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.

00:20.66

Kevin Holst

Thanks for having me back on.

00:22.34

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, 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?

00:36.62

Kevin Holst

Well, 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 the

01:25.30

Kevin Holst

amount 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.

02:43.05

Kevin Holst

completely 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.

03:13.15

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, 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.

03:23.39

Kevin Holst

Yes.

03:29.29

Sam Shirazi

She 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.

03:40.28

Sam Shirazi

And 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.

03:55.45

Sam Shirazi

Do you think that’s accurate or do you think it’s more complicated?

03:58.81

Kevin Holst

I 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.

04:14.56

Kevin Holst

There, 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.

05:44.07

Kevin Holst

Roy 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,

06:09.25

Kevin Holst

In 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 have

07:14.68

Kevin Holst

performed 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.

07:28.92

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, 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.

07:40.04

Sam Shirazi

And 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.

07:54.39

Sam Shirazi

you 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.

08:05.04

Kevin Holst

Yeah, 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...

08:20.30

Kevin Holst

against 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...

08:38.96

Kevin Holst

could 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.

08:51.21

Kevin Holst

And 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 story

09:41.60

Kevin Holst

So 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.

10:03.59

Kevin Holst

But 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.

10:16.32

Sam Shirazi

Well, 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.

10:42.87

Sam Shirazi

But 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.

10:53.37

Kevin Holst

Yeah. So John Reed denied it was his Tumblr, which, you know we hear a lot of some some crazy made up things in politics, but if you were to go to court and say, prove this isn’t your Tumblr more likely than not, the court would find it is because Who in 2012, 2014 was like, you know, I’m going to create an account with the same location, ip addresses, and username that John Reed has for every other account and just post things that are of interest to him. And why would the account be deleted the day Governor Yunkin...

11:33.87

Kevin Holst

calls John Reed to tell him to drop out before it was leaked to the press three days later. It’s it’s really just, it shows, this is was a great example of how Virginians just couldn’t trust him because you know he couldn’t accept that the account was his.

11:49.42

Kevin Holst

He fought with the governor over it. So that became the bigger story because obviously Governor Youngkin was the leader of the Republican Party. And it was kind of amazing how reided won that fight and damaged Youngkin’s ambitions and showed him that he never really controlled the Republican Party or really had the sway that he thought he did with Virginia voters.

12:11.66

Kevin Holst

I think what did become a big story in some constituents media, the LGBTQ press was huge on this, was the Nazi fetish porn stories that came out in the fall. There were other things happening in Virginia that major outlets were covered rather than this story. But we saw in LGBT media media throughout the country that this was a recurring story. And our press clips, we got this almost every day.

12:40.98

Kevin Holst

So it might not have been in the Washington Post or of the newspapers in Richmond, but it was definitely a story that got out there.

12:48.10

Sam Shirazi

Well, at least we know that the voters in Virginia, at least they decided to to back Ghazal Hashmi and made their own judgment on all the stuff that was discussed during the campaign. And I wanted to just kind of finish the Virginia part of the discussion, just what it was like on your end, you know, day to day doing the campaign, particularly when As you said, you know the lieutenant governor’s race, I feel like got squeezed between all the attention paid to the governor’s race. And then obviously with the attorney general race, the Republicans went on all in on it.

13:20.67

Sam Shirazi

Whereas the lieutenant governor race, I feel like on both sides was a little bit of more of a sleeper race. i mean What was it like on your end trying to you know be be involved in that race?

13:31.34

Kevin Holst

you know We worked very closely with the coordinated campaign and had great relationships with the other statewides. I think one thing that we always forget now that we’re we’re focused on the general election past was just how close the primary was. i generally have a good idea of whom the nominee will be in a particular race. The DLGA multi-candidate primaries does not take a position in primaries typically.

13:54.90

Kevin Holst

And I remember doing a poll on the LG primary week before, and the three candidates were at 29, 28, and 27. And I thought to myself, what a waste of money. This will be like 2021. One candidate is going get 40% and win by margin of 10%.

14:13.12

Kevin Holst

Then turned on my polls pretty accurate when Gazzala was ahead by 5000 votes and then LeVar was 1000 votes ahead of Aaron Rouse. So she entered the campaign broke. All the Democratic primary candidates were broke because they were fighting to win the nomination. So, you know, we made a very large investment. We gave her a million dollars the day after the primary, which I think helped set a level of level of seriousness for the campaign where John Reed Had this opening where they’re like if there is a damaged Democratic nominee, maybe we can drop winsome and try to boost read and hold the AG seat But it caused a lot of people to say there’s no point in even trying to help read it’s time to coalesce around the artists because He was never going to catch up with us on fundraising John Reed Said that the DLJ’s donation was you know

15:09.32

Kevin Holst

far-left Soros pro-Hamas money. i can tell you George Soros has never donated to the DLGA, nor has Hamas or anyone connected with Hamas. We are proud of our donors throughout the country who contribute $5, $10, $25 to our efforts.

15:24.81

Kevin Holst

But it was great getting to know Ghazala. She loves to say she’s a mild-mannered English professor, but she is really in this for the right reasons. And we’re really fortunate to have someone like her step up. mean, she got into politics because of Trump’s Muslim ban and her daughter calling her saying, should I carry my passport around? Her daughter was born in the US, but being brown, being Muslim, she was like, rather than sit by and hear the fear of my daughter’s voice i’m gonna do something about this and she just has a core moral conviction in what she’s doing to make life better for everyone that is really unique in politics today especially as we have so many people throughout the country dismayed about our leaders and their motivations it’s just it was really great to be able to

16:20.62

Kevin Holst

spend time and get to know a leader like Gazala, who is in it for the right reasons. She’s data driven, she’s always thinking about how government can improve the lives of everyone across the state.

16:33.56

Sam Shirazi

And so now that she’s been elected, she will obviously become the lieutenant governor. The main role is to be presiding over the Virginia Senate. You know, what do you think she will be like as lieutenant governor? And what do you think some of her priorities will be?

16:46.70

Kevin Holst

I mean, she’s a key player in state government now, because as you know, we had a blowout election in the House of Delegates, but the Senate wasn’t up. We still just have a one seat majority and we cannot always count on every Democrat in the Senate to be unified on any issue.

17:04.33

Kevin Holst

So if we want Governor Spanberger’s agenda to pass swiftly, it’s going to fall on Ghazala Hashmi to ensure that they are building the coalitions necessary in the state Senate and be that tie-breaking vote, which is inevitably going to occur at some point throughout session.

17:23.84

Kevin Holst

I know she she ran on lowering costs, fully funding public education and creating opportunity. I know she has a pretty robust transition team right now, which is focusing on her policy priorities in that area. But one thing I’ve learned about Gazala is that if she makes a promise about something, she comes through with it. And so I can imagine that’s going to be the bulk of her policy focus in the next session.

17:48.28

Sam Shirazi

Got it. Well, yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how she does as lieutenant governor and 2026 will be interesting here in Virginia. and speaking of 2026, did want to kind of shift focus to the midterms of for the end of the discussion and specifically about kind of big picture Democrats’ goals for the midterms, your organization’s goals, and kind of the question of how ambitious should they become? Because I think after you win in New Jersey and Virginia, like the Democrats did, there’s a temptation to want to go big.

18:18.46

Sam Shirazi

But obviously, you know, just because one election happened one way in 2025 doesn’t mean it’s going to happen the same way in 2026. So kind of what are your thoughts on that?

18:27.35

Kevin Holst

We have a lot of opportunity, but the midterms were historically better for Democrats in 2022 and obviously 2018. We all have our own priorities and fights among our fights being like, I’m taking the fight to Republicans the 10 governors, DTRIP to Republicans in Congress.

18:46.99

Kevin Holst

For our sister committees, I have 31 races for lieutenant governor next year, and i have some top pickup opportunities like in Nevada. We’ve recruited an incredible candidate, Sandra Howdy, who is the state assembly majority leader in Nevada, daughter of immigrants.

19:03.95

Kevin Holst

She is a survivor of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting and turned her grief into action and is the author and champion of every major piece of gun violence prevention legislation in Nevada. She will be the only Latina on the statewide ballot in Nevada next year. And she was endorsed by Sanders Cortez Masto, Rosen, Attorney General Ford, who is the front runner for the Democratic nomination for governor right now. Vermont is another interesting pickup for us where a Republican won that election in 2024.

19:38.25

Kevin Holst

twenty twenty four People think Vermont is Bernie Sanders socialist blue, but Phil Scott is the most popular governor in the country. He’s a Republican with an 80% approval rating in Vermont. So that is going to be interesting for us next year. and We have a some states that we need to hold, like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas. And then what’s unique about us at the DLGA is we don’t just flip seats from red to blue. for our Lutang governors. We support our Lutang governors throughout their political journey.

20:12.68

Kevin Holst

And so we have some Lutang governors who are running for higher office right now, whom we have endorsed, and some of which we’ve made financial commitments to. Our Lutang governor in New Jersey just announced today, we’re recording this on Tuesday, that she’s running for Congress. The DLGA has endorsed her. We have our lieutenant governors in Illinois and Minnesota running for U.S. Senate. We’ve endorsed and made financial commitments in Wisconsin. Our lieutenant governor, Sarah Rodriguez, is running for governor, and we will be spending $2 million dollars in her primary to ensure that she’s the Democratic nominee for governor.

20:46.27

Kevin Holst

So I will be running around with my hair on fire because i have 31 races for UTank governors. I have a bunch of others running for higher office, but i think we have an opportunity.

20:57.75

Kevin Holst

Trump has overstepped. He has said that he was going to lower costs and many voters voted for him in 2024 based on the economy and saying that he could bring prices down. Things have only gotten more expensive.

21:09.84

Kevin Holst

And then his tariffs have caused it to become even more expensive on top of that. We’re seeing some sectors deal with double digit and sometimes even triple digit price increases. And so Republicans fundamentally are not governing.

21:26.16

Kevin Holst

Their idea of governing is just whatever Trump’s daily whim is and whatever he posts on truth social and that’s not a serious governing coalition or party. So it’s on us to talk about how we are actually going to improve lives for Americans across the country And it’s a very different message at the federal level because, of course, we need to take back the House. We need to do everything we can to have a good shot of taking back the Senate. But at the state level, state politics is very different and voters think about it differently. State and local politics affects your life immediately, while most things at the federal level can take months and sometimes even years for it to be felt. So people know whom their governor is. They know whom their mayor is. And they care about are their roads paved? Is their trash picked up on time? Are their kids going to good quality schools? And that’s why we’ve been able to see

22:20.91

Kevin Holst

People like Laura Kelly and Lieutenant Governor David Toland win as Democrats in Kansas, in a state that hasn’t gone for a Democrat at the federal level, think, in over 100 years. That’s why we’ve won in very tough places, and have good shots in states like Iowa next year, and why we’re primed to flip Nevada next.

22:43.72

Kevin Holst

And so i think we should be ambitious, but we also have to be very clear headed with our candidates that we get the right candidates and that they’re running on the right messages that resonate with voters.

22:56.66

Sam Shirazi

Well, I wanted to talk about one race because it’s kind of interesting to me, and it specifically talks about the issue about how state elections are different than federal elections, and that is in Vermont. So a lot of people don’t know this, but Vermont has a Republican lieutenant governor. I think you mentioned that when you were discussing it. And I wanted to just kind of get your sense of, you know, when these types of races happen, how do you kind of deal with those kind of quirks in states that are not necessarily going to be a federal election is really going to be a much more state oriented election.

23:29.25

Kevin Holst

yeah So many people really don’t appreciate that Vermont kind of had a red wave in 2024. Of the 150 seats in the House Representatives, Republicans picked up 19 seats and Democrats had a super majority before and lost that. And then in the state Senate, there are 30 seats in the Republicans won six and got to 13 seats. So like really had headline of sight almost at tying with the, with Democrats. And we saw, know, we lost the 10 governors election 2024. Phil Scott endorsed Kamala Harris. He’s not your average Trump Republican. has an 80% approval rating. his approval rating among Democrats might actually be higher. My native state of Massachusetts, we saw that Charlie Baker, when he was Republican governor, had a higher approval rating among Democrats than he did Republicans.

24:25.51

Kevin Holst

So i say a lot of this is personality-driven. There was a backlash to property tax increases that the legislature imposed in Vermont 2024, which Phil Scott, you know, hugged the Republican Lutang governor nominee and all down ballot candidates and his popularity translated into big wins for them in 24. It’s to be determined if Phil Scott runs again. he’s His first election was in 2016.

24:55.44

Kevin Holst

you know He will go on 10 years as governor, which is a very long time. He doesn’t make his announcement until May, usually, which is when the Vermont session wraps up.

25:06.21

Kevin Holst

If he does not run for re-election, we’re going to flip the governor’s office and lieutenant governor’s office. No questions asked. It will happen. If he runs for election, it becomes harder. But at the DLGA, we still have a clear line of sight to take out the Republican lieutenant governor, John Rogers, who is kind of a gun nut and doesn’t really focus on anything of note. He’s a former Democrat who switched to Republican to run for lieutenant governor 2024. He will probably run for governor if Phil Scott does not run for reelection, but he will not win. It’s going to be a pretty active primary. We are speaking to all of the candidates. It’s a very late primary. It’s August 11th in Vermont. Imagine Virginia, if we were still going through our

25:57.17

Kevin Holst

primaries in August rather than June. So whomever the Democratic nominee is in Vermont, the DLGA is fully behind them and we’ll be focused on making sure we can flip the seat and take it back.

26:10.99

Sam Shirazi

Well, it’s certainly going to be an interesting race. I did want to ask one last question, kind of on a lighter note, because, you know, we obviously went through a long campaign here in Virginia and it doesn’t seem like it, but campaign folks are also human beings. And, you know, I just wanted to get a sense of what you’re, you don’t really have that much downtime, but what you did kind of decompress from the election and if you took any time off or did anything fun to get a, take a break after the Virginia elections and New Jersey.

26:40.45

Kevin Holst

Every year is an election year at the DLGA. Some are crazier than others. We had two this year, and like I said, I have 31 LG elections and a couple for higher office next year. So unfortunately did not get any time off, but we will be visiting my in-laws in Mexico for the last two weeks the year. closed the DLGA offices for the last two weeks to...

27:05.00

Kevin Holst

sort of force my team to have some downtime and recharge because you know this is a very intense business that can lead to a lot of burnout so i will happily be in mexico for the holidays yeah thanks for having me on sam

27:16.52

Sam Shirazi

Well, I hope that you’re going to be able to relax a little bit and everyone can relax over the holidays. Kevin, I really appreciate you coming on and talking about the LG race in Virginia.

27:27.85

Sam Shirazi

All right. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time.

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