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00:01.13
Sam Shirazi
Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode will focus on the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General races, both the primaries and the general election.
00:13.91
Sam Shirazi
Who's running and what the races could look like. First up, the Lieutenant Governor's race. Both parties will have primaries and we'll start off with the Democratic primary.
00:24.86
Sam Shirazi
But first, I wanted to give you you a brief overview of what the Lieutenant Governor does and why it's important.
00:32.21
Sam Shirazi
So the Lieutenant Governor, if something happens to the governor, will step in and act in that role. So obviously that's important. It's analogous to the vice president in the federal government.
00:45.95
Sam Shirazi
But there's another role for the Lieutenant Governor. The lieutenant governor is the presiding officer of the Virginia Senate. So just like the vice president provide presides over the U.S. Senate, the the lieutenant governor has that role in the Virginia Senate.
01:02.06
Sam Shirazi
And the lieutenant governor has the ability to break ties, just like the vice president has the ability to break ties in the Virginia Senate has 40 members. Currently, there's a 21-19 majority.
01:14.25
Sam Shirazi
And the Virginia State Senate is not up for election in 2025. It will be up for election in 2027. But I think it's important that the party that controls the tie-breaking vote, it obviously gives them a little bit of an advantage if there's ever a tie. And with majority,
01:34.22
Sam Shirazi
Democratic majority, there is the possibility that there could be ties. So I think Lieutenant Governor's race is important in that regard. And there are a lot of Democrats running on the Democratic side. So I will just first off go through each candidate and then we'll talk a little bit about the dynamics of the primary.
01:51.98
Sam Shirazi
So in alphabetical order, the people who are currently running, there is Alex Bastani, he is a lawyer and a former union official. There's Carl Eggleston, he is a businessman.
02:05.78
Sam Shirazi
There is State Senator Ghazala Hashmi.
02:09.62
Sam Shirazi
There is the Prince William County School Board Chair, Babur Lateef. There is state Senator Aaron Rouse. There is former DOJ attorney Victor Salgado.
02:22.15
Sam Shirazi
And finally, routing it out for the Democrats, there is former Richmond Mayor LeVar Stoney. So as you can see, there are a lot of people running. And I think it's hard for me to pick who would be a favorite at this point because of all the people running. And I don't think there's a clear front runner.
02:39.07
Sam Shirazi
And one thing to keep in mind when there are that many people running is Virginia doesn't have ranked choice voting or anything like that. So the person who gets the most votes will win, even if that means the winner only gets one third of the total votes.
02:52.49
Sam Shirazi
That person will end up winning because you don't need a majority and there's not not any sort of ranked choice voting or runoff or anything like that. And I think with all these people running, this is somewhat similar to the 2021 Democratic lieutenant governor primary.
03:07.68
Sam Shirazi
In that race, there were there were a number of Democrats running. At the end, it kind of became a two-way contest between Hala Ayala and Sam Rasoul, and Ayala was able to win with little over 37% of the vote. So I think we could see something similar this time where the winner gets less than 50% of the vote, and I think that's pretty likely given all the candidates.
03:29.63
Sam Shirazi
And you know I think they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I think they they all come from different communities within Virginia. And I think that's going to be a little bit of the dynamic in the race is which candidates can bring out their supporters, both geographically and from the communities they they come from. So for example, Aaron Rouse comes from Hampton Roads. He's the main candidate from Hampton Roads. I think he's going to have...
03:56.08
Sam Shirazi
an advantage there and that'll be an area where he can kind of run up the vote but that's not the entire primary that's one part of Virginia there's obviously other parts so I don't think he can just win off of Hampton Roads similarly LeVar Stoney was a former Richmond mayor So you would think he might have more support in the Richmond area.
04:15.46
Sam Shirazi
But then State Senator Ghazala Hashmi also comes from the Richmond area. She's in the Richmond suburb of Chesterfield. You have Barbara Lateef, who is from Northern Virginia, and Prince William County is the second biggest county in Virginia. So he obviously has a lot of people who have voted for him before there. And then you have maybe the other candidates like Alex Bistani might be trying to get support from the labor movement. You have Victor Salgado maybe trying to get support from the Hispanic community.
04:47.12
Sam Shirazi
And so, know, you have a lot of different parts of Virginia at play, lot of different candidates. Oftentimes, you last minute endorsements and or money can help sway things. So if any of these candidates gets a big endorsement at the last minute,
05:02.71
Sam Shirazi
for example, from a member of Congress or from a major organization gives them a lot of money so they'll start to run ads, I think that could make a difference. But right now, it's very hard for me to kind of pick who is going to win. And obviously, there's still a lot of time before, not a lot of time, but there's still a decent amount of time before the primary. And a lot of voters aren't going to be super tuned in right now to the lieutenant governor primary.
05:29.81
Sam Shirazi
But I do think people will start to get more engaged and we might have a little bit of better sense of who has more of an advantage on the Democratic side. Now, let's focus on the Republicans. So the Republicans will also have a primary for Lieutenant Governor.
05:48.17
Sam Shirazi
The field is a little bit smaller, so there aren't as many people running. There is businessman John Curran, Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Harrety,
06:02.48
Sam Shirazi
And then there is radio personality, John Reid. And so this has a little bit of a different dynamic where you can kind of see the lanes of each candidate. And I would say he's kind of more of a traditional Republican primary. So you have Pat Herity, who is the on the Fairfax County Board. He's one of the few Republican officials left in Northern Virginia. And I think that's one of the selling points is that he's been able to win tough elections in Northern Virginia.
06:26.22
Sam Shirazi
I would say he's probably a slight front runner at this point because he's he's more of the establishment favorite for lack of a better word, because I think he, that he has an image of being more electable and you have a familiar dynamic in the Republican primary where John Reid could try to come in as a little bit of a outsider trying to bring more of a, you know, non-politician type vibe with him. And that often works in Republican primaries. So he might be able to pull that off.
06:58.14
Sam Shirazi
And then you have John Curran who, has donated his campaign about a million dollars. So he has a fair amount of money to work with. And so we'll see where're how far that takes him. So it's going to be interesting. If I had to guess, I mean, I'm guessing Herity is going to do well in Fairfax County, which is obviously the largest county in Virginia. It's become more Democratic, so it's unclear how many Republicans are actually going to vote in.
07:22.84
Sam Shirazi
the Republican primary, but he will get a lot of support from Fairfax County. And the question mark becomes how much support does he get in the rest of Virginia?
07:35.18
Sam Shirazi
particularly more conservative parts of Virginia, like Southwest Virginia. and again, this race, it's a little bit depends on who gets endorsements. Does Governor Youngkin wade into this race? We'll see. it's It's a little bit hard to tell.
07:48.41
Sam Shirazi
And I guess one thing I should have mentioned earlier about these primaries is any voter in Virginia can pick which primary they want to vote for. So Virginia does not have party registration for voter registration. So Basically, anyone can pick up either ballot on primary day or during early voting. Obviously, you can only vote in one of the two primaries, but that'll be interesting to see. Usually, there isn't a lot of crossover options.
08:14.04
Sam Shirazi
Typically, Democrats vote in the Democratic primary, Republicans vote in the Republican primary, but it will be interesting to see how many independents end up voting in these primaries. And it's possible that independents, if it's going to be more of a Democratic leaning year, will decide to vote in the Democratic primary, either because they're leaning that way or they think that candidates on the Democratic side are more likely to win.
08:38.34
Sam Shirazi
It's probably hard to right now have an idea of who's the front runner on either side. I would say on the Republican side, probably Pat Haratey has a little bit of an edge, but definitely could see John Reid as well coming up and pulling an upset.
08:53.95
Sam Shirazi
as often happens with Republicans, with outsiders being able to come in. I do think the Democrats, it's a lot more wide open, and it's hard for me to really be able to pick who's ahead right now.
09:05.83
Sam Shirazi
I did want to just quickly pivot to the general election. Obviously, we don't know who candidates are on either side, but what a lieutenant governor's race will look like in the general election, I think it's going to be interesting because Typically, nowadays, people just vote straight ticket.
09:23.84
Sam Shirazi
And in the last four Virginia elections, the party that won the governor's race has also won the lieutenant governor's race and the attorney general's race. You have to go all the way back to 2005.
09:35.84
Sam Shirazi
Tim Kaine was elected governor, and then you had a Republican lieutenant governor who was elected. And back then, there was more ticket splitting. i think nowadays, it's very hard for people to really...
09:49.22
Sam Shirazi
split their ticket that much for whatever reason people are becoming more polarized they just vote for one party down the ticket and realistically I think whoever wins the governor's race.
09:59.89
Sam Shirazi
there's a good chance that that purse that party is going to win the lieutenant governor's race unless it's really close, but I think if it's you know.
10:13.96
Sam Shirazi
well also win for the same party that won the governor's race i will say i think republicans have a little bit of hope that if pat harty is the nominee he can run ahead of the top of the ticket, particularly in Fairfax County. So just to give you a little background, his dad was also on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
10:34.27
Sam Shirazi
he The Herity name is has a long history in Fairfax. So I think there's a sense that you know maybe that can win some crossover support from people who might vote for the Democrats at the top of the ticket and in Fairfax, but they might end up voting for Pat Herity for Lieutenant Governor.
10:51.83
Sam Shirazi
you know, realistically these days, you know, Fairfax is a big county and it's important that to have a candidate from Fairfax if if you're the Republicans.
11:02.14
Sam Shirazi
But at the same time, I mean, it's only one part of Virginia. And even if he does a little bit better in Fairfax County, it's unclear if that's actually going to make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, unless it's a really close election.
11:15.22
Sam Shirazi
But, you know, Pat Harity has been able to win a tough district for a Republican, a district that's voted for Democrats. for other offices by fairly large margins. So he has shown that he has crossover appeal.
11:30.60
Sam Shirazi
Having said that, county supervisor is a very different role than lieutenant governor, and he's going to have to wade into some difficult issues such as abortion and other things that Republicans typically on the county board do not often have to talk a lot about. But obviously, if you're running for lieutenant governor, and you may have to break ties in the Virginia Senate, you're going to be asked about a lot of things from gun control to voting rights to all these things that he may not have had had to answer questions about previously. And obviously he has a primary, so he has to say things that will get him support in the Republican primary, which I'm sure the Democrats are going to use against him if he ends up being
12:11.16
Sam Shirazi
the Republican nominee. So long story short, if if the conventional wisdom, again, is that Democrats have a little bit of an advantage at the top of the ticket with the governor's race, then you would think they have a little bit of advantage in the Lieutenant Governor's race.
12:25.65
Sam Shirazi
And it's going to be interesting to see how the numbers shake out when all the votes are in during the primary. So that's the Lieutenant Governor's race. Let's move to the Attorney General's race. It's a little bit simpler in terms of the primary.
12:41.39
Sam Shirazi
So right off the bat, there's no Republican primary for Attorney General. The only Republican running is the incumbent, Jason Miyares, and obviously there is not going to be a primary against him.
12:54.36
Sam Shirazi
On the Democratic side, there are two candidates running. There's former delegate Jay Jones, and there's the Henrico Commonwealth's attorney, Shannon Taylor. And so we can talk a little bit about that race.
13:04.75
Sam Shirazi
The good thing about it is it's a one-on-one race, which is not as complicated as a lieutenant governor's race where you have all these Democrats running. But before I talk about the primary, I just wanted to take a moment to talk about what the attorney general does and why it's an important role.
13:18.78
Sam Shirazi
And I think, you know, I talked about this in the first episode, there's a lot of focus on the governor's race, particularly by national media. And in in most people, when they think of 2025, they think of the Virginia governor's race. And that makes sense.
13:34.36
Sam Shirazi
But I do think the attorney general's race should not be overlooked, particularly in this moment. So if you think about it The Democrats in Congress don't have a whole lot of power. we i did the episode on the shutdown fight and basically how the Democrats decided not to put up a big fight in the Senate over the budget and so or the continuing resolution to fund the government.
13:58.28
Sam Shirazi
And so that that didn't really end up going anywhere. And so we're seeing a lot of the pushback to the Trump administration by Democrats happening in the courts, both private organizations and state attorney generals filing lawsuits.
14:09.44
Sam Shirazi
And a lot of these lawsuits are are at least successful at the district court level. And we're seeing a lot of injunctions being granted. It's important to keep in mind, none of that is coming from Virginia.
14:20.23
Sam Shirazi
The Virginia Attorney General, Jason Miyares, is not joining any of those lawsuits. And so those are all coming from either private organizations or the Democratic Attorney General.
14:31.17
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, obviously, if the Democrats win the Attorney General's office, that's going to change and whoever becomes the Democratic Attorney General next year will file A lot of lawsuits, presumably, or they'll join a lot of lawsuits against the Trump administration.
14:46.36
Sam Shirazi
Whereas if Jason Miyares is reelected, he will continue to basically not go after the Trump administration because realistically, that's what happens. The Republican attorney generals at the state level don't go after a Republican president. And usually a Democratic attorney general at the state level doesn't go after a Democratic president. That's just the reality of how these offices work.
15:06.90
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, there are a lot of other attorney general offices that are going after the Trump administration, notably Maryland. Maryland has a Democratic attorney general who's been filing lawsuits against the Trump administration.
15:18.46
Sam Shirazi
But there may be Virginia specific issues that only the Virginia attorney general may be able to bring. There's also an issue called standing, which means does a party have the legal ability to bring a lawsuit? And sometimes if something is really directly directly affecting Virginia, perhaps only the attorney general in Virginia could bring the lawsuit.
15:37.45
Sam Shirazi
And generally, as I mentioned, there's a lot of litigation going on and there's you know there are a lot of lawyers, but there's not an infinite supply of lawyers. And to have another office of attorney general another attorney general office with a decent amount of lawyers who might be able to bring these lawsuits, I think is important at the federal level.
15:56.66
Sam Shirazi
And as I mentioned, this podcast is called Federal Fallout. I'm trying to kind of explore the intersection of what's going on in DC with the federal government and the Virginia state election. So I don't want to belabor the point, but as you can tell, i think there is a decent amount on the line for the attorney general's race in terms of what will happen next year.
16:15.37
Sam Shirazi
If there's a changeover in the attorney general's office, or if the incumbent Jason Miyares is able to get reelected. All right, with all that out of the way, let's talk about the two democratic candidates running for attorney general.
16:30.57
Sam Shirazi
And I think they each kind of come from a different geographic area and they bring a different dynamic to the race. So former delegate Jay Jones, he was a delegate representing Norfolk.
16:41.09
Sam Shirazi
He has a decent amount of name recognition because he ran for attorney general in 2021 against the incumbent Democrat Mark Herring. Jay Jones ended up losing that primary.
16:52.45
Sam Shirazi
Mark Herring went on to lose the general election in 2021 because it was a tough year for Democrats, but Jay Jones has run for attorney general before. So he has the name ID there and he has, you know, his base of support in the Hampton Roads area.
17:05.65
Sam Shirazi
He also comes from the African American community. And I think that also gives him a level of support. So when you add all that together, you know, I think there's an argument that he's slightly considered the front runner for the attorney general nomination on the Democratic side.
17:20.08
Sam Shirazi
However, I think his opponent, Henrico Commonwealth's attorney, Shannon Taylor. So she comes from Henrico County, which is in the Richmond suburbs. It's a big county.
17:31.08
Sam Shirazi
Commonwealth's attorney is just a fancy name for a prosecutor. So she's the top prosecutor in Henrico. So she obviously has that part of Virginia that might come out to support her. And, you know, realistically, sometimes these primaries come down to different communities. And I think The wild card here is going to be Northern Virginia and how that breaks. So if you think about Jay Jones might have more of the support in Hampton Roads, maybe Shannon Taylor has more support in the Richmond suburbs.
18:02.25
Sam Shirazi
What's gonna happen in Northern Virginia? Are they gonna split it? Is one candidate gonna do better than the other? And I think you know if Shannon Taylor is able to maybe mobilize women and she she gets more of that community to come out for her, that could be a pathway for her to win.
18:17.89
Sam Shirazi
But if instead, know, Northern Virginia split pretty evenly, that Jay Jones is able to consolidate Hampton Roads, and he's able to get more of the African American vote, then you can see him having more of a pathway to then win. So regardless, we'll find out one way or another, which candidate is going to win.
18:36.65
Sam Shirazi
I think that should be interesting. It's, it's as I mentioned, a one-on-one contest. Whoever gets to 50.1% is going to win. So it's going to be interesting to see which candidate will be able to pull it out.
18:51.64
Sam Shirazi
So that's both the LG and Attorney General's races. I did want to briefly talk about the general election for the Attorney General. So as I mentioned, Jason Miyares is the only incumbent statewide who's running for reelection.
19:07.44
Sam Shirazi
I think his strategy is going to be a typical, you know, tough on crime Republican campaign, basically running on that. And there's a possibility he may run a little bit ahead of the ticket just because he's an attorney general.
19:22.69
Sam Shirazi
However, as I mentioned, I think nowadays there's less ticket splitting. So I wouldn't necessarily count on that.
19:30.69
Sam Shirazi
I think the reality is if Democrats win by, let's say five points at least, then you know it's going to be difficult for any of the other Republicans down ticket to win.
19:40.85
Sam Shirazi
If we're talking about a one to three point win for the Democrats, that's in the range where maybe the Republicans may be able to hold the attorney general office. So I don't think it's a given that the Democrats are going to win the attorney general's office, particularly if it's closer than people anticipate.
19:59.00
Sam Shirazi
i did want to just briefly talk about the primary generally. So the primary will be on June 17th, but there is 45 days of early voting. So the early voting will start on May 2nd.
20:14.31
Sam Shirazi
So that's coming up. So that's not too far away in terms of the Virginia primary.
20:22.93
Sam Shirazi
So I think the big question is how much turnout there's going to be on each side. And it really comes down to on the Republican side, is there going to be a governor primary? If there's a primary on for governor, then obviously that's going to drive turnout.
20:36.21
Sam Shirazi
Most people are going to come out for the governor's race and then they'll probably end up voting for lieutenant governor. But if there's just a lieutenant governor's race on the Republican side, you know, it's hard to know how many people are actually going to come out for just the lieutenant governor's primary in Virginia.
20:51.44
Sam Shirazi
So we'll just have to wait and see. As I mentioned in previous episodes, there are two Republicans attempting to get 10,000 signatures to get on the Republican ballot for governor. We don't know right now if that's going to happen.
21:02.25
Sam Shirazi
They have until April 3rd to submit those signatures. So we'll just have to wait and see if there's a Republican primary at the top of the ticket. On the Democratic side, i think with each passing day, it's less and less likely that there is going to be a Democratic primary for governor.
21:18.46
Sam Shirazi
But we're fairly certain there's going to be one for lieutenant governor and attorney general. And I think the question comes down to who's going to turn out for those races. I think it will be, for the most part, pretty diehard Democrats.
21:30.92
Sam Shirazi
But I do think there's a possibility that there are going to be more people coming out this year just because more people are engaged in the Virginia elections.
21:41.86
Sam Shirazi
So if you look back to 2013, that was the last time there was just a lieutenant governor primary on the ballot without a governor's race on the ballot for the Democrats in a primary.
21:52.90
Sam Shirazi
And that time you had about 145,000 people turn out for that primary. I think almost certainly this time there's going to be more than that, partly because of population growth, partly because people are a lot more engaged than they were 2013.
22:07.07
Sam Shirazi
And I think one of the real wild cards in the primary, and I think this is something that like doesn't get a lot of attention in Virginia, and I might just do a whole podcast about it, but right now I'll just talk about it briefly, is the permanent absentee list.
22:21.39
Sam Shirazi
So the permanent absentee list is an optional list that anyone can sign up for where you sign up to get a ballot every single election without having to request it each time.
22:35.16
Sam Shirazi
And there's an option when you're filling out that form to request to either get ballots for the Republican primary or the Democratic primary or neither primary. And the reality is vast majority of people who sign up for the permanent absentee list typically are Democrats.
22:51.27
Sam Shirazi
And so there are a lot of Democrats on the permanent absentee list.
22:55.87
Sam Shirazi
And I went and looked at the 2024 Democratic primary for president in March 2024. And in that election, the record show there were two hundred over 217,000 Democrats on the permanent absentee list.
23:13.89
Sam Shirazi
And of those 217,000 Democrats, over 100,000 voted by mail. So you you had about a 50% return rate. and And I'm guessing for a primary, like for Lieutenant Governor, you're probably going to get another 50% return rate.
23:30.81
Sam Shirazi
but you know The permanent absentee list has probably only grown since then. So let's say there are 220,000 Democrats on the permanent absentee list, even if half those people return their ballots, that's 110,000 people just from the permanent absentee list that are voting by mail.
23:48.16
Sam Shirazi
And as I mentioned in 2013, the whole primary, there were only 145,000 people. And so this time, i think it's likely we're gonna get over 200,000 people voting in the Democratic primary,
24:01.08
Sam Shirazi
if not hit 250,000, just given the engagement and the permanent absentee list and the fact that it's easier to vote now in Virginia. So I think it's gonna be wild card to see who those people end up voting for, how do the campaigns reach them,
24:16.78
Sam Shirazi
Are they sending out mailers? I think those are all going to be really interesting questions because is the first big statewide primary since the permanent absentee list was rolled out. So the first year I think it was in use was 2022. There was no statewide in 2022.
24:31.75
Sam Shirazi
There was no statewide race in twenty twenty two there was a Presidential primary in 2024, so that was used for the first time, but realistically in 2024, the Democratic primary for president was not super competitive.
24:47.45
Sam Shirazi
So this is the first time we're gonna have a really competitive primary where there's gonna have this permanent absentee list being used. And so I just think it's an important little wrinkle as we see the results rolling in on primary night, that there's gonna be a fair amount of mail ballots coming in from this permanent absentee list.
25:05.75
Sam Shirazi
So that's a lot on the primaries. You know, it's only going to ramp up. Make sure you vote in the Democratic or Republican primary, whichever one you choose to vote in. Early voting will start on May 2nd, and then the primary is on June 17th.
25:22.39
Sam Shirazi
So I'm going to be covering it all. that's not even I haven't even gone to the House of Delegates. There's going to be a not a whole lot of primaries, but there will be some primaries in the House of Delegates. I will cover that. Obviously, there's a lot of developments every day outside of the primary, just on the regular campaign trail and in D.C.,
25:39.47
Sam Shirazi
a lot going on. I will try to do my best to cover everything. I wanted to use this podcast to talk about the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General primaries because those are very important and those are coming up.
25:50.62
Sam Shirazi
But I will follow up and do other podcasts on everything else that's going on. So thank you for listening and hope you will listen next time.
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Transcript
00:01.13
Sam Shirazi
Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode will focus on the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General races, both the primaries and the general election.
00:13.91
Sam Shirazi
Who's running and what the races could look like. First up, the Lieutenant Governor's race. Both parties will have primaries and we'll start off with the Democratic primary.
00:24.86
Sam Shirazi
But first, I wanted to give you you a brief overview of what the Lieutenant Governor does and why it's important.
00:32.21
Sam Shirazi
So the Lieutenant Governor, if something happens to the governor, will step in and act in that role. So obviously that's important. It's analogous to the vice president in the federal government.
00:45.95
Sam Shirazi
But there's another role for the Lieutenant Governor. The lieutenant governor is the presiding officer of the Virginia Senate. So just like the vice president provide presides over the U.S. Senate, the the lieutenant governor has that role in the Virginia Senate.
01:02.06
Sam Shirazi
And the lieutenant governor has the ability to break ties, just like the vice president has the ability to break ties in the Virginia Senate has 40 members. Currently, there's a 21-19 majority.
01:14.25
Sam Shirazi
And the Virginia State Senate is not up for election in 2025. It will be up for election in 2027. But I think it's important that the party that controls the tie-breaking vote, it obviously gives them a little bit of an advantage if there's ever a tie. And with majority,
01:34.22
Sam Shirazi
Democratic majority, there is the possibility that there could be ties. So I think Lieutenant Governor's race is important in that regard. And there are a lot of Democrats running on the Democratic side. So I will just first off go through each candidate and then we'll talk a little bit about the dynamics of the primary.
01:51.98
Sam Shirazi
So in alphabetical order, the people who are currently running, there is Alex Bastani, he is a lawyer and a former union official. There's Carl Eggleston, he is a businessman.
02:05.78
Sam Shirazi
There is State Senator Ghazala Hashmi.
02:09.62
Sam Shirazi
There is the Prince William County School Board Chair, Babur Lateef. There is state Senator Aaron Rouse. There is former DOJ attorney Victor Salgado.
02:22.15
Sam Shirazi
And finally, routing it out for the Democrats, there is former Richmond Mayor LeVar Stoney. So as you can see, there are a lot of people running. And I think it's hard for me to pick who would be a favorite at this point because of all the people running. And I don't think there's a clear front runner.
02:39.07
Sam Shirazi
And one thing to keep in mind when there are that many people running is Virginia doesn't have ranked choice voting or anything like that. So the person who gets the most votes will win, even if that means the winner only gets one third of the total votes.
02:52.49
Sam Shirazi
That person will end up winning because you don't need a majority and there's not not any sort of ranked choice voting or runoff or anything like that. And I think with all these people running, this is somewhat similar to the 2021 Democratic lieutenant governor primary.
03:07.68
Sam Shirazi
In that race, there were there were a number of Democrats running. At the end, it kind of became a two-way contest between Hala Ayala and Sam Rasoul, and Ayala was able to win with little over 37% of the vote. So I think we could see something similar this time where the winner gets less than 50% of the vote, and I think that's pretty likely given all the candidates.
03:29.63
Sam Shirazi
And you know I think they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I think they they all come from different communities within Virginia. And I think that's going to be a little bit of the dynamic in the race is which candidates can bring out their supporters, both geographically and from the communities they they come from. So for example, Aaron Rouse comes from Hampton Roads. He's the main candidate from Hampton Roads. I think he's going to have...
03:56.08
Sam Shirazi
an advantage there and that'll be an area where he can kind of run up the vote but that's not the entire primary that's one part of Virginia there's obviously other parts so I don't think he can just win off of Hampton Roads similarly LeVar Stoney was a former Richmond mayor So you would think he might have more support in the Richmond area.
04:15.46
Sam Shirazi
But then State Senator Ghazala Hashmi also comes from the Richmond area. She's in the Richmond suburb of Chesterfield. You have Barbara Lateef, who is from Northern Virginia, and Prince William County is the second biggest county in Virginia. So he obviously has a lot of people who have voted for him before there. And then you have maybe the other candidates like Alex Bistani might be trying to get support from the labor movement. You have Victor Salgado maybe trying to get support from the Hispanic community.
04:47.12
Sam Shirazi
And so, know, you have a lot of different parts of Virginia at play, lot of different candidates. Oftentimes, you last minute endorsements and or money can help sway things. So if any of these candidates gets a big endorsement at the last minute,
05:02.71
Sam Shirazi
for example, from a member of Congress or from a major organization gives them a lot of money so they'll start to run ads, I think that could make a difference. But right now, it's very hard for me to kind of pick who is going to win. And obviously, there's still a lot of time before, not a lot of time, but there's still a decent amount of time before the primary. And a lot of voters aren't going to be super tuned in right now to the lieutenant governor primary.
05:29.81
Sam Shirazi
But I do think people will start to get more engaged and we might have a little bit of better sense of who has more of an advantage on the Democratic side. Now, let's focus on the Republicans. So the Republicans will also have a primary for Lieutenant Governor.
05:48.17
Sam Shirazi
The field is a little bit smaller, so there aren't as many people running. There is businessman John Curran, Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Harrety,
06:02.48
Sam Shirazi
And then there is radio personality, John Reid. And so this has a little bit of a different dynamic where you can kind of see the lanes of each candidate. And I would say he's kind of more of a traditional Republican primary. So you have Pat Herity, who is the on the Fairfax County Board. He's one of the few Republican officials left in Northern Virginia. And I think that's one of the selling points is that he's been able to win tough elections in Northern Virginia.
06:26.22
Sam Shirazi
I would say he's probably a slight front runner at this point because he's he's more of the establishment favorite for lack of a better word, because I think he, that he has an image of being more electable and you have a familiar dynamic in the Republican primary where John Reid could try to come in as a little bit of a outsider trying to bring more of a, you know, non-politician type vibe with him. And that often works in Republican primaries. So he might be able to pull that off.
06:58.14
Sam Shirazi
And then you have John Curran who, has donated his campaign about a million dollars. So he has a fair amount of money to work with. And so we'll see where're how far that takes him. So it's going to be interesting. If I had to guess, I mean, I'm guessing Herity is going to do well in Fairfax County, which is obviously the largest county in Virginia. It's become more Democratic, so it's unclear how many Republicans are actually going to vote in.
07:22.84
Sam Shirazi
the Republican primary, but he will get a lot of support from Fairfax County. And the question mark becomes how much support does he get in the rest of Virginia?
07:35.18
Sam Shirazi
particularly more conservative parts of Virginia, like Southwest Virginia. and again, this race, it's a little bit depends on who gets endorsements. Does Governor Youngkin wade into this race? We'll see. it's It's a little bit hard to tell.
07:48.41
Sam Shirazi
And I guess one thing I should have mentioned earlier about these primaries is any voter in Virginia can pick which primary they want to vote for. So Virginia does not have party registration for voter registration. So Basically, anyone can pick up either ballot on primary day or during early voting. Obviously, you can only vote in one of the two primaries, but that'll be interesting to see. Usually, there isn't a lot of crossover options.
08:14.04
Sam Shirazi
Typically, Democrats vote in the Democratic primary, Republicans vote in the Republican primary, but it will be interesting to see how many independents end up voting in these primaries. And it's possible that independents, if it's going to be more of a Democratic leaning year, will decide to vote in the Democratic primary, either because they're leaning that way or they think that candidates on the Democratic side are more likely to win.
08:38.34
Sam Shirazi
It's probably hard to right now have an idea of who's the front runner on either side. I would say on the Republican side, probably Pat Haratey has a little bit of an edge, but definitely could see John Reid as well coming up and pulling an upset.
08:53.95
Sam Shirazi
as often happens with Republicans, with outsiders being able to come in. I do think the Democrats, it's a lot more wide open, and it's hard for me to really be able to pick who's ahead right now.
09:05.83
Sam Shirazi
I did want to just quickly pivot to the general election. Obviously, we don't know who candidates are on either side, but what a lieutenant governor's race will look like in the general election, I think it's going to be interesting because Typically, nowadays, people just vote straight ticket.
09:23.84
Sam Shirazi
And in the last four Virginia elections, the party that won the governor's race has also won the lieutenant governor's race and the attorney general's race. You have to go all the way back to 2005.
09:35.84
Sam Shirazi
Tim Kaine was elected governor, and then you had a Republican lieutenant governor who was elected. And back then, there was more ticket splitting. i think nowadays, it's very hard for people to really...
09:49.22
Sam Shirazi
split their ticket that much for whatever reason people are becoming more polarized they just vote for one party down the ticket and realistically I think whoever wins the governor's race.
09:59.89
Sam Shirazi
there's a good chance that that purse that party is going to win the lieutenant governor's race unless it's really close, but I think if it's you know.
10:13.96
Sam Shirazi
well also win for the same party that won the governor's race i will say i think republicans have a little bit of hope that if pat harty is the nominee he can run ahead of the top of the ticket, particularly in Fairfax County. So just to give you a little background, his dad was also on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
10:34.27
Sam Shirazi
he The Herity name is has a long history in Fairfax. So I think there's a sense that you know maybe that can win some crossover support from people who might vote for the Democrats at the top of the ticket and in Fairfax, but they might end up voting for Pat Herity for Lieutenant Governor.
10:51.83
Sam Shirazi
you know, realistically these days, you know, Fairfax is a big county and it's important that to have a candidate from Fairfax if if you're the Republicans.
11:02.14
Sam Shirazi
But at the same time, I mean, it's only one part of Virginia. And even if he does a little bit better in Fairfax County, it's unclear if that's actually going to make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, unless it's a really close election.
11:15.22
Sam Shirazi
But, you know, Pat Harity has been able to win a tough district for a Republican, a district that's voted for Democrats. for other offices by fairly large margins. So he has shown that he has crossover appeal.
11:30.60
Sam Shirazi
Having said that, county supervisor is a very different role than lieutenant governor, and he's going to have to wade into some difficult issues such as abortion and other things that Republicans typically on the county board do not often have to talk a lot about. But obviously, if you're running for lieutenant governor, and you may have to break ties in the Virginia Senate, you're going to be asked about a lot of things from gun control to voting rights to all these things that he may not have had had to answer questions about previously. And obviously he has a primary, so he has to say things that will get him support in the Republican primary, which I'm sure the Democrats are going to use against him if he ends up being
12:11.16
Sam Shirazi
the Republican nominee. So long story short, if if the conventional wisdom, again, is that Democrats have a little bit of an advantage at the top of the ticket with the governor's race, then you would think they have a little bit of advantage in the Lieutenant Governor's race.
12:25.65
Sam Shirazi
And it's going to be interesting to see how the numbers shake out when all the votes are in during the primary. So that's the Lieutenant Governor's race. Let's move to the Attorney General's race. It's a little bit simpler in terms of the primary.
12:41.39
Sam Shirazi
So right off the bat, there's no Republican primary for Attorney General. The only Republican running is the incumbent, Jason Miyares, and obviously there is not going to be a primary against him.
12:54.36
Sam Shirazi
On the Democratic side, there are two candidates running. There's former delegate Jay Jones, and there's the Henrico Commonwealth's attorney, Shannon Taylor. And so we can talk a little bit about that race.
13:04.75
Sam Shirazi
The good thing about it is it's a one-on-one race, which is not as complicated as a lieutenant governor's race where you have all these Democrats running. But before I talk about the primary, I just wanted to take a moment to talk about what the attorney general does and why it's an important role.
13:18.78
Sam Shirazi
And I think, you know, I talked about this in the first episode, there's a lot of focus on the governor's race, particularly by national media. And in in most people, when they think of 2025, they think of the Virginia governor's race. And that makes sense.
13:34.36
Sam Shirazi
But I do think the attorney general's race should not be overlooked, particularly in this moment. So if you think about it The Democrats in Congress don't have a whole lot of power. we i did the episode on the shutdown fight and basically how the Democrats decided not to put up a big fight in the Senate over the budget and so or the continuing resolution to fund the government.
13:58.28
Sam Shirazi
And so that that didn't really end up going anywhere. And so we're seeing a lot of the pushback to the Trump administration by Democrats happening in the courts, both private organizations and state attorney generals filing lawsuits.
14:09.44
Sam Shirazi
And a lot of these lawsuits are are at least successful at the district court level. And we're seeing a lot of injunctions being granted. It's important to keep in mind, none of that is coming from Virginia.
14:20.23
Sam Shirazi
The Virginia Attorney General, Jason Miyares, is not joining any of those lawsuits. And so those are all coming from either private organizations or the Democratic Attorney General.
14:31.17
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, obviously, if the Democrats win the Attorney General's office, that's going to change and whoever becomes the Democratic Attorney General next year will file A lot of lawsuits, presumably, or they'll join a lot of lawsuits against the Trump administration.
14:46.36
Sam Shirazi
Whereas if Jason Miyares is reelected, he will continue to basically not go after the Trump administration because realistically, that's what happens. The Republican attorney generals at the state level don't go after a Republican president. And usually a Democratic attorney general at the state level doesn't go after a Democratic president. That's just the reality of how these offices work.
15:06.90
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, there are a lot of other attorney general offices that are going after the Trump administration, notably Maryland. Maryland has a Democratic attorney general who's been filing lawsuits against the Trump administration.
15:18.46
Sam Shirazi
But there may be Virginia specific issues that only the Virginia attorney general may be able to bring. There's also an issue called standing, which means does a party have the legal ability to bring a lawsuit? And sometimes if something is really directly directly affecting Virginia, perhaps only the attorney general in Virginia could bring the lawsuit.
15:37.45
Sam Shirazi
And generally, as I mentioned, there's a lot of litigation going on and there's you know there are a lot of lawyers, but there's not an infinite supply of lawyers. And to have another office of attorney general another attorney general office with a decent amount of lawyers who might be able to bring these lawsuits, I think is important at the federal level.
15:56.66
Sam Shirazi
And as I mentioned, this podcast is called Federal Fallout. I'm trying to kind of explore the intersection of what's going on in DC with the federal government and the Virginia state election. So I don't want to belabor the point, but as you can tell, i think there is a decent amount on the line for the attorney general's race in terms of what will happen next year.
16:15.37
Sam Shirazi
If there's a changeover in the attorney general's office, or if the incumbent Jason Miyares is able to get reelected. All right, with all that out of the way, let's talk about the two democratic candidates running for attorney general.
16:30.57
Sam Shirazi
And I think they each kind of come from a different geographic area and they bring a different dynamic to the race. So former delegate Jay Jones, he was a delegate representing Norfolk.
16:41.09
Sam Shirazi
He has a decent amount of name recognition because he ran for attorney general in 2021 against the incumbent Democrat Mark Herring. Jay Jones ended up losing that primary.
16:52.45
Sam Shirazi
Mark Herring went on to lose the general election in 2021 because it was a tough year for Democrats, but Jay Jones has run for attorney general before. So he has the name ID there and he has, you know, his base of support in the Hampton Roads area.
17:05.65
Sam Shirazi
He also comes from the African American community. And I think that also gives him a level of support. So when you add all that together, you know, I think there's an argument that he's slightly considered the front runner for the attorney general nomination on the Democratic side.
17:20.08
Sam Shirazi
However, I think his opponent, Henrico Commonwealth's attorney, Shannon Taylor. So she comes from Henrico County, which is in the Richmond suburbs. It's a big county.
17:31.08
Sam Shirazi
Commonwealth's attorney is just a fancy name for a prosecutor. So she's the top prosecutor in Henrico. So she obviously has that part of Virginia that might come out to support her. And, you know, realistically, sometimes these primaries come down to different communities. And I think The wild card here is going to be Northern Virginia and how that breaks. So if you think about Jay Jones might have more of the support in Hampton Roads, maybe Shannon Taylor has more support in the Richmond suburbs.
18:02.25
Sam Shirazi
What's gonna happen in Northern Virginia? Are they gonna split it? Is one candidate gonna do better than the other? And I think you know if Shannon Taylor is able to maybe mobilize women and she she gets more of that community to come out for her, that could be a pathway for her to win.
18:17.89
Sam Shirazi
But if instead, know, Northern Virginia split pretty evenly, that Jay Jones is able to consolidate Hampton Roads, and he's able to get more of the African American vote, then you can see him having more of a pathway to then win. So regardless, we'll find out one way or another, which candidate is going to win.
18:36.65
Sam Shirazi
I think that should be interesting. It's, it's as I mentioned, a one-on-one contest. Whoever gets to 50.1% is going to win. So it's going to be interesting to see which candidate will be able to pull it out.
18:51.64
Sam Shirazi
So that's both the LG and Attorney General's races. I did want to briefly talk about the general election for the Attorney General. So as I mentioned, Jason Miyares is the only incumbent statewide who's running for reelection.
19:07.44
Sam Shirazi
I think his strategy is going to be a typical, you know, tough on crime Republican campaign, basically running on that. And there's a possibility he may run a little bit ahead of the ticket just because he's an attorney general.
19:22.69
Sam Shirazi
However, as I mentioned, I think nowadays there's less ticket splitting. So I wouldn't necessarily count on that.
19:30.69
Sam Shirazi
I think the reality is if Democrats win by, let's say five points at least, then you know it's going to be difficult for any of the other Republicans down ticket to win.
19:40.85
Sam Shirazi
If we're talking about a one to three point win for the Democrats, that's in the range where maybe the Republicans may be able to hold the attorney general office. So I don't think it's a given that the Democrats are going to win the attorney general's office, particularly if it's closer than people anticipate.
19:59.00
Sam Shirazi
i did want to just briefly talk about the primary generally. So the primary will be on June 17th, but there is 45 days of early voting. So the early voting will start on May 2nd.
20:14.31
Sam Shirazi
So that's coming up. So that's not too far away in terms of the Virginia primary.
20:22.93
Sam Shirazi
So I think the big question is how much turnout there's going to be on each side. And it really comes down to on the Republican side, is there going to be a governor primary? If there's a primary on for governor, then obviously that's going to drive turnout.
20:36.21
Sam Shirazi
Most people are going to come out for the governor's race and then they'll probably end up voting for lieutenant governor. But if there's just a lieutenant governor's race on the Republican side, you know, it's hard to know how many people are actually going to come out for just the lieutenant governor's primary in Virginia.
20:51.44
Sam Shirazi
So we'll just have to wait and see. As I mentioned in previous episodes, there are two Republicans attempting to get 10,000 signatures to get on the Republican ballot for governor. We don't know right now if that's going to happen.
21:02.25
Sam Shirazi
They have until April 3rd to submit those signatures. So we'll just have to wait and see if there's a Republican primary at the top of the ticket. On the Democratic side, i think with each passing day, it's less and less likely that there is going to be a Democratic primary for governor.
21:18.46
Sam Shirazi
But we're fairly certain there's going to be one for lieutenant governor and attorney general. And I think the question comes down to who's going to turn out for those races. I think it will be, for the most part, pretty diehard Democrats.
21:30.92
Sam Shirazi
But I do think there's a possibility that there are going to be more people coming out this year just because more people are engaged in the Virginia elections.
21:41.86
Sam Shirazi
So if you look back to 2013, that was the last time there was just a lieutenant governor primary on the ballot without a governor's race on the ballot for the Democrats in a primary.
21:52.90
Sam Shirazi
And that time you had about 145,000 people turn out for that primary. I think almost certainly this time there's going to be more than that, partly because of population growth, partly because people are a lot more engaged than they were 2013.
22:07.07
Sam Shirazi
And I think one of the real wild cards in the primary, and I think this is something that like doesn't get a lot of attention in Virginia, and I might just do a whole podcast about it, but right now I'll just talk about it briefly, is the permanent absentee list.
22:21.39
Sam Shirazi
So the permanent absentee list is an optional list that anyone can sign up for where you sign up to get a ballot every single election without having to request it each time.
22:35.16
Sam Shirazi
And there's an option when you're filling out that form to request to either get ballots for the Republican primary or the Democratic primary or neither primary. And the reality is vast majority of people who sign up for the permanent absentee list typically are Democrats.
22:51.27
Sam Shirazi
And so there are a lot of Democrats on the permanent absentee list.
22:55.87
Sam Shirazi
And I went and looked at the 2024 Democratic primary for president in March 2024. And in that election, the record show there were two hundred over 217,000 Democrats on the permanent absentee list.
23:13.89
Sam Shirazi
And of those 217,000 Democrats, over 100,000 voted by mail. So you you had about a 50% return rate. and And I'm guessing for a primary, like for Lieutenant Governor, you're probably going to get another 50% return rate.
23:30.81
Sam Shirazi
but you know The permanent absentee list has probably only grown since then. So let's say there are 220,000 Democrats on the permanent absentee list, even if half those people return their ballots, that's 110,000 people just from the permanent absentee list that are voting by mail.
23:48.16
Sam Shirazi
And as I mentioned in 2013, the whole primary, there were only 145,000 people. And so this time, i think it's likely we're gonna get over 200,000 people voting in the Democratic primary,
24:01.08
Sam Shirazi
if not hit 250,000, just given the engagement and the permanent absentee list and the fact that it's easier to vote now in Virginia. So I think it's gonna be wild card to see who those people end up voting for, how do the campaigns reach them,
24:16.78
Sam Shirazi
Are they sending out mailers? I think those are all going to be really interesting questions because is the first big statewide primary since the permanent absentee list was rolled out. So the first year I think it was in use was 2022. There was no statewide in 2022.
24:31.75
Sam Shirazi
There was no statewide race in twenty twenty two there was a Presidential primary in 2024, so that was used for the first time, but realistically in 2024, the Democratic primary for president was not super competitive.
24:47.45
Sam Shirazi
So this is the first time we're gonna have a really competitive primary where there's gonna have this permanent absentee list being used. And so I just think it's an important little wrinkle as we see the results rolling in on primary night, that there's gonna be a fair amount of mail ballots coming in from this permanent absentee list.
25:05.75
Sam Shirazi
So that's a lot on the primaries. You know, it's only going to ramp up. Make sure you vote in the Democratic or Republican primary, whichever one you choose to vote in. Early voting will start on May 2nd, and then the primary is on June 17th.
25:22.39
Sam Shirazi
So I'm going to be covering it all. that's not even I haven't even gone to the House of Delegates. There's going to be a not a whole lot of primaries, but there will be some primaries in the House of Delegates. I will cover that. Obviously, there's a lot of developments every day outside of the primary, just on the regular campaign trail and in D.C.,
25:39.47
Sam Shirazi
a lot going on. I will try to do my best to cover everything. I wanted to use this podcast to talk about the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General primaries because those are very important and those are coming up.
25:50.62
Sam Shirazi
But I will follow up and do other podcasts on everything else that's going on. So thank you for listening and hope you will listen next time.
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