Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout to 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus episode where I will go over some recent redistricting news and see how Virginia plays into that and give you just an update on the state of redistricting a nationwide with kind of an explanation of what is going on with Virginia.

00:22.45

Sam Shirazi

terms of redistricting. And the reason I bring this up is some states have been talking about doing mid-decade redistricting. So just as a primer, redistricting is the idea of redrawing district lines.

00:39.03

Sam Shirazi

So typically, redistricting is done at the beginning of the decade. And that's when, after the 10-year census, the census put puts out the population numbers. And obviously, some districts will have grown, some have shrunk. And so redistricting is mandated to make sure that each district has roughly equal population.

00:58.13

Sam Shirazi

And I think that happened, obviously, at the beginning of this decade. And various states had different ways of doing it. There had been some states that basically gerrymandered the maps. There's some states like Virginia, and I'll get more into Virginia, that had more of a nonpartisan process.

01:13.24

Sam Shirazi

And I think ultimately the maps were what they were. And, you know, the last few elections have been using those maps.

01:20.56

Sam Shirazi

What changed was really this push by Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps. And this has been partly pushed by national Republicans and Donald Trump because they feel like they can get more seats out of Texas in terms that will favor the Republicans.

01:37.13

Sam Shirazi

The reason for that, so if you think about the last redistricting cycle, It was right after the 2020 election. And while Democrats didn't win Texas, they did relatively well and it was somewhat of a competitive state in 2020.

01:50.75

Sam Shirazi

And so the Republicans wanted to be, i would say, cautious. They wanted to protect their incumbents. They didn't know how ah blue Texas was gonna become this decade. But after the 2024 election, Texas became much redder.

02:04.36

Sam Shirazi

Partly that was driven by moves towards the Republicans with Hispanic voters. And so now Texas Republicans feel like they want another bite at the apple. Let's redraw the lines. Let's try to squeeze some more seats out of Texas.

02:17.68

Sam Shirazi

And there there have been a few other Republican states that have talked about mid-decade redistricting. But frankly, most of those states had already kind of gerrymandered their maps. And, you know, there might be one or two seats that might be picked up in other states, but Texas is a real big one.

02:33.49

Sam Shirazi

Now, obviously, Democrats are not happy about this, and they basically said we have to do something. So a number of Democratic-leaning states have said that they might do mid-decade redistricting to kind of counter what the Texas Republicans are trying to push.

02:49.66

Sam Shirazi

There are some legal challenges in some of those states because there's different redistricting rules in the state constitutions. But long story short, basically, Texas Republicans are trying to redistrict.

03:00.45

Sam Shirazi

And this might set off some sort of arms race in next few months to see which states can redistrict. And potentially that'll have an impact on the midterms.

03:11.06

Sam Shirazi

you know Traditionally, I would say there was a norm in American politics where you're not supposed to redistrict in the middle of a cycle unless there's a reason to do it, like a court order. I think just generally for the stability of the districts, it's better for there to have be districts for 10 years because you know if you're an average voter, you you might live in one district and then...

03:32.23

Sam Shirazi

You don't know why your district is changing all of a sudden. So I think it's not a great thing in terms of democracy for the districts to be changing all of the sudden. For real, no reason other than to get partisan advantage.

03:45.04

Sam Shirazi

Now, I'm also realistic about the nature of power, the nature of how politics works. I think the Republicans think we might as well see how much we can push this, see how many seats we can get. Because realistically, 2026 is going to be a tough environment for Republicans. Almost every single time there's a midterm, the party in the White House tends to perform poorly. You know, who knows if that's going to happen this year, but that's just traditionally been the trend that the party in the White House doesn't do well in the midterm. So the Republicans are probably feeling that they need to take every advantage that they can.

04:16.59

Sam Shirazi

And the Democrats are feeling upset because they feel like this is just another attempt by Republicans to undermine the will of voters and to try to seize as much power as they can. And obviously, we'll see how these things play out. It's always possible that Texas doesn't go through because maybe they don't want to set off this redistricting arms race.

04:35.98

Sam Shirazi

It's possible there are lawsuits because there might be violations of the Voting Rights Act, for example, if the Tex-Republicans push this too far. I think um was a draft map released and basically the, it looks like on a really good night that the Texas Republicans could possibly pick up five seats because of redistricting. So basically five democratic incumbents would lose and they would be replaced by five Republicans.

05:00.65

Sam Shirazi

Now keep in mind, midterms It might not be as favorable for the Republicans as they think. And so maybe not all these seats flip. Also with Hispanic voters, I mean, maybe 2024 was really the sea change in Hispanic voting patterns, or it could be more of a one time change because of some of the issues regarding cost of living and inflation. And maybe the Texas Republicans aren't going to do that well with Hispanics as they think in 2026.

05:25.80

Sam Shirazi

So all that to say is like we'll have to wait and see what happens in Texas. But it's definitely starting this conversation about redistricting. When should people redistrict? When is it appropriate? When is it not appropriate? Should you gerrymander? Should you not gerrymander?

05:38.88

Sam Shirazi

These have all been kind of floating around in the national conversation. So I thought it'd be interesting to talk about it in the context of Virginia.

05:46.04

Sam Shirazi

Pause.

05:46.94

Sam Shirazi

So I would say that traditionally Virginia did normal redistricting in the past. So that basically means that the legislature draws the line. And in various times in the past, Virginia has definitely gerrymandered its maps. I would say last decade, for the most part,

06:02.33

Sam Shirazi

It was a Republican gerrymander, certainly in the congressional level. There was actually a court case that found that there was some racial gerrymandering that was going on with the third district. So the third district in Virginia, the previous version, the court found that there was too many black voters. They were basically being packed into this district.

06:22.24

Sam Shirazi

And so it unpacked the third district, created the the the current version of the fourth district, that is more evenly balanced in terms of the Black population in Virginia. So now there are two seats that have an opportunity for Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice. So long story short, in the past, there were some shenanigans going on with redistricting in Virginia.

06:44.95

Sam Shirazi

And in the like in the end of the last decade, there was a push by various groups to try to create a redistricting commission in Virginia. The feeling was...

06:55.75

Sam Shirazi

We don't want this gerrymandering to continue in Virginia. Now, that all sounds good in theory. I think there were two problems with the way redistricting happened in this last cycle in Virginia.

07:07.68

Sam Shirazi

So from Democratic perspective, one school of thought is that basically Virginia Democrats unilaterally disarmed, because if you think about 2021, Democrats had a trifecta. They could have gerrymandered the map had it not been for this redistricting reform.

07:22.80

Sam Shirazi

And while I think most Democrats probably think in an abstract sense, theoretical sense, yeah, gerrymandering is not good. But the reality is these Republican states like Texas and Florida, they are going to gerrymander to the max.

07:35.65

Sam Shirazi

So we as Democrats, wherever we have the chance, we have to also gerrymander. And, you know, in terms of the problem of gerrymandering. We're trying to pass a bill at the federal level to fix it so that it's fixed across the board.

07:48.47

Sam Shirazi

It doesn't really make sense to unilaterally disarm in Democratic states while the Republicans are gerrymandering to the max. I think the counter argument to that is like, look, gerrymandering is bad and it doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democratic state, like you might as well not have gerrymandering and two wrongs don't make a right kind of thing. And and ultimately that carried the day. So there was an amendment put for a constitutional vote in 2020.

08:14.64

Sam Shirazi

And realistically, when you put a redistricting amendment on the ballot, it's almost going to certainly pass. So it passed in 2020. It's kind of interesting to think about why the parties let it go to the voters.

08:25.53

Sam Shirazi

I think the Republicans for sure kind of saw the writing on the wall. They knew that they weren't going to be able to gerrymander Virginia anytime soon. And so they said, we might as well just do nonpartisan redistricting in Virginia. And it kind of denies the Democrats the opportunity to gerrymander in Virginia, which again kind of makes sense from the Republican standpoint.

08:45.31

Sam Shirazi

three.

08:46.63

Sam Shirazi

So for Democrats, I think it was a much more complicated situation because in theory, they were on the cusp of being able to gerrymander the seats in Virginia, the the districts in Virginia.

08:57.88

Sam Shirazi

And there was a debate. Some of them said, you know, we have to take this opportunity. Others were saying, look, gerrymandering wrong. We shouldn't allow this to happen. There was a lot of internal debate. But ultimately, you know, I'm not going spare you all the internal details, but long story short, the constitutional amendment was put on the ballot in 2020 for voters to vote on, and they voted for it.

09:17.85

Sam Shirazi

And again, anytime you put like any sort of redistricting reform on the ballot, it's likely to pass, and it did pass. Now, I think the real problem with the Virginia redistricting, I mean, putting aside the debate about whether it's good or bad to partisan gerrymander,

09:33.68

Sam Shirazi

I think the way the redistricting commission in Virginia was set up was really bound to fail. And to just kind of explain that process a little bit, some states have purely nonpartisan redistricting, which means that there's a redistricting commission. It's independent from the legislature.

09:51.51

Sam Shirazi

It has Democrats, Republicans, independents on it. um it. um That's not what Virginia did. Virginia created this redistricting commission, but It included some members of the legislature and it included, it had to include an even number of people from both basically the Democrats and the Republicans. And there really wasn't any role and vision for independence.

10:14.29

Sam Shirazi

So you basically had this commission that was half Democrats, half Republicans, and they, in order to pass anything, they needed super majority. So And there was no tiebreaker.

10:25.33

Sam Shirazi

And even if they passed something, which seemed pretty unlikely, the legislature would then have to vote up or down on their final proposal. And so it was this kind of crazy convoluted process that honestly didn't make a whole lot of sense to have a redistricting commission like that.

10:40.25

Sam Shirazi

And indeed, you know, the results were pretty clear when the Redistricting Commission did its work in 2021. Now, that was one of the first times I was, I would say, reengaged in Virginia politics. And maybe I'll give you my origin story at some point. But, you know, I started getting more interested in um maps in Virginia, obviously, because we were doing redistricting. I followed the Redistricting Commission.

11:02.79

Sam Shirazi

I think there were people on there who, in good faith, were trying their best to get something done, trying to pass fair maps. The reality is just partisan politics seeped into the commission.

11:13.30

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, based on my observations, it was certainly more partisan on the Republican side because. This is just my personal opinion. I don't think the Republicans wanted the commission to drop the draw to maps. They they didn't they didn't see any sort of way to find a compromise with the Democrats.

11:29.57

Sam Shirazi

And it was basically bound to fail. So the redistricting commission just was not able to come up with any sort of maps, either for the congressional map. or the state legislative maps in 2021 in Virginia.

11:43.48

Sam Shirazi

So what ended up happening is the maps went to the Virginia Supreme Court. And I think that the defenders of the way redistricting was done in Virginia, they say, basically, look, we know the redistricting commission doesn't make a lot of sense.

11:57.10

Sam Shirazi

But the backstop was that the Virginia Supreme Court would draw the maps. So what happened was the redist redistricting process in Virginia went to the Virginia Supreme Court. They appointed two special masters, one Democratic, one Republican.

12:10.14

Sam Shirazi

They worked together and they came up with the Virginia maps. Now, I think there are pros and cons to this process. I think the pros were you know I have my quibbles with the Virginia maps. And I think there are certainly some districts that just don't make a whole lot of sense.

12:24.77

Sam Shirazi

However, these special masters were on a short timeline. They had to draw the districts. And I think the pros of the process are, you know for the most part, there They tried, i think, to create districts that would make Virginia somewhat competitive and would not lead to kind of a crazy gerrymander. And I think there's no outright gerrymander of the Virginia districts. I think there are specific different districts you can kind of quibble with.

12:51.24

Sam Shirazi

The con of the process, I would say more so, is that It's basically these two people drew the maps. I don't think they were really experts in Virginia. And it was kind of crazy that, you know, this big state, millions of people, the process was drawn by two people behind the scenes. They did allow some public input, but for the most part, they just kind of went behind the scenes, drew these maps.

13:13.10

Sam Shirazi

I think in the grand scheme of things, They are not the worst maps in the world, but obviously it's not necessarily something where the public was able to participate in a way that I think true redistricting reform envisions.

13:28.93

Sam Shirazi

But regardless, we got the maps. These are the maps that we're using this year in Virginia for the House of Delegates. And so whenever I talk about some of these districts and some of the oddities in the district, it's because the special masters drew them that way.

13:41.61

Sam Shirazi

And you know there are some districts in here that make a lot of sense. I think for the most part, they drew Northern Virginia in the House of Delegates pretty well. The districts look clean. They make sense. i will I will have to cri critique them in one district, which is House District 41.

13:57.69

Sam Shirazi

And i I have no idea how they do this district, why they do it this way. I think almost universally everyone says this district is just kind of crazy the way it's been drawn by the special masters. So House District 41, I've talked about it before. It's a competitive seat. It's basically the only competitive seat in Southwest Virginia.

14:16.95

Sam Shirazi

This is the seat that includes Blacksburg and Virginia Tech, but then it also includes a lot of rural areas. And the reason why the district just doesn't make any sense whatsoever is you have Blacksburg, which is you know this blue college town. And then a few miles away, there's another town called Christiansburg, which is the other major city in Montgomery County.

14:36.60

Sam Shirazi

And they're kind of like sister cities. And so it's a little bit crazy that they're in different House of Delegates districts. I don't think anyone who's trying to draw a House Delegates map, i mean, it doesn't really make sense where these seats, these two cities are very similar. They're a few miles apart. I don't know why they would be in different districts.

14:52.78

Sam Shirazi

districts And then the other crazy thing is a few, a little bit further away the college town of Radford. So Radford and but and Blacksburg are very similar because they both have colleges in them.

15:03.96

Sam Shirazi

And yet Radford and Blacksburg aren't in the same district. And so you have these three cities, Radford, And then technically Christiansburg and Blacksburg are town. But you have these three places and they're all pretty similar, but then they're in they're in these separate, you know they're they're not in the same district, which just to me is a little bit crazy.

15:24.77

Sam Shirazi

And you know i have my guess about why they did that. I think if they wanted to keep that seat pretty competitive and they just thought that putting Radford or Christiansburg in with Blacksburg would make...

15:36.77

Sam Shirazi

that district to Democratic leaning. And so, you know, it is what it is. i think I I think ah that was one of the biggest flaws in the maps that were produced. and And I don't want to blow on it too much, but just to kind of give you a sense of why redistricting was such an issue in Virginia because these maps are important. And this district, the 41st district, we're going to talk a lot about it. It's probably going be really competitive in the fall.

16:01.07

Sam Shirazi

you know We may have to wait for same-day registrations to determine who wins. i mean, that all goes back to the decisions that these special masters made in 2021. And they could have drawn a very different district, a district that leans Democratic,

16:13.89

Sam Shirazi

And that frankly would look perfectly normal, but the fact would be that it leaned democratic, but they chose to make it this kind of district that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

16:24.32

Sam Shirazi

And so all that's to say is like these two special masters had a lot of power at the beginning of the redistricting cycle in Virginia, because these maps are going to be used for 10 years in Virginia. So these two guys, they sat down, they draw the maps.

16:35.59

Sam Shirazi

I mean, I get it was a tankless job and, you know, no one was ah going to end end up being happy with the final product. And, you know, I think they did the best they could and there were some flaws in the maps, but that's always going to happen. So I don't want to I'm not trying to be too hard on them, but it just goes to show you what's going on with Virginia redistricting.

16:54.22

Sam Shirazi

All right. So I'm kind of going on and on about Virginia. The reason i I'm doing that is so this redistricting commission is now in the Virginia Constitution. So that means no matter who wins, doesn't matter if the Democrats get a clean sweep this year in Virginia, they cannot redistrict in the middle of the cycle because that would violate the Virginia constitution.

17:14.05

Sam Shirazi

So as you hear all this talk about redistricting and changes and you hear things like, oh, I actually see people say, well, Virginia could just redistrict and you know the Democrats could gain a couple seats out of Virginia. It's like, no, they can't.

17:26.55

Sam Shirazi

yeah that That would violate the Virginia constitution. So it's important to keep in mind the the limits to redistricting in Virginia. And I wanna talk about one other possibility, which is that in 2028, there could be a constitutional amendment on the ballot to change the way Virginia does redistricting.

17:45.57

Sam Shirazi

So you've probably heard me talk about this before, There are three constitutional ballots amendments on the ballot if the Democrats win in 2025 that will be on the ballot in 2026. So that's already been decided that if the Democrats win, they're going to put these three ballot amendments on the ballot in 2026.

18:02.84

Sam Shirazi

However, they can also start that process if they win the House of Delegates this year for 2028. twenty twenty eight Now, they will have to win the House of Delegates and the State Senate in 2027 order to do that. but just kind of highlighting the future, there could also be constitutional amendments on the ballot in Virginia in 2028.

18:24.03

Sam Shirazi

And I know that's a far way off, but that's the soonest basically that there could be any sort of change to the redistricting process in Virginia. Now, realistically, I don't think that there's going to be any sort of full repeal of the redistricting commission. One, because I just don't think the Democrats have the appetite to kind of go there.

18:41.96

Sam Shirazi

And two, I just think the voters are going to reject it. So if there's some sort of amendment on the ballot that says we're going to completely go back to the old school way of redistricting, I just don't think voters are going to vote for that.

18:54.48

Sam Shirazi

so But there is a possibility that there could be these changes to the Virginia Constitution on the ballot that maybe make the redistricting commission more rational or create a different process that has a chance of succeeding. Because honestly, i think if the current process is in place, there's a decent chance the Virginia Supreme Court will once again draw the maps in 2031. And think and i think The other possibility is some of this stuff about redistricting is in the Virginia statute. So it's not a constitutional part of the Virginia code. It's a statutory part of the code.

19:29.24

Sam Shirazi

And that's much easier to change. So it's possible Democrats start tinkering with those aspects of it. But I think you know that is a little less powerful than changing the Virginia Constitution.

19:40.12

Sam Shirazi

So all that is to say, while you're hearing about these conversations about redistricting, I don't think Virginia is really going to be too much in play unless something starts happening for maybe 2028 and changing the Virginia Constitution.

19:53.06

Sam Shirazi

I did want to note, however, you know, my sense is from the Republican side, part of what's causing this push to redistrict is I think they're getting realistically nervous about the 2026 midterms and any any party in the White House would be nervous about the midterms. And I think this is an attempt to maybe try to give the Republicans a chance of maybe retaining the House by doing some of this redistricting.

20:16.54

Sam Shirazi

And I think if the Virginia Democrats do well in November, which, you know, Who knows what the final margin is going to be. But right now, it looks like Democrats are in a better position in Virginia than Republicans.

20:28.50

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, there isn't a great result for Republicans in November. I think the discussions might ramp up and we might see even more redistricting than we've already talked about because Republicans start to get more and more nervous. So I do think.

20:43.08

Sam Shirazi

You know, there's this discussion about how if Democrats do well in Virginia, that'll kind of fire up Democrats and it'll help them in the midterms. I also think there's a scenario where Democrats do well in Virginia that makes the Republicans more nervous. And so they're trying to push even more gerrymandering.

20:58.30

Sam Shirazi

in some of these states. you know Texas is a big one, but there's been other states talked about, Missouri, Indiana, Florida. Now, obviously Democrats have talked about some of their states like California New York.

21:12.11

Sam Shirazi

I think it's a little bit harder for Democrats to gerrymander because most of those states have some sort of commission. But long story short, I mean, this is a very interesting topic. I think Virginia is a little bit more in the backseat when it comes to the mid-decade redistricting. But I did want to talk about it because it's in the news a lot. I wanted to give people context about Virginia.

21:33.87

Sam Shirazi

And I also just wanted to you know explain that Virginia is not really going to be able to do a whole lot, even if the Democrats make a clean sweep. So Certainly a lot going on politically, nationally. i don't always talk about all the different things that are going on in the rest of the country, but I do think even though this is a Virginia podcast, I think what happens in Virginia and especially these state elections could have an impact on the overall national environment and could even have an impact on some of what's going on with redistricting in other states.

22:04.69

Sam Shirazi

So that's why I think Virginia elections are super important. I'll continue to... do the podcast and keep people updated. But for now, this has been Federal Fallout and I'll join you next time.

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