Federal Fallout: The 2025 Virginia Elections

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

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,09:0

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 pas

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, t

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 t

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 annou

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 i

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 positi

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,

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 cl

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

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

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

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 c

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

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

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 comprehensiv

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 weight

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

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 th