00:00.46

Sam Shirazi

Hi, everyone. I'm Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, I will be checking in on the Federal Fallout because obviously the premise of this show has been that what's been going on in Washington, D.C is going to affect the Virginia elections this year. And I've been covering other topics and they're all very interesting, but I haven't really spent a whole lot on the federal fallout issue in a while. And I wanted to check in because there were two pieces of interesting news that I wanted to talk about.

00:41.59

Sam Shirazi

So at the University of Virginia, they have something called the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. And every once in a while, they will put out different studies and different forecasts.

00:52.60

Sam Shirazi

And so recently they put out a forecast about the job losses in Virginia this year. And according to this forecast, they say that about 32,000 net jobs will be lost in Virginia this year.

01:05.07

Sam Shirazi

That means Virginia won't be creating jobs. That means that 32,000 jobs will be lost. And obviously, main cause of that is the federal fallout in in regards to what's going on with all the federal cuts.

01:16.45

Sam Shirazi

Now, I should say this is a forecast. Things can change. I don't want to take it 100% certain Virginia is going to be losing jobs. It's possible that Virginia gains jobs this year, forecast change. So you know I would take the specific number with a little bit of grain of salt. But I think the broader point is still there that Virginia is seeing job losses, both directly from people getting fired, but also from businesses that are suffering, specifically government contractors. So a lot of government contractors, they technically aren't employees of the federal government.

01:45.36

Sam Shirazi

But they are making money off the federal government through these contracts. And so there have been a lot of contracts that have been cut. And so obviously, if you're a contractor, your contract's been cut. You can't play it pay your employees. You have to let your employees go.

01:56.81

Sam Shirazi

So that's another source of job losses. And I think the other thing I should mention... which I don't think is talked about a lot in the news, is the fact that a lot of federal employees are leaving under either early retirement or through incentives to leave the federal government, such as the original fork in the road that Doge offered where people would be able to leave the federal government, still get paid until September 30th while they were not working.

02:25.26

Sam Shirazi

And a lot of times those people who've left through these voluntary early separations are not necessarily counted as technically being fired. They aren't necessarily eligible for unemployment. So you may not see them in the official statistics, but they are still very much being affected by what's going on in the federal government.

02:45.04

Sam Shirazi

And I guess the the one other thing I should mention along these lines is Obviously, Northern Virginia has a lot of federal employees who work in D.C. who commute into D.C. And so while they may not have been technically jobs located within Virginia, if someone either voluntarily leaves or they are being fired from their job in Washington, D.C., that may be reflected in the Washington, D.C. employment numbers.

03:08.18

Sam Shirazi

But it's going to affect Virginia because obviously people who come come back to Virginia after they work in D.C. They're bringing most of their money and most of their paycheck back to Virginia.

03:18.81

Sam Shirazi

And so we're seeing a lot of these effects from the federal fallout about what's going on in D.C. And The Washington Post recently did a poll of the D.C. area, but they had specific questions about Northern Virginia. So they asked people in Northern Virginia,

03:34.19

Sam Shirazi

About the federal cuts and only 25% of people in Northern Virginia approved of them and 68% disapproved. And then they asked people about whether the federal cuts will help or hurt the DC area economy.

03:47.93

Sam Shirazi

76% said it would hurt the D.C. area economy, while only 12% said it would help the D.C. area economy. Now, obviously, Northern Virginia is known for being a blue area, and obviously, Northern Virginia is very impacted by the cuts in the federal government.

03:59.97

Sam Shirazi

So these numbers are not super surprising, and that's about what you expect to see. And I think some Virginia Republicans, their response would be, well, what do you expect? It's Northern Virginia. Of course, they're not going to like the just the cuts to the federal government.

04:12.74

Sam Shirazi

And these people aren't going to vote for the Republicans anyways. I mean, I think there's certainly some truth in that. I think the problem for the Republicans is they need some people in Northern Virginia to vote for them. And if you look at 2021, part of the secrets to the success of Glenn Youngkin was that he was able to keep the margins in Northern Virginia, particularly the outer suburbs of Loudoun and Prince William, somewhat competitive.

04:36.51

Sam Shirazi

And he wasn't totally blown away in Northern Virginia. And so while he didn't win Northern Virginia, the margins were close enough where combined with some good turnout in the rest of the state, he was able to win in 2021. And he really improved on President Trump's 2020 performance in Virginia. And that's part of the reason why he was able to win.

04:54.76

Sam Shirazi

And so if you think about what happened in 2024, former Vice President Harris was able to win win Virginia by about six points.

05:02.91

Sam Shirazi

So if you think about a Republican this year in Virginia, they have to do better than what President Trump did in 2024, because obviously President Trump didn't win Virginia in 2024.

05:11.82

Sam Shirazi

And so when you look at those dynamics, I mean, i think it's it's getting tricky for the Virginia GOP because I don't know exactly what the plan is in terms of trying to win Northern Virginia voters over or at least not lose as many of them as President Trump did in 2024.

05:30.69

Sam Shirazi

And I guess the other thing I should mention is in the Northern Virginia area, there are four House seats in the House of Delegates that could be competitive this year. So that's House District 22 in middle Prince William County.

05:43.94

Sam Shirazi

There's House District 30 in western Loudoun County. There's House District 64 that is in middle stafford and there is house district 66 which is in spotsylvania county for the most part and all four of those districts are currently held by the republicans the democrats are targeting those four seats and those are basically the last four seats in Northern Virginia that the republicans have been able to hold on to and you know i think traditionally those have been republican districts.

06:13.28

Sam Shirazi

There's an open question about whether some of those people in those districts who have voted for Republicans in the past may be open to voting for Democrats this time, either because they've been directly impacted by what's going on in the federal government or they know people who've been impacted, or even if they aren't really connected the federal government, maybe their businesses have or the place they work has seen a slowdown because of what's going on with the federal government.

06:34.65

Sam Shirazi

And if you think about what happened in 2017 in Virginia, so there were a lot of Republican seats, surprisingly, in places like Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, that had been Republican for a long time. And everyone just assumed, well, yeah, these are kind of traditional Republican seats.

06:49.27

Sam Shirazi

And the Democrats were able to flip some of those seats really easily in some cases because of the backlash to the first Trump administration. And by the end of the Trump administration, there were no Republicans left in Fairfax County at the House of Delegates or state Senate level.

07:06.59

Sam Shirazi

And I think there's a possibility if there's a lot of federal fallout in Northern Virginia that the same thing could happen with these last seats in Prince William, Loudoun and Stafford.

07:17.56

Sam Shirazi

And the other thing I should mention, I mean, I think a lot of the federal fallout has directly hit the civilian side of things with different agencies with different agencies. For example, we've seen a lot about USAID and the Department of Education and Health and Human Services. So those have been the the agencies most directly impacted and where we've seen a lot of news about the changes to those agencies.

07:42.24

Sam Shirazi

But I also think it's an interesting thing to see what happens if, for example, some of the the workers who are in and around military bases, are they seeing the federal fallout? Are they feeling differently about what's going on in D.C.?

07:55.89

Sam Shirazi

And if that's the case, I mean, that affects a lot of people. So there are military bases in the Richmond area and certainly in Hampton Roads. There's a lot of military bases. And I'm not going to go through every single district, but I mean, there are a lot of districts where the Republicans are trying to hold on.

08:09.22

Sam Shirazi

to seats where potentially the changes and the impacts of the federal government could make a difference in November. So again, i think the conventional wisdom is that this is going to help Democrats. Democrats are certainly running on this issue. They are talking about how they are focused on helping Virginia and wanting to help the federal workers who are been losing their jobs.

08:29.86

Sam Shirazi

And they they're attacking the Republicans for not doing that and for basically backing what President Trump is doing. And so, you know, the conventionalism is you would think that would play pretty well, at least in Northern Virginia, if not in other parts of Virginia.

08:42.66

Sam Shirazi

And I did want to step back and kind of maybe Think about that. And is there a scenario where maybe the federal fallout will not be that big? I mean, I think the Republican story or plan is that, well, yeah, there's these impacts to the federal government. Yeah, Virginia is kind of dependent on federal jobs and federal spending.

09:02.86

Sam Shirazi

But again, those people mainly vote for the Democrats anyways. And there's a lot of different parts of Virginia and maybe Southwest Virginia or the Shenandoah Valley or Southside Virginia. I mean, those people are much more supportive of what President Trump is doing.

09:15.83

Sam Shirazi

And if you know they get really fired up because they support President Trump and his agenda and they come out in huge numbers, then the it doesn't really matter what's going on in these other parts of Virginia because the the Republicans are still going to be able to win this year.

09:29.60

Sam Shirazi

I mean, I think the the problem with that thinking and the problem for the Republicans is that those areas have gotten close to maxing out. So maxing out is when you've kind of hit your peak in terms of the votes you can get out of those counties.

09:44.97

Sam Shirazi

And so if you think about Southwest Virginia, there are parts of Southwest Virginia where the Republicans are getting 80 plus percent of the vote. And I mean, at some point, there's really not much else you can get out of those places.

09:55.92

Sam Shirazi

Whereas think part of the reason President Trump did better in 2024 than he did in 2020 is because he really did do better in Northern Virginia to a certain extent. And particularly among, let's say, people from a diverse background, whether it's the Asian community or it's the Hispanic community, I think President Trump in 2024 did a little bit better than what people were expecting. I think the impact was a little less in Virginia as compared to other states. But certainly, I think, know, if you think about 2020, President Trump lost Virginia by 10 points, whereas in 2024, he only lost it by six points.

10:30.50

Sam Shirazi

So that was about a four-point swing towards the Republicans in 2024. And a lot of that was in Northern Virginia and you know, if that gets reversed, there's not a lot of the Republicans can do in terms of driving up the turnout and the margins in rural areas where they think that the President Trump's approval rating and President Trump's plans are more popular among voters.

10:55.86

Sam Shirazi

Now, the other possibility that I think I've mentioned is that DOGE, which kind of wraps up his work, the cuts of the federal government are finalized and everyone kind of moves on. And yeah, some people lost their jobs, but for the most part, the economy in Virginia stabilizes because they're able to find other jobs and everything kind of returns back to normal.

11:15.56

Sam Shirazi

I think that's, that's certainly going to happen probably to a certain extent. I think the challenge with that position or that view is that the reality is that, you know Even the federal workers that stay, I mean, they've gone through a lot in terms of having to deal with Doge and questions about whether they were going to get fired. And and so that that stays with you. And I just don't know if by November there's enough time where they'll just kind of say, yeah, I'm okay. I kept my job, so I'm not going to worry about this anymore.

11:44.32

Sam Shirazi

And anyways, so long story short, I think it's interesting to look at the federal fallout. I don't always talk about it on every podcast because I think there are a lot of other things going on.

11:54.24

Sam Shirazi

But I do think kind of lurking in the background is the issues with the federal government. It hasn't gone away. I think it's still a big issue in Virginia, even if you don't always hear about it in the news. It's something that's constantly impacting the economy one way or another. And so I think we're going We're going to see how much of an impact it eventually has in November.

12:15.69

Sam Shirazi

And I do hope eventually we get a good Virginia poll to kind of give a pulse on where things are right now in Virginia. But I just kind of wanted to do this quick recap and...

12:26.79

Sam Shirazi

touch base on where things are with the federal fallout. And I'm sure there'll be a lot more to discuss in future podcasts, but until then I will leave it to see what happens. And this has been federal fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. I'll see you next week.

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