybe...11:20.08Sam Shirazitake it too far or maybe learn the wrong lessons. I think the thing that the voters really endorsed in this election Spanberger’s message, cost of living, kind common sense policies, not necessarily doing the culture war stuff. And, you know, obviously Earl Sears,11:36.35Sam Shirazikept focusing on the trans issue, and I think that was like a big mistake. And you know I had flagged for a while that didn’t make sense for Earl Sears to talk so much about the trans issue. So I think in that sense, the voters endorsed kind of the Spanberger vision of lowering costs, improving the economy.11:51.10Sam ShiraziI think the challenge becomes now she has to deliver. And, you know, I don’t necessarily think the Democrats are going to be sidetracked by all these social issues, but there’s also the reality that they have to deal with a lot of things. They have to deal with red redistricting. And so if the voters kind of get the message after you get this big win, you know, you’re focusing on your own agenda or you’re focusing on all these other things.12:09.27Sam ShiraziYou’re not focusing on us. You’re not focusing on what we actually care about, what we elected you to do. And you could argue That’s kind of a message they were sending this year about what happened in 2024. So in 2024, you know, Trump and the Republicans get a big win.12:25.04Sam ShiraziArguably, a lot of that was economy, inflation, Voters expected them to fix that. President Trump comes in. They have a whole agenda. Some of it’s doge. Some of it’s immigration stuff. Some of it’s a lot of things that don’t really have to do a whole lot about lowering costs in the economy.12:40.96Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, some of the tariffs have arguably increased the cost for the American people. And so the voters are kind of getting that. And I think at some point, you know, the national Republicans may want to think about the course they’re going down because, you know, the midterms are a year away. And typically what happens in Virginia is often followed by the midterms the next year.13:05.49Sam ShiraziAnd so I think it’s important for the national Republicans, Virginia Republicans to learn the lesson of the 2025 Virginia elections. It’s also important for the Democrats to learn the lessons And I will unpack all this. There’s a lot to go over. I understand this podcast was probably a bit of a ramble of different things I was kind of thinking about in the moment.13:26.65Sam ShiraziBut I will try to organize my thoughts a little bit better down the line and give you kind of more of a a bigger picture breakdown of what everything that happened. But I will say, big picture overall, good night for the Democrats, obviously.13:41.43Sam ShiraziAnd you know we’ll just have to wait and see where things go from here. Once I get a chance to process all the data and the specific precincts and the races and just kind of give you some more granular information, I want to do that. I want to kind of think through what this means for Virginia 2026 when democrats come in with the new new people elected. And long story short, a lot to still cover. As I said, I’m not going to wrap up the podcast yet. I don’t know.14:09.52Sam ShiraziI don’t think it’s going to go on forever. But I do think in the short term, I do want to do some more podcasts, maybe i have a few more guests to kind of go over everything. And yeah, I mean, I appreciate everyone who’s been listening to the podcast, as you can tell.14:21.10Sam ShiraziIt’s something that I wanted to do to inform people. I hope people have found it informative before the election. I still want to inform people after the election. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I am obviously passionate about Virginia elections. I think they’re important. I think this election showed why they are important and why they often turn into these kind of national referendums and they send a national message.14:43.35Sam ShiraziSo anyways, I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over what to expect on election day and election night. The big day is finally here. It is election day in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Polls are open until 7 Voters can cast ballots at their local election places. And yeah, it’ll be really exciting tonight when the results start coming in.00:26.52Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to just do this podcast for people who want to listen on Election Day to give a little bit of a preview of what Election Day is going to look like. and then what might happen once the polls close.00:37.29Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, it’s just the end of the campaign is always exciting. I think for the people who worked on the campaign and who’ve been following the campaign, I think regardless of what happens, most people are relieved that it’s over because it’s been a long haul.00:49.38Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, once the results are coming in, there will be the opportunity to analyze the results and overanalyze the results and extrapolate what happened. So before we get to that, I wanted to kind of lay out what’s going to happen on Election Day. So generally,01:02.52Sam ShiraziDuring Election Day, obviously people are going to vote and Election Day is a big wild card. I’ve talked about it before. You don’t know who’s turning out. It could be people you or have not modeled for. There’s a surge of turnout for whatever reason. One side or both sides are able to get out their voters. It’s possible turnout is not that strong. It’s possible that it’s it’s weak. you know There’s so many different possibilities on Election Day.01:23.62Sam ShiraziWe’re just going to wait and see how it all pans out. Typically what happens during election day, the certain counties and cities will post on social media or on their accounts just kind of what the turnout is looking like.01:36.96Sam ShiraziAll right, at noon, this many people have showed up. some Some people also try to call up the registrars or get information from you know local sources. Okay, I’ve heard that this many voters have come out in this city or this county.01:49.12Sam Shirazii think that’s all very helpful. you know It gives you some information, gives you a sense of what’s going on. couple things to keep in mind. i mean, you obviously have to add the early vote to that number. So if you’re saying 10% of people have come out as of 9 a.m., you also have to consider you know maybe 20, 30% came out during the early voting period. So you can’t just look at the election day turnout. i you know I think there are some things you can learn from it. I also get a little bit nervous because I think people really over extrapolate sometimes or they make these huge conclusions like, oh, turnouts down here. you know This side is going to do horrible.02:22.18Sam ShiraziSometimes that ends up happening. Sometimes it’s a little bit overblown. You have to think about a lot of different things, a lot of different factors. Do people come later? What is turnout overall looking like? So I tend to be a little bit hesitant to be you know going all crazy about turnout extrapolation during election day.02:41.16Sam Shirazithink the reality too is that at 7 o’clock, we will know, starting at 7, we’ll know what’s going happen because the results are going to be released. So Long story short, I mean, keep an eye out on turnout and and generally it’s helpful, but I would not go crazy. I would not drive myself crazy.02:58.72Sam ShiraziThere’s been elections where based on turnout, I thought it would go one way and it went the other way and vice versa. So I think it’s just definitely not worth worrying too much about the election day turnout. And, you know, we’ll all know the answer soon enough.03:12.97Sam ShiraziI think the other thing to keep in mind is so exit polls. So one of the worst phrases at we all dread is early exits. And you know I have a scoop. I know what the exit polls are going to show.03:25.31Sam Shiraziyeah It’s helpful to maybe take a look at the exit polls once the polls actually close. The thing with exit polls, it’s kind of a, they recalibrate it after they get all the data and they look at the final outcome.03:37.54Sam ShiraziAnd it’s not really meant to at 7 p.m. give you the result. I think it’s really meant to after the fact, after results come in, They get to switch up the weighing and all this, a lot of different stuff to just kind of give people a sense of what happened during the election. But it’s not really meant to be this predict prediction thing that it’s sometimes used as.03:59.85Sam ShiraziNow, realistically, if the exit poll shows a really obvious outcome, some networks will just go ahead and call it at the close of polls. Personally, i like to wait to get some results because you never know. There’s been chimes in the past. The exit polls have been wrong, you know.04:15.25Sam ShiraziI think after the 2000 election, networks tend to be very cautious using exit polls. So long story short, exit polls, they’re helpful. I tend to look at them more down the line. Really, I would not freak out about early exits or stuff you’re seeing online because frankly, it could be fake. yeah don’t Don’t go too crazy with exit polls.04:35.10Sam Shirazii Generally, that’s a good rule of thought and rule of thumb. And I think you’re never wrong just kind of ignoring the exit polls until later. Okay, so that’s kind of all up until 7 p.m. 7 p.m., the polls close, the first results are coming in.04:50.64Sam ShiraziAnd I think there’s a few things you have to think about when you are looking at results coming in. You have to think about where are the votes coming from, both geographically where they’re coming from and also what types of votes are coming in.05:06.17Sam ShiraziSo I’ll just explain the three basic types of votes that come in on election night. You have... the election day vote, which are people who have gone out on election day and voted, and that’s data from individual precincts.05:20.51Sam ShiraziAnd then you have early voting, and that’s split up into the mail early voting and the in-person early voting. And those in each county and city might come in at different times. So some counties and cities do the early voting first, they’ll put the mail and the in-person early vote first.05:36.84Sam ShiraziSome counties will do the election day first and the early voting is the last thing that comes in. And so there’s really no rhyme or reason to how that happens. And so you really have to be careful when you are looking at results from individual city or county.05:48.90Sam ShiraziWhy do you have to be careful? In-person vote, both early and on election day, tends to be better for the Republicans. So it’s hard to tell with this election, but probably the Republicans will be doing pretty well on election day vote.06:02.94Sam ShiraziI still think Democrats are going to win the in-person early vote, but just not by that much. as compared to maybe previous years, the area where Democrats have a huge advantage is the mail vote. So the mail vote is gonna be very, very blue as compared to the other types of votes.06:16.97Sam ShiraziSo if you’re looking at a county and city and you’re just looking at election day and in-person early vote, you’re gonna miss the mail vote. And you really need to wait for the mail vote to make a final call about a specific city or county.06:28.56Sam ShiraziSo I just caution all that by saying that you can’t you know just look at the first results that come in from a city or county. And then you have to think about geography, both within a city and a county and and then also within Virginia. So big picture within Virginia, obviously some counties are very red, some counties are very blue.06:47.05Sam ShiraziSo you really have to think about and look at where are the votes coming in. If it’s coming in from a red county and the Republicans are doing well, that’s not a huge surprise. Obviously, Republicans are going to win a red county. If it’s coming in from a blue county, same thing. Democrats going to be doing well.07:00.81Sam ShiraziSo you’re not going to... I wouldn’t drive yourself crazy thinking, oh my God, the Republicans are winning or the Democrats are winning when you just have votes from blue or red areas. And I will say...07:11.92Sam Shirazithe It’s hard to know exactly, but typically the smaller rural counties tend to come in first and the more urban and suburban democratic counties tend to come in last.07:24.35Sam ShiraziThat’s not 100% true, but that’s generally what happens. and so There’s been this famous thing for a long time in Virginia elections where people kind of freak out, or at least Democrats tend to freak out because they’re they’re losing. And then at the end, all of the Northern Virginia vote comes in and the Democrats end up winning.07:40.98Sam ShiraziThis has happened several times. I think most famously 2014, the Northern Virginia vote came in for the Senate race late and that kind of saved Mark Warner. you’re going to see that dynamic where probably some of the latest reporting counties will be in Northern Virginia.07:56.52Sam ShiraziSo just another thing to keep in mind. And then within cities and counties, you still have to think about the geography. So some counties everywhere, every precinct is blue. Some counties, every precinct is red. But there are plenty of counties that are fifty fifty or 50-50.08:10.25Sam ShiraziOne part of the county is very red. One part of the county is very blue. And so just because some results are coming in from one county where it looks red or it looks blue doesn’t mean that’s going to be the final result because, again, Election Day comes in precinct by precinct. Sometimes the red precincts come in. Sometimes blue precincts come in.08:26.69Sam ShiraziSo a lot a lot of caveats on when votes are coming in. I think the good news for Virginia is that Virginia, Generally, they count votes very quickly, at least the election day and the early votes.08:41.18Sam ShiraziSo I think as seven o’clock, you’re going to start seeing the initial vote. Eight o’clock is really going to ramp up. And then nine o’clock, you’ll probably get most of the rest of it. So I think by 10 o’clock, frankly, most of the votes should be in.08:53.75Sam ShiraziAnd so that’s the good news in Virginia. You’re not gonna be sitting around forever trying to figure out what’s going on. Pretty quickly, we’re gonna get the votes. I think the thing that’s gonna be interesting is when are calls going to be made? And and you know I tend to be pretty conservative. I like to wait wait for more votes.09:08.70Sam ShiraziBefore I make a final call in a race. And frankly, for this election night, because I’m going to be busy, i’m going to be doing a lot of other things. I don’t know if I’m going to call, you know, race by race. You know, Chaz Netticombe, State Navigate, they’re going to be doing that stuff. They’re really good. Another person I look to is Ben Tribbett. He, I’ve been following him for a long time. His election night calls are great.09:28.37Sam ShiraziSo, you know just keep that in mind. It’s possible. I don’t know what’s going to happen. If maybe some of the networks, they feel comfortable with the exit poll, they end up calling it you know very early. i tend to just wait for some votes because you know you never want to make a call and then end up being wrong.09:45.10Sam ShiraziBut good news, we should find out pretty quickly for most races what’s going to be happening. on election night. I do think i caveat this by saying in some really close races, and I’m thinking potentially in the attorney general race and definitely some of these House of Delegates seats are going to be really close.10:02.04Sam ShiraziAnd by really close, I mean, it could come down to 100 votes. In 2023, some of the House of Delegates races came down to a few dozen votes. So when you’re talking that level of closeness, you basically have to wait for all the votes to come in. You can’t just say that one side is one when there could potentially be hundreds of votes still out there.10:21.23Sam ShiraziWhy might there be a few hundred votes out there? There are two categories of votes that are counted after the election, and I will talk about those. One are provisionals and one are the last mail votes.10:32.98Sam ShiraziSo I’ll talk about provisionals first. So what are provisionals? Provisional ballots are basically someone shows up to their polling place on election day, or they show up to a polling place on election day.10:43.84Sam ShiraziAnd for whatever reason, they’re not on the books and something’s happening. They’re not registered to vote. the They can’t cast a normal ballot. If you’re not registered to vote, you’re not in the system, you will not be casting a regular ballot in Virginia.10:57.93Sam ShiraziThe biggest, the bulk of provisional ballots are what are called same-day registrations. So the way same-day registration works in Virginia, you show up on election day, you’re not registered to vote, you tell the election workers, I want to same-day register and I want to cast a provisional ballot.11:14.28Sam ShiraziWhat they will have you do, they’ll have you fill out the voter registration form. You obviously have to be a qualified voter, 18, have to be a citizen, you can’t have your voting rights suspended or revoked.11:26.32Sam ShiraziYou fill out the voter registration form. After you do that, they will give you your provisional ballot. You vote. that Those votes, the provisional votes, are set aside. They are not counted on election night.11:36.88Sam ShiraziThey’re a special type of vote called provisional votes. And so what happens after election night is the election officials in each city and county, they will go through each provisional ballot.11:47.77Sam ShiraziThey’ll review the voter registration. If someone is a valid voter, they’re allowed to legally vote. That vote will then be cast. And it’s a very intense process. Both parties keep an eye on it.11:59.05Sam ShiraziObviously, if someone is not allowed to be a voter, they will be rejected. Parties have the right to review these things. So it’s a pretty rigorous process. And because of that, it takes some time.12:10.19Sam ShiraziAnd each city and county does it a little bit differently. If it’s a small city or county with only a few provisionals, they could do it in a day day or two. Bigger cities or counties, it might take a few weeks, not a few weeks, sorry, a few days, and and you might not find out until maybe even next week all the provisionals.12:27.09Sam ShiraziSo I caveat, in some places, particularly college towns, Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Harrisonburg, Williamsburg, they could potentially have hundreds of same-day registration. Typically, same-day registrations happen in places with younger voters.12:40.64Sam ShiraziThey’re especially popular in college towns. So I’m thinking about House District 41, We may not know who’s going to win for a few days because Montgomery County and Blacksburg, Town of Blacksburg, they have to go through the provisionals. They have to determine which ones are valid, which votes will be cast. And so you all that’s to say is you you cannot just assume whoever’s ahead on election night, if it’s really close, is going to win because you have to wait for the provisionals and the same-day registrations. That’s one batch of votes.13:06.60Sam ShiraziTypically, the rule is provisionals. are more Democratic. I will say in 2024, they were more Republican. There were more Republican provisionals than I was expecting. Democrats still won the provisional overall, but it wasn’t super blue. And I think that was an indication that in 2024, the Democrats were not doing that well with students and younger voters because the provisionals were not a blowout it like they typically are in the Virginia elections. And that’s one of the things I’m going to be looking at this year is what do the provisionals look like?13:37.28Sam ShiraziDo the Democrats have a huge advantage in provisionals? If they do, that means they’re doing well with younger voters. If it’s more even, that means the Republicans are kind of keeping the gains they made with younger voters. So lot of interesting stuff you can kind of figure out through provisional data, but it takes a few days and you’re not going to know on election night what’s going on with the provisionals.13:55.74Sam ShiraziThe other kind of batch of votes are the mail-in votes. And most mail-ins are counted by election night. However, under Virginia law,14:05.98Sam Shirazias long as something is postmarked by Election Day, the mail ballots can be received up until noon on Friday after the election. So what does that mean? That means each day the local official election officials look at their mail.14:21.38Sam ShiraziIf there is a ballot, if it’s been postmarked by Election Day, they go ahead and process that. And then they will at the end add all the mail votes. Now, realistically, this isn’t going to be that many votes, but it’s not an insignificant amount statewide. So this is probably going to be, we’re talking tens tens of thousands of votes going to be added in the late mail.14:40.34Sam ShiraziAnd the thing to keep in mind with the late mail this is going to be overwhelmingly Democratic. So, you know, whatever the margin is on election night, a combination of the provisionals and the late mail is going to boost the Democratic numbers a little bit.14:54.37Sam ShiraziAnd most races is not going to matter. Either it’s very clear the Democrat or the Republican has won and these like, you know, marginal amounts of additional votes aren’t going to matter. But When is going matter in the really, really close race? So I would say for like House of Delegates, if it’s within a few hundred votes, depending on the district, you really have to wait for the final votes. You can’t make a call either way, but especially if the Republican is up, because if the Republican is up by 100 I mean, it’s possible the Democrats are going to make that up in the provisional and the late mail.15:26.18Sam ShiraziConversely, I think if the Democrats are up by about 100, I think it’s unlikely that the Republicans are going to make that up because realistically, the mail vote is just going to be pretty blue. Again, depends on the district, depends on the county. So it’s not like a universal rule.15:38.84Sam ShiraziSo all that to say is like, there’s a lot, there’s a lot that goes into analyzing Virginia results. Obviously, once the results are in, there’s going to be more granular analysis to show what the election tells us like, you know, are Democrats doing well with young voters or Republicans are making gains with, you know, Hispanic voters, you know, there’s a lot of things you could you know down the line, try to extrapolate from the Virginia election results just on election night. It’s just going to be exciting as the results coming in.16:06.47Sam Shiraziyou know i anticipate the governor’s race is going to be called pretty quickly unless something crazy is going on. Somewhat similar story with lieutenant governor’s race, although I think it’ll be a little bit closer. Attorney general race is the one that’s like a big question mark. like Can we make a call quickly? do we have to wait? is it How close is it? Do we have to wait for late mail? Do we have to wait for provisionals?16:25.75Sam ShiraziA lot of stuff that could be going on in the attorney general race. And then the House of Delegates is going to be super interesting because you know, 90 to 95% of the seats in the House of Delegates, we should be able to call very, very quickly.16:38.14Sam Shirazii think the last few seats are going to maybe take a while in the House of Delegates. And there’s been in the past recounts in 2017, there was a famous incident where there was actually a tie and the winner had to be picked out of a hat.16:51.82Sam ShiraziSo, I mean, these House Delegates seats, I mean, they’re not huge and can often come down to, you know, handfuls of votes, dozens of votes. So, It’s going to be interesting. It’s going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out. you know That’s kind of what election day and election night is going to look for look like.17:09.62Sam ShiraziA lot of granular stuff that you probably don’t have to worry about unless you really want to. Obviously, most people are just going to be paying attention to the governor number. And how big of a margin does Van Berger get? I think after that, people are going to look at the attorney general race to see if either Meares or Jones get a clear victory on election night or if we have to wait until the final votes are counted.17:31.11Sam ShiraziHouse of Delegates, I suspect... The chamber is going to be able to be called on election night, where Democrats are probably going to get a majority on election night. The question really becomes, you know in these seats, how many of them are closed? How many can we call on election night? How many do we have to wait for the late mail, the provisionals?17:48.49Sam Shirazilot of interesting stuff. I mean, I’m going to be trying to cover it all through mainly social media. I think... Obviously I will do podcasts, probably do one the day after kind of a short summary. I will not wrap up the podcast yet. I think I want to go through and kind of analyze what the results mean, but a lot of just, you know, interesting stuff that happens on election day. I wouldn’t kind of freak out too much about things you’re seeing. I think one the things that’s not fun about election day is there’s a lot of anxiety for both sides because they’re seeing different things and, you know, some of it’s misinformation and,18:23.18Sam ShiraziA lot of just quick analysis without a lot of you know nuance. And you know to a certain extent, I try to zone that out because it’s just not super helpful. And frankly, my attitude has become increasingly over the years. If it’s one o’clock on election day, like you’re going to know by seven o’clock or 7.30 or eight like what the results are going to be. So it’s not really worth freaking out too much during election day about some of the stuff you’re seeing.18:47.39Sam ShiraziI will be doing my best to cover it. I’m trying to share and as much as I can and hopefully people find it helpful. But yeah, yeah, we’re we’re here here. This is election day. It’s going to be exciting to see what happens. I appreciate everyone who’s been joining me on this.19:03.58Sam ShiraziWild Ride, which has been the Virginia elections in 2025. i will join you on the other side of the election once we have the final results. And obviously I will do all the coverage of that. But for now, this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fall Out the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is the final countdown to election day. Tomorrow is the election in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This is the final countdown. We will see what’s going on yeah as voters get ready to head to the polls. We already have a lot of early voting going on.00:21.07Sam ShiraziTomorrow will be the last round of voting and at seven o’clock when the polls close we will start to get results. I did want to do this episode to go over a few things. So the first thing I will go over are some of the final polls that we’ve gotten in Virginia.00:34.78Sam ShiraziNow, honestly, I’m not going to go through every single poll because there’s been a lot. I will focus on maybe two polls that came out at the end that I thought would deserve a little bit extra attention. And then i will go through the early voting numbers because early voting ended on Saturday. And now we have the almost complete picture about early voting. And then we can talk about what that might mean for the election.00:55.75Sam ShiraziAnd then finally, i will spend a few minutes on the vibes, which are essentially kind of the non-data feelings that people are having about the election. And just to get a sense of where we are, because obviously this is the end. We’re going to find out who’s going to win on Tuesday evening, but I know people are interested in getting my thoughts before the election is over and I may kind of tip my hand in some of these races. I will not be giving like individual predictions in the House of Delegates or anything like that, but I will kind of give you my sense of where things are.01:27.03Sam ShiraziAll right. So to begin, let’s go over the polls. And, you know, there’s been a few different types of polls released. I think generally all the polls are showing that the top of the ticket, Abigail Sperenberger is leading and that she is going to win by a healthy margin.01:43.54Sam ShiraziLieutenant Governor, there’s been, you know, polls that have come... and shown different things, but generally, Gazella Hashmi is leaving and leading in the lieutenant governor spot. I think attorney general is the big question mark. Most of the polls at the end have shown Niara’s ahead, but interestingly, there have also been some polls that have showed Jay Jones ahead, so I’ll talk about that.02:02.30Sam ShiraziAnd so, The polls, I think in some elections, they’re really interesting. This one, because all the polls have consistently, at least the nonpartisan polls have consistently shown Spanberger up by about 10%.02:14.14Sam ShiraziI think it’s not as interesting, but I will go over a couple of the final polls that have come in. And, you know, I’ll just say from the start about the governor’s race, I think, you know, most observers and frankly, a lot of Republicans behind the scenes will tell you that,02:28.79Sam Shiraziyou know it is going to be very difficult for Winston Earl Sears to win. i mean, I don’t want to say it’s impossible. you know i think yeah you never you never want to say never, but I think unless something really, really crazy happens, in all likelihood, Abigail Spanberger is going to win the governor’s election. I think that’s not a huge leap to say that.02:46.74Sam ShiraziI think the reality is The margin is what’s going to matter. Is she going to win by 10 or more? Is she going to win closer to seven? i mean, obviously, there’s a range. It depends on turnout. there’s a you know It’s not a done deal, the final margin. so we’re just going have to wait and see what happens.03:02.46Sam ShiraziI will give you kind of some poll numbers that have come in at the end. and And I wanted to highlight two extra polls. So obviously, on Saturday, I had Chaz Nandy come on. He went over the State Navigate poll.03:13.15Sam ShiraziI thought that was really helpful. you know That poll, frankly, was better for the Democrats than a lot of other polls that had come out. And I think you know as Chaz kind of explained what went into that. And I think there’s been these two polls at the end that kind of confirm what Chaz has been finding, because I think There’s these two pollsters that, you know, they both got a lot of attention for various reasons. And I’ll go through that the final two polls that I want a spotlight on this podcast. Obviously, want to give a shout out to for... chat chazz for03:43.67Sam ShiraziDoing the House of Delegates polls and also the statewide polls. And it was really interesting to get to hear from him about that. But without further ado, I will first go over Atlas Intel. And the reason that this poll was really anticipated was Atlas Intel, you know, their claim to fame in 2024, they were very accurate.04:01.47Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, they just were able to get the numbers right. And almost every single swing state, they saw that Trump was going to win. That’s what their numbers showed and they were right in 2024.04:12.13Sam ShiraziAnd in this year, for example, in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, they were pretty close to the final resort that result. Their final poll had the Democrat winning that race by 7%. The final margin was 10%.04:23.30Sam Shiraziso You know, again, they show pretty much what ended up happening, especially since most of the polls in that race were much closer. but So everyone was looking to see what would happen in the Atlas Intel poll.04:34.29Sam ShiraziIt was a little anticlimactic, to be honest, because it was basically what everyone thought it would be or is basically where the vibes were in Virginia. And we’ll talk about the vibes a little bit later. So quickly, I’ll go over the Atlas Intel poll.04:46.94Sam ShiraziFor Governor, it had Spanberger at 54% and it had Earl Sears at 45%. For Lieutenant Governor, it had Hashmi at 52% and it had Reed at 46%. And then for Attorney General, it had Meares 48% and jones at So governor number, Spanberger around 10%, which she usually gets in nonpartisan polls.05:08.78Sam ShiraziHash me, I think there’s less ticket splitting here. The 6% number, if Spanberger is winning by 9%, sounds about right. I think the AG race was interesting. You know, another close AG race. I think everyone expects their AG race to be close. So not a huge surprise there. It did show Miro is slightly up here.05:28.68Sam ShiraziSo before I move on to the next poll, I already talked about governor. Most people think Spanberger is going to win the governor’s race. I think for lieutenant governor, you know we can talk about the dynamics there.05:38.60Sam ShiraziSome of the polls have been pretty close where Hashmi is only up by like two or three. And a lot of people are like, oh why is the lieutenant governor a race so close? I think realistically, most of that is just name ID. People don’t really you know know the lieutenant governor candidates as well as they know the governor candidates.05:53.79Sam ShiraziI also think Spanberger, frankly, will be doing better at the top of the ticket. I do expect probably 2%, 3%, 4% max ticket splitting for lieutenant governor because I think Spanberger just appeals to certain voters that you know traditionally don’t vote Democratic, but they might vote for Spanberger.06:08.97Sam ShiraziSo Long story short, I think Hashmi definitely favored, especially if Spamburger is winning by around 10. I think you know it’s not a huge leap to say that unless something crazy happens, Ghazal Hashmi should win the Lieutenant Governor’s race.06:22.57Sam ShiraziAll right, I want to talk about one last poll before moving on. And that was the Emerson poll. So Emerson traditionally is not thought about as a super favorable pollster for Democrats. I think, you know, they’re nonpartisan.06:37.81Sam ShiraziMost of the time, they’re They’re pretty, you know, i don’t want to say favorable for the Republicans, but you don’t usually see these super great results for Democrats in Emerson polls. And the New Jersey poll this year was a good example. So Emerson came out with a poll in New Jersey and it found the Democrat, Mikey Sherrill, was only up, I think, one or two points in the New Jersey governor’s race.06:58.22Sam Shiraziwhich was kind of surprising. And that was a lot closer than other polls have found. And we’ll see if they’re right in in New Jersey. But I think it’s a good example just showing you why Emerson is not thought of as this, you know, super pro Democratic pollster.07:11.81Sam ShiraziI will go through their Virginia numbers, which I think was surprising and I think was a little bit of a reality check for the Republicans. so The Emerson poll for governor, it had Spanberger at 55% and Wintemarle Sears at 44%.07:25.95Sam ShiraziAnd then for attorney general, it had Jay Jones at 49% and it had Jason Meares at 47%. So the governor number in the Emerson poll, not super surprising. Again, in most nonpartisan polls, Smeanberger is around 10%. I think that wasn’t that big of a surprise. I think the big, bigger surprise in the Emerson poll was the attorney general number. So they found that Jay Jones was up 2%.07:47.37Sam ShiraziAnd as as I said, most other public polling, you know besides maybe the State Navigate, has found that Miara’s is ahead. And so when you’re thinking about Emerson not necessarily super favorable to Democrats, and then you’re seeing that Emerson is finding that Jay Jones is up 2%, you have to start thinking, okay, you know what are the odds that Jay Jones is able to win? And I think I have been flagging for a long time.08:12.50Sam ShiraziThis race is inherently unpredictable. I think there are a lot of different things you have to consider. You have to consider you know shy Jay Jones voters, people people not necessarily telling pollsters how they’re going vote. going to have to consider ticket splitting or lack thereof. You have to think about straight ticket voting. You have to think about undervoting.08:29.75Sam ShiraziThere’s just so many things that go into a race like this down ballot that I don’t think anyone confidently can say, I think you know this is definitely going to happen. Miara is going to win or Jones going to win. I just don’t think it’s one of those races you can really predict in that way.08:44.40Sam ShiraziAnd for that reason, I’m not necessarily going to make a prediction. in the attorney general race. I will say this, you know, without making a formal prediction, I think, you obviously jy Jones has been dealing with the tech story for a while and that has hurt and heard him certainly compared to where he would have been had that story not happened or had not come out.09:04.54Sam ShiraziI do think, and we’ll get we’ll get to this in the vibe section of the podcast and also a little bit in the early vote section. I think the last, the late momentum in the campaign usually is what with one party or another. And I think here, most observers see the momentum being with the Democrats. And again, you see it in this polling where most of the polls at the end, Spanberger’s doing well.09:25.26Sam Shiraziand And so there’s a sense that the Democrats have some momentum. And I think momentum can carry you a long way in a close race. And so I think that’s just something to consider as much as Meares has these advantages, the momentum and the kind of national state environment is more with the Democrats.09:42.01Sam ShiraziAnd I’ve said this from the beginning, this is going to be a test of is is it going to be individual candidate specific determination in this race or is it going to be kind of the overall environment? I think if if people are making the decisions based on the individual candidates,09:55.05Sam ShiraziMeares has a better chance chance of winning. I think if people are making the decision based on the environment or they’re making it based on Trump, I think Jay Jones has a better chance of winning. So I’m not going to make the final prediction in this race. I think it’s very unpredictable. I think it’s very hard to predict. But I do think, you know, this narrative that...10:12.10Sam Shirazioh, this story came out, so there’s no way Jay Jones can win. you know Jason Meares has this in the bag. I think this final polling from Emerson, from State Navigate, and even the Atlas Intel poll showed that it was not necessarily a slam dunk for Jason Meares. I think this is going to be a very close race.10:28.62Sam ShiraziI don’t know if it could be called on... Election night, as I said, there’s a lot of things you have to consider. And you know I will do a podcast tomorrow when to kind of explain how results are going to come in.10:41.32Sam ShiraziAnd I think there are a lot of different votes that could be coming in later that might help Jay Jones. So I don’t know if this is a type of race that might be called on election night. Maybe if it’s not as close as we think it is, it will get called.10:53.50Sam ShiraziSo Long story short, Attorney General Race is the one that I think is the hardest to really get read on. But do keep in mind, as I’m going through the early vote and also the vibes, that those are generally favoring the Democrats. And so that’s maybe something that Jay Jones has in his corner in the final leg of the campaign.11:13.66Sam ShiraziOkay, so those are all the polls. i don’t want to dwell on the polls because, again, don’t think they’re super interesting given that Spamberger’s ahead in most of them. And there’s a lot of bunch lot of polls, and I don’t want to go through every single poll. I kind of highlighted the ones that I thought were more important.11:26.53Sam ShiraziObviously, if you’re interested, it you can go look at all the polls. but But yeah, that’s kind of where we are with the polling. I will shift over to early voting because early voting... I think is super interesting in its own way, tells us things that polling can’t necessarily tell us, but also has its limitations.11:43.88Sam ShiraziAnd so I had flagged all the way at the beginning, I’m not going to go crazy with early voting analysis. I’m not going to predict who’s going to win based on early voting. But I wanted to kind of just give people an update of where things are.11:55.96Sam ShiraziSo with the early vote, Saturday was the last day of early voting. It was the biggest day of early voting by far. And it was the biggest day of early voting in a state election in Virginia history.12:06.48Sam ShiraziThere were over 116,000 votes cast in virginia And the total early vote currently is about 1.43 million. I think there’s going to be some mail that is still going to come in and that still has to be processed. So I think we’re going to end up close to 1.5 million total early votes.12:25.100Sam ShiraziThat’s a record for a state election. I think that’s a very strong early vote turnout. As I flagged in my early vote podcast, Northern Virginia really picked up at the end, and I knew it was going to pick up at the end because the satellite loading voting locations were opened at the end.12:41.77Sam ShiraziAnd also just generally, Northern Virginia is a type of place that shows up. It just shows up later in the cycle. So Northern Virginia had a really good turnout on that Saturday for the Democrats. I think they picked up a lot of votes at the end of early voting.12:55.60Sam Shiraziyou know The Republicans, I think, in certain parts of Virginia are doing okay with early voting. They’re certainly getting their core base supporters out in areas but such as the Richmond suburbs, the outer Richmond suburbs like Goochland and Hanover.13:08.55Sam ShiraziThose voters are coming out like they typically tend to come out. I think where the Republicans are struggling a little bit is in the more rural working class areas like Southwest Virginia. Turnout has not been great for the Republicans there.13:21.50Sam ShiraziGenerally, you know Democrats are doing okay in the suburbs, as I flagged. I had flagged at the very beginning that Democrats are going to struggle more in Hampton Roads with black voters. I think there is some evidence of that. Obviously, that could change with Election Day, those voters coming out on Election Day. There was a rally with President Obama in Norfolk that I’ll talk about a little bit.13:40.92Sam ShiraziThat obviously could motivate black voters to come out in Hampton Roads. So I think overall, like big picture, the early vote wasn’t super surprising, except that I think the Democrats at the end had a little bit of a surge that I think gave them more of an edge in the early vote.13:57.53Sam ShiraziAnd you know most neutral observers and also people on both sides or agree that the Democrats, particularly if you factor in the mail vote, are ahead. And the number that’s kind of floating out there that I think is pretty accurate is in terms of the early votes of these 1.5 million, Democrats have about a 60% to 40% advantage.14:17.22Sam ShiraziAnd so that means Democrats have roughly 900,000 early votes. The Republicans have about 600,000 early votes. Democrats have about a 300,000 early vote advantage.14:28.29Sam ShiraziThis is all just estimates because obviously there’s no way we know who these people are actually voting for. It could be Bigger Democratic lead. It could be a smaller Democratic lead. Virginia doesn’t have party registration. So these are just basically estimates based on people’s voting history and demographics and other factors.14:43.58Sam ShiraziBut it you know generally, it appears that Democrats right now have about a 60-40 advantage in the early vote. I think the question becomes... Who’s going to show up on election day and how many voters are going to show up There’s one universe where basically the early vote cannibalized election day vote. And so we’re going to get about the same amount of election day as we did in early votes. we get maybe 1.5 million election day votes for a total about 3 million total votes. I think that’s possible. I think it’s more likely that we’re going to get more election day votes. So personally, I think we’ll probably get around 2 million election day vote.15:17.06Sam Shiraziplus the 1.5 million early. So that means we’ll have 3.5 million early vote sorry total votes. you know And the question then becomes, okay, so you have these 3.5 million votes. you know what What is election day looking like?15:30.02Sam ShiraziTraditionally, Republicans tend to win election day. I still think probably they’re going to have an edge on election day, but... Frankly, because the Republicans have been pushing early votes so much, I just don’t know how much of advantage Republicans are going to have on Election Day. And frankly, i think both sides have kind of come to the conclusion that at least for the governor’s race, there’s really no way for the Republicans to make up the early vote lead the Democrats have on Election Day.15:54.28Sam ShiraziAttorney General, obviously different story. I’m not trying to pretend like Election Day doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. There’s a lot of things that are going to be decided on Election Day in the House of Delegates, and I haven’t really talked about the House of Delegates, but I think certainly In terms of overall votes, we’re going have a lot of turnout for a state election in Virginia.16:14.31Sam ShiraziEarly vote was pretty strong. I think Democrats had the edge. The question really just becomes like, who’s going to come out on election day? Are we going to have more of a blue surge? Because it seems like the blue areas are waking up at the end.16:27.16Sam ShiraziAs I said, Democrats have a little bit more enthusiasm at the end. Generally, if you’re winning, you’re doing well, you’re the polls are coming in and they’re looking good for you, you kind of have you Your supporters are more motivated to go vote. vote And I am curious to see what the rural turnout looks like for Republicans, the more white working class turnout for Republicans, because obviously if you’re if you’re not doing that well and the polls aren’t looking that good, maybe people aren’t going to be motivated to come out.16:53.06Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, I mean, election day is always this big wild card. And so I will add you know kind of one more prediction to the mix, and that’s House of Delegates. I think House Delegates, pretty clearly the Democrats are going to get a majority. I talked about that last weekend in my podcast.17:08.13Sam ShiraziI’m going to make a prediction how many seats the Democrats are going to pick up. I think so much of that depends on turnout, particularly with Black voters for Democrats in some of these districts that I just can’t predict the exact number the Democrats are going to pick up.17:19.43Sam ShiraziAgain, I will defer to Chaz Nuttikom on that, but I will you know go out on limb and say Democrats are going to retain their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. I’m kind of kidding about that because obviously the Democrats are probably very heavily favored in the House of Delegates.17:35.28Sam ShiraziBut I don’t want to pretend like you know the exact dynamics on Election Day aren’t important. I think specific districts, Election Day turnout is going to be very important. Some of those races in the House Delegates going to be decided by you know a few hundred votes.17:48.36Sam ShiraziAnd you know who shows up is really going to decide those races. Same thing with the Attorney General, like, we just don’t know how close it’s going to be. And so, you know, even though the governor’s race is a little bit of an anticlimax, and we kind of have a sense of how that’s going to turn out.18:02.60Sam ShiraziI am curious to see what the turnout looks like on election day and If the Democrats are getting a surge of maybe younger voters and black voters, I think that’s going to be a good sign for Jay Jones.18:13.56Sam ShiraziWe’ll see if maybe the opposite happens and Miárez is able to bring out a bunch of rural voters. that That might help save him. And so we’re just going to have to wait and see. In terms of one last thing about early vote, you know I had flagged in the beginning, there’d be all this kind of speculation about the early vote and overanalyzing the early vote. It’s kind of interesting that that it happened at the beginning, but I think towards the end, it just became kind of obvious that the The traditional Democratic early vote advantage was going to be there again this year. And we didn’t really see this dynamic where the Republicans made these huge gains in early vote.18:47.05Sam ShiraziAnd for that reason, I mean, i think that’s one of the factors you have to consider that things are going the Democrats way. i mean, obviously, if the polls at the top of the ticket that are looking good for the Democrats, I think the early vote.18:57.70Sam ShiraziI don’t love you know doing this early vote analysis, but I think to the extent you’re trying to read the tea leaves, I think generally the early vote is looking pretty good for the Democrats. Not to say that Republicans can’t make up some of that on Election Day, so I don’t want to pretend like the early vote is going to tell us exactly who’s going to win, but I do think...19:15.23Sam ShiraziIf you’re trying to read some tea leaves in the early vote, generally it’s been better, I would say, for the Democrats than for the Republicans. Again, that’s traditionally the case in Virginia, so it’s not like a huge surprise. I just don’t think that the Republicans made any sort of huge breakthrough in the early vote this time.19:31.33Sam ShiraziAll right, and one last thing I want to talk about before we close out, and that is the vibes. And what what do I mean by the vibes? It’s kind of the intangibles. You can’t really see it in the polling data. You can’t really see it in the early vote data. It’s just kind of the gut feeling you have or it’s kind of you know it when you see it kind of thing. And the problem with this is it’s very speculative.19:55.21Sam ShiraziAnd obviously people’s guts can be wrong. And so I don’t want to necessarily go too crazy with the vibe analysis. But I do think it’s important because I think it shapes kind of the narrative.20:06.74Sam ShiraziAnd, yeah you know, I wanted to talk about a few things that I’ve seen in the closing days of the campaign. So on Saturday, there was a campaign in a campaign rally in Norfolk with former President Barack Obama.20:19.40Sam ShiraziIt seemed like that was pretty well attended. It seemed like that was you know he he was able to bring out decent amount a decent crowd, and they were pretty enthusiastic to see the former president. He gave his speech. I think one thing that was also note noteworthy at that event was that earlier, before Spanberger and Obama spoke, there were a decent amount of speakers. And one of them was Jay Jones, which normally is not a huge deal that the attorney general candidate speaks at a big campaign event.20:45.63Sam ShiraziI think this time it was seen as a bit of a message that the Democrats are sticking with Jay Jones. So I thought it was interesting that Jay Jones was able to speak at that event. He’s from Norfolk, so I think it makes sense that he was on stage in in in the sense of it’s his hometown and If he wasn’t on stage, then obviously the media would talk about Jay Jones not being there.21:04.63Sam ShiraziInstead, the media was talking about how Jay Jones was there. and And, you know, the Republicans used it to attack the Democrats, which you would expect them to do. But the reality is, i think at this stage, given what the governor’s race is looking like, the Democrats also understand that the attorney general race is the closest race and that, you know,21:21.63Sam ShiraziIf Jay Jones is going to win, he will need a good turnout. He’ll need turnout in Norfolk with black voters. So I think that was part of the reason President Obama was in Norfolk. And, you know, the you know it got a good amount of media coverage.21:34.36Sam ShiraziThe same day, there was another event. And, you know, Winsorne Sears, she’s been doing her events around the state as well. Obviously, when you have a foreign president come, it’s going to be a big event and it’s going to overshadow any other campaign event.21:47.93Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I’m not trying to say that Winston Merle Sears isn’t running her campaign, but there was an event in Loudoun. And, you know, to be perfectly honest, it just was not a huge event. There weren’t that many people at it. Now you could say like, look, it was in the evening on a Saturday at a small college in Loudoun County.22:06.54Sam ShiraziI’m not trying to say that that means, you know, Winston Earl Sears campaign is definitely going to lose by a huge margin. But it was kind of a striking contrast where you had the Democrats in Norfolk with a lot of thousands of people.22:17.94Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, you had the Winston Earl Sears campaign in Loudoun with, you know, maybe max like a few hundred people. And, you know, just kind of gives you a sense of what it feels like. And and a lot of people have been posting how,22:30.52Sam ShiraziFor the Republicans, this feels so much different than 2021, where 2021, there was all this momentum, people were excited on the Republican side, and the Democrats were demoralized, and they weren’t really that excited about their ticket. And I think, you know, you could argue the roles have been reversed in 2025.22:46.27Sam ShiraziA lot of that, frankly, is just the environment. I mean, I think we’ve talked about this before. The party out of the White House almost always does well in the Virginia elections because people are upset about what’s going on in D.C. with the incumbent administration.22:59.84Sam ShiraziAnd so it’s just such a, you know, you could have flagged this weeks and months ago that this was likely going to be the vibes at the end of the campaign. And I don’t really think it’s necessarily Winston-Marcel Sears’ fault or the Republicans’ fault who are running this year in Virginia.23:16.12Sam ShiraziIt’s just the reality that it is very difficult to run when you are the party in the White House in Virginia. it’s just it’s And I don’t think this year is going to be the exception. I think this year, at least at the top of the ticket, the tradition will continue that the party that is out of the White House will win the Virginia governor’s election. And it’s just very difficult to overcome those types of vibes.23:39.22Sam ShiraziI did just want to talk about one thing that I did personally. So I live in Arlington, pretty close to the border border with Falls Church and Falls Church is not too far from me. And I saw that the Spanberger campaign was doing an event in Falls Church on Sunday evening.23:53.18Sam ShiraziSo I decided to go there and this was the first event I was credentialed as a member of the press for federal fallout. I wanted to just go see what it was like, what the energy was like, what the candidate had to say.24:04.100Sam ShiraziTo be perfectly honest, it was a smaller venue. So this is a state theater in Falls Church. There was a good crowd, probably, I had to guess, a few hundred people. i think they filled the theater because it’s not a big theater.24:19.80Sam ShiraziIt was pretty packed. I think the people there were enthusiastic. Makes sense. Falls Church, very blue part of Virginia. And so that was not super surprising to me. You had Senators Kane and Warner speak for Abigail Spanberger and then Spanberger was there.24:36.15Sam ShiraziI mean, to be perfectly honest, to just give you the mechanics of how a campaign works, like, given this was a smaller venue, I mean, I don’t think the real purpose of this was to have, you know, some sort of huge rally in Virginia and Northern Virginia to get all these people motivated.24:50.09Sam Shirazii think the reality is this was more for the local press coverage to just get some press on the 11 o’clock news in in the DC media market before the election. And to that extent, I think it was successful.25:02.93Sam ShiraziYou know, it it was interesting going there. i definitely feel like the Democrats were confident. They felt like they were going to win the election, least the governor’s level.25:12.75Sam ShiraziAnd I will play you a quick clip of the Democratic nominee, Abigail Spanberger, speaking in Falls Church at the State Theater.25:32.51Sam ShiraziAll right, so that was in Falls Church, and I will just plug Falls Church for anyone who has not been there. It is a small little city in Northern Virginia, but likes to keep kind of a small town vibe, even though it’s pretty suburban and surrounded by a lot of development.25:47.11Sam ShiraziBut it’s it’s a great little city, and and even though I live on the Arlington side, I often go to Falls Church. So just a plug for Falls Church which as as a nice little city in Northern Virginia if you’re ever in the area.25:58.79Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, you heard from Congresswoman Spanberger, former Congresswoman Spanberger. She is definitely, you know, talking about this election in Virginia in some in kind of a national context.26:10.46Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, the reality is. People are going to be looking at Virginia and New Jersey and New York and California to get a sense of what’s going on. But really, Virginia and New Jersey are going to be the big ones. you know Potentially, New Jersey might be the bigger story depending on the outcome. and It’s closer. It’s possible the Republicans could win the governor’s race in New Jersey, although I still think The Democrats have the advantage in the New Jersey the governor’s race.26:33.89Sam ShiraziI think the thing with Virginia, particularly at the governor’s level, is what is the margin going to be? And I think increasingly the Democrats are feeling more and more confident that it could be a bigger win than 2017. 2017, Northam won by And this time, I do think there’s a possibility that the Democrats could win by more than 9%.26:54.93Sam ShiraziI think particularly if there’s a Democratic sweep where Democrats win by 9%, more than 9% at the top of the ticket, they win the lieutenant governor’s race. Jay Jones pulls it out in the ut attorney general race. And then the House of Delegates, Democrats pick up a bunch of seats. I think their goal is to maybe get up to 60 seats.27:12.55Sam ShiraziWe’ll see if they do that. But even if they get close to 60 seats, I think that’s going to be a good night for them House of Delegates. So if there is this kind of Democratic blue wave sweep, a big one, I think that will potentially have some ramifications.27:25.60Sam ShiraziAnd I guess the last thing I should talk about In terms of federal fallout, I mean, honestly, there’s been so much going on, we haven’t even really had time to talk about it, is the shutdown. The shutdown is still going on.27:36.42Sam ShiraziBy all indications, it will still be going on election day. So this will be a historic Virginia election, where on election day, there will be a shutdown of the federal government. I know it doesn’t get that much attention in the national news, but it is, especially in Northern Virginia, still a big story. And I don’t think you can underestimate the impact of the shutdown, even if people don’t necessarily like make their choice for governor just purely based on the shutdown.28:01.47Sam ShiraziIt is definitely in the background of the Virginia elections, particularly in Northern Virginia. a lot of the economy is influenced by what’s going on in D.C. So even if there’s a shutdown, it’s going to impact the Virginia economy in the short term, even if it eventually gets resolved. And I do think there’s a universe where, let’s say the Democrats do well in Virginia, there is the possibility that after that, perhaps the Republicans will say, like, look, we got to change course a little bit.28:28.96Sam ShiraziMaybe we’ve got to figure out what to do with the shutdown. Maybe we need to figure out what to do with these Obamacare subsidies. It’s possible. It’s possible that could happen. I’m also realistic about the way things are going in D.C. And it’s also possible the Republicans just say, like, look,28:42.56Sam ShiraziWe don’t care, we don’t wanna give the Democrats a win. And maybe the Democrats will say like, we we we we stood up, we did we fought the good fight, but we can’t keep the government close forever. So we have to figure out a solution where the government is reopened.28:55.17Sam ShiraziAnd so long story short, I do think after the election, in sometime in November, there’s a decent chance the government shutdown ends. Obviously, the Virginia elections will be long gone by that point, but it’s interesting to think about how the shutdown has also kind of been an influence in the background in this election. And yeah, I haven’t really even had time to talk about it, but that is kind of a crazy thing to think about that the government shutdown has been going on so long and it will be still happening on Election Day when voters go in to cast the ballots at the polling locations.29:26.57Sam ShiraziAll right. Well, I appreciate everyone who’s listened to Federal Fallout this whole time. i don’t plan to end the podcast after the election, at least not in the short term. I will do a bunch of follow ups after the election to kind of analyze everything.29:37.98Sam ShiraziI will release one more podcast tomorrow morning, which will be more just kind of what to expect on Election Day and election night, not so much the analysis of who’s up, who’s down.29:48.81Sam ShiraziThat was more the point of this podcast. I’ve really enjoyed doing this. I appreciate everyone who’s given me good feedback. As you can tell, it’s a bit of a labor of love for me doing this podcast. I will you know give you kind of my final thoughts tomorrow in terms of what to look for.30:04.94Sam ShiraziElection night, you can obviously follow me and see what I’m doing online and on social media. And then I will continue to be doing the podcast to analyze the results, whatever they may be. And yeah, it’s This is it. This is the final countdown. We are here. The election is just a day away. And, you know, i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. If you haven’t voted, obviously, I’d encourage you to go vote. And yeah, that this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, I am really excited to have Chaz Nuttycombe on. He is the director of State Navigate, and he’s been doing a lot of great work with the polling, with his model, with early vote tracking. So just a lot to talk with him about. So I’m really excited to have Chaz on. Thanks for joining me.00:22.66Chaz NuttycombeHey, thanks for having me on You know, i like Virginia years more than the even.00:24.57Sam ShiraziSo Chaz, before we get into it, I just wanted to see how you’re doing. I know it’s a really crazy time of the year and like, how are you balancing everything?00:36.21Chaz Nuttycombei mean, like last year, this time a year ago, was like writing a book pretty much. I wrote like maybe two or 300 something pages on state level elections, whereas, you know, I’m just writing an article and just you know, following up with folks and just making sure that you know, our our forecast is as good as it gets.00:58.27Chaz NuttycombeAnd preparing for election night with the NAVCAS, which will project the winners, as well as what is the live projected margin using the results coming in.01:09.53Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, just really at this point preparing for final final forecast stuff and and election night.01:18.08Sam ShiraziYeah, well, I know everyone’s going to be keeping a close eye and I recommend on election night having State Navigate open as well as following Chaz on social media. So I did want to get to these polls, which, you know, it’s really awesome that you are doing these polls, particularly the House of Delegates polls, because basically no one does that in a public way. And I think, you know, yeah there were polls in House District 86, House District 73. People can go look those up. But I did want to talk about the last House of Delegates poll you’re going to be releasing, which is in House District 64. So can you tell me about that poll?01:51.49Chaz NuttycombeJustin Fields’ know, first off, I want to thank the people who have donated for these polls, or know we had a sponsor for our first house delegate district poll as well02:04.27Chaz NuttycombeI am very fortunate that we were able to do this. I’m very fortunate to be working with the talented team, putting these together, people who are a lot smarter than me, frankly.02:16.07Chaz NuttycombeAnd yeah, so this last poll for a House of Delegates seat that we did is in House District 64. this is in Stafford County where Paul Mildy is running for reelection for his, you know, he just got elected first term in the house in 2023 running against Democrat Stacy Carroll.02:39.99Chaz NuttycombeAnd this one is full of federal workers. And I figured, well, you know, Sam, we got to debut this on federal fallout. given the shutdown going on especially i was interested in seeing you know if there’s maybe any kind of effect here and it does seem like there is a little bit so i’ll just kind of dive right into the numbers we’re recording this at 10 a.m on on friday happy halloween and this will be coming out toward the end of today today and then tomorrow we’re releasing our statewide03:15.20Chaz NuttycombeI’ll go over the statewide next, but let’s start on 64. So 64 is a, it’s mostly a non-college district in terms of its electorate.03:28.56Chaz NuttycombeJust like 50 some percent of voters don’t have a college degree, at least in 2024. And it is becoming increasingly diverse, both in age and race.03:42.14Chaz NuttycombeIt’s like, maybe 20 something percent black, which I was surprised by. i and then I think it’s like 10% Latino, 3% Asian, something like that.03:55.28Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, this is a very competitive seat. We have this as a race that’s going to be decided by less than 2% either way. In our forecast, we have Paul Milding narrowly favored.04:08.62Chaz NuttycombeSo the race for governor, it is 4948 spamburger this seat voted for trump by oh let’s see here i’ll have to pull up state navigate uh and go to our site to find out the number uh i believe it voted for trump by one to two percent let’s see here 64 voted for trump last year by 1.9 percent so just about two points so this district is moving, leftward on, uh, you know, in the race for governor, comes as no surprise.04:43.64Chaz Nuttycombeso that is, you know, about a three point swing towards Bamberger. and then, and that’s kind of interesting. We look at our 73 poll because there was only a two point swing towards Bamberger from 2024, in, in that result.04:57.36Chaz NuttycombeUh, and then, in the race for Lieutenant governor, John Reed has a three-point lead, 50 to 47, over Ghazala Hashmi. And then 50 to 46 lead in the race for Attorney General, where Jason Mieris has a lead over Jay Jones.05:13.94Chaz NuttycombeAnd then Paul Mildy has just a one-point lead, 49, 48, Mildy, in the actual House of Delegates race here. And I think that it’s not surprising the House of Delegates result. It’s not surprising at all.05:29.71Chaz NuttycombeYou know, Millie’s been getting just heavily outspent on the airwaves. I feel like he’s been kind of lazy in his campaign this year. I think he hasn’t really taken his race that seriously. And i think in general, the Republicans haven’t.05:45.45Chaz NuttycombeBut, you know, i I think that at the end of the day, we have him narrowly favored. Our poll has him narrowly favored. So, you know, if he wins, a win’s win. But this race is too close for comfort for him.06:00.11Chaz NuttycombeAnd I would also note that out of all of these polls that we’ve done for the House stuff, This one is definitely has the least amount of certainty.06:10.95Chaz Nuttycombeit doesn’t have as many respondents as our other two House polls. And then it was also harder to get younger voters in here and non-college and minorities.06:22.97Chaz NuttycombeWe still waited the 2024 electorate with those demographics and everything. But like in the actual raw sample, it was hard to get them. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this district flipped, quite frankly.06:36.30Chaz NuttycombeBut I think the most interesting thing here is that Mieris only has a four-point lead in this seat that Trump won by two points, right? That House is District 73 poll, he had seven-point lead in a seat that voted for Harris by one point, right? That was a very good poll for him.06:52.78Chaz NuttycombeSo he’s not really making up much ground here. And I’m wondering if It’s just because of the shutdown. I mean, but so we asked, we asked in the survey, who do people blame for the shutdown?07:07.59Chaz NuttycombeAnd I think ba if I’m remembering correctly with what we had in 86, this one’s a little bit larger with blaming Republicans. So 43% blame Trump slash Republicans in Congress.07:21.16Chaz Nuttycombe38% blame Democrats. 17% blame both. blame democrats seventeen percent blame but And then we also asked how much of an impact is the federal government shutdown going to have on your vote this year?07:35.47Chaz Nuttycombe33% impact at all. said barely any impact. impact. twenty percent said some impact twenty seven percent said large impact and thirteen percent said the biggest impact and you know when this poll comes out you’ll be able to see like you know who’s saying it’s having an impact and who isn’t but yeah so i think that is honestly unlike the 73 poll yesterday i think the 73 poll in chesterfield which is early versus meta was a good poll for the republicans relatively speaking i would say this one is a good one for the democrats even though you know know um08:23.00Chaz Nuttycombeso you know, they’re they’re down one point in the House of Delegates race. I think, relatively speaking, especially that AG number, that’s a good number for them.08:33.00Sam ShiraziYeah, so super interesting stuff. I appreciate you going through all that. I did want to kind of follow up with a specific question about the shutdown and also kind of the federal fallout from Doge earlier in the year.08:44.82Sam Shirazii mean, do you think, I mean, there’s some kernels in here. Obviously, it’s one poll, but I wanted to talk compare it also to the eighty six House of Delegates district poll where the Democrats did pretty well in that poll.08:57.59Sam ShiraziObviously, Nova, Hampton Roads feeling more of the federal fallout potentially than the Richmond area. do you think there’s this dynamic where Democrats are benefit benefiting from federal fallout shutdown?09:10.24Sam Shirazicould make an impact in the House of Delegates in and Hampton Roads, Nova, and then potentially, obviously a lot of votes in Nova potentially could save Jay Jones in the sense of people are just going to vote straight ticket because they’re mad about what’s going on with the Republicans in D.C.09:27.01Chaz NuttycombeYou know, I think that I guess the answer is maybe. I mean, it’s, you know, I’m in Richmond, so I’m a little blind to like the impacts of federal government stuff, the federal government shutdown.09:41.49Chaz NuttycombeI think that, think that may be part of it. We didn’t ask in the 86 poll how big of an impact the shutdown is having, but, you know, a plurality of respondents said they blit and blame Republicans.09:56.36Chaz Nuttycombeand, but, you know, I mean that, that Cordoza number running behind, with some Sears is mainly just because of the negative ads gone against them.10:07.13Chaz Nuttycombeso, I mean, I think that the shutdown is having an effect in some of these seats. It looks like I would say with 64 86.10:16.96Chaz Nuttycombe73, not so much. I think that’s a valid theory. i think also, you know, with 73, I think why that wasn’t a great poll for Dems is because of just the kind of, let’s let’s say, ancestral Republicans there.10:30.98Chaz NuttycombeBut, yeah.10:32.45Sam ShiraziWell, I had one other question on this poll before we move on, because I know we got so much else to cover. Both in the 86th district and in this district, I think kind of traditionally the Republicans have a turnout advantage.10:45.19Sam ShiraziAnd you noted that there’s kind of younger voters now moving into this district, more diverse district. Is there a potential that, you know, maybe if you just poll it like... It shows the Democrats are doing well, but then when the actual votes come in, the Republicans end up overperforming because the Democrats just can’t get the turnout there they need in the district.11:03.72Chaz NuttycombeYeah, I think that’s a good point. I mean, look, in our in our waiting for our statewide poll, and you can see this in other previous Virginia elections, the election is usually wider than the presidential result.11:17.66Chaz NuttycombeBut I think it’s silly to like, you know, like so so our House polls are weighted to the 2024 recall, just about. But we also look at the EV, the early vote is or the or the overall vote for this district is probably going to be even between Trump and Harris instead of like Trump plus two.11:36.72Chaz NuttycombeLooking at everything thus far, I think this is going to be a nail biter, quite frankly, in House seat. But, you know, if you’re going to wait to the recall, you got to wait to the demographics that were up that year as well by age and race.11:48.55Chaz NuttycombeI think it is... I think anyone that doesn’t has an agenda. If you’re not going to wait, you’re going wait by the overall electoral result, but not the electoral demographics. And what are you doing?12:00.60Chaz NuttycombeRight? Like that you’re, you’re, it’s like, it’s, it’s not really the like scientifically sound, I guess, for lack of a better term.12:11.36Chaz NuttycombeBut yeah, I mean, look, you know, we we’re, I would be surprised if middle day became the underdog in our forecast. but you know, he doesn’t even have like a 60% something chance of winning in our final forecast. Probably.12:26.61Chaz NuttycombeI mean, right now, as we’re recording this on Friday, he has just a 58% chance of winning, right? He’s up by 1.3%. and i mean, his, his early vote looks quite frankly, pretty bad, from everything that I’ve seen.12:42.100Chaz Nuttycombeuh and and this is part of why you know i think that he’s he may get caught sleeping at the wheel election day or election night i should say but you know we’ll see i think at the end of the day he’ll probably still be favoring our forecast by election day so but yeah13:03.48Sam ShiraziAll right. Well, super interesting stuff. Really appreciate doing these House of Delegates polls. As I mentioned, you know but you basically never get them, at least publicly released. So just appreciate all the work State Navigate has done and you know your team has done and the donors to to get the these polls out. And I thought you did a good job doing one in Hampton Roads, one in Richmond, one in Nova, so we can compare and contrast.13:24.71Sam ShiraziSo I did want to turn to the statewide poll because obviously most people who aren’t following the ins and outs of the House of Delegates are probably more interested in the statewide numbers, particularly for governor and attorney general.13:35.79Sam ShiraziSo I will turn it over to you to go over the statewide poll.13:40.34Chaz NuttycombeYeah, absolutely. I’m going to skip the executive approval stuff. Obviously, we all know that Governor Yunkin is going to be, you know, in a good place compared to Donald Trump.13:52.66Chaz NuttycombeSo those numbers will be out. I know that everybody’s just interested in the top line, so we can go over the top lines here. So the overall vote in the governor race in our poll,14:07.77Chaz Nuttycombeis 54 to 41 for Spanberger. 54% of vote likely voters say they’re voting for Spanberger. 41% spanberger forty one percent save air voting for Sears and 4% do not know. And then the race for Lieutenant Governor, it’s a little bit closer, but not by much. 53% say they are supporting Hashmi.14:26.42Chaz Nuttycombe41% say they are supporting Reed and 5% don’t know. they are supporting read and five percent don’t know And then obviously the closest race is that for attorney general.14:38.10Chaz NuttycombeAnd it’s closer than compared to our previous one. And I’ll talk about a little bit of kind of a change in methodology or weighting really for this one compared to the previous one.14:48.88Chaz NuttycombeBut for attorney general, is 49% Jones, 46% Mieris, 5% don’t know. forty six percent mieris five percent don’t know And then in the House of Delegates generic ballot 53% say they will support the Democratic candidates 42% say will support the Republican candidates so three point lead for Jones 11 for the House of Delegates generic ballot 12 for Hashmi 13 for Spanberger.15:20.39Chaz NuttycombeWe also asked the about which of the following issues would have the biggest impact on your decision of who you’ll vote for in the upcoming election. Select up to three.15:31.03Chaz NuttycombeSo this is kind of the thing that separates our poll from these others, right? I think like something that is annoying that I see is like when pollsters just ask, what is your most important issue? It’s like, okay, they’re going to select the economy, right? It’s always going to be economy or like something like that.15:47.14Chaz Nuttycombewhat is your most important issue and they don’t actually ask more often than not like what is what is actually going to have an impact on your vote this year right so we asked that and let people select up to three uh so we had inflation cost of living protecting democracy health care immigration crime and public safety education transgender policies jobs political violence and something else so uh 53 of respondents selected inflation slash cost of living 44 selected protecting democracy 42 selected care selected immigration selected crime selected education16:33.63Chaz Nuttycombeseventeen percent selected transgender policies sixteen percent like a job sixteen percent so i could political violence and four percent selected something else so this it looks like it’s pretty good for the Dems I mean spamber has been just pounding on the issue of inflation slash cost of living Sears who has made transgender stuff the vocal point of her campaign you know only uh 17 percent of17:04.83Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, respondents selected that as one of their issues. So, and, you know, protecting democracy being up there, that’s probably going to more Dem-leaning, I think,17:15.94Chaz Nuttycombethat’s a good sign for them. Also, immigration only being at 30 and crime and public safety being at 25, I think is also a sign of the changing electorate compared to last year, right?17:28.42Chaz NuttycombeImmigration, not really as salient compared to 2024. That was an issue that Republicans won on. And and Yeah, so those were the horse race questions we had.17:42.96Chaz NuttycombeSo a little something different from this poll compared to the previous one. I’ll have, I guess, a little bit of a mea culpa. So we waited the previous poll between 2017 and 2021 exit poll.17:56.38Chaz NuttycombeHowever, upon rereading Catalyst, which is a Dem group, but you know their their data is very neutral on this project. They put something together talking about what happened in Virginia in 2021 and have a lot of comparisons between previous Virginia electorates going as far back as 2009.18:18.37Chaz NuttycombeAnd the biggest difference is that our previous sample was too college educated. Probably narrow majority of likely voters this year are going to not have a college degree.18:33.18Chaz Nuttycombeand then another difference is the way we weighted party ID. our independents were more democratic leaning, uh, than the previous one, for the previous sample.18:45.27Chaz Nuttycombeso what I did is I still looked at, a, uh, so, uh, instead of looking at the, uh, exit polls, which do not push party ID.18:56.19Chaz NuttycombeChris Price- What I did in our elections coordinator Michael Foley did was we looked at previous ap vote cast data, these are these big let’s kind of say exit polls with raw data and to play around with it, so we use the same way that we create our lb samples just thereabouts.19:15.96Chaz NuttycombeAnd we’re able to look at the AP vote cast in Virginia in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2024. And then just looking at previous Gallup quarterly numbers to look at where the likely party ID is going to be.19:33.55Chaz NuttycombeSo instead of just waiting by the non-pushed party ID, non-pushed meaning like without leaners, right? You know, we asked a follow-up question that people say who are independent the first time.19:44.79Chaz Nuttycombewhich party you generally lean toward right so we’re now waiting on this that follow-up with like the total the cumulative amount of like how many people say they are you know they affiliate themselves with the democratic party or they lean toward a democratic party same with republican or neither so right now we have a plus eight party id So 49% of likely voters say that they identify with the Democratic Party, they lean toward it. 41% with Republicans and 10% neither.20:19.75Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, I feel better with this approach compared to the previous one. Just given, you know, the AP Vocats data and the Catalyst data, I’m glad that I reread that.20:32.79Chaz Nuttycombeand Because like the 2017 exit poll is hot garbage, pretty quite frankly. I mean, it was totally inaccurate. It had like 20% black, for example, when in actuality in 2017 and 2021, it was 17% black.20:48.48Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, we’ve also just changed a little bit of weights all around with, you know, race and education, age as well. So our overall like demographics, I guess, kind of got more friendly to Republicans, but like with the party ID, which was also not quite accurate in those, you know, those exit polls look like, we changed it to looking at AP VoteCast data and Gallup data for their national quarterly stuff.21:18.80Chaz NuttycombeAnd so like a D plus A party ID would track pretty much with where things are expected to land, given that Trump is in the White House and is deeply unpopular and where things were in previous AP Votecast stuff.21:33.09Chaz Nuttycombei posted I posted those numbers on Twitter, as well as where the Gallup quarterly numbers are, which I think was like D plus seven in Q3 nationally, which is higher than Q3 2017. yeah. that’s so yeah so that’s And at the end of the day, what’s going to change it the most, were talking about waiting for like, you know, those top lines are going to be that party stuff.21:58.35Chaz Nuttycombebut still the demographics for this are, I guess kind of more friendly to Republicans compared to the previous one. Uh, cause we actually went with the hard data, the voter file, all that sort of thing.22:09.17Chaz Nuttycomberather than these like kind of messy exit polls, particularly the 2017 exit poll, which is very messy.22:15.66Sam ShiraziYeah, so super interesting stuff. And I mean, I really appreciate giving people a breakdown of how you came up with those numbers. And I thought it was interesting, even though, you know, you tried to make some more favorable assumptions to the Republicans, or or at least kind of trying to make it more balanced.22:29.83Sam ShiraziThe outcome hasn’t really changed that much from your previous poll. And I wanted to ask you about that, because when you when your previous poll came out and it showed a good result for the Democrats, I think You got some flack, people saying, oh, yeah you know you’re obviously like biased, and which I don’t – I know State Navigate has to be neutral, and I know you really know Virginia well, and you want to be right. I think that’s your number one goal.22:50.35Sam ShiraziAnd you know since your poll, there was the YouGov poll, which found Spanberger up by like 15, which also is a universe where things could be going pretty well for the Democrats. Yeah. you know Could you explain you know why you think this poll makes sense in the context of a lot of other pollsters being very, i would say, not politically conservative, but just kind of, I think, shell-shocked from 2024. They really don’t want to get it wrong again, and they are trying to make a lot of assumptions that are very favorable to the Republicans, showing Spanberger’s still up, but just not maybe as much as your poll is showing.23:24.96Chaz NuttycombeSure, absolutely. Look, my motto when it comes to forecasting, I guess now polling as we get into this is I don’t care who wins. I care about being right.23:36.82Chaz NuttycombeRight. At the end of the day, my job as a forecaster is to look at previous data that can inform the present and look at, you know, obviously current data but that can inform the future.23:53.16Chaz Nuttycombeso I’m a student of Virginia history in a lot of ways. but favorite class in college but or one of my favorite classes in college, but you know also not just like actual, you know like the kind of thing you learn in class, but like also, you know it’s important to compare to previous, you know, editorial elections or really any election in Virginia.24:14.84Chaz NuttycombeThe party ID in Virginia in 2024 with pushed respondents, you know, that meaning like you include the leaners and everything, right?24:28.44Chaz Nuttycombewas like D plus three. You have a lot of pollsters who like, bless their heart, are waiting to 2021, 2021, 2021, which I think is a mistake because in every single gubernatorial election over the last pretty much 50 years, the out party has had a turnout advantage.24:49.11Chaz NuttycombeIt can be a slight advantage, but or it can be a big advantage right talk about 2009 for a big advantage talk about you know 2013 for only a slight advantage right republicans still had that turnout advantage compared to the previous presidential election right so i’ll just read all these party id numbers with ap votecast stuff it was d plus 10 in 2020 plus in uh 2018 for six in twenty eighteen Uh, that was with a lot of independents though, who probably skewed toward the Dems. That was 12% independent.25:22.77Chaz Nuttycombeit was R plus three in 2021. so for me to, like, I’m not one to herd. I don’t care what other pollsters have to say.25:35.05Chaz Nuttycombei just look at the previous data and look at like, okay, using the actual hard data, And, you know, i’ve I’ve learned as, you know, compared the previous one, that exit polls are not really good hard data.25:49.25Chaz NuttycombeBut, you know, like looking at the actual hard data, this is probably what the electorate is going to look like, I think it’s, it’s hackish to say that this electorate is going to be like anything better, anything better than like,26:08.84Chaz NuttycombeHarris plus six. I think that you have found the last quaalude and you’re riding that to high heaven if you think that this electorate is going to be redder than 2024.26:24.49Chaz NuttycombeYou can say like, okay, well, maybe it’s only Harris plus seven. and I think there’s reasonable argument for that. That is only a hair bluer, kind of like 2013, right? And the inverse of that.26:34.64Chaz Nuttycombewhere it was only a little bit redder. But, you know, especially like 2021, though, where in demographics and partisanship, it was, you know, everybody was angry at Biden.26:48.23Chaz NuttycombeAnd so you had a lot of Republicans come out in droves. I was at the Jason Mieris rally, actually, kind of on this note, I think about 2021. I think, you know, I’ll just, like I tweeted out because it was very apt that you know the room was probably don’t know not even a third of the size that it was in 2021 yonkin had a rally there at this mieres thing it was so quiet you could hear a mouse fart and you know i had was standing right next to i don’t know like some lady with chesterfield county republican party that she was talking to i think someone on mark early’s campaign and she was saying like you know we aren’t really getting27:29.27Chaz Nuttycombelike many volunteers this year. We need volunteers, I guess, because, you know, Donald Trump’s in the White House. And so people kind of want to sit out. I mean, this is just a thing, right? It goes against Virginia history to be like, oh, yeah, we’re waiting this to 2021.27:43.95Chaz NuttycombeThis is what, like, this is another 2021. Now, that being said, that being said maybe in the statewide margin for ag it can actually be closer to 2021 or jason meares gets a narrow victory but it’s not going to come from like a very republican friendly electorate it’s going to come from him winning over democrats in our current poll and our previous poll he’s getting seven percent of spamburger voters right and then if there’s like two or three percent28:12.61Chaz NuttycombeYou know, like, like’s say, let’s say he’s, he’s capped at seven now, because this poll was conducted, you know, about a week after the previous one. Let’s say he’s capped at seven. He probably needs like two, maybe 3% of Spanberger voters to not vote for the AG base. base. And obviously you can play around with that math. If it like, okay, then maybe he gets 8% of Spanberger supporters or something. Right.28:35.21Chaz NuttycombeI think at the end of the day, like the, the point of no return, for me, Aris is like, if Spanberger is winning by, i don’t know, 10, maybe, maybe 11, depending on how these undecideds break.28:51.44Chaz NuttycombeRight. for where he can’t win. I would be surprised, very, very surprised. I think it’s possible, but I just have hard time seeing it where Spanberger is winning by like 12 and me Aris is pulling it out by an ad highbrow or something.29:07.40Chaz NuttycombeRight. But yeah, I mean, look, I think it is, you know, and and anybody who looks at polling can tell you it is good that there isn’t hurt. We have these buckets of Republican pollsters who, are trying to do, are trying to satisfy their clients, and putting out numbers that are not in reality.29:28.37Chaz NuttycombeBamberger only has like a two 5% lead. right Cough Cough Trafalgar putting Donna Charles on the ballot, getting 4%.29:40.65Chaz NuttycombeBowtie boy over here just, you know, puts out very, very funny polls. So, and then you have the second bucket, which is like the colleges who are doing these weightings to like, you know, maybe they’re doing 2024 2021.29:56.81Chaz NuttycombeNot all of them. I don’t think, I don’t think that GMU weighted 2021 2024. and think that’s how they got spamburger plus 12. and then you have these other buckets which that we are in where spammers lead by double digits more often than not that has a democratic turnout advantage which would be more in line with virginia history for when the republican is in the white house so you pretty much have three buckets of these polls30:27.42Chaz Nuttycombeand one of those three buckets is going to be right. so, you know, we’ll have to wait and see, where things land and which one of those buckets is right.30:40.20Sam ShiraziWell, it’ll certainly be interesting when the results start coming in, what ends up happening. I did want to shift a little bit to your forecast, although I will bring up the polls as necessary.30:51.08Sam ShiraziI will go through governorne Governor and Attorney General first, although I did want to spend more time on Attorney General. So the State Navigate forecast, really good. Recommend everyone go take a look at it.31:01.72Sam ShiraziFor governor, it’s pretty dramatic. It says at the top, Democrats are virtually certain to win the race for governor. You give Abigail Spamberger a 98% chance of winning.31:12.32Sam ShiraziYou say that she will get, you’re projecting her to have 55.6% of the vote versus 44.4% for Winston Earl Sears. And I should say that this is as of time of recording, these slightly change with more polls and other things.31:27.72Sam ShiraziThat’s around where your poll is. i mean, could you explain Just, you know, how the forecast is giving such a certain number for Spanberger to win.31:38.71Chaz NuttycombeYeah, absolutely. And look, you can go to our website to read more on our methodology. you know, we have a certain percentage of the weighting towards fundamentals. And, you know, looking at like the current economy, pretty much since the start of a presidency, looking at approval ratings for the presidency.31:57.11Chaz NuttycombeThat kind of and so that’s part of why, like, you know, Jones has a narrow lead in our forecast, for example. so because I’ve been burned by polls before, so it’s like, no, we’re not just going to build a purely poll model. That would, that would be a polling average. Right.32:13.20Chaz Nuttycombeso we actually look at the fundamentals of partisanship, looking at, uh, you know, economic indicators like, uh, change in inflation from the beginning of the presidency, uh, through current, uh, changes in unemployment, that sort of thing.32:29.94Chaz Nuttycombeand you can read all about it. By going to state navigate that org slash Virginia and go into our articles and looking at our methodology. But yeah, I mean, yeah, look, Spanberger is going to governor.32:40.62Chaz NuttycombeThat’s just a fact of life. If you think that Spanberger isn’t going to be governor, you know, i’ve I’ve got a nice lifelong house for you on Tanger Island.32:51.20Chaz Nuttycombewhich will totally not sink in your lifetime, right? that’s the That’s the Virginian little joke there. But yeah, so I mean, she’s going to win. The question is by how much Spanberger’s going to win the governor race by. And the Republicans know that.33:06.30Chaz NuttycombeThe Republicans know that, all of them in Virginia, right? Like it was in the summer where Terry Pilko was like, we’re just trying to make this 2001 where we get the AG to scrape by, right? So yeah.33:18.49Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, not a whole lot to say about governor, given given those odds. I did want to just briefly talk about lieutenant governor because it doesn’t get a lot of attention of the statewide, of the three statewide races. you say or State Navigate says Democrats are strong favorites to win the race for lieutenant governor.33:32.87Sam ShiraziYou give Ghazala Hashmi an 89% chance. She is projected to get 52.2% the vote versus for John Reed, 45.8%. Again, this time of recording. point eight percent again time of recording I think the question for LG, and there’s been some polls where Hashmi is only up by like 2%. I mean, I think that’s mainly name ID. Most people just expect straight voting in the LG race.33:55.72Sam ShiraziI mean, how much ticket splitting do you realistically see in the LG race?33:59.52Chaz NuttycombeYeah, I mean, look, Abigail Spanberger becoming governor is as certain as his son coming up in the morning, whereas Hashmi becoming lieutenant governor is as likely as it is, you know, each day that it’ll rain in Seattle.34:13.66Chaz NuttycombeThere are some sunny days, right? There’s a one in 10 chance where Reid wins. and so I’ve seen those one in 10 chances happen. You do have some polls where, you know, Hashmi only has a narrow lead.34:26.66Chaz NuttycombeBut they’re more undecideds and they absolutely lean Spamburger. And, you know, really have much ticket splitting in our poll. I think like Hashmi, if I had to guess, maybe 4% of the most run but runs behind Spamburger. I would be kind of surprised if it were more than that.34:43.53Chaz NuttycombeBut I think predicting ticket, I mean, look, predicting ticket splitting for any of these races is really hard. But I would say, especially for LG, because it’s just like you have so many undecideds.34:54.81Chaz Nuttycombebut yeah, we have, you know, Hashmi leading by six, Spanberger leading by 11. So we’ve got like a five point gap, in our forecast. So I, you know, I can see that happening.35:05.41Chaz Nuttycombequestion is whether those undecideds are gonna, you know, who are voting for Spanberger are gonna go to, uh, Hashmi or whether, you know, to John Reed’s campaigns slogan or or whatever in their advertising, are they gonna want a check on Richmond because they know that Spanberger is gonna win, right?35:21.98Chaz NuttycombeSo, but either way, i mean, Hashmi is incredibly likely to become the Lieutenant Governor.35:26.24Sam ShiraziYeah, not not too much of a surprise there. I did want to spend or ask specific questions about attorney general race. Obviously, that’s going to be the big statewide race in terms of the results coming in. We didn’t necessarily think it would be that close, but obviously in the last month, the change the race has dramatically changed.35:42.86Sam ShiraziStill, you say, or the State Navigate model says Democrats are moderate favorites to win the race for attorney general. Jay Jones is projected to get 51.2% of the vote, and Meares is projected at this stage to get 48.8%. Obviously, that could change before Election Day.35:59.86Sam ShiraziIn terms of the percentage of who might – the chances of who’s going to win, you give Jay Jones 68% chance. You give Meares 32%, so about 2 to 1 for Jones. think people – i think people I’ve seen a lot of people saying like a lot of polls are coming out, you know, Miara’s is like 48, 46, or it’s Miara’s like 46, 45. And so almost every poll except yours, Miara’s is typically up in the polls.36:23.00Sam ShiraziAnd so I think a lot of, People who just look at the straight polls are like, well, yeah, Miara’s is going to win because he’s like up in every poll. I did want to point out in 2021, in most of the polls, except maybe some of the Republican polls, Herring was up in in most of the polls. So I do think it’s more complicated. As you mentioned, ticket splitting is super complicated.36:41.70Sam ShiraziIn a race like this, it’s going to be like ultra complicated. You know, given the kind of conventional wisdom, like Miara’s has the money, he has the scandal, all this stuff. you know Why do you still at this stage give Jay Jones a 2-1 odds that he’s going to win?36:55.72Chaz NuttycombeWell, look, it has to do with the fundamentals part of the model, right? I mean, again, we just did polling, a polling average, but yeah, the units would be ahead. But I’ve been burned by polls too many times before. So using actual fundamentals and previous ticket splitting history is is useful.37:12.08Chaz NuttycombeGoing back to, i think I think our model for previous ticket splitting, I think it goes back to 2005. So, but, you know, there’s probably going to be more tickets. I think we’re probably going to see as much but a difference in the margin between go and AG, if I had to guess, as just about there was in 2013, when there was an 11-point difference between lieutenant governor race and attorney general race.37:38.92Chaz NuttycombeBut yeah, I mean, look, Mieris has skyrocketed in our forecast for the last few weeks. I mean, bar bar none. that’s That’s a fact of life. Jones has been losing a lot of ground.37:48.77Chaz NuttycombeI mean, Mieris had like what, 7%, 8% chance at the beginning the month. He’s now at a 32% chance. jones is only ahead by what uh 2.2.3 right and look our poll is going to come out uh it hasn’t even added to the model uh you know this poll that is right off to you it will tomorrow and then you know there’s atlas intel coming out and emerson coming out and you know we will we will see maybe miris can take ahead38:21.60Chaz NuttycombeBut, you know, I think at the end of the day, the thing that’s hurting him the most is, like, you know, the the fact that Spamberg is leading by, like, 11.38:31.11Chaz NuttycombeSo, but look, I mean, Mieric is probably going if I had to guess, he’s probably going to be around, like, you know, he’s probably going to be at least a 35% chance, maybe, like, 40-something percent chance that he wins.38:45.25Chaz NuttycombeIf I had to guess where things... move in our model toward election day, but I don’t know because I i don’t know what other pollsters are showing. don’t even know what our poll or our model is going to show when we add our poll and take out our old one, right?39:00.00Chaz NuttycombeSo at the end of the day, i wouldn’t be surprised if Mieris won. I wouldn’t, right? But I think to your point where Mieris is typically getting 46% of the vote,39:13.86Chaz Nuttycombethat is i think the question are the is the shy j jones voter theory real right and i think there’s like some evidence of that you know there’s a typical non-response bias among candidates or supporters of of voters of candidates i should say not supporters but voters of candidates who have scandals i’ve the only situation that it hasn’t happened in my time of looking at elections is the governor race in North Carolina last year where the polls got it right on the margin.39:55.11Chaz NuttycombeBut yeah, I mean, look, Mieris is favored to win a lot of Harris counties or counties that flip from Biden biden to Trump. He’s favored to win Prince Edward County by almost five points. He’s favored to win Surrey County by almost two, Virginia Beach by one and a half.40:12.67Chaz NuttycombeStafford by almost four. Montgomery by almost one. Radford by almost two. Chesapeake, he’s up by about half a percentage point.40:23.95Chaz NuttycombeAnd then, you know, he’s only down half a percentage point in like James City County. So this thing is going to come down to the wire. I mean, I would be surprised if this race is called unless people are very fast with reporting results at the registrar’s offices.40:38.90Chaz NuttycombeI’d be surprised if this race is called before 9 PM or like 8 30.40:45.23Chaz NuttycombeSo this thing is going to be pretty tight, I think. But yeah.40:50.89Sam ShiraziAll right. Yeah. I mean, statewide AG, everyone’s going to keep their eyes on that on election night. I did want to also talk about House of Delegates. I’ve said this before. It doesn’t get a lot of coverage, but I think these are super fascinating races. State Navigate does a good job covering the House of Delegates.41:07.40Sam ShiraziIn terms of your model, Democrats are overwhelmingly favorites to win a majority in the House of Delegates. I don’t think anyone is really, you know, sitting up thinking, are the Democrats going to win a majority? I think it’s pretty obvious the Democrats are going to win a majority.41:19.95Sam ShiraziYou’re giving them a 94% chance of winning the chamber with a 12% chance of a supermajority. Republicans only have a 6% chance of winning it. you You know, the the model will kind of change as the final polls are entered. So but at a time of recording, you have the Democrats flipping eight seats.41:38.39Sam ShiraziAnd I think the question specifically in the House Delegates that I’m grappling with, you know, I’ve kind of given up doing the race specific stuff because I think some of these are just so close. And I told people, you know, I defer to you. and mean, my prediction is Democrats are going to win a majority, but go look at State Navigate and go look at Chaz for the specific projections.41:57.83Sam ShiraziIn some of these races, I mean, literally, you know, we know it’s probably going to come down to a few hundred votes, potentially a few dozen votes. I mean, at that point, like, how do you really project? I know you have the model, but like, like, how do you how do you pick? Because for some of these, it’s so hard to to get a sense of, okay, who’s going to pull it out by like a few hundred votes?42:18.42Chaz NuttycombeYeah, so look, we use a whole bunch of stuff. We use previous presidential, we use previous house, we look at fundraising, we look at trends and you know any any non-public data that kind of goes in on the back end.42:34.96Chaz Nuttycombeyeah, mean, so yeah i mean I feel pretty good about the forecast, but look, I know kind of a claim to fame I have in Virginia is, oh, he got every single state, let’s say district right in the Virginia General Assembly in 2023.42:47.28Chaz NuttycombeI don’t think that’s going to happen this year. Point blank period. I don’t think I’m going to get it You know, that in this forecast I worked on with Jack, my development director, i don’t think we’re going to get 100 out of 100. And the reason why is because it’s like very hard to predict these gubernatorial years in terms of like what the electorate is going to look like, right?43:05.59Chaz Nuttycombewhere it’s like 2023 or like, you know, just any election where you have both the Senate and house out before that presidential, you already have like two whole elections to work with, uh, to where you’re able to see what the electorate is looking like in these, years where the presidency isn’t on the ballot. You’re able to see just how fired up the party out of power is.43:25.25Chaz NuttycombeRight. and you, you want to look more on methodology. You can go to the methodology article. you know, I feel our goal. has always been from the beginning to just get 97 seats, seats. And I’m happy.43:38.70Chaz Nuttycombegubernatorial years previously, Jack and I worked on a forecast for the house and that got, uh, 2021 and that got 96, right? 2017, when I did this, it’s a hobby. I got 96, right? If I get a 97, with, or in this, you know, Jack and I get a 97 in this forecast, then we’re happy.43:59.80Chaz NuttycombeSo there are like five seats that I feel like I would not be terribly surprised that they went the other way. one of them is actually Ken Taylor’s.44:10.42Chaz NuttycombeI wouldn’t be terribly surprised if she won. Democrats aren’t great at giving out black voters out of the Affematics. But Petersburg is seeming to catch up a little bit in the EV in the last stretch of this campaign.44:23.15Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, I mean, we have, Kim Taylor with like only a 20% chance of winning 21 be exact as we’re supporting. So still a heavy underdog. But I wouldn’t be surprised despite the forecast that one going the other way, just knowing what goes on south of the Appomattox River.44:41.19Chaz NuttycombeSame thing with Carrie Poiner. She’s got Hopewell. If you read a great article I did on what I call the curse of Hopewell, it pretty much always bolts to the right, trends to the right of the state in the gubernatorial years.44:54.76Chaz NuttycombeBlack voters in Hopewell just do not come out these gov years, right? Like Ralph Northam barely won Hopewell in 2017.45:02.44Chaz NuttycombeBut it actually didn’t trend to the right in 2021. So maybe the curse is broken. We’ll see. We have Carrie Coiner as a slight underdog, down by two and a half, 64% chance she loses.45:15.34Chaz NuttycombeThe other ones that I would not be terribly surprised they went the other way Milday, Green, and Higgins.45:26.51Chaz NuttycombeSo that’s 30, 69, and 64. So they’re like, I think on a worst case scenario night, it’s kind of like, Kevin Nielsen, 2021 to where like you know we had a 5248 Republican House right became by a different path I had Rodney will it and when could I just losing. Kevin Nielsen, And then you know the forecast also showed Kim Taylor and AC cordoza losing instead all of them one. Kevin Nielsen, And we still have the 50 to 40 Republican House, but just by a different path so worst case scenario, I think our forecast only gets 95 seats right, which I would not be very happy with.46:01.52Chaz NuttycombeKevin Nielsen, But. you know the goal is 97 that is my floor the floor i have for you know the kind of tradition i have now of like whether i get to open a nice bottle of scotch and you know i get it from scotland i was just there this summer and and picked up a bottle in glasgow and it looks delicious i only get to open the bottle if our forecast gets 97 seats right and all three statewide contest right.46:31.76Chaz NuttycombeSo we’ll see if I get to open the bottle or not.46:33.81Sam ShiraziWell, I hope for your sake you get to have some nice scotch on election night if your forecast doesn’t end up being correct. And yeah, so I wanted to ask you kind of a combination question because you had posted about this theory you had, and I also wanted to ask about early vote.46:40.37Chaz Nuttycombeyeah46:49.97Sam ShiraziSo I think a lot of... you know, election forecasters and stuff are kind of stuck in 2020 when they think, you know, early vote is super Democratic and Election Day is super Republican. think every year since 2020, there’s kind of been this depolarization of voting methods.47:06.27Sam Shiraziyou know it’s hard I think election day is always this wild card. You don’t know who’s going to show up. 2021, there was a bit of a rural surge that really helped Yunkin win.47:16.43Sam Shirazii think there’s a possibility this year that if Democrats can get out younger voters, they can get out black voters, there could be more of a blue surge. But then again, those people might not show up because Democrats just can’t get them out.47:29.02Sam ShiraziCould you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in the early vote and then what you think election day might look like?47:35.72Chaz NuttycombeYeah, satellite Saturday is going to coming tomorrow. Be interested to see what happens in these especially large blue localities and everything. You know, I think Democrats have a Loudoun problem, and I think they know that, particularly with Asian voters there in southeast Loudoun.47:55.26Chaz NuttycombeQuestion is if they come out on Election Day, maybe they come out on Election Day and the Dems are fine Loudoun. David Price- Republicans, I think, are definitely more struggling the early vote you know, despite the satellite delays in like Richmond I mean Richmond still at 63% or really day. David Price- amount votes in 2024.48:14.34Chaz Nuttycombeit’s same day amount of vote in twenty twenty four That’s running just a little bit behind Hanover at 67%. The statewide average is, or so sorry, not statewide average, of statewide as a whole for same day amount of votes cast early this day in 2024, give or take a day, is 61% as it is reporting.48:35.26Chaz NuttycombeEven though there are these delays in Fairfax and Prince William, Fairfax at 56 and a half, Prince William at 57.4. But these like localities where Republicans really need good turnout are not really coming out strong. Like there aren’t any satellite delays or anything in Campbell. It’s at 59 half.48:52.06Chaz NuttycombeAndrew Bickford, Bedford 60, Roanoke 61. That’s just running even with the state. And then like you have all these Southwest counties, you know, Buchanan at 47, Dickinson 52, Wise 49, Lee 49, Scott 49, right? So you can, and then, you know, but so it’s just like these big counties that are Republican leaning, that are populous.49:17.82Chaz Nuttycombethat were pretty much the reason why Yunkin won 2021, they’re not really having this EV advantage compared to this time a year ago. And look, the EV is probably on the low end, going to be like 40%. For like overall electorate, early votes probably going to be like 40% of the entire electorate.49:39.08Chaz NuttycombeI would guess probably going to be closer 44 to 46%.49:45.12Chaz NuttycombeBut it’s hard, like trying to think about election day is hard. But that being said, I feel like it’s pretty ingrained that we’re going to get lower turnout compared to 2021. It could be anywhere between 46 to 53 percent.50:02.76Chaz NuttycombeIf I were to guess right now, it’s a big range, but it’s just hard to think about who’s coming out on election day. And election day is going to interesting. I mean, Mieris is going to win election day, but Spanberger might. In 2024, election day was Trump plus five.50:20.18Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, it was about 10 or 11 percent right of the statewide result. But this election day has been getting bluer and bluer as, you know, Republicans have been doing a better job at getting out their voters to vote early.50:36.59Chaz NuttycombeAnd keep in mind, it was like 2020 when we had the beginning of this, you know, expansion and access to early voting, right? 45 days of early voting and everything. 2024, 52% of the entire Virginia electorate voted early. Again, and when i say voted early, it’s either by in-person or by mail, early in-person or early by mail.50:58.94Chaz NuttycombeSo we’re probably tracking closer to 2024, guess, because like 2021, only 36 or 37%.51:03.70Chaz Nuttycombeonly thirty six or thirty seven percent of the overall electorate voted early. So, yeah. And here’s the thing about election day. i mean, besides like, I’m not expecting like enormous turnout on like 2021.51:18.24Chaz NuttycombeBut what what I think is going to be interesting just something that kind of popped in my head is like, there are more low and mid propensity Democrats than there are Republicans in Virginia, right?51:31.61Chaz NuttycombeThat’s just fact. But Republicans have done a better job of getting their low and mid prop voters out to vote early. But I think they have kind of a structural advantage and that they have had a a motivating reason for these folks to come out and vote early because of Biden.51:52.10Chaz NuttycombeRight. Through twenty twenty one through twenty twenty four. It’s like, hey, let’s go stick at the Biden. Come out and go early. Right. And so it’s like those Democrats, those low mid prop Democrats who are probably.52:06.44Chaz Nuttycombei don’t know how much of the overall electorate they’re going to make up, but, you know, questions whether they come out, they didn’t really have a reason to come out to vote in 2021 through 2023. Maybe they came out for one two at the most or maybe none.52:21.94Chaz NuttycombeAnd maybe some of them didn’t even come out in 2024 because they’re like, well, I don’t want to vote for Kamala because Kamala’s just Biden, right? I think that’s fair. And so question is whether they come out this year.52:35.51Chaz NuttycombeThose folks who haven’t come out since like 2020 and early voting in person and all this is new to them. They’re like, okay, I early voted during mail or by mail in 2020 because of COVID, right?52:47.46Chaz NuttycombeAre they going to come out on election day as they did before? Like, are they pissed off with Trump to where they’re like, well, I guess I got to go vote. now right i’m interested to see if that’s the case because that would kind of turn the whole narrative in lessons of last year of like higher turnout benefits republicans right which i think there is a very very uh there’s a lot of concrete evidence for that right but i’m wondering if those people get off the sidelines come out if they don’t i think it is an indictment of the coordinated campaign uh virginia53:22.26Chaz Nuttycombebecause you would think they would have a better time at getting them out by election day. But yeah, so but you know, look, on election day, we’re gonna dial up the registrars, me and my, my good friend and our political, or sorry, our data science chair, Charlie Kramer, gonna dial up the registrars and tracking turnout.53:46.84Chaz NuttycombeIn some places by the precinct level, most places just by the county level. And so we’ll have a sheet. I’m going to be doing a YouTube live stream throughout the day. going to call it Nuttycomb Watch, you know, and we’ll be talking about, you know, votes as they come in throughout the day and trying to look at, okay, what does this mean for a few hours from now on the polls close?54:09.19Sam ShiraziYeah, well, I mean, I know you’re probably the most invaluable resource on Election Day. I mean, most of what I’ll be doing is just posting what you post because I think, you know, you know this stuff inside out. I think we’re really going to have some interesting in election days. Always interesting. There’s always a lot of speculation. We’ll obviously get the results on election night.54:28.87Sam ShiraziI guess the last question i have, and I really appreciate you taking the time to go over this. I think this is you know super, super interesting stuff. I mean, what are kind of some things you’re looking for on election night and or kind of what are like last thoughts you want to share before you know we get the results on Tuesday night?54:44.12Chaz Nuttycombelook maybe if you do not have state navigate on your screen you’re going to be behind i promise you cross my heart hope to die you’re going to left behind with uh knowing who won i feel good about our ability to confidently and quickly call the races uh for the winners of election night we have a lot of great interactives to where you’re going to be able to see you know, the live projected art margin, current margin, all that sort of thing that our development director, Jack Kirsten, has been working on.55:18.97Chaz NuttycombeAnd yeah, I mean, that’s that’s really it. Please come to the site and look, I would very much appreciate it. You know, if your audience has been enjoying the work that State Navigate’s been doing, please donate. It’s tax deductible.55:37.10Chaz NuttycombeAnd most importantly, it’ll help go to buying all of our staff pizza on election night. For those who have been following my stuff since the scene analysis days 2021, you know, the the pitch has always been like, buy us a pizza we can get from a room back when I was in college.55:56.18Chaz NuttycombeAnd now, you know, I’ve got a staff all over the country. So it’s like, All right, well, going to buy everybody pizza. So please donate to State Navigate. It’ll go to that.56:07.02Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, we are staffed and working very hard on this election. We’ve been working hard in these other states that we’re going to be looking at next year and working hard at getting out these other states over the next several months.56:22.64Sam ShiraziYeah, well, I definitely second that. And I second going to State Navigate, checking out all the resources, following Chaz. Really, really great resources. So Chaz, thanks so much for joining us and giving us your final thoughts before the election.56:35.73Chaz NuttycombeThanks so much for having me on, Sam.56:37.44Sam ShiraziAll right. And this has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out the 2025 Virginia Election. This is a bonus episode where we will go over the final campaign finance reports before the election. And the reason that there was these reports is so that the public can know how much money the campaigns have raised, how much they’ve spent.00:16.97Sam ShiraziAnd it covers the period of October 1st through October 23rd. I’m going to go through all the statewide offices, then I’ll spend some time on the House of Delegates, Primarily, I will focus on the House of Delegates and the Attorney General race because i think that’s where there was the most interesting campaign finance information.00:34.23Sam ShiraziAnd then I also wanted to think through, you know, what is the point of all this money? What are the campaigns trying to accomplish? And I will say for the Attorney General and House of Delegates races, it’s all about ticket splitting and the campaigns trying to either increase ticket splitting or minimize ticket splitting.00:48.94Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll talk about both those strategies in the Attorney General race and House of Delegates. But to begin, let’s start with the governor’s race, because obviously that’s the big big race on election night.01:00.02Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll go through the numbers, and I’ll talk a little bit about what it might mean. So in terms of fundraising, Abigail Spanberger still had the edge, but when some Earl Sears narrowed it, this report, Spanberger raised about a little over $11.7 million, whereas Earl Sears raised about $9.5 million.01:18.44Sam ShiraziSpanberger has more cash on hand, so she has $4 million cash on hand compared to $1.25 million for Earl Sears. And then finally, Spanberger spent more than Earl Sears. She spent about $13 million, whereas Earl Sears spent about $9.9 million.01:32.24Sam ShiraziSo obviously, consistently throughout this race, Spanberger has been leading in the money, and even in this last campaign finance report, Spanberger is ahead. However, Earl Sears has made up ground, and this looks better for her than previous campaign finance reports.01:46.26Sam ShiraziYou could argue it’s a little bit too little too late. Obviously, it helps Earl Sears that she has this money and she’s been running more ads. But frankly, for most of September and even earlier, Spanberger was really dominating the airwaves and Spanberger had a bigger war chest. She was able to go up earlier.02:02.86Sam ShiraziYeah. and earl sears has been catching up the whole time now you could argue this report is maybe showing that the republicans are taking the governor’s race a little bit more seriously i don’t know it’s cause they think they’re going to win the governor’s race i think it’s more so that it isn’t a total blowout at the top of the ticket and obviously that’s going to be important for the attorney general race that’s going to be important for some of these house of delegates candidates So you are seeing the Republicans spending more money on Earl Sears in the hopes that it isn’t a blowout at the top of the ticket.02:31.78Sam ShiraziAgain, you could argue maybe it’s a little bit too little too late. Spanberger obviously still has more money. She’s running more ads generally during the the entire campaign cycle. And I think if you if you think about the money that Spanberger has, she still is trying to reach those independent voters. You know, Earl Sears, it’s a little bit unclear what her strategy has been.02:53.75Sam ShiraziFirst, she was talking about the trans issue. Then she was talking about the Jay Jones text. You know, unclear if any of those really stuck. I think there have been some pieces where she’s trying to reach independent voters.03:05.09Sam ShiraziBut because of Spanberger lead in terms of the money and her going up early and consistently in all the polls, Spanberger has been ahead with independent voters. And I think the governor’s race, it’s one of those things where,03:17.61Sam ShiraziSpanberger still enjoys the campaign finance advantage and Earl Sears just cannot make up that gap in terms of the polling, given that she’s behind in the money, given the environment. So all that’s to say is like, obviously, the Republicans are probably taking the governor’s race a little bit more seriously now.03:33.59Sam ShiraziBut, you know, I just don’t know if it’s ultimately going to change the outcome. And if you think about it from a Republican standpoint, I mean, the point of the governor’s race is not necessarily to win it. I think the point is to get Earl Sears to within maybe seven, six points of Spanberger.03:48.07Sam ShiraziThat would be a good night for the Republicans. And that’s kind of the range where... Miara’s might be able to hang on. I think if Earl Sears is losing by 10 or more, I think that’s the range where Jones definitely can pull it off. So the Republicans, they’re starting to spend big in the governor’s race.04:03.67Sam ShiraziI think more so to maybe help Miara’s at the attorney general spot. And we’ll talk about the attorney general spot in a second. I did want to just quickly go over the lieutenant governor’s race. Not as interesting just because the money is not as big, but I’ll just go over it.04:16.76Sam ShiraziGhazala Hashmi, the Democratic nominee. Still enjoys the fundraising advantage. She raised about $1.85 million, whereas Jean-Reed has been far behind. He raised about $454,000.04:28.25Sam ShiraziReed does have more cash on hand, but that’s because Hashimi spent a lot more money. So Reed has about $350,000 cash on hand compared to $335,000 for Hashimi. But Hashimi had a bigger war chest. She basically spent all her war chests, which makes sense because it’s the end of the campaign and she wants to run her ads.04:46.03Sam ShiraziHashmi spent about $4.6 million compared to just $491,000 for John Reed. And this has been pretty consistent where Hashmi’s had the fundraising advantage. John Reed’s just never really been great at raising money.04:57.77Sam Shiraziyou know He’s pretty good at getting earned media, but it’s not the same as running ads. Hashmi spent her war chest. she’s not but She’s not running as many ads as these other candidates, but she’s certainly running a decent amount of ads for herself. So Overall, I mean, I think the main advantage, I mean, Hashmi does have the fundraising advantage. I think the main advantage Hashmi has is that top of a ticket Spamburger is going to win by decent amount. Hashmi doesn’t have the issues that Jay Jones has. So I think while she’s not polling as well as Spamburger, a lot of that is just name ID. And I think at the end of the day, but05:28.54Sam ShiraziUnless something crazy happens, Hashmi should be able to pull it out. you know Fundraising helps a little bit, but ultimately the main advantage that Hashmi has is her top of the ticket versus John Reed’s top of the ticket. So not a lot else to say for the lieutenant governor’s race.05:42.66Sam ShiraziI did want to spend a lot of time on the attorney general race because that’s the most interesting race in terms of being the most competitive of the statewide offices on election night, as well as interesting numbers in the fundraising category.05:55.55Sam ShiraziSo not a huge surprise. After the Jay Jones tech story came out, Jason Miara has got a bunch of money. The Republicans were willing to spend a lot on him. And in October, just up until October 23rd, Jason Miara has raised over $8.6 million.06:12.01Sam ShiraziAnd that compares to just around $1.9 million for Jay Jones. Uh, Meares also has more cash on hand. He has about 2.5 million cash on hand compared to about 685,000 for Jones.06:25.67Sam ShiraziAnd even, even though Meares has more cash on hand, he also spent more. So we’re seeing a lot of Meares ads because he spent 9.5 million compared to about 4.7 million for Jones. Now Jones did have a little bit of a war chest. So he’s also spending his war chest. It’s not like there are no Jay Jones ads. He’s running his ads, but ultimately In this race, obviously, Miárez has the advantage.06:47.40Sam ShiraziObviously, the Republicans are pouring a lot of money in to try to save Miárez. And we’ll see how much of a difference it makes. And I talked about the point of the money in this race. For Miárez, it really just comes down to ticket splitting. And his goal is to get people who voted for Spanberger at the top the ticket to vote for him.07:05.21Sam ShiraziIn the attorney general race, obviously, Jay Jones has the opposite goal. He wants to make sure that people who voted for Spamberger vote for him in the attorney general race. And it’s kind of an open question how much the money is going to matter. i mean, obviously, Meares having the cash means he can run his ads. He can kind of remind voters of the story. He can push the story out to more voters.07:24.36Sam ShiraziBut the reality is... A lot of voters already are aware of it. They are probably going to make their mind based on other factors, such as whether they want to send a message about President Trump.07:36.32Sam ShiraziAnd you know the fundamental dynamics of the race are the same. It’s basically...07:40.80Sam ShiraziWhat’s more important to voters? yeah Are the tax more important or is Trump more important? And I think while the money can help Meares try to boost up his numbers a little bit, it’s unclear if at the end of the day, people will go into the polling booth and vote for Spanberger at the top of the ticket and Meares in the attorney general spot. Of course, there will be some ticket splitting. The question is how much.08:01.50Sam ShiraziAnd I think both Jones and Meares are kind of stuck in the higher quality nonpartisan polling at around 45, 46 percent. So you see that they are getting a decent amount of support from the base of their party.08:14.23Sam ShiraziThe question is those undecideds who haven’t necessarily backed one of the candidates or the other, what do they do? Do they split their ticket? Do they vote straight ticket? Do they undervote, which basically means they skip that race?08:25.83Sam ShiraziI think those are all possibilities. I think there’s a lot of different factors you have to look at. you have to look at turnout. you have to look at how much of the exact combination of straight ticket versus ticket splitting versus undervotes there’s going to be.08:37.39Sam ShiraziAnd so all that makes this race inherently unpredictable. I don’t think either of the candidates are going to have a clear advantage going into election day. I think it’s just one of those things we’re going to have to wait and see. And while there might not be a whole lot of suspense on election night with the governor’s race at the top the ticket, I do think a Attorney General’s race is going to be very interesting.08:55.55Sam ShiraziAnd it’s also just kind of a test of the environment versus a candidate-specific issue. Because if you look at the specific issues for the candidates, obviously, Meares is a fundraiser. Jay Jones had those.09:06.38Sam ShiraziObviously, Meares has... Obviously, Miara’s has the fundraising advantage. He has incumbency. He has the issues that Jay Jones has with the tax. So a lot of things going Miara’s way. The question becomes,09:17.43Sam ShiraziOK, is that enough to overcome the overall environment where Trump is unpopular? More more people disapprove of Trump in Virginia than approve of him. Spanberger is going to win by a decent amount at the top of the ticket. OK, is that enough for Joy Jones owes to hang on? And really, there’s no way of knowing. We’ll find out in less than a week when the results start coming in. But yeah, anyway, so interesting numbers in the attorney general race.09:42.52Sam ShiraziI did want to spend a decent amount of time on the House of Delegates because, again, i think the House of Delegates are often overlooked. Most people are focusing on the statewide offices, particularly Governor and Attorney General. However, as we saw this week with redistricting, so the General Assembly came back to Richmond. They started the process of potentially amending the Virginia Constitution and putting a referendum on the ballot.10:02.99Sam ShiraziThat is primarily or almost exclusively in the purview of the state Senate and the House of Delegates. So the House of Delegates are important for that amendment, for other amendments that might happen in the future. They’re important for regular old bills.10:15.58Sam ShiraziAnd I do think because there’s so much attention to the governor and attorney general race, the House Delegates is not getting a lot of attention. But the numbers were really striking in this fundraising a report in the House of Delegates. So in terms of the overall fundraising, the candidates Democrats are running versus the candidates Republicans are running.10:32.30Sam ShiraziThe Democratic candidates raised over $21.7 million. dollars So huge, huge haul for the Democrats in the House of Delegates, whereas the Republican candidates only raised a little over $6.7 million.10:44.81Sam ShiraziSo we’re seeing that the Democrats in the House of Delegates have raised more than three times the amount that the Republicans have raised. Some of these competitive battleground districts where the Democrats are trying to beat incumbent Republicans, just crazy amounts of money being raised in the 30th House district.11:02.43Sam ShiraziThe Democrat John McAuliffe has raised over two million dollars. In the 22nd House District, Elizabeth Guzman has raised over $1.6 million. In the 71st House District, Jessica Anderson has raised over $1.5 million.11:15.73Sam ShiraziAnd basically, it’s kind of the same story. Those were the biggest numbers, but basically every single seat the Democrats are targeting, trying to defeat incumbent Republicans, they have raised more in this campaign finance report.11:27.42Sam ShiraziAnd you know they’re definitely on the offense. They’re trying to get as many seats as possible. I think they want to send a message in terms of beating a lot of incumbent Republicans. And, you know, I talked about this before. I think the issue the Republicans are having is that Meares is sucking up a lot of the fundraising and the oxygen. And so if you’re a Republican donor, you’re thinking about saving the attorney general spot.11:48.88Sam ShiraziBasically, that’s only a thing the Republicans have a good shot of winning this year. And so he’s getting a lot of fundraising. These House of Delegates candidates are not getting a lot of fundraising. Now, you could argue the amount of money the Republicans are spending at the governor’s race and that the attorney general race is going to help down ballot, because obviously, if Earl Sears is not getting blown out and then Miara is either wins or keeps it close, that’s probably going to help the House of Delegates candidates down ballot. So you could argue it kind of makes sense.12:15.48Sam Shiraziif you think about, you know, what what are the Democrats trying to achieve with all this spending, it’s kind of the exact same thing that Meares is trying to achieve, except the other way. So,12:25.16Sam ShiraziSpanberger, she’s going to be doing well at the top the ticket. I expect that she’s going to be winning most of the competitive battleground seats in the House of Delegates. What the Democrats are hoping to do is just get straight but straight ticket voting. just You fill out Spanberger and you fill out everyone else in the bubble, including the House of Delegates candidates.12:43.21Sam ShiraziRepublicans obviously are hoping that even if Spanberger wins these districts at the top of the ticket, they can get their incumbents to survive through ticket splitting. And it’s an open question. I mean, I think obviously money helps. If you can run ads, you’re going to raise your name ID. You could try to attack the Republicans in some of these districts.12:59.68Sam ShiraziThat’s going to minimize ticket splitting. The question is, can the Democrats get enough? Does the map money really matter? How many candidates? how many Voters are really focusing on the House of Delegates races to the extent that they’re either going to ticket split or to the extent that they they’re not not going ticket split.13:16.22Sam ShiraziSo again, House of Delegates, super interesting because there’s so many of these individual races and it’s just a really interesting dynamic. And one thing I was surprised about was the fact that basically every...13:27.45Sam ShiraziRepublican but incumbent got some money. And I don’t think the Republicans, quote unquote, triaged anyone because i think their attitude was if you’re an incumbent Republican, you decide to run again. Even if you’re in a tough race, we’re going to be willing to back you.13:40.99Sam ShiraziAnd so I’ve talked about House District 57. This is in the Richmond suburbs. Democrats are very likely going to flip this seat. However, the incumbent Republican, David Owens, still got $423,000 in October, which was really surprising to me because that’s more than some of the other incumbents in tough races.13:56.65Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, May Navarro, the Democratic nominee, still outraised him. I think the reality is that unless something crazy happens, she’s going to win. And so you’re seeing the Republicans still spending in that race. And, you know, you could say it might not make a whole lot of sense. But I think from the Republican perspective, they don’t want to necessarily cut anyone loose.14:15.16Sam ShiraziAnd it’s tough. It’s tough when you’re an incumbent and you’re expecting support from the party, even if you’re in a tough race. So anyways, that’s the House of Delegates. I mean, i think a lot of people, particularly the election nerds, are going to be looking at, okay, what’s the final margin at the top of the ticket?14:31.02Sam ShiraziAnd then how many seats can the Democrats get up to? I think i think the Democrats are probably – Hoping to get 60. I think 60 psychologically is a big number. If they can flip nine seats, get up to 60, I think they can say that they had a really good night in the House of Delegates.14:46.100Sam ShiraziObviously, Republicans are trying to minimize their losses, try to keep the chamber competitive. Even if it doesn’t flip in 2027, maybe they can hope to flip it in 2029. And yeah, we’ll we’ll see.14:58.11Sam Shirazii think it’s these campaign finance numbers kind of confirm what we already knew for the governor’s race. Spanberger has the advantage and Earl Sears is trying to play catch up, but it might just be a little bit too late to really change the outcome in that race.15:13.45Sam ShiraziLieutenant Governor Hashmi has more money. Generally, she’s going to benefit from straight ticket voting. And so she’ll she’ll probably end up being able to be winning that race after Spanberger is able to win at the top of the ticket, if that’s what ends up happening. Attorney General race, Republicans really spending a lot trying to save Meares. We’ll see if he’s able to do that or if Jay Jones is able to survive through straight ticket voting.15:36.11Sam ShiraziHouse of Delegates, consistently the the Democrats have had a big advantage. We’ll see if it actually gets translated into actual seats. All the money gets translated into seats. So Long story short, fundraising, super interesting, but kind of confirms what we know. Interesting to see the actual numbers and see it on paper.15:54.39Sam ShiraziBut yeah, I mean, ultimately, we are about, you know, six days out. And it’s going to be really interesting to see what ends up happening on election night. I’m going to try to cover everything.16:05.96Sam ShiraziI mean, there’s so much going on. There’s redistricting, there’s the shutdown, you know, and there there’s all these polls coming out and I can’t even cover every single poll because that would just be too much. I will try to do some more podcasts before the election just to give people a sense of where everything is going, what I’m seeing.16:22.93Sam ShiraziYou know, I gave you my update now with both campaign finance and where I think the state of the race is in these different campaigns. Appreciate everyone who’s been listening. There’s been a lot going on. Hopefully this is helpful.16:35.05Sam Shiraziyou know Feel free to follow me on social media for all the updates. So much going on in the Virginia elections. It’s been a wild ride, and I think it’s going to be a wild end and really interesting to see what happens on the final days on the campaign trail.16:47.66Sam ShiraziAnd I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. i am Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout to 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over the House of Delegates and just take a look at the seats that might flip on election night.00:11.78Sam ShiraziNow, to be perfectly honest, I have not spent a lot of time recently on the House of Delegates because there’s been so much else going on. particularly with the attorney general race. And then there’s been the shutdown, which is pretty crazy to think the shutdown still going on. And you know I don’t even have time to talk about it. I’m sure i will talk about it if it’s continuing in another episode.00:28.66Sam ShiraziBut this episode, I really did want to focus on the House of Delegates because it just doesn’t get a lot of attention in terms of the national and the state media, because there’s just so much focus that the on the statewide races.00:40.39Sam ShiraziBut all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up for re-election. Democrats currently hold a 51-49 majority. There are a lot of really interesting races. I think in some ways for the political nerds, this is kind of the most interesting part of the campaign because there’s 100 different elections.00:55.14Sam ShiraziRealistically, there aren’t going to be that many competitive races. And I’m going to mainly focus on the races the Democrats are trying to flip this year in Virginia. I will not be making predictions in every single House of Delegates race. I may tip my hand who I think has the advantage To be perfectly honest, I tend to defer to Chaz Natty-Comb and State Navigate on the House Delegates stuff because he did a really good job in 2023.01:18.85Sam ShiraziHe predicted all 100 seats in the House of Delegates so and all 40 seats in the state Senate. He has a model and State Navigate has a model. So I would recommend everyone take a look at that.01:29.42Sam Shiraziyou know In terms of individual predictions, I would kind of defer to that. Again, I will tip my hand a little bit. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to say that the Democrats are very favored to hold their majority in the House of Delegates.01:41.44Sam ShiraziTo be perfectly honest, Republicans are not even competing in half the districts or seriously competing in half the districts. They’re only really attempting to compete in 50 of the districts. There’s one Democratic seat held seat that the Republicans are competing and in. That’s House District 97. I think unless there’s a red wave, which you know right now seems relatively unlikely, I think the Democrats should be able to hold that seat.02:04.64Sam ShiraziSo I’m going to mainly focus on the seats the Democrats are targeting. They already have a 51-49 majority. I think there’s a good chance their majority is going to expand. I think the good, the big question is how many seats do they pick up? Do they pick up a couple seats? They pick up five seats. They pick up 10 seats. I think that’s really hard to know. A lot of that will depend on the top of the ticket.02:23.42Sam ShiraziThere’s obviously no way of knowing that right now. you know We just have to wait and see how much the Spanburger win by and how much ticket splitting is there. And then in some of these seats, there’s also going to be a turnout dynamic in terms of younger voters, in terms of black voters. So I will talk about each race. I’ll spend some more time on the more interesting races. I think, frankly, some of these are are less interesting, either because they’re not going be super competitive or just because there isn’t a whole lot to say.02:49.84Sam ShiraziI’ll start off with the seats the Democrats are more likely to flip, and then I will go to kind of the toss-up seats that it’s a little bit unclear who has the advantage right now, and then I’ll end with the districts the Republicans are more favored to retain.03:03.58Sam ShiraziAll right, so to begin, i will start with House District 57. This is in the Richmond suburbs. This is currently held by Republican David Owen. It is about a Harris plus nine district.03:16.48Sam ShiraziAnd I believe that Abigail Spanberger lives in this district. So, you know, this is the part of Virginia that the Republicans are going to have a huge problem on election night with, you know, David Owen, he’s trying his best, but I think the Democrat Maine Navarre has raised a lot more money. You know, she’s got a lot of backing, uh,03:34.44Sam Shiraziyou know if If seats are starting to flip, this is going to be the first leap to flip. And I think there’s a decent chance or more than a decent chance that the Democrats are going to pick up this seat. So you know right off the bat, I think Democrats are going to pick up at least this one seat. If if that happens, you know obviously it’s going to be very hard for them to not get the majority in the House of Delegates or or for the Republicans to flip the House of Delegates. So part of the reason that they’re so favored in the House of Delegates to retain the majority is because they are favored to flip this seat. And so if you’re already flipping a seat, you know there’s really no way for the Republicans to get a majority.04:04.23Sam ShiraziSo all that’s to say is House District 57. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it because, frankly, there’s not a whole lot to say other than the Democrats are pretty favored to flip it right now. Okay, let’s talk about another district. This is House District 71.04:17.93Sam ShiraziThis is in the Williamsburg area. The current incumbent is Amanda Batten, and she is being challenged by Jessica Anderson. So this was about a Harris plus 5% district.04:28.41Sam ShiraziI think Spanberger is a good fit for the district. I think she’s going to be winning the district pretty comfortably. i think there isn’t going to be a whole lot of ticket splitting or enough to save Amanda Batten. So again, if there are seats flipping, I think this is probably the second seat to flip on election night.04:43.29Sam ShiraziSo we’re already seeing if there’s kind of even a normal type election, not a huge wave, Democrats are going to flip these two seats pretty easily. I think if Spanberger is winning by at least five or more,04:54.35Sam Shiraziat the top of the ticket. All right, now let’s move on to a different district. These next batches of districts, I would say that these are more, I don’t want to say toss-ups because I think some of the parties might have a slight advantage in each one, but I could see them going either way. And it really depends how good of a night Democrats have. I think if they have maybe...05:12.54Sam Shiraziyou know, a normal night, not a huge win. I think some of these seats, the Republicans can definitely hold on to them. I think if there’s a blue wave, these are the types of seats where it’s going to be very difficult for the Republicans to hang on in a blue wave environment.05:25.94Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll start with House District 89. This is in Hampton Roads. The current Republican incumbent is retiring. And so I think that’s one of the reasons Democrats might have an advantage in this district. It was about a Harris plus 3% district, and it’s about 25% Black The one thing I will flag with this district, African-American turnout, black turnout in Hampton Roads is a big question mark for the Democrats. So if for whatever reason, Democrats cannot get those voters out, I do think there’s a scenario where the Republicans are going to be able to maintain this district.05:55.71Sam ShiraziHowever, if you kind of have a normal election, Democrats are getting out, the voters to a certain extent, you know I can see this seat definitely flipping. All right, now let’s go to a another district with a decent amount of African-American voters. This is House District 82. It is in Petersburg and some of the surrounding suburbs.06:13.81Sam ShiraziThe district is actually... more than 45% Black. So I think that’s definitely going to be an important factor. How much turnout do Democrats get with Black voters? It voted for Harris by about 4%. The Republican incumbent is Kim Taylor.06:27.22Sam ShiraziShe is being challenged by Kimberly Pope Adams, who also ran in this seat in 2023. i think, again, this is really a turnout dynamic race, and it’s going to be very hard to predict who’s going to be able to win this seat, partly because I think it’s just...06:41.65Sam Shiraziyou know In theory, the Democrats on a good night should be able to win this seat, but I can see this scenario, even if Spanberger is getting a pretty healthy win where for whatever reason, Democrats are just not coming out in this district. I could, in theory, see Kim Taylor holding on.06:55.45Sam ShiraziSo again, i don’t want to make a prediction, but I do think in terms of what to be looking for, it’s kind of a turnout dynamic in this district in Southside and Petersburg. All right, now I’m going to talk about the neighboring district, which is House District 75. This is in Hopewell and then parts of Chesterfield County.07:14.34Sam ShiraziAgain, a district with a large Black population. It’s about a third Black. The current Republican incumbent is Carrie Coyner, and she is being challenged by Democrat Lindsey Daughtry.07:25.48Sam ShiraziI think this is another one of those districts where It really depends about on turnout for Democrats with African-American voters. I think they know that. I think they’ve been focusing more on that this time than they did in 2023 because they kind of half-heartedly targeted this seat in 2023. I think obviously this time they’re taking it much more seriously. They’re putting a lot of money into this district.07:44.70Sam ShiraziAs a side note, just wanted to – Carrie Coiner, you may have heard her name in the news because – She was the Republican delegate that Jay Jones had sent those texts to. And so you’ve seen her in the news.07:56.85Sam Shiraziyou I don’t know how that is going to factor into this election, whether it’s going to factor into the election. Again, you know she’s hoping to get ticket splitting. I don’t know if that’s going to happen for various reasons.08:09.37Sam ShiraziThe thing that’s a little bit weird about this district is I can see the Democrats doing really well or doing better in the Chesterfield part of the district than they have in the past because it’s more suburban. but then turnout in the Hopewell part of the district not being that great for Democrats.08:22.69Sam ShiraziSo again, it’s kind of a turnout dynamic in this district, and it’s really hard to tell who’s going to be able to pull it out. you know I think if the Democrats have a good night and they’ve spent the money in this district, I think there’s a good chance they could flip it. If it’s more of a kind of neutral environment, then I think there is a scenario where Kerry Poirier could hang on.08:41.73Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s go down to Southwest Virginia, different part of Virginia, but a similar turnout dynamic. This time the turnout is with younger so younger voters, particularly students who go to Virginia Tech. So the Republican incumbent is...08:56.66Sam ShiraziChris Obenshain, he is running again against Lilly Franklin, and they faced off in 2023. The thing with this district, it’s actually a Trump district. So Trump won it.09:06.82Sam ShiraziIt’s a little bit hard to know the exact margin, but he won it by about three to 4%. I think the reason Democrats feel like they could win this seat, because it really does come down to students showing up. If students show up, particularly if they are able to come out on election day, Virginia has same day registration. If you’re seeing those students excited about voting, you see them come out.09:26.95Sam ShiraziThis is the type of seat that could flip. Lily Franklin has run before. She knows how to get those students out. It’s just, can she get and enough of those voters out? Again, purely going to come down to turnout,09:38.51Sam Shirazithe seat is very oddly drawn as I’ve talked about. It’s basically the college town of Blacksburg and then a bunch of rural areas who is better at getting out their base. Really no way of knowing that until the votes come in. The one thing I will flag about this race, because students can same-day register, I do think there’s going to be a same a decent amount of provisional ballots because same-day registrations are counted as provisionals.09:59.95Sam ShiraziSo we may not know on election night who wins because the provisionals take several days to count. So just flagging that, even if the Republicans are ahead election night, doesn’t mean they’re going to win because there could be enough same-day registrations to give Lily Franklin the edge.10:13.60Sam ShiraziAll right, now let’s move back to Hampton Roads and this time talk about House District 86. I talked about this in my previous episode because State Navigate very helpfully did a poll in this district.10:25.94Sam ShiraziAnd it found that the Democrat was up in this district. So the Republican incumbent is AC Cardoza. He has not necessarily the strongest incumbent. The Democrat is Virgil Thornton.10:36.78Sam ShiraziI think it was roughly a Harris 1.5% district. is turnout thing. again this ist turnout thing The district is about 25% black. that The voters for Democrats there are in the city of Hampton.10:50.24Sam ShiraziCan they get those voters out on election day? And, you know, the Republican turnout in the city of Pocosin, which is a very red district, tends to be stronger. Is this going to be the scenario where maybe the turnout is enough to save Cardoza? Democrats are pouring a lot of money into this race. you know The State Navigate poll seems to say that Democrats have a good chance of winning it.11:10.13Sam ShiraziSo again, a lot of these districts, it really does come down to turnout, either with younger voters or with black voters. A lot of the districts I flag so far, it’s hard for me to pick a winner because it really just comes down to11:23.14Sam ShiraziAnd if you look at every single district I talked about for the past few ones, House District 89, House District 82, House District 75, House District 41, House District 86, those are basically turnout type districts. I mean, there is going to be a little bit of persuasion and ticket splitting dynamic, but really it just comes down to do Democrats get those voters out?11:44.33Sam ShiraziBecause if the Democrats can’t get the voters out in those districts, it’s not going to matter. They’re not going to be able to win. And I think that’s going to be the difference between a blue wave and a normal Democratic victory. victory And in 2023, you know, the Democrats did pretty well. They flipped. They were able to win both chambers of the House of the General Assembly, both the state Senate and House Delegates, but they didn’t get this massive blue wave because some of the turnout just wasn’t there for some of those districts.12:09.42Sam ShiraziSo maybe we’ll see if this year they can flip these now that there might be a more favorable environment. All right. Now I will be talking about a few different districts. Most of these are basically persuasion type districts. so what’s the difference?12:23.98Sam Shirazidifference is these are more suburban districts. People are going to come out because they’re college educated, they’re wealthier. The real question in a lot of these districts is ticket splitting because most of these districts, Spanburgers should be able to win them.12:36.88Sam ShiraziThe question becomes, okay, if Spanberger is winning, how much ticket splitting is there going to be? Because typically, if you think about the Spanberger House of Delegates ticket splitter, it’s kind of a traditional Republican voter who either doesn’t like Trump or maybe just likes Spanberger because she seems more moderate.12:55.05Sam ShiraziBut they they kind of traditionally have voted for the Republicans, specifically for the House of Delegates. So I could see a decent amount of ticket splitting in these races. And again, it’s hard to know who’s going to win because we just don’t know how much ticket splitting there’s going to be right now.13:09.04Sam ShiraziAnd the first district I will talk about is House District 22. This is in middle Prince William County in Northern Virginia. The incumbent is Ian Lovejoy, and the Democrat is Elizabeth Guzman. I think the thing that’s going be interesting in this district is just to think through, okay Is Elizabeth Guzman maybe a little bit too progressive for this district? Because she’s definitely known for being a progressive Democrat. Now, maybe that’ll motivate Democratic voters to come out and you know vote for her, to knock doors for her.13:36.49Sam ShiraziBut I do think there’s a potential for some more ticket splitting here because she is, again, more of a progressive Democrat. And maybe if you are a moderate swing voter in the district, you you may vote for Spamberger at the top of the ticket.13:48.13Sam Shirazibut you’ll vote for Lovejoy for the House delegates. And this is a district that Harris won in 2024. However, for the House vote, the Republican House candidate in House District 10 in 2024 was able to win this district. So we have seen some ticket splitting last year in this district, and we’ll see if it happens again.14:07.36Sam ShiraziOkay, next district I will talk about is House District 30. thirty This is in Western Loudoun and Western Falkir. The current incumbent is Gary Higgins.14:18.10Sam ShiraziHe is being challenged by Democrat John McAuliffe. And again, one of those districts, suburban, kind of going into more exurban parts of Northern Virginia, typically has been a Republican district. I think there’s a decent chance Spanberger is going to win this district.14:33.13Sam ShiraziQuestion is how much ticket splitting does McAuliffe get and and does Higgins get because I could see some voters spilling their ticket. But then again, maybe voters in Northern Virginia will go just straight Democratic on the ticket. So another really interesting race in Northern Virginia.14:52.81Sam ShiraziI will talk about one other Northern Virginia seat, and that is House District 64. That is in Middle Stafford County. The current incumbent Republican is Paul Milday, and he is being challenged by Stacey Carroll.15:06.51Sam ShiraziThis was a slightly Trump district. Again, Northern Virginia, federal fallout, suburban district. People traditionally have voted for the democrat for the Republicans. excuse me And I think, again, good chance that Spanberger is going to win this district.15:21.99Sam ShiraziQuestion comes down and to ticket splitting and can the Republicans hold on in this district? OK, one more district in terms of kind of the toss up type districts. that I will talk about, and that’s House District 69.15:35.74Sam ShiraziThis is back down in Hampton Roads in the York area, in York County. Again, this has been a traditionally Republican part of Hampton Roads. The current incumbent Republican is Chad Green. He is being challenged by Mark Downey.15:50.74Sam ShiraziSlightly, think, a 1% or 2% Trump district in 2024.15:55.72Sam ShiraziSo same story. I think there’s a decent chance Spamberger is going to win at the top of the ticket. How much ticket splitting is there? Is it possible for the Republican delegate to hold on here? So basically all those districts that I talked about, the last few ones are basically kind of toss up type districts where it really just comes down to persuasion and ticket splitting at the House of Delegates level. So Actually, I forgot to do one more. I mean, there’s so many of these seats the Democrats are targeting.16:24.91Sam ShiraziI’ll talk about this last one, which is a similar type district, which is House District 73. This is in the Richmond suburbs in Chesterfield County. and The current Republican incumbent is Mark Early, and he is being challenged by Leslie Mehta.16:39.13Sam ShiraziI think Harris very slightly carried this district. And as as I was saying before, I forgot to include this district. Same story. Just you know traditionally Republican voters. I think Spanberger is going to be doing well in the 73rd district as well because she used to represent Chesterfield. She comes from the Richmond suburb.16:55.44Sam ShiraziSo question just becomes, you know, I’m kind of a broken record, but in all these districts, house district 22 house district 30 house district 64 house district 69 house district how much ticket splitting can the republicans get or do the democrats just get straight ticket voting and these house of delegates candidates get right spam workers coattails and we’ve seen that before in previous virginia elections where when there’s a blue wave or a red wave at the top of the ticket 2017, a bunch of delegates rode the coattails of Northam.17:28.23Sam ShiraziDemocrats picked up a bunch of seats. 2021, a bunch of House Republicans were able to ride the coattails of Glenn Youngkin, and they were able to get a majority. So really unclear how much of a wave there’s going to be and then how much ticket splitting and riding of coattails there will be in these districts that, you know, it’s hard for me to make a prediction in some of these races.17:48.78Sam ShiraziAll right. I did want to talk about a couple other seats the Democrats are targeting. To be perfectly honest, I think at this stage, the Republicans have more of advantage in these districts. Doesn’t mean the Democrats can’t flip them on a really good night, but I think realistically, you you know unless there’s a really big blue wave, I think that the Republicans should be able to hold on.18:09.51Sam ShiraziThe first district is House District 66. The current Republican incumbent is Bobby Oroc, and he is being challenged by Democrat Nicole Cole. I think this was a Trump 2-3% district 2024.18:22.52Sam ShiraziA little further down on 95, a little further from Northern Virginia, kind of a similar dynamic of persuasion and a little bit of turnout. I think the challenge Democrats are going to have in this district is Bobby Oroch’s been there a long time. So he’s a well-known incumbent.18:36.68Sam ShiraziI think that will probably give him enough ticket splitting to survive, even if Spanberger is able to carry the seat at the top of the ticket. So I think this one of all you know of the seats, it’s probably the...18:49.32Sam Shirazione one of the ones that it’s most unlikely the Democrats are going to be able to flip. And then there’s one other seat that the Democrats are targeting. They kind of added this seat late. This is House District 34. It is in the Shenandoah Valley in Harrisonburg.19:03.51Sam ShiraziAnd the Republican incumbent is Tony Wilt. He’s being challenged by Democrat Andrew Payton. I think this is the most Republican seat that the Democrats are challenging. It was about a hair a Trump plus seven seat in 2024.19:17.62Sam Shiraziyou know I think the Democrats are just hoping that, like in House District 41 in Virginia Tech, they’ this district is JMU, and they’re going to hope that they’re going to get same-day registration. College students are going to come out.19:30.89Sam ShiraziThey might be able to flip the seat. I think it’s just it’s hard because... A lot of red rural areas around there. And you know it’s just hard to know how many students are actually going to come out. in Are there going to be enough for the Democrats to be able to flip the seat? I think if there’s a really, really good night for the Democrats, potentially it’s going to happen. i just think you know given the polling, even the best case scenario pollal polling, I don’t think we’re kind of quite there yet where this seat will flip, but you never know. So definitely a seat to to watch out for on election night.19:59.98Sam ShiraziAll right, so I kind of went through all those districts pretty quickly because I didn’t want to kind of get too bogged down in any specific district. But big picture, as you can see, I mean, I think there’s a decent chance the Democrats are going to pick up at least two seats right off the bat. And so you’re seeing the Democrats get up to 53 seats in the House of Delegates.20:18.13Sam ShiraziThen the question becomes, okay, of these much larger number of and this you know toss-up type seats, how many can the Democrats pick up? And you know if I had to guess, they’re going to pick up some of them. I don’t think...20:30.63Sam Shirazi53 is going to be the ceiling for the Democrats. I think they they could get up to 55. And then the real question is, you know, how much of a red wave so or how much of a blue wave is there going to be? I mean, are they are we going to start seeing seats flip left and right to the point where the Democrats are getting up to 60 seats?20:47.25Sam ShiraziI think it’s possible. There’s really no way of knowing right now because there’s kind of a range. you know I think if Spanberger wins by about 5%, we’re obviously on the lower end of what the Democrats are going to be able to pick up in the House of Delegates, maybe like 53.21:02.40Sam Shirazii think if there’s a really good night, Democrats winning by 10% or Spanberger is winning by 10% or more, that’s where we start getting into the 60-seat territory. And the Democrats are certainly playing to win a lot of seats. They’ve, as I mentioned, raised a lot of money.21:17.33Sam ShiraziThey’re spending a lot of money. The Republicans are definitely on defense. And I think in some of these races, they are throwing a decent amount of money at it. But some of these races, frankly, the Republicans are just telling the incumbents, you know, either we don’t think you’re going to make it. So sorry, you’re not getting much help. Or they’re telling the incumbents, you know i think you’ll be OK. You can handle it. And they’re not getting too much money.21:39.38Sam Shiraziyeah know Republicans just don’t have the money in the House of Delegates to throw at these individual incumbents. And you know obviously, there’s been a lot going on with the attorney general spot on the ticket. And generally, that has been good news because there’s a chance that Jason Meares might be able to pull it out.21:55.22Sam Shirazithe for the attorney general race. But that also means all the donors know that and all the donors are starting to give Meares a lot of money. And you know to a certain extent, that’s going to help him and it may help some of the House of Delegates candidates, but there isn’t a lot of money being spent on the House of Delegates because I think the mentality that Virginia Republicans have is we just got to save Meares because he’s pretty much the only one who can survive. And you know House of Delegates...22:19.51Sam ShiraziWe’re going to lose it anyways. you know We’ll probably... We might be able to pick some of these back up in another cycle. This cycle is just not the cycle where we can win the House of Delegates. So there’s no point in putting a lot of money into it.22:30.86Sam Shiraziyeah They seem really focused on trying to get Meares over the line. And it makes sense to a certain extent. But I do think there’s a risk that the House Delegates starts getting really dicey for the Republicans. And you know we’ll see what happens.22:43.88Sam ShiraziI think conversely, the Democrats... They’re feeling good about the House delegates. They want a big majority. i think that’s part of the message they want to send is picking up a lot of seats. Obviously, the more seats you have, the easier it is to pass bills.22:55.88Sam ShiraziAnd so we’ll see. I mean, i again, we’ll we’ll defer to Chaz Nettie-Kohm on the individual predictions. My personal opinion is that the Democrats are going to be picking up seats. They’re going to retain their majority. And, you know, I talked about this all the way back in the beginning of the year.23:12.75Sam ShiraziSo the House of Delegates, it’s important for passing laws, obviously. But I think one thing that just has not gotten a lot of attention this year in Virginia has been these constitutional amendments.23:21.97Sam ShiraziBecause the governor doesn’t play a role. The lieutenant governor doesn’t play a role. The attorney general doesn’t play a role. The constitutional amendments in Virginia are purely the purview of the House of Delegates and the state senate. And the state senate is not up for election this year. It’s up for election in 2027.23:37.23Sam ShiraziSo the Democrats, if they win the House of Delegates, which is increasingly looking like it’s going to happen, they are going to put three constitutional amendments on the ballot for the voters to decide in 2026.23:48.43Sam ShiraziOne of them is on reproductive rights. One of them is on putting the ending the ban on same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution and protecting same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution. And one of them is to end the disenfranchisement of people convict convicted of felonies so that someone, when they’re released from prison, will automatically get their voting rights back.24:09.17Sam ShiraziI think very likely those all three of those are going to be on the ballot in 2026 in Virginia because the Democrats are going to win the House of Delegates. Those are going to be important changes to the Virginia Constitution.24:19.40Sam ShiraziAnd I do think... It doesn’t get a lot of attention, but that’s the reality is those things are going to be on the ballot in 2026, in all likelihood, given the Democrats are going to win the Virginia House of Delegates unless something really crazy happens.24:34.16Sam ShiraziAnd I also think, you know, not to get too ahead of ourselves, but, you know, obviously, Democrats can start that process all over again for 2028. So if the Democrats win the House of Delegates this year in Virginia, they can start proposing new constitutional amendments for 2028. Now, they would have to win the 2027 elections, both the House of Delegates and the State Senate.24:55.44Sam ShiraziBut, you know, with Trump in the White House and the way Virginia swings against the party in the White House, I think there’s a decent chance Democrats are going to maintain their majority in the General Assembly in the 2027 elections.25:06.88Sam ShiraziObviously getting way ahead of ourselves. But I do think the reason I wanted to flag this is because... While there’s so much focus on the governor’s race, there’s so much focus on the attorney general’s race. Obviously, those races are important, but the House of Delegates is also really important.25:19.86Sam ShiraziAnd House of Delegates, particularly in the constitutional amendment space, has more much more power or basically has all the power along with the state senate. So I don’t want people to lose sight of that. I don’t want people to lose sight of the stakes for the House of Delegates. you know it’s It’s easy to forget about them because is there’s so much going on.25:36.41Sam ShiraziThere’s stuff going on with Trump. There’s stuff going on with the shutdown. There’s stuff going on governor’s race. There’s stuff going on with the general race. But House of Delegates, super important and for constitutional amendments, but also just for passing regular old laws. And, you know, I do think those constitutional amendments are going to be important in 2026.26:24.06Sam ShiraziBut these things are important. And, you know, that’s why these elections are happening. I think there’s a lot of line in the Virginia elections. I will, I’m sure, talk a little bit more about the House of Delegates down the line. But, you know, there’s so much else to cover that it’s going to be hard for me to spend a whole episode again talking about it.26:40.47Sam ShiraziBut I did want to just do this one. Obviously, closer we get to election day, there’s a lot of stuff kind of go going on and I want to cover it all. But I did want to make time for this final check-in, I would say, at least for me personally on the House of Delegates.26:53.70Sam ShiraziAnd I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I will do my best to keep everyone updated. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

00:00.70Sam ShiraziHi, everyone. I am Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special extra interview that we’ll be doing with John McAuliffe. He is the Democratic nominee in the 30th House District in House Delegates District in Western Loudoun and Western Fauquier County, and it is one of the top battlegrounds in Virginia.00:20.12Sam ShiraziThe current Republican incumbent is Delegate Gary Higgins. I’m happy to have him on at a different time if he would like to come on the podcast. But today we have John. Thank you for joining me.00:30.51John MYeah, I’m so thrilled to be here. Thank you for everything you do. And and yes, it is an exciting year to say the least.00:36.65Sam ShiraziYeah, so so before we get into it, I did want to say, you know, honestly, just in terms of places I like to visit, the 30th District is one of my favorite districts in Virginia, just a really beautiful part of Virginia and Western Loudou and Western Fauquier.00:49.93Sam Shirazilot of beautiful scenery, especially this time of the year with the leaves changing. So if anyone wants to make the trip out there, I really encourage them to do that. So in terms of the race, John, what made you want to run for office?01:03.67John MYeah, absolutely. I decided to do this just about 10 months ago. I left the the Biden administration after after three and a half years there, where I had the privilege of working for Department of Agriculture, where it was my job to help farmers get access to renewable energy.01:21.22John MThat could look like solar panels on the roof. That could look like a small turbine. That could look like geothermal or a biodigester. Whatever they needed, we would get them a grant to to help them put that on the farm because that is their biggest bill in many cases and and the one that’s going to happen every single year no matter how good the harvest is.01:40.52John Mright You still have to pay your energy bills. So I decided to do this because I realized that the biggest energy crisis in the country is actually right here in my backyard. We have Loudoun County has 200 data centers.01:53.09John MThere’s another hundred coming online. And this is a place where the impact of that is being felt by every single person. And so I realized that I could use everything I’ve learned and a apply it right here at home, where I have my small business, a little bed and breakfast over in Warrington, and where I have lots of nonprofit boards I’ve been on and things like that, that that I felt like I really understood my community really well.02:16.39John Mand So that’s why I decided to do this.02:18.26Sam ShiraziWell, you know, that that’s all very interesting. I will get to data centers because I know it’s a big issue in your district. I did want to talk about the first thing you mentioned. So used to work for the federal government. Obviously, as of the ti the time of the taping of this podcast, there is still a government shutdown going on, and it seems unlikely it’s going to end anytime soon.02:35.57Sam ShiraziWhat has been the impact of the government shutdown in your district?02:39.62John MYeah, honestly, Sam, it’s been heartbreaking. i have never run for office before. I have certainly never run for office during a shutdown before. Back in in the administration, we had to prepare for one, but it never ended up happening.02:53.72John MThis has been very different experience because every day I’ve been knocking doors in communities where folks are federal employees, federal contractors, two income families are now one income families.03:03.95John Mtwo income families or sometimes zero income families. And that doesn’t stop the bills. And so people are going to pick which bills to pay, right? Whether it’s tuition or taxes or energy bills, folks are having to make really hard decisions, taking out loans, trying to figure out how long this is going to last.03:24.42John MAnd quite frankly, it’s horrifying. Like we are, it is embarrassing that Washington cannot make the most basic decisions to keep the government open.03:38.41John MAnd i think people are angry that Republicans are playing politics with their livelihoods just to stop us from having health care tax credits that we’ve all signed up for.03:49.70John MAnd it’s it’s going to be a really, really big impact, regardless of what happens, whether it the government reopens without those tax credits or whether it it reopens with them. you know, folks are folks are really, really feeling this impact.04:04.18Sam ShiraziAnd kind of related to that, there’s kind of the separate issue of the federal firings. Obviously, that was a big deal in the beginning of the year with Doge. That kind of died down a little bit. Now it seems to be coming back with the shutdown.04:16.80Sam ShiraziCan you talk about some of the impact of the federal fire firings in your district?04:20.54John MYeah, I mean, we’ve we’ve had a lot of folks who have lost their jobs and who have chosen to leave either as part of the rifts or just because they had reached retirement.04:31.19John MHD30 is sort of the outer edge of sort of the company town that is Washington, right? So once you go past Leesburg, you are out in beautiful, beautiful country.04:43.15John MWe have dozens and dozens of wineries, breweries, farm visits, agritourism at its finest. And we really rely on all the visitors from Arlington, Fairfax, Washington, and then Maryland to be able to come out here.04:59.74John MAnd those folks are currently worried about their mortgage and their rent and their tuition payments. And they’re not really worried about where they’re going on the weekend. So that impacts our economy directly.05:10.28John MAnd I’ve talked to dozens of businesses this summer who have seen it already. And there was a report that came out this morning that Northern Virginia is zero growth as of right now, zero literally 0.0 in Northern Virginia.05:25.68John Mthat can’t sustain here. And I don’t think it will. I think we’ve got lots and lots of incredibly talented people. I wanna make sure they stay. There’s a lot we can do with the state government to make that easier.05:37.44John MBut I wanna make sure they stay and I wanna make sure we can find roles for them in some of the other extremely lucrative high-tech industries that are here, including renewable energy, where a lot of the folks that built the battery storage systems that we use around the country live right here in Northern Virginia. And a lot of the companies so that have that innovative streak live right here in Northern Virginia. So there’s a lot we can do.05:58.28John MBut right now, to be honest with you, Sam, the defining characteristic of every conversation I have on the doors is anxiety. Almost every conversation has that element in it.06:10.24John MAnd it’s, it’s know hard to be surprised.06:12.70Sam ShiraziYeah. and And so just to follow up on that, in terms of the anxiety, it anxiety about what’s going on in D.C., anxiety about the state of the country, anxiety about just the political environment? I mean what is it that you’re hearing from the voters?06:24.04John MAnxiety about their own personal lives, right? Not sure where the next paycheck going to come from for folks that are currently furloughed. Not sure where the next job is going to come from for folks that have been riffed or have chosen to leave for any number of reasons.06:40.46John MAnd not sure what our lives are going to look like here in Northern Virginia. Because it’s one of the least affordable places to live, especially here in Loudoun County, anywhere in the country.06:51.39John MAnd It’s not a place where folks can go you know months and months without a paycheck or a plan. We have to have the state step up here, right? the The federal government has stepped back from its traditional role in our lives. We have to have the state step up.07:06.93John MAnd that looks like expanding unemployment insurance. That looks like ensuring we have a livable minimum wage so folks can get gap jobs. They can actually pay their bills. That looks like making sure that either the federal government maintains the health care tax credit or the state fills the gap and and builds that tax credit in. So, I mean, I’m i’m on the exchange because...07:30.54John MRunning for office is not a paying job, but I wanted to make sure that that I put everything I had into it. And so I’m doing this full time all year. And you know I don’t take advantage of the tax credit, but a lot of folks do.07:42.25John MAnd that can take their their monthly costs from a couple of hundred bucks to five or 600, which is unaffordable for a lot of people, which means they’re going to cancel and deal with the deal with the tax penalty.07:53.78John MSo there’s a lot we have to do in Richmond next year. It’s going to be a really, really busy session.07:59.43Sam ShiraziYeah, well, i it sounds like there’s a lot going on in your district in terms of the federal fallout. I did want to shift to a little bit of a different topic, but I know it’s a really important topic in your district, which is data centers.08:08.42John MSure.08:12.28Sam ShiraziI know a lot of people have probably heard the term. Could you explain kind of what data centers are and why they’re such a big deal in your district?08:20.29John MYeah, so data centers are are two things. They are the the sort of hub for all of the things we’re doing on our phones and our computers and in the cloud. So I don’t know, maybe a decade ago, all the talk was the cloud, the cloud, the cloud. Well, this is what built all of that infrastructure.08:38.23John MAnd because so much of the internet traffic in the world runs through Northern Virginia, the data center hub that back in the early 2000s started here has gone completely out of control.08:51.33John MIt went from 50 data centers back in 2013. And then in 2014, they passed a new zoning amendment that allowed them by right in five places, five five different zoning districts.09:02.79John MAnd that has resulted in an expansion of of nearly 200. And now with another 100 in the pipeline, The reason I say data centers are two things is because that’s not really the reason for the explosion. The reason for the explosion is artificial intelligence, right?09:21.97John MThere was an article yesterday, Sam Altman, who of course is the is the chairman of OpenAI, And he said that the plan for their company, just their company alone, not AI development at Google and all the other companies that are doing this, would be to put the equivalent of India’s peak load power on the grid by 2027. So we’re talking data centers that are consuming the electricity of up to a million homes per data center.09:50.99John MAnd Virginia and Loudoun County specifically is the first choice for those companies. And they bring significant revenue when they do that, but they don’t really bring the level of jobs that we would expect from somebody investing that kind of revenue.10:06.10John MSo there’s a lot we need to do. And there’s such a big deal because right now in Virginia, all of the energy infrastructure, meaning those transmission lines, those substations that are being used for the data centers are being paid for by the rate payer, meaning you and me.10:28.43John MWhen we pay our electric bill, we are paying for this infrastructure that is going purely to the profit margins of the world’s biggest companies. This is a basic unfairness that does not need to be this way.10:42.06John MSo the first thing we have to do next year is fix that. And I hope the industry will join me in working on this because I think they understand that it also is unfair. They’ll take it if we’ll give it to them, of course. But I think they understand that that they want to be good partners in the community, I hope.10:57.53John MAnd part of that is paying their own way. And and Abigail Spanberger, who I hope is our next governor, has said she’s going to make sure that they do. and i And I really appreciate that because the places around the data centers are the places most impacted by the cost increases.11:12.21John MAnd as I mentioned at the top of this podcast, for most farmers and most families, the energy bill is one of the biggest that they pay all year round. And here we’re paying some of the highest.11:22.97John MSo there’s a lot we can do. That’s just the start. But this is gonna be a multi-year multiyear arrangement. Next year will be a really great opportunity to do it because the data center tax credit is coming up for review.11:36.87John MAnd I assume they’d like to do it again, if I had to guess. And this is a a tax credit on the sales11:44.20John Mfor for the data centers. And I’m sure they’d like to do it again. That was about $900 billion. dollars and with an M 900 million last year, which could give every teacher in Virginia $10,000 raise. So if they’re going to ask for that, they better be prepared to, to give us something in return here.12:02.84Sam ShiraziYeah, I think that’s really helpful background. And I had a specific question about Loudoun because Loudoun is kind of known as like the data center hub of the world.12:08.17John MYeah.12:11.78Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, when I’m driving out there, land is really expensive. People want housing. you know Why are there so many data centers in Loudoun? Because I think of places like Southwest Virginia, they need economic development. I’m sure they would be much more willing to have data centers next door. Obviously, the infrastructure is not necessarily there right now, but but why does everyone why do all these data centers want to be in Loudoun and Prince William as opposed to like Southwest Virginia?12:37.04John MYeah, so so part of it’s the energy infrastructure, excuse me, the internet infrastructure, which was built here in Ashburn. And so because of that sort of initial hub, it became the place that that data centers wanted to build.12:52.87John MIt’s also a talent question. We have a huge amount of really, really smart high-tech folks in our industry here. And a lot of that is because of the expansion of the federal government and federal contracting.13:04.26John Min the internet age. So a lot of the really, really bright folks came from around the world and around the country to live here in Loudoun County during that during that big expansion. We’re obviously now in a contraction phase for for the government. but And so we’ve got talent and we’ve got the existing internet infrastructure that they love.13:22.55John MWe used to have cheap land as well, which when they started this process, that was appealing. That is obviously no longer the case. And so what they’re doing now is they’re buying single family homes, tearing down entire neighborhoods and putting up data centers because that is cheaper and easier than trying to get large chunks of of land. But that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped trying to get those large chunks of Greenfield.13:45.43John MAnd, you know, right here in Fauquier County, one of the the members of the board of supervisors sold his family farm to a data center in in Remington for $1,000.13:55.68John MI think over a hundred million dollars, not, not jump change, uh, and has the opportunity, you know, now to also vote on that on the board. So we’re talking about a lot of money here, uh, which makes people make decisions like that.14:08.96John Mbecause they’re going to look to do it wherever they can, but counties can decide, right? Loudon could decide tomorrow. We don’t want any more. I think we’re probably at that point, given how many are still coming online.14:19.10John MI’d like to see the supervisors take that really seriously. Uh, Fauquier could decide that too. Other counties have decided that, towns have decided that, and other counties have said, no, please bring them in. We need that economic development here in our county.14:33.46John MAnd I think that’s great, right? So folks folks need to be able to make that decision for zoning at the county level. I don’t think I’m changing my opinion on that. What we need to do at the state level is make sure that the utility is correctly regulated in such a way that that Virginians are not paying for the cost of profit for for all these companies.14:52.74Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, that’s that’s really helpful to have that information on data centers. I did want to ask kind of question about other things you’re hearing on the doorstep, specifically about you know the the nature of your district being kind of suburban exurb. Obviously, there’s a lot of growth coming in from Northern Virginia, and the district is still kind of rural. And I imagine that the residents like that feel of the district. So can you talk about some of the tension where there’s growth coming in versus the traditional rural lifestyle of the district?15:21.97John MYeah, I mean, you’ve hit right on it. So i I’m proud to be endorsed by Saverall Loudon, which is an organization that’s been around a long time that has been doing their best to preserve through conservation easements and things like that as much of our rural land here as we can. Because what we are is we are the rural part of Northern Virginia.15:44.80John MAnd as we’ve seen in Loudon, the the Board of Supervisors can decide you know how much of an area is getting used for for new homes and for industrial use.15:56.43John MAnd when you drive around the eastern part of my district, which is sort of the Aldi area, which is the fastest growing suburb anywhere in Virginia, they’ve done it in such a way that you have subdivisions on subdivisions with huge footprints, right? So large square footage, because that’s what you can sell the house for.16:14.30John MThe bigger the square footage, the the more profit you make. Right next to each other. just like suburbs, but with no actual infrastructure, meaning that folks are living there and driving 20 minutes to the grocery store, 20 minutes to a coffee shop, 20 minutes to a gas station, because they weren’t required to do mixed use in those areas, which is just foolish. So those folks obviously don’t have the amenities that that you’d expect somebody to have.16:43.94John MAnd they also have huge class sizes because of how quickly that area has grown and how quickly the board allowed new subdivisions to be built there. And so those are the kind of problems that they’re having out there. And the rest of our district, which is pretty much quite similar, we have obviously the Falkier side, which is conservation easements are much more common.17:04.76John MAnd it is significantly less dense than than most of most of the rest of the district. But there’s a common ethos through through all those folks, which is we want to preserve what we have we want to make sure that anything new coming in is reviewed understood and the community has time and the ability to push back if they want to that’s it it’s not it’s not a huge ask to be honest with you it is folks want the ability to have some local control over over what happens in their communities whether that’s data centers or housing developments or hotels or whatever and and just as an example of that when i started my little bed and breakfast 10 years ago17:43.03John Mwe had a six month permitting process to get a special use permit cost, I think about $30,000 to get that process done. Cause you had to go to the planning commission and the council, then back to the planning commission to do their edits and then back to the council to get final approval.17:58.29John MAnd you know, if they had too much going on that month, they would skip it and go to the next month. And the problem with what happened in data with data centers in Loudoun County, is that they allowed them by right in all those places, meaning they didn’t have to go through the special use permitting process, they could just build them.18:13.52John MAnd that’s how they got so close to folks’ homes. Stafford this morning just put a 750-foot setback, which is, I think, the biggest in the in in Virginia now. So they’re allowing them, but but requiring them to be set back from communities pretty significantly. So I think that’s that’s helpful.18:30.38John MBeyond that, I think a lot of folks care a lot about supporting our farmers out there because it’s not just land use, right? It’s not just, i want pretty trees to look at.18:40.33John MThe culture that comes with agriculture of farm stands and being able to buy all of your groceries and all of your meats from people you know folks move out here to have that and if you don’t have enough acreage to farm meaning that if you don’t own the farm and you’re a leased farmer which we have many of here and in western loudon and northern faulk here uh the farm i live on leases as well so this is you know, if they don’t have the acres they need to lease, they’re going to go to the West and find places where they can make a profit.19:15.17John MAnd then you’ll have land and it’ll be an easement, but it’ll be dead quiet. And so folks care a lot about that here. Education is huge because this is such an expensive place. I mean, affordability is is rough across the board.19:29.63John MBut because it’s such an and in an an expensive place to live, teachers are commuting from Maryland and West Virginia to teach at Loudoun County Public Schools.19:40.33John MAnd they’re commuting from Prince William to teach at Fauquier County Public Schools, which means that they’re not, they’re one, they’re on the road probably two hours a day, which is time they’re not spending with the kids. But it also means that they can’t invest in those communities in the same way they’d like to.19:56.18John MSo I think that is, you know we’re still in the bottom 25 states in teacher pay. I think that’s something we can we can fix and need to fix in the very near future here. So folks can actually afford to live in the communities they teach.20:07.69John MBut the end of the day, i this this election, you know there’s always a lot lot of flack going back and forth, but this election is going to be about the North Virginia economy.20:17.92John MWe’ve done a great job since COVID in our small towns because folks discovered them and we’ve done a good job of keeping folks coming in to Main Street.20:28.18John MBut we have to make sure that if we’re heading into a period of zero growth or perhaps negative growth in Northern Virginia, then we need to do everything we can to keep that churn on Main Street, meaning that when someone decides to retire or when their business idea didn’t work,20:42.60John MWe have to get somebody else in the door because all it takes is a couple of vacancies for a Main Street to start to look dead. And I used to run our Main Street Association. I’ve been endorsed by the National Main Street Alliance for this reason, because I want to make sure that that that we can do as easily as possible for our towns. And I think the right way to do that is a small tax credit.21:03.06John MI think if we’re going to give a giant tax credit to data centers can give a small tax credit to our first time entrepreneurs who want to start businesses because often that first cost, right, that first month’s rent. And I talked to small business owners all the time that do the do the farm market.21:18.06John MSweet meaning that they you know go to five or six farm markets in a in a week or something like that. They’re looking for their first, you know, physical place to be and their first brick and mortar and having a tax credit to help them pay their first month’s rent, I think would be incredibly helpful.21:34.84John MSo I’d love to see something like that. And beyond that, you know, every town’s got its own its own set of issues. I’m sure we could do a whole other podcast on each one. And so our job will be to make sure that folks have access to the resources down in Richmond to help fix their water infrastructure, help fix their, know,21:53.87John Myou know, budget gaps, whatever it is that they need to get done to make sure that the folks who live there can thrive.22:00.76Sam ShiraziYeah, and you you mentioned water as well. I wanted to follow up on that because there’s a lot of talk about data centers and electricity, but I think obviously water is a really important resource as well. What are some of the issues you’re hearing about water in your district?22:12.94John MYeah, so here in Western Loudoun, we are on a cars formation that is fairly porous. And so the groundwater level has been dropping, depending on where you are, between 10 and 40 feet in the last 20 years, which means that wells are starting to run dry.22:32.78John MAnd those wells can cost 10, 20, 30 grand to replace. And so as we start to decide what else is going to be built out here, and developers are always you know looking for new opportunities, but we have to understand what impact that’s going to have on all of us.22:50.19John MWe can’t just do things without thinking this through now. And what that probably looks like is a state level water management district like they have in Virginia Beach, which would require the state to review large large well uses of more than 300,000 gallons. I think that’s a good way to do this.23:07.50John MI think the county also needs to start taking a a bigger role in thinking about what this looks like, because if you let the groundwater level go too low, The primary users of that are farmers, wineries, breweries, and data centers.23:23.27John MData centers pull from the Potomac, but of course the Potomac pulls from the groundwater as well. And you start to lose all of those things, not even talking about individual folks having to incur that large expense or perhaps deciding not to incur that large expense and saying, well, I’m gonna retire, move to Florida and and sell my place to someone who’s gonna tear it down and put up a mega a mega mansion or something like that.23:47.90John MYou know, this is something that everyone, that will impact everybody in the not too distant future if we don’t take big steps now. And Northern Falkir is part of that same same formation. So we’ve got a lot of work to do.23:59.28Sam ShiraziWell, this has been a lot of really interesting policy discussions about the things impacting your district. I did want to talk about politics a little bit because this is one of the most competitive House of Delegates races this year.24:11.69Sam ShiraziTrump barely won the district in 2024, and you’re obviously trying to win it this year. and What has it been like to run in the district, in a battleground district, in a 50-50 district, and just that experience on the campaign trail?24:25.14John MYeah, no, it’s it’s been incredible, to be honest. i I’ve been doing this since since the last time it was cold. It’s starting to get cold again. But it’s such an incredible place. And you pointed out the top of the podcast how beautiful it is. It’s a huge district. It’s about 650 square miles.24:41.69John MI drive at least two hours a day every single day. But I get to drive through incredible country and I get to meet incredible people. But the the bottom line is that my family’s been here for hundreds of years. We care a lot about what happens to these communities.24:58.86John MAnd I have a privilege to be able to to have my name on the ballot. Nothing really prepares you for having, you know, your name and your face splashed all around the district and in all sorts of media and people accuse you of all sorts of things. You know, I didn’t know that the traffic tickets from when I was 18 or I forgot to play replace my headlight or something like that was going to be such a hot topic in the campaign this year. But, you know, I think On the whole, it’s an amazing experience. And we’ve met so many wonderful people.25:32.73John MAnd I can’t wait to to take my seat in a few months and and start to get down to work.25:38.88Sam ShiraziWell, I did have kind of one final question that I like to ask candidates because i I love going out to the district. If you love wineries, breweries, you know, pumpkin patches that has all that, you know, what is your favorite part of the district or what is something that you would like people to come out and visit in your district?25:55.60John MYeah, great question. So just yesterday, and folks should do this now if they hear your podcast, because the leaves are incredible at the moment. If you go to the very, very, very edge of the district, right near Bluemont, as you start to get into Clark County, we went yesterday to a great little place called Bear Chase, which has incredible views of the Shenandoah Valley without having to go all the way up Skyline Drive into Shenandoah National Park.26:24.11John MAnd there’s also a brewery right across the street. And you can basically walk between it. You can walk on the Appalachian Trail for a while. I’ll be honest, the district has dozens of places like this. But this one’s super easy to get to.26:36.22John MAnd I highly recommend it.26:38.20Sam ShiraziWell, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the podcast. If people are interested and want to learn more about your campaign, how would they do that?26:45.19John MYeah, you can go check it out at john4va.com, the number four, john4va.com. And please reach out. goes right to my goes right to my email. so26:55.36Sam ShiraziAll right. Well, thanks so much for joining me. This has been Fittable Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a bonus episode where we will go over some breaking news about redistricting in Virginia and just try to unpack it.00:12.93Sam ShiraziNow, to be perfectly honest, there’s a lot of unknowns right now, and I’m going to try to give everyone some answers to questions they might be having because the news has just come out. And obviously, we’re going to have to we’re gonna have to wait and see what happens. But I’ve seen a lot of people have questions, and I want to kind of explain as much as I can some of the reasons why what’s going on is going on. And then we can talk about what it might mean for redistricting in Virginia.00:38.76Sam ShiraziAnd to be perfectly honest, I mean, this is just pretty crazy to think about another October surprise. i don’t think a lot of people saw this coming because my sense is it was kept pretty closely tight within the Democrats in the general assembly. And then obviously the news came out.00:54.35Sam ShiraziWe’ve had a lot going on in October in Virginia. This is just another thing that is going on. don’t, you know In theory, it could impact the election, to be perfectly honest. I don’t really think most voters are that tuned in where they’re really kind of following the nuances of this.01:09.05Sam ShiraziSo I don’t think it’s going to have a huge impact on the election here in 2025, but it could have a big impact in 2026 in the midterms. And so I wanted to kind of do this podcast just to give people an update.01:19.95Sam Shiraziyou know To be perfectly honest, i you know we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out. There’s a lot of unknowns right now. I’m going to do my best. So there’s so much going on in the Virginia elections that, you know, I’m going to try it to also do my best to also figure out what’s going on with redistricting. But but to be very perfectly honest, most of the next 12 days are going to be focused on the Virginia elections.01:39.77Sam ShiraziAnd then we can talk about redistricting, depending on how it plays out. But I did want to do this. I want to give everyone a little bit of a primer about where we are. So big picture.01:50.77Sam ShiraziAt the beginning of the decade, Virginia, like every other state, redo their congressional maps because that is mandated every 10 years after the census comes out. In 2020, Virginia voters passed a independent redistricting commission.02:05.76Sam ShiraziSo the General Assembly did not draw the lines in Virginia. It was supposed to be drawn by the redistricting commission. Unfortunately, the redistricting commission was not able to do that because there was a lot of partisan issues. And long story short, redistricting commission did not draw the lines in Virginia. It got punted to the Virginia Supreme Court. They appointed two special masters. The special masters drew the lines.02:28.36Sam ShiraziCurrently, Virginia has a 6-5 Democratic delegation to the Congress. That means there are six Democrats from Virginia and five Republicans. so that’s kind of redistricting big picture in Virginia.02:41.54Sam ShiraziEarlier this year in Texas, there was a big push to redistrict. They redrew their lines. That helped the the Republicans. Obviously, they benefited. They gained a a decent amount of seats.02:51.88Sam ShiraziThere’s been talk about redistricting in some other states. I think it’s already happened in Missouri. There’s talk about Indiana. There’s talk about other states. So the Republicans very clearly are trying to redraw the lines in several states because in their minds, it’s going to help get them some extra seats next year during the midterms.03:07.98Sam ShiraziAnd obviously they’re they’re going to have an uphill climb to retain the House of Representatives in 2026, because typically the party that’s in the White House doesn’t do that well in the midterms. And so I think Republicans are expecting to probably lose some seats And so in their mind, if they’re able to redraw the maps in some states, that’ll help gain some more seats.03:27.04Sam ShiraziThere’s also been, I forgot, North Carolina as well, there’s been the maps being redrawn. So long story short, I mean Republicans are trying to get as many seats as they can to potentially deal with a rough midterm next year.03:40.05Sam ShiraziAnd the Democrats have been a little bit slow to respond. I would say the only state where they’ve seriously responded is in California. So in California, There is a referendum on the ballot this November to try to temporarily change the maps in California because California also had a redistricting commission.03:56.94Sam ShiraziIt looks like almost certainly that redistricting amendment is going to pass in California. So the maps are going to change in California in all likelihood, and that’ll gain some seats for the Democrats, but it’s not going to make up for all the seats the Republicans are gaining.04:09.94Sam ShiraziAnd so there’s been talk in other states like Maryland or Illinois about also redistricting. Long story short, there’s been a lot of kind of national conversation about redistricting. It kind of was kicked off by the Republicans redistricting in some states, and now the Democrats are trying to play catch up.04:24.38Sam ShiraziAnd the question becomes, you know, what’s going on in Virginia? And in Virginia, just to give people... Some context, I did a podcast earlier in the year on this topic. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think the Democrats were going to move forward with redistricting this quickly. I thought eventually they may think about some long-term changes to how redistricting is done in Virginia, try to change things before the 2030 census.04:46.60Sam ShiraziI have my personal opinion about some of the problems with the redistricting commission in Virginia. There’s a lot of things that could be changed about how Virginia does its Redistricting. However, i was not expecting the Democrats to do anything quickly to change the maps in Virginia.05:01.16Sam ShiraziHowever, theoretically, it was possible. And so what it seems what’s going on, at least what’s been reported, is the Democrats in the General Assembly are thinking about moving forward with changing the maps potentially before the 2026 midterms.05:15.22Sam ShiraziAnd to give people context, so currently the Democrats have a majority in both the state Senate and the House of Delegates. It’s a narrow majority. So in the state Senate, they have 21-19 majority.05:26.05Sam ShiraziIn the House of Delegates, they have a 51-49 majority The House of Delegates, all 100 seats are up for election this year. In all likelihood, the Democrats are going to maintain their majority. And if anything, they’re going to expand the majority.05:37.40Sam ShiraziSo think the Democrats feel pretty good that they’re going to win the House of Delegates again this year. And so that’s kind of where we are in terms of you know the present. And so I think the question becomes, OK,05:48.42Sam ShiraziWhy are the Democrats doing this now? Because I’m getting that from a lot of people. Like, why, you know, 12 days before the election would you announce this? It’s obviously going to distract people from the state elections. It’s also potentially going to energize the Republicans. It could energize the Democrats, but it could energize the Republicans. So people are confused. Like, why is this happening right now?06:07.28Sam ShiraziWell, there’s a very specific reason it’s happening right now. Under the Virginia Constitution, there is really only one way to change the Constitution. And remember, I said in 2020, 2020, voters passed a constitutional amendment to create the Redistricting Commission.06:20.44Sam ShiraziAnd so in order for the maps to change in Virginia, there needs to be an amendment to the Virginia Constitution. And the only way to amend the Virginia Constitution is a pretty you know complex process, and I’ll just kind of lay it out.06:34.02Sam ShiraziThe way you amend the Virginia Constitution is, first, the General Assembly, the House of Delegates in the State Senate pass an initial version or the initial, the first time they pass a bill saying there’s gonna be a referendum to amend the constitution.06:48.43Sam ShiraziSo that happens in one year. The Virginia constitution says there has to be an election for the House of Delegates in between So what that means is there has to be another election before there can be a referendum. So in other words, Democrats have to do this before the election, there needs to be an election, and then the Democrats need to do it again next year. So you have to do it two years in a row with an election in between.07:13.89Sam ShiraziSo that’s basically a long way of saying the way you amend the cup Virginia Constitution General Assembly passes it. There’s an election. General Assembly passes it again. And then it goes to the voters and the voters get the ultimate say.07:25.22Sam ShiraziAnd so in order for there to be a potential constitutional referendum next year on the red redistricting in Virginia, it has to happen before the election. And so that’s why the Democrats are doing this right now.07:37.45Sam ShiraziNow, you could argue the Democrats waited till the last minute. And so it’s not really giving voters a whole lot of notice about this. i think part of the idea about having the election in between is so that voters can maybe decide whether they want this or not. But long story short, Virginia Democrats, they have a very short timeframe to get this done.07:55.75Sam ShiraziThey would have to do it in the next 12 days. So let’s just assume you know they do this. They pass it in the next 12 days, the initial version they would have to win the elections this year for the House of Delegates. So it doesn’t it doesn’t matter what happens with the governor, doesn’t matter what happens with lieutenant governor, or even really attorney general. Basically, this is all down to the House of Delegates.08:16.90Sam ShiraziAnd remember, the state senate is not up for election. Democrats already control the state senate. So what would happen is, Democrats pass the bill once, they win the House of Delegates elections this year, which seems pretty likely. And then...08:28.68Sam ShiraziThey would have to come back in January and they would have to pass the bill again in order to have the referendum. So if they pass it in January, the Virginia Constitution then says there can be a referendum within 90 days. So it can’t be the next day. It has to be within 90 days.08:44.36Sam ShiraziSo that means, let’s say you pass something in January. Theoretically, the referendum could be in April. So that’s kind of the timeline. Democrats pass it in the next 12 days. They win the House of Delegates. They pass it again in January.08:56.13Sam ShiraziAnd then in 90 days, they do a referendum in April. And so that is all the steps that would need to be taken in order for there to be a change to the Virginia Constitution so Democrats could redistrict in 2026.09:09.20Sam ShiraziNow, that’s already a lot. and And again, this is assuming the voters pass it. The voters could say no, they could reject it. I think what the Virginia Democrats are seeing is they’re seeing what’s going on in California. They’re seeing that the California Democrats look like they’re going to be able to pass this thing.09:25.12Sam ShiraziAnd so maybe the the Virginia Democrats are thinking, you know, we’re going to be able to pass it too. Now, keep in mind, Virginia is a lot less blue than California. So maybe they’re miscalculating. But long story short, let’s assume the voters end up passing this in 2026. What happens then?09:40.98Sam ShiraziSo the problem is the maps have to be redrawn and the primary is typically in June in Virginia. And so that’s going to be very quick turnaround and all of that stuff.09:53.91Sam ShiraziThere has been talk that maybe the date of the primary will be changed. In theory, maybe you could change the date of the filing deadline, but all that would require laws being passed.10:04.55Sam ShiraziYou don’t need to amend the Virginia Constitution to do all that. You would just need to pass laws changing the date of the primary. And you know honestly, I haven’t thought through all of this. I mean, I’m sure there were some legal pitfalls. I’m sure it’s complicated. I’m sure it’s not that easy to get all this stuff done.10:22.77Sam ShiraziAnd i think that’s been kind of but the initial reaction that it’s going to take a lot of specific things have to happen in order for this redistricting to happen in 2026. I think, you know, my personal opinion is I think the Virginia Democrats are probably not going to want to do something drastic change to Virginia redistricting for the rest of time. They’re going to kind of do the California way where California basically said, this is an exception just till the end of the decade for these next few elections because the Republicans in Republican states gerrymandered their maps.10:52.74Sam ShiraziWe in California have a exception toward normal redistricting where we will basically redraw our maps for the next few elections. I think the Virginia Democrats likely will go down that route.11:04.70Sam ShiraziIn theory, in 2028, they could do a different referendum to change long term the way the maps are drawn in Virginia. But at least for the referendum, if it’s going to happen in 2026, the likelihood that it’s going to succeed will really come down to it being more of a temporary measure. Because I think if you just try to completely repeal nonpartisan or or you you repeal the independent redistricting commission, I think it’s going to be very difficult to get that passed. So long story short, I think this will be a short term change to redistricting for the next few cycles.11:37.24Sam ShiraziAnd then the question becomes, you know what do the maps look like? I think you know if the Democrats are going to go through all this hassle, you know my my gut is telling me they’re going to try to redraw the maps to in order to get three more seats.11:49.90Sam ShiraziNow, if they’re cautious, they could redraw it to only get two more seats. But again, i think you know if you’re going through all this hassle, you might as well try to get as much as you can. So I think it’s possible for the Democrats to draw 9-2 map.12:02.90Sam Shirazifor virginia So that means nine Democrats, two Republicans. Currently, there are six Democrats, five Republicans. So that would be a three-seat pickup for the Democrats. Frankly, I don’t think it’s that hard to draw 9-2 map.12:15.14Sam ShiraziI think that would it would it be compliant with the Voting Rights Act. You could... you know Just play around a little bit. Essentially, all the Republicans would have left would be a district based in southwest and southside Virginia, and then they probably have a district based in the Shenandoah Valley and central Virginia.12:32.69Sam ShiraziAnd then every every other district could basically be you know parts of northern Virginia, parts of Richmond, parts of Hampton Roads. You know, people have played around with it. I’ve played around with it. It’s not that complicated to come up with a 9-2 map.12:45.40Sam ShiraziYou know, if if they’re being cautious and they don’t want to go too crazy, they could draw an 8-3 map. But again, if you’re going through all this hassle, you might as well kind of do it do it to the max. So, I mean, that’s all this stuff going on in Virginia.12:59.04Sam ShiraziObviously, a lot of open questions, a lot of question marks from... The starting point, I mean, do do the Virginia Democrats have the votes in the General Assembly? Because they have very narrow majorities.13:11.02Sam ShiraziAs I mentioned, you you know they can’t lose anyone on either in either chamber. Presumably, you know theyre they they should be somewhat unified if they’re going to be bringing this out into the public. So it’s hard for me to imagine they don’t have the votes. But obviously, and we’ve seen in some of the Republican states, there’s been pushback. And it’s possible that the Virginia Democrats to begin with don’t get the votes. So that would kind of kill it this year.13:34.80Sam ShiraziI think if it passes this year, you know it’s likely to pass next year. I mean, theoretically, if the Democrats don’t win the House of Delegates this year, which I think is relatively unlikely, it could not pass in the General Assembly next year. i think I think almost certainly Democrats are on track to win the House of Delegates. So...13:51.52Sam ShiraziAnyway, so the other thing that could trip them up is potentially the voters just saying no, that they could lose the referendum next year. Again, you know that’s kind of a long ways off. The other thing too, some of the nuances about passing a law and changing the potential primary date, all that stuff would have to go through like regular legislation.14:13.82Sam ShiraziAnd that does involve the governor. So open question whether Spanberger would be on board with some of this stuff if she ends up winning. Obviously, she she’d have to win the governor’s race, but that’s kind of how it’s looking right now.14:24.85Sam ShiraziThe other thing are the legal challenges. i mean, obviously, there’s going to be complicated stuff going on. Almost all of these redistricting efforts in other states have led to lawsuits. Most of them have been unsuccessful, but there are lawsuits.14:37.46Sam ShiraziAnd actually, you know, talking about the attorney general race, Potentially, if there’s a lawsuit, you know it’s an open question, what is the next attorney general going to do? Obviously, if Jason Meyers wins re-election, he could decide he’s not going to defend any of this.14:51.77Sam ShiraziObviously, if Jay Jones wins the attorney general race, he was much more likely to defend what the Democrats are doing, or almost certainly going to defend what the Democrats are doing. And Virginia Supreme Court, it is an interesting judicial body. it is It tends to be nonpartisan. So I think it’s hard to read how they would handle cases. It’s not like they are hacks. I think everyone in Virginia, Democrats and Republicans, generally respects the Virginia Supreme Court. I think they try to be independent.15:21.57Sam Shirazithey They have a reputation for being little c legal conservative, so they are not you know necessarily super progressive judges, but it doesn’t mean that they will go along with whatever the Republicans want them to. They are not those types of you know big C conservative judges.15:37.48Sam ShiraziSo long story short, I mean, a lot a lot of unknowns. I think it’s a big surprise that this happened. I personally didn’t think the Democrats were necessarily on board. I think my guess is They have been seeing what’s going on both at the governor’s level and in the House of Delegates.15:54.06Sam ShiraziThey felt pretty confident they’re gonna win the governor’s race. They feel pretty confident they’re gonna win the House of Delegates. They’ve been looking at what’s going on in California where it looks like the redistricting amendment’s gonna pass easily. And so they’re thinking, you know why don’t we do this in Virginia? We can pick up three seats.16:07.92Sam ShiraziI think that would make it a lot easier for the Democrats to win the House of Representatives in 2026. So definitely a lot on the line for redistricting in Virginia. i will do my best to keep everyone updated. Like I said, to be perfectly honest, there’s so much going on with the election. it’s just It’s been a crazy October in Virginia, and it just keeps coming.16:30.32Sam ShiraziI hope this kind of answers some of the questions people have. I mean, I don’t have every single answer, but my goal is to kind of explain what’s going on, explain how this might happen.16:41.40Sam ShiraziIt is a complicated process. There are a lot of road bumps. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen. But this has been kind of the first indication that Democrats might be going there in Virginia. We’ll have to just keep an eye on it. you know Again, I doubt it’s going to actually impact the election because the people who are in the know enough to actually understand what’s going on with the redistricting are probably pretty engaged voters, and they’ve probably already made up their mind one way or another. So...17:08.19Sam ShiraziI don’t actually see it impacting the election that much. However, obviously, Republicans are trying to use this to say, you know, Democrats shouldn’t change the maps. Democrats, my guess is Spanberger and the other Democrats are going to probably not want to focus on this. They just want to get the votes done and then focus on the election.17:24.80Sam ShiraziYou know, we’ll see how it actually plays out in the closing days of the campaign. There’s a lot going on. There’s a shutdown. There’s, you know, all the stuff coming out of DC. So hard to know how much of an impact this is going to have.17:38.00Sam Shirazii will try to keep, keep doing my best to cover it all. There’s so much going on in Virginia. i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. There will be a lot of podcasts coming out. I hope people find them useful. They’re going to be covering all the different things going on in Virginia. And yeah, so stay tuned. Never a dull moment in the Virginia elections. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been federal fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special bonus episode where I will go over a bunch of polls that we have gotten in recent days just to see where the campaign is and specifically taking a look at the attorney general race, because I think that’s shaping up to be the most competitive race this year in Virginia.00:19.64Sam ShiraziSo before I go over some of these polls, I did want to caveat that there’s a lot of what I would call partisan or partisan aligned polls coming out from both sides. Frankly, it’s more on the Republican side. There have been a few Democratic ones, but typically these are more on the Republican side.00:35.62Sam ShiraziAnd it’s not that I completely ignore these polls, but I often have some skepticism on either side when a poll is being put out, because obviously there’s a reason the polls are but being put out. Sometimes the poll method methodology isn’t very clear. Sometimes there isn’t a lot of information about the poll in terms of The crosstabs. And so I have more skepticism of these partisan polls.00:58.46Sam ShiraziAnd it’s, again, not like I totally ignore them. I take a look. I try to think about, okay, what are they telling us? But I will be honest with you, I’m not going to go over all of those in this episode, because I just think that’s a lot of polls. And, you know, some of them are good. Some of them are bad, i think.01:14.77Sam ShiraziSome of them have more thorough methodology and they explain kind of how they came to their results. Some of them really have very little information. So I just think it’s not really worth spending a lot of time, especially since we’re going to be getting a lot of these partisan polls in the last few days of the campaign to really dwell on them.01:31.07Sam ShiraziWhat I’m looking for are the nonpartisan polls, particularly from places that have either history in Virginia or have polled Virginia before. I think that’s going to be really helpful. Because, you know, you can kind of get a more realistic picture on those nonpartisan polls as opposed to the partisan polls, which obviously have a little bit of agenda and there’s a reason they were putting out there.01:51.34Sam ShiraziWhereas the nonpartisan polls typically, you know, they’re trying to give a more accurate assessment of what’s going on. So I will start off with a poll from State Navigate. So State Navigate is an organization, nonprofit created by Chaz Netticombe, who has been a guest on this podcast and Chaz has been doing Virginia election stuff for a while.02:11.90Sam ShiraziHe started in 2017. He did it in 2021. 2023, he did a really good job in predicting every single race in the General Assembly. So I think Chaz has a good sense of what’s going on in Virginia.02:22.84Sam ShiraziHe helped put this poll together and he helped try to make sure that it was balanced and there was a good representation of what’s going on in Virginia. And so while I think You never want to just focus on one specific poll. I did take a closer look at this one because it’s nonpartisan and I know Chaz knows Virginia really well.02:42.84Sam ShiraziSo I want to go over that poll. I will say, I think this poll is more favorable for for the Democrats compared to other polls that have come out. And I think Chaz is maybe assuming a slightly bluer environment as opposed to some of these other polls.02:57.20Sam ShiraziAnd I think when you’re modeling and putting together a poll, you’re always thinking about, okay, what is the electorate of the people in the poll? Because you don’t want to just have Democrats in the poll. You don’t just want Republicans in the poll. You want to have a good representation.03:11.51Sam ShiraziAnd there’s other kind of demographics you want to take a look at. You want to take a look at race. You want to look at college education. And I think Chaz has tried to put together this poll, what he thinks it might look like on election day in Virginia.03:23.81Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I just want to kind of caveat by saying this is kind of one scenario about what Virginia might look like on election day, which is maybe more of a blue wave type scenario.03:34.57Sam ShiraziAnd I will say, I think a lot of pollsters are scared to kind of go there because in previous elections, particularly the presidential elections, they’ve been kind of burnt on what’s been going on in polling.03:45.82Sam ShiraziThey miss some of the Trumpier voters who are less likely to respond to polls. And I think Chaz has tried his best to, you know, get a poll that is accurate for this year in Virginia and specifically for this environment, not necessarily looking back to 2024, not looking back at 2021, but trying to figure out, okay, what’s going on in 2025 in Virginia?04:07.74Sam ShiraziThis is kind of the snapshot from the state Navigate poll, so I’ll go over that right now. All right, so for governor, it had Democratic nominee Abigail Smanberger at 55%, and it had Winston Merle Sears, the Republican nominee, at 42%.04:20.91Sam ShiraziFor lieutenant governor, it had Ghazal Hashmi 53%, and it had John at For Attorney General, the State Navigate poll had Democratic nominee Jay Jones at 50% and the current incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Meares at 45%. And then for House of Delegates, it had the Democratic ballot, generic ballot at 53% and the Republican won at forty one at 41%.04:46.54Sam ShiraziSo obviously this poll got a lot of attention because it’s much more friendly to the Democrats overall than most of the other polls that have been coming out. Now, keep in mind, a decent amount of those polls are GOP-aligned polls. So it kind of makes sense that this more nonpartisan poll would be friendlier to the Democrats.05:02.34Sam ShiraziAnd I think the big surprise was really the attorney general number, because we’ve had a lot of talk about how you know Jason Meares is now in the driver’s seat. He might win. i think there’s certainly a possibility that Meares can win. But I think the problem Meares is having, and even in most of the GOP-aligned polls, is he’s having a ceiling around 45%, 46%. And you see that in this poll. So Meares is definitely the best performing Republican.05:28.30Sam ShiraziI think he’s going to do the best out of the three statewide Republicans running. The question just becomes, you know, is he going to hit 46% and that’s kind of his ceiling or can he get up to 50%?05:39.88Sam ShiraziAnd typically in most polling, Meares is not getting up to 50%. I think the thing that was surprising in this poll was that Jones was able to hit 50%. So Meares is getting 45%. I think that’s pretty expected.05:52.67Sam ShiraziThere’s been a lot of questions about can Jones get up to 50% because we talked about it before. There’s the issue of ticket splitting. There’s the issue of undervotes. And so this poll is saying that enough people are or backing Jones that he’s able to get up to 50%.06:09.70Sam Shiraziand And, you know, it’s it’s an unknown. i think I think there is a very strong tendency among voters to come home at the end of the day and just vote straight ticket, particularly if you’re partisan, particularly if you’re upset at what’s going on in D.C. and you’re upset at President Trump.06:22.54Sam ShiraziThere’s going to be a strong temptation to just fill in the deep, deep bubble in every single race. and i And I think in terms of the as Australian general race specifically, i will just be honest. i mean, we live and breathe Virginia politics. if you’re listening to this policy, if you’re you’re listening to this podcast, I’m sure you are well aware of everything going on in Virginia.06:40.99Sam ShiraziA lot of voters are not as tuned into as we are. And frankly, some of them probably have not heard about the text. And even if they have heard about it, just have very vague idea about what’s going on.06:52.79Sam ShiraziYou know, I think a lot of us have to keep in mind, particularly younger voters, how they have a very different way of approaching elections. You know, they get tuned in at the very, very end.07:04.05Sam ShiraziAnd if they show up, they typically don’t know much about any of the candidates. And you know they might not even, frankly, know much about the governor candidate, let alone the attorney general candidate. But the way it works for a young voter is you wake up on election day, you realize there’s an election, you go to the polling place, and then you just vote for whatever party you feel like voting for. so i think you know as much as the people...07:28.16Sam Shiraziwho are closely following this election really live and breathe and know all the nuances of every single story. i mean, there are a lot of voters who are not like that. The question becomes how many of them show up on Election Day. And obviously, young voters are notorious for not showing up in in elections, particularly non-presidential elections.07:45.24Sam ShiraziSo it’s possible a bunch of them don’t show up. It’s possible a decent amount of them show up and their same day orration registration in Virginia. And they just vote straight ticket Democratic because, you know, whatever reason they’re upset at what’s going on at D.C. or they want to send a message. and And they just are not thinking that critically about every single race.08:03.15Sam ShiraziSo, anyways, all that has to say is like, I think with the Attorney General race, you just have to keep in mind, you know, there are different types of voters and some voters are very familiar with the tech story and there’s some voters who might barely even know about it. So, anyways, that in terms of the State Navigate poll, I think it was a helpful poll. I think it’s helpful to have a poll that’s maybe modeled a little bit more.08:25.88Sam ShiraziIn a typical off year election in Virginia, which typically in these off year elections, the party out of the White House tends to do better, tends to get out more of their base. And so I think if if this is like a typical year in Virginia, this poll is kind of showing you that. And that’s one possibility this year in Virginia, where you kind of have a 2017 type scenario.08:46.70Sam Shiraziwhere people are upset at what’s going on in D.C., they’re upset at Trump, they just want to send a message, they vote for the Democrats. I think if that happens on election night, this is kind of the scenario you’re you’re looking at. All right, now let’s take a look at the VCU poll. So VCU at the Wilder Center put out a poll and they do periodically polls in Virginia.09:04.31Sam ShiraziI will say typically the VCU polls have a decent amount of undecideds. And so you’ll see that in this poll. And I think while it’s helpful to have the poll, it’s also a little bit difficult to kind of get a full read on the race when you have the VCU poll having so many undecideds.09:17.54Sam ShiraziI think the VCU poll is more like a type environment where Democrats are going to do decent in Virginia because it slightly leans to a blue state, but it’s not going to be this crazy blue wave according to the VCU poll.09:33.05Sam ShiraziIt’s not going to be a red wave either. I think it’s more kind of a typical Virginia elections. Democrats have the advantage. And you’ll see some of these numbers. There are a decent amount of undecideds specifically below the top of the ticket.09:43.48Sam ShiraziAnd i think that makes it particularly hard to figure out in this poll what’s going on in the attorney general race. So09:49.86Sam ShiraziAll right, so I’ll give you the numbers in this VCU poll. For Governor, Abigail Spanberger is at 49%. Winston Merrill Sears is at 42%. For Lieutenant Governor, Ghazal Hashmi is at 44%, and John Reed is at 43%.10:04.58Sam ShiraziAnd then for Attorney General, Jason Meares is at 45%, and Jay Jones is at 42%. is at forty two percent Okay. And they also did a generic ballot for the House of Delegates, and that was 47% Democratic and 44% Republican.10:20.95Sam ShiraziAnd again, we’re seeing a decent amount of undecided. I mentioned Miárez, he’s at 45%. Again, he’s kind of at the ceiling where he hits 45%, 46%. I think he’s going to get up to 45%, 46%. The question is, again, how much higher can he go?10:35.49Sam ShiraziAnd there’s something that I haven’t talked about, which you know you hear thrown around, the idea of shy Jay Jones voters. So what that means is maybe in a poll, for whatever reason, they don’t tell the pollster that they’re going to vote for Jay Jones. Maybe that’s because they don’t want to admit that they’re voting for him.10:51.07Sam ShiraziMaybe they are undecided, and then at the last minute they decide to vote for him. So there’s this... potential where, you know, if you’re at 45, 42% in a poll, obviously that there is going to be a decent amount of undecideds there, about 13%. So where did those people go? Do they go to Meares? Do they go to Jones?11:09.99Sam ShiraziDo they get split? If there is this late movement towards Jones for whatever reason, because Democrats come home or maybe the late deciding voters are kind of out of it and they don’t even really know about the tech story and they just all go to Jones, I do think even if Meares is showing a little bit of a lead at the end,11:25.60Sam ShiraziIf he can never kind of get above the hump and get to 50%, there is this possibility that Jones is able to pull it off at the end. And obviously the top of the ticket margin for the attorney general race is the most important thing. So I think if Spanberger is winning closer to the VCU number of 7%, I think that is going to be tough for Jones. And that’s kind of the environment where Jason Mears might be able to win.11:46.85Sam ShiraziIf we’re closer to the state navigate environment where Spanberger is winning by 13%, I think that’s clearly more in the area where Jones is going to be able to pull it out and vrs is going to have a much harder time if we’re we’re looking about double digit win for Spanberger at the top of the ticket.12:02.03Sam ShiraziAnd again, I wanted to give you these two polls. They’re nonpartisan. They’re kind of giving you different potential outcomes in Virginia. yeah it’s it’s never a good idea to kind of hyper fixate on one poll. It’s good to have kind of a sense of, okay, this is what one poll is showing. This is what another poll is showing. Again, i just wanted to kind of flag the nonpartisan polls at this time.12:20.33Sam ShiraziYou know, if you want to look it up, you can look it up all the partisan polls. I think it’s just too much. And again, some of the partisan polls, I trust a little bit more than the others. Some of them I’m very dubious about because they just don’t have a very clear explanation of how they reach those results.12:35.12Sam ShiraziSo, I think both State Navigate and BCU put out a bunch of cross tabs, put out their numbers. You can go look at it. I think, you know, it’s, I think what it’s telling us is Spamburger is definitely in the driver’s seat to potentially win this year in Virginia.12:50.93Sam Shirazithe Question is, does she get a big win, a smaller win? I think the bigger the win for Spanberger, the bigger the down ballot implications are going to be. And potentially, Jay Jones could win for a Attorney General and Democrats can flip a lot of seats in the House of Delegates.13:05.34Sam ShiraziThe smaller the Spanberger win, obviously, you’re going to have the opposite effect. And, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see how things shake out. I did want to talk about the House of Delegates because it doesn’t get a lot of attention because so many people are focused on the governor’s race and now the you attorney general’s race. But the House of Delegates is super important. And I think for this week on Saturday, I will go through the House of Delegates races because I just think we’ve reached the point.13:47.12Sam ShiraziSo I think it’s really helpful to have that. And so this week, State Navigate released a poll regarding House District 86. So this is in the Hampton Roads area. It includes part of the cities of Hampton and Pocosin, and also includes a small part of York County.14:03.01Sam ShiraziAnd this is a close seat in 2024. Harris barely won it by about 1.5%. The current incumbent Republican is A.C. Cardoza, and he is being challenged by Democrat Virgil Thornton.14:17.02Sam ShiraziI will say, you know, Cardoza has some issues, and he he even before the issues came out, he is not considered necessarily the strongest incumbent, partly because he hasn’t fundraised a lot, partly because he hasn’t been there that long. He only won in 2021.14:33.13Sam ShiraziAnd the other thing to keep in mind is the Democrats are spending a lot of money in this district. I think that was a big surprise in the campaign finance reports, how much money the Democrats were spending in this district.14:44.77Sam ShiraziBecause frankly, in 2023, it really wasn’t much of a battleground. It was kind of an afterthought. This year, very much the Democrats are targeting it. And I think the State Navigate poll shows that there’s a reason the Democrats are targeting it.14:57.69Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, I’m sure the Democratic internals are also looking pretty good for them. Because they wouldn’t be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars if they didn’t think there was a chance they could win this seat. So I will go over the State Navigate poll now.15:09.62Sam ShiraziAll right. So in terms of the State Navigate poll for specifically the House District 86, for governor, it had Abigail Spanberger winning this district 52% to 47%.15:21.07Sam ShiraziFor lieutenant governor, it had Ghazala Hashmi winning the district 50% 49%. percent to forty nine percent For Attorney General, it had Jay Jones winning this district 50% to 49%. And finally, for the House of Delegates, the the two candidates running in this district, it had the Democrat winning 52% to 46%.15:39.84Sam ShiraziAnd so there’s a lot going on in this poll. Generally, this is showing that... the environment is going to be bluer, at least at the top of the ticket, than 2024, because in 2024, Harris won this sheet by about 1.5%. Here, Spanberger’s winning the seat by 5%. I think the thing that was really surprising about this poll was the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General race, specifically that in the Attorney General race, there wasn’t much ticket splitting.16:04.90Sam Shiraziespecially basically it was the same as the lieutenant governor’s race. Now keep in mind Hampton Roads, Jay Jones comes from Hampton Roads, so he’s probably going to be doing doing a little bit better there. This district is about a quarter black, and I think Jay Jones in terms of the voters most likely to stick with him. with with him They’re basically black voters in Hampton Roads.16:21.62Sam ShiraziSo a little bit of caveat there. I think the other thing obviously interesting in this poll is the Democrats, at least according to the State Navigate poll, are on track to flip this seat 52% to 46%. Partly, I think that’s because AC Cardoza is not a strong incumbent. Partly, I think it’s because the Democrats are investing a lot in this district.16:40.00Sam ShiraziSo, I mean, if they flip this seat, it’s going to be a very good night for them in the House of Delegates. You know, the one thing I wanted to caveat about this district specifically is I mentioned the district’s about a quarter black in Hampton, and most of those are in the city of Hampton.16:55.43Sam ShiraziI think there is a scenario where the Democrats just don’t get the same amount of turnout potentially in the city of Hampton. And I mentioned another city in the district, Pocosin, that’s a much more Republican district district.17:08.98Sam Shirazipeople tend to come out in that part of the district. It’s not a huge city, but it just gets pretty high turnout. So I think there could be this turnout dynamic where maybe on a poll, if you just pulled the district, you think the Democrats would be able to win. But when the turnout ends up happening, more Republicans come out. So the Republicans are able to pull it out. So again, it’s one poll. I wouldn’t necessarily obsess over it. I think a lot of things on election night come down to turnout and,17:37.49Sam Shiraziparticularly down ballot.17:39.21Sam ShiraziOkay, so one last thing I wanted to cover is just The idea of turnout versus persuasion, I think at the top of the ticket, it’s pretty clear that Spanberger is getting a decent amount of persuasion. I think she’s going to be the strongest performing Democrat.17:52.40Sam ShiraziSo, you know, we can put the governor’s race aside because I think both sides are kind of coming to the conclusion that’s going to be very unlikely that for the Republicans to win that race.18:02.72Sam ShiraziI wanted to focus more on the attorney general race, to be honest, and you know to a certain extent, this also has implications for the House of Delegates. I think for those races, it’s going to be less persuasion because people are more kind of loyal to the party that they typically vote for down ballot. So I think there’s going to be less Republicans voting for the Democrats down ballot than potentially at the top of the ticket.18:26.82Sam ShiraziAnd voters in the middle, if you if they lean conservative, they may vote for Spanberger, but I think they’re going to stick more with the party that they’re usually loyal to down ballot. So I think a lot of the House of Delegates and the Trade General is going to come down to turnout.18:40.76Sam ShiraziSpecifically, I’ve talked about this before. Black voters in Hampton Roads, both for House of Delegates and the Attorney General race. I also think increasingly for the Attorney General race, students are going to be important. Students are important in the House of Delegates as well.18:54.40Sam ShiraziI say students, but really young people, college students. because those voters tune in very late. And like I said, they typically don’t think too much about down down ballot. And so you can see this scenario where there’s kind of a surge of Black voters, there’s a surge of young people at the end, and that will help the Democrats in the House of Delegates. That should help Jay Jones for a Attorney General.19:15.99Sam ShiraziSo I think that’s one scenario. And maybe the State Navigate poll is kind of thinking that’s going to be a more likely scenario. I think there’s this other scenario where For whatever reason, because it’s an off-year election or voters aren’t paying attention, that doesn’t happen. So the black turnout isn’t that great.19:31.94Sam ShiraziYounger voters don’t come out. And I think that’s going to be tougher for the Democrats in the House of Delegates, tougher for Jay Jones. And so as we’re getting closer and closer to Election Day, I think it’s important to think about turnout.19:43.58Sam ShiraziAnd I just wanted to note one last thing that happened. It was announced that the Saturday before the election on November 1st, there will be a rally in Norfolk with a former President Obama, who’s going to come to campaign for Spanberger.19:56.89Sam ShiraziNow, some people are saying, well, why is Obama coming to Virginia if Spanberger is winning? i mean, he’s come to Virginia in every single election since 2005. So this is just kind of been a tradition. Obama comes to Virginia. If you’re a campaign, I said this, it’s pretty much malpractice to not have Obama come because why you get a lot of free earned media. So obviously a former president campaigning, you will get a lot of local news coverage. You’ll get national news coverage. So it’s just a bunch of free media. You know, it’s kind of obviously you’re going to want that.20:25.81Sam ShiraziAlso, your base is going to get enthusiastic. President Obama is very popular among the Democratic base. And then finally, specifically with black voters, i mean, he is a popular figure with black voters, and you would want them to get energized and to go out and vote and to tell their friends to vote. And so i think for all those reasons, it makes sense for Obama to come out. And it’s certainly going to be a boost for Smanberger. I think the question is, how much does it also boost Jay Jones for attorney general? Does it also boost some of the House of Delegates candidates? We talked about the 86th district.20:53.97Sam ShiraziIt’s one fourth black. It’s in Hampton Roads. Norfolk is obviously the same media market as Hampton, the city of Hampton. So all this is going on in order to kind of get that blue wave potentially for the Democrats. doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but I think that is why you’re seeing certain things happening on the campaign trail.21:10.77Sam ShiraziWe’ll see if it happens. We’ll see if State Navigate, their poll ends up being right, or maybe we’re closer to a VCU environment. Who knows? I wanted to kind of lay out these polls as we’ve we’ve seen them.21:21.56Sam Shiraziwe there There will be more polls. I will typically only report on the good polls, the ones I think are nonpartisan, the ones I think have good methodology. I’m not going report every single poll. Just be weary when you see a bunch of random polls out there, especially from people and organizations that you you may not be super familiar with. you know i will I will flag the more important polls. in my final podcasts before the election.21:44.94Sam ShiraziSo I appreciate everyone who’s been listening a lot going on. As I said, I’m going to be putting out more episodes. Some of them are more interviews. Some of them are going to giving you my thoughts. You know, it’s, it’s the, it’s the final countdown until the election. It’s really exciting. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been federal fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus interview with Todd Truitt. He is an attorney in Arlington, and he also spends a lot of time working on education policy. And I wanted to have him on because obviously there’s been coverage of education in this election, but I think sometimes the actual policy discussion is missed. And I think Todd is well regarded on both sides of the aisle. And in terms of his knowledge of education, he’s a father of kids who go to public schools in Virginia. I also have kids who go to public school in Virginia, so I thought it’ would be interesting to hear from an actual parent on this issue as well.00:41.05Sam ShiraziSo, with that Todd, thanks for joining me.00:43.65Todd TruittNo, thanks for having me, Sam. It’s a, it’s an honor to join your podcast. I’m a big, big listener.00:48.77Sam ShiraziYeah, so to to begin, you know what made you interested in education?00:53.85Todd TruittWell, you know, I am a first generation. I was a first generation college student and, you know, I, I just, now I have two kids in public schools. I’m involved in the public schools, and Arlington public schools, which very much a big fan of Arlington public schools, but, you know, I, I just see from kind of a lived experience perspective.01:13.19Todd Truittlike what kids have that have kind of two educated parents versus kids that don’t have, and the expectations that are set at home versus kids that don’t have those kind of resources in-house and kind of like what public schools should be providing.01:28.50Sam ShiraziThat makes sense. And, you know, I think your background is helpful in terms of the work you’re doing on education, because obviously there’s been talk about education in this election. I find the media tends to just focus on the trans issue, which, you know, frankly,01:44.13Sam ShiraziI know a lot of parents who have kids in public schools is probably the least of their concern. They’re mostly concerned about things related to reading, writing, math, trying to make sure their kids are learning, and that often gets missed in the political conversation.01:58.76Sam ShiraziSo can you kind of talk about how education policy fits in, even though you don’t always hear about it on the campaign trail?02:05.31Todd TruittWell, yeah, and no, Sam, I expressed your disappointment, too, with kind of this year. And i would say this, you know, I think first to just talk about the trans issue, it’s not a great polling issue for Democrats. It splits activists from the rank and file voters.02:20.01Todd TruittBut I think Republicans love to talk about it to kind of, quote unquote, own the libs. And the amount but the amount of press coverage it’s gotten is just really kind of mind boggling from the kind of effect that it has versus kind of really bread and butter issues as to.02:35.44Todd Truittkids learning. And i think you’re exactly right that like what regular parents care about are kids learning or not. You know, i think say second point is that if you saw that, you know, I didn’t watch all the debate, but but I read up on it.02:50.11Todd TruittAnd I think other than the trans question that came up and correct me if I’m wrong, the only other k through 12 ed question was about the, know, the Terry McAuliffe kind of throwaway question from 2021. that correct?03:03.49Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, i don’t think at the debate, education was a big part of it. And I i think, to your point, you know, at the policy level, there’s a lot of things that actually the parties agree on. And I think there is a lot of things that that is somewhat bipartisan, both in the General Assembly, and in terms of the governor’s office. So I I think part of it is, you know, there’s more in common than we than we like to think sometimes in terms of the actual policy side side of things.03:32.69Sam ShiraziSo I think that’s part of it. I think that the campaign in the media likes to highlight the contrast. And so think it’s interesting to talk about, you know where there might be actually bipartisan agreement on some of this education policy.03:44.80Todd TruittYeah, and that’s kind of where I got involved a year and a half ago, almost two years ago, is that yeah I was seeing these things, kind of these press articles like Republicans say this, Democrats say that.03:55.77Todd TruittAnd there’s just so much kind of things that actually both have in common. And yeah I just started writing on these things and you know unfortunately to find places to kind of publish Education analyses in Virginia is just you know few and far between, but yeah I’ve published in the kind of conservative-leaning blog, Bacon’s Rebellion.04:15.90Todd TruittTo his credit, James Bacon will publish everyone. He publishes Paul Goldman and David Toscano and others. I just did an interview with Skylar von Valkenberg on his and Dan Helmer’s big SOL testing reform efforts coming up.04:32.37Todd TruittThey passed a law this last year. They’re going to there’ll be another bill this session. And it’s it’s bipartisan. It’s got a lot of bipartisan input. And it’s going to be nine-figure kind of reform. Probably one of the biggest things that we’re going to do in the state in the next four years, five years.04:50.58Todd TruittAnd it’s it’s a rigor-raising, know, raising the bar, kind of make our schools better. It’s great. I also have another interview with Skylar again. Well, it’s the same lunch over tacos and Skylar’s district on the account accountability, the new accountability system. and and that was done by the Yonkin administration, but Schuyler, Senator von Valkenberg, Russette Perry, and Cannon Sreenivasan actually killed a bill in the Senate in the last session that would have delayed that system, and that that that new accountability system.05:23.07Todd TruittAnd that wasn’t reported on the press too. So, and I also did an op-ed in the Richmond Times Dispatch this past summer, but but yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, It’s is there a market for that level of of press coverage that can is financially worth it? That’s a question. So it’s up to kind of volunteers to fill fill the void like you do on election and analysts analyses.05:45.71Sam ShiraziWell, yeah, it’s good to have like voices also like regular people who have kids in school, because I think a lot of times the space is dominated by kind of people who don’t really have stake in the game. So I did want to ask you about a specific policy question, because to be perfectly honest, you know, I grew up taking a lot of tests in school and I’m, I have some skepticism of it because I do worry about teaching to the test, but I know that there needs to be some way to measure06:07.14Todd TruittThank06:12.60Sam Shiraziif kids are learning. So can you kind of walk through some of the nuances of testing and the pros and cons and what you think, how it makes sense to use testing in education context?06:23.64Todd TruittYeah, no, no. And this is one where I’m a lawyer. I geek out on this stuff. So the testing is actually required. So by federal law, there you must have state standardized tests in grade three through eight for math and for English.06:38.74Todd TruittAnd you have to do and then one for one year in high school. And for science, you must do it once every three years in grades three through five, six through eight, and then in high school.06:50.77Todd TruittAnd then We have state kind of testing requirements for social studies, and I might be missing a few things. But I think the thing that gets lost about the testing is, is that 2015, so there was no child left behind in 2002.07:06.86Todd TruittAnd that is what made our 2001 and that is what mandated statewide testing and the states had a few years to implement it. But in 2015, we roll back some of No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Act.07:20.19Todd TruittYou know one one thing to notice is that the co-author of that bill was U.S. Representative Bobby Scott and from Virginia. And in his focus, he actually added a lot of things to that bill to to raise the rigorous to the least performing schools that were just really, really great.07:37.100Todd TruittBut I digress, though. But the reason why that testing is in there is because civil rights organizations are big advocates of it. They they they are. I saw a presentation by Denise Ford, who’s the head of the Education Trust. That’s one of the leading education groups for civil rights.07:56.92Todd TruittAnd she was talking about how they’re just scared to death that the Trump administration would waive testy because it is so important to see insights into how those least performing, the kind of least advantaged kids are performing. So I think that’s one thing that gets lost in the conversation.08:11.100Todd TruittAre standardized tests perfect? No, not not at all. You know, if there was a better system, i am all for it. But, and I think that, you know, in my interview with Skylar, like Virginia’s tests are pretty outdated and, you know, they need to be updated.08:26.56Todd TruittAnd I agree with him that, you know, no one disagrees with teaching to an AP exam. But, but yeah, I mean, I, I’m very hopeful this next legislative session that we’re going to get the funding to really kind of bring our testing system into the 21st century, uh, into, yeah, 21st century and into, to this decade and basically into the next decade.08:49.83Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, looking ahead to the next governor and next General Assembly, you know, whoever ends up winning, i mean what do you think some of the areas are that the parties can work together to try to make some progress on education? Because I know a lot of people move to Virginia specifically for the schools. And obviously, we want to keep the schools really top notch. You know how do you think the parties can do that while there’s all this other division with other stuff going on?09:16.79Todd TruittWell, you know, I think you see a kind of push in both parties to really kind raise the standards. And I think that if you go back 10 years, and and I call it the federal fallout in education, because that’s when the federal government stepped back.09:31.30Todd TruittAnd the idea was is that the states would fill the void. And we saw in much of the United States, including in Virginia, they didn’t. There was a number of changes that, you know, you’ll never hear Republicans admit it, but they were bipartisan to kind of cut back on testing, cut back on, you know, we lowered the bar on accreditation. There was a number of changes And the results are in after 10 years. And you see states like Mississippi and Louisiana kicking our butt. And pretty much if you look at the NAEP scores, for if you look at the demographic subgroup scores, you know it’s Mississippi is outperforming us and for African-American kids, for Hispanic kids, for economically disadvantaged, the least advantaged kind of demographics.10:12.40Todd TruittBut then you look at like white kids and economically advantaged kids and Mississippi outperforms us on those subgroups as well. The same with Louisiana. So I think that, you know, you see both parties, it’s really a new generation on ed policy that’s in charge versus 10 years ago.10:30.02Todd TruittAnd both parties are talking about kind of raising the rigor. I think One kind of change is if Democrats are in charge, you’re going to see a lot more money going to the public school system. I do think that the, you know, i am a Democrat. I think that the there should be more funding for a state of our wealth to our public school system. Now, I think states states like Mississippi and Louisiana have really kind of proven that it’s not just about money, but I’m all about an all of the above approach.10:58.53Todd TruittMississippi was very big and Louisiana had been very, very big on kind of raising standards, you know, pushing those high standards as civil rights groups push for. So but I do think that from a perspective of like, you know, the Sears, if Sears wins, it’s kind of a black box.11:16.77Todd TruittI would think that she will continue with what Youngkin has been pushing. But if you look at her website, she has like a paragraph on Ed Policy, You Spanberger put out a very, very detailed kind of plan on EdPol. And a lot of this stuff is about upholding Virginia’s high standards. There’s a lot of stuff on kind of raising the standards, raising the rigor of the schools also while sending the money.11:40.62Todd TruittBut Sears really just kind of talks about school choice. And that’s it. I saw an interview, too, with a group called Capital News Service. It’s an article detailing the EdPlan.11:51.46Todd TruittThey reached out to the Sears campaign like multiple times and for an ed plan and that would they they did not send one. So it’s kind of a black box, kind of a long answer. But I think that the General Assembly is really kind of probably you know like what the what has been proposed with the s SOL testing reform.12:11.05Todd TruittWith, you know, one thing that you could also see is we have a very, very outdated finance system here in Virginia. Antiquated is putting it lightly. And that really needs to get updated. We fund school systems, not the actual students.12:25.85Todd TruittIt’s an extremely complex issue. But I know both parties want to change that. There’s a whole funding kind of amount issue. I think that that probably becomes more likely if Spanberger wins versus Sears.12:39.60Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I wanted to pick up on the specific examples of Mississippi and Louisiana, because, you know, there are parts of Virginia that the schools have had issues. You know, you often hear about Northern Virginia, the schools are so great. But I do think parts of Virginia, more economically disadvantaged urban areas like in Hampton Roads and possibly, you know, more rural areas in Southwest Virginia, the schools could use a lot of improvements, both, you know, from a physical standpoint, improving the schools themselves, but also, you know, the test scores and and making sure the students are learning better.13:10.56Sam ShiraziHow do you think Virginia can help close the gap between, you know, the really high performing schools in Northern Virginia and some of the other schools that could do better?13:19.42Todd TruittLook, I mean, I’m an education realist. Look, there’s there’s a lot, and you know this, Sam, there’s a lot of learning that happens outside of school. There’s a lot of, you know, just socioeconomic benefits to, you know, kids growing up in a family with two advanced degrees. But I do think schools, you public schools is probably the biggest kind of social mobility equalizer in society.13:41.44Todd TruittAnd so when you look at like and, you know, there’s some stories being told, some success stories being told that are not being told in Virginia. And one is Wise County in southwest Virginia.13:52.64Todd TruittVery poor county. There’s a guy down there, Matt Hurt, not Matt Hurt from Twitter fame, of the Arlington Republic County, a Republican County, but another guy. He runs this program called the Comprehensive Instructional Program in Virginia.14:06.45Todd Truittthey have about 40 districts down there that they handle but i mean the results they are getting there are just phenomenal and i talked to a lot of like democratic policy makers and a lot of them don’t know of that story of of what matt is doing down there and i think that you know there’s some major highlights i think also a lot of what was on the prior accreditation system It was spitting out numbers for decade plus that said, you know, basically 90 percent of schools are accredited, 10 percent or not, with no distinguishment in those 90 percent of schools.14:39.10Todd TruittAnd it had a lot of kind of opaque metrics. And I think that that’s going to help our, and you know, that was I was a big supporter of the new accountability system. You there’s a lot of success stories in Virginia that are just not being told to the public.14:52.12Todd TruittAnd to state lawmakers, too. And I’m very optimistic that that can be told. But, you know, it’s a long answer. But yes, I’m very big on that Virginia needs to increase its funding as well.15:04.07Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think there are some bills that have been passed in the previous General Assembly and you have previewed some that might come up in the next General Assembly.15:14.88Sam Shiraziyou know What do you think the role of the General Assembly and the governor is in setting education policy versus the local school district? Because you often hear about that kind of tension between the the state, the local, and now we have the federal government in some instances trying to get involved with local school board decisions. So, I mean, how much do you think the local school board is important versus some of the state level decisions?15:41.78Todd TruittYeah, and I think that not to completely wonk out, but I think your your listeners that are a big in politics will like this, is that there’s really kind of what I call four quadrants of kind of education kind of politics. And you have a split on the Democratic side between kind of these local controlled Democrats who are a lot of like the unions, the school boards, the superintendents.16:04.08Todd TruittAnd then you have kind of reform oriented Democrats. And those are you the civil rights groups. You have a lot of kind of suburban parents. and And then on a Republican side, you have these kind of reform oriented Republicans.16:16.39Todd TruittIt’s a lot of suburban kind of Republicans. And then you have this popular populist parent rights Republicans, which has gotten yeah a lot bigger in the last five in the last five to 10 years. So you kind of like look at that split.16:31.51Todd TruittAnd I think that, you know, in i just think that having watched a lot of school board meetings and there’s a new study by David Houston, he co-authored, he’s a George Mason professor, really like watching a bunch of school board meetings.16:47.27Todd TruittAnd the amount of time they spend on actually out academic outcome data is very limited. I mean, their their expertise to do so is is very limited as well. And you’ve seen kind of the results on that the last 10 years as the federal federal government kind of stepped back from doing that.17:04.48Todd TruittAnd the state has that, you know, the scores have gone down. And you look, I don’t blame these kind of like, you know, stakeholders in education. I’ve been a lawyer in highly regulated industries for 20 years.17:18.08Todd TruittNo one likes regulation. But I think the results are kind of speaking for themselves. And you really kind of see legislation-wise the past five years, not just the Yonkin administration, but also kind of Democrats and the legislators saying, look, we’re we’re funding these schools with a lot of money.17:35.22Todd TruittThe results are not showing. We’re going to step in. So, you know, I want to just... call out a few things. There was a Virginia letter Literacy Act that was passed in 2022, amended in 2024.17:47.44Todd TruittThat was Luis Lucas, Jennifer McClellan, Carrie Coiner. There were some other folks, too. There was also the cell phone ban in schools. That was the Yunkin administration. Really kind of led on that. But all of the legislators, except for two, voted for this they you know ban of bell to bell.18:04.76Todd Truittvery popular with parents. There’s this advanced math auto enroll law. Hasn’t gotten the press that it deserves, but that was Delegate Katrina Coulson. There’s a high quality instructional materials bill that was passed by Sam Rasool, Skylar von Valkenburg, Kerry Koiner.18:21.61Todd TruittSo you could kind of go on and on. And I think the meta level, what you’re looking at is you’re looking at both parties in Virginia saying, hey, we’re taking back a little bit of data power here From schools with with regards to academic outcomes, you know, they’re probably not going to say that blatantly because you get you have people on both sides, Republican and Democratic side that are fiercely for local control.18:44.70Todd TruittBut I think on this academic outcome areas where you’re going to see the state continue to kind of creep up on the power of local localities to kind of take it back.18:53.79Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. And I think that cell phone ban has in schools is or limiting cell phones in schools. but It’s a good example, because I think almost everyone was behind that. And as an example that education can be less polarized than it often is portrayed, i guess one question would be, you know, going forward.19:14.46Sam Shiraziyou know how do we or the education community try to kind of depolarize the school’s issue? Because my sense is a lot of parents don’t want to these schools to become this kind of cultural battleground hotbed. They just want to focus on learning and I think that’s a frustration that a lot of parents have that both in the media and some of the political spaces, it’s become so polarized.19:41.03Sam ShiraziYou know, is there any way to do that, to depolarize it, or is it just the reality that now it’s become kind of this cultural battleground?19:49.26Todd TruittI mean, look, I think that, you know, you’ll, yeah yo you people, you know, complain about the demise of local press. And I think that’s, that’s part of the reason because, you know, there’s just less of a demand for these kinds of things financially. And you’ve seen a lot of local press coverage that would, you know, typically cover these things is just not doing so anymore. Because, I mean, see massive layoffs at the Richmond Times Dispatch, rounds of layoffs, you know, it’s like, you know, I don’t know who’s keeping the lights on over there, but, know,20:19.26Todd Truittyou know i think that’s one thing and i i’m hoping that there’ll be some more kind of independent people that kind of step in the void to cover these things from public interest perspective you know because people ask me my kids do a bunch of sports you’re like they’re like are you volunteering to do sports i’m like well i i volunteer and do a a different activity that i i hope that is kind of helping out the larger community20:41.26Sam ShiraziYeah. And so to that a point, let’s say you have a you know quick meeting with whoever’s elected the next governor. What would you tell that person about what they should be doing on education policy in Virginia?20:54.26Todd TruittWell, yeah, I mean, I think that they you should be working with, as I’ve told both sides that, you know, you should be talking to each other. i just think there’s so much room for agreement. I think that what we’re seeing with both parties really now wanting to kind of get in and rate raise the bar.21:12.52Todd TruittI think there’s a lot of room for agreement. And, you know, look, there’s a lot of political theater. I get it. You know, I’m not I’m never going to be an elected official because I have no interest in it And you you see the political theater that goes on. You can’t compliment the other side because you got an election coming up. It’s frustrating, but it’s the world that we live in. And that’s the that’s how laws are made.21:36.87Todd TruittWe don’t have a benevolent dictator here in the United States. So but but I do think, you know, I think that the Spanberger campaign has it in there.21:47.43Todd Truittin their policy platform. And Ghazal Hashmi had a bill last time. Like on Math Ed, I think there needs to be a significant, and this is kind of one of the things I write about. I think that there needs to be a significant focus on Math Ed. I mean, and the Virginia Literacy Act, and not to get too wonky, but for years, the biggest thing out of ed schools were ways to teach kids kids to read that did were not proven to work.22:13.89Todd TruittAnd there’s ideological reasons that yeah we could do. There’s an excellent eight part podcast on it called Sold a Story. But that’s what kind of Luis Lucas and others did with the Virginia Literacy Act is to basically roll that out and tell schools, no, you need to teach kids the proven ways that are proven to teach kids to read.22:34.10Todd TruittAnd I think that there could be something done on the math side. you know, we were 50 first state for math ed recovery on the national test that’s done called the NAEP. And the Spanberger campaign is definitely talking about that.22:47.96Todd TruittHashmi had a bill last session with Shelly Simons to kind of do like what a VLA did the Virginia Literacy Act did. i will say I like that bill. I did not think it had enough guardrails around it as to sending the money to districts to make sure they they spend on those evidence-based methods and i’m hopeful if it gets re re-proposed that that evidence-based based language will be you know re-included because you know districts just are not doing enough on that and so i think that’s one one big thing for uh for the next session as well23:26.04Sam ShiraziWell, let’s try to close that closer on a happier note. Let’s say, what do you think Virginia schools are doing right? Because I i mean, i’m in Northern Virginia, the schools in Northern Virginia are very good. People move to Virginia for the schools. you know What do you think, at least some things that they’re doing correct and that they could potentially build upon going forward?23:46.83Todd TruittNo, I think that, you know, Virginia school, like from what I have seen in Arlington and I know a lot of other districts, there’s a lot of ways for parents to get involved in kind of school.23:58.48Todd TruittLike we have various different curriculum committees. They’re very, very open to parent feedback, you know, in terms a lot of different ways to do so. So, and I know other districts are like that. Well, you know, some people will complain about, wow, they don’t listen to us, et cetera.24:13.84Todd TruittBut the fact that they’re there and actually listening and everything, I think from a parent perspective, is just very, very refreshing. I mean, look, we have a very highly educated populace here.24:25.62Todd TruittAnd so I think that you know a lot of times the schools are with a lot of kids that are born on third base. And we offer some amazing academic opportunities.24:36.13Todd TruittI do think in Northern Virginia, we could do better. There’s a number of schools with some very, you know people are like oh, Northern Virginia is so rich. There’s a lot of you know pockets of very kind of underperforming, you know so low socioeconomic kids.24:49.85Todd TruittAnd I don’t think that we are doing enough to help those kids. And the NAEP scores show it, the test scores show it. And unfortunately, we had a system in place previously with the prior accreditation system that just wasn’t telling that story for the public. Nobody knew about it.25:06.81Todd TruittAnd I think that, you know, with the new, whenever the new system releases its results, it’s going to kind of tell a story to these kids. left-leaning communities that, hey, look, you know, we need to be doing more to kind of helping out these kind of underprivileged districts. But but otherwise, i think that, you know, would the opportunities that these schools in Northern Virginia offer kids in terms of advanced academics and things is really just unbelievable. You know, one thing that’s kind of hot right now in the ed policy circuit too that I got to mention is raising what’s called the cut scores.25:40.42Todd TruittAnd that’s the kind of proficiency, what’s considered proficient to pass the standardized tests for math and reading. And, you know, what’s not been talked about is that the U.S. Department Education comes out Every two years with where those kind of benchmarks meet versus state standards in Virginia has had the lowest benchmarks in the country for the last like five plus years and the young campaign.26:04.15Todd TruittThe Youngkin 2021 campaign ran on this. They’ve been working on it for three and a half years. There’s been a proposal now that the Board of Ed is gonna vote on on Thursday to raise those scores kind of similar to what Massachusetts is doing, Maryland is doing, Colorado is doing.26:21.39Todd Truittyou know You see these Northern Virginia school districts raising just this huge ruckus. It’s actually a four or five year phase in period. and It’s just really been disappointing because I know our populace here believes in high standards, but it kind of going back to this conversation we had about the state, both parties in the state taking back power, is is that this is a better way for the state to monitor, for state policymakers to kind of monitor what’s going on and for parents.26:51.15Todd TruittSo, you know, I’ve been a little pretty disappointed in the Northern Virginia school districts for this kind of knee-jerk opposition to it. but But overall, i have a fifth and a sixth grader. Like, I love the Virginia public school system. Look, I mean, it has problems like any institution does, public or private.27:11.90Todd TruittBut I think everything is on the table that these things can be, you know, fixed. And I’m all for all of the above approach, raising standards, raising funding. And I’m just very kind of bullish in the next 10 years of where our school system will be.27:27.78Todd Truittwhen everything gets implemented over the next 10 years.27:31.26Sam ShiraziWell, that’s good to hear. i did have one final question about this issue, because, as you mentioned, there isn’t a lot of news coverage about it, which is disappointing. If someone is interested in Virginia learning more about this next year, General Assembly, what the next governor does, you know what are some of your recommendations of how to follow along with what’s going on?27:54.68Todd TruittYou know, I mean, well, I’m going to be writing about some of these things for sure, because, you know, and and there is some press coverage. I find some through Google News, obscure things, obscure publications.28:08.05Todd TruittTwitter, if you want to go into that cesspool, it’s addictive. I’m on it. And you find a lot there’s a lot of kind of Virginia. yeah Skyler von Valkenberg, he loves to tweet about ed policy.28:19.85Todd TruittAnd I follow him for a lot of that as well. And so so, yeah, I mean, it is at this point, it’s really kind of ad hoc is the local press is kind of you know falling away on this kind of on these issues.28:31.49Sam ShiraziWell, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and also for you know so spending your time highlighting these issues and trying to be an advocate for you know education policy because I do think it’s unfortunately lost in a lot of the debate about what’s going on in the schools. So anyways, thanks so much for joining me.28:48.87Todd TruittThank you, Sam. Greatly appreciate it.28:50.82Sam ShiraziAll right. This has been Federal Fallout and i’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a packed episode where we will go over a lot of things. So I wanted to start with the Attorney General debate that was on Thursday night. Everyone was paying close attention to that because of the revelations that came out about Jay Jones’s text.00:20.30Sam ShiraziSo we’ll start first with that. debate And then we will move on to campaign finance numbers that also came out this week for the month of September. We’ll talk about that, what it might mean for the campaign.00:32.84Sam ShiraziAnd then finally, i wanted to just quickly touch base about the... Start of expanded hours and locations for early voting. It’s going to start this weekend. And just wanted to kind of touch base on early voting generally because there’s been kind of a lull right now where it’s been pretty steady, but nothing too dramatic. And I think in the next couple weeks, obviously, as the election gets closer, there’s going to be a lot of stuff going on with early voting. Just wanted to kind of set that up and then we’ll we’ll talk about it down the line.00:59.16Sam ShiraziSo lots to talk about this week. Lots of going on with the Virginia elections. I wanted to start with the attorney general debate because I think In terms of big moments left in the campaign, I mean, obviously there’s something unknown that could happen. But in terms of things we knew that was coming, there was the governor’s debate and then the attorney general debate.01:16.33Sam ShiraziAnd usually the attorney general debate is not a super high stakes thing. Frankly, not that many people usually watch it. However, this year I think was different because of the story that came out with Jay Jones and the techs.01:29.71Sam ShiraziObviously, that really shook up the attorney general race. And I think all eyes were on Jay Jones specifically in the debate to see how he would handle it. And we can I’ll play you a few clips of the debate and then we can talk about it.01:42.19Sam ShiraziBefore I get into the actual substance of what was discussed at the debate, I did want to note that the format of the debate I think was very interesting, very different than the governor’s debate format. Governor debate was kind of a typical...01:53.77Sam Shirazimedia run debate, short sound bites, like 30 second answer sessions. And, you know, I think that this format in the attorney general debate was a lot stronger in many ways because the candidates were given more time to speak.02:08.58Sam ShiraziThe Virginia Bar was the one moderating the debate. One thing I noticed, for example, and a lot of people were surprised, there was four minute opening statements. And I actually thought that was good because it gave the candidates enough time to explain their positions.02:21.15Sam ShiraziAnd then during the actual engagement of the debate, The candidates weren’t interrupting each other. I think they were both told to act in a lawyerly manner or like they were in court as opposed to a political debate. I thought that really served the debate well. I thought both of them carried themselves well.02:37.74Sam ShiraziAnd people on both sides, you know regardless of who you thought won the debate, basically said that the debate was the format of the debate made a lot of sense. And people were just generally happy that it was a more substantive debate.02:51.74Sam Shirazithan, for example, the governor’s debate where specifically Winston-Mariel Sears was interrupting more. And it was kind of hard to get a full answer from either of them because there was a lot of back and forth. So long story short, that was kind of the substance, though sorry, not the substance of the debate, the format of the debate.03:08.06Sam ShiraziAnd we can go over the substance and talk about a few things that happened during the debate. I will say before I play you a few clips, I don’t think the debate was a game changer either way. So I don’t think all of a sudden you know, the race is back where it was before the text.03:23.06Sam ShiraziI don’t think the race is over. I think it was basically what we expected. To the extent there was more expectations, I think Jay Jones had the harder task in this debate because he obviously had to step in there, deal with the text issue, and then try to talk about other things. And I think he did that I don’t think the debate either side had a huge gaffe. I don’t think there’s something where everyone was talking about the attorney general debate. I think, you know, it got some attention, but ultimately it kind of was basically what we expected in that Jay Jones had to address the text. He kind of pivoted you03:59.55Sam Shirazitrying to link Jason Meares to Donald Trump. And then obviously Jason Meares was talking more about the text and trying to attack Jay Jones. So not super surprising in many ways, but I will kind of play you some of the clips just so you get a sense of how things were.04:16.37Sam ShiraziSo the first clip I will play is Jay Jones at the beginning of the of of the debate directly addressing the text issues.04:51.72Sam ShiraziAll right. So that was Jay Jones addressing the issue with this text. Now let’s see how Jason Meares responded to that apology from Jay Jones.05:35.84Sam ShiraziAll right. So that was Jason Miara is talking about the text issue. And so I wanted to kind of get that out of the way, because frankly, that’s kind of how the debate went, where obviously it was going to be the first topic. Both sides would want to deal with it.05:49.54Sam ShiraziI think Jason Miara is during the debate was trying to bring it up again and again, you know, The reality is the moderators weren’t going to spend an entire hour just talking about text. They wanted to talk about different issues.06:00.48Sam ShiraziThey brought up other questions. And you know some of them were a little bit more into weeds, legal stuff. But I think overall, they were trying to have a debate that touched on voters’ concerns, but also talked about some of the issues that are going to come up for whoever ends up winning the election.06:17.12Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to talk a little bit about Jay Jones’ strategy after apologizing. So very clearly, he was trying to link... Jason B.R. is to Donald Trump. And that has been the strategy of the Democrats for the most part the entire year. As I’ve said, the Virginia elections tend to just become a referendum on the incumbent president.06:35.23Sam ShiraziAnd so the Democrats, given that President Trump, most polls have him at negative approval in Virginia. The Democrats strategy is to just link the Republicans with Donald Trump.06:45.100Sam ShiraziIf you like Donald Trump, You’re going to vote for the Republicans. If you don’t like Donald Trump, you’re going to vote for the Democrats. If that happens and it really does become a pure referendum, Democrats are probably going to win because almost certainly President Trump’s going to have a negative approval in Virginia. He never won Virginia.07:01.14Sam ShiraziAnd so that’s just the Democratic strategy. And we’ll I’ll play a clip of Jay Jones doing that just to get a sense of how he was doing it in debate. in the debate07:42.81Sam ShiraziAll right. So that was Jay Jones talking about Jason Miara is not going after the Trump administration. Again, that was his strategy. And I think this race, the debate didn’t change the fundamentals. The race will come down to what is more important for voters.07:57.66Sam ShiraziAre the texts the most important issue in this race? And are voters going to make up their mind mainly on the text issue? Obviously, Republicans would like that to happen. If that happens, obviously, pretty likely that Jason Miara’s will win the race.08:11.26Sam ShiraziOr our voters, their primary concern, what’s going on in D.C., sending a message to Donald Trump. If that’s the way it happens, and obviously Jay Jones and the Democrats want that to happen, if that happens, then obviously, more likely, the jy Jones is going to win. And I think the debate can’t really answer that question.08:29.21Sam ShiraziThe only people can answer that question are the voters. And we’re going to just wait and see what the results will be on election day when the votes start coming in, because that is how this race is going to be decided at the end of the day.08:41.36Sam ShiraziYou know, I know that There’s a lot of different things going on. There’s a lot of important issues. But most voters, they’re either going to remember one or two things about the candidates and make their decision based on just a split-second decision about whether they like Trump or maybe they don’t like these texts.08:58.76Sam ShiraziAnd that’s kind of how they’re going to decide this race. And I think you know to the extent the the debate mattered, I don’t think this hurt Jay Jones anymore, or at least the debate didn’t hurt him in the sense of,09:10.89Sam ShiraziI saw some Democratic officials put out statements after the debate supporting Jay Jones. So for example, Lamont Bagby, he’s the chair of the Democratic Party in Virginia. He’s also a state senator. He put out the standard statement, you know, Jay Jones won the debate, which is not super surprising. And that’s what you expect him to put out. But I think in this context, it the statement itself was a bit of a statement because it showed that he was backing Jay Jones in the attorney general race.09:36.47Sam ShiraziSo to that extent, I think the debate kind of was one of those moments where it it put to rest some of the concerns Democrats had. And so I think on the Democratic side, there’s going to be a little bit more consolidation behind Jay Jones, if I had to guess.09:52.31Sam ShiraziI think the big question mark are independents. I think independents are going to decide the race. Miárez needs to win the independents. He’s very clearly going after them. And you know i think it’s going to be very difficult to know the state of this race, even if we get nonpartisan polling.10:07.33Sam ShiraziAnd the reason I say that is with These types of races, when candidate has some issues, it is hard to get people to poll to pull people correctly because they don’t always give you who they’re going to vote for. And oftentimes there’s a lot of undecideds and there’s a lot of undecideds until the end. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we see polls coming out 46, 45 for candidate.10:30.37Sam Shirazifor either candidate And basically that’s very difficult to know who’s going to win at the end. If you’re, you know, the last poll you get is 46, 45, it could go either way. Voters could break one way or another.10:43.08Sam Shirazii think the other thing to think about is there’s a lot of talk about ticket splitting. So ticket splitting, obviously Miare, his strategy is to try to get Spanberger voters or a certain chunk of Spanberger voters to vote for him for attorney general.10:56.16Sam ShiraziYou know, obviously most of the polls show Spanberger ahead. So if Spanberger wins, by definition, Miárez will need some Spanberger voters to vote for him in order to win. He can’t, you know, Miárez is hoping there isn’t going to be straight straight ticket voting.11:11.19Sam ShiraziAnd so I think that’s certainly going to happen to a certain extent. But I think the open question is what’s called undervoting. So that’s basically when someone may may vote for the Democrats for the governor race, but either they skip the attorney general ballot or they write someone in.11:27.08Sam ShiraziSo they don’t actually give Meares their vote. And I think that may happen to a certain extent in this race. so And obviously that helps Meares because it’s a vote that Jay Jones isn’t getting, but it’s not as good as ticket splitting because ticket splitting, you know, Jay Jones is down one, Meares is up one.11:44.28Sam ShiraziBut if there’s an under vote, then Jay Jones is basically down one, but Meares isn’t up one. So I think this All that makes this race very inherently hard to predict because you have to take into account voters who may not be telling the pollsters who they’re going to vote for. You have to take into account ticket splitting. you have to take into account undervotes.12:07.62Sam ShiraziYou have to take into account that traditionally people tend to come home to the party that they vote for at the top of the ticket, especially if this is a referendum on the president and people are just upset at Trump. So all that is very, very complicated stuff in a race like this.12:23.41Sam ShiraziAnd to be perfectly honest, I mean, I hope we get some nonpartisan polls. I’m sure we will. I still think even after the nonpartisan polls, unless they show very clear results, like someone’s winning by 10 and is above 50 percent,12:35.34Sam ShiraziI still think this is going to be very inherently hard to predict who’s going to win. You know, it’s just one of those things where you you have to get into the individual minds of each voter.12:46.12Sam ShiraziAnd it’s it’s very hard because I think some voters might think right now, well, I don’t love what he did. Some Democratic voters might think, I don’t love what Jay Jones did. But a common refrain that, for example, Representative Don Breyer basically said is, you know, I don’t – the texts were awful, but – Trump has also done bad things. And I think that’s what you might hear from a lot of Democratic voters at the end of the day.13:10.31Sam ShiraziAnd so I just don’t know. how everything’s going to shake out at the end. And so we’re just going to have to wait and see. And yeah, anyways, so Attorney General debate, very interesting.13:21.12Sam ShiraziI don’t want to dwell on it for the whole podcast because there’s a lot of other stuff going on. Definitely, if you’re interested, you can watch the debate. It’s online. Watch the whole thing. Don’t think it was a game changer.13:32.24Sam ShiraziEssentially, the race is going to come down to what’s more important for people. sending a message about president Trump or maybe these texts and the fact that people don’t like what happened. And so we don’t know, we don’t, there’s no way of knowing. We’re going to have to wait and see.13:46.72Sam ShiraziSo anyways, that was the attorney general debate. All right. Now let’s turn to the campaign finance numbers that came out this week. So these reports were covering basically the period of September and, uh,13:59.64Sam ShiraziIt covered the period that ended on September 30th. So it’s important to keep in mind these are not totally up to date to the current moment. And why is that important? Obviously, there was a lot of news that happened in October.14:13.01Sam ShiraziThere was the revelation about the Jay Jones text. Also, the shutdowns happening in the background. So lot of stuff happened in October that these reports aren’t necessarily going to capture. But wanted to kind of big picture talk about the statewide races. And I wanted to spend a little bit more time this time on the House of Delegates, because I think this report, the House of Delegates, was actually much more interesting than the statewide numbers. So the statewide numbers...14:35.46Sam ShiraziActually, the Republicans were doing much better than I would say in previous reports in terms of money that was raised for the governor’s race. So it just in one month, Abigail Spanberger raised about $12.5 million, whereas Winston Earl Sears raised about and a little over $9.1 million.14:53.12Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, Spanberger is still ahead in the money, but that was a respectable haul, certainly much better than Winston Earl Sears has been doing in the past. So I think in the governor’s race, the money is still...15:04.24Sam ShiraziDemocrats have the advantage, but the Republicans are doing a little bit better. And so you don’t see this huge gap like you’ve seen in previous fundraising reports. Lieutenant governor wasn’t super interesting because there wasn’t the same amount of money being raised.15:16.68Sam ShiraziLike previous reports, John Reed didn’t re raise a whole lot of money. He raised about $451,000, whereas Ghazala Hashmi raised over $1.4 million. So Hashmi has the advantage in the lieutenant governor’s race, but neither of them have like huge amounts of money. So I don’t think the lieutenant governor’s race is you super interesting in terms of the campaign finance.15:37.82Sam ShiraziAttorney General, obviously lot going on in the attorney general race. I thought it it’s – the problem with the attorney general race is I think there’s been a huge – These reports are a huge lag from what’s been going on. So Jason Meares has gotten a huge injection of cash because now the Republicans think he might be able to win that race. However, that basically all happened after October 1st.15:57.21Sam ShiraziSo I’ll give you the numbers in this report. And frankly, Jay Jones and Jason Meares were pretty close in this report. Jason Meares raised... about a little over 3.5 million, whereas Jay Jones raised 3.3 million.16:09.67Sam ShiraziSo we see that the attorney general race was very competitive in terms of the fundraising. However, I caveat all that by saying that’s by September 30th and a lot of stuff happened in October. So We’re going to get one more campaign finance report before the election.16:24.41Sam ShiraziAnd that’s going to be very interesting, primarily for the attorney general race, just to see how much money Jason Meares has gotten. So I don’t want to spend a lot of time in the statewide offices because, frankly, like they’re kind of confirming what we knew.16:37.72Sam ShiraziGovernor Spanbaker Spanbaker has the advantage, but... Earl Sears is catching up in fundraising. Lieutenant Governor Hashmi has consistently had an advantage. And then Attorney General, it’s been pretty close.16:48.38Sam ShiraziBut the problem is, at least for our knowledge, is we don’t know exactly how much it’s changed over the the couple weeks we’ve been in October. So that’s the statewide stuff.16:58.93Sam ShiraziI did want to spend more time talking about the... House of Delegates, because typically in the House of Delegates, I don’t spend a whole lot of time on the campaign finance because there’s so many races and I didn’t want to kind of dwell on every single race.17:11.65Sam ShiraziHowever, this campaign finance report, I think the really interesting numbers were in the House of Delegates. So as a reminder, all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up for a reelection. The Democrats currently have a 51-49 majority, and they’re really on the offense. They’re hoping to flip a lot of seats.17:29.51Sam ShiraziRepublicans are much more in the defense. And while theoretically it’s possible for Republicans to get a majority, I think it’s very difficult. And the fundraising, again, really confirms that. So in terms of these 100 seats in the House of Delegates, if you look at all the seats the Democrats are competing in and the Republicans are competing in, Democrats raised over $16.3 million. dollars And that’s a lot of money, and that’s just in a one-month period. Compare that to Republicans where they raised...17:57.73Sam Shirazia little over 5.6 million. So Democrats, almost three times as much raised in the House of Delegates. And if you look at individual races, I won’t go through every individual race, but some of them, I mean, the Democrats are raising really big amounts of money. And and we’re talking basically from congressional level of money. So I’ll give you a few examples.18:18.70Sam ShiraziThere were four races where the Democrats raised more than a million dollars. House District 75, House District 82, House District 89, House District 97. So House District 75, this is a very competitive seat that Harris won by six points in the Richmond suburbs. The Democrat raised $1.5 million. dollars I mean, that’s really, you know, a huge chunk of change, especially for a House of Delegates race.18:44.19Sam ShiraziAnd that’s been that was kind of consistent across the House races where the Democrats are targeting incumbent Republicans. They all basically raised a lot of money. On the Republican side, there certainly were some seats where the Republicans were spending a lot of money to try to save some of their incumbents.19:00.97Sam ShiraziAnd then there were other seats where, frankly, the Republican incumbents are trying to basically hold on where it seems like they’re out on their own. you know In these situations, sometimes what happens is Let’s say you’re in a you know light red seat, but the Democrats are targeting you. Your House leadership might be telling you, look, we got some incumbents in really tight races. you know We think you’re going to be OK. You can handle it, essentially. And so they’re not necessarily getting boatloads of money because –19:32.26Sam ShiraziFor whatever reason, they might think either the seat is lost or they or they might think the seat is not going to end up flipping. and and And that’s kind of the cold calculation that happens at the end sometimes.19:43.99Sam Shiraziand you know and And this happens to parties on both sides in different cycles. And you know sometimes you’re told as an incumbent, you know you’ve got this, don’t worry about it. we’re There’s no money coming your way. And I’m sure some of the Republican incumbents would like to have more money. But the reality is given where the fundraising is, the the Republicans don’t necessarily have as much to give to each individual incumbent that’s in a tough race.20:11.08Sam ShiraziAnd at some point, probably when we get closer to the election, maybe after the next fundraising report and after we get some more nonpartisan polls, I want to really go race by race in the House of Delegates because I think the House of Delegates races are super interesting, but they don’t get that much attention because everyone’s focused on the governor’s race. Now everyone’s focused under u attorney general’s race.20:32.58Sam ShiraziBut there are a lot of seats where the Democrats are targeting the Republicans. And I could see everything from the Democrats picking up a couple seats to the Democrats picking up 10 seats. And it’s really hard to tell right now certainly the Democratic mindset is they are trying to flip a lot of seats.20:48.83Sam ShiraziAnd there are some of these seats where they’re spending a lot of money, which necessarily which aren’t necessarily the top tier battlegrounds, where you know earlier in the year, you would say they’re kind of reached seats. And you know who knows, maybe the Democrats...21:01.33Sam Shiraziare being a little bit too ambitious. Maybe the Republicans will be able to hold on to the majority of these seats. But the money is certainly telling you that they are investing big to try to flip some of these seats.21:12.86Sam ShiraziAnd i think we’ll see if that’s successful. I will say, you know, money isn’t everything. I mean there are a lot of races where the side that has more money doesn’t win. and Money is important, but it isn’t going to decide every single race. A lot of them comes down to the exact amount of ticket splitting, the amount exact turnout in a district.21:33.64Sam ShiraziAnd it’s very hard to predict individual races, especially when you’re getting down to the House of Delegates. I tend not to predict individual races because i think it’s so difficult. Chaz Naticombe, who’s been a guest on the podcast, his State Navigate site has a really good model where they do forecast who may win each House of Delegates race. I think it’s very thorough. That’s kind of my go-to because it some of these races are going to be very close.22:00.04Sam ShiraziIt’s going very hard to make a call. So... I think in probably a couple of weeks, as we’re almost at the election, I will give you, i don’t want to call them my personal predictions, but I will kind of tip my hand to the extent I feel comfortable about who may be ahead in some of these races.22:16.12Sam ShiraziAnd I think one thing it’s interesting where the money is being spent, it tells you where the parties think the races are competitive. I think that’s what money is really good at telling you.22:26.39Sam ShiraziIt might not tell you who’s going to win at the end of the day, but I think it’s good at telling you who the parties think might be able to win, if that makes sense. And again, i will give you this example one more time because it’s my favorite race that is kind of didn’t really happen this year.22:44.01Sam Shiraziso I will talk about House District 21. This is in western Prince William County. The incumbent is Josh Thomas. I’ve talked about the seat before. It was the closest seat in terms of 2023 margin and in terms of 2024 margin.22:57.25Sam ShiraziSo in terms of the seats the Democrats hold, this should be the closest seat and in theory should be a battleground. But the Republican candidate in this district only raised $1,238 and he has $937 cash on hand, not 937,000. He has $937 cash on hand.23:16.39Sam ShiraziSo what that is telling me is the Republicans are not competing here. They are not taking this race seriously. If they were taking this race seriously, they would be throwing a lot of money at it. That’s not what’s happening. So you know I’ll go out on a limb and say House District 21 is not a top-tier battleground just based off the fundraising.23:35.02Sam ShiraziI don’t want to say it’s impossible for the Republicans to ever win this seat. I don’t want to say it’s safe Democratic. But I think at this point, you know it’s pretty clear – the Democrats have the advantage in this seat. And so that’s kind of how fundraising can be used.23:48.56Sam ShiraziI don’t want to go seat by seat and just purely look at the fundraising. Maybe I will allude to fundraising when I do my episode going through each House of Delegates district. But anyway, long story short, super interesting fundraising report, more so at the House of Delegates level and House of Delegates level, Democrats have a big advantage and we’ll see if that gets translated into the actual results and if they’re able to pick up a bunch of24:09.73Sam ShiraziAll right. One last topic. And I know this has already been a packed episode, but I wanted to talk about early voting and touch base on it. So to be perfectly honest, early voting has been in a little bit of a lull. I think we’ve pretty much been plateaued where there’s been some consistent voting, but nothing overly dramatic in terms of things have changed in the past few weeks.24:30.49Sam ShiraziAs of recording of this podcast, there are over 600,000 early votes, lot of early voting. We’re going to Definitely get record early voting for a state election. i don’t think any of that has changed.24:42.79Sam Shiraziagain say it’s too early to draw big conclusions from early voting. The thing I wanted to flag is we’re entering kind of the home stretch of early voting. a couple of things are going to happen. One, starting this weekend, there’s going to be a lot more early voting locations opening up.24:58.32Sam ShiraziAnd they’ it’s kind of staggered because each locality has its own hours and locations. And so it’s not like on one day all the early voting locations are going to open. It’s going to be different in each city and county.25:10.51Sam ShiraziObviously, if you’re interested in early voting, check with your local city or county to make sure you know the hours, you know the locations. The first big one is going to be this Sunday. So this Sunday, Prince William County is going to open all of its early voting locations.25:24.12Sam ShiraziAnd right now, there’s just currently been only one early voting location in all of Prince William County. Prince William County, big county, takes a while, a lot of traffic. So relatively, the early vote has been lower than the rest of Virginia. But I knew that was going to happen because decent amount of people particularly on the I-95 corridor, are are waiting for the satellite early voting locations to open.25:47.16Sam ShiraziWhy? Because the early voting location for Prince William County, the one that’s open right now, is not on the I-95 corridor. And if you know that area, there’s a lot of traffic to try to get around. So long story short, Prince William County is going to open up this Sunday. And then they’re open pretty much except next Sunday all the way up till the end of early voting. All those locations are going to be open And that’s going to happen in various parts of Virginia at different times. It’s going to happen in Fairfax County, in Loudoun County, in Virginia Beach.26:17.04Sam Shiraziyeah All these different parts of Virginia are going to start having more and more early voting locations. There’s also going to be two Saturdays, the last two Saturdays of the election, there’s going to be early voting across Virginia.26:29.70Sam ShiraziBut I wanted to note something about the satellite early voting locations. I actually went through, and I think almost all of them are going to be in localities that Harris won in 2024.26:40.66Sam ShiraziSo that means the vast majority of people who are going to have more early voting locations are going to be in blue counties. And not obviously, everyone not everyone in those go counties are Democrats, and a decent good amount of them are going to vote for the Republicans as well.26:57.85Sam ShiraziBut I mean, I don’t think it’s that big of a leap to say, Probably the majority of people who are going to be voting at these satellite early voting locations are going to be Democrats. And that’s just something to keep in mind. And and so I do think the early voting composition going to start changing as the satellite early voting locations are going to open up.27:15.59Sam ShiraziHowever, the other thing to keep in mind is closer we get to Election Day, more people are going to early vote, more people are going figure out there’s an election. So I do think there’s going to be a lot of Republicans also coming out to early vote, particularly this time because they’re getting more comfortable with in-person early voting. They’ve been encouraged to early vote. So I do think it’s going to be interesting to see in the homestretch of the campaign, how is early voting changing? How is it staying the same?27:40.18Sam ShiraziWhat are the numbers looking like? The one thing I’ve kind of consistently warned about is I wouldn’t go too crazy with early voting analysis, even at the very end, because I think it’s just it’s hard to draw big conclusions from early voting.27:54.61Sam ShiraziI think we’re going to get a sense of turnout from early voting. Maybe at the end and like right after the end of early voting, we can really try to and analyze it in kind of a more systematic way and try to think through, okay, what does this mean for the election? But especially for something like the attorney general’s race, there’s going to be ticket splitting and undervotes and all these things. And it’s just hard to make predictions.28:18.08Sam Shirazibased on early voting data because we don’t know how people have voted. we know the numbers of people who voted, but we don’t know who they’re voting for. So I caution, you’re going to see a lot of stuff about early vote. you know I wouldn’t go crazy either way, thinking too hard about it. The thing I just wanted to flag is there’s going to be more locations opening up for early voting. The numbers are really going to spike.28:39.19Sam ShiraziSo that’ll be interesting. And I will at some point obviously update everyone on early voting. As you can see, there’s like a lot going on in the Virginia elections. We haven’t even talked about the shutdown, which is still going on, which is pretty crazy to think about.28:52.78Sam ShiraziI’m sure I will talk about it if it’s continuing. So much going on in the Virginia elections. I will try to release more episodes as things are happening. And i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This is the homestretch. A lot going on.29:03.69Sam Shirazistay Stay tuned here for all the coverage. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fallout. And i’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus interview with Rich Meagher. He is a professor of political science at Randolph-Macon College, and he is also the host of another great podcast about Virginia, which is called RVA’s Got Issues. So definitely make sure to check out that podcast as well. Rich, thanks for joining me.Rich MeagherNo problem. As they say, long time, first time. So glad to be on here with you, Sam.Sam ShiraziYeah, so I wanted to have you on to talk about a few things. I think one thing that’s different or interesting about your background, you have more of an academic background, have a PhD. Could you just talk about that background and what that kind of brings to your both political commentary and podcasting?00:45.92Rich MeagherYeah. I mean, I don’t want to like, it’s not about pulling rank or anything like that. Right. I i do not believe that a PhD makes you with like a, a better person than anyone else. Uh, and there’s lots of folks with PhDs political science who don’t know anything about their local political context.Rich MeagherAnd that’s fine. Right. It’s, it’s not, it’s not what every academic has to do, but for me, I’ve always been interested in how things that we talk about abstractly in political science, right? Concepts and and theories and things like that, how they play out locally.01:22.57Rich MeagherAnd I found like very early on when I got to Richmond, that some of the stuff, you know, I occasionally get a call from a reporter and and they were asking me about stuff that was like, well, I, yeah, i know about that. We study that.01:35.18Rich MeagherAnd, and the things that we study, i can actually, i hope help explain to you and your listeners. And I don’t want to say like a dumbed down way, but just not with the jargon and all that stuff.01:45.88Rich MeagherAnd, and that hopefully it helps people understand a little bit more about what’s actually happening. what the fight is about, what the stakes are, and and how it might shake out. you know i I try to stay away from election predictions because nobody, even if political science, knows anything about that still.02:04.17Rich meagherthe The models are always like, here’s what happened last year, and we can explain what happened, but a little less less good at predicting. But so you know i just I’ve always felt like the stuff we learn and the stuff we know in political science is is helpful for the rest of the world. So I try to share it whenever I can.02:21.20Rich meagherand And I hope that it’s helpful and not like confusing when I when i do02:24.94Sam ShiraziYeah, and I want to talk about your podcast because I think that’s a really interesting way where you can bring some of this academic stuff into more of the political discourse. And I know not just in political science, but a lot of different academic fields, history, other fields, like there’s a question about how much...02:41.35Sam ShiraziIt should be kind of more academic, you know, for lack of better term, more Ivy Tower versus like it should be more public. There should be more engagement. You know, which one do you think academics should do more? what what is the role of the academic?02:54.50Rich meagherYeah. I mean, I’m definitely on the side of more public engagement. And I think there’s a growing movement in political science about this. you know there’s There’s this whole question about our our national organizations, right? There’s like the American Political Science Association. There’s big meetings every year.03:12.04Rich meagherAnd some folks in the discipline are like, hey, what are we doing about this whole, i don’t know, like democracy falling apart thing? What are we doing about this whole... like march towards authoritarianism all across the globe. Like, can we help at all? Because it seems like we know a little bit about politics. We should be involved.03:29.66Rich meagherAnd for me, that stuff’s really interesting and important. But for me, it’s always been about local community, right? The local context. I’m much more interested in what’s happening in city council than I am in at the UN.03:42.10Rich meagherand And that’s just my own kind of personal preference. I do think like I’ve always tried to offer a corrective because I think most of your regular citizens would say, oh yeah, i understand that UN n stuff is really scary and and it’s important, but they don’t think the same way about their city council all the time, right? They’re not thinking about their county board of supervisors meetings as as affecting their lives just as much as, you know, what Donald Trump is doing today, but but it really does. And so that’s been, you know, sort of my motivating even evangelical factor, right? Is just to raise the alarm and sound the,04:17.47Rich meagherlet’s get the word out about, you know, your local context. You know, what’s going on in, in the city, what’s going on in Richmond. And so the, the podcast for me has been an outgrowth of that work that I’ve been doing for years about like local politics. I mean, i wrote a book in 2020, you know, always be plugging your book, right?04:36.26Rich meagherThat was, that was local politics matters. i mean, that was the big argument was that, you you know, not only does the stuff that happened at the local level matter as just as much as anything else, but, You can, you have impact. I mean, you can meet these people. Like you can go to these meetings and they they can get to know you, you get to know your representatives.04:51.69Rich meagherI don’t hang around buddy, buddy with Tim Kaine, but you know, I, I knew who my city council folks were in Richmond.04:57.72Sam ShiraziYeah. and And kind of talking about the podcast a little bit, you know, I want to definitely recommend people interested in Richmond area issues to listen to the podcast. I know recently you had the mayor of Richmond, Mayor of Lula on, and I thought that was a really interesting podcast for many reasons, including that he announced he was going to run for reelection, even though he’s not up for reelection until 2028.05:18.52Sam ShiraziBut I thought it was interesting to hear from the mayor and what it’s been like as he has come into office this year. i mean, I think most people outside of Richmond, the story they’ve heard in the last year is kind of the water crisis.05:31.92Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, how is that going? And has things have things gotten better? and And what are the citizens in Richmond thinking about in terms of, you know, hopefully that never happening again?05:42.08Rich meagherYeah, I think, I mean, we hope it will never happen again. The odds are something, don’t want to say disastrous will happen, but, you know, we’re still a city with aging infrastructure and there’s only so much you can do about that overnight. And this is a big, like a national problem, right? It happens at the local level, but our infrastructure all across the country, you know, bridges and roads and, and water systems and sewers are, are aging, right. And, and we haven’t invested in them. We haven’t paid enough attention to them. And that was like brought home for everybody.06:13.06Rich meagherAt least most of all, you know, mayor of Vula when he stepped into the office here in Richmond. So I don’t think it’s the last time we’re going to have infrastructure problems. I don’t think it’s the last crisis the city’s going to face.06:25.37Rich meaghermaybe Maybe and hopefully it won’t be as bad as it was where we just didn’t have water for a week. But I mean, i think that conversation with with Mayor Avula is exactly the kind of of thing that we like to do on our podcast, right? Because you can get him, you know, his his newsletter and you can get a sense of what he says at his press conferences, but we really get to sit down with a guy.06:47.95Rich meagherand you know, he’s a politician. He’s he’s very... polished person. I mean, I do think he seems to be very genuine. People like and and respond to him that way, but he gets a chance to talk in depth about some things. And so you get to hear about, yeah, like, oh yeah, I’m i’m going to run again. oh yeah. Like that that, you know, not quite an announcement, but a a way saying it.07:06.68Rich meagherHe also, I mean, one of the things I think that, that I didn’t hear a lot of people talk about on that, about that podcast was, you know, he he’s getting you know political violence. There’s threats, you know incredible threats that he has to worry about as a politician.07:20.74Rich meagherAnd you know mayor of Richmond is not exactly a big job or it’s one where you’re really among the people all the time and you can’t be isolated to do that well. And I don’t think he wants to do that well.07:31.72Rich meagherBut, but he’s got to deal with this whole new reality, right. And in a really visceral way, you know, in a way that I think members of Congress don’t always have to, because they’re sort of whisked from limo to, to plane or helicopter or whatever. but you know, here’s this guy who’s just sort of like hanging around his neighborhood and walking around the city.07:50.06Rich meagherSo, I mean, I do think that that part of what we try to do in the podcast is just kind of humanize these folks who are active and in city government. And and again, you you can get to know them. You can get to see them. So I think that it’s a real genuine connection you can make with people like that.08:05.62Sam ShiraziYeah, it’s always a good reminder that politicians are human beings, too, as much as, you know, it’s hard to think of them that way.08:09.38Rich meagherYeah.08:11.64Sam ShiraziBut they have to face a lot of issues, even even though it’s it’s often a thankless job. And, you know, obviously, he’s just stepping into it. So we’ll see how how he does in the rest of his term.08:23.69Sam ShiraziI did want to ask you about... kind of Richmond area, en Richmond City as well. But, you know, I moved to Virginia in 2006. And six and when when I was moving here, you know, Northern Virginia was the place where a lot of growth, a lot of people are moving to Northern Virginia. I think over time, it’s kind of hit its peak. There’s housing issues.08:43.12Sam ShiraziAnd so i I know a lot of people are moving to the Richmond area. It’s growing relative to Northern Virginia. There’s obviously housing issues now because so many people are moving and housing costs have gone up.08:54.12Sam Shirazimean, have you seen that in the Richmond area? And how do you think the Richmond area is changing because of that?08:59.26Rich meagherOh, for sure. i mean, it is a huge topic of discussion here and and not to knock you folks in Northern Virginia, right? But Northern Virginia is sort of like the, the specter of the future hanging over Richmond. i mean, there are some folks here, particularly there’s a great website called RVAMag where they do a lot of car arts and culture commentary and reporting.09:20.90Rich meagherAnd they’re a big thing. The folks there have been about like condo culture and and really trying to preserve Richmond’s identity in the in the wake of of all of the new people moving here.09:33.32Rich meagherbut There’s a sense that you know newcomers are welcome and and new investment is great, but it too many you know wealthy professionals coming down from the DC area, too many you know sort of like white folks from outside the city.09:47.11Rich meagheryou know, it’s a it’s a problem and and it’s not just a Richmond problem, but because Richmond, I think, has a distinct identity, there is this concern like you don’t want to become southern northern Virginia, you know, and I hear that a lot from people just sort of out and about.10:01.81Rich meagheri read about it a lot and I experience it, too. I mean, I recently moved outside of the city borders, not, you know, for a variety of reasons and family release reasons and things like that. But, you know, i I would have liked to have stayed within the city.10:15.71Rich meagherbut because of family needs and and schools and things like that, just didn’t work out. And it would have been a lot easier to work out you know a decade ago, right? Because I i would have had more options. And it’s just the options are drying up for a lot of people at a lot of different income levels.10:31.46Rich meagherAnd of course, it’s the the most vulnerable people are really suffering from that. But I think everybody is feeling pinch. Now, again, this is where Richmond is like the rest of the country. This is a national problem of housing affordability and housing burden and and And that’s affecting low income folks. It’s affecting high income folks. Not everybody can find a place to live where they want to live.10:52.40Rich meagherAnd it is causing all kinds of you know, sort of cultural problems and concerns as well as like economic problems and concerns. So it’s definitely this part of the story of Richmond right now is what’s the future of Richmond going to look like?11:05.46Rich meagherAnd everybody kind of like talking through how do we keep what’s so unique about the city and the region while still allowing for this growth, which is great and good for the economy and good for for everybody’s, you know, sort of pocketbooks in general.11:19.49Sam ShiraziAnd you know one thing i think about is you know Richmond is obviously the capital of Virginia. And how does that aspect of the city fit into the culture? And what is it like when the General Assembly is in session? And i mean, I know people are just kind of going about their daily lives, but is it something that impacts the city or or do you feel it when the General Assembly is in session versus when it’s not?11:42.92Rich meagherI mean, I i don’t know if if it’s really like a feel. I mean, certainly there are more people in the city and and I think it does have long-term effects over the year though. Like if you’re a downtown and hanging, if you work downtown or you go downtown during the sessions, big different vibe there.11:58.05Rich meagherAnd you know, there’s there’s protests every day and people gathering the park and and just lots more people in suits and and fancy pins running around. there’s definitely an energy to the downtown area, but I think the longer term effect on Richmond is is more important. and And that helps people like me who are you know into politics for a living because it means that Richmond is a city.12:20.38Rich meagheri mean, i always say this about Richmond, culturally, politically, economically, it’s a city that punches above its weight class. I mean, we’re not a big city, but I think we have a big impact. And so when I want to do something like start a podcast about local politics, I think one of the reasons why I can do that is I think we’re more politically attuned here in Richmond, right? Even though people might you know, not be involved in state government even though they’re not working directly for, you know, Glenn Youngkin or for a legislator, they still are are much more kind of connected to it. they’re more aware they’re thinking about politics. Politics is in the air a little bit more in Richmond than it might be elsewhere.12:58.81Rich meagherSo it’s easier for me to make the case, like if we talk about the city of Richmond, there are people here whose jobs are in state government or who are lobbyists or government relations people they’re advocates or nonprofit folks.13:11.79Rich meagherAnd they’re going to pay attention to what’s going on in city hall because they’re attuned already to think about politics much more than your, your normal person. Who’s, you know, a lawyer out in Bristol say, or, uh, you know, a teacher out in,13:27.48Rich meagheryou know, another part of the state where they’re they’re not kind of thinking about it so much. So I do think that really helps bring politics alive a little bit more in the city so that even if we’re talking about what’s happening in the county or in in City Hall, I think people are are more likely to care about it. So that that’s helpful to me as a guy, you know, a local politics guy who’s trying to get people excited about about what’s happening in those places.13:52.38Sam ShiraziThat makes sense. And, you know, shifting gears towards the elections this year, i think Richmond area is is taking center stage for a few reasons. One is because two of the candidates on the Democratic side,14:04.62Sam ShiraziAbigail Spanberger running for governor and Ghazal Hashmi running for lieutenant governor are from the Richmond suburbs. And then on the Republican side, John Reed running for lieutenant governor is is from the Richmond suburbs.14:15.62Sam ShiraziAnd then also there’s several competitive House of Delegates seats in the Richmond area. How do you think Richmond... fits into this election, Richmond area. And do you think this is kind of a new area of focus in Virginia politics as Northern Virginia has kind of settled into its voting patterns? Maybe Richmond is becoming more of a center in Virginia politics.14:36.65Rich meagherYeah, I think that’s a good way to put it, right? Because Northern Virginia is the, I think, the center of political power and political gravity and in the Commonwealth. And I think, you know everything sort of tilts northward.14:48.70Rich meagherBut that means also that it’s kind of less interesting up there. No offense, right? But a lot of the the kind of battles that were shaking out like 10 years 20 years ago, twenty years ago over those competitive districts in Northern Virginia are kind of settled down, right? There’s just too many Democrats around to make it, i don’t want to say interesting, but but to make it competitive. Whereas the the competition has shifted to these more, you know, suburban districts in Central Virginia to a lesser extent out in the Tidewater area. But, you know, that urban corridor that runs from Northern Virginia through Central Virginia and out to the to the ocean is really where15:27.38Rich meagheryou you know, the Democrats are, it’s where the cities are, it’s where the kind of, a again, center of gravity is in this state that’s, that’s trending blue or is blue, or at least is purplish blue. And so the competition is going to happen along that corridor. Again, Northern Virginia, just because there’s so many Democrats now is less competitive. So I do think the sort of, when we’re looking at Virginia and what’s going on in Virginia, and particularly because we have these weird off year elections, when the whole country looks at Virginia,15:55.36Rich meagherThey’re looking more and more now to central Virginia as the place where stuff is happening and where people are coming from, just because everything’s so settled up in Northern Virginia, right? The power structures, the powerful Democrats are up there already. They’re kind of centered in their’re theyre in what they’re doing. And and it’s just, it’s it’s where the action is, I think, central Virginia. So so Richmond is is playing an outsized role in this election.16:41.12Sam ShiraziAnd looking at the election big picture, you know, from your academic hat, you know, what is it that you are kind of seeing maybe that you haven’t heard other political commentators saying or or something that maybe your academic background kind of informs with this election that you’re not necessarily seeing other people talk about?17:00.47Rich meagherYeah, I mean, I don’t know that people aren’t talking about it, but the way I would put it in a very political science-y way is the nationalization of state and local elections, like the continuing nationalization of it.17:12.78Rich meagherAnd it’s possible this was the case back in the late 1800s. Like we have reverted to a really, really partisan movement. politically divided, ideologically divided environment in in the country over the last 20, 30 years.17:27.46Rich meagherAnd that’s not unprecedented. That’s the way politics kind of worked in the late 1800s, too. But it’s really shaking down the sort of partisan divide is is trickling down, you know like, i don’t know if it’s injecting down what the metaphor you should use is to state races and to local races. So that, you know, for example, the, the Jay Jones texting scandal that we’re seeing right now, I mean, to me, this is an ultimate test of partisan power, right? Are people going to focus on this guy and his particular, you know, scandals or concerns about this, this particular race, or are they going to vote DNR, right? is Is that what’s going to determine this race? And I think,18:07.07Rich meagherIf Jay Jones wins this race, despite everything that, you know, he’s sort of these self-inflicted wounds he’s given himself over the last couple of weeks. If he wins this race, that suggests to me that this nationalization is really, really dominating our elections right now to the point where you can do just about anything.18:23.85Rich meagherAs long as you’ve got that letter in your name, that’s going to be what people vote for. So that’s what I’m looking for. Like, and again, i’m not making a prediction here about how this is going to shake out. But but to me, that’s a trend that we measure in political science.18:37.69Rich meagherThat is a sort of concept that we’ve been kind of looking at and that I think really can help us understand what happens in an election. If something happens, and you’re like, why did that happen? Well, here’s an example. Nationalization, all this partisan divide is is really just kind of dominating our politics so much that that’s how voters think now.18:55.97Sam ShiraziThat makes sense. and And I think one thing that I’ve seen in a lot of the academic literature and and also in the political commentary is the fact that we’ve become so kind of isolated. So Richmond is really blue, but then you go you know a little bit outside into more rural areas and it’s really red. And you know i remember not too long ago when it was...19:16.65Sam Shirazimore even where things weren’t so red and blue. And I’ve seen a lot of different explanations. Some of it is social media, some of it is redistricting, some of it is self sorting. I mean, there’s so many different of explanations for why things have kind of shaken out the way they have and we’ve become so polarized, as you say. i mean, from your research or your sense, even why do you think things have gotten so polarized these days?19:41.72Rich meagherYeah, I should say it’s and it’s not my area of focus, really partisan polarization. But in general, the technological argument is really compelling to me, like just the the media environment, the algorithms of our social media, the way that people consume news and information these days is is really just become divided into different streams that are catering to our ideological interests.20:08.87Rich meagherYou know, not that the world was perfect back when everybody watched CBS News and Walter Cronkite and all that stuff. Like, I’m not that, you know, like like the history is is not, it’s not like we didn’t have problems before.20:20.50Rich meagherBut but the the the the lack of a kind of monoculture, the lack of any kind of, and I don’t know, the the the way that we’re just sort of self-selecting our own and the technological tools we have are enabling us to to choose more and more of the stuff that we agree with, I think is a big problem.20:39.16Rich meagherI mean, and then the other thing that the technology connects to is the the sort of bowling alone thesis. That’s Robert Putnam wrote a but famous book. He’s a big... former head of of political science associations and and very famous political scientist and social scientist who argued that you know the lack of of what he called social capital, the lack of of civic engagement, the lack of connections at the community level between people is really driving this home even further, right?21:06.92Rich meagherWhere 30 years ago, you may still have been strongly Republican or Democrat, but you bowled with people who were different from you. right You saw them at church. You maybe joined a rotary club or you were you know active in the Boy Scouts and whatever. You saw all these people that had different were different walks of life and different interests and different ideologies.21:28.12Rich meagherAnd we’re less and less likely to do that now. We’re less and less likely to join up with groups that might bring us in contact with people we disagree with politically. and And that’s being fed along with our our technological and media consumption.21:40.91Rich meagherSo I think those two things together, the sort of technology piece, which affects our media and social media, and the this sort of lack of community engagement is is really driving us apart in this in this way.21:53.79Sam ShiraziWell, to try to close out on more optimistic but note, do you think local government is a way to maybe bridge the divide?22:00.75Sam ShiraziBecause I often notice, at least in my local government, there are a lot of issues that are basically nonpartisan, you know fittic filling in potholes. I mean, these types of things where we don’t have to be debating super hot button issues.22:13.17Sam ShiraziDo you think there’s a way to use local government to maybe, and don’t say counter the polarization, but maybe bring people together to talk about kind of less partisan issues?22:23.20Rich meagherYeah, it’s a great question, Sam. And I do believe it, but we have to be careful about just saying, well, go local and everything will be fine. I mean, the the book I wrote in 2020, Local Politics Matters, I actually argue that there are right answers in local politics. Like we know that we should invest in transit. We just don’t because of political and like lack of political will and resources.22:46.26Rich meagherBut we know the benefits of it and we know we should do it. We know we need affordable housing. It’s just question how to do it exactly. But we we just know. So I do think there’s agreement, there’s good data, there’s a lack of, like you say, the kind of partisan heat that we can get from from local politics if we get more people involved.23:04.69Rich meagherThe only problem is that the kind of structural inequalities that we have in America get reproduced at the local level. And political scientists have studied local politics and they at least currently right The kinds of folks who get involved in local politics are often sort of wealthy property interests, right? Either rich people, property owners, like homeowners, you know, like HOA associations, all this kind of stuff.23:29.95Rich meagherAnd so it’s not equitable. and And participation needs to be more equitable at the local level. i’m I’m not saying that’s always the case. and And certainly folks in Richmond, and there’s been some recent efforts by the city, for example, the the people’s budget effort, right? They really tried to bring it to the the people, the the idea of of asking citizens, what what do you want to pay for, like, here’s a chunk of money. What kind of things do you want to spend that money on?23:55.57Rich meagherThey really tried to work on outreach and there’s a lot of programs and and and nonprofits and and governments that are trying to do that. But I think we need to do more. Like we should have childcare available at city council meetings. We should feed people.24:08.62Rich meagherMike Jones, when he was a city council member here in Richmond, was always like, you’ve got to feed people at meetings because it’s it’s not just that that that gets them to come. It’s like it’s just an equity issue. Like people aren’t going to come if they have to choose between coming your meeting and and eating dinner like they need to need to eat and they don’t have time.24:25.05Rich meagheryou got to feed them. like And so that kind of ethos, that kind of like, yes, local politics can help bridge the divide, but we have to set up the structures of local government and local politics and local engagement to make sure that we’re not reproducing other divides that we see elsewhere.24:42.60Rich meagherSo that’s what I sort of caveat about. I really do believe that that local politics can be part of the answer, but we’ve got to create a local politics that is a sort of open hand to everybody so that it’s easy for them to participate rather than just letting the same voices kind of dominate.24:57.85Sam ShiraziThat makes sense. And food and meetings is always a good idea. So I think that’s yeah that’s a creative way to do it.25:00.51Rich meagherAlways feed them. Always feed them.25:04.13Sam ShiraziWell, one last question about the Richmond area. If people want to visit either for vacation or for a day trip, what is something in the Richmond area that you enjoy or something that you think is is not as well known that people should go visit?25:17.65Rich meagherOh, that’s a really good question. Yeah, that’s that’s a tough one too because it just depends on on who you are. I mean, I always point to museums, right? And I hate to be like the museum nerd, but if you’ve got a kid who’s even like yeah a tween, like a teenager, the science museum is just like a great way to spend the day. i mean, I have fun when I go there with my kids.25:40.72Rich meagherI’ve been in a few years, like but I sometimes think like my youngest kid’s now 16. sixteen I’d like to kind of drag her back to the Science Museum just because it’s it’s fun for everybody. And the VMFA, right, is it just this beautiful little urban park outside of it. I think they’re renovating it right now, but it’s like it’s free every day, and you can spend 15 minutes in there or five hours, but to like to just go stick your head in the museum and then just sit outside among sculpture in this beautiful park.26:08.68Rich meagherthat’s That’s the way to go. I mean, I just think you got to take advantage. I know those are sort of like easy answers, but I just kind of feel like those are the gems of the city. and And if you’re in the city, you should you should go and and hang out with those places.26:22.51Rich meagherI mean, take a grown-up, go on a date to the Science Museum. You guys can have fun there banging on things and running around. Even grown-ups can have a good time there.26:31.56Sam ShiraziWell, museums are always great. So those are some good recommendations. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. Check out RVA’s Got Issues, another great podcast. So Rich, thanks so much for joining me today.26:42.29Rich meagherAnytime, Sam. Thanks so much.26:43.68Sam ShiraziAll right. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus interview where I will be interviewing State Senator Danica Rome. She represents the 30th State Senate District in western Prince William County. It also includes the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.00:19.41Sam ShiraziAnd I really appreciate the state senator for taking the time to join me.00:23.15Danica RoemYeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Sam.00:25.41Sam ShiraziYeah. So I wanted to talk about a few different things, but I think it’d be interesting to hear your background, how you decided to run for office. And I did want to also plug your book, Burn the Page, which I think gives you know the full story. But if you wanted to just give a brief background on yourself and why you decided to run for office.00:44.74Danica RoemYeah, absolutely. Thank you so so kindly, especially for mentioning the book, too. So I’m a lifelong resident of the greater Manassas area. you know, I was born at Prince William Hospital off of Sudley Road at Manassas September 30th, 1984.00:57.83Danica RoemAnd, you know, I was our local news reporter for the Gainesville Times, the Prince William Times here. for nine years, two months, and two weeks from 2006 to 2015. twenty fifteen and covered everything during that time that you can imagine from you know high school sports to you know interviewing candidates for governor and U.S. s senator, all the like.01:17.26Danica RoemAnd you know i’ve really focused a lot on political coverage as well as you know stuff just going on in the community in general, specialized in transportation, of course. And after in 2015, I took a job as the news editor of the McAmarin County Sentinel over in Maryland. So had a nice little commute from Manassas there.01:36.50Danica RoemAnd i had also spent from 2009 to 2013, four out of five years at one point, just like, well, from 2009 to 2013, I was a staff writer for the hotline at National Journal in DC, where I was covering state and federal campaigns every single day, starting at six of them the morning.01:55.63Danica RoemAnd so for four out five years at one point, I was working two full-time jobs. And then 2015, I went over to the Sentinel. And at the beginning of 2016, after you know I had earned a degree in journalism in 2006 from St. Bonaventure University, go Bonneys.02:14.09Danica Roemi And i had you know spent you know the next decade of my life reporting the news. It did get to a point for me personally in my own transition where I didn’t want to just stay neutral on everything when the Virginia General Assembly that year had nine anti-LGBTQ bills that had come up.02:36.57Danica RoemAnd so very early in January 2016, I had asked my editor at the Sentinels like, hey, I’d like to go down to Richmond so I can go advocate against some of these bills.02:46.88Danica RoemAnd, but at the same time, you know, I’m a news editor, I’m a reporter, i know, you know, i have to be a neutral, dispassionate third party observer. And, you know, telling me, he’s like, well, just because you became a reporter didn’t mean that you lost your right to redress grievances with your government. So he pretty much told me, like, you know, be smart, don’t do anything stupid, and you I got your back.03:06.32Danica RoemAnd he’s also told me, he was like, The last time I checked, Richmond, Virginia was not in the circulation area of Montgomery County, Maryland, correct? I’m like, right. Well, then, okay, then you’re fine. So I was like, okay.03:16.61Danica RoemSo i drove down, advocated against these bills, and we defeated seven of them before they even got to the floor. Another one we ran out the clock on, and then then Governor McAuliffe vetoed the last one live on WTOP.03:29.41Danica RoemAnd during my advocacy... I had stopped over at an Equality Prince William meeting so I could kind of brief a bunch of folks in Prince William about what was going on with these bills.03:40.32Danica RoemAnd I came across the 2015 Democratic nominee for the 13th District of the Virginia House Delegates, which at the time was represented by Bob Marshall. The Democrat who had lost was Don Shaw. And I told john Don, you know, in passing, hey, I voted for you, you know, and bla bla blah, blah, blah.03:55.36Danica RoemAnd we just got to chatting. Well, fast forward that summer, I’m working a second job as a you know, weekend delivery driver, you know, making $5 an hour plus tip out of my 92 Dodge Shadow, you know, because journalism, just community journalism is not a great financial decision for you to, you know, pay the bills. It’s essential, important work, but it’s, you know,04:18.48Danica RoemIt was tough. And so I had to have a second job. And I was doing these 11, 12, 13 hour weekend delivery driving shifts and such. And was one day i get this email, August 4th, 2016. And Don asked me, hey, i have to move out of the area. Have you considered running? You’d be really good.04:36.80Danica RoemAnd i laughed out loud and I closed my laptop. I didn’t even think twice about it. And then the next day i got a phone call from State Delegate Rip Sullivan, who is recruiting chair for the House Democratic Caucus.04:47.42Danica RoemAnd he asked me, hey, you know, have you considered running? you be really good. And I said, well, I know what i would run on, which is fixing my mom’s commute. She’d been driving from Manassas to get to her job in near Dulles for you know nearly 40 years at that point.04:59.60Danica RoemAnd I said, you know, the guy who was in office at the time is more concerned about where I go to the bathroom than how my mom gets to work. So let’s go something about it. And well, I knew at that point for all the years I had covered campaigns, I had never been on the inside of a campaign.05:15.09Danica RoemAnd so I i knew i needed to get trained. And I was aware of the LGBTQ Victory Institute’s candidate campaign training program. So I applied for it. I couldn’t believe that I got in, but I did. And it was like right after the 2016 election, we met up in Dallas for four days over there. And I learned from an insider perspective about how campaigns run.05:38.82Danica RoemSo I decided to run over the next two months. And in that decision making, James Parrish from Equality Virginia put me in touch with Julie Copeland, who is the then executive director of Emerge Virginia.05:52.92Danica RoemAnd he said, hey, we’ve got someone who’s running against Bob Marshall, by the way, it’s trans women. So just want to let you know that she’s out there. And Julie’s like, yes, send her to me. And so I went into this three day boot camp and it was all these Democratic women who are put our names on the ballot that year.06:11.39Danica RoemAnd we all learned how to ran for off run for office together. And meanwhile, at the same time, the 2017 Emerge Virginia Signature Program was going on. And there was a particular a person in that class who now all of Virginia knows because her name was Abigail Spanberger.06:29.41Danica RoemAnd from that class, actually, Delegate Elizabeth Bennett Parker was in that class, among many others. And our classes overlapped for one day together in Alexandria on a Saturday.06:41.59Danica RoemAnd so, you know, that election in 2017, we flipped 15 seats red to blue in the House of Delegates that night. It was, you know, some of the likes of which we had not seen in a very long time.06:54.24Danica RoemAnd of those 15 Red to Blue seats, 11 of us were women. And of the 11 women, nine of us were Emerge alums. And of those nine, eight of us had gone through that boot camp that year.07:06.24Danica RoemAnd so, you know, it was a real big banner moment for Emerge because at that point, only Jennifer Boisko and Kathleen Murphy, both of whom had flip seats Red to Blue, by the way,07:17.56Danica Roemwere Emerge alums in the House of Delegates, and there were no Emerge alums in the State Senate. Well, fast forward today, now there are 17 Emerge alums in the Virginia House of Delegates.07:27.74Danica RoemThere are five State Senate Emerge alums, myself included, along with Jennifer Carroll-Foy, Stella Prokarski, Jennifer Boisko, as I mentioned before, and Russell Perry. And this year, we also have another 16 Emerge alums who are challenging Republicans in House Delegates districts.07:44.28Danica RoemWe’ve got another six Emerge alums who are running for local office. And biggest change from 2017 to now for me personally is I’m now the executive director of Emerge Virginia. And I took over in February of 2022. And that’s kind of brought us where we are today.08:01.06Sam ShiraziWell, that’s a really great background. And before we get to the individual candidates, I did want to ask you about Emerge Virginia virginia generally. you know What is it that you provide the candidates and why do you think it’s important that candidates get that kind of training?08:14.16Danica RoemOh, absolutely. Great question. So what Emerge Virginia provides for the candidates is not only the actual training where they’re hearing from experts, from people who have run campaigns before as candidates, as well as staffers, and they’re hearing a whole world of different perspectives.08:32.50Danica RoemThey get the network. They get each other. when i was When I was first sworn in in 2018, 2018, most of my closest you know allies in the General Assembly at that time were the Emerge women who I trained with.08:45.94Danica RoemAnd it was really, really incredible to have that network and that commonality that we all kind of fall back on. And to this day, that’s still a sentiment that is really strong in the Virginia General Assembly, where a lot of the Emerged alums are really close with each other in both chambers.09:05.36Danica RoemAnd i think that that’s also really important because you have that sense of commonality and you know the same information. And that’s allowed a lot of Emerge alums to exchange a lot of ideas with each other, which I think is really, really, really critical. And so, yes, of course, you are learning everything from how to raise money, how to, you know, get volunteers out for you, how to, you know, do all the paperwork and get your, you know, websites online and stuff in all the community organizing, how to talk to press, how to hone your own message, working on your public speaking,09:39.61Danica RoemWe go through all of that in our signature program, and the next signature program is going to start November 8th and 9th. It’s going to be the first weekend, of once a weekend for every five months that we’re going to do. and we’re going to have some days that are to be in Richmond, some days that are going virtual.09:56.03Danica RoemThere’s more information about it It’s on the Emerge website. You can check it out at va.emergeamerica.org. And... you know So I’m really, really excited for everything that’s coming from it. But the thing I always tell everyone about this is it’s the network. We’ve trained more than 300 Democratic women how to run for office in Virginia since its founding in 2014.10:17.41Danica RoemAnd you know considering how many that we have in office today and how many we have on the ballot this fall, you know it’s it’s really something else. It’s a very special network.10:28.02Sam ShiraziWell, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of your alum who are running this year in Virginia. And I wanted to ask about a specific race and then obviously feel free to talk about any of the other races. So specifically in middle Prince William County is House District 22.10:42.85Sam ShiraziFormer Delegate Elizabeth Guzman is running in that seat. And part of that district overlaps with your district. So I know you know that that area really well. What are you seeing in that race and then in any of the other races across Virginia?10:56.56Danica RoemOh, sure. I think especially for your audience who’s interested in learning about how, you know, federal fallout is impacting the down ballot is impacting what people are talking about.11:08.30Danica RoemYou know, HD 22 without question is one of the top seats in the state. You know, that’s super competitive right now where. all the, you know, the rifts that have just been after the reduction in force, along with the original doge cuts, along with just basically the scale back to the federal government in general, where is it hitting right now? Well, it’s absolutely hitting in Western Prince William in Mid-County right now, without question.11:33.31Danica RoemIt’s a you know, very pressing issue that’s come up here. And, you know, at the same time, you know people’s energy bills. That’s another thing that’s you know really important because data center sprawl, huge issue, especially in Bristow.11:47.74Danica RoemAnd you know former Delegate Guzman, she’s a very vigorous campaigner. No one’s ever questioned about that. That’s you know her chief skill set that she brings to office. She’s very, very you know good on doors and making sure that she’s you know well-funded. She’s one of the Democratic challengers who’s out-raised a Republican incumbent this year, which is actually pretty common for a number of our Emerge alums, which is, you know, really exciting to see.12:12.60Danica RoemAnd at the same time, I think there’s this notion right now that when we hear about, you know, federal fallout affecting, you know, House of Delegates races and stuff, that it’s Northern Virginia and then, well, maybe a little Hampton Roads, but it’s Northern Virginia where you’re going to really see this.12:28.76Danica RoemAnd sure for sure. And, you know, the races between not just, you know, for former Delegate Guzman running in the twenty second but You know, Josh Thomas running in the 21st district. And then I think next door, you know, John McAuliffe, who’s running to flip a seat.12:41.90Danica RoemJosh is running to retain his seat. jo And John is running to flip a seat in Western Loudoun and Northern Falkir. You know, that’s clearly going to be an issue out there as well. But I’ll highlight another Emerge alum who is hearing a lot about this as one of the top three issues in her race. And that’s Casey Carnegie in the 89th district. And so this is in Chesapeake and Suffolk and Hampton Roads.13:04.24Danica RoemAnd for a lot of federal workers who work in Norfolk specifically, they actually live out in some of the more suburban areas of Hampton Roads. And even though you know it’s like a lot of cities right for Hampton Roads.13:19.00Danica Roemyou know They’re still kind of you know in sort of the way that you would kind of look at Prince William, very similar sorts of development very often. And what Casey’s been hearing about in Suffolk and Chesapeake, you know as she’s trying to represent you know her home community and everything.13:35.95Danica Roemshe hears a lot at the doors. She’s been telling me about the impact of all the federal cuts and stuff. And if I was to tell you, you know if I’m handicapping who are going to be some of our you know most likely seats to flip red to blue this fall, 22 that you just mentioned, I’m looking directly HD 89. That’s a really good bellwether. I think we’ve got a strong candidate in Casey where When she came into the signature program for 2024, 2025, she’s a local attorney. She’s mom. She’s got really, really strong connections to her district.14:12.38Danica RoemAnd at the same time, she was new to campaigning. And so she had a lot of questions about, hey, I want to really, really learn a lot about all the aspects of what it takes to run a successful campaign.14:23.28Danica RoemSo she came in from there, you know kind of you know at that baseline. And then she went on. And she won every single precinct when you look at the reallocated votes from early voting and from in-person early voting or from mail-in ballots and in-person early voting.14:38.36Danica RoemShe won every precinct in her primary. And I would say that you know she’s in a very good position right now to win this fall. you know So I think she’s got a very strong message. I think she’s doing great. And you know as she was training in her class, we also had Nicole Cole, who’s now running against Bobby Orrick, who’s the dean of the House of Delegates.14:58.38Danica RoemAnd this is the first time that this district has really been put in play in a competitive way since the 90s. I think this is, you know, if Spotsylvania and Caroline flip this year, you’re talking about, you know, Democrats in all 14 of those targeted red to blue seats, you know, really having a chance of a clean sweep at that point.15:19.07Danica RoemAt the same time, Nicole, Casey, Elizabeth, We have eight Emerge alums who are running in these top 14 red to blue seats right now, and a number of whom are, you know, previous candidates as Doug Guzman is.15:33.50Danica RoemLily Franklin in the 41st district running for that Montgomery County seat that’s anchored in Blacksburg. and guess she’s got little bit of Rona County. that’s That seat, I think, is Lily is... It’s really interesting because I always talk to her. I talk about Lily Franklin, what she brings to the table, in the same way that you would talk about someone in the performing arts as being a triple threat and that they can sing, act, and dance.15:56.34Danica RoemLilly is a really special case here where you got someone who is so strong on policy because she worked in the General Assembly as a chief of staff. She knows policy really well.16:07.06Danica RoemIncredibly good campaigner. you know She almost won this seat in 2023 despite being very much underfunded. And a lot of people would tell you that.16:18.02Danica RoemAnd then the third part on that is she’s good at public speaking. And I’ve watched her develop in that role too. And so I think she’s you know she’s she’s really got what it takes to win. And meanwhile, Kimberly Pope Adams right now in that Petersburg anchored seat that’s got Dinwiddie, it’s got a bunch of rural Virginia south of Richmond,16:39.81Danica RoemWe’re talking about someone in Kimberly Pope Adams case here who a lot of people did not believe would win her primary in 2023. She had actually dropped out of it for like one day in 2023, came back and just won this huge by huge margin surprise victory in her primary, came within a recount in the general election.17:01.16Danica RoemAnd Kimberly Pope Adams is, I mean, she speaks the language of her district so, so well. And she’s been excellent, excellent with her ground game. I’m really, really particularly pleased with how well she’s been executing, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and handling the basics and getting the basics right of the campaign.17:21.92Danica RoemAnd, you know, I would not be surprised to see Carolee Pope Adams in the, you know in the winner’s circle this fall at all.17:28.13Sam ShiraziYeah, well, you did a really good job breaking down some of the big races and some of the alum that yeah have been trained and are now running. and And we’ll see how many of them make it to the General Assembly in January.17:40.27Sam ShiraziI did want to ask, because you in 2017 ran and then you won in a blue wave and there was a big class of people coming in to the General Assembly. What do you think it would be like for the new class of delegates who come in and what advice would you have for them?17:55.51Danica RoemSure. So i kind of theorize this in two ways. One is, what if we have 2017 part due, right? you know What if you know Democrats catch lightning in a bottle this year and you find out that, hey, Democrats end up flipping a whole bunch of seats in the House of Delegates?18:16.01Danica RoemI think for the Emerge alums who win, they’re going to have not only the network of themselves as brand new members to the Virginia House of Delegates, what they’re also going to have that we didn’t have with the same volume is they’re going to have the existing eMERGE network that’s already in the House, where we’ve got 17 incumbents at this point.18:40.22Danica RoemWhereas when i was you know when we had the nine of us who won in 2017, you know, we had Jennifer Boyce go in Kathleen Murphy there and that was it, you know, for the Emerge alums. We had other women for sure, but these days Emerge alums make up, you know, overwhelming majority of the house democratic women at this point and just adding more to that all the better. So I think they’re going to have a strong network amongst themselves. They’re have a strong network among the incumbents who are already there.19:11.83Danica Roemthe thing I would tell them that I think is really important is that when the House of Delegates conducts its own training and it’s bipartisan, it’s for all the new members.19:24.89Danica RoemAnd so you’ll have Republicans, Democrats alike who come into, you know, who come into it. It’s so important that you not only talk to other Democrats, you need to talk to Republican, you know, you know, delegates elect as well.19:39.14Danica RoemIt’s really, really important to have relationships on both sides of the aisle as soon as you can. And that training opportunity, remember, most people are meeting the other people in that in their class for the first time during that training.19:55.45Danica RoemAnd so It’s going to be really important that you have a good first impression and get along with people because you don’t know how long those relationships can go on for. For example, you know, State Senator Emily Jordan, she’s a Republican.20:09.75Danica RoemHer and i we won our elections, you know, at the same time in 2017. We actually got along really well in our training together. And, you know, we are very different on policy, you know, a lot of ways, you know different politics, different, lot of that.20:22.05Danica RoemBut you know we’ve maintained a cordial relationship you know over last eight years too. And that’s something i I think I would just really stress to people is making sure that You’re talking to people on both sides, even if Democrats, you know, hey, we get a trifecta, everything’s great.20:38.69Danica RoemVirginia is a pendulum politically. And so, you know, we have seen there’s the 20 year majority that the Republicans had for the House of Delegates. That’s long gone.20:49.16Danica RoemBut now we’ve also seen, you know, just in my terms that I’ve been there, i had Kirk Cox, the Speaker of the House, Eileen Fillercorn, a Speaker of the House. Todd Gilbert, is Speaker of the House. And then I went to the Senate.21:02.50Danica RoemAnd now we have Don Scott, a Speaker of the House. We’ve had four speakers of the House in the eight years that I’ve been in office, just under eight years. And so I think it’s very, very important for people to make sure that they’ve got good relationships on both sides of the aisle.21:18.81Sam ShiraziWell, I think that’s good advice, especially in these days where things have become so part partisan. i did want to ask one kind of interesting question for people who really are in the weeds about Virginia politics.21:30.30Sam Shiraziyou were You served both in the House of Delegates and now you’re in the State Senate. Could you talk about kind of the differences, similarities and what it was like to serve in both those bodies?21:39.15Danica RoemYeah. So in the house of delegates, house delegates funnier, that’s for sure. you can have, uh, you have a lot more, we’ll just say a flaring of emotions.21:51.64Danica Roemand And not all negative. Sometimes, you know, it can be a very funny place to work. Paul Nardo, who is the clerk of the House. I mean, like just like Paul just is the House of Delegates in a lot of ways. He like he you know, he’s he’s very well respected both sides of the aisle, even though you he came up as Bill Howell’s chief staff. But, you know, it’s just, you know, he’s very well respected. And I think biggest difference between the two is that because the House Delegates is a hundred member body.22:19.36Danica RoemAnd you have members, unless you sit on an aisle or you sit in the back row, you have members who are squeezing and shoving, trying to get themselves behind other so people in their seats as you’re trying to get to your seat and stuff. And so it’s, we’ll just say it’s a very cozy environment in the house.22:37.02Danica RoemAnd because of that, There are members who absolutely take the initiative to walk over to the other side of the aisle during downtime and, you know, talk to other members. And i think that’s really, really important, you know, skill set to have.22:52.57Danica RoemAt the same time in the Senate, that’s every day, every day in the Senate, because you have 40 members instead of 100. You have a physically smaller room. And decorum in the Senate is a very big deal.23:09.29Danica RoemWhereas in the House during my time there, decorum, every speaker will talk about the importance of it. I think... In the House, you’ll have members who just who who shout at each other you know you know on camera, on the mic, and have very heated rhetoric that go back and forth between each other.23:26.56Danica RoemAbsolutely, that happens. In the Senate, that’s more frowned upon. And it’s very, very much like, look, the members on both sides of the aisle, you’re on four or five committees.23:38.71Danica RoemYou’re going to be working with just about everyone at different points. you’re going to be interacting with each other on members from both sides of the aisle, whether you want to or not very, very frequently.23:52.27Danica RoemAnd so i would say the house of delegates was a really good training for me to have had over six years going into the Senate. It gave me such a headstart on policy, on understanding the dynamics of the Senate, because I had, you know gotten to know a lot of the senators over the years.24:10.90Danica RoemAnd at the same time, it wasn’t coming to the Senate completely green. That said, you don’t have to have served in the House of Delegates to you know go into the Senate, but a lot of us do.24:22.47Danica RoemThe other thing in the Senate is the four-year term absolutely comes with a different perspective because in the House, Kirk Cox used to say,24:34.40Danica RoemThe first day of your next campaign is election day of the campaign that you just won, because that’s when you’re meeting voters and you’re greeting them and everything.24:46.45Danica RoemAnd immediately you’re getting started fundraising and, you know, doing community outreach and stuff for the next two year cycle. You’re already doing it. It’s just you’re in the nonstop campaign mentality when you’re in the House.25:01.05Danica RoemAnd in my case, having flipped a seat from a 26-year, 13-term incumbent, having you know a really vigorous challenge in 2019, still a battleground challenge in 2021, but that one wasn’t actually like you know super well-funded. It was really, I was told, hey, you you know we’re not going to ask you to give extra caucus dues.25:23.37Danica Roembut you’re going to have to run your own campaign because you know we’ve got other priority seats. And you know that was its own challenge in and of itself, without question, 2021, especially with the headwinds that came in.25:33.79Danica RoemAnd I actually outran my top of the ticket in my district by 0.13, which is kind of interesting. And then 2023, race... you know my race what’s What’s interesting in the 2023 one is there were other races that were getting funded well, and I had the second worst thing that could happen to you as a candidate. The worst thing that happens to you as a candidate is you lose.25:56.52Danica RoemThe second worst thing it happens to you as a candidate is that you have a really good poll that comes in for you right before the start of early voting. And I did. And so at that point, it’s like, all right, Janica, you’re not going much of a priority right now. We really got to shift money into...26:12.35Danica Roemsome of these other seats. And i was like, oh no. And so I knew i was not going to win that election by the amount that that early polling showed us. And that is like, okay, we had 41 negative slash contrast you know mailers with negative you know you know messaging against me come into the district that my campaign I knew about.26:34.71Danica RoemAnd then there were the TV ads, then there were digital and all this other stuff. And we did not have nearly as much mail. We didn’t have nearly as much TV digital. Well, actually, pretty close, i would say on that. But they got started before we did it in some regards.26:49.06Danica RoemAnd we just kind of had to you know, really win that that campaign on the ground until the last week of the campaign when we knew the other side was going to go up with, you know, just about half million dollar buy.27:02.79Danica RoemAnd so we had to, you know, make sure that we did what we had to do on that one and put up something similar. And we did. you know, one at the end of the day, it was just, you know, really, really took one on took one for the team in that campaign. And, you know, and that’s that’s okay. You know, whatever it takes for you to get to that majority, that’s what we did.27:20.93Danica RoemSo the biggest difference though, otherwise for the Senate versus the House, I think because of the volume that you’re dealing with of legislation and committee, the volume that you’re dealing with on the floor,27:34.64Danica Roemand the number of committee assignments that you have. There’s a lot of people who come to you when you are a new member of the Senate with a certain air of respect that they project to you that they don’t always project project on new members of the House.27:55.79Danica RoemI had people who would come up and talk to me in the Senate who I don’t believe would have given me the light of day my first term in the House. And that’s not among other members. That’s just like, you know, people who come in and out of Capitol Square pretty much.28:11.13Danica RoemAnd so that was, i think there is a certain respect that’s afforded to first year senators that a lot of delegates need several years in order to just gain over time or depending on what their committee assignments are or anything. So, you know, I think those are some of the key differences.28:32.80Sam ShiraziWell, certainly had some interesting experiences, and I’m sure you’ll have more as you continue in the state Senate. I did want to ask kind of one last question about Emerge Virginia, specifically about and of local offices, because and know when you were a reporter, you covered a lot of local politics.28:49.86Sam ShiraziAnd oftentimes, the big organizations tend to overlook that they focus on the state level stuff. and What do you think the importance of local politics is? And How can there would be more of an emphasis on that? Because I think oftentime it gets oftentimes it gets overlooked.29:04.99Danica RoemOh, I mean, like, here’s a great example right now. you know, so for Emerge, we’ve got six Emerge alums who are running for local office right now. We’ve got Lauren Coliver running for re-election for Blacksburg Town Council.29:18.45Danica RoemKeish Evans for in Stafford County. And actually, what’s interesting is the the sheriff of the city of Richmond, Antoinette Irving, she was actually in my 2017 boot camp for Emerge. And, you know, so she’s running for another term.29:31.32Danica RoemTrina McLaughlin and Danville for school board. That’s a special election down there. Lucy Pullen here in Manassas Park, Commissioner Revenue. She’s unopposed, you know so you know she’s a lock for that seat.29:42.06Danica RoemAnd then Blythe Scott, who’s running for re-election for Norfolk, Commissioner Revenue. What’s really important if you’re into politics and campaigning is very often this is where your farm team comes from.29:56.07Danica Roemright This is where a lot of people, you know they get their start in local government before they run for you know higher office. Great example of this this year right now is Nicole Cole.30:08.20Danica RoemNicole Cole you know running in that Spotsylvania, Carolina County seat. She flipped a seat on the Spotsylvania County School Board. It’s important to note that school board races are officially nonpartisan, but the parties make endorsements rather than nominations.30:25.12Danica RoemBut that’s the sort of thing where it’s just like, okay, she’s held elected office before, so she’s a little bit more a known quantity. And I think that’s really important in a district like that. And also a side note, you know between her race and, say, Stacey Carroll next door you know in Stafford County, who’s running the flip a seat, who’s another Emerge alum,30:45.68Danica RoemThese are also areas to watch for some of the long distance federal commuters because, you know, the VRE stops in Spotsylvania. It stops in Stafford. And so I’m very interested to see, you know, kind of how that plays out down the 95 corridor a bit.31:02.49Danica RoemSo otherwise for the local offices, we don’t have as many up in Northern Virginia this year because we had a lot of those elections this past year.31:11.72Danica RoemThat said, we do have a special election for Gainesville District Supervisor this year, longtime Republican-held seat, an incumbent who died, who knew very well over a long, you know almost 19 years.31:23.64Danica RoemSo we’ve got a couple candidates running there. in the city of Manassas, we’ve got both of our constitutional offices up, Commissioner of Revenue and Treasurer, City of Manassas Park, we’ve got a special election for city council, plus we’ve got Treasurer and Commissioner of Revenue.31:37.36Danica RoemAnd if you want your local government to function well on a day-to-day basis without having the sort of infighting, dysfunction, all the sorts of problems that you see where you have people who you know just get it wrong, for lack of better words.31:58.44Danica RoemYou’ve got to have good candidates who are well-intended, who are running for these local seats. And a great example, Lucy Pollan, our Emerged alum who’s running for Commissioner Revenue in Manassas Park,32:10.86Danica RoemShe’s coming directly out of the office of the commissioner of revenue for the city of Manassas. I think the fact that she has such significant experience directly in the line of work that she’s running for right now is probably part of the reason that she’s unopposed this year, because just she’s going to do a good job. And like, I think, I think she’s, you know,32:31.71Danica Roemreally got a good shot there, which is which is great. you know I’m very excited to see to see how she goes. But you know from there, i think if you look in the House of Delegates, we have a lot of former local elected officials who are now serving in the House. you know just Among some emerged folks, Elizabeth Bennett Parker, for example, she was on on the Alexandria City Council. I think she was actually vice mayor before she ran for the House. Karen Keyes-Gamara, former school board member for Fairfax County.33:01.52Danica RoemShe was actually up in a special election in Fairfax in 2017. And i actually took a part of a day to go knock doors. in her district, which overlapped with Carrie Delaney’s House Delegates District that she was running for, so we can help them out. So my team and I, we actually took a field trip to Fairfax that day to help them with the special, and they won, which was great.33:20.92Danica RoemAnd Laura Jane Cohen, she’s another Emerged alum who’s a former elected Fairfax County School Board member. are And then even someone like, you know, Brianna Sewell, she wasn’t elected to local government, but she had significant local government experience before she came in.33:36.71Danica RoemTusa Reesers, another former school board member who’s an Emerge alum in the House. So, you know, i think it’s really, really significant that we’ve got, you know, people looking at having strong people elected locally who can make a difference later. And by the way, for those folks, every vote counts.33:57.09Danica RoemShelly Simons, Emerge alum, is a prime example for why. She had been a school board member, ran for House of Delegates, 2015 lost. When she ran in 2017, it was a tied race that was decided by a what I like to call fishbowl drawing in Newport News. And that was the reminder that every single vote counts. So she won in 2019. She’s doing great now. i expect her to be reelected this fall.34:22.07Danica RoemBut yeah, you know so we’ve got a lot of people who’ve been elected at local levels so who then run for the House. And if you look at the members of Congress from Virginia right now, almost all of them, all of them except for Eugene Vindman, came from either state or local government.34:37.82Danica RoemIf you include Don Beyer in his role as presiding over the Senate in particular, you know for he had been Lieutenant Governor. When you look at James Walkinshaw in Northern Virginia, he had come from the Fairfax Board.34:50.16Danica RoemWhen you look at Suha Subramanian, he was my seatmate in the General Assembly, both the House and the Senate. And then All the Republicans had local elected experience. Jim McClellan was a state senator and a former member of the House Delegates.35:03.87Danica RoemBobby Scott served in the General Assembly way back when, too. So just, you know, if you want to know who the elected officials at the statewide and federal level of tomorrow are, let’s start looking at who’s in office today, because, you know, that’s where the farm team comes from.35:19.16Sam ShiraziWell, that that makes sense. And I imagine there might be some new members on the team as as the elections happen this year. I usually like to end with something about a person’s district. And so I think most people, they think of your district, maybe Manassas Battlefield comes to mind. What is something like in your district that you really enjoy or something that people don’t often think about in your district?35:40.78Danica RoemOh, all right. So I’ll give you. So the one that you just mentioned from Manassas National Battlefield Park, when people come to the battlefield, most people go to Henry Hill, which is basically where the visitor center is.35:54.27Danica RoemIt’s the site, the the main site for where the first battle of Manassas was fought. in 1861. It was the first pitched battle of the Civil War. A lot of people overlook the part of the battlefield that is dedicated for the second battle that happened in 1862. Horrendously bloody affair, terrible affair.36:16.67Danica RoemWhat a lot of people don’t know about that one also, by the way, is A sharpshooter almost most picked off Robert E. Lee there. He was coming up the Warnton Turnpike, and they grazed his cheek, almost like almost took him out. And the nephew of Stonewall Jackson was actually killed at the Second Battle of Manassas.36:36.86Danica RoemI would urge any anyone, if you come to see the Battle of Manassas or you come to the Massas battlefield, please, by all means, come enjoy Henry Hill. Come enjoy the Visitor Center. you know Walk around, go see the Union Monument, everything. you know it’s it’s It’s really breathtaking to be out there.36:51.82Danica RoemMake time to go to Deep Cut, where the fighting of the second battle was so intense that soldiers on both sides started picking up stones and throwing them at each other because they were out of the ammunition. I mean, like go see the Brooklyn monuments that the state of New York You know, delivered here a little after the turn of the 20th century to commemorate their war dead where I always pronounce their name wrong, but I’ll just say it how I always say it with the Zouaves.37:21.99Danica RoemThey were just massacred, but they held the line and actually allowed Pope to retreat in the first place and get out of there before he got captured. So, you know, it was very, very crucial stand that they actually had there and even in the losing effort.37:35.37Danica RoemAnd because of what happened at the Second Battle of Manassas, that’s actually what set up Antietam. And Antietam is what directly led to the Emancipation Proclamation. And so Second Battle of Manassas, not only important historically, but today that is the area that is most threatened by data center development. Now, the data data centers want to be coming on federal property itself, but directly next door to it is where you know the Prince William Digital Gateway would set up if it were actually successful in court. It lost in the you know it lost most recently over the public notice requirement that’s now being appealed.38:15.39Danica RoemBut Go to Bronner Farm. Go check out that second battlefield of Manassas and really take in an appreciation for the fact that an area like that still exists in Northern Virginia. And by the way, if you like just wildlife and trees and such, great place to see that too. Go hike the trail there.38:35.58Danica RoemAnd for a non-battlefield experience with that, go out to Silver Lake. Go out to Silver Lake. It’s called the Gem of Prince William County. It’s on Haymarket. It’s a very tranquil, passive-wrecked place to go to as well. So if you like outdoors, like stuff like that, check it out.38:51.92Danica RoemOtherwise, if you like really big and loud, we’ve got Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow in my district. My very first concert ever was at AusFest 99 over there when it was still in the Nissan Pavilion. So, you know, we’ve got, people for people who like being around a whole bunch of other people in a very loud environment. And then we’ve got the pristine beauty of the battlefield and Bull Run mountain and, uh, Silver Lake. So, you know, my district really has a lot to offer.39:17.69Danica RoemAnd even here in the city Manassas park, we actually have three parks in Manassas park for a little two point something miles long, uh, city. And, I love hiking over at Blooms Park. It’s great.39:28.94Danica RoemIt’s actually one of the few areas that we’re reforesting in Northern Virginia, which is amazing. It former golf course, now being allowed to just regrow. And we got Signal Hill Park. They got like ball fields, you know, pool and a bunch stuff over there. And then Costello Park actually came up playing ball there when I was a kid.39:47.13Danica RoemThat’s still around. That’s where the Mass Park Community Center is. And then City Manassas, head on into Old Town. We’ve got First Friday in Old Town. So the first Friday of most months, it’s a big street party festival, lots of bands and food and all this other stuff. So it’s always good time. And then last Friday in Manassas Park, they’ve got one too with our downtown that’s under construction. so Yeah, just want to say Sam, thank you so much for having me today. Also, we’ve got a couple other Emerge alums in those top eight seats. Just want to quickly mention as well, Leslie Mehta, Lindsay Doherty, who are running for these Chesterfield seats.40:20.26Danica RoemI think I mentioned our other six. If I’ve missed anyone, I’m so sorry to them in advance. But I just want to highlight that, you know, we’ve got some incredible candidates who are on the ballot this fall.40:30.56Danica RoemWe’ve got a lot more emerging candidates too. And just because someone loses an election one year doesn’t mean they won’t put their name on ballot again for a future year. And we’re seeing that happen right now. So thank you so much. Thanks for talking about the district. Thanks for plugging my book. It’s called burn the page. It’s an audio book, ebook and hardcover.40:47.88Danica RoemAnd if you want any more information about our program and merge, please visit va.emergeamerica.org. We’ve also got a big event that’s coming up in Richmond on November 8th over at Strange Ways Brewery off of Dabney Road. So come on out. Love to see you.41:03.87Sam ShiraziWell, thanks so much for taking the time to come on. And it’s been really interesting to hear all about that. And I’m sure once the results come in, i wouldn’t be surprised if some of your alumni end up winning this year. So anyways, thank you so much. And this has been Federal Fallout. And I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over the governor’s debate and highlight some of the key moments and talk about what it might mean for the campaign.00:29.44Sam ShiraziNow to begin, let’s go over the debate. So it was an hour long debate. it was in Norfolk and the two candidates for governor were there. And obviously this was high stakes because of the news that happened over the last week with the text from Jay Jones and,00:46.30Sam ShiraziIt was going to be a big part of the debate. It dominated the first part of the debate. And then obviously there was discussions about other issues. But I think a lot of the media was focusing on that issue and seeing how Spanberger would respond.00:59.40Sam ShiraziSo anyway, that’s kind of the background of the debate. I think this is the only debate we’re going to be getting. So that raised the stakes even more. And if you think about where the race is, Spanberger is up right now. So she wants to play it safe, protect her lead.01:11.84Sam ShiraziShe doesn’t want to do anything to rock the boat too much. If you think about where Winston Merle Sears is, she’s down in the polls. Conventional wisdom is if you have a debate and you’re down, you’re going to have to get some sort of game changer, have to be a little bit more aggressive.01:24.94Sam ShiraziI think she certainly was more aggressive than Spanberger and there was a lot of interruptions and That was part of the dynamic of the debate and one of the things people noted at the end. But the thing i wanted to kind of lead with before i play a clip of the debate, I wanted to play a clip from the 2021 debate in Virginia for governor.01:44.20Sam ShiraziBecause I think we’ve gotten to the era where, in my mind, it it’s hard for a debate to really help you. Maybe if you have a really good moment, it can it can help you. But for the most part, the reality is these debates are each side looking for something to knock the other off of with. And so to give you an example...02:04.54Sam ShiraziObviously, 2024, we had the first presidential debate. It was very bad for President Biden. I think that’s like an example of what happens in these types of debates where they really make an impact in an election is when they go badly. So if you really screw up in a debate, it can really hurt you. That obviously hurt President Biden in 2024.02:21.47Sam ShiraziAnd it also hurt Terry McAuliffe in 2021 when he was running for governor. So first, I want to play the 2021 clip because honestly, understand was somewhat out of context the way the Republicans used it, but the reality is this was not a great thing to say if you’re running for governor.02:40.01Sam ShiraziAnd I think it probably wasn’t the only reason Terry McAuliffe lost, but I think it’s kind of a lesson of what not to do in a debate and frankly, kind of what either any candidate wants to avoid when they’re debating because ultimately,02:53.68Sam Shirazithat is the main thing a debate can do to you. It can hurt you. It can’t really hurt help you. So I will play that clip.03:36.21Sam ShiraziSo that was a clip of terra McAuliffe in 2021. It was seized on by the Republicans and Glenn Youngkin really fed into their story that the Virginia Democrats were not allowing parents to stay in their child’s education. So really helped Glenn Youngkin that year.03:52.39Sam ShiraziAgain, i don’t think that alone was the reason Glenn Youngkin won, but it certainly didn’t help the Democrats. And I think it’s just one of those things to keep in mind. I mean, that’s frankly what I’m looking for in a lot of these debates. Like, is there any sort of major screw up by either candidate?04:06.46Sam ShiraziI will say for Spanberger, she had the easier task in the debate. All she had to do was go into the debate, not totally mess up like like that, and then she’ll be fine because she just wants to live to see another day.04:18.29Sam ShiraziShe’s ahead. She obviously has to deal with the Jay Jones story, and we’ll we’ll talk a little bit about how she dealt with that. But – Essentially, what she needed to do was survive the debate. And I think if that was her goal, she did that. I don’t think the day after the debate, anyone was like, oh, my God, can you believe what Spanberger did?04:34.69Sam ShiraziIt really wasn’t a huge deal in terms of the election. i think it’s not really a game changer. That’s kind of how I saw things on the Spanberger side. With Winsor Meryl Sears, you know I think she had to be more aggressive, and you certainly saw that from her. you know She landed a few punches on Spanberger, but ultimately I don’t think it was the kind of game changer she needed.04:56.01Sam ShiraziAnd there was one moment in the debate where I think you know kind of – don’t want to it was exactly the same as the McAuliffe gaffe, but I think – Certainly, Democrats wanted to seize on this thing that Winston Earl Sears said. So she essentially said that it’s not discrimination when someone is not for same-sex marriage or is not for protections for gay people in the workplace. That’s not discrimination. so So you’ll hear the clip in a little bit while I’ll play it. But essentially, the Democrats wanted to use that, I think,05:27.20Sam Shiraziit was kind of a short soundbite moment that I think was easy for the Democrats to take and use. So in that sense, I think it wasn’t a great moment for Winston-Will Sears. At the same time, you know, I don’t know if it’s the kind of game changer moment because frankly, Winston-Will Sears has been pretty clear about some of her socially conservative views. She just stated them in the debate, but I don’t think it was some huge revelation that is going to totally change the the election.05:55.21Sam ShiraziAnd I also think the fact that, Winston Merle Sears, uh, was more aggressive, tried to get some more focus on the Jay Jones text. That happened. A lot of the headlines the next day were about the text. So I think in that sense, she did well. She was able to kind of focus on that issue, even though she also had this thing about discrimination that I think was also so creating some negative headlines for her. So long story short, i will play you a clip, a compilation of clips from the debate, just so you get a sense of what happened.06:23.41Sam ShiraziAnd then I’ll give you kind of my final thoughts. But I don’t think this was like the The race has suddenly changed because of this debate. I think it was pretty status quo after the the debate didn’t really move the boat too much. So let me play you a few clips of what the debate debate sounded like if in case you didn’t catch it07:34.63Sam ShiraziAll right. So those were a few clips from the Virginia governor’s debate. i thought Spanberger’s answer on the Jay Jones side of things was kind of interesting because both Winsor Meryl Sears and the moderators wanted her to take more of a specific stance on him.07:51.42Sam ShiraziSo Winsor Meryl Sears wanted her to basically denounce him, say he should drop out. The moderators wanted Abigail Spanberger to say that she endorses him. She basically took the middle ground saying, it’s not my race. I’m focused on my race. he you know The voters can make a decision about the attorney general race, which you know obviously doesn’t help Jay Jones a whole lot, but in theory doesn’t hurt Spanberger because she can’t be tied as closely to him.08:16.99Sam ShiraziSo long story short, and i think there was never going to be a great answer about the Jay Jones story from the Spanberger camp. So I think from her side, she’s just happy that She survived. Again, no major gaffe, nothing that you know was dominating the news the next day. you know At the end, you heard the comments that Winston Ross-Sears made about discrimination.08:37.36Sam Shirazii think the Democrats are seizing upon that to the extent that there was a gaffe. I think that was probably the closest we got to a gaffe. But again, I don’t think it was this huge game changer in terms of the election.08:48.61Sam ShiraziAnd so pretty much we’re back where we started with this debate. Didn’t change the dynamics in the race. I think it was interesting. Got to see the different styles.08:59.44Sam ShiraziAnd one thing I should kind of mention before I move on, because...09:04.30Sam ShiraziYou know, I am and relatively younger. I’m not super old. I’m not super young. I’m kind of at that point where I’ve seen politics for a while. And I remember the pre-Trump era and I remember the Trump era, obviously.09:17.14Sam ShiraziI think a lot of older Virginia commentators, people have watched debates for like 30, 40 years. were telling me like how much different this debate was. I mean, this is not necessarily a normal type debate for Virginia. The reason for that, you know, in the old days, there was kind of a different way of doing politics in Virginia, much more, you know, frankly, it was gentlemanly because it was mainly men back then, kind of more of a Southern gentil gentility, gentility.09:44.61Sam Shirazithat dominated these debates and you would kind of be courteous to your opponent and all the sorts of things that you know you would imagine in kind of the old school way of doing politics.09:55.47Sam ShiraziAnd I think Spanberger certainly was trying to keep that tradition alive. You could very much see that that’s what she was trying to do. And you saw kind of that clip where she said, you know you’re not my enemy.10:06.32Sam ShiraziShe’s trying to you know partly because I think that’s her personality, but I think partly that was a strategy. She wanted to seem like, and know I’m calm, cool, collected. I’m contrast to Winsome Rale Sears, who she probably rightly suspected was going to be more aggressive.10:20.20Sam ShiraziAnd so you see Spanberger trying to do the kind of old school way of doing politics. Winstermore Sears, clearly, i mean, I think she had to do something because she’s behind in the polls, but was much more aggressive.10:32.06Sam ShiraziAnd you could call it kind of a Trumpier style where you’re interrupting your opponent, you’re trying to goad your opponent. And I think that while we’re kind of we’re kind of all used to that, because that’s been the politics for roughly the last 10 years, I do think it’s been a shift from previous Virginia elections.10:48.04Sam ShiraziAnd I just wanted to note that. And I do think that it’s interesting to see that Winston-Marcel Sears, you know, I I think the Republicans were glad that she was a little bit more aggressive, but I’m curious to see the voter in the middle. Are they going to necessarily like that sort of approach in a debate?11:03.10Sam ShiraziAnd it reminded me a little bit of the first debate in 2020. So if people remember that, that was between present then President Trump and Vice President Biden, who later won the election and became President Biden.11:16.23Sam ShiraziSo In that debate, similar dynamic, Trump was behind in the polls. He had to be more aggressive. And so he interrupted Biden a lot. And you know Biden, I think at that time, was a better debater and was able to kind of effectively deal with it. And I think most people thought that Biden won that first debate in 2020 because he was able to kind of look more statesmanlike than Trump.11:38.01Sam Shiraziyou know You could argue there’s kind of a similar dynamic here where Earl Sears was interrupting and Spanberger looked a little bit more polished and put together. But at the end of the day, I mean, I think we’ve...11:48.47Sam ShiraziPolitics has changed and, you know Republicans want to see the aggressive posture. Probably the Democrats are fine with more of a, you know, normal style debating that Spanberger was able to do. So I want to keep in mind that the reality is most people don’t watch these debates. You know, obviously the hyperpolitical people are really tuned in.12:09.10Sam ShiraziMaybe people will see one or two clips. So from the Spanberger side, they’ll probably see the clip about Jay Jones. From the Earl Sear side, they might see the clip about discrimination. mean, that’s essentially what most people get out of these debates. And so as much as the debates matter, I think they’ve essentially become these clips that you share on social media. And you know as frustrating as that is, i mean, you aren’t going to get these you know real substantive policy debates out.12:34.75Sam ShiraziYou know, the first question in the debate was actually about the car tax, which is, you know, kind of an important policy question for certain people. I mean, Earl Sears quickly tried to just talk about the Jay Jones stuff. I mean, she didn’t really want to talk about the car tax, even though, you know, that’s that’s something she had talked about during her campaign.12:52.95Sam ShiraziAnd I was struck how both campaigns were not necessarily able to talk about the main themes about at least that they previously talked about in this election. So for Spanberger, you know, one of her main themes is the throw cuts and the economic impact to Virginia.13:07.39Sam ShiraziObviously, with the shutdown going on, in theory, she would want to talk about that. There was a little bit of talk about that, but that wasn’t like the dominant thing about the debate. She wasn’t really able to get that much in about those things. And, you know, frankly, she was trying to play it safe. She didn’t want to you know, be too aggressive and and force the issue, but she wasn’t able to really talk about that issue, which is really her best issue.13:26.61Sam ShiraziAnd then for Earl Sears, I mean, I’ve talked about this before. I mean, she spent two months on the trans issue, spent a lot of money trying to get that message out there. And there was a question towards the end of the debate about it, but it was kind of an afterthought. And I think Spanberger, you know,13:40.26Sam Shirazigot through it and it wasn’t a huge deal. And so you saw Sears spent two months of the campaign on an issue and it just really wasn’t that big of a deal in debate. Now, obviously, she now she has a Jay Jones text and so she wanted to talk about those. So she had something else. But long story short, I mean, this isn’t some you know super meaningful policy debate and people got a lot of nuance and and more information about the candidates. It really was just...14:04.06Sam Shiraziyou know, politics at the end of the day and trying to survive for Spanberger, trying to, you know, score some points for Earl Sears. I would say both of them probably did fine for what their end goals were Neither of them got the game change.14:18.73Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, Earl Sears kind of needed the game changer. And so she didn’t get that. So in that sense, I think if you’re, you know, in the grand scheme of things, looking at this debate, probably the advantages with Spanberger, because if you’re up, you just want to survive the debate, you want to move on.14:31.32Sam ShiraziSpanberger was able to do that, and so she kind of met the objectives she had set out for this debate. All right, now let’s move on to a different topic, which is the ongoing shutdown and some of the potential rifts that could be coming out of D.C. So obviously the last week has been pretty rough for the Virginia Democrats since the Jay Jones tech story has come out, and they’ve really been on the defense this past week.14:54.53Sam ShiraziEven though the shutdown has been going on, that has been in the background, I’m the Virginia elections for the past week have been kind of dominated by that issue. However, on Friday afternoon, the head of OMB, Russ Vought, he tweeted out or posted on X that quote, the rifts have begun and didn’t really elaborate beyond that. But obviously people have been waiting to see what was going to happen with the potential layoffs that during the shutdown. So at the beginning shutdown,15:25.30Sam ShiraziThe Trump administration said there could be layoffs. think there had been those have been delayed for a while because there was an attempt to maybe reach a compromise with the Democrats to get the government back open.15:35.70Sam ShiraziMy sense is the democrat Democrats are not going to go along with a compromise that promises a vote without any sort of real guarantee that some of their demands are met.15:46.21Sam ShiraziAnd so long story short, I think the Republicans came to the conclusion, or at least the Trump administration came to conclusion, that the shutdown is not going to end anytime soon. Let’s just go ahead and do the layoffs. And, you know, we said we’d do them. We gave them a chance to negotiate.15:58.54Sam ShiraziThey didn’t negotiate. Now we’re going to do the layoffs. Obviously, as of the recording of this podcast, we have not heard specific details. We don’t know how many jobs are involved. We don’t know how many of those jobs are in Virginia. But it’s hard for me to imagine if this actually...16:12.10Sam Shirazihappens, it won’t have an impact on the election because obviously decent amount of those jobs are probably going to be based in either DC or Northern Virginia. People who live in Virginia are probably going to be impacted.16:23.72Sam ShiraziIt brings this whole story back to the forefront. Obviously, at the beginning of the year we had the Doge thing and that was a big impact at the beginning of the year to both Virginia and the Virginia elections.16:35.16Sam ShiraziIt had died off, died down for a little bit. And this is now potentially Doge 2.0, where it really comes back into the open. And the time when right before people are about to start voting, and actually there’s early voting going on right now, the federal cuts and specifically the cuts to federal jobs is now back up.16:52.80Sam Shiraziat the forefront of everyone’s mind because there might be these layoffs that are happening. And, you know, it’s hard to tell how much of an impact it’s going to have on the election. It’s possible that, you know, the people who are upset at this, we’re going to vote for the Democrats anyway. it doesn’t really move the needle too much. But I do think In the reality of people’s lives, specifically in Northern Virginia, the shutdown and the potential losses of more federal jobs are a big deal.17:19.84Sam ShiraziThey’re probably going to feel an impact to the local economy, even if the impact isn’t like immediate where people, the the local economy is immediately feeling the hit. If you’re a local business owner,17:31.12Sam ShiraziYou know, you’re thinking in the back of your mind, federal employees aren’t getting paid. There could be layoffs, like people are gonna have less money to come into my store. And so that’s still something you’re thinking about, even though maybe the impacts haven’t been felt yet.17:43.75Sam ShiraziAnd so I do think this is going to be important story as the campaign continues. And not just the federal layoffs, I mean, the shutdown itself. And and there was kind of a interesting moment that happened. So the Speaker of the House, Speaker Johnson, went on C-SPAN. So C-SPAN does this thing where politicians come on and then just members of the public are able to call in. Usually it’s not high high government officials that go on this. It’s usually kind of back bench members of Congress, but Speaker Johnson...18:11.54Sam Shiraziagreed to do this. And you know to his credit, not too many speakers have agreed to do it. So you know that’s one thing that was interesting to watch. But he did get a call from a person in Virginia who identified herself as a Republican.18:23.93Sam ShiraziAnd she said to Speaker Johnson, she was very disappointed that he had not brought the House back and that he had not brought a vote forward on pay for the military because the military might miss a paycheck. And she was talking about her own specific family. It’s a military family.18:39.32Sam ShiraziSome of her kids have medical issues and this is going to potentially really hurt her family. And so I thought that was interesting. One, because it shows you that not everyone who’s impacted by the shutdown is a Democrat. I think there is this mentality among some Republicans that and who cares about the shutdown? Who cares about federal firings?18:56.97Sam ShiraziIt’s all Democrats. you know they’re They’re going to vote for the Democrats anyway. It’s not really going to hurt us. I think specifically on the military side, both in Northern Virginia and in Hampton Roads, a lot of swing voters, a lot of, frankly, Republican voters who, you know, their their military...19:12.45Sam ShiraziThey might you know lean to the right, but they all see obviously get their paycheck from the federal government. And so anytime that is getting interrupted, they are going to pay attention. So in that sense, this is kind of an important story for them, not just kind of the traditional federal employee you think of in northern Virginia.19:29.85Sam ShiraziSo I don’t want to lose sight of the shutdown because we are probably going to be at this point, it’s looking closer and closer to like at least a two week shutdown. And so I don’t know how it’s going to end. And it’s,19:43.56Sam Shirazipossible it doesn’t end and it’s possible that it drags on and on. And frankly, the fact that the Trump administration is announcing rifts is telling me that this is probably going go on longer because if they thought that there was going to be an end soon, I think they would try to negotiate something with the Democrats. This is telling me the negotiations aren’t working. We’re just going to go through with these rifts and then see what happens.20:03.42Sam ShiraziSo, I mean, i i keep telling people there’s a non-zero chance that on election day, there could be a shutdown still going on. I think every day, obviously, we get closer and closer to that. And basically, since the shutdown started on October 1st, there has been really no progress in terms of negotiations.20:21.95Sam ShiraziAnd just to kind of set up what the fundamental problem is. So, I will say that typically in the Senate, things are still a little bit more like the old school backroom deal type days. So I think from the Republican standpoint, the Republicans are telling the Democrats, just vote for this continuing resolution we have on the table.20:40.32Sam ShiraziAnd then sometime in the future, we promise we’re going to give you a vote on the Obamacare subsidies that you care about. And so we need to open the government first, and then we promise we’ll give you a vote on the Obamacare subsidies. I think the problem with that from a Democratic standpoint is that the Democrats, even if they believe the Senate Republicans, you know, if Chuck Schumer believes John Thune, you know, John Thune, you seem like a man of your word. I believe you. you’re going to give us a vote on this.21:05.62Sam ShiraziThey understand how the government works. You need the House of Representatives to vote and pass something in order for a bill to become law. And so I think a lot of Senate Democrats are saying, OK, well, that’s great. Senate Republicans, you’re willing to negotiate with us.21:19.54Sam ShiraziYou need to get Mike Johnson and the House Republicans on board with this so that whatever happens, whatever resolution we come up with, both chambers agree this gets passed. And also, oh by the way, President Trump agrees to it. So whatever gets passed,21:33.51Sam Shiraziwe will have that bill signed into law. And I think that’s how the Democrats view the end game. The Democrats view the end game is everyone sits down, the Republicans get the government reopened and they might get some funding for things they want.22:04.98Sam ShiraziThe Republican position is We’re not gonna negotiate while the government shut down. You have to reopen the government, Democrats, and then we will sit down and negotiate whatever we’re gonna negotiate with you.22:14.64Sam ShiraziAnd I think the problem with that is obviously once the government is reopened, the Republicans probably aren’t gonna give the Democrats what they want. And at least that’s the Democratic perception. And so the Democrats say we need to get everything in one bill to get it done.22:29.94Sam ShiraziAnd then, you know, we will be able to move forward. And, you know, I think they’re really at an impasse. And the Republican strategy, my sense was from the beginning, that we’re just going to wait out the Democrats. Democrats are going to cave. Eventually, they’re going you know, give up and we’ll win the shutdown fight. There’s really no indication that’s going to happen, at least at this point.22:50.26Sam ShiraziAnd so I think maybe that’s why the rifts are going forward. And maybe the members of the Trump administration, their attitude is, look, If the Democrats don’t want to negotiate with us, whatever, we’ll just keep going. we’ll do this we’ll The shutdown will keep going. We’ll do the layoffs and you know we’ll be able to, we’ll be fine.23:08.37Sam ShiraziI think from a national Republican perspective, you know, you could argue if that makes sense or not. But certainly from a Virginia Republican standpoint, that really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, especially when the elections are three and a half weeks away. So this is really coming at the worst possible time for the Virginia Republicans. You know, they obviously had this good story for them from their perspective on the Jay Jones stuff. So, OK, they’re having a little bit of momentum.23:34.40Sam ShiraziFocus has shifted to something they want to talk about. And all of a sudden, the national Republicans are kind of throwing this wild card of the rifts that could happen in terms of the shutdown. And, you know, the thing I find interesting is that Frankly, the polling’s a little bit mixed.23:49.00Sam ShiraziFor the most part, more people are blaming the Republicans than the Democrats by a slight percentage. But my gut is telling me, you know, most people, it’s like they’re blaming everyone. Congress’s fault, Democrats, Republicans, President Trump, everyone’s to blame.24:02.58Sam ShiraziSo it’s not necessarily like the Republicans are getting killed right now on the shutdown. I think what could really hurt them and could really hurt the Virginia Republicans If the story shifts from the shutdown to the federal firings, again, i don’t know how big they are. If there are a few hundred people, just not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.24:19.34Sam ShiraziIf we’re talking about thousands of people across multiple agencies, different parts of the country, different parts of Virginia, I mean, that’s when it’s really going to become a major story. And that’s kind of like what it was like in the beginning of the year with Doge, when there were layoffs at multiple federal agencies, Department Education, Department of Health and Human Services.24:35.91Sam Shiraziusad I mean, it it just it it really dominated the beginning part of the year if you lived in northern Virginia. And I think there’s a possibility now that there are they going to be have these layoffs. It could again dominate things really at the worst possible time for the Virginia Republicans.24:50.74Sam ShiraziWe’ll see. I mean, that there’s a lot unknown. I’m sure we’ll get more details in the days to come. it’s all It’s also possible that the shutdown could be avoided or or not avoided, but could be ended anytime, either because there’s too much pressure, there’s pressure about the military pay, there’s pressure about the FAA.25:06.73Sam ShiraziBoth sides just want to get it over with. So you never know. You never know when these things are going to end. But I do want to update everyone. So lot going on. Again, there’s a reason I called the podcast Federal Fallout. I do think what’s going to happen in D.C. is really going to impact the Virginia elections. We’re seeing that at the end where, again, it’s impacting the Virginia election. So.25:24.57Sam ShiraziAnyways, I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. it’s I’m going to be doing more podcasts probably the closer we get to Election Day. Try to have some more people on because there’s obviously a lot going on. I want to keep people updated. And this is really it. This is the homestretch. We’re going almost be at the end. So really want to appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And I hope I’ll do my best to keep everyone updated. And this has been Federal Fallout. And I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus episode where we will go over some of the latest updates on the campaign trail, specifically about the attorney general race, and then quickly touch base about the debate that will be happening this evening, Thursday, October 9th in Virginia. So to begin with, there’s a lot of things happening in terms of the attorney general race since I last talked about that on Sunday.00:29.38Sam ShiraziSpecifically, President Trump made his biggest direct intervention into the Virginia elections when he called for the Democratic nominee, Jay Jones, to drop out of the race. Obviously, that has not happened. And from all indications, it seems that Jay Jones is going to stay in the race, that he is going to continue.00:46.71Sam ShiraziAnd for the most part, Democrats have completely backed him. So I don’t think that there’s any sort of dynamic where we’re going to see any sort of swap. I think the race is set. It’s going to be Jay Jones and Jason Meares for attorney general.00:59.90Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, I think this is going to be the race everyone’s going to be looking at on election night because while in theory things could change at the top of the ticket, frankly, I think both sides understand that there probably isn’t going to be enough movement in the governor’s race to change the outcome.01:16.43Sam ShiraziLieutenant governor, similar thing. But attorney general, I think has gotten to the point where Things could be interesting on election night, depending how everything shakes out. And I wanted to talk about some data that we got. So I’m not just kind of speculating. I’ll talk a little bit about the data and then I’ll talk about what I’m seeing in terms of the attorney general race, because there’s just been a lot of focus on it. lot of thinking about it, thinking about the ticket splitting and all this other stuff. And I think while,01:43.64Sam ShiraziIt’s certainly going to be an interesting race. I do want to not jump to any conclusions before we get nonpartisan polls. That’s the one thing we haven’t gotten. We haven’t gotten a nonpartisan poll, which I think will be really interesting.01:54.63Sam ShiraziWhat we have gotten are two sets of internal polls. And so typically with internal polls, you always want to caveat it. You always want to take it with a grain of salt. You don’t want to 100% buy the number from either side because Internal polls, some are better, some are worse. You can kind of look under the hood to get a sense of why it might be good, why it might be bad.02:29.88Sam ShiraziAll right. So first I will go over a poll released by the Jay Jones campaign that showed him up slightly in the race. So this was done after the news of the text came out. And so it showed Jay Jones at 46% and it showed j Jason Millares at 45%.02:46.90Sam ShiraziOne thing I noticed in this internal poll was that the recall 2024 was... Harris plus six. So basically it was exactly what happened in 2024.02:58.40Sam ShiraziSo that’s a little bit of an assumption that 2025 2025 is going to look like 2024 in Virginia. We’ll see if that’s true. It could be more Republican, could be more democratic. Typically the trend is that after the presidential election, the Virginia elections become more favorable to the party out of the white house. So that’s one thing to keep in mind. So long story short, this, uh,03:18.57Sam ShiraziJay Jones internal showed him up by one. i think it did acknowledge that he had lost some ground with independence. And I think also acknowledged that he, you know, the story made an impact. So they weren’t just pretending like nothing happened. They did understand that it did,03:35.32Sam Shiraziyou know, talk about, it didn’t hurt his image with voters, particularly voters in the middle. And so that’s something that he’ll have to deal with. But at the same time, it showed this, that he has a path to victory according to this poll.03:47.61Sam ShiraziAll right. Now I want to talk about the Jason Miara’s poll because he or the Republican Attorney General Association on his behalf essentially put out a Republican internal, which found somewhat similar things, although I think they found Miara’s up. So the Republican internal had Jason Miara’s at 46 percent and then it had Jay Jones at 44 percent. And and Apparently, there they had been doing a poll in September, which I don’t think was released at the time.04:16.43Sam ShiraziAccording to the September poll, Jones was at 46.5% and Miárez was at 42.5%. And so according to this poll, there’s been movement towards Miárez and away from Jones in the attorney general race.04:33.79Sam ShiraziI think one thing that was interesting is we got these two polls at the same time and I don’t think it’s a huge surprise. One side released an internal. So the other side wanted to re release their internal. You know, I would focus less on the specific numbers because, you know, you’re kind of getting granular at that point. I think big picture, both of the polls show that the race is close. So I think essentially you could say both the internals are showing roughly the same thing.04:57.68Sam ShiraziYou know, obviously the democratic internal is going to show the Democrats slightly up. The Republican internal is going to show the Republican slightly up. both of these polls have Miara’s roughly at 45 to 46%.05:11.05Sam ShiraziAnd the Jones poll had him up a little bit more. Miara’s poll had him down a little bit more. I did think it’s interesting. So even in Miara’s own internal, he’s at 46%. So he’s at 50%. And keep in mind,05:22.45Sam Shiraziand keep in mind Jason Meares is an incumbent and he’s at 46%. Now, obviously the environment is tough for Meares. Top of the ticket is tough for Meares. So I think his folks will say like 46% for him is a good number.05:35.20Sam ShiraziAnd in September they were at 42 and a half percent. So lot of movement towards Meares in this poll. And they’ve all, the Meares folks I imagine would point out that Jones has gone down, which you never really want to go down in the poll.05:47.92Sam ShiraziYou want to go up in the poll. So i think overall, you know, I wouldn’t hyperfixate on the numbers from either side because I think what both internals are trying to signal is it’s a close race and they both want to signal that they’re slightly up.06:01.85Sam ShiraziNow, I wanted to think through the dynamics for the election and which side might be able to pull it out in the Eternity Journal’s race, because I think almost everyone admits that’s going to be the closest race for the statewide offices on election night.06:17.06Sam ShiraziAnd I think you basically have two dynamics. You have the turnout dynamic, and then you have the independent dynamics and the voters in the middle dynamics. So, and and it goes back, remember my last couple podcasts ago, i was talking about turnout versus persuasion. So you have both the turnout angle in the attorney general’s race and the persuasion angle.06:34.24Sam ShiraziI’ll talk about turnout more. Sorry, I’ll talk about turnout first. So turnout, I think in this race comes down to a specific set of voters. And you’ve heard me talk about them before.06:44.76Sam ShiraziIt is black voters and specifically black black voters in Hampton Roads. Why are they so important in this race? So if you think about the voters that are most likely to stick with Jay Jones, they’re probably going to be black voters and black voters in Hampton Roads. Why? Because Jay Jones is from Hampton Roads.07:01.64Sam ShiraziHe’s black. You would think that you know generally those types of voters would want to stick with him. They know him. We’ve talked about you know his family has a long history in that area. So I think in the primary, his base was Hampton Roads.07:14.47Sam ShiraziThat’s what got him the win in the primary. So you would think he needs to do well with those voters and and not so much do well, because I think at the end of the day, he’s going to win them. The question really is,07:24.92Sam Shiraziare they going to turn out in sufficient numbers? So black voters or make up roughly 20% the voters in Virginia. In 2021, according to the exit poll, they were only 16% of the total voters. and Why? Because the turnout was lower in some parts of Virginia, like Hampton Roads.07:43.25Sam ShiraziIt was higher in more rural white areas. So you saw there was that differential in the turnout. And so This election, I think the question becomes, what is the turnout looking in Hampton Roads, in Southside, in Richmond area, in Prince William County, areas with higher black population? Because that is going to be key, not just so to Jay Jones, but also to the House of Delegates. Several House of Delegates seats are going to essentially going to be decided by black turnout.08:10.77Sam ShiraziAnd I have talked about this in the past, and I think most Virginia Democrats will acknowledge this. you know, one of the areas that they struggle, especially in these state elections that happen on the off years or the odd number years is just black turnout. And sometimes it’s just not there for whatever reason.08:27.78Sam ShiraziI think, you know, that is going to be an important dynamic. And, you know, obviously the Republicans are hoping there could be some crossover at the top of the ticket where some black voters might end up backing Winston Merrill Sears.08:40.32Sam ShiraziI do think for the attorney general spot, I think Jay Jones could be doing better with black voters potentially than Spanberger. We’ll see if that ends up happening. But ultimately, I think regardless, I think the Democrats, any of the offices are going to win black voters by a large margin. And so the question is not so much do they persuade black voters to vote for them. It’s more about turnout.09:19.66Sam ShiraziAll right. Now let’s talk about the persuasion angle. So the other dynamic that’s going to decide the attorney general race are the voters in the middle, the independents. So the Jay Jones internal poll showed, according to that poll, that independents were slightly going for Miárez, I think by one point in the Jay Jones internal poll.09:40.21Sam Shirazithat’s probably around where it’s going to be close. Because I’m guessing at the top of the ticket, Spanberger is doing pretty well with independents. Almost all the nonpartisan polls have showed, and even the partisan polls, Republican polls, have showed Spanberger doing well with independents.09:54.52Sam ShiraziSo I imagine... Independents are going to break pretty strongly for Spanberger. Question becomes, what do they do when they get to the third but spot in the ticket? And remember, independents, they may lean right. They may lean left.10:06.83Sam ShiraziI think what makes them unique is they’re not loyal to either party. That’s why they consider themselves independent. So I think they’re they’re more likely to ticket split. And I think if Jay Jones can get about an even split, that should be close enough where if with the turnout and other dynamics, he should be able to pull it off. So I think for Jay Jones, he’s going to want to get around even split of independence.10:28.50Sam ShiraziI think Miarez will need to get win independence. So he has to win them maybe by 5% or 10%. Remember in 2021, Glenn Youngkin won independence by about 10%. That gave him a 2% win. So again, you know, Miara needs to get a slight win with the independence.10:46.75Sam ShiraziSo he’s going to focus on the persuasion angle, trying to win over those independents. I think Jay Jones is going to have to focus both on keeping the independents close, keeping it about a split, and then getting black turnout. I think that’s essentially going to be the dynamic of the race.11:01.27Sam ShiraziAnd the question becomes, who does a better job? Does Miareza do a better job of persuading the independents to back him to split their tickets from the top of the ticket? Or does Jones do a better job of keeping the independents close and then getting out the black turnout in his base of Hampton Roads?11:16.20Sam ShiraziAnd I think the other thing to keep in mind, both these polls were taken very recently after the news came out. And I think that can go both ways. One way is this is like the top thing on people’s minds because they they just saw the story and it and they’re processing it. And so it’s very high in their mind when they’re telling you how they’re going to vote in the poll.11:33.54Sam ShiraziSo what could happen is by Election Day, they kind of forget about the story or it it becomes less important for whatever reason because the shutdown is going on a long time and the shutdown becomes a dominant story or whatever whatever ends up happening by Election Day, where maybe this story is just less important by Election Day. And so voters don’t make the decision based on just this justice one story.11:53.95Sam ShiraziOr it could go the other way where voters, this was their first impression of the story. It gets reinforced, particularly if the Republicans keep talking about it. There’s more ads about it. It gets reinforced. And so maybe by Election Day, their feeling is stronger and that actually they’ll end up deciding more based on this story rather than less.12:12.00Sam ShiraziAgain, we don’t know that. We just have to see how it plays out. What I’m really looking for is a nonpartisan poll because I do think These partisan pollsters on both sides, they are obviously you know trying to figure out what’s going on and give a certain estimate of the the election, but they also tend to show that their side is up. And so I want to see what a nonpartisan pollster who doesn’t have any skin in the game is going to find in the attorney general’s race.12:39.11Sam ShiraziAnd then the last thing I want to flag before we move on to the debate is just the fact that the issue with polls down ballot is there can often be a lag between the top of the ticket and down ballot. And I’ll give you a good example from 2024. 2024,12:54.48Sam Shirazithe The polls for Senate were so often certain races. And I think the biggest shock on election night was in Pennsylvania, Democratic Senator Bob Casey lost his reelection, even though he had a long history in Pennsylvania. His family had a long history in Pennsylvania. Why did he lose? Essentially, it was because Trump won at the top of the ticket.13:11.83Sam ShiraziWhat the polls were showing for president... they were basically showing a very close race in Pennsylvania for president. I think everyone kind of understood Pennsylvania at the presidential level was going to be close. However, I think at least on the Democratic side, maybe some Republicans were more optimistic, but Democrats certainly thought that the,13:28.81Sam ShiraziPennsylvania seat was going to be okay because they thought, okay, well, yeah, I mean, maybe Trump might even win Pennsylvania, but Bob Casey, you know, he’s been there a long time. He’s got a strong brand. He’s going to win the Senate race.13:39.97Sam ShiraziBut that didn’t end up happening. I mean, there was a little bit of ticket splitting, but essentially people just went straight ticket. And the polling wouldn’t show you that. The polling showed, I think, Casey roughly up by about 2% at the end, and then he lost, obviously.13:52.48Sam ShiraziAnd the reason for that is... people were just not giving you, they just didn’t know that much about the race or they weren’t answering the polls. So so the the percentage of voters responding to the Senate poll was less than the presidential poll. So long story short, there were a certain number of people who might’ve said, oh yeah, I’m undecided in the Senate poll.14:11.17Sam ShiraziBut then when they showed up, they voted for Trump. They just voted straight ticket. They didn’t think too much about it. And that’s why you got that result in the Pennsylvania Senate race. And so I think there could be a similar dynamic. Remember, neither candidate is close to 50 percent, even in his own internal. Jason Meares at 46 percent. So I think you could see this dynamic where Meares is maybe... keeping it close or even up a little bit in the polling.14:34.16Sam ShiraziBut at the end of the day, the like late deciders, though the the people who vote at the end who tend to be the least engaged voters, they’re not really thinking too much about these elections. they’re not looking at the individual candidates. They’re just kind of wake up on election day, realize there’s an election, go to the polling booth.14:48.29Sam ShiraziAnd then they just vote straight ticket. And that would help Jay Jones because they aren’t thinking about the individual races. They’re just kind of voting straight ticket. And that would hurt the the incumbent Meares. And I think that’s kind of what happened to the Bob Casey, where remember, Trump does really well with low propensity voters, voters who aren’t necessarily living, breathing politics.15:06.66Sam ShiraziThey might not know who Bob Casey is. They might not care who Bob Casey is. So they just showed up on election day. They voted straight ticket for the Republicans. I think you could see a similar dynamic here. here in Virginia, where the late deciders, the people aren’t super engaged, if they break towards the Democrats, they just vote straight ticket. And that is going to help Jay Jones.15:25.03Sam ShiraziOn the other hand, I did, you know there were Senate races like in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, where people did split their ticket from the top of the ticket. And Trump was able to win those states, but the Democratic senators were able to hang on because there was enough ticket splitting.15:39.66Sam ShiraziSo long story short, I think it’s it’s pretty un unpredictable to know what’s going to happen right now. I think these internal polls were helpful. I think they confirm what everyone kind of feeling that it was going to be close at the year attorney general spot on the ticket.15:53.55Sam ShiraziI think what would be really useful is getting a high quality nonpartisan poll to just get a temperature check of where the attorney general race is. And so hopefully we get one of those soon. And then obviously if we get one, I will report on that.16:06.28Sam ShiraziThe last thing I wanted to mention is that there will be a debate in Virginia. I think it’s gonna be very interesting. I think it’s gonna be high stakes. Obviously on the Republican side, they are gonna wanna talk about the story with Jay Jones and the text and highlight that. And I think that’s gonna be one of Winston Merle Sears attack lines in the debate.16:23.73Sam ShiraziSo gotta see how Abigail Spanberger responds to that. From the Republican standpoint, they what they’re going to be defensive on or potentially have to answer questions on are the shutdowns.16:34.08Sam ShiraziIs the shutdown dynamic and the federal cuts? I’m sure Spanberger is going to be more on the offense talking about the shutdown, talking about the federal cuts. And so you’re going to see that dynamic, see which one kind of dominates the debate. it going to be more about the shutdown?16:48.83Sam ShiraziFederal issues is it going to be more about... The text, i think I think that’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out. And I guess the last thing I wanted to close with is the shutdown is really kind of this wild card in the background. Because as I said, the longer the shutdown goes on, the bigger deal it’s going to be in the Virginia elections.17:07.01Sam ShiraziAt this point, it looks like the shutdown is going to last at least 10 days. We could be coming up on two weeks next week if the shutdown is not resolved. And so that’s going to be increasingly going to dominate the Virginia elections if the shutdown just keeps going going. And, going and you know, I actually did the math. So the last shutdown during Trump 1.0 was the longest shutdown we’ve had, and that was 35 days.17:30.38Sam ShiraziAnd so if this shutdown that we’re currently in lasts 35 days, that will go all the way until November fifth And obviously, Election Day is November 4th. So I don’t necessarily think it’s going to happen, but I do think there’s a non-zero chance that the shutdown could still be going on on Election Day. And so I think...17:48.54Sam ShiraziGiven that possibility, I mean, there is a chance that the election at the end is going to be dominated by the shutdown. So while you don’t hear about it every single day, i think the longer the shutdown goes on, the effects are real. There’s been reports of flight delays because of FAA staffing issues.18:05.79Sam ShiraziI saw that DCA airport in Arlington was having some delays. Obviously, federal workers eventually are going to start missing paychecks. There’s going to be services that are not being rendered with the various agencies. So a lot of stuff that I think is kind of building under the surface.18:21.73Sam ShiraziAnd the longer this goes on, the more it’s likely to explode. And so while I think... The story right now with Jay Jones and his texts are dominating things and it’s an important story and I get why it got a lot of attention. i also understand that there’s other story going on with the shutdown and that could be really important in Virginia election. So all this is stuff we have to keep an eye on.18:43.53Sam ShiraziI think it’s, you know, October is seems like a pretty crazy month already and it’s, we’re barely in one week into October. so A lot of stuff going on in the Virginia elections. I’m going to try to keep everyone updated. I hope everyone finds the podcast interesting. i will keep everyone going, keep everyone updated as this wild ride of the Virginia elections comes to a close. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fall Out. And I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi Everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is a special bonus episode where we will go over an October surprise that happened in the attorney general race and just think about how that might impact the final outcome in about a month when the results start coming in for the Virginia election So to set things up, there was a story on Friday that was revealed about the Democratic nominee, Jay Jones, for attorney general.00:26.74Sam ShiraziTo be honest, when I released my podcast yesterday, i was not completely up to date on everything. I was trying to process it. I was trying to think through how it might impact the elections, uh, this year.00:37.20Sam ShiraziNow that I’ve had some time, I saw more context. I saw kind of, you know, how it might play out and thought about how it might play out. I thought I’d give you my, uh, reaction now.00:47.45Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, just to kind of describe what happened, uh, there was an article and reporting about a, uh, text conversation and phone conversation that, uh, Jay Jones had with, uh,00:59.05Sam Shirazia Republican delegate, Carrie Coyner. Now she is currently in a very competitive House race in the 75th House District. And the conversation was about the former Speaker of the House of Delegates, Todd Gilbert. And I’m not going to go over the actual conversation.01:14.60Sam ShiraziYou can look it up. It’s inappropriate and shouldn’t have happened. And Jay Jones himself would say that he has personally apologized. He has reached out to the former Speaker and apologized to him and his family and took responsibility for his actions and is trying to, you know,01:33.99Sam Shirazimake this right and as much as he can, because obviously he can’t take back what he did. So long story short, the story came out. Republicans were obviously upset at what they saw, and they were trying to you know make this an issue in the campaign. And I think it’s one of those things where we quite don’t know how it’s going to play out, because something like exactly like this has not happened before in Virginia Attorney General’s race.01:59.16Sam ShiraziAnd so we have to kind of think through, OK, what is going to happen? And I do think the Virginia Republicans now think that they have an opportunity to potentially win the attorney general’s race, even if they are realistic about the governor’s race, given the lead that Spanberger has had in some of these recent polls. I think they’re realistic about what’s going on with the governor’s race. But they think, OK, at least maybe the attorney general race can be salvaged and Jason Miyares might be able to win reelection.02:26.57Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to kind of objectively think that through looking back at the last 20 years of Virginia elections. And the reason I wanted to do that is because, you know, without polling, and we’re probably not going to get polling on this race for a couple weeks because it takes a while for this story to reach the voters, and then we have to gauge how the voters are reacting to it. So we’re not going to have any sort of sense for a couple weeks.02:49.07Sam ShiraziBut I wanted to kind of look back at the past 20 years of Virginia elections. And I’ve talked about this before. The 2005 Virginia election, I would say, was the first basically nationalized Virginia election because President Bush came to campaign.03:01.70Sam ShiraziThat didn’t really work out for the Republicans. The Democrats were trying to make this referendum in 2005 on President Bush. So I kind of start the modern Virginia elections in 2005. And so that year, Tim Kaine won the governor’s race by about six points.03:18.37Sam ShiraziBut for attorney general, Bob McDonnell was able to win the attorney joe general race in a really, really close squeaker that went to a recount, but he was barely able to pull it off. where he was able to beat Creigh Deeds.03:30.17Sam ShiraziSo that was an example where the attorney general candidate was able to overperform the top of the ticket and win that race. But every election since then, the party that’s won the governor’s race has also won the attorney general’s race.03:44.82Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think what’s interesting is every single election, the party that loses the governor’s race, they actually do better in the attorney general’s race. So they overperform in the attorney general general’s race. It’s just not by that much.03:55.79Sam ShiraziAnd typically since 2009, the overperformance has only been about 2% by the party that loses. So you do see ticket splitting between the governor and attorney general race, but it’s only 2%.04:07.32Sam ShiraziNow, I think the Republicans are going to say, well, this year is going to be different because of what happened in this story. I think there are a few examples that we can think about in terms of why might it be different and and why might it not be different. And so the the best example I think I can use is 2009. So 2009, Bob McDonnell ran for governor and he got a big landslide when he won by about 17 points.04:30.63Sam Shirazipoints He ran a smart campaign. He was more pragmatic in that race and really ran race focused on the economy. And I think that really paid off and he got a big landslide.04:41.46Sam ShiraziThe attorney general race in 2009, Ken Cucullinelli was the Republican nominee. I mean, frankly, he was not as strong a candidate as Bob McDonnell. He was more ideological. And, you know, in theory, he was he’s not a he was a weaker candidate, but he only underperformed McDonald by about 2%, and he won by about 15%.05:02.40Sam ShiraziSo, again, we saw that there wasn’t much ticket splitting. People weren’t really thinking about the individual candidates in 2009. They were just voting straight ticket.05:12.52Sam ShiraziWe can also think So just like now, there’s an incumbent attorney general trying to run for re-election. 2021, Mark Herring was trying to run for re-election against the current incumbent, Jason Miyares. Jason Miyares won that race.05:25.24Sam ShiraziAnd Youngkin at the top of the ticket won by about 2%, and Meares won by about 1%. So there was just 1% of ticket splitting in the 2021 attorney general race, even though Youngkin was able to win.05:37.59Sam ShiraziAnd even though Herring was an incumbent. And so that’s two attorney general races where they’re kind of similar to what’s going on right now, but there’s only 2% or 1% 2% ticket splitting.05:50.47Sam ShiraziAnd then you could say, well, this is different. There’s a different level of a story here that is a different caliber of a race than those races. So maybe we can look to 2013. So 2013 for the attorney general, there was some ticket splitting, but not that much. I think it was about two and a half percent.06:10.18Sam ShiraziBut for Lieutenant Governor, there was a lot of ticket splitting. And what happened was for the governor’s race, Terry McAuliffe was able to win by about 3%. But for the lieutenant governor’s race, Ralph Northam got a big win, almost an 11% win.06:25.02Sam ShiraziSo Northam basically overperformed the top of the ticket by 8%. And the reason for that, E.W. Jackson was the Republican nominee. He had said a lot of things that were pretty controversial in the past, and the Democrats were able to use that against him. And so you saw this huge overperformance by Northam.06:41.45Sam ShiraziBut even then, I mean, that was 8%. That’s been like the most overperformance that anyone’s gotten since 2005, and it was 8%.06:49.64Sam ShiraziOne thing that caught my mind was in in the summer during one of these panic pieces, the Republican House leader, Terry Kilgore, he talked about how this year in Virginia could be like 2001. And the reason he said it could be like 2001, it’s because...07:03.20Sam Shiraziit’s because In 2001, his brother Jerry Kilgore was able to win the Virginia Attorney general worked attorney General’s race, even though Mark Warner won at the top of the ticket. And the reason he was able to do that is he just got a lot of ticket splitting. It was like a crazy amount of ticket splitting. So Jerry Kilgore got 60% of the vote compared to 40% for Donald MacHean, who was later a congressman.07:27.63Sam ShiraziAnd so... That was a 25% overperformance. And I think maybe Terry Kilgore thinks this year there’s going to double digit overperformance. I think the problem there, 2001 specifically, was right after 9-11.07:40.69Sam ShiraziSo there was just a lot of different vibes in politics at that time. And there was just less partisanship. So I think you could imagine a 25% overperformance in 2001.07:51.50Sam ShiraziIt is very hard to imagine that in 2025. And realistically, i don’t think the Republicans are going to think they’re going to get 25% overperformance. But I think the Republican argument is like, look, even if Spanberger gets like a really good night and she wins by 10%, that’s still within the range where we could potentially win the attorney general’s08:08.59Sam ShiraziAnd the reason they think that is, you know, they’re trying to talk about the story a lot. And, you know, I get it. The facts aren’t great. And obviously it’s something that the Republicans can use against Jay Jones.08:19.68Sam ShiraziBut I’m also trying to think critically, one, how many voters are actually going to hear this story? And even if it reaches a good amount of voters, like how many of them are actually going to switch their votes?08:30.50Sam ShiraziBecause, as I mentioned, the Virginia elections have just become referendums on the president. And when you are doing a referendum, you’re trying to send a message. So you’re either sending a message, I like the incumbent president, or you’re sending a message, I don’t like the incumbent president.08:44.79Sam ShiraziAnd when you’re doing that, you’re just doing that straight down the ticket. You’re not thinking, you’re just saying, I don’t like the president or I like the president. I’m going with his party straight down the ticket. And so I do think the Virginia Republicans are hoping that a certain amount of voters will say, okay, I will send a message by voting for Spanberger, but maybe down the ticket for attorney general, I’ll vote for Miyares.09:06.67Sam ShiraziAnd you know we’ll just have to wait and see. There’s really no way of knowing if that’s going to happen or not. I would just say that voters, i don’t I just don’t know if that’s kind of the trend in Virginia elections.09:17.59Sam ShiraziAnd even if you look back at 2013, voters, they just... you know voters they just gave Northam a big overperformance, that was 8%. And that was, 2013 was a different environment, less partisanship. I would say during the Trump era, the partisanship has really ramped up. So, you know, 2021, we were, we almost had no ticket splitting. It was basically 1% ticket splitting in 2021, just because the Trump era, people are so partisan.09:44.36Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I get that this story will probably be more than 1%, but, you You know, is it 5%? I mean, I’m having a hard time thinking it’s going to come up to 10%.09:55.54Sam Shirazi You know, that’s just my personal opinion, but I don’t want to go with my personal opinion. I want to wait for polling. And I want to see, you know, is there any sort of movement at the attorney general spot of of the ticket?10:06.31Sam ShiraziAnd again, the the issue is it’s going to probably take before, you know, the the story gets out, it gets processed and we get new polling. It’s going to be like two weeks. So it’s just got a huge lag before we actually find out what’s going on.10:19.07Sam ShiraziAnd I just wanted to flag a couple other things before we end this podcast. you know, one of them is the fact that 10% of voters have already voted. There’s over 350,000 votes cast in early voting already.10:32.29Sam ShiraziAnd I think we’ll probably get around 3.5 million total turnout. And typically the people who voted at the beginning are the hardcore partisans. So it’s a little bit of an open question whether that many votes would have been switched anyways. But regardless, you got 10% of the people off the board. So you have 90% of the people who are left.10:48.56Sam ShiraziAnd then of those 90%, I mean, how many are they going to hear this story? Is it going to be... 50%? Is it going to be 75%? it going to be 25%? I mean, we really don’t know. And even if they hear the story, how many people are going to say, okay, I’m going to switch my vote from governor and attorney general because of the story.11:05.55Sam ShiraziYou know, it’s really unknown. And, you know, the one thing i will say, you know, I understand the Republicans want to to going talk about this story and I get it. I mean, that’s what a party would do in this situation.11:20.49Sam ShiraziBut I’m also mindful of what happened in late August with the sign in Arlington. I mean, obviously that sign was also inappropriate and it was a story for a few days. But at the end of the day, I mean, voters, they don’t necessarily want to spend an entire campaign talking about, you know, one issue or one story.11:37.63Sam ShiraziThey’re concerned about their lives. They’re concerned about, you know, their jobs, putting food on the table, their health care. I mean, those ultimately are the things that voters fundamentally care about. I mean, that’s the point of the elections is more about those issues. And so...11:53.64Sam ShiraziTo the extent the Republicans want to talk about this, I get it. And, you know, it makes sense. I just I wonder how long this can be sustained, because I think at some point voters are going to say, like, all right, we understand what happened with this story. But I’m also have questions about health care or I have questions about taxes or I have questions about these other things.12:15.40Sam ShiraziAnd if the entire election becomes about this, at least the Republicans try to make the entire election about this, I don’t know if the voters are going to go there. And last podcast yesterday, I talked about the trans issue.12:27.88Sam ShiraziYou know, the Republicans were trying to basically make this a referendum on the trans issue. And I think they’ve basically come to the conclusion that’s not going to happen because the voters don’t want to have that conversation. It’s just not the top issue on their minds. The top issue is primarily the economy.12:42.87Sam ShiraziAnd so while the story with Jay Jones, I understand it’s a serious story and it’s it’s worth covering. I also understand that voters are not going to want to spend the and next month of the campaign talking about it, especially when there’s a shutdown going on in D.C.12:58.29Sam ShiraziIt’s probably affecting some of their jobs. They’re probably worried about some of these Medicaid cuts that are coming out of D.C. potential cuts to Obamacare subsidies.13:08.56Sam ShiraziI mean, these are things they’re hearing about. And frankly, i mean, it’s probably more on voters’ minds than some of these other issues that, you know, for individual candidates, while they matter, ultimately voters decide on the party and the brand and,13:26.12Sam ShiraziYou’re either on team red or team blue. And I think partisanship is become very powerful. and And I think it’s an important reminder not to underestimate partisanship. I am trying to keep an open mind.13:37.07Sam ShiraziI don’t want to assume things one way or another. i think there’s a lot of jumping to conclusions when a story like this happens.13:44.96Sam ShiraziI do think there’s a tendency among the political class to focus on certain issues because, You know, it’s just what everyone’s talking about. But in the real world, there are other things going on that perhaps for the average voter is more important because they are not living and breathing politics. They are not following the nuances of all these stories. They’re mainly just trying to get their kids to school. They’re trying to go to work.14:08.79Sam ShiraziThey’re trying to put food on the table. i mean those are so typically things that the voters are thinking about more. And so all that’s to say is, like, I don’t want to discount the story. I don’t I understand.14:20.95Sam ShiraziIt’s important. We’re going to have a debate on Thursday. I think that’s going to be really interesting. I’m sure this will come up during the debate for the governor candidates.14:27.27Sam ShiraziThey’re going to be asked about it. But I also don’t think it’s going to be the entire debate. So we just have to kind of wait and see how this plays out. I’m trying to keep an open mind. I’m really curious to see what polling is going to say in a couple of weeks. I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to go one way or another. I’m just kind of thinking this through and trying to give an objective assessment of where the story might head.14:48.33Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, so, I mean, we’ll see. I’ll obviously update it. There’s a lot going on, both nationally and in Virginia, other than the story. But for the past couple days, it’s been dominating the news. So I did want to do this podcast about it. And yeah, I mean, I appreciate, I mean, the thing with this Virginia election, there’s a lot, lot of surprises, especially here at the end. And I haven’t even covered some of the other surprises that have have happened because there’s not even been enough time. So,15:16.08Sam ShiraziI’ll keep everyone updated as best I can. i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fall Out. And I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will first go over some of the fallout about what’s going on in D.C. with the shutdown.00:11.01Sam ShiraziAnd then I wanted to talk about a bunch of polls that we got this week in Virginia and specifically look at the question of turnout versus persuasion. All right, to begin, let’s talk about the shutdown in D.C.00:24.48Sam ShiraziAs of the release of this podcast, the shutdown is still ongoing and there hasn’t really been any indication that it’s going to end soon. And if you remember, one of the factors I had discussed previously about the shutdown was the length of any shutdown. So the longer the shutdown, the bigger the deal it’s going to be in the Virginia elections.00:45.14Sam ShiraziSo this one is probably going to be at least a week at this point. And so that’s getting into the territory where it’s starting to become a bigger deal. So I do think the shutdown is going to have a bigger impact on the Virginia elections.00:57.02Sam Shiraziah Still unclear the overall impact and still unclear which party is going to benefit or perhaps it just doesn’t really affect the Virginia elections in terms of helping one side or the other.01:09.85Sam Shirazii will say there have been some polls released ah that have been taken before the shutdown, kind of assigning ah blame and which side the voters assign blame to.01:20.86Sam ShiraziI will say that the polls generally have said that President Trump and the Republicans took more of the blame, particularly more independents blame them. ah Now, obviously, that could change. That was a snapshot in time. But that is one data point to consider as the shutdown um fight continues.01:38.77Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, it also just depends how the shutdown plays out. And so currently, there has been some talk that um the figures within the Trump administration may want to go ahead with further federal layoffs as a result of the shutdown, also known as rifts.01:55.58Sam ShiraziAnd so obviously, if that happens, there’s going to be more of an impact to what’s going on in Virginia if there are more rifts at the federal level. And so all that is just things to consider as we are analyzing the shutdown right now, because um there is a debate coming up on...02:13.07Sam ShiraziThursday between the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor in Virginia. It appears that’s going to be the only debate. And I think that’s going to be a really big moment. If the shutdown is still going on on Thursday, I think it’s going to be a major issue in the debate. And that’s going to be one of the many things that um is going to be discussed that is more of a federal fallout from what’s going on in D.C.02:35.81Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, the beginning of the year, I had called this podcast Federal Fallout. The reason I did that was because I just had this feeling, which was not a huge surprise given everything going on in DC, that the what was going on in the federal government was going to have an impact on the Virginia elections.02:52.23Sam ShiraziObviously, at the beginning of the year there was more of an impact with Doge and the federal firings. I think um once Elon Musk left the stage, that quieted a little bit, although it’s still in the background. But now with the shutdown, it’s really come at possibly the worst time for the Virginia Republicans because it’s brought all these issues back to the forefront.03:12.09Sam ShiraziWe’re talking about not just a shutdown, but we’re talking about federal potential federal layoffs, which would have an important consequence here in Virginia. So I think one possibility is what’s going on in D.C.03:24.14Sam Shiraziis generally going to help the Democrats in in the Virginia elections because there’s more focus on D.C., there’s more focus on Trump, and there’s also another focus, again, on the federal and job cuts potentially. um I do think there’s also a world where the shutdown could potentially help the Virginia Republicans.03:43.30Sam Shiraziyou know In theory, if the shutdown is just dragging on and on and people start blaming the Democrats because they they look like they’re being unreasonable and they’re unwilling to vote for the continuing resolution, it could hurt the Democrats.03:54.60Sam ShiraziAnd there’s also the potential that eventually the Democrats will just – there’s too much pressure on them. They will essentially cave because – and frankly, I think that’s the Republican strategy. I think the Republican strategy right now is to just wait out the Democrats – They feel like eventually the Democrats are just going to vote to reopen the government and then they’ll get the win in the shutdown fight because the Democrats didn’t get what they wanted.04:17.39Sam ShiraziSo all that’s to say is, you know, there is a potential that it helps the Virginia Republicans. And and again, i think it’s a it’s a total wild card in this election. um i mentioned it was basically an October surprise. We had something similar happen in 2013.04:31.29Sam Shirazithat I think did change the dynamics of that election and help the Democrats in that election. So we’re just gonna to wait and see. I mean, I wish I had a more definitive answer for people about what the impact of the shutdown is gonna be on the election.04:43.88Sam ShiraziI do think given that it’s gonna be at least a week, I do think it’s gonna have some impact on the election. The question becomes again, who does it help? Does it hurt one side? too too unpredictable right now. I think we’ll get some more polling um on this specific question that might help answer some of the question. But again, i think i think it’s a wild card. And I’m going talk about all the Virginia polls that we’ve gotten so far. And I think all of them have pretty much were right before the shutdown. So I think it’s important to keep in mind while the polls right now are looking pretty good for the Democrats, it’s not taking into account this potential shift with the shutdown. So I’m not going to05:22.57Sam Shirazispeculate too much about how the shutdown is going to impact the election until I have some more data and I can kind of give you a more definitive answer. I did want to talk about the polls and I’m going to do that in a minute, but just kind of want to reiterate that the shutdowns, this total wildcard could completely change the election um if it continues. And, you know, if it’s getting into later in October and the shutdown still going on,05:43.41Sam Shirazii mean, that’s pretty much going to be the dominant issue of the campaign. And so while there isn’t a lot more else to say about it right now, I do want to kind of keep in mind that it is going to be a major issue um in the election going forward.05:56.24Sam ShiraziAll right. Now let’s go talk about something that’s a little bit more certain, which are these polls that came out again before the shutdown, but still good to have more Virginia polls. And we got a bunch of Virginia polls this week. I will try to go through them pretty quickly to not...06:10.57Sam Shiraziget too bogged down in each poll. However, i did want to discuss each poll, and then I’ll talk a little bit about this thing about turnout versus persuasion at the end. So in terms of the polls, I think we got two good nonpartisan polls this week, which I was really happy about because We’ve been getting um kind of inconsistent polling and some of it’s been more partisan polling. And I had specifically been waiting on a poll from the Washington Post because they have a collaboration with the Schar School at George Mason.06:43.00Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, I find that these polls are very high quality polls, particularly in Virginia. I think they know how to poll Virginia. Their past polls have been pretty accurate. So in 2024, their last poll had Harris up by 6%. And that was exactly the margin that she won Virginia by. And I still remember in 2024, people were a little bit surprised by that last poll because it was closer than other polls had showed and it was closer than 2020. And in hindsight, I think that was a little bit of a warning sign to Democrats that maybe the election wasn’t this huge cakewalk that they thought it might be with Trump and that actually they might be in some trouble.07:20.51Sam ShiraziAnd you know obviously it was one poll, so you you know you’d never knew if it was 100% accurate. um But in hindsight, the Schar school ah poll for 2024 was pretty accurate. And so that’s why when their 2025 poll finally came out, and this is their first poll in a long time, I was excited because I do think of the polls, and I mentioned before,07:41.44Sam ShiraziThere are some polls I pay more attention to, and this is one of them. All right, so I’m just going to go through the numbers first. In the Washington Post-Shar school poll, it had for the guy governor race, Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger at 55%.07:55.99Sam ShiraziFor the lieutenant governor’s race, it had Winston Merle Sears at 43%. For lieutenant governor, it had Ghazal Hashmi, the Democratic nominee, at 49%, and the Republican nominee, John Reed, at 45%.08:08.92Sam ShiraziFor Attorney General, it had the Democratic nominee, Jay Jones, at 51%, and it had the Republican nominee, Jason Meares, at 45%. It also had a couple other interesting nuggets in here. So the Trump approval was 55% disapprove, 45% approve.08:26.33Sam ShiraziAnd the Yunkin approval was 50% approved and 46% disapproved. And I thought the Trump approval was especially interesting because to be perfectly honest, this is not um that bad of an approval for President Trump in Virginia. Remember, President Trump has never won Virginia. He lost it three times in a row.08:45.23Sam Shiraziah He got about um this number in 2024. So it’s not like he’s lost that much support. ah He’s down negative 10. But still, the Democrats at the top of the ticket with Spanberger are up by 12%.09:00.86Sam ShiraziSo even in a poll, so that tells the Trump number tells me the poll itself is not super friendly to the Democrats. Because if it was super friendly to the Democrats, Trump’s approval would probably be closer to 60% disapproved.09:12.98Sam ShiraziBut he’s only at 55% approved. But then Spanberger also at 55% in terms of her number. And this is one of the highest numbers I’ve seen for Spanberger in terms of just pure margin.09:24.45Sam Shiraziwhat’s that What that’s telling me is everyone pretty much who disapproves of Trump is voting for Spanberger. So again, I’ve said this since the beginning of the podcast that these off these um Virginia governor’s election often become a referendum on the president.09:38.01Sam ShiraziIf this poll is correct, it is essentially become a referendum on Trump. If you like Trump, you are voting probably for the Republicans. If you don’t like Trump, you’re voting for the Democrats. Overall, that’s good news for the Democrats because Trump has 55% disapproval according to this poll.09:53.64Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, look, 12% margin at the top of the ticket. I mean, that’s going to be tough for anyone to overcome with one month left in a campaign. i will say that, um you know, the shutdown is a wild card and we we can’t take anything for granted. But this was not a great poll for the Republicans.10:12.36Sam ShiraziAll right. And I wanted to talk about one other nonpartisan poll that we got, and that was from Emerson. So I’ll give you the numbers quickly for the Emerson poll. For governor, it had Smair Burger at 52%.10:23.58Sam ShiraziAnd then it had Winston Merrill Sears at 42%. For the Trump approval, it had disapproved, was 46% approved, 41% disapproved. prove yu k approval was forty six percent approve forty one percent disapproved And I like getting these two polls pretty close to each other because you can compare and contrast.10:41.35Sam ShiraziAnd frankly, they’re pretty similar. The Trump approval is pretty similar. And then the Spanberger margin is pretty similar. In in Emerson, she’s at 10 percent. In Washington Post, she’s at 12 percent.10:54.06Sam ShiraziAnd keep in mind with Emerson in New Jersey, very recently they found a tie. And so this is not necessarily a pollster. I think Emerson’s a pretty good pollster, pretty nonpartisan. They’re not a pollster that’s necessarily super favorable for the Democrats.11:07.64Sam ShiraziThey found a tie in New Jersey, but then they they’re finding Democrats are doing 10% better than in Virginia. So again, the nonpartisan polls taken prior to the shutdown are giving us a pretty clear signal that the Democrats are doing well.11:21.25Sam ShiraziSpanberger is above 50%. She’s getting at least all the ah Harris 2024 voters to back her, if not getting all the Trump disapprovers to back her. so um you know,11:33.79Sam ShiraziIt doesn’t take a genius to look at these polls and say that things are going pretty well at the top of the ticket for the Democrats. I did want to just talk about one other poll ah briefly because, you know, to to give you a sense of what some other polls are looking like. So there’s a polling organization called Trafalgar.11:50.09Sam ShiraziI will say that they’ve had a mixed record in the past and they’re definitely more... I would say leaning towards the Republicans in terms of their alignment. But I wanted to give you their numbers just in in terms of you having all the numbers in terms of polls that came out this week. So for governor, of the Trafalgar poll found Spanberger 47%. It found ear Sears Lieutenant Governor, it had Hashmi at 48% and Reid at 44%. For Attorney General, it had Jones at 49% and Mears at 45%.12:20.61Sam ShiraziAnd you know keep in mind, again, this is similar to other Republican internals or Republican-aligned polls, which typically show Spanberger up about 5%.12:31.83Sam ShiraziSo almost all the internal Republican polls or Republican-aligned polls have shown Spanberger at 5% in recent weeks. um weeks But compare that to the nonpartisan polls. Nonpartisan polls typically have spam murder up by about 10%.12:46.86Sam ShiraziSo while it’s helpful to have these Republican polls, you also want to keep in mind that there might be a little bit of um you know different numbers than what the nonpartisan polls are finding. Okay, so now that we have all those numbers out of the way, we can kind of think about why is the race where it is?13:03.30Sam ShiraziAnd I often get this question about turnout versus persuasion. So but people on both sides will ask me kind of essentially the same question. What’s more important in election, turnout or persuasion?13:15.75Sam ShiraziSo turnout is the idea that you just need to really motivate your boy your base to go vote. Whereas persuasion is the idea, no, what you really need to focus on are the voters in the middle, the swing voters.13:26.82Sam ShiraziAnd I often give the same answer, which is basically you got to worry about both. the The elections, the campaigns where you do really well, it’s when you both have turnout and you have persuasion.13:38.79Sam ShiraziSo you think about 2021 with He was able to win because he brought out his base. He had a lot of turnout among Republicans, and he was able to persuade some of those voters in the middle to back him.13:50.79Sam ShiraziThat’s how he was able to win in 2021. needed both. I think there are scenarios where maybe you could win with one or the other, but again, the really big wins are done when you have both. So if you’re a campaign, you want both turnout and persuasion.14:04.48Sam ShiraziAnd I will give you an example in ah democratic history, not too long ago, but 2008, obviously there were a lot of um things going right for the Obama campaign, but they were able to get their turnout up.14:16.58Sam ShiraziThey were able to persuade voters in the middle that gave you a landslide. um That’s the kind of thing that you want to do. You want to get your base excited and turning out and you want the voters in the middle to back you.14:29.62Sam ShiraziAnd I think sometimes there’s this false choice presented that, oh, no, all you need to focus on is your is your base. Just turn out your base and who cares about voters in the middle? um Or who cares about your base?14:41.08Sam ShiraziYou just need to focus on the voters in the middle. ah you know Again, i think it’s important to think about both and you need both. I think the advantage just structurally that Spanberger has, and again, this is an advantage that the party out of the White House typically has in the Virginia governor’s election.14:56.24Sam ShiraziThe structural advantage she has is that her base is going to be fired up. So a lot of Democrats, they’re frustrated at what’s going on in DC. They want to send a message. They’re going to come out and vote. And so the Spanberger campaign knows that they’re going to get a certain amount of votes from the base.15:11.74Sam ShiraziAnd so that means they can spend more of their time focused on the vote the voters in the middle. They can try to persuade voters. And you’ve seen her do that with a lot of focus on cost of living, ah talking about you know, the tariffs and those issues. And yes, she’s trying to tie them to to Trump, but it’s not this super red meat stuff that maybe you would think the Democratic base would like. She’s more focused on everyday concerns people have, you know, gossip groceries, those types of things, because she has that space, because she knows her base is going to turn out, given how angry they are at what’s going on in D.C.,15:45.93Sam ShiraziI think the problem that Winston-Merle Sears has had, and this is again the problem the party in the White House has, is their base is never fully engaged in the Virginia elections because they’re generally happy because Trump is in the White House right now, or if it it’s a Democratic president, you have a Democratic, ah the Democratic base is not necessarily as fully engaged. That was part of the problem in 2021.16:06.37Sam ShiraziAnd so I think what Earl Sears, she has to do both. She has to both engage her base and she needs to persuade the voters in the middle. And I wanted to talk about one other issue this week that came up, and it’s been the focus of the Winston-Murl Sears campaign that she’s had so much focus on the trans issue. And I think even some Republicans are now but starting to speak out and saying, you know, maybe she’s starting to go a little bit overboard in terms of the focus on the trans issue. And I’m going to read to you something that former Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, Bill Bowling, he’s a Republican. He’s still a Republican. He voted for President Trump in 24.16:45.73Sam ShiraziI will say he’s more of an establishment Republican, but he’s still a Republican. And this is what she wrote he wrote because Winston Meryl Sears released a new ad that was focused on the transgender issue this week.16:57.88Sam ShiraziAnd ah Bill Bowling said, quote, I guess... um The thought is that this issue will turn out the conservative base and maybe cut into Spanberger’s support in Northern Virginia localities where these issues are being hotly debated.17:11.03Sam ShiraziBut if this is all the Sears campaign has to talk about, I think they are in serious trouble. And so we’re seeing even... Republicans are starting to question the Earl Sears strategy of just focusing on the trans issue.17:23.43Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I wanted to just step back and kind of explain what the Earl Sears campaign was trying to do and why it might not be totally crazy. Because I’ve been hearing certain things about like, why is Earl Sears spending so much time on the trans issue? I wanted to kind of explain it from their perspective, where what they might have gotten right and I think what they might have gotten wrong.17:42.65Sam ShiraziSo if you remember, in July, there were some panic pieces that came out and the Republicans were really nervous because they thought they were going to lose the the election in July. And so there was a reboot of the Winston-Marcel Sears campaign. She made some changes in her campaign.17:55.06Sam ShiraziIn August, they started talking more about the trans issue. There was obviously the incident in Arlington, which gave them injection of energy. And so that’s kind of how ah the July-August timeframe looked like.18:06.96Sam ShiraziAnd to be perfectly honest, I think in August, in august purely from... a political standpoint, I think there was some, it did make sense to a certain extent to try to do something to energize the base. Because as I said, they had a turnout problem. They needed to get the base energized in order to at least get to a certain number this year in Virginia.18:27.79Sam ShiraziAnd so in August, I think the focus on the trans issue made sense to a certain extent if you’re the Winston Earl Sears campaign. Because, again, it’s an issue that they think it doesn’t turn off the the middle voter, but it really excites their base and they need it based excitement. So in August, it kind of made sense for that to be part of the campaign.18:48.68Sam ShiraziHowever, I think the issue Winston-Marcel Sears had, and I actually flagged this all the way back in August, if you listened to the podcast back then. is that at some point they would need to shift to the voter in the middle because this is not the type of issue that wins the voter in the middle, in my opinion. And it’s not just my opinion. There’s also polling backing that up. So both in the Washington Post poll and in the Emerson poll, the trans issue is just not the top priority for voters. It’s just...19:15.41Sam Shiraziyou know, well below the other ones. Economy is always the top issue for most voters. And so while I think the trans issue to a certain extent made sense in August for the Winston Earl Sears campaign, in October, it’s not the issue you want to be running on because the voters in the middle, they don’t necessarily care about it. They care much more about the economy.19:32.88Sam ShiraziThe Washington Post and Emerson polls show this. If you dig down into those polls in terms of the issues, the vast majority of voters are much more concerned about the economy than they are trans issues. So I think the salience of the issue is not what the Winston-Marcel Sears campaign ah thinks it is.19:49.42Sam ShiraziAnd I think they’ve probably started to get the message that they need to shift ah messaging to to maybe more of the economy. If I had to guess, they’re going to focus on the car tax issue. So If you’re familiar with Virginia, Virginia has a car tax, which is burst basically a personal property tax with some exemptions where essentially you have to pay a tax on your car and most people don’t like it. And obviously...20:13.62Sam ShiraziPolitically, it’s popular to get rid of it. ah you know You can debate about the policy and how are you going to make up the lost revenue? And are you goingnna have to cut services? are you goingnna have to raise taxes other places? But obviously, from a political standpoint, it makes sense. And it it makes sense to the point that the Spanberger campaign has also talked about how they that she’s open to potentially repealing the car tax. So I think that The Earl Sears folks are going to try to maybe go down that road. You know, the problem is a little bit ah too little too late.20:41.37Sam ShiraziAlso, like this is not necessarily the most important single policy in the world. So while, yes, it’s pretty popular, like, are you going to suddenly shift 10% of voters just off the car tax? um We’ll see. But I do think they they might shift their focus a little bit. And obviously, the trans issues got gotten to the point where they got enough, they got them as much mileage as they could from it, but it’s it’s getting old. and And I honestly had flagged in August that the danger for the Republicans was they were going to beat a dead horse. And at some point, people just get, they get the message. And, and you know, you can’t just talk about one thing over and over again, especially an issue like this that,21:18.65Sam ShiraziWell, I know some people on both sides have passionate views about it. The reality is most people, they’re trying to get through the day. um They’re trying to pay groceries. They’re trying to pay rent. There’s stuff going on with the shutdown. um you know Most people are not thinking about this issue every single moment. And so you know as a campaign, you just have to be realistic about what is it that is exciting your base versus what’s going turn out your base versus the things that the average voter in the middle cares about. And so I think that’s the challenge with turnout versus persuasion. You you need to do things that will get your base excited.21:57.18Sam ShiraziBut at the same time, you can’t forget the voters in the middle. You have to be able to persuade them. And I think right now, given the polling, Spanberger definitely has the right formula. Her base is excited. They want to turn out. They’re angry at what’s going on in D.C.22:10.54Sam ShiraziAnd yet, because of her money, because of the focus on economic issues, she’s able to win the voters in the middle. She’s winning independents. That’s why you see that she has such a big lead in these polls right now.22:22.26Sam ShiraziAll right. One last thing. And it’s kind of similar to the persuasion thing I talked about earlier, because there had been a few stories that have come out this week. To be perfectly honest, I don’t necessarily have the time to go in the ins and outs of each story. There was one story about Lieutenant Governor candidate John Reed, and there was a couple stories about the attorney general candidate Jay Jones.22:44.61Sam ShiraziAgain, um I don’t want to necessarily spend a whole bunch of time talking about it because it’s still unclear how much of an impact it’s going to have on the race ah for both those ah races.22:55.99Sam ShiraziBut I did want to talk about ticket splitting and also the issue of persuading voters down ballot, because I think One of the things I’m grappling with is how much ticket splitting there’s going to be this year. I think I’ve been pretty consistent saying there’s not going to be a lot of ticket splitting.23:10.51Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, my gut is still telling me it’s most people don’t necessarily split their ticket. It’s just the reality that voters like to pick the blue team or the red team and they just go straight down the ticket. They don’t think too much about each candidate.23:24.20Sam Shiraziah You know, it’s just an easy thing to do because, you know, who’s going to spend time researching every single candidate? Obviously, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably the type of person that might. But most people, they’re not necessarily living and breathing politics. They’re not thinking about this stuff all the time.23:40.19Sam ShiraziAnd so the question becomes, OK, how much of there how much could there be ticket splitting? And I think there certainly is a possibility that that at least ah for a certain amount of voters, that they will probably split their ticket either way. And so I don’t think we’re going to get 100% exactly the same margins for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general.24:02.44Sam Shirazithe The challenge is when you have a race where Spanberger is winning by this much, and um again, unless something changes, and i and I don’t know if it will, ah you know, with the shutdown, you know, assuming Spanberger gets a double digit win, which is what the Emerson and and Washington Post polls are showing,24:19.70Sam Shiraziyou know Yes, there will probably be a certain amount of ticket splitting, but I just don’t know if it’s getting to the point where you can overcome 10% at the top of the ticket. maybe Maybe if the Republicans or the Democrats spend a lot of time investing in individual races, um maybe, but even then it’s going to take a lot lot of time.24:39.83Sam ShiraziBy the time you know the average voter learns about something, it takes some time. so I’m you know keeping an eye on it. I really do hope we get new polls in October that will both talk about the shutdown and also take a look at the lieutenant governor and attorney general races a little bit more closely.24:57.01Sam Shiraziyou know The reality is most people in the world are not living and breathing Virginia politics. I know if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s probably something you’re passionate about. I obviously spend a lot of time thinking about Virginia politics. That’s why I did this podcast.25:12.39Sam ShiraziBut I’m also mindful, and I think this is one of the hardest things to do when you are very politically engaged, is to think about the average voter. you know What are they actually thinking about in terms of politics? What are they seeing?25:24.09Sam ShiraziAnd I think um I want to be a little bit um humble and don’t want to take, presume anything and too much one way or another without some sort of data backing me up. Because I do think the reality is most voters,25:39.34Sam ShiraziThey are um you know worried about their lives. They’re worried about the economy. They are not necessarily following every single story. and And I think the extra challenge this year in the Virginia elections is what’s going on in D.C. is really dominating things. So the shutdown in Northern Virginia is a big story.25:56.28Sam ShiraziAnd everything going on with Trump and Congress and federal cuts and this and that, I mean, most voters, i mean, that’s more of what they see in their news to the extent they’re even watching the news, because frankly, some people just want to tune out the news these days. And so I’m mindful that that’s what’s dominating a lot of what’s going on. um The Virginia specific issues, Virginia specific questions,26:20.58Sam ShiraziI’m just unsure about how much that’s seeping through to the average voter. And we’ve really seen this since 2005, where the Virginia elections essentially just become a referendum on the incumbent president.26:32.44Sam ShiraziAnd so to the extent the Emerson and Washington Post polls are showing that that’s kind of what’s happening, um that is telling me that people are just going to vote straight ticket. And I don’t know how much these individual stories are going to matter.26:44.55Sam ShiraziNow, I’m trying to keep an open mind. I’m obviously going to look at the data as it comes in. I want to look at more polling, both nationally and Virginia, about the shutdown, which party is taking more of the blame. I also want to take a look at more Virginia polling that’s been conducted in October that looks at the Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor of race.27:00.87Sam ShiraziAnd I’m going to keep my mind open, but right now, you know my gut is still telling me there’s not going to be a lot of ticket splitting. So let’s just see how it plays out. um I’ll probably cover it more in future podcasts as we get more information. but Yeah, I mean, Virginia elections are certainly ah a wild ride. There’s a lot going on. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I’m trying to do my best to cover everything. And I will keep everyone updated. I’m i’m keeping a look at everything and trying to you know be reasonable, trying to be objective about what I’m seeing, try to report it as best I can. i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com