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.

00:15.29

Danica Roem

Hey, it’s great to be back, Sam. Thanks so much.

00:17.82

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, 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?

00:29.79

Danica Roem

Bluntly, 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.

00:45.90

Danica Roem

I 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.

00:59.59

Danica Roem

Democratic 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,

01:23.80

Danica Roem

over 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...

01:50.43

Danica Roem

This 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.

02:39.44

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, 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.

02:49.75

Danica Roem

Mm-hmm.

02:51.29

Sam Shirazi

Arguably, 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?

02:59.01

Danica Roem

Okay, 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.

03:27.50

Danica Roem

Democrats 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...

04:04.30

Danica Roem

The 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.

04:17.32

Danica Roem

But 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 that

05:12.91

Danica Roem

Jason 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.

05:26.23

Danica Roem

He 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 that

06:02.82

Danica Roem

If 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.

06:24.71

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, 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.

06:37.48

Sam Shirazi

And 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?

06:50.54

Danica Roem

Number 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,

07:17.05

Danica Roem

In 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 democratic

07:53.44

Danica Roem

And 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,

08:11.34

Danica Roem

Yeah, 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.

08:30.51

Danica Roem

And 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.

08:53.99

Danica Roem

I 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.

09:04.56

Danica Roem

And 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 Democratic fundraising remains really strong, And i think it will considering who’s in the White House right now. And, you know, the president’s certainly not going anywhere anytime soon.

10:12.43

Danica Roem

I would certainly suspect right now that Democrats are going to be much more interested in playing offense than just trying to preserve the status quo. I think, you know, there are definitely seats to be made. And if we had a super majority in both chambers, yeah, that would, that that’s in the realm of possibility. Absolutely.

10:31.83

Sam Shirazi

Well, we’ll certainly see how how competitive all those races end up being in 2027. I did want to talk about Emerge Virginia and its role this year in getting candidates elected. a lot of the candidates that you had worked with and endorsed got elected.

10:46.36

Sam Shirazi

Just wanted to ask you about that generally, and then if there were any surprises among the candidates who ended up winning.

10:52.19

Danica Roem

Yeah, sure. So happy talk about so So in my role as executive director of Emerge Virginia, yeah my job is to recruit and train Democratic women how to run for office. And of the 41 Emerge alums who were on the ballot this year, 32 them won. And keep mind, some of them were in very hard rural areas, like Joy Powers, for example, who was running in an area in rural part of Bedford County and some other areas. That was a seat that was always going to be far upheld climb.

11:22.03

Danica Roem

But it was really important that we were having someone running as hard as she could in a district like that to make sure that we had all 100 districts covered. She absolutely helped the top of the ticket, no doubt about it. And now she’s you know launched a congressional race. Good for her. and you know like Really glad to see that you know she got a platform you know after having the courage to put her name on the ballot. But of the 13 House delegate seats that flipped from red to blue this year, Democratic women won 10 of them. And of those 10, Eight of them were alums from Emerge Virginia. And I personally trained a number of them. So if you just go through, i actually, I trained five of those eight myself between Willie Franklin, Kimberly Pope Adams, Stacy Carroll, Casey Carnegie, and Nicole Cole. you know They all did outstanding work, out so absolutely outstanding time after time. They were so disciplined. They stayed on message and they did all the basics. They made sure that they were knocking their 5,000 plus doors. They were making sure that they were raising, that they not just raising money, but they they were doing consistent call time with a good hard ask. They were staying on the issues that were connecting with voters at the doors, especially on economy affordability.

12:41.02

Danica Roem

I have to say just of those, I knew Lily Franklin and Kimberly Pope Adams were going to win. like There was no question my mind after how close they had come you know the time before. It was just like, all right, let’s go.

12:52.74

Danica Roem

At the same time, Casey Carnegie, I had i had a discussion with Don Scott late last year right before the signature program started. And he was telling me about how important that then Baxter NFC was. And he’s like, you know, that’s really important. See, we got to have it. And I said, you know, like, you know we’ve got a candidate with Casey now, like, you know, i’ll I’ll train her up, make sure that you know she’s in good shape. And I’ll tell you, Casey came around so incredibly well from being a you know local attorney who just wanted to do good by her lifelong home community. to winning every precinct in her primary after reallocation of votes for our early vote and mail-in ballot stuff and provisional back to, well, actually not even provisions back then, but just reallocation of votes back to the precincts.

13:38.58

Danica Roem

And when you look at the response, what she did on the doors, while the other side was going all in on anti-trans messaging about sports and stuff, Casey was talking about affordability, talking about the economy, talking about, those issues day to day. And when I asked her, I said, hey, i want to know, like, I know your district is kind of the Hampton Roads equivalent of suburban Norfolk, for a lack of better words, even though, you know it’s cities and such. was just like, you know what’s how was the how are the you know, how much are you hearing about the doge cuts? How much are you hearing about the federal spending cuts and everything else? And she’s like, Danica, I’m hearing at it about the at the doors every day.

14:30.47

Danica Roem

And Casey fit the mold of that district. She campaigned like she knew the district because she did. And that was really important. And then, i mean, the talk of the town after the this election of for down ballot was Nicole Cole to take on the Dean of the House of Delegates and who had been first elected in 1989 to win that seat. I know on Dwayne Nancy from Cardinal News has written up, you know, kind of an explainer about, you know, how have Caroline County and Spotsylvania County changed. And there lots of people have different takes and stuff.

15:04.77

Danica Roem

Nicole Cole was so disciplined throughout that campaign. And she took the training that we did really seriously. She asked a lot of great questions. Just today, I was actually rewatching part of the fundraising training that we put her through back in January. And, you know, was looking at some of the, you just like watching some of the clip of that, that from questions she was asking.

15:26.38

Danica Roem

And she just ran this, I mean, flawless campaign. She just did everything right. And was was so interesting was we knew that even though Delegate Oroc knew a challenge was coming, I don’t think he understood the breadth of what was what he was going to have to face. Because when he’s out you know donating money to other candidates, which he was doing as of you know like late spring, early summer,

15:58.07

Danica Roem

That to me reminded me of what happened with then delegate Jackson Miller in 2017 when he was out donating to other candidates because he didn’t think that he would be upset by you know Lee Carter that fall. And then he was.

16:11.99

Danica Roem

And It’s just, you know, I called Nicole the next day and I said, welcome to the club of Democratic legislators in Virginia who’ve unseated someone who’s been in office for a quarter century or more.

16:24.40

Danica Roem

And, you know, like when I defeated former delegate Bob Marshall in 2017, he had been in office for 26 years. And in Nicole’s case for her coming from the Spotsylvania County School Board, where she was in her first term in office to unseating the dean of the house.

16:42.11

Danica Roem

I don’t think everyone’s really understood what that means for Virginia right now, because what that means is that where we typically associate the end of planning district eight, Northern Virginia, of Prince William, Manassas, Manassas park, Loudoun, Fairfax, Fairfax County, Falls Church, Alexander, Arlington,

17:04.12

Danica Roem

You go into Stafford and Fredericksburg, yes, those have been emerging battlegrounds. Yes, Joshua Cole did a phenomenal job in his reelection campaign. I was happy to you know campaign for him down there. And then Stacy Carroll, who I also, who’s part of my boot camp this year, she took on Paul Mildy. Paul did not put in his own funding to the degree that a lot of us thought he might be able to do.

17:27.17

Danica Roem

And Stacey was up on every mode of broadcast communication. I was listening to her ads on WTOP, you know, when I’d be driving my car in the morning. So Stacey did a phenomenal job, you know, as a, you know, someone who serves in the West Virginia National Guard and someone who really understands foster issues and everything else in that community.

17:46.91

Danica Roem

But for the end of the excerpts to not end at Fredericksburg, to continue into Spotsy, into Caroline, I remembered...

17:58.94

Danica Roem

After, I think it was around the 2019 election or so, when I was in the House, I had told the caucus once, keep an eye on Spotsylvania.

18:11.22

Danica Roem

It’s an emerging locality for us. I’m not saying it’s there yet, but it’s going to be there. And here I am six years later remembering this and being like, Spotsy’s finally come around. I mean, it went Democratic for governor for the first time since the 80s. I mean, this is...

18:27.50

Danica Roem

Spotsylvania County coming around really should be a five alarm red flag or whatever else that you want to say for the Republicans at that point. Because I, to be honest with you Sam, I don’t know what their path to victory is for having majorities or statewide or anything. If they’re losing Spotsylvania County, if they’re losing Spotsy and Caroline, I mean, like good night, game over, drive home safely.

18:53.45

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, especially Spotsylvania was known as a really Republican core county. And, we you know, we’ll see we’ll see if it becomes more blue and continues that trend over time.

19:05.33

Sam Shirazi

I did want to ask just specifically about the upcoming session. We’re obviously going to have a bunch of new delegates, many of whom your organization has helped. You know, what kind of support do you think they’ll continue to get? And, you know, what is it going to be like when you have such a new big class in the House of Delegates?

19:21.98

Danica Roem

Oh, sure. So of the new House of Delegates coming in for for that, of the 100 members, one quarter of them will be Emerge Virginia alums, which is an incredible tally. You know, when I was running in 2017, there were only two Emerge alums who were in the House at the time, Jennifer Boisko and Kathleen Murphy, who had both flipped seats red to blue. And Jennifer Boisco now serves in the state Senate with me. And Kathleen Murphy, she retired after her last term in 2023. But to see those numbers grow at the time from two, and then we had nine Emerge alums win 2017, went 11. And then we got up to 17 after 2023. And now here we are going into, you know, January 14th and we’re going to have 25 merge lums in the house. That’s, it’s, it’s just a testament to not only the work that we’ve done since I took over on, know, in 2022, but my predecessors, Vina Lothi,

20:22.76

Danica Roem

and Julie Copeland, the jobs that they did. you know Julie was the founding executive director of Emerge Virginia. She’s who taught me how to run for office. And the continuity that we had where you know my fundraising trainer back then was Jamie Menoscalco. And Jamie just came in to help train the next cohort that we had. She flew in to Richmond this past weekend on to help us out. And that was... you know like The current class that we have right now, I’ve got 20 folks you know ready to go, and they just completed their second of five months right now.

20:56.41

Danica Roem

And so you know they’re getting ready for 2026, 2027, and beyond. And I’m really, really stoked to watch where they go because I think... They get to see come January that of the more than 300 Emerge Virginia alumni, 61 of them will be in office come January of next year.

21:17.22

Danica Roem

that’s That’s really special. It’s a really special part of the network in particular. And i just want to say it’s not just you know me, not just even the you know my predecessors as executive directors, it’s what the executive directors from Merge across the country have done you know in their states. you know they’ve just they They pour everything that they have into these trainings and you know you just see the complete utter success that we’ve been having in Virginia and beyond.

21:47.90

Danica Roem

It’s so encouraging. It just really, really, really is. And so what they can expect, obviously, they’re going to you know have complete access to me anytime, but it’s not just those who are in General Assembly and getting alumni support. It’s also our locals.

22:01.67

Danica Roem

Here’s one thing that people don’t necessarily realize. Yes, Abigail Spanberger is an Emerge alum from 2017 and she won. Yes, we won big for the House of Delegates. All 17 of our House alums earned re-election and we are adding in another eight on top of that.

22:19.07

Danica Roem

All six of our local candidates won, including a school board special election in Danville with Trina McLaughlin. And Lucy Pullen is now going to be my new commissioner of the revenue for city Manassas Park. So I’ll actually be one of her constituents and she’ll be one of my constituents, which is really cool.

22:37.63

Danica Roem

And, you know, we had other like Blythe Scott winning reelection. We had Antoinette Irving, the sheriff of Richmond winning reelection. It’s just, it’s really, really exciting to see that it’s every level of government. Keisha Evans and Stafford’s another one who just every level of government where we have that representation.

22:59.17

Danica Roem

i think it matters for your development, for the Democratic bench in general. And at the same time, you know, the House Democratic Caucus is,

23:10.05

Danica Roem

is strongly women. We have 37 Democratic women in the next House of Delegates. There are 36 total Republican delegates in the next House of Delegates. I mean, that’s just, that’s never happened to before. you know And Virginia’s you know government’s been around for 406 years. and so you know and so that’s pretty incredible.

23:32.95

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, certainly a pretty crazy statistic and definitely a lot of Emerge Virginia alumni will be in places of power next year and in Virginia.

23:56.80

Danica Roem

Now it’s what do you do once you won? And i yeah I’m really, really excited to see some of the policy proposals coming to the table. Some of the alums have actually reached out to me and saying like, hey, want to, you know, just I get some questions, I get some ideas I’m trying to, you know, work off of blah, bla blah.

24:13.18

Danica Roem

I love to see it. I’d love to see that they’re diving into policy head for it first. I think some of them are going to be incredibly, incredibly effective legislators.

24:20.26

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, so to that point, I mean, what do you think the General Assembly is going to look like come January for the new session? And I mean, I imagine the Democrats have a lot of bills they want to pass and a lot that they want governors like Spanberger to sign.

24:34.18

Sam Shirazi

You know, how do you kind of balance wanting to get a lot done, but also making sure that some of the priorities that people have in terms of cost of living and affordability are are addressed? Yeah.

24:45.46

Danica Roem

Well, so I think they’re one and the same, right? I think there’s a lot of people who campaigned on affordability, who’ve campaigned on a cost of living, and now we need to go past bills for that, right? And so like HB1 and SB1 is raising the minimum wage.

24:59.83

Danica Roem

I think, you know, making sure we get up to $15 an hour and then indexing that, that’s really, really important. At the same time, we also know... There’s going to be a fiscal impact to the state for that because the Commonwealth is a very large employer for a lot of minimum wage workers once you get into like you know public work and such and so and clerical staff. And so I think it’s really important that people are able to afford to live in the same communities where they work.

25:26.85

Danica Roem

That’s huge. And here’s the way I’ve kind of phrased it in the General Assembly. I’ve said this in the House. I’ve said this in the Senate. If you work, you put in your 40 hours a week, you should be able to afford a studio apartment and you shouldn’t need a second job in order to do it.

25:40.88

Danica Roem

No matter what your job is, if you’re putting in your time, you should be able to afford a home. And What the definition of that is might change region to region across the Commonwealth. but The fact of the matter is in 2025, $15 an hour, or even that it’s really hard to qualify to even get into an apartment for one $15 an hour job. You still need like multiple people in order to do that. It’s just, it’s just so hard to you know pay rent or let alone even like have the idea of a mortgage for that. So you know we’ve got to i think sometimes legislators who haven’t worked minimum wage jobs in a long time can be a little bit detached from that.

26:25.52

Danica Roem

And certainly of the arguments that I’ve heard. But Sam, but I’m a little different than some of the other legislators in many many respects. But my last minimum wage job wasn’t even a full decade ago. it was in 2016 after I had transitioned. It was really, really hard for me to find full-time work. And, you know, I was working for 30 hours a week for $15 an hour for a newspaper, you know, over the bridge in Maryland the Montgomery County Sentinel during the weekdays. And then on the weekends, I was working for $5 an hour plus tip out of my 92 Dodge Shadow delivering information. You know, kebabs throughout Northern Virginia, well, really Arlington and into parts of DC, you know, lost money at that job because, you know i had so many car repair bills on a car that old, that old. And so i have a different perspective than some other folks do. And living here in Manassas park, if I go up the street, if I’m seeing a studio apartment going for 16, $1,700 that to me, you know, a month that to me says, how on earth is someone going to qualify with their first job out of college or assuming they even went to college in the first place? How are they going to qualify for this? This just means you’re having more and more people having to put off homeownership, having to put off expanding and having families, for example. I think there’s a lot to be said here on an affordability agenda that goes beyond just the cost of housing. But then, you know, we’ve got my bill, which is SB4, that would have universal free school breakfast for all kids. So there’s no, you know no cost and kids go in, they get their grab and go breakfast in the morning, have a nice day, make sure every kid gets fed, saves parents hundreds of dollars per school year, streamline stuff administratively.

28:14.70

Danica Roem

for the school system. So it’s really, really win, win, win. That’s an affordability thing right there right then and there. And it’s targeted financial relief for parents who need it the most. And I think that’s really good policy. I’m really, really pleased to see that the Senate caucus actually prioritized it. I think your listeners might get a quick laugh out of the fact that in my going nine years, this will be at my ninth session in offices, the first time I’ve ever had a low number bill. Typically, you spend a lot of time working on fixing roads, feeding kids and fighting data centers for all your bills don’t get a lot of low numbers. But, you know, I’ve passed 60 bills into law for my time, you know, all bipartisan support. So I’m still pretty good at it. But, you know, it’s really nice to see it being prioritized. That’s for sure.

28:58.36

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, well, I imagine you will hopefully get some bills passed and signed because of the trifecta. so So certainly something to look forward to. Another thing that the Democrats have said that they were going to do is redistricting.

29:31.73

Sam Shirazi

You know, you obviously voted for the referendum. I mean, why do you think it’s necessary? And if it passes, you know, I’ll ask you, you may not be able to tell me, do you think it’s going to be a 10-1 math, 9-2 math in terms of the proposed map, like when we might see it and and just move it?

29:48.09

Danica Roem

Yeah, so I served briefly on the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee before going, oddly enough, back to the AC&R Committee. So I started the 2024 session on one day on the i started my twenty twenty the the twenty twenty four session on one day on ag And then I went to P&E, and then I went back to Ag.

30:11.77

Danica Roem

So that kind of got weird. But I’m not going to be on the committee that’s going to be dealing with those lines at the end. So we’ll see you know what the lines are. For your listeners out there, I have as much of an idea as your listeners do about what the lines are going to look like, which is to say, no one knows. like just The lines have not been drawn yet. there’s there There is no map. You know there’s a lot of maps that have been floating around on social media and such. None of them are official maps. So we’ll see what ends up happening.

30:41.24

Danica Roem

At the same time, here’s thing. Okay. Supreme Court says Texas’s gerrymandering is fine. And then you’ve got California to offset Texas.

30:51.61

Danica Roem

Okay. Okay. If those two were the only two states in the entire country where that happened, maybe you go, well, okay. Red state gets redder, blue state gets bluer.

31:04.31

Danica Roem

Leave them alone at that. But what happened? The Trump administration started putting on pressure for states like Indiana to do this, where even one of, you know, a Republican operator from Virginia has been very outspoken against the Indiana legislators who didn’t want to go forward with this. So you’re seeing Indiana proposing a 9-0 map right now. What have you seen in North Carolina this year?

31:29.47

Danica Roem

They’ve now, you know, gone ahead with, uh, legislation to get rid of, Don Davis’s district or to make it a lot more, uh, Republican anyway. But that comes after they had already eliminated three other democratic districts. Right. So that gets into like, okay, who’s going to offset North Carolina. Who’s going to offset Indiana, Indiana.

31:52.01

Danica Roem

And sure, the you the thing out of Utah got kind of weird. And so Democrats benefit from that one of like a plus one. But you’re still down nationwide at that point. So who’s going to offset those losses? Well, here comes Virginia.

32:08.10

Danica Roem

And when a border state of ours, North Carolina, has had four seats swing because of gerrymandering, and you’re seeing other Republican let states across the country, you know, going at this one after the next, after the next, after next, then they cannot expect a passive response.

32:27.32

Danica Roem

It’s just not going to happen, you know? And so we’ll see what the numbers end up being, you know, we’ll just, we’ll, we’ll see what happens when the time comes. But, you know, I certainly, you know, as Senator Sherville said, you know, it’s full steam ahead, you know, no question.

32:40.42

Sam Shirazi

All right. Well, we’ll keep an eye out for that. I don’t want to take up too much your time. Did want to ask you kind of one catch all question at the end. You know, what is something that people should be looking for in 2026 in Virginia, either the General Assembly or redistricting or the congressional races? kind of what What is one thing they should be keeping an eye on?

32:57.68

Danica Roem

I’ll try to answer a whole bunch of those real quick. So legislatively, one thing you should be looking on, I’m going to be crossing my fingers and everything, hoping that this is finally the year that we actually pump the brakes on reckless sprawl for the data center industry, where the JLARC report has said this is not sustainable. We’ve seen PGM’s independent watchdogs say that this not sustainable. And we’re going to have a lot of legislative proposals to start dealing with this multi-trillion dollar industry that is consuming massive amounts of power, water, and land. And maybe, maybe, maybe this will finally be the year that we start seeing a couple of bills or at least, you know, some with with some actual significance get signed. So legislatively, that’s definitely a thing to look out for. in terms of in terms of the next elections, to start dealing with this multi-trillion dollar industry. I think everything’s going to depend on what the new lines look like, right? like I think that’s going to be where everyone’s a focus is going to be.

34:00.00

Danica Roem

I expect you’ll start seeing some candidates announcing for office in January if they haven’t already or if they’re forming exploratory committees. But it very, very well could be that we just have, you know, it could be until spring before you start seeing a whole lot of people come out because they want to see what those lines are going to be. so you know, whether we, you know, pass lines early or whether we wait until after a referendum, you know, or however the process works. stay tuned because there’s going to be a lot of activity you know really, really quickly. And then lastly, big thing to mention is the other constitutional amendments that are going to be up. So we passed on first reference the ones for reproductive rights, the ones for marriage equality, the ones for

34:46.95

Danica Roem

Automatic restoration of voting rights. Those are now going up for second reference. They absolutely will pass both chambers, no question. And those will be going up for statewide referendum as well. And, you know, I expect all three of them to do just fine. hopeful Hopefully, anyway. And the thing is, this will mark the 20th anniversary of the Marshall Newman Amendment that...

35:34.11

Danica Roem

I still remember hitting the no button on that. And it was like a 5743 in favor outcome. It was really heartbreaking. It’s even at a time where we had a Democrat like in Jim Webb winning this, you know, US Senate election against George Allen. You know, the state just wasn’t there yet on marriage equality. And now, I think we have an overwhelming majority of voters who are going to be ready to support that. and So, you know, it really says a lot to make sure that people understand that the more people who come out and the more people who are vulnerable enough to be visible in the first place, the more, you know, people say, hey, it’s not just a concept. This is my friend. This is my family. This is my neighbor. This is my colleague. And they really humanize us and recognize that we’re real people. And, you know, we deserve our rights to be protected as much as anyone else.

36:26.24

Sam Shirazi

Well, that’s a good reminder about those amendments, and I think that’s a good place to leave it. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time. Super interesting, and best of luck in the next General Assembly.

36:35.71

Danica Roem

Hey, well, thank you for making the time for for me, Sam. Thank you for the invitation back. It’s really good talk to you

36:40.65

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, no problem. This has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time.

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