Transcript

00:01.38

Sam Shirazi

Hi, everyone. I'm Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will look at tariff troubles and how they might affect the 2025 Virginia Elections.

00:17.28

Sam Shirazi

Then we will switch gears and talk about how you can get get involved this year in Virginia. Now, to set things up, the name of this podcast is Federal Fallout. And its initial assumption was that the main fallout in Virginia from what's going on in Washington, D.C. would be based on the firing of federal workers and the impact of that to the Virginia economy.

00:40.15

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, that is a major issue here in Virginia. And that is something that will continue to be an issue all the way through the November election in all likelihood.

00:50.31

Sam Shirazi

But now we are seeing the effects of other federal changes, namely President Trump imposing tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. And this has had a number of effects.

01:05.11

Sam Shirazi

Initially, there has been a lot of uncertainty in the economy about what might happen.

01:12.17

Sam Shirazi

So all of this has battered the stock market with the uncertainty. Stocks have had a rocky ride and have recently been going down. And I think part of that is due to the uncertainty when President Trump, sometimes he'll announce a tariff and then a little bit later he'll say something that seems to reverse the tariffs. The market's not exactly sure what's going on.

01:34.95

Sam Shirazi

Canada or Mexico or China will do retaliatory tariffs. And it's just kind of an endless cycle where we're not sure exactly what's going on with some of these tariff policies.

01:45.93

Sam Shirazi

So that's causing the markets to be a little bit in chaos right now. Then there's also the possibility that tariffs could raise prices. Obviously, in the last election, inflation was a big issue and Democrats were...

02:03.41

Sam Shirazi

largely blamed for the inflation and the cost of living issues that have happened in the past few years. And President Trump was able to win and take advantage of that. And one of the the things people expect is that he was going to, if not lower prices, at least keep prices where they are. But obviously, with these tariffs, there's a risk that prices can go up.

02:25.58

Sam Shirazi

And so all of this is creating an uncertain economic environment. Who knows what it's going to end up doing in the long run, but at least in the short term, there's definitely a lot of people of upheaval in the financial markets.

02:40.00

Sam Shirazi

And so I want to talk a little bit about how this is impacting the election now with the issue of tariffs, I think that is making its way onto the campaign trail.

02:50.03

Sam Shirazi

And we saw Virginia Democrats, including the likely Democratic nominee, former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, start talking about tariffs.

03:00.89

Sam Shirazi

She posted on social media, quote, Donald Trump's tariffs are a tax on Virginians. It's Virginia's families, small business owners and farmers who will feel the sting.

03:12.10

Sam Shirazi

So clearly trying to tie the tariff issue to Virginia and making it also tied to the cost of living issue in terms of costs going up for everyday Virginians.

03:26.80

Sam Shirazi

Now, Virginia Republicans have been more muted, I would say, on the tariff issue. They do comment on it from time to time, but it's definitely not the top issue that they want to be talking about.

03:36.67

Sam Shirazi

However, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin did go on in CNBC, and he was asked to talk about the tariffs, and he was generally supportive of what President Trump has been doing. And let's listen to an audio of that.

03:51.48

Sam Shirazi

And let me just start with tariffs. If anybody is surprised that President Trump has placed tariffs on countries like Mexico and and Canada and China, and by the way, the reciprocal tariffs that he has already pre-announced that will will be imposed in April, then they didn't listen to him during the campaign.

04:13.34

Sam Shirazi

So that was a little bit of audio of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. And i think it was a little bit surprising because Youngkin comes from the more pro-business wing of the Republican Party. He was known for being the CEO of Carlisle.

04:29.12

Sam Shirazi

And I think it was a little bit interesting to see him take definitely, I would call, a more populist tone when he was talking about these tariffs and and backing President Trump with the tariff issue.

04:41.71

Sam Shirazi

And I think that's just kind of the political reality that President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party and Republicans are going to be backing him, even if traditionally they might not have been big supporters of tariffs, they feel like they need to support the president.

04:55.26

Sam Shirazi

there are some parts of Virginia that might be receptive to the tariffs, more so in southwest Virginia and maybe southside Virginia, where they they have seen deindustrialization and the idea that the tariffs might be able to bring back manufacturing and jobs would be attractive in those types of places in Virginia. However, I would say that many other parts of Virginia, northern Virginia, Richmond area, Hampton Roads,

05:21.68

Sam Shirazi

They have benefited generally from greater free trade, greater availability of goods. You think of Hampton Roads, big port, big shipping, a lot of products from overseas coming in there.

05:34.78

Sam Shirazi

Tariffs may reduce the amount of foreign products that are coming in. And also American products that are going out if other countries are putting tariffs on the United States.

05:45.54

Sam Shirazi

So I think it's it's a bit of a risky proposition to be going in on the tariffs in Virginia because my guess would be that the majority of Virginians would not be supporting tariffs, at least on Canada and Mexico. I think the tariffs on China are more popular generally.

06:02.79

Sam Shirazi

But we've seen that the tariffs on Canada have largely been moving forward and there's been a lot of back and forth. And traditionally, Canada has been, if not the closest ally, one of the closest ally of the United States. So I'm not sure how that tariffs on Canada are going to be playing in a in Virginia during this election.

06:25.01

Sam Shirazi

So now let's talk about what might happen if the tariffs really start taking a toll on the economy. And we've already seen that they've had an impact on the stock market.

06:40.44

Sam Shirazi

And I think there is a risk based on what we've been seeing that there could be a larger economic downturn. I don't know if there's gonna be a recession. I think there's a lot of different factors that would lead to that, but certainly there is a risk that there could be an economic downturn.

06:55.38

Sam Shirazi

And I think there's a risk for Virginia Republicans and Republicans across the country that that could become really toxic because there were a lot of different things going on in 2024. You could talk about the immigration issue. You could talk about some of the wars that were going on in Ukraine and Gaza. Obviously, those things played a factor. But I think a lot of Americans, the economy was top of mind.

07:18.21

Sam Shirazi

2024.

07:20.94

Sam Shirazi

Democrats were blamed for the rise in prices that occurred in recent years, even though there were probably a lot of factors behind that. Ultimately, they were in the White House and and they bore a lot of that blame. And so President Trump was able to win because he talked about the economy. And I think there's a real risk for Republicans if the economy starts to go south.

07:41.43

Sam Shirazi

There isn't a whole lot else that is really holding things together for them at this point in terms of their coalition. something that all their voters support is is a strong economy. And so if you you see the economy falling apart, either because of tariffs or other issues, that's going to be a real danger zone for Republicans.

08:01.89

Sam Shirazi

And there is a similar situation that happened in Virginia in 2009. So if you think about what happened in Virginia in 2008, there was a financial crisis at the end of that campaign that really helped the Democrats and Barack Obama win a big victory in 2008, including Barack Obama winning Virginia, being the first Democrat to win in 44 years.

08:24.48

Sam Shirazi

And I think there was a sense of, well, maybe Virginia is going to become this blue state. And then the next year 2009, Governor Bob McDonnell was able to get a big victory. he won by 18% in a state that former President Obama was able to carry by almost five. So you saw a huge swing between 2008 and 2009. And that was largely driven by the economy, even though former President Obama was not in office when the Great Recession started.

08:53.06

Sam Shirazi

He took a lot of blame because people were still not going back to work and the economy was not great. And Bob McDonald ran a really smart campaign. He had a clever slogan, which was Bob for Jobs. And he talked about bringing more jobs back to Virginia. And that was a message that resonated in 2009.

09:11.44

Sam Shirazi

So Virginia Republicans got a really big win that year. i think realistically, given how much more polarization there is these days, I don't think it's possible for the Democrats to get a win that big.

09:21.74

Sam Shirazi

But I do think if things really start falling apart at the economic level, I do think there's a risk that... for Republicans that Democrats are going to have a bigger win that they did in 2017. So 2017 economy was pretty strong, but obviously that was the initial blowback and at first to the first Trump administration.

09:42.47

Sam Shirazi

And Democrats were able to win almost by nine points in the governor's race. And so I think it's not out of the question that Democrats hit perhaps a 10 point win this year in Virginia.

09:53.85

Sam Shirazi

If, and it's a big if, if the economy really goes south combined with the firing of federal workers, I think that's going to create this perfect storm where Democrats could have a really good night in November in Virginia if all those things happen. Now, I will say that I've made a lot of assumptions.

10:12.23

Sam Shirazi

based on some recent market turmoil. I do think there's a possibility that either President Trump pulls back from the tariffs or maybe the tariffs are just kind of built into the market. The market kind of stabilizes.

10:25.42

Sam Shirazi

They accept some of these tariffs. There's a little bit back and forth. They don't cause too much damage to the economy. And things just kind of chug along like normal. And maybe the economy by November is looking pretty good.

10:38.84

Sam Shirazi

If that's the case, I think the election could be a lot closer. Obviously, the firing of federal workers is still going to be an issue. But if you think about the firing of federal workers, no doubt in Virginia is a huge issue.

10:50.61

Sam Shirazi

And it affects hundreds of thousands of people. If you talk about people's kids and spouses and family members and friends, you know a lot of people are affected by what's going on.

11:01.32

Sam Shirazi

So I'm not trying to downplay that issue at all. But I do think the risk for the Republicans with the tariffs and with the overall economy going downhill is that basically affects everyone because...

11:13.26

Sam Shirazi

if costs go up, that affects everyone. If people are losing jobs in the private sector, that affects a lot of more people than just the federal government. And I think if you look back at 2024, part of the reason it was so difficult for Democrats is the inflation issue hit everyone. I mean, basically, didn't matter if you were working class, middle class.

11:33.08

Sam Shirazi

upper class, you still felt some of those price pressures no matter what when you went to the supermarket. And I think there's a risk for Republicans that if they don't fix that, because that's what a lot of people voted for President Trump to do, they wanted him him to fix the the economy and the price issues.

11:49.23

Sam Shirazi

If that doesn't get better, and in fact, if he gets that gets worse, there's a real risk that people will start abandoning the Republican Party and going back towards the Democrats.

12:00.34

Sam Shirazi

And I think Former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, if she ends up being the but for Democratic nominee, which seems fairly likely at this point, she can really start exploiting that issue, not just in terms of the federal workers, but talking more broadly about the economy.

12:15.03

Sam Shirazi

And that's going to be a message that resonates. And it's a little bit unclear. how the Republicans and if Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears is the nominee, how is she going to respond? What is her message going to be?

12:27.49

Sam Shirazi

Because if the economy is going south, there's not a real great message you can have. And we saw that in 2009 when Creigh Deeds was the Democratic nominee and he didn't have a lot to say in terms of the economy struggling other than trying to blame the previous Republican administration. And you you will probably see Republicans maybe trying to blame a lot of things on former President Biden. And I understand that from a political standpoint, but I do think the reality is a lot of voters...

12:59.60

Sam Shirazi

expect the party in power to take responsibility and try to fix things. And I think blaming a president that's no longer in power usually doesn't end up working. And so I think that's going to be a real challenge for Republicans this year if the economy starts to have issues.

13:16.22

Sam Shirazi

And again, I think that's a big assumption. I don't want to, you know, dwell on it too much because I i don't know what's going to happen and it's possible that the economy stabilizes. So I wanted to talk about it right now because I do think it's in the news a lot and we are seeing some issues in the stock market and there there are a lot of there's a lot of news about the tariffs. So people are seeing it in the news.

13:40.22

Sam Shirazi

and it's starting to make its way to the campaign. So I don't think we can kind of ignore it at this point. But I do think it's a little bit too early to make a final call and to see how big of an impact it's going to have on the Virginia elections.

13:53.81

Sam Shirazi

So that's a lot on tariffs and the economy. I did want to kind of switch gears to a totally different topic that I think a lot of people are interested in. I think one of the big questions that people like me who are political and interested in politics hear from people who are less political is how do I get involved? What do I do? What's going on?

14:17.20

Sam Shirazi

And there's a million ways to get involved. There's a million different things to do. I kind of wanted to walk people through what makes sense in terms of the Virginia elections this year and and the different ways you can get involved.

14:30.09

Sam Shirazi

There's a lot of different causes and campaigns. It's totally up to you what you want to do. My goal is to kind of give people a little bit of a starting point so no matter where they want to go, they can make the first step because often the first step is the hardest and it's hard to figure out where to go, who to talk to.

14:47.46

Sam Shirazi

And my goal is not to tell you who to vote for or necessarily which side you should go to, but more how you can get involved if you want to get involved. So in terms of how to get involved or what organizations to get involved in, I think it's important to keep in mind some of the local structures in any sort of community to try to get involved politically. So I often tell people who want to get involved in politics, one of the good places to start is your local political party. So in Virginia, typically, every city or county will have a local Democratic or Republican committee.

15:23.69

Sam Shirazi

Some areas will also have third parties. And these are kind of the local organization that's always around in the good times and the bad times. They have a certain structure. They have certain rules.

15:36.83

Sam Shirazi

There's people that typically have been involved in those organizations for years. They're usually open to new people. They want people to get involved. So I think that's a good starting place if you're interested in politics to to maybe go to some of those meetings or some of the events that those organizations are having.

15:53.58

Sam Shirazi

I will say, I think sometimes the disadvantage of those organizations, they have decent amount of resources and and organization, which is good. But it's also a little bit structured and they have to follow a certain hierarchy in the party and they have to take orders from people sometimes in the party structure.

16:13.14

Sam Shirazi

And I think sometimes people get a little bit disenchanted with that. Just something to keep in mind, if that's not exactly what you're looking for, I think at the local level, there are often good grassroots organizations, either on the left or right, liberal, conservative, who are not necessarily tied to the local Republican or Democratic parties.

16:35.44

Sam Shirazi

And these organizations often have more flexibility. They often are able to be a little bit more creative in some of the approaches that they take. Now, having said that, they often have less resources and are less structured, but they offer an alternative. And so, for example, there's been a lot of organization with indivisible groups. And they have been working with some of the protests that have been taking place in recent days, both in Virginia and Washington, D.C. So those are some of the groups if you wanted to get involved.

17:08.31

Sam Shirazi

Less in a formal party structure, but at a local level with some grassroots organizations. I think those are always interesting organizations to get involved with, either if you are more on the left or on the right.

17:21.93

Sam Shirazi

Now, The other thing I should add is those organizations are typically around long term. And then there are the campaigns for this year in Virginia, which are much shorter term affairs.

17:35.62

Sam Shirazi

And typically I've heard it but be described that campaigns are almost like startups. They start. they do their thing and then they end up closing shop either if they're successful or not.

17:47.75

Sam Shirazi

And I think that creates a lot of opportunities to get involved at the ground level and to get more involved. And one thing to keep in mind is The lower down on the ballot a campaign is, the more opportunities to get involved. So if you wanted to get involved in a local school board race, there's a lot of opportunities and there's a lot of opportunity to get a lot of responsibility because honestly, probably your local school board candidate doesn't have a huge staff, doesn't have a lot of people helping them.

18:17.79

Sam Shirazi

The higher up you go on the ticket, the more organization there is, the the more hierarchy. Obviously, if you want to get involved in the governor's campaign, those are going to have a lot of resources, but you may not be able to necessarily get get a super high up position.

18:33.88

Sam Shirazi

And some people, that's not what they're looking for. They're looking to just volunteer and knock on doors. That's great to get involved in the governor's campaign. But if you want to get really much more involved in a campaign, I would recommend going a little bit lower on the ballot.

18:47.41

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, there's a lot of House of Delegates races this year. There are county board races. There are school board races. So a lot of different ways to get involved in a campaign. And I think it's really meaningful because that is not necessarily a long term commitment.

19:03.31

Sam Shirazi

It'll one way or another, it'll be over in November. And so that's a good way to get involved in the short term if you're interested in that.

19:10.58

Sam Shirazi

Now, I should also talk about how you can get involved. I think some feedback I got about the 2024 election was individuals would go to the campaign and they were told to either knock on doors or make phone calls, kind of old school ways of campaigning.

19:27.56

Sam Shirazi

And honestly, they didn't always feel like that worked with the current environment. Obviously, with phone calls, it's difficult for people to talk to someone. Oftentimes people don't pick up the phone. There are a lot of spam calls, so it's difficult to make phone calls. Even door knocking, I think people are hesitant to go to the door.

19:46.64

Sam Shirazi

They often don't want to be interrupted. i will say, i think in a 2024 presidential election, it was often a lot more polarizing. And I think most people had made up their minds. So it's kind of hard to knock on a door And talk about the presidential election because most people probably knew who they were going to vote for and it was hard to persuade someone.

20:07.08

Sam Shirazi

I do think in a state election like this, door knocking can be a little bit more effective because a lot of people don't know there's a state election. They might not have made up their mind. You may be able to persuade them. So I do want to do that plug that even if you didn't love door knocking in 2024, it's possible that in 2025, you're going to have a better experience just because the voters are not as tuned into this election and you have more of an opportunity on the doorstep to talk to them.

20:35.25

Sam Shirazi

But having said all that, I do think it's a valid point that campaigns are changing. The old methods are not working as well as they used to. And so much more of campaigning is done on social media.

20:48.25

Sam Shirazi

Frankly, a lot of is done on podcasts. Part of the reason I wanted to start this podcast is I know a lot of people are starting to get political news through podcasts. There's a lot of social media, as I mentioned, and not just

21:02.40

Sam Shirazi

the old social media, but new new things like Blue Sky and TikTok and a lot of different ways people are getting their information. And I think it's a challenge for campaigns to to figure out how to break through.

21:14.40

Sam Shirazi

I think you as an individual, obviously, posting on social media, if you want to do that, is one way to kind of spread the word. I do think within a a state election like this in 2025, there's an opportunity to almost do really, really old school campaigning person to person work.

21:32.88

Sam Shirazi

So if you have friends that are not super political or you might have seen them recently get interested in politics but have not previously talked to them about politics, I think it's a good idea to maybe just have a conversation with people, tell them, hey, there's some state elections this year.

21:49.60

Sam Shirazi

do you know what's on the ballot? Here are some people running. I think those conversations an election like this can be a lot more meaningful than in a presidential election. As I mentioned, in presidential elections, people already know who they're voting for.

22:02.42

Sam Shirazi

It's hard to persuade people. People have really set views on things. State elections, it's not as strong. And I do think we're at a moment partially in Virginia because of the firing of federal workers, where people are starting to get more politically engaged. They might not have thought politics really affected their lives that much. Now they're seeing that politics is affecting their lives in a more dramatic way than they thought.

22:26.09

Sam Shirazi

There are a lot of ways to get involved, whether you want to do it formally through a campaign, whether you want to just do it on your own through social media and talking to friends, whether you want to join the local political party, whether you want to join a local grassroots organization.

22:41.22

Sam Shirazi

There is a lot of ways to get involved. Again, my message to everyone is I hope you do get involved this year because I do think there's a lot on the line. and I'm going to try to keep everyone informed. And hopefully if you listen to this podcast, you can know what to talk about with people when you're on their doorsteps or you're having those conversations.

23:01.74

Sam Shirazi

And I guess I should end with, if you do enjoy the podcast, I would appreciate it if you would tell people. I know a lot of people listen to podcasts. They're looking for podcast recommendations. They're looking for news, politics, podcasts.

23:15.42

Sam Shirazi

If you know someone who might be interested in the podcast, feel free to send them a link to this episode or any of the other episodes. Typically, I will try to do at least one podcast a week. My goal is to get them out on Saturday morning.

23:28.54

Sam Shirazi

I hope you will stay engaged in the Virginia elections this year. I know that I will. And I appreciate everyone listening. And I will join you next time on Federal Fallout.

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