Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over some lessons that both parties can learn from the Virginia elections this year, because obviously, after the results came in, it was clear that the Democrats had a very good night in Virginia.

00:16.72

Sam Shirazi

And so when you have a big election like this with a big swing towards one party, the party that wins can certainly learn some lessons that they can apply to future elections. And the party that loses can also learn lessons more what not to do. So I want to kind of go over what the Democrats got right this year in Virginia and perhaps what the Republicans got wrong.

00:37.41

Sam Shirazi

And before I go into those details, I did want to say like national environment, state environment, a lot of that is very difficult for a campaign to change. So as I’ve noted in Virginia, almost every single governor election, the party out of the White House wins.

00:54.10

Sam Shirazi

And so that’s just to say the Democrats had a lot of advantages structurally built in. Republicans had a lot of challenges. And so as much as we kind of microanalyze every part of a campaign,

01:06.15

Sam Shirazi

Sometimes the environment carries you a long way. I will say, though, given the scale of the Democratic victory, I think it’s clear that this was not just the environment. Because it was the environment, you’d expect, okay, maybe Spanberger would win closer to the Northam number of 9%.

01:21.62

Sam Shirazi

Instead, given the scale of her win, it’s clear that her campaigns did some things right and the Republican campaigns did some things wrong because you just don’t see that level of a win unless something went right and something went wrong.

01:33.83

Sam Shirazi

So I will go over some lessons that Democrats can learn for 2026. Conversely, obviously things that Republicans might try to change before then. Now, before I get into it, one last thing, and I wanted to talk about turnout and persuasion. And I’m going to talk about those in different sections. So, you know as I mentioned, there’s often this debate about turnout and persuasion, which one’s more important, which one caused the victory.

01:56.27

Sam Shirazi

You need both. And typically when you see huge swings like this, it’s both. So that means the party that wins has persuaded voters in the middle to to go over to their side.

02:07.75

Sam Shirazi

And they’ve also brought out their core supporters. So I think in this election, there was clearly both turnout and persuasion. Democrats got better turnout and they did better job persuading the voters in the middle and getting them to vote for the Democrats this year.

02:22.48

Sam Shirazi

So I just kind of wanted to lay that out there because sometimes you hear things like, oh this was all about turnout. The Democrats had good turnout and the Republicans had bad turnout. I think the reality is both in Virginia and New Jersey,

02:33.28

Sam Shirazi

There were people who voted for Donald Trump, who voted for the Democrats this year. There were people who perhaps didn’t vote in 2024 that came out for the Democrats. So the Democrats were able to win voters that traditionally are not Democratic voters.

02:48.54

Sam Shirazi

So first, I’ll talk about the Democrats, what they did right. And I wanted to start with persuasion.

02:53.71

Sam Shirazi

So persuasion, again, is the idea of reaching those voters in the middle. And I think the advantage Spanberger had is she and her campaign probably knew the Democrats were going to come out because they were upset this year in Virginia. So she could spend a lot of time on persuasion trying to convince the voters in the middle.

03:11.01

Sam Shirazi

And there’s been a lot made about her message and talking about cost of living and all that. And I thought, and mean I mean, that all makes sense. I mean, I think her focus on cost of living economy, that was clearly the top of mind issue.

03:22.37

Sam Shirazi

Her message was clear. She was opposing what President Trump was doing in terms of the federal cuts. She was opposing the tariffs. And I think the link to the economy was the key for her.

03:33.42

Sam Shirazi

So see she didn’t just say, you know, Trump is bad. Trump is doing all these horrible things. She’s saying Trump is doing these things that are hurting our economy and are hurting your pocketbook.

03:43.72

Sam Shirazi

And The federal cuts are are hurting Virginia in terms of job losses. The tariffs are increasing costs. So I think tying President Trump and the Trump administration to specific economic policies that are hurting people is a strong message.

03:57.66

Sam Shirazi

And it’s a stronger message than just saying Trump is bad. And I think that’s part of the success that Spanberger had. Which, you know, it makes sense and it’s not necessarily super complicated.

04:07.97

Sam Shirazi

i think the thing that was underappreciated about the Spanberger campaign was her message discipline. And message discipline is very difficult. And it’s very difficult, particularly when you have someone like President Trump and kind of the Republican Party now that has become kind of shaped by President Trump. And the reason I say this is the Republicans tried a lot of things to get Spanberger off message.

04:32.18

Sam Shirazi

you know We talked about it in the summer. They went all in on the trans issue, and it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. But eventually the polling showed that. But at the beginning, you know you don’t know. i think Democrats were certainly nervous about it Given the results in 2024, they didn’t want to take anything for granted.

04:51.54

Sam Shirazi

So I do think Spanberger, you know, she she addressed it when she had to, but she did not want to make the election a referendum on the trans issue. Because I think, you know, we’ve talked about this before, and some of the way, depending on how you frame it, it’s possible the democrat the Republican position is stronger.

05:08.06

Sam Shirazi

But the salience of the issue is not that important. And I think the Spam Worker campaign understood that and and understood that, you know, if you just stick to your message about the economy and Earl Sears all day is talking about the trans issue, most people are going to say, like, look, my concern is the economy. So I don’t know why you’re talking so much about the trans issue.

05:27.16

Sam Shirazi

and then the other thing I want to talk about message discipline was obviously what happened with Jay Jones and the text. So that was kind of the October surprise and the thing the Republicans wanted to talk about the entire campaign for the, when the story came out.

05:42.36

Sam Shirazi

And I think obviously Spanberger had to address that. She tried to take this position where she didn’t fully endorse Jones. She didn’t necessarily disown him. It was a kind of a tough balancing act for her.

05:54.38

Sam Shirazi

But she didn’t want to make the entire campaign about Jay Jones because she understood that was not going to be good for her. She wanted to keep the focus on the economy. So she addressed it when she had to, but she didn’t lose track of what was going on and she wanted to focus on the economy.

06:09.83

Sam Shirazi

And so I think that is just a very difficult thing to do. I mean, it’s easier said than done. Obviously, message discipline. Yeah, it’s important. Talk about the economy. Yes. But in the day to day, when all these stories come out or President Trump every single day is doing something, he’s posting something every single day is doing something. It’s a little bit different trying to throw the Democrats off.

06:30.96

Sam Shirazi

And I think for a long time, the Democrats would take the bait. Every every single post Trump did. They felt like they had to push back on it. And I think the lesson of the Spamberg campaign is you just have to have your message discipline and just focus and hammer the issue. If your issue is economy and you’re saying President Trump’s making the economy worse, just hammer that issue and don’t necessarily get sidetracked by every single thing that President Trump is doing.

07:20.29

Sam Shirazi

I did want to talk about the turnout side. So turnout is different than persuasion in that you know that these voters, they’re going to vote for you. It’s just a challenge to get them out because they may be low propensity voters.

07:32.15

Sam Shirazi

And these typically fall into different categories. usually they’re younger. Usually they are more working class. And For the Democratic coalition, this tends to be non-white voters who are working class and younger voters like college students. And, you know, it’s very tricky in non-presidential years to get these voters out.

07:53.71

Sam Shirazi

And I think often in Virginia, the Democrats don’t do a great job getting these voters out in the state elections. But I think that there were specific examples where the Democrats did a good job. And I’m going highlight yeah maybe four different examples with four different groups.

08:08.54

Sam Shirazi

So the first is in Loudoun. Loudoun County always gets a lot of attention. the media always focused on Loudoun. Spanberger did really well in Loudoun. It reverted back to kind of the traditional, you know, advantage Democrats had in Loudoun before 2024.

08:24.57

Sam Shirazi

And a lot of that was, I think, getting out and persuading you know South Asian Indian voters and also Muslim voters to go back to the Democrats to come out and vote for the Democrats.

08:34.82

Sam Shirazi

And I heard things on the ground like they were trying different approaches, for example, kind of person to person contact through the Telegram app. So the Telegram app, some people use it, I think, in immigrant communities, it’s more popular.

08:47.63

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, it’s different than a normal text message that, you know, maybe a text messaging service will send out for elections. You kind of have to know the community. The community needs to know where it’s coming from. They have to trust the the the message. So I think the Democrats in Loudoun were able to kind of organize that way. And I think it’s a really important way for Democrats to reach the immigrant community in certain parts of the country. And I think it’s something that Democrats can learn for the midterms in 2026.

09:16.08

Sam Shirazi

Okay, wanted to talk about a different group that Democrats did a pretty good job getting out. And those are black voters in different parts of Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond area. And there were certainly a few House of Delegates seats that were decided by this. And the Democrats, part of the reason they got a big blue wave in the House of Delegates, they were able to get out the black voters in the critical House of Delegates seats.

09:37.24

Sam Shirazi

And I’ll just flag one, House District 82, it was 45% Black, very kind of polarized district. Most of the Black voters are Democrats, most of the white voters are Republicans. So it’s kind of who can get out more of their base.

09:48.87

Sam Shirazi

Kimberly Pope Adams won that race because she was able to get out voters, particularly in the city of Petersburg. And, you know, it’s it’s just one of those things. Democrats spent a lot of time on that. you know She had been running, Kimberly Pope Adams ran in 2023. She basically kept running after that race.

10:05.59

Sam Shirazi

And it takes... months, years to kind of build a campaign to do that. And I think oftentimes you hear in communities, you know, the Democrats come on election day, but they’re never there otherwise. I think in order to get those voters out, you need to be in the community for a while.

10:19.98

Sam Shirazi

And Kimberly Pope Adams, she put in the time, she put in the effort. She was able to get those voters out. That’s why the Democrats were able to flip that seat. you know, if those voters didn’t show up, it wasn’t going happen in that district. And and honestly, I was, you know, it was very hard for me to predict because I think there’s a temptation to say, the Democrats will never get the voters out in that district. And so Kim Taylor will, the incumbent will win because the Democrats can’t get their voters out. I think a lot of people were kind of thinking that maybe in the back of their head.

10:47.38

Sam Shirazi

But as the results came in, Kimberly Pope Adams was able to get out those voters and she was able to win. So again, i think you have to, you can’t just go there on election day. it has to be weeks and months of organizing in order to do that.

10:59.85

Sam Shirazi

Okay, give you another example of how you need to do that. And that’s what college students. So college students are notoriously difficult to get out. Again, you need weeks and months of organizing to get them out.

11:11.40

Sam Shirazi

And I will use the example of House District 41. This is in Virginia Tech area, Blacksburg. Lily Franklin was able to do that. And she just, you know, she another candidate that lost in 2023, it was very clear she was going to run again.

11:26.66

Sam Shirazi

And she spent, frankly, two years trying to figure out how to get the college students out in Virginia Tech. She and her team went out and organized. They registered students. They tried to get them go vote early.

11:38.52

Sam Shirazi

They got them out on election day. They used same-day registration. The thing that was amazing about this race, I mean, I think most people thought, okay, Lily Franklin’s probably going to win this time. But she didn’t even have to wait for the same-day registrations because the same-day registrations are provisional ballots. They take some time to count.

11:53.42

Sam Shirazi

But Lily Franken did such a good job registering voters and getting them to vote on election day or before that she won an election night. And I think probably in hindsight, that’s probably her goal because she wanted to win an election night, and she did.

12:07.22

Sam Shirazi

And again, the lesson is it takes a lot of time in organizing. You cannot just show up on election day and expect a bunch of college students to vote. At those universities, you have to be organizing weeks, months in advance. You have to be registering them in advance.

12:22.01

Sam Shirazi

Even if Virginia has same day registration, it just takes a long time to get students to do same day registration on election day. The polls, the lines of the polls are going to be super long if you don’t.

12:32.97

Sam Shirazi

and get enough voters registered ahead of time. So you can’t just rely on saving registration to save you. You really do have to organize ahead of time. I think Lily Franklin knew that. And that was part of the reason that she won that race. Okay.

12:44.87

Sam Shirazi

Wanted to talk about one other community really quickly. And that is the Hispanic community. I’ll talk about how twenty two house district house district 22 that is in middle Prince William County.

12:56.43

Sam Shirazi

Elizabeth Guzman, she was able to win in a very healthy margin, much more than I think most people expected. I think a lot of people thought that race is going to be really close. She won with, I think, around like eight points. Very strong win for Elizabeth Guzman.

13:10.38

Sam Shirazi

She is known for organizing, knocking doors. And I think, obviously, she comes from Hispanic community. That district had a decent amount of Hispanic voters. Kind of notoriously, they don’t necessarily show up for the state elections. And I think the other issue is In 2024, Democrats lost a lot of ground with Hispanic voters. There was a lot of talk about, you know, can Democrats do well, both in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats did well with Hispanic voters.

13:34.23

Sam Shirazi

I think the lesson here is... you know, don’t give up at any group of voters. I think there was a little bit of despair after the 2004 election about why did Hispanic voters go over to Trump? It doesn’t make sense. You know, obviously Trump is doing all these things on immigration that are going to hurt the Hispanic community.

13:51.63

Sam Shirazi

I think Democrats, you know, they went through the process and worked to win back those voters and win back the trust of those voters and get those voters out. I think it it worked both in Virginia and New Jersey. So long story short, i mean, I think As much as you want to focus on persuasion and reaching the voters in the middle, and that’s important, you also have to think about all these different communities that make up the Democratic coalition and try to get out each different part of the Democratic coalition. And they may all require different types of messaging.

14:22.80

Sam Shirazi

And it’s hard. It’s not easy. But in order to win elections, you have to do all of it. And you know I’ll just end on one note with Spanberger. There was this clip that was kind of... And interesting, at the closing days of the campaign, she held a Hispanic outreach event.

14:39.14

Sam Shirazi

And at the event, she spoke Spanish. And I think a lot of people were surprised because they weren’t necessarily expecting Spanberger to know Spanish and to speak it. And i I heard anecdotally that that clip was kind of sent around the Hispanic community.

14:50.84

Sam Shirazi

Now, obviously, not every candidate is going to speak. be able to speak the language of every community. But I do think having kind of native language material and videos and information for voters, reaching them where where they are, frankly, just making an effort.

15:05.23

Sam Shirazi

I mean, a lot of these voters, you know, they know that, you know, they probably know English, but they’re trying to, they appreciate it when you make the effort and you try to speak in the language that they may speak at home. And I think,

15:18.27

Sam Shirazi

All that’s to say is there’s a lot that goes into a campaign. And when you do all these things right, you get a big win like the Democrats got on Tuesday night. All right. Now.

15:28.46

Sam Shirazi

Let’s go over what didn’t work and what didn’t go right for the Republicans in Virginia. i will go through the same kind of thing about persuasion versus turnout.

15:39.28

Sam Shirazi

On the persuasion side of things, I think the Republicans need to have a little bit of soul searching about the message they had and this year in Virginia. And I wanted to talk about a phrase that i maybe have used before, but I wanted to bring it up again. And it’s called X is not real life.

15:56.21

Sam Shirazi

So as I mentioned and in the previous iteration of xs known as Twitter, there was an expression, Twitter is not real life, because there was a sense that progressive activists were spending too much time on Twitter and their entire world worldview was shaped by Twitter and they were losing track of what was going on in the real world.

16:12.17

Sam Shirazi

I think once Elon Musk bought Twitter X and turned it into X, a lot of people left X and it has become a very right leaning site.

16:23.97

Sam Shirazi

Now, am still there and I think, you know, I find there’s a lot of interesting people in it and there’s a lot of value in X, but there’s certainly increasingly a lot of random crazy stuff on there, a lot of trolls, a lot of bots.

16:36.63

Sam Shirazi

It’s hard to really use it sometimes because it is so kind of filled with that stuff. So my point is, and you may be saying like, why are you spending so much time on X? Not that many people are on X and it’s it’s kind of this niche thing.

16:51.58

Sam Shirazi

To be perfectly honest, there are still a decent amount of political journalists. And I think the real important problem for the Republicans is a lot of political consultants and Republican kind of political elites get a lot of their news, a lot of their time and energy is spent on X and and maybe Truth Social. To be honest, I’m not on Truth Social. Maybe that’s part of the problem, too. But I do know on X there is a lot of...

17:14.25

Sam Shirazi

kind of groupthink and a lot of time spent on X. And I think the problem that Winston Earl Sears campaign had and this is kind of a basic problem they had, was they tried to reboot things in around July. And I think they my sense was they brought on some consultants to change some of her messaging.

17:32.39

Sam Shirazi

And those consultants basically measured success with X social media engagement and maybe engagement on other platforms.

17:41.47

Sam Shirazi

But as I mentioned, X is not real life. And I think certainly on the trans side of things, X was not real life. I mean, i I would see a lot of stuff about the trans issue on X. I talked about the sign in Arlington. So I’ll talk about Arlington because I live in Arlington. There was an incident with the sign in Arlington.

17:58.98

Sam Shirazi

in August, obviously inappropriate sign. It shouldn’t have happened. This is when Earl Sears went to a Arlington school board meeting, talked about the trans issue, and then someone held up an an inappropriate sign outside.

18:10.11

Sam Shirazi

Now, to be perfectly honest, it was a random person holding up a sign. They shouldn’t have held up that sign, but you know you know the Republicans tried to make it like this huge deal and wanted to make the entire election, at least in those few weeks, about this sign. And it’s like, look I get it. You’re trying to run your campaign. You’re trying to get your voters somewhat engaged.

18:30.54

Sam Shirazi

But like no one in the real world cares about this stuff. I mean, they care about their own lives. They care about putting food on the table, keeping their job. you know In terms of education, to the extent they care about education, it is they want their schools to be good. They want to have the teachers having the resources.

18:47.77

Sam Shirazi

I mean, that is what people care about. And you know the fact that you... Earl Sears would post over and over about the trans stuff. It just was really odd. And I think I got comments from a lot of people, not necessarily Democrats, like it’s just weird how much she’s spending on this one random issue. And and I think part of it is just the hyper kind of fixation of stuff on X. The last thing I would say about this is just, you know, there was a there was an ad that Earl Sears made and, you know, it was basically an attack ad against Spanberger on the trans issue.

19:20.09

Sam Shirazi

And there was line, they basically used a video of Spanberger and the quote was essentially, you know, are what Spanberger said was our LGBTQ neighbors have the same legal rights as the rest of us.

19:31.43

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, to me, it was very odd that they would use that ad in Virginia as an attack ad, because frankly, most Virginians probably agree with that statement. And so I just don’t know where they were thinking this was a good idea.

19:45.93

Sam Shirazi

So anyways, that was enough on the... The trans issue, the last point about persuasion I want to talk about was the Jay Jones text. Obviously, that’s a different type of story. It was the candidate directly.

19:57.38

Sam Shirazi

It did have an impact on the AG race. I think that the challenge the Republicans had was they kind of gave up on any sort of message at the end other than the Jay Jones text.

20:08.47

Sam Shirazi

And it reminded me of what the Democrats did in 2021 in Virginia with Trump. So in 2021, The Democratic message was essentially Trump is bad. you know, don’t vote for going on because that would give you Trump a win. and And every single time, like the response of the Democrats was Trump, Trump, like, you know, in 2021.

20:26.33

Sam Shirazi

Arguably, it worked in 2025 because that’s Trump is the president. But. I saw the Republicans kind of trying to do that with Jay Jones this time. So like every time, anytime something came up, they would just say, oh, but Jay Jones is bad or Jay Jones texts are bad.

20:39.14

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I get it. Like you’re you’re on the other side. You’re trying to use that against the Democrats. But like it just didn’t work. And, and you know, Jay Jones himself won because, again, at the end of the day, like most people – they might If they look at those texts, or like, those are not good texts. I would not want you know someone to send those. And you know that’s not a great thing that Jay Jones did.

21:02.63

Sam Shirazi

But again, i care about putting food on the table, my kids’ school. I care about you know these types of normal issues. I’m worried about losing my job. And so if all the Republicans are talking about are the Jay Jones texts, you’re not talking about the actual issues people care about.

21:19.14

Sam Shirazi

And so I kind of closed the persuasion section for the Republicans. with a warning that you know you really need to keep a pulse on what the average person is thinking and maybe spend less time on X.

21:32.18

Sam Shirazi

you know That is not the way the world thinks necessarily, just because there’s a bunch of people on X who are saying things. And frankly, you know the way I understand X works, there are a lot of bots. I don’t know if they’re foreign. I don’t you know i have no idea, but like you just cannot base your worldview on what’s going on.

21:48.39

Sam Shirazi

On X, I think that’s also good point for the Democrats, you know to the extent that they’re spending too much time on social media, it’s generally not a good idea. It’s usually a better idea to go and talk to the voters.

21:58.42

Sam Shirazi

Okay, one last thing on Republicans. So Republicans, they did have a turnout problem this year in Virginia. Certain parts of Virginia, particularly Southwest Virginia, did not come out at the same rate as other parts of Virginia. And in terms of the low propensity voters, I’d say Democrats did a better job at getting out their low propensity voters.

22:16.63

Sam Shirazi

Again, This is part of the dynamic about the party out of the White House. It’s just easier to motivate your voters if they’re angry. It’s easier for your voters to get complacent if you are already in power in D.C.

22:28.35

Sam Shirazi

So I don’t necessarily fault the Republicans too much for the turnout side of things because it is just always the dynamics you see in these off-year elections. You know, and and frankly, neither party has really unlocked this issue of what do you do when you’re in power? How do you turn out your voters? Because Typically, anger is a very strong motivator.

22:51.63

Sam Shirazi

I would say the closest success either side has had was probably in 2022 and maybe 2023 in Virginia, where the Democrats, they were in power in D.C., but they were able to somehow get enough voters out to not get blown out because i think that was unique with the Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe. There was enough anger at that directed at the Supreme Court. The Democrats were able to get decent turnout.

23:17.63

Sam Shirazi

But you know it’s just a problem that the party in power has. you know To the extent the Republicans, again, were maybe trying, i think part of the issue with the trans issue and then the Jay Jones text, it was more so trying to persuade people to get off the couch and go vote as opposed to trying to persuade voters in the middle.

23:40.22

Sam Shirazi

It was to try to motivate their voters. And you know you could argue maybe if they didn’t do that, fewer people would have showed up on the Republican side. I don’t really, you know i don’t have some magic formula about how do you get out these low propensity voters.

23:53.88

Sam Shirazi

I do think the Republicans have to think about that because I think that’s going to be an issue again in the midterms. i My sense is they’ll probably use Trump. I think he’ll try to do more rallies. But the problem like.

24:05.53

Sam Shirazi

That was a problem in Virginia. Like if Trump came and did a big rally in Virginia, that would probably get a decent amount of attention and, you know, might enthuse some of his supporters to come out. The problem is, you know, Trump was not a popular figure in Virginia during this election, so he really couldn’t do that. Maybe next year in the midterms in some of the rather redder states, maybe Trump can come out. But obviously, the Democrats are going to use that against Trump.

24:29.64

Sam Shirazi

Trump and they’re going to attack Trump. So long story short, I mean, I do think it’s a challenge for the party in the White House. And you know I’d be curious to see if anyone comes up with some magic formula, because I will warn the the Democrats about this, because eventually they will probably be back in power in DC, and they’re going to have this problem again. So as much as I like to think about 2025, Democrats had a good year, but I’m just talking about hypothetically, let’s say in theory, Democrats win 2028 presidential election.

24:59.29

Sam Shirazi

There will be a governor’s election in 2029. And if they are in power in D.C., they are going to have the problem the Virginia Republicans had this year. And so i I may be thinking way too far ahead, but I do think the Democrats down the line have to think about what are they going to do in the future when they’re in power? Because obviously in 2021, they got a little bit complacent. They thought Virginia’s a blue state. We’re going to win the governor’s election.

25:24.58

Sam Shirazi

And there was a huge swing. And Glenn Youngkin was able to win. So all that’s to say, i think the Democrats also have this turnout problem when they’re in power. It’s just this year they didn’t have that problem because obviously they’re not in power.

25:36.58

Sam Shirazi

And I do think, yeah you know, this is not the last Virginia governor’s election. And just because the Democrats got a big win in 2025, nothing’s predetermined doesn’t mean they’re going to get a big win in 2026. Doesn’t mean they’re going to get a big win 2027, 2028, 2029. So I think certainly an interesting election in Virginia lessons for both the parties.

25:55.80

Sam Shirazi

But I do think Democrats shouldn’t get complacent. They should try to replicate some of what they did and build on it. Republicans, they should probably learn some of the lessons and try to maybe shift, if not their messaging,

26:10.17

Sam Shirazi

I guess this is the last thing i’ll I’ll leave the Republicans with, you know, obviously you can shift the messaging and all that, but perhaps the voters were also sending a message about the way the Republicans are governing. And typically i will say, I’ll just be honest, both parties in in DC don’t really change that much because of the Virginia elections.

26:27.05

Sam Shirazi

I think the media and maybe outside observers, they take a lot away from the Virginia election, but it’s kind of interesting. party in power typically doesn’t change, you know, in 2021, know,

26:38.97

Sam Shirazi

Democrats went ahead. They did you you know various bills in 2022, like the Inflation Reduction Act and other things, even though they didn’t do well in the Virginia elections. 2017, obviously, Republicans kept doing what they were doing in D.C. after the Virginia elections in 2018. So long story short, I think the Virginia elections are a little bit of a warning to the party in power, typically.

26:59.56

Sam Shirazi

And we’ll see if the Republicans listen. I think at a minimum, they’re going to shift some of their messaging, if I had to guess. There’ll be less trans stuff in 2028, excuse me, in 2026. Democrats are just going to keep doing what they’re doing, try to link Trump to the economy and hope that works in 2026. And obviously we’ll find out. But hopefully this was an interesting episode. Wanted to kind of do this lessons of the Virginia elections for everyone. i will, again, keep doing the podcast for a little bit longer, at least have some guests on, hopefully to kind of go over the results. I appreciate everyone listening. And this has been Federal Follow-up and I’ll join you next time.

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