Transcript

00:01.14

Sam Shirazi

Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special Senate episode.

00:12.13

Sam Shirazi

Just like the Senate yesterday, the votes are there for cloture, so let us proceed. So it was a crazy week in the Senate, and I wanted to just quickly talk about what happened and then switch gears about how that what happened in the Senate might affect Virginia this year.

00:31.81

Sam Shirazi

And you might think, well, these are totally different things. But obviously, this podcast is called Federal Fallout because we're looking at how what's going on in D.C. and the federal government affects what's going on in Virginia this year with Virginia's state elections.

00:48.71

Sam Shirazi

So let's just set the scene. What happened?

00:53.52

Sam Shirazi

So, the funding for the federal government was going to end on Friday at midnight.

00:59.62

Sam Shirazi

And Republicans in the House had passed a bill and then they had left town because They wanted to punt the bill over to the Senate and they didn't want an opportunity to have to vote for a different bill.

01:11.55

Sam Shirazi

The Republicans obviously wanted their bill to get passed and it was sent to the Senate. And Republican senators had set up the vote for Friday because that obviously applies maximum pressure on the Democrats, because if the bill did not pass on Friday, then there would be a government shutdown.

01:31.56

Sam Shirazi

So that was kind of the the scene of what happened on Friday. Now, on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer came out and said that he would support what's called cloture. He would vote for cloture to allow the bill to proceed, but he would not end up voting for the final bill. But essentially, if you vote for cloture, you're going to let the bill proceed and it was going to pass.

01:54.26

Sam Shirazi

Just to kind of explain some. Senate procedures, there is a 60 vote threshold to basically move a bill forward, most bills.

02:05.34

Sam Shirazi

And sometimes you'll hear people refer to it as Democrats could have filibustered the bill. Sometimes you hear it as the Republicans are trying to invoke cloture and proceed to voting on the bill.

02:18.33

Sam Shirazi

Long story short, in order to pass most bills in the Senate, you need 60 votes. Democrats have 47 seats in the Senate.

02:28.63

Sam Shirazi

And as a result, obviously Republicans need some Democratic votes to pass bills. And what happened was... There were some Democrats and frankly, most Democrats felt that the Democrats should use their votes to block this bill. Essentially filibuster the bill, don't allow the Republican plan to fund the government to move forward.

02:54.35

Sam Shirazi

Well, what would happen would be obviously there would be a government shutdown because the funding would expire. And the Democrats thinking was, well, most Democrats were thinking, well, all right, there's a shutdown, but Republicans could come back.

03:09.64

Sam Shirazi

They can negotiate with us. We can pass what's called a clean CR, which means it would just continue filling the federal government without some of the other things Republicans put into this bill. And so that was, I would say, what most Democrats ended up voting for. They voted to block the bill, but there weren't enough votes. So after Schumer came out and said that he would vote to advance the bill, there was a question mark. A lot of grassroots organizations started making calls, started really pushing back, saying, no, we can't push this bill forward.

03:41.59

Sam Shirazi

But eventually enough Democrats on Friday voted to advance the bill. It passed. So the bill was moved forward 62-38 and then it eventually passed with fewer Democrats supporting it at the final stage.

03:58.13

Sam Shirazi

But as I mentioned, really, the battle is about whether the bill could get 60 votes and it got 62 votes. And so there was a huge kind of upheaval within the Democratic Party because a lot of people felt that Democrats should have stood firm. They shouldn't have allowed this bill to move forward.

04:13.65

Sam Shirazi

There were a lot of different opinions on it. I think the the Democratic senators who voted to advance the bill, their thinking was, well, we're in a difficult position. if If there's a government shutdown, we might get a lot of the blame.

04:27.28

Sam Shirazi

Also, who knows? This won't be a normal government shutdown with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. We don't know what they're going to be doing. And so the safer option would be to just allow this bill to move forward. The government would be funded And we can kind of pick other battles to to stand up to the Trump administration.

04:46.29

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, a lot of Democrats felt that that doesn't make a whole lot of sense because there aren't a lot of opportunities to stand up. And this was really one opportunity where the Democrats had the ability to push back with the 60 vote threshold I should note that Virginia's two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both voted no on cloture. That means they voted no to advance the bill.

05:11.15

Sam Shirazi

But said Democratic senators from other states move voted to advance the bill. Enough of them, at least, that the bill was able to move forward. Now, again, this is a podcast about Virginia state elections. So why does this matter? Well, a couple reasons.

05:25.30

Sam Shirazi

First, This bill essentially funds the government through the end of September. And guess what happens at the end of September? That is the beginning of early voting in Virginia.

05:37.30

Sam Shirazi

So the government funding deadline will expire, I believe it's September 30th, which will be right when early voting is going on in Virginia. And obviously there's a high likelihood that there will be some sort of shutdown deadline looming.

05:54.20

Sam Shirazi

And part of the reason some Democrats said they had to be really strong and and take a hard line this time and not allow this bill to move forward is Republicans are just going to do the same thing next time, except next time they know that Democrats are going to blink and never allow a shutdown.

06:11.20

Sam Shirazi

So next time the Republicans are going to put even more things in the bill to essentially make it very difficult for Democrats to vote for it, but get what they want out of Democrats to be able to advance a bill.

06:24.61

Sam Shirazi

And so I will have to wait and see. Obviously, September 30th is a long way off. It's always possible there could be some compromise. They could pass a normal budget. But I think there is risk that there could be some sort of CR battle, and CR stands for continuing a resolution, where basically what happened on Friday will happen all over again at the end of September.

06:48.41

Sam Shirazi

I should note that the reason why this might actually matter in September is something like that very similar to this happened both in 2013 and in 2023. So in 2013, there was a government shutdown right at the end of the Virginia governor's campaign.

07:05.66

Sam Shirazi

And the conventional wisdom is that helped Democrats and Democrat Terry McAuliffe was able to win that election. And the thinking was that it was because there was a blowback to the Republicans at that time shutting down the government over Obamacare.

07:22.75

Sam Shirazi

And 2013 was the only time since 1977 when a Democrat was able to win the Virginia governor's election while there was a Democrat in the White House. And you could argue part of that was because of the shutdown.

07:37.75

Sam Shirazi

Now, in 2023, there were state elections. It wasn't a governor's election, but every seat in the Virginia House of Delegates and State Senate was up for election.

07:47.96

Sam Shirazi

There was a lot of pressure behind the scenes to avoid a shutdown because the Republicans were worried about how it would affect the Virginia elections. That time, the fight was over funding for Ukraine.

08:00.70

Sam Shirazi

There was a compromise at the end where the the government was funded without the Ukraine funding, and it didn't really affect the Virginia elections. But it just all goes to show you that these government funding fights do...

08:12.70

Sam Shirazi

sometimes potentially affect the Virginia elections because they are happening in odd years. Usually in election years, the parties don't have shutdown fights because they know it's going to be bad for politics and their election chances.

08:26.98

Sam Shirazi

But The members of Congress aren't up for election in odd years like they are in Virginia. So they're more likely to have a shutdown fight in these odd years. And that often creates issues in the Virginia elections.

08:40.23

Sam Shirazi

This time, the shutdown was avoided. We will see what happens the rest of the year and if there will be another shutdown fight in September right before that funding deadline.

08:54.27

Sam Shirazi

Now, the other thing I should mention... about the Virginia elections and what happened in the Senate is that we saw a huge backlash from the base of the Democratic Party.

09:07.37

Sam Shirazi

And I don't think it was just an ideological thing. So it wasn't just progressives that were upset by what happened. It was interesting to see that more moderate and establishment figures within the Democratic Party were not super happy with how some of the Democrats in the Senate voted, such as Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. And you saw someone, for example, like Senator Mark Warner, who's more in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. He voted no on cloture.

09:35.89

Sam Shirazi

And it just shows you this isn't necessarily an ideological battle within the Democratic Party. I think it's more about tactics and when and how to stand up to the Trump administration for Democrats.

09:49.10

Sam Shirazi

And you know why does that matter in Virginia? I think there's a large amount of grassroots organizations that have started to come out as a result of what's going on in D.C. on the and the Democrats.

10:03.32

Sam Shirazi

The base of the party is frustrated with what's going on. They don't see a really coherent Democratic response in Washington. And some of these grassroots organizations are organizing separate from the Democratic Party to put pressure both on the Democratic Party and on the Trump administration to protest, to do things that are not necessarily always endorsed by the Democratic Party because they feel like there isn't enough going on in Congress to to push back on the Trump administration.

10:35.12

Sam Shirazi

And it might affect Virginia because those groups are going to get involved in the campaign. I think it injects a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of volunteers, a lot of potential donations for Democrats.

10:47.70

Sam Shirazi

At the same time, I think a lot of those people who are getting involved are going to expect the people running in Virginia this year to have a plan to stand up to the Trump administration. They aren't just expecting you know a normal campaign. I think they are they do want to hear more about how the state government, if Democrats get in are going to push back against the Trump administration. Obviously, the state government, there's limited things that they can do in Richmond.

11:13.79

Sam Shirazi

But I mentioned in the first podcast episode, the attorney general has the ability to sue the administration in power if they choose to. There could be a Democratic attorney general after this year's elections.

11:27.52

Sam Shirazi

The governor of Virginia often has a national profile to speak on some of these issues. We saw that with Governor Youngkin during the Biden administration. He would often wade into national politics.

11:39.01

Sam Shirazi

There's obviously other ways the state government can try to push back on the Trump administration. And I think some of these more grassroots democratic organizations are going to expect the politicians this year in Virginia to not just talk about hyper local state issues. I think there is a sense that they want more and want to hear more from politicians.

12:01.38

Sam Shirazi

all Democratic politicians, but obviously the ones who are on the ballot this year about how they can potentially stand up and do do more to to push back on the Trump administration. And I think, as I mentioned in previous episodes, the firing of federal workers is having a big impact on Virginia.

12:20.71

Sam Shirazi

And I think there's a lot the state government could do, both providing resources for those employees, but also trying to just push back on some of the things that Trump administration is doing.

12:32.15

Sam Shirazi

Now, the last thing I wanted to mention on this topic is the topic of primaries. So after what happened in the Senate, a lot of people talked about, well,

12:43.62

Sam Shirazi

It's time to change leadership and even more drastically maybe change the members of Congress through primaries. And you've heard the term thrown around like a progressive or democratic Tea Party. So the Tea Party movement started after Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and started pushing the Republican Party more to take right wing positions.

13:08.50

Sam Shirazi

And that included primary in some members of Congress who they perceived as not being sufficiently right wing. And I think There could be a similar movement, more so in the 2026 midterms for some of these members of Congress on the Democratic side who may not be doing enough in the minds of progressive activists to stand up to the Trump administration that they might face primaries.

13:33.51

Sam Shirazi

I think what's interesting this year in Virginia, relatively, there have not been a lot of primary challengers. in the House of Delegates. So the House of Delegates, all 100 seats are up for reelection.

13:45.10

Sam Shirazi

There are 51 Democratic delegates right now in Virginia. There has been a lot of enthusiasm. So there's been a lot of Democratic candidates filing. There's been a lot of Democratic candidates filing in Republican seats, even seats that are realistically probably not going to be winnable in November. But you see candidates out there who want to contest the seats and give voters an option.

14:10.01

Sam Shirazi

and that's not super surprising because that that basically happened in 2017, we saw a similar thing where Democrats were able to flip a lot of seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. So it's not surprising a lot of Democrats are running and they're running in Republican seats.

14:23.20

Sam Shirazi

I think the only thing that's a little bit surprising is there haven't been a lot of Democrats running in Democratic seats currently held by Democrats. And especially there haven't been a lot of primary challengers.

14:35.31

Sam Shirazi

Now, I will do an episode on primaries and in the House of Delegates, the filing deadlines, April 3rd. I'm just going to wait for that to pass. Realistically, most of the candidates have already filed, and I don't think there's going to be a lot more coming out of the woodwork because April 3rd is coming up.

14:53.85

Sam Shirazi

there'll probably be a few primary challengers to incumbent Democratic delegates. And again, I'll cover that in a future episode, but I thought that was a little bit surprising that we didn't see more of that this year in Virginia, particularly because in 2023, there were a lot of state senators, Democratic state senators who faced primaries and a number of them went down to defeat in the primary.

15:17.50

Sam Shirazi

And so there was a huge changeover in the Virginia Senate in 2023. In theory, there could have been something like that similar in 2025. in the Virginia House of Delegates. I don't necessarily think that's going to happen.

15:28.35

Sam Shirazi

And so anyways, we can talk more about the primary in a future episode. But I did want to just kind of give you this bonus Senate special election. It was a crazy week on Capitol Hill.

15:40.54

Sam Shirazi

I wanted to just kind of touch base on how that might have affected the Virginia elections. Anyways, there's a lot going on, lot of federal fallout from what's going on in D.C.

15:50.68

Sam Shirazi

on the Virginia state elections. I will do my best to cover it all. And thank you for listening. And I will join you next week for federal fallout.

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