Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will first go over Super Saturday and the expansion of early voting that is happening today in Virginia. And then I wanted to also talk about Spanberger, Governor Spanberger’s approval rating and some commentary around that, and just wanted to share my thoughts because I’ve seen lot of hot takes about it, and I thought I would give you mine.

00:24.22

Sam Shirazi

But before we get to that, obviously redistricting referendums coming up. It’s not that far away. We are just around the corner in terms of election day. Election day is April 21st.

00:35.64

Sam Shirazi

However, before that, there will be a lot of early voting. There has already been a lot of early voting. And there will be even more early voting in the final days. That’s typically when you see the most early voting is the last days of the early voting cycle.

00:48.98

Sam Shirazi

And I really wanted to emphasize April 11th, which is today, Super Saturday. The reason I call it Super Saturday is because... It is the first day of early voting on a Saturday across Virginia. So everywhere across Virginia, there will be early voting.

01:03.52

Sam Shirazi

But then on top of that, it’s the first day that many satellite voting locations will be opening this cycle for early voting. I’ll kind of go through where they’re opening, where they’ve already been open, So let me break down early voting a little bit. So early voting, typically the way it works in Virginia is every city or county has to have at least one early voting location.

01:23.60

Sam Shirazi

And that’s typically the registrar’s office, usually in the a government center where the the county has the rest of the government facilities. You can go there and do some early voting.

01:35.18

Sam Shirazi

But in some of the bigger locations across Virginia, big counties, big cities, they will have what are called satellite voting locations. These are secondary or other locations where people can go and early vote.

01:46.02

Sam Shirazi

There’s really no law that governs that in Virginia. You have pretty big counties in Virginia that only have one like early voting location. And then you have other relatively smaller counties that might have two.

01:58.04

Sam Shirazi

so there’s really no law in terms of how many early voting locations a city or county has, other than obviously they have to have one. And then the other rule that governs early voting is that the last two Saturdays before the election, there needs to be Saturday early voting. Otherwise, there’s no real law. Some places have more weekend weekend early voting. Some places have less, but you have to have at least two weekends.

02:21.19

Sam Shirazi

two Saturdays before the election, you have to have early voting. And so typically what we see in Virginia, especially for general elections, is the satellite early voting locations tend to open up earlier in the cycle, probably a week or two before they have opened up right now.

02:36.61

Sam Shirazi

However, because this is, I would say, a not a general election, it’s a special election, essentially, I think we’re seeing satellite early voting locations opening up later this cycle.

02:47.56

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I I think maybe part of that was just the fact that there was less time to get prepared for this special election. And frankly, I think the but local county election officials might not have thought we were going to get it this much early voting. We have gotten a lot of early voting. They probably thought it wouldn’t be this busy.

03:05.70

Sam Shirazi

And so they scheduled it for later in the cycle. But, you know, we are seeing a lot of early voting. So, you know, right now, going into Super Saturday, we are seeing – early voting that is almost matching how much early voting we had in 2025, which is really crazy to think about. And keep in mind in 2025, there are more satellite early voting locations open at this point.

03:27.73

Sam Shirazi

So going into Super Saturday, we are you know well over 850,000 early votes, which is just a lot of early voting in Virginia for an election that is not a general election. It’s in the spring.

03:40.96

Sam Shirazi

We typically don’t have elections in spring. So lot of early voting. And that is also telling me that we are going to see a lot of early voting on Super Saturday because we’ve already seen a lot of early voting. The other reason we’re going to see a lot of early voting on Super Saturday is because typically on weekends, there is more early voting because people a lot of people don’t have to work. And it’s just more convenient for them to early vote on the weekend.

04:01.98

Sam Shirazi

And then finally, the final reason we’re going to see a lot of early voting, I think, on this Super Saturday is because so many places are opening up their early voting locations. And I’ll kind of go through the list of places that are opening up their early voting locations today.

04:28.90

Sam Shirazi

Currently, there are three early voting locations open in Fairfax County. And on Super Saturday, there will be 13 additional early voting locations opening up for a total of 16 early voting locations in Fairfax County. And a lot of people know that the early voting locations going to be opening up. So you may live on the other side of the county. You may be waiting for your early voting location to open up. So that’s why I think Super Saturday is going to see a lot of early voting because there’s a lot of pent up demand in terms of people who know that they were going to early vote. It’s just they were waiting for the early voting location to open up. So that’s in Fairfax County, big county, a lot of early voting locations opening up. So definitely one to watch on this Super Saturday.

05:09.11

Sam Shirazi

Okay, the next county that’s going to have early voting is Prince William County. And as you can see, early voting on the Super Saturday is going be really important in Northern Virginia, because a lot of the satellite early voting locations are opening up in Northern Virginia.

05:22.82

Sam Shirazi

On Super Saturday, there will be six additional locations that are going to be opening up in Fairfax County, excuse me, in in Prince William County. So you’re going have seven total early voting locations in Prince William County.

05:35.68

Sam Shirazi

And these seven locations are going to be open all the way through the end of early voting on Saturday. And that includes on Sunday. So Sunday, April 12th, Prince William County will also have early voting. And so we’re seeing a lot of early voting that’s going to be happening in Prince William County.

05:50.69

Sam Shirazi

This always happens. There’s a lot of pent-up demand for early voting and in Prince William County because the early voting location is around Manassas area. A lot of the population in Prince William County lives along the I-95 corridor, so they’re waiting for the early voting locations. I expect a lot of early voting in Prince William County.

06:07.64

Sam Shirazi

Okay, another location that’s going see satellite voting locations are opening up. That will be in Loudoun. Loudoun’s a big county, typically leans towards the Democrats, but is somewhat competitive sometimes in these elections. So Loudoun always gets a lot of attention, important county.

06:24.99

Sam Shirazi

On Super Saturday, they will open up four more early voting locations. So Loudoun’s another really important area where we’re just going to keep an eye out to see how much early voting there’s going on.

06:34.55

Sam Shirazi

And I’ll round up the satellite early voting locations that will be opening up in Northern Virginia in Arlington. Arlington currently has one early voting location and there will be two additional locations opening up on Super Saturday. So Arlington will have a total of three early voting locations.

06:49.88

Sam Shirazi

But that’s not all on the Super Saturday. There is also going to be more early voting locations opening up in Hampton Roads. The first place that will be opening it up is Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is a big area.

07:01.63

Sam Shirazi

On Super Saturday, they they will open two additional locations. Now, I did want to note, this is less than they had last year for the governor’s election. Typically, they have more early voting locations. They only got to have three for Super Saturday, but still important given that you know that’s going to essentially double or triple the amount of early voting locations that are going to be available in Virginia Beach.

07:23.71

Sam Shirazi

And I’ll talk about one other location in Hampton Roads, and that’s Norfolk. Norfolk has has had one early voting location open this time.

07:34.56

Sam Shirazi

But on Super Saturday, it is going to be opening up additional early voting locations. There will be four more early voting locations opening up in Norfolk on Super Saturday, and those will also be open generally until the end of early voting. So that’s the thing with this first Super Saturday of early voting. It’s not that these satellite early voting early voting locations are going to be open just on Saturday. They’re going to be open on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And in some locations, specifically Prince William County, they’ll also be open on tomorrow, Sunday, April 12th. And in other places, for example, Alexandria will have Sunday early voting.

08:14.94

Sam Shirazi

Richmond will have some Sunday early voting. So we’re seeing that the early voting is not necessarily uniform in terms of the hours and the locations across Virginia. And I should also not forget to mention, there are a lot of early voting locations opening up on Super Saturday, but there have been early voting satellite locations open up opening up this past week as well in places like Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield,

08:43.00

Sam Shirazi

Newport News has been relatively less attention because there haven’t been as many of those opening up, but they have also been opening up. So as we can see, the end of early voting always sees a lot more locations opening up.

08:56.39

Sam Shirazi

People obviously are going to be paying more attention to the election because it’s getting closer. And so more people vote at the end of early voting, especially with the they take advantage of the Saturday early voting.

09:07.91

Sam Shirazi

And the other thing to keep in mind is typically the people who vote at the very beginning of the early voting period are the most highly engaged, most partisan people who pretty much know how they’re going to vote. So if you’re voting on the first day of early voting, you are probably not an undecided voter. You’re probably committed to one side or the other.

09:26.89

Sam Shirazi

I think the thing that’s interesting is... Towards the end of the early voting period and up through election day, the people who vote at the end typically are either the people who are undecided, who don’t know how to vote, and so they’ve been waiting on it, thinking about it, or also people who are just kind of lower propensity voters who may be not that engaged.

09:45.46

Sam Shirazi

independents who you know just wait till the end to to hear all the arguments or people who just are not super engaged, they hear there’s an election, they go vote in it. And so the importance of that is those people can be really swing one way or another towards a towards a party or in this case,

10:04.53

Sam Shirazi

Yes or no at the end. And I think that’s really important. Sometimes we see in these elections, sort for example, in 2025, clearly a lot of the late deciders seem to have moved towards the Democrats. Democrats had momentum in the end.

10:16.08

Sam Shirazi

They got a big win in 2025 in Virginia. And the question becomes, you know, who has the momentum here in the closing days of the campaign? I think the Yes campaign is putting a lot of efforts to get out the vote in these two weekends of early voting. Typically, Democrats do well in early voting on the weekends in Virginia.

10:36.12

Sam Shirazi

Why is that? You know, you have younger people who tend to vote more on the weekends. You have people who are working during the week. So they they like to vote on the weekends. So we’ll just have to wait and see how much early vote the Democrats are able to get out this Saturday and then also next Saturday during the last day of early voting.

10:52.88

Sam Shirazi

And we’ll have to kind of see is there kind of late momentum towards yes or no. You know, it’s it’s hard to tell. I think there’s a lot of different factors you have to look into. i think we’ll get some final polls that’ll be helpful to get a sense of where things are going. But anyways, I wanted to just kind of highlight Super Saturday. I’ve been pretty excited about it. I think it’s unique because most Virginia elections, a lot of these satellite early voting locations open up at different times. The counties don’t have this kind of uniform opening of early voting locations. I think this election is pretty unique. You’re going to have a lot of them opening up on Saturday.

11:24.62

Sam Shirazi

So I just wanted to flag that for everyone. Keep an eye out on it. Keep an eye out for the numbers. I think this Saturday, next week, and then the final Saturday of early voting is going to be really big. And I think the question is going to become how much early voting do we see?

11:39.14

Sam Shirazi

Currently, we by the end of this weekend, we will probably be close to a million votes. In 2025, we had just under 1.5 million early votes total.

11:49.24

Sam Shirazi

I’m curious to see, do we hit 1.5 million early votes this time? And if we do hit that number or get close to it, does that mean that a lot of people have just kind of shifted their voting patterns from Election Day to early vote?

12:01.03

Sam Shirazi

Or are we going to still see a lot of Election Day early vote? I think we’re going to see a lot of Election Day early vote. And the question becomes, do we get more turnout in this election than the governor’s election, which if you told me at the beginning that would happen, I would have really so doubted that. But it’s it’s plausible that we end up getting more total votes this election for the redistricting referendum than we got in the governor’s election, which is really kind of crazy to think about. And I think the reason for that is, I you know frankly, I think both sides are really...

12:29.80

Sam Shirazi

engage Both sides are really trying to get out their voters. I think in 2025, certainly Democrats had some momentum. I think the Republicans weren’t as excited about their candidates, so they didn’t get as as many of their voters out. I think they’re going to do a better job getting their voters out this time.

12:46.01

Sam Shirazi

We had about little over 3.4 million votes in 2025. I wonder, are we going to hit 3.5 million votes in this referendum? So lot of stuff to look up for. I think early vote, I flagged this before, is typically not great at predicting elections because you don’t know who are the independents voting for. you know, you there’s a lot of trying to read the tea leaves. And I think that stuff’s a little bit over overdrawn, but what I think early vote is really good at telling you is turnout.

13:11.90

Sam Shirazi

So if you were heading towards around 1.5 million total early votes, that is telling me this is going to be a high turnout election. I think we’re going to get at least 3 million total votes and we can get close to 3.5 million early votes, which, you know, is really high for a non-general election in Virginia.

13:29.60

Sam Shirazi

And anyway, so, Super interesting stuff. I won’t dwell too much more on Super Saturday, but did want to mention it. But now I will move on to a different topic, which is more so about Governor Spanberger’s approval. But I should talk about this poll that was put out by The Washington Post.

13:45.08

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, last time I put I put my podcast out, I had recorded it. And then the next morning, Washington Post had put out this poll, so I didn’t get a chance to talk about it in the last podcast. I do want to talk about it this podcast. this post This poll from Washington Post came from the Schar School at George Mason University.

14:04.17

Sam Shirazi

They’re one of the pollsters that do polls in Virginia. I typically look for the GMU Schar School polls because I think they have a pretty solid track record. They were pretty on the money in 2025 in terms of predicting the winners in the election. And so I like the GMU-Schar school polls. I trust them.

14:24.46

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, there are other pollsters in Virginia. I think State Navigate’s working on the poll. That’s going to be super interesting. But I’ll go over the Schar school poll. And then I’ll talk a little bit about the Spanberger approval, because I think that’s what honestly got a lot of attention from this poll.

14:40.56

Sam Shirazi

So to begin with, in terms of the redistricting referendum, The Washington Post GMU-Schar school poll found that and in terms of likely voters, they are 52% yes, 47% no.

14:53.42

Sam Shirazi

And if you look at registered voters, they are 53% yes, 44% no. And they also had the Trump approval at 57% disapprove and 40% approve.

15:05.12

Sam Shirazi

So I first want to talk about that number. I think pretty much that’s in line with the vibes. And what I mean by that is I think the vibes have been that the yes campaign has a slight advantage or an advantage in Virginia, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s not something where you can kind of a hundred percent be certain that the yes campaign is going to be winning. These aren’t the numbers we saw, for example, with Spanberger in, in polls around this time when she was winning by about 10% and everyone was pretty confident that Spanberger was going to win.

15:34.88

Sam Shirazi

I think, uh, you know a five point lead among likely voters is not insignificant, but it’s also not that the kind of margin where you can be certain about the outcome. And I also think it’s interesting that there are people who disapprove of President Trump who are going to be voting no on the referendum, at least according to this poll. And I think certainly that’s going to most likely be independents, people who may not like some of the president’s policies, but they also don’t like what the Democrats are trying to do with this gerrymander. so long story short, I would actually say that GMU-Schar school poll was not super interesting in terms of the referendum results because it was kind of like what we were thinking about. It it was you know not super super surprising. When I saw that poll, I said, yeah, that that makes sense to me.

16:20.46

Sam Shirazi

I think the thing that got a lot more attention in the Washington Post-Schar school poll was the Spanberger approval numbers. And I’ll just go over the approval first, and then I’ll talk about it. So Governor Spanberger’s approval, according to this poll, was 47% approve, 46% disapprove. And I think that was surprising because obviously Governor Spanberger got a big win, 15% last year. And so now, according to this poll, she’s only at 1% net approval.

16:46.21

Sam Shirazi

Typically, we see in Virginia, at least at the beginning of their terms, Virginia governors have pretty positive approval ratings because you know state governors are usually less partisan. And I think people who may be more polarized with national politics aren’t as polarized with state politics. However, the Washington Post poll has found that Spanberger’s approval is lower than other governors at this point in their administration. And I think there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of commentary, a lot of reasons why people think this is what’s going on. The first thing I wanted to say, like right off the bat is it’s one poll. So as much as I think this GMU Schar is, is a good pollster, like you never want to base your entire worldview on one poll because for whatever reason, things could be off. And so I just put that caveat out there because think there’s a lot of commentary based on one poll.

17:54.23

Sam Shirazi

Spanberger doesn’t have overwhelmingly positive approval. like If this was 20% positive approval, even if the poll was a little bit off, you could say, okay, she’s still pretty pretty popular. I think there’s a lot of things in terms of why Spanberger’s approval may not be as high as previous governors at this point.

18:11.89

Sam Shirazi

Realistically, I think polarization has caught up to every politician. And I think we’re at a point where If you’re a Republican, it’s very hard for you to give a Democratic governor a positive approval and vice versa. I’m not saying that’s 100% true. We have seen more, you know, blue state governors. Sorry, we we’ve seen governors in Republican governors in blue states who have pretty decent approval. For example, Vermont’s a famous example where they have a Republican governor, but he has a strong approval rating because he’s...

18:41.84

Sam Shirazi

Viewed as not the typical Republican in Kentucky, we have a red state, but the Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, typically has a pretty positive approval. So I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I do think po polarization has caught up.

18:55.03

Sam Shirazi

And I think specifically with Spanberger, the issue she’s having is she’s kind of becoming the face of the redistricting campaign, whether she likes it or not, because she is the most prominent Virginia Democrat now. Obviously, the gerrymandering that is going to be happening is being done by the Democrats.

19:09.78

Sam Shirazi

I think the Republicans have done a successful job at kind of pushing that image that this is a very extreme gerrymander. And so I think they’re their voters, the Republican base, is very upset. And so they’re you’re seeing that being translated over into Governor Spanberger, where you know perhaps in the past you might have had some Republicans who who may have had positive approvals of a Democratic governor. I think that’s going to be very difficult in this environment.

19:34.54

Sam Shirazi

when the Democrats in Virginia are pushing a pretty partisan gerrymander and Spanberger, while she doesn’t seem to be the person who is most behind this, wasn’t the person necessarily who who’s been driving this the most, I think she certainly has come out in favor of it. And as the most prominent Democrat in Virginia is going to be part of the the face of the campaign.

19:54.89

Sam Shirazi

However, I don’t think it’s just a redistricting referendum because, frankly, according to this poll, the redistricting referendum is polling higher than Spanberger, or least there’s more people who are going to vote yes on the redistricting referendum than Spanberger. I think the Republicans have also done a good job of kind of weaponizing some of the bills that Democrats ended up proposing, but not passing.

20:17.51

Sam Shirazi

And so there’s been a lot of commentary about all these bills and tax rises, and frankly, most of them didn’t pass. And so the Republicans made a lot of noise, but most of the things that they said are going to happen didn’t end up happening.

20:31.35

Sam Shirazi

But a lot of, you know, less engaged voters, they might have seen something online. They may not have realized it never got passed. So I think there’s been a lot of a sense that the Republicans are certainly trying to paint it as the Democrats are going far left. They, you know, Spanberger campaigned as a moderate. Now she’s super left.

20:46.72

Sam Shirazi

And I think, you know, Spanberger is going to have to deal with that narrative that is being pushed by the Republicans. And frankly, I think you know maybe the next legislative session, I think the Democrats have to think about some of these bills they’re proposing. like If there’s really no way a bill is going to be passed, you know do you really need to propose it? like you know I get sometimes legislatures put in bills because they know it’s not going to pass, but they’re trying to get the idea out there. So maybe down the line it might pass. I get that. But at the same time,

21:14.44

Sam Shirazi

You have to think, how are the Republicans going to weaponize this bill? Is this the kind of best bill that we need right now in terms of getting our message out there? So, you know, I think i think there’s some some learning that Spanberger and the Democrats in the General Assembly can can do from this last session. I also think, you know, right now there’s a a really... Andy Combin feeling across the world, frankly, and it it goes all the way down to the state level. And I think that helps man burger a lot in 2025. You know, the Republicans were in charge of DC, they were in charge of Virginia. And so was easy for her to get up there, say, I’m change.

21:47.35

Sam Shirazi

I’m running against DC, I’m running against Richmond, I’m going to bring something different to Virginia. And the voters like that because they want to change and there’s a strong anti-incumbency feeling and that’s why Samanberger got such a big win.

21:58.70

Sam Shirazi

However, that’s a two-way street. And so once you’re in office, you are the incumbent, you are people are expecting you to make their lives better, or fix their problems. And you know realistically, a lot of what’s going on is being set in DC by policy in DC, but you as a governor are also accountable for people’s lives and they may feel that things are getting better, gas prices are high,

22:21.23

Sam Shirazi

You can say, you know, that’s because of the war with Iran, and that had nothing to do with Spanberger, and that’s almost certainly true, but at the end of the day, people are not feeling their lives getting better, and I think this is part of the challenge when, especially when you run on affordability, you have to end up delivering, and some of the changes you can make as governor are important, but they also might take time to implement. They may not, people might not feel them directly, so I think Spanberger is kind of dealing with that issue where once you’re in power, I think it’s easy for the other side to attack you and say, oh, things aren’t getting better. and And maybe, you know, the Democrat strategy is to just blame everything on Trump. And, and you know, that makes sense from their perspective, but it doesn’t. It also means that the Republicans are going to start blaming you because you’re in charge in Richmond.

23:05.59

Sam Shirazi

So I think I think there’s a lot going on with the Spanberger approval. I kind of caution everyone that it’s very early. There’s a lot that can still happen. It’s one poll. So I, you know, people need to talk about something. So there’s been a lot of commentary about it. i think, you know, Spanberger’s got a long time in office. She’ll be in office for you know almost four years left in her term. She’ll almost certainly have a trifecta for all four years. There’s a lot of things she can do that might boost her approval. There are lot of things that might she might do that might hurt her approval. Like, it’ll go up and down. We’ll just have to keep an eye on it. And I do think the last thing I’ll leave you a bit with is kind of tying this all back to the redistricting referendum.

23:42.05

Sam Shirazi

I think the reason why the redistricting referendum is so important is it’s going to be viewed in a way as in some ways as a referendum, both on Trump and now I think on Spanberger. And I think winning can fix a lot of problems. Like there are, you see this a lot when a politician has a problems, but you win an election, you know, people will forget about it. They’ll move on.

24:02.79

Sam Shirazi

You might say president Trump is in that camp. He obviously had legal issues after he left office. He won the election and, you know, a lot of people have kind of moved on from that. And, and so winning can fix a lot of problems for politicians, no matter which side of the aisle they’re on.

24:18.55

Sam Shirazi

And I do think if the redistricting referendum passes by healthy margin, I do think that will fix a lot of problems for Spanberger. She’ll be back in the news and she’ll kind of be the face of this redistricting referendum passing in Virginia.

25:09.68

Sam Shirazi

People have asked me like, you know, what is your sense of the referendum? And I often point people back to the governor, so excuse me, the attorney general’s race in 2025, because it’s kind of the same dynamic. People thought it was going to be close. The Republicans seem more energized by the attorney general race.

25:23.99

Sam Shirazi

And at the end of the day, Jay Jones almost won by 7% because I think people were just, you know, upset at what was going on in DC and wanted to send a message. Probably also benefited obviously from Governor Spanberger’s coattails, but long story short, it was a,

25:37.79

Sam Shirazi

thought to be a close election, one that even the Republicans might win in 2025, but Jay Jones won by 7%. So I think one scenario is like, this is kind of the we redo of the Virginia Attorney General race. It kind of looks close, or it looks like maybe the Republicans have a chance, but at the end of the day, it might not be close at all.

25:55.20

Sam Shirazi

And the yes campaign passes easily. i think the other alternative is that, you know, this kind of becomes like 2021 all over again where you know The Democrats feel confident. They think Virginia is a blue state, but the Republicans are just able to mobilize, able to get their grassroots upset, able to win over independence and kind of at the end get a so a kind of a surprise victory or come from behind victory where they’re able to pull it off and win in Virginia, which is a difficult state for them to win in. So I think there’s also that possibility.

26:26.02

Sam Shirazi

I’m kind of looking at the Jay Jones margin around six and a half to 7% as kind of the over under. I think if Democrats do better than the Jay Jones margin from 2025, I think that’s generally a good night for them.

26:39.50

Sam Shirazi

i mean, obviously, if it passes, a win’s a win, they’ll take it. But if it’s less than the Jay Jones margin in terms of the election being you know less than 6.5%, I think that’s a decent night for the Republicans. Obviously, if it doesn’t pass, that’s a very good night for the Republicans.

26:54.53

Sam Shirazi

But I think that’s kind of what I’m looking for in terms of the Virginia elections. And it’s kind of an interesting test because the national environment looks really bad for the Republicans right now. I don’t want to go into the ins and outs of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

27:13.08

Sam Shirazi

and that was a race that in twenty twenty five was at least somewhat competitive even though it was a ten point win and in the past certainly has been very competitive so we’re seeing in a swing the kind of classic swing state of Wisconsin democrats or the liberal candidate is winning by twenty points even in Georgia there was a special election for a congressional seat the. The Republicans still won that seat, and that was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former seat, but there was about a 25% swing in terms of the overperformance by Democrats in Georgia. And so we’re seeing these like crazy overperformances by Democrats.

27:46.66

Sam Shirazi

And yet, you know, Virginia doesn’t seem like a done deal. And I think there’s the possibility that there are more state local dynamics. The independents are not loving this idea of gerrymandering, perhaps.

27:58.70

Sam Shirazi

The debate is more about the nuances of the districts as opposed to is this a referendum on Trump. And so I think there is a possibility that this is going to be close and closer than people expect. There’s also the possibility that I think we’re all kind of underestimating how much of a anti-Trump and anti-Republican feeling there is in the country. And if people just view this as a straight referendum, the ability to send a message on President Trump,

28:21.86

Sam Shirazi

and push back, then I think there is a possibility that this could pass by a pretty healthy margin. So we’ll just have to wait and see. I think it’s going to be super interesting. Keep an eye out for some of the numbers on Super Saturday. And then I’ll probably be doing a few more podcasts next week before the referendum as we’re starting to wrap things up. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening.

28:42.58

Sam Shirazi

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

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia elections. This episode we will go over a vibe shift that has seemed to have happened with the redistricting referendum here in Virginia. And then I also wanted to talk a little bit about the potential areas to look for in terms of, you know, the important swing counties in this election. So the first thing I want to talk about is really just this vibe shift that has seemed to have happened in the past week or two weeks.

00:26.90

Sam Shirazi

I think at the beginning, there was a sense that on the no campaign, there was some momentum. The initial early vote numbers look pretty good in terms of more red parts of Virginia coming out.

00:39.13

Sam Shirazi

And I think there was a sense that, you know, and I had talked about this, that this referendum was not necessarily a a slam dunk. Virginia was not California. There were a lot of independents. So I think, you know, there was a sense that this was not necessarily a done deal in Virginia.

00:56.34

Sam Shirazi

And while I think that’s still true to a certain extent, I don’t think it’s a done deal. I do think the last two weeks or so, there’s been a bit of a vibe shift. I want to talk a little bit about that. You know, right now we’re in kind of this lull of the campaign period where We’re in the middle of early voting.

01:13.29

Sam Shirazi

It has come down a little bit, but it’s still very high numbers. I expect well over a million people kept voting early and potentially one and a half million people voting early, which is just really, really high numbers for a non-general election.

01:25.93

Sam Shirazi

And then the last 10 days of this campaign are going to be really big. because that’s when all the, most of the early voting locations, satellite locations are gonna be opening up. So I think the last 10 days are gonna be a sprint. And so we’re in this kind of holding pattern right now where there’s some consistent early voting happening. And then I think at the end, there’s gonna be this huge momentum to for people to come vote early. And I think in terms of the vibe shift right now,

01:51.24

Sam Shirazi

I think there’s a sense both in terms of the early vote. I think it’s starting to look better for the yes campaign. And I think part of the reason for that is just fact that typically the longer early voting goes on, the better it typically is for Democrats because more male votes are added. And I think oftentimes the people who vote earliest are like,

02:11.09

Sam Shirazi

older people. And usually as the early voting period goes on, it starts to get a little bit younger, more diverse. So I think those are starting to show through some of the early voting data. And I think it’s going to get even better once we get the early voting satellite locations opening up for the Yes campaign. So I think The early voting is not as great as it was at at the beginning for the the No campaign. And there’s a couple of different outlets that do analysis of early vote. You know, in Virginia, there’s no party registration. So we don’t know what party anyone belongs to.

02:41.25

Sam Shirazi

Like you can do that in some other states and do that type of early voting analysis. However, you can kind of model what the model party ID is. And one organization that does that, for they’ve and they’ve done it for a long time, is called L2. They’re just kind of a a data organization.

02:57.82

Sam Shirazi

And their estimate is roughly that, you know, give or take, it’s about 60-40, the Democrats coming out in this election so far. You know, caveat that, but we don’t know how these people are voting. But typically, that’s what you see in Virginia early vote about a 60-40 advantage for Democrats if you take into account the mail vote. Chaz Netticombe, who was on last week, also did analysis through State Navigate. And he found or his team basically found the same thing, roughly sixty forty Democrats, you know, in terms of the early vote.

03:27.92

Sam Shirazi

you know I caveat all that by saying that we don’t know how these people are voting. We don’t know how independents are voting. Even if if model ID is 60-40 Democrats, it could be 50-50 yes-no, just because the no campaign is getting some persuasion.

04:14.14

Sam Shirazi

I think in this election, I think you can assume most R’s are going to vote no. I think most D’s are going to vote yes. You know, what is the number? Is it going to be 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%? I think that’s going to be important.

04:26.94

Sam Shirazi

We don’t quite know how many D’s are voting against it. You know, it seems like there’s probably going to be more than voted for Earl Sears, but is it going to be a lot more or is it more anecdotal? and I think the real question mark are the independents. How do independents go?

04:41.53

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, Spanberger did really well with independents last year. That’s part of the reason she got such a big win. This year, I think I could see the independents definitely being more skeptical of the Yes campaign, just given the nature of it, given it’s a more partisan endeavor to gerrymander Virginia.

04:56.83

Sam Shirazi

At the same time, a lot of independents, their number one priority is maybe sending message to President Trump. So if it’s just a straight referendum on the president, I think that’s going to be better for the yes campaign in terms of independence. So still a lot of unknowns. Like I’m not comfortable saying, you know, definitely yes is going to win or no is going to win. I just think it’s not that type of election.

05:14.53

Sam Shirazi

But I am comfortable talking a little bit about the vibe shift. And the the reason I mentioned that is election like this. There hasn’t been a lot of polls, and there particularly has not been a lot of polls of, you know, specifically the question that’s on the ballot. I think there are some organizations that have put out polls, but they’re not exactly a question on the ballot.

05:31.71

Sam Shirazi

I think hopefully we’ll get some more polls in the final days of the campaign. I think Chaz Naticombe mentioned that State Navigate is going to be doing a poll. I think we’re going to probably get a few other polls, but there there isn’t a lot of polling to go off of. There isn’t kind of a lot of...

05:44.89

Sam Shirazi

precedent for this in Virginia, you know, like we did with the governor’s election where, you know, okay, the party out the White House typically does well in the governor’s election. We just can’t really assume that because we don’t do this type of referendum in Virginia very often or ever. So I think a lot of the analysis so far has been on vibes. And and what I mean by vibes is just people’s guts, people’s like, you know, this kind of feels like, you know, the no campaign is doing okay or the yes campaign is doing okay. There’s not really a lot of logic behind it other than maybe some very, you know,

06:13.41

Sam Shirazi

Broad interpretation of early vote data. So all of that is to say, basically, we are not going to get really good data on on this election until but maybe the end when we get the final polls. And so a lot of the analysis has been based based on vibes. I think certainly the No campaign and certain movements, certain people within the conservative movement have been very loud and I think they’ve made their voices heard. And I think that has perhaps informed the vibes in terms of, well, the No campaign seems like they have some moment momentum, seems like they’re doing well.

06:45.28

Sam Shirazi

So I think that was kind of the initial vibe reading in Virginia, at least once the early voting started. I think the last two weeks, you know putting aside the early voting data, I think just given the national environment, I think things have gotten harder for the Republicans.

07:22.13

Sam Shirazi

And so if you think about this referendum, you know what are people going to be doing when they go into the voting booth? Are they going to be thinking, you know, really nuanced questions about gerrymandering and trying to think through, you know, should Virginia gerrymander to counteract Republican states? I mean, is that really the calculation or is it just going to become, you know, I want to send a message. I don’t like what’s going on in D.C., so I’m going to vote yes on this campaign. Certainly the yes campaign wants that to happen.

07:48.01

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, the no campaign is trying to make it a Virginia specific campaign. The yes campaign is trying to make it a national campaign. And you may have remembered that is the same dynamic that happened in Virginia in 2025. Almost always with these state elections, the party that’s out of the White House wants to make it a national election. The party in the White House wants to make it a state election. And you’re seeing those dynamics again.

08:10.70

Sam Shirazi

The Yes campaign wants to make this about President Trump and national politics. The No campaign wants to make this about state-specific election in terms of gerrymandering these seats.

08:36.36

Sam Shirazi

So we’re seeing all those dynamics play out. I mean, I think part of the analysis in terms of the vibe shift fives shiftft is just, you know, national politics is more in the news, especially now with gas prices, with the war in Iran.

08:48.55

Sam Shirazi

It’s just... You know, people are not thinking about the nuances of gerrymandering. They’re kind of thinking about how am i going to pay for gas and groceries and all those things. And so the more that becomes the dominant issue in the news leading up to April 21st, I think the more difficult task the no campaign is going to have. I think interesting question is going to be, you know, we’re about. a little, about two and a half weeks out from this referendum, you know, what is going to be happening on April 21st? Is there going to still be a war going on in the Middle East?

09:19.26

Sam Shirazi

Are oil prices going to continue to be elevated? You know, right now, that seems very you know possible that that could be happening on April 21st. Although in theory, you know, things could wind down.

09:29.23

Sam Shirazi

There could be the end of the war that could cause, you know, stocks to go up. That could cause oil prices to come down. You know, in theory, there are these kind of dynamics that could change in these next 20 days or so But I think the reality is, even if that happens in the best case scenario for the Republicans, I think, you know, these things are kind of baked in at this point. And it’s it’s pretty hard to move the national politics that much. And so long story short, i think it’s just interesting to think through where we are in Virginia right now.

10:00.11

Sam Shirazi

i you know... I’m just kind of giving you an update in terms of what I’m seeing out there. I don’t personally think the dynamics have changed that much either way. i think a lot of this is just kind of commentary and, you know, we got to talk about something. So we’re going to talk about no doing well or yes, doing well.

10:16.97

Sam Shirazi

I would really like to see some, Polling, I think the State Navigate poll is going to be great. Hopefully you get some more polling as well. I also think the the final early voting numbers will be great because I think, you know, the first few days early voting may be skewed. I really look for early voting almost at the end. I mean, you really have to wait because of the satellite voting locations.

10:37.76

Sam Shirazi

I’ll probably do a whole episode about... what I call Super Saturday, but I will preview it for you here. So Super Saturday will be on April 11th. The reason I call it Super Saturday is that’s the first day we we’ll have weekend Saturday early voting across Virginia.

10:52.44

Sam Shirazi

And a lot of places will be opening up their satellite voting locations, including Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun, Prince William County, Virginia Beach, lot of big places typically more democratic voters in those areas are going to be opening their early voting locations that’s later than they usually open. And so I think this Saturday on April 11th, I think we’ll see a lot of early voting because there’s been a lot of pent up demand with people waiting for their satellite early voting locations. So,

11:19.13

Sam Shirazi

Long story short, I mean, I think it’s too early to really use early voting to predict what’s going to happen. I think maybe at the end you can use it. I think at the end you’ll also get more polls. The polls will be closer and time to the election.

11:30.72

Sam Shirazi

All the advertisement money is going to be spent. So I think more so than a typical election, this is really one you’re just going to have to wait till the end to make a formal prediction. I mean, to be perfectly honest, like I didn’t do this in the governor’s election in 2025, but I probably could have. I mean, I think as soon as Doge happened, I mean, I was pretty confident that Smanberger was going to win the governor’s election. There was really no other way the Republicans could come back from that, no matter how good of or bad of a campaign Earl Sears ran. It didn’t really matter. I think I was pretty confident in saying that.

11:58.81

Sam Shirazi

i you know I didn’t say it on here because I didn’t i didn’t want to you know jump to conclusions, but that was you know in the back of my head. Here, you know I certainly think the Yes campaign has the advantage, but it’s not the same where I can say with 100% confidence, it’s definitely going to happen. I just think it’s just not that type of election, given the kind of unique circumstances that has...

12:18.51

Sam Shirazi

that has given a rise to the election and, and just the unpredictability. You don’t know how many Democrats are going to end up voting. No, you really don’t know how many independents could be voting. No, I think there’s a wide range.

12:29.65

Sam Shirazi

It could, it could be much more than we’re expecting in theory. And so just want to be a little bit cautious, but I did want to note the vibe shift that has been happening. Okay, so last thing I want to talk about just briefly is just some of the areas to look for in terms of the redistricting campaign when these results start coming in. Because I think one of the question marks that that I flagged are independents, and especially independents in kind of ancestrally Republican areas that have become blue. And so I’ll i’ll talk about a few counties that Spanberger did well in in 2025, places like Stafford, Chesterfield, you know, these are in

13:03.33

Sam Shirazi

kind of suburban parts of D.C. or Richmond where traditionally they’ve been red, but they’ve been becoming more and more blue. I think there was a dynamic where Spanberger did well in those areas, but Jay Jones was was running further behind there and then other parts of Virginia. And that’s just because you have people who have traditionally been more comfortable voting for Republicans.

13:22.08

Sam Shirazi

So they might have liked Spanberger, but they were willing to vote for Miárez. I think you could see a similar dynamic where in some of those counties, people who voted for Spanberger, they just you know This rubs them the wrong way, either because they don’t like one party rule, they don’t like one party trying to maximize its power. They may just you know traditionally be willing and sympathetic to Republican arguments, so they’re willing to hear the no side campaign more than they would otherwise. So those are some of the interesting counties that I’m looking for.

13:51.43

Sam Shirazi

And then the other counties, and that’s really on the persuasion side. so that’s in terms of, you know, are people going to vote for the no campaign, even though they voted for Spanberger? I think that’s kind of those are the types of places to look for, in know, more higher income, wealthier, educated areas where, for whatever reason, they may have traditionally been Republican and they’re willing to vote no for Spanberger.

14:12.71

Sam Shirazi

The campaign. i think the other dynamic to look for is just turnout. You know, what is turnout looking for looking like in the Democratic areas, for example, areas with more black voters and more young voters on how are Democrats doing in those areas in terms of turnout, because probably if people end up voting.

14:31.04

Sam Shirazi

They’re probably going to vote yes in those areas. I think the Democrats, frankly, in the early vote data have done a pretty good job with black voters in places like Hampton Roads, where sometimes they struggle with those voters. I think here they’re certainly keeping up with 2025.

14:44.79

Sam Shirazi

And I think for Democrats, they have to be happy about that because obviously, I think the more black voters that come out, the more it’s likely they’re going to vote yes. So I think Democrats are doing well or the yes campaign is doing well in terms of getting out those voters in those parts of Virginia.

14:59.15

Sam Shirazi

I think the real area where Democrats or in the yes campaign could struggle is potentially college towns, places with young voters. You know, we saw that the Democrats did well in places like Blacksburg in 2025. That’s how Lily Franklin was able to flip a seat. I think.

15:26.95

Sam Shirazi

I think the challenge the Yes campaign is going to have in this election is just – A lot of college students, younger voters, they may not really understand what’s going on. is there referendum? What is redistricting? What is gerrymandering? I mean, it’s just it’s just a different thing that they might not quite get and they might not be as engaged.

15:44.71

Sam Shirazi

And so I think that’s just one thing to keep in mind. you know There may not be as much youth turnout because it’s just a different type of election as opposed to a governor’s election. However, I think if they’re able to kind of persuade people or at least you know make the case that this is more a referendum sending a message on President Trump, I think there’s certainly a possibility those yes voters can come out for for Democrats who are younger.

16:05.87

Sam Shirazi

On the Republican side, there’s a similar dynamic with with Turnout in terms of rural areas like Southwest Virginia. I think part of the reason there was this kind of optimism about the no campaign was places like Southwest Virginia, which typically doesn’t have great turnout in state elections because it’s more of a working class area, but very red.

16:24.04

Sam Shirazi

Those areas had pretty good early votes so far. The problem is, you know, it’s not, you know, super crazy high. Like it’s it’s good relative to 2025, but given 2025 was pretty bad. It’s just not this like crazy, crazy high level of turnout. And I think the no campaign will just need really, really high turnout in places that are very red because obviously the red, you know, they’re going to vote no you know, rural areas where, you know, they may be affected by the gerrymander. They’re going to be voting no.

16:52.46

Sam Shirazi

The question is, do they get kind of like, OK, turn out maybe a little bit better than 2025? Or did he get like really through the roof turnout? Again, we don’t really know until Election Day. A lot of those places probably people prefer to vote on Election Day. So we just really have to wait and see. And I think the fundamental problem that no campaign going have is even if they get a lot of low propensity Republicans out.

17:12.97

Sam Shirazi

So, you know, this type of election. It’s just, you know, if even if they get their voters out, if it’s generally a high turnout election and the Democrats are getting their voters out and they’re getting their low propensity voters out, I mean, Virginia leans blue. So what the no campaign really needs is high turnout in rural red areas and low turnout in Democratic areas. It seems like they’re getting pretty good turnout in the red areas. They’re just not getting the low turnout in the Democratic areas. And so I think that’s part of the challenge that no campaign has. So long story short, we’ll just have to wait and see how that all happens, how that all plays out. You know, I’ll be covering it all as we get more early vote data. I’ll i’ll give you more analysis on that as we give more.

17:52.14

Sam Shirazi

Polling, i’ll I’ll give you kind of more information about that. But I think right now we’ll just have to wait and see where things are. i did want to mention the vibe shift. And, you know, I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I’ll keep covering the wild ride that is the Virginia elections. And I’ll join you next time on Federal Fall Out.

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

00:00.60

Sam Shirazi

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the Virginia Elections. This episode, we I am really excited to have Chaz Nuttikome back on. He is the Executive Director of State Navigate and Chaz, thanks so much for coming back.

00:13.42

Chaz Nuttycombe

Hey, Sam, thanks for having me back on. Good to hear you Good to hear from you.

00:16.90

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, so to begin with, just wanted to see how you’re doing. How are things at State Navigate? It’s been a while since we talked last year and how how are things been going for you?

00:26.22

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, I know. I think it’s been maybe since like right after the election, you know, after we had a really good a year for our polling. So, you know, been been working on some projects. You know, we launched in Michigan in January.

00:40.45

Chaz Nuttycombe

We’re looking to launch in, I think, Colorado and Texas, our next targets. Trying to get up there next month. And we have like a jam. We have jam-packed content, you know, over...

00:53.02

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know, the next like quarter in the states of Virginia and West Virginia and and Utah. So those are kind of our our three main states right now through the second quarter. And again, working to launch in Colorado and Texas, hopefully next month.

01:12.06

Chaz Nuttycombe

And, you know, we’ve got some more exciting news coming out next month as well. You know, I think, a you know, a couple days or maybe a week after this podcast, we’ll hopefully have this big announcement. But yeah, it’s going great. It’s going great.

01:26.58

Sam Shirazi

Well, awesome. And yeah, i definitely recommend everyone check out State Navigate. And it was really amazing to see all the resources you put out last year for the Virginia governor’s election. And you have a lot of great stuff already for the redistricting referendum. We’ll get to all that, like the the early vote tracker.

01:43.54

Sam Shirazi

But before we kind of dive into the details of the redistricting referendum, you know, big picture, what are you seeing right now as we are less than a month until Election Day?

01:54.46

Chaz Nuttycombe

Well, yeah, I mean, just real quick, going talk about the features, you know, just in case your audience doesn’t know. So, yeah, we have like an early voting tracker that compares to the same day equivalent in 2025 from 2026, right? So 2026 divided by 2025, same day votes, whether it be early in person or male. We have scatter plots and we’re going to add correlations to those soon now that we’re you know, like two weeks in and we got a lot of votes in, pretty much everybody is reporting mail.

02:24.53

Chaz Nuttycombe

obviously males counted at different paces, right? Sometimes they count it slower. Sometimes they count it faster each year. you know, we’re kind of the mercy of registrars, but what’s nice is that early in person is, you know, pretty consistent.

02:36.31

Chaz Nuttycombe

and they pretty much update, update that daily and in pretty much every locality. And then, you know, what what I was really proud, I was very proud of the State Navigate team when the maps dropped because we had spent the entire day, our creative director, Jack Hirsting, myself, and our elections coordinator, Michael Foley, to where when those maps dropped, we had an interactive ready to go.

03:01.30

Chaz Nuttycombe

and so it’s it’s really fun to see you know like a lot of people posting our interactive map of the you know proposed uh uh you know democratic gerrymander you know i think especially conservatives are using it and uh you know it’s just nice to see our work you know be be used by uh used by the public i guess my only my only complaint is that sometimes they don’t include the state navigate logo that’s in the header so it’s like Well, at least you know, it’s like that’s that’s kind of killing our potential traffic, man. So, you know, if you’re if you’re one of those people, i would appreciate, you know, just include the state navigate logo in there. You know, we want to build our audience and help people learn about state government and state legislatures to to get to your question on, you know, kind of like what we’re what we’re looking at.

03:45.65

Chaz Nuttycombe

I mean, you know, I was I was talking with, you know, the Times yesterday and, you know, it’s it’s a shame because my grandfather ran track and I should like know a little bit about this. But, you know, I kind of described, you know, like where we are in early voting as like we’re in the first quarter mile of a.

04:03.22

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know, mile long track. And, the you know, he was like, you know, we’re at the first quarter mile and we don’t really know where the markers are. Right. In terms of like, you know, like what we, what we got coming up.

04:16.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, look, I mean, right now, I think these, these first two weeks have been, have been crazy when we’re talking about the early voting. I mean, if, if you had told me two months ago that like,

04:29.38

Chaz Nuttycombe

we would be seeing early and like overall early voting on like being even or right now, as of this recording, when we’re talking about yesterday’s early voting, yesterday being March 24th on Tuesday, you know it was there were more votes cast on you know the equivalent day 2026 2025 early voting.

04:52.24

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know it’s like a hundred two percent of early in person Right. And then it’s what is it for mail? Mail-in ballots versus 2025. 102%. Yeah. yeah So, I mean, we’re at like 102% thereabouts of, you know, gubernatorial same day turnout.

05:09.03

Chaz Nuttycombe

This thing is going to be like incredibly high turnout, looks like. I mean, we’re we’re at least looking at 50% turnout. When I was like thinking about when we started to see like high turn in the first you know few days, it’s like, okay, first few days, you know first week, a lot of people come out from this thing, right? And then we we typically get to like a slump point. And right now it’s kind of like where we typically are are in a slump point, but we’re not.

05:33.70

Chaz Nuttycombe

It’s just continually turnout, turnout, turnout. More and more people are voting in this thing. To the point where, you know, when all is said and done, we may see more votes cast in this election than there were in 2025.

05:47.92

Chaz Nuttycombe

And, you know, if there are more votes, I’m going to take a guess and and say that the people who are, you know, who didn’t vote in 2025, who are already voting for this thing, are probably skewing Republican.

06:00.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, Michael Foley, our elections coordinator, has been doing, you know, a little bit of of rough modeling, you know, down to the precinct level. And, you know, we’re looking at an electorate that is probably...

06:13.90

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know, probably two points, maybe up to three points, right. When we’re comparing to 2025. Now the, the main thing is pick your own path or universe whatever. When we talk about persuasion, right. You know, Abigail, Spamber did really well on persuasion.

06:31.75

Chaz Nuttycombe

And so she won by 15 points. the sort of generic race was the Lieutenant governor race where Gazzalajami won by 11. And then, you know, Jay Jones did terrible on persuasion, lost a lot of college educated whites around Western Richmond and parts of Nova and especially the beach.

06:49.39

Chaz Nuttycombe

uh, and so it’s like, well, this is not a partisan election, right? There’s no RRD on the ballot. So what is your persuasion baseline?

06:57.81

Chaz Nuttycombe

Is it the AG race? Because if it’s AG race, we’re looking at a nail biter. and, You know, I, if, if I had to pick like what I think the baseline is, I would say it’s probably closer to the AG race.

07:09.86

Chaz Nuttycombe

because I think that Dems are having a little bit of a hard time convincing their like soft Dems and especially independence on giving them a 10 to one gerrymander this year. Right.

07:22.98

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know, I know like. like just off the top of my head, like three people who did not vote for Kamala Harris, but voted for Abigail Spanberger, and all of them are going to be voting against the amendment.

07:36.75

Chaz Nuttycombe

Again, that’s like anecdotal. But, you know, it’s, I think that, they’re having a hard time with, with those college educated whites.

07:47.06

Chaz Nuttycombe

And they really have to put in the work, the, the yes team. Right. So, i mean, it’s just kind of crazy when we talk about, you know, just, just two months ago, like if you had told me again, like turnout this high,

08:17.54

Chaz Nuttycombe

We’ll see if things change by election day. I don’t know whether I’ll do like a a final, you know, throwing something on the dartboard or whatever, because there’s not going to be a model because you can’t really model something like this. We haven’t had a a general election in April since the 1950s. We have constitutional amendment outside of November since November.

08:38.74

Chaz Nuttycombe

or at least in April, I think in like a hundred years, I know Jeffrey Skelly at like DDHQ put something together on this. So maybe I’m i’m wrong there, but I know it’s something like that. So like, you know, there’s not much history to work with here, whereas there’s a lot of history to work with in Virginia. So it’s kind of easy to model or or Virginia gubernatorial elections. So those are easy to model, honestly, you know, relative to this at least.

09:03.61

Chaz Nuttycombe

so, you know, I, I think that, look, we’re, we’re going to go into the field, on, on April 10th and that’s when the satellites open up thereabouts.

09:13.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

And I think that’s really like the week before the election, we’ll have a little bit of an idea where things are. You know, I think the key thing here is persuasion. And I think Republicans know that, but they’re still trying to get out their base, which I think they are, but they, you you know, there’s different people at the helm trying, you know, this time around compared to when, you know, Sears was leading the charge.

09:36.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

and these are, you know, people at the helm on the Republican side who know that they have to convince soft Dems and independence to their side. Right. so yeah.

09:47.14

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, i mean, that’s all super helpful. I mean, one question I had, because unfortunately, not going to have the model as much as it would be great. I understand why it’s pretty much impossible to do it in something like this. But it sounds like the good news is you will be doing some polling. And just to plug for State Navigate in 2025, you put out some polls that were showing the Democrats up. And I think a lot of people super skeptical, especially at the AG race. And you proved the haters wrong because you were pretty much right on the money with the State Navigate polls.

10:17.58

Sam Shirazi

How are you going to try to pull this year, given that it’s such so much more complex with turnout and independence? Like, what is that pulling going to look like? And what lessons that you learned in 2025 are you going to apply in 2026?

10:31.20

Chaz Nuttycombe

I mean, like, i this is kind of the thing, you know, I mean, the main thing that’s going to change anytime you wait a poll is going to be like the partisanship. So I emailed Gallup today because Gallup’s quarterly party ID was very, very helpful in figuring out Virginia last year.

10:48.42

Chaz Nuttycombe

and and look you know it’s i mean yeah there there are people who who gave me s**t but it’s like at the end of the day you know my my job is you know like like i like to say i don’t care who wins i care about being right right like i don’t have a side i root for i’m an independent i have mixed political views uh my you know whole job not i mean i have a lot of jobs who things i need to do as as executive director of you know state navigate right but you know, as a forecaster, it’s just like following, you know, just sticking your finger in the air and seeing where the wind’s blowing. Right.

11:25.07

Chaz Nuttycombe

But yeah, I mean, this this is sort of the thing I’m interested in what Gallup has in the quarterly party ID. The quarterly party ID was one point bluer in Q4 than it was in Q3 last year.

11:36.33

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, we’re at the end of Q1. So I’m hoping that, you know, by the time I get to wait this poll, I get to see what their, you know, quarterly party ideas for Q1 2026. That’ll be something I definitely look at.

11:51.68

Chaz Nuttycombe

but you know, I’ll, I’ll be kind of looking at early voting as well. I think that we’re looking at a, a wider electorate. you know, last year was about 71% white. I would say we’re probably looking at 73 if I were to guess.

12:06.02

Chaz Nuttycombe

at the moment we’ll see how things land when these satellites open up and if that kind of helps us some, uh, a little bit of minority turnout, and some of these localities. That being said, I, you know, as a sidebar, I think black turnout in Hampton roads is is pretty good relative to 25.

12:22.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

kind of honestly impressed there. you know, at this point it but it wasn’t there in like, uh, in the first week, but like now it’s like picking up, but you know, we’ll see if that maintains. but you know, I’ll be looking at a little bit of early voting and I’ll be looking at, you know, Gallup and then kind of following a little bit the same methodology we had last year.

12:39.58

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, what what I will say is, you know I know that there are people in the field who are doing private stuff. right you know Maybe there will be another college poll, maybe two.

12:52.59

Chaz Nuttycombe

But you know i mean this may be like the only poll public poll right that you know one, ask the ballot language like right up front. you know I’m just going to say that. We’re going to ask the ballot language up front.

13:05.31

Chaz Nuttycombe

in all likelihood, you know, I still to meet with the polling committee and whatnot. I’ve got like a draft together. you know, we’ve got a couple ideas that we’ve kind of shot back and forth today.

13:15.06

Chaz Nuttycombe

meet meet, meet next week and kind of finalize things. but yeah, so, you know, it’s, it’s, uh, I, I don’t think I have, have, um,

13:25.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, I, I don’t know. It’s like when, when the primaries are rolling about, I kind of just threw a dart and like, you know, privately, when people are asking me and still, you know, it’s pretty much right.

13:38.85

Chaz Nuttycombe

Thought Hashmi, if I had to pick was going to win. and then, you know, Jones in that primary, I think those are tough contests to predict.

13:48.20

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know i don’t i don’t think I have like a mandate of heaven or whatever, though. right it’s it’s you know I could very much see you know this this being hard to oh wait right when we talk about waiting a poll.

14:04.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

And it could be wrong. I have no idea. like This is probably, think, in my... this is probably i think in my you know, what, nine years?

14:15.80

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, nine nine years. It’ll be nine years this August of predicting Virginia elections. I think this one is just the toughest to model, right? Because there’s there’s no partisanship and it’s a general election in April.

14:25.99

Chaz Nuttycombe

So we’re going to give it our best shot, but it’s like, I’m not going to guarantee that it’s like, hey, I have, like, I feel as confident as I did in 25 years. or 21 or 23 or whatever right like there’s there’s a low confidence threshold in that this is a totally different kind of beast that we’re we’re trying to tame when we talk about you know just like in a political science way you know of of trying to pull this so we’ll give it our best shot and and hopefully hopefully we’re right you know

14:55.37

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think this is a tough election to read. And I am definitely going to be looking to your poll because I think it’s one of the ones that I will trust. There’s a lot of random polls out there, but I think your track record in 2025 shows that you have the methodology.

15:10.13

Sam Shirazi

doesn’t mean it’s going to be 100% correct, but you’re thinking this stuff through. So definitely looking for that. I did have a question.

15:15.02

Chaz Nuttycombe

And can I make a quick plug, Sam?

15:16.50

Sam Shirazi

Yep.

15:17.16

Chaz Nuttycombe

So if if anybody wants to like help us with the cost of the poll, I think we’re about at like 13,000 or sorry, or from like donors right now.

15:31.48

Chaz Nuttycombe

we gotta to hit like the three thousand mark you know we’ll well you know If we have to use a little bit of StateNav’s general operation funds, well we’ll do that to make it happen.

15:42.87

Chaz Nuttycombe

And a little bit of like some other polling fund money that we’ve gotten before. But you know if if anybody wants to donate, just go to my pinned tweet, you know at ChazNodicomb on X or Twitter, and you can make a tax-deductible donation to our polling fund. We greatly appreciate it if you’re able to help us with the cost offsetting that.

16:02.84

Chaz Nuttycombe

ahead of April 10th, which is when we are i hopefully going to be in the field.

16:08.93

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, that’s definitely a important to do if if you’re able to to keep these polls coming. And i hopefully you’ll have more after these. I did have a question about the early vote because I think, you know, there’s different things you can look at here. We don’t have a lot of polling. I feel like this referendum especially has a lot of vibes and some of the vibes have been informed by the early vote. And as you mentioned, it’s very early in the early vote.

16:33.64

Sam Shirazi

My sense was The really kind of hardcore, high propensity Republicans were upset and they really turned out strong the first couple weeks.

16:41.74

Chaz Nuttycombe

Mm-hmm.

16:41.71

Sam Shirazi

And the Democrats took a little bit longer, but it seems like the Democrats are starting to turn out. Early voting starting to even out a little bit more than it looked like at the beginning. I guess my question is, like do you think that’s true? And then what is the point of looking at the early vote this early if like really all you can – I think it’s great for turnout, but like at some point you just got to wait for all the early vote to make a final determination because like I feel like it’s it’s constantly changing every day as they can see in your tracker that you have.

17:12.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, I mean, look, I absolutely get what you mean when we talk about, you know, as as as terminally online as as both of us are, right? You know, I think being being being on X and and seeing, you know, kind of conservative outrage at Abigail Spanberger over and and the Democratic trifecta and that, oh, it’s because they’re angry that, you know, there’s there’s high turnout.

17:22.08

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, that’s true.

17:37.18

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know and maybe there might be credence to that you know like i think there could be absolutely credence to that if we are seeing higher republican turnout you know so uh i think there’s absolutely credence but here’s the thing you know i think yes uh but when i’m in first week i’m sorry that what yes the the When people, this this is sort of the thing i keep seeing journalists do. That that annoys me, which which is like, oh, they look at like, oh, highest, highest you know, most votes are cast in the Republican districts and least are in the Democratic districts. It’s it’s it’s such a lazy way of of of looking at all this. I’m sorry.

18:20.09

Chaz Nuttycombe

it’s it’s It’s very, very lazy when I see people do that. it’s it’s It’s fun and all, but like it’s it’s not really getting deep into, like especially when we’re talking like raw votes here, right?

18:33.40

Chaz Nuttycombe

so So that’s why when we were deciding how we wanted to track early voting, it’s like, okay, well, we should really be comparing to the same day, to you know election, and then you’re actually able to figure out like, okay, is this is looking like a little bit redder or a little bit bluer compared to that. So,

18:49.35

Chaz Nuttycombe

so Yes, in 2025, like absolutely, the the Republicans were like, you know, they had like a good start, I think, especially in the beginning. And that was mainly because of their high props. It was pretty much all of their high propensity voters were coming out that, you know, are we’re already 100% going to be voting in that election, right? They were just moving more and more toward EV.

19:09.50

Chaz Nuttycombe

Whereas like this time, Sam, I mean, we’re seeing Buchanan County at, 156.6% of its same day, you know, equivalent votes. Scott County at 200%, uh, for all early voting, uh,

19:25.19

Chaz Nuttycombe

Lee County at 201%. If we just say like, okay, well, male, maybe they’re counting male little bit faster. No. Scott County, 242. Lee 221. Buchanan at 171. So like the coal fields are coming out. These are like low propensity, poor poor areas that are you know very, very Republican.

19:44.94

Chaz Nuttycombe

The Valley’s coming out, right? Like when we’re talking about like the Republicans that were coming out for this thing in the beginning, it was really like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like... James City and Goochland, right? You know, like where, and maybe like Mechanicsville or whatever, when we talk about like, oh, the kind of Republicans are coming out, right? You know, they have a college degree, they got money and they’re like, okay, I’m going to be voting. Let me just go ahead and go early.

20:11.26

Chaz Nuttycombe

I’m retired and everything, right? Whereas like the the deep rural areas in you know, the West are coming out. It looks more like, kind of like 2021 ish kind of map when we talk about like areas that are turning out more relative to like previous patterns i’m not saying like this is going to be a 2021 red wave or whatever but i’m just talking about in terms of like comparing one election to another and like the richmond region is also lacking and i don’t think that’s going to pick up i i think that you know spamburger

20:43.74

Chaz Nuttycombe

really did a good job as well as Ghazala Hashmi, mainly Spanberger though, and in getting a lot of Richmond liberals out and winning over a lot of independents without her really here campaigning and everything. You know, she’s cutting ads and everything, but she’s not campaigning, right?

21:00.99

Chaz Nuttycombe

I don’t think they’re really going to come out as much for this. You know, Richmond is kind of an anomaly in terms of how much it it made of the composite of the electorate last year. Now, like Fairfax is lacking and I think that’s gonna pick up toward the end here.

21:16.49

Chaz Nuttycombe

And you know Hampton Roads looks like it’s it’s pretty good for Dems. so, you know, I, I think that like, i mean, areas where Republicans funny enough are, you know, maybe struggling a little bit when we talk about like their, their weak points, Roanoke County is, you know, I’ll put in quotes here only at 101% of its same day equivalent turnout Hanover at 98.

21:40.53

Chaz Nuttycombe

While the, uh, you know, statewide is 102. so those are like, you know, and like, you know, Washington County at 104, right? Whereas like some of their other rules are just like much higher or even like Pennsylvania is much higher, right? At 128.

21:57.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, I mean, it looks like they do have some work in some of these like suburban ex-urban counties. But it looks like, know, they’re doing good in Bedford. They’re doing good in Campbell right now at 108 or sorry, 109% in those.

22:10.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

That was very important for Glenn Youngkin in 2021. So, you know, I mean, I i would be surprised. We’ll see what happens when the satellites open. But I think we’re, if I had to guess, I think we’re looking at an electorate that’s slightly redder than 2025.

22:26.60

Chaz Nuttycombe

But again, it’s it’s like pick your own universe in terms of like, what is the baseline for persuasion? AG, LG, or Gov, right? We need talk about comparing to 25.

22:36.25

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, no, i agree with you. I think those are all good points. And I think some of those counties you highlighted, I think there is indication that perhaps more low propensity Republicans are turning out, which obviously would be good for the Republicans.

22:46.62

Sam Shirazi

I did have kind of a question on the persuasion side, because obviously a lot going on in the country, lot going on in the world. Gas prices going up, generally not good for the Republicans. I think there’s a sense nationally, like big picture,

23:00.99

Sam Shirazi

Things are looking better and better for the Democrats, like midterms are looking better and better for the Democrats.

23:03.32

Chaz Nuttycombe

Mm-hmm.

23:05.43

Sam Shirazi

And so it’s kind of interesting that in Virginia, it looks like things are, I mean, looking better for the Republicans doesn’t mean they’re gonna win, but it’s not like a totally blowout type environment.

23:15.51

Sam Shirazi

So do you think that’s just because Virginia is like a purple state and this just looked like a power grab from the Democrats or you think it’s it’s Because the Democrats are doing so well, people don’t feel that freaked out about Trump, where like in California in November of 2025, like people were freaked out because it seemed like maybe, I don’t know, he could he could try to get all these seats through redistricting. views You just think the the vibes have kind of changed, at least on the redistricting front.

23:44.49

Chaz Nuttycombe

I mean, it’s it’s I mean, there’s a couple of things you I feel like you just asked. Right. I mean, like, look, I think i mean I do think the Republicans are going to get put out to pasture this year nationally. I think we’re looking at a a midterm environment that is going to be a taller blue wave in 2018. Now there won’t be as big of a sink get seat gain because 2018 was kind of part of this a little bit of realignment. when We talk about the suburbs. Right. You know, there’s a whole bunch of like Clinton carried Republican districts in 2016, whereas there weren’t, there are not many Harris one Republican districts now.

24:20.90

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. So, you know, Democrats may be getting to somewhere in the two thirties for the house of representatives would track or like maybe low two forties. I think they got two 40 in 2018 off the top of my head.

24:33.29

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, in in terms of like, I, I mean, yes, like the the environment is awful for Republicans. National environment? Yeah, like Trump’s approval is awful.

24:43.81

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, it’s it’s it’s in the to deep in the toilet to where it’s like even a plumber can’t fix it, right? it’s It’s done. It’s over. And then, you know, the, yeah, like the gas prices going up. I mean, who knows if that’s going to be continuing for election day.

24:58.26

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, like, but but here’s the thing. I don’t know that like, a A yes or no question on gerrymander is is something that people want to use to stick it to Trump in the way that like, oh, I’m going to go vote for a Democrat.

25:15.87

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know If I’m like an independent or something, right? or I like lean Democrat something, you know like let’s say i I voted for Joe Biden 2020, I voted for Glenn Young in 2021, right? But and I disapprove of Trump.

25:27.85

Chaz Nuttycombe

Like, let’s say I’m that person. i think you’re going to have that the the Dems are going to have a hard time. Trying to push a honestly a very, very ugly map, right? You know, I think the seventh is you know, I still think it looks like a scorpion. People say it’s a lobster, whatever.

25:47.15

Chaz Nuttycombe

But like, when people look at the map, I think that that is like the biggest threat to Democrats on whether they can pass this gerrymander or not. I think they i don’t know that like, those independents and lean Dem people are 100%

26:06.78

Chaz Nuttycombe

implementing, you know, the, the biggest gerrymander in the country that just narrowly, yes, does be out North Carolina. So in a way it kind of counteracts North Carolina. but they also don’t know like insider baseball and everything on like, Oh, this is going to counteract this or that. Right.

26:21.96

Chaz Nuttycombe

I do feel like, you know, in, in California, I mean, there’s a few things here. i mean, it was like immediately after Texas redrew, it’s like, okay, Texas redrew, we have to redrew. We got to go get out and vote. you know, on the Dem side and also like Gavin Newsom made it his thing, right? Like the dude wants to run for president, like point blank period. He, that was his launch platform.

26:42.39

Chaz Nuttycombe

whereas like Abigail Spanberger’s launch platform for her, you know, whatever she wants to do, whether she wants to run for president or just, you know, succeed Tim Kaine, if he retires or whatever, her launch platform was like last year. She just got off an election.

26:57.45

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know It’s like, I don’t think that we’re seeing on the Dem side, like this big, you know, sort of energy for like passing this to stick it to Trump.

27:11.22

Chaz Nuttycombe

Maybe I’m wrong. That being said, you know, it’s like anecdotal, but it’s like, I i live in like probably one of the most liberal parts of of of the richmond metropolitan area now right i grew up in hanover now i’m a mountain church hill and you know i don’t see any of the you know like oh vote yes signs or anything out here but i’ve seen like a no sign you know may now i’m getting anecdotes with yard signs and whatnot, but like, you know, just, just point being, I think that it’s, this is a tough sell.

27:44.91

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think it’s a tough sell when we talk about these like independence and lean down folks, who overwhelmingly like 80, 20 voted for Abigail Spanberger. Right.

27:55.78

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think that it’s a tough sell. But, you know, i mean that’s that’s the goal. of The yes campaign is to make this a partisan election. There is no R&D on the ballot, but you they have to convince their base that this is a partisan election, that voting no means Republican voting. Yes, means Democrat.

28:14.32

Chaz Nuttycombe

If they get that job done, they win. it’s It’s just as simple as that. So because I don’t think that, you know, we’re going to see a very, very lopsided Republican electorate.

28:25.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. I mean, even the electorate in 2021 voted for Joe Biden by three points. Right. Republicans still had to win a persuasion. so, you know, and the, and the 2025 electorate was Harris plus 11.

28:39.24

Chaz Nuttycombe

so, you know, Republicans have to wane that down and win on persuasion. while Democrats, you know, on the yes side just need to, you know, just, just convince their base like, Hey, yes equals good.

28:52.83

Chaz Nuttycombe

No equals bad. Right. That’s their job. So.

28:56.70

Sam Shirazi

All right. Well, well I appreciate you you coming on. If people want to learn more about State Navigate’s work, how would they do that?

29:03.03

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, go to satenadvocate.org. We have a lot of content in Virginia. you know We have you know ideology of legislators. I don’t think we’ve done it for this session yet, now that I think about it, but we’ll hopefully get that out this quarter for the ideology of the new General Assembly. You know, we have early voting tracking. We’ll be doing some election night coverage similar to what I did in 2025 with the team.

29:33.51

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, we have a lot of content in Virginia over the next, you know, month. So definitely go to state and advocate.org, subscribe to our newsletter, you know, hit the Virginia button to to get like weekly updates for our like weekly news roundup newsletter that we just launched, you know, about a month or so ago for the states that we’re operating in.

29:54.85

Chaz Nuttycombe

And, you know, if you want to help support our work, you can go to state navigate.org slash donate and make a tax deductible donation. You can attribute attribute it to any state you want, whether it be Virginia.

30:06.36

Chaz Nuttycombe

But, you know, we have our Virginia funding covered thanks to Dominion Energy. But if you you know want to help us get a surplus there, that’s it’s more than fine. And. But if you want to do it for another state, you know, we’ll open up there a little bit faster.

30:21.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

So it’s up to you. And, you know, we’d love to be your tool for navigating state legislatures.

30:28.55

Sam Shirazi

Well, I definitely recommend that people check out State Navigate. And I really appreciate Chaz coming on. This has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time.

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

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over a special election in the 98th House of Delegates District and talk about what that might mean for the redistricting referendum.

00:12.92

Sam Shirazi

Now, I want to caveat that first by saying special elections are definitely special and you cannot read too much into them because they’re very unique circumstances, really depends on the district, depends on the night.

00:24.84

Sam Shirazi

So I don’t want to go too crazy with the special election analysis, However, I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about this district because I think people were a little bit surprised. Generally, since President Trump was elected in 2024, Democrats have been doing well in special elections. Most special elections Democrats overperform. And what does overperforming mean? Typically, overperformance is measured against 2024 results in the district. So, for example, if Trump won a district by 10 points in 2024, but the Democrat wins a district by five points in the special election, that would be a 15 point overperformance.

01:01.86

Sam Shirazi

And across the country, we’ve seen Democrats doing really well in special elections. Most special elections, Democrats overperform. And earlier this year, there have been a bunch of special elections in deep blue seats in Virginia. And almost all of those special elections, Democrats have also overperformed.

01:17.58

Sam Shirazi

So there’s a sense that Democrats are doing well in these special elections. And I think people were looking at this special election in the 98th house district to see what would happen because while it is a pretty red district it is not overwhelmingly red in 2024 uh president trump won this specific district by about uh 15 points however in 2025 spamburger carried excuse me spamburger still lost the district but it was a little bit closer she only lost it by about six and a half points

01:49.02

Sam Shirazi

However, this district generally is known as more of a Republican district. It is in the most Republican part of Virginia Beach, which is kind of the southern part of Virginia Beach, includes even some rural areas and as well as some suburban areas.

02:03.54

Sam Shirazi

And in 2025, the delegate who won that election was Barry Knight. He won by about 13%. So he overperformed Spanberger and did better than the top of the ticket.

02:15.99

Sam Shirazi

And so, you know, When you look at this district, it’s kind of a Republican-leaning district, but not overwhelmingly so. Now, Delegate Knight unfortunately passed away, and so that’s why you had a special election for this seat.

02:29.18

Sam Shirazi

And again, people were looking at this seat, seeing what would happen. Would it be close? Would the Democrats be able to overperform again? And it looks like Democrats have not done that. They are not going to overperform. This will be a rare instance where the Republicans actually overperform.

02:43.10

Sam Shirazi

And I want to caveat by saying we do not have all the ballots yet. So in Virginia, the mail ballots can be received up until Friday at noon if they have been postmarked by Election Day.

02:54.22

Sam Shirazi

So we don’t have all the ballots in. And basically, it’s impossible to know how many mail ballots are still out there. Typically in special elections, there tend to be more late ballots than usual because the early voting period is shorter.

03:07.30

Sam Shirazi

People get their absentee ballots later, and so they have less time to return it. So you usually see more late mail in special elections. So I caveat all about saying the the vote totals are not final. However, i think the outcome pretty clear. Certainly the Republicans are going to win the seat.

03:24.05

Sam Shirazi

And it looks like they are probably going to overperform Donald Trump’s margin in 2024. So as of the time of recording, the Republican in the 98th House of Delegates seat, Andrew Rice, got about 62.5% of the vote, the Democrat, Cheryl got 37.5% of the vote.

03:40.63

Sam Shirazi

that’s about a 25% margin for Republicans.

03:45.08

Sam Shirazi

so that’s about a twenty five percent or margin for the republicans you know That’s probably going to come down a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to come down that much. And so if you think the district being a 15% Trump district in 2024, almost certainly the Republicans are going to overperform in this special election, unless there’s like a crazy amount of late mail that will be added, which seems relatively unlikely.

04:08.36

Sam Shirazi

So in the grand scheme of things, Republicans had a good night with the special election. They overperformed. And so the question becomes, what does all this mean? So I think a few things were at play here. One, obviously, when a delegate passes away, it’s it’s very unfortunate. And I think it was kind of a circumstance where it didn’t exactly lend itself to the Democrats having a big overperformance. It’s not like a situation where someone resigns in scandal. So I think the reason for the special election often is important.

04:40.15

Sam Shirazi

And then if you look look at this district, It’s in more of a kind of white working class part of Virginia Beach. So typically Democrats have a harder time overperforming in districts with white working class voters.

04:52.74

Sam Shirazi

There are suburban portions of the district, so I want to pretend, you know, it’s just a classic white working class district. But it certainly has some rural areas where I think it’s just very difficult for the Democrats to overperform in a district like that.

05:05.09

Sam Shirazi

I also think the elephant in the room is the redistricting referendum. And so I want to talk a little bit more about that, because I think one explanation of what happened is the Republicans are fired up and they’re upset about the redistricting referendum.

05:18.76

Sam Shirazi

Potentially, they could also be generally upset at what’s been going on in Richmond since the Democrats took over in January. So perhaps they’re upset with some of the bills that have been passed.

05:29.71

Sam Shirazi

And so I think generally the Virginia Republicans are more fired up than they were in 2025. Now, having said that, I mean, 2025 was a really bad year for the Virginia Republicans. So it’s basically as low as they’ve been in a long time. So the fact that the Virginia Republicans are doing better than 2025 doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing great, but it definitely was the lowest point they’ve been. And I think they’ve a little bit started to dig themselves out of the hole. And how have they done it? i mean, I think At the end of the day anger is a very strong motivator to vote. And obviously in 2025, Democrats were angry at what was going on in D.C.

06:04.36

Sam Shirazi

And so they were very motivated to vote. They were motivated to talk to their friends, convince them to vote for the Democrats. Democrats got a big win. After that big win, Democrats came into Richmond. They did a lot of things.

06:16.24

Sam Shirazi

And specifically, with redistricting that upset a lot of Republicans. And so now you see the opposite reaction where Republicans are upset and perhaps they are starting to organize, whereas last year they were a little bit at asleep. And this is kind of a common thing we see in Virginia.

06:31.41

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, that all goes to show you in in politics, you know, for... every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so democrats get a big landslide in 2025 uh they start doing all these things including redistricting you would think that the real reaction on the republican side and it kind of goes back to one of the things i’ve talked about that in politics one of the hardest things is to be present you know it’s easy in politics to one that we live the last election for the rest of time republicans want it to be 2024 forever Democrats want to be 2025 forever.

07:01.04

Sam Shirazi

The reality is the world moves, things change. And I think 2026 is 2026. And the environment is different than 2025, than 2024. And I also think it’s important to kind of think about regional dynamics in elections. Like perhaps the Democrats are doing really well nationally.

07:17.68

Sam Shirazi

National environment is definitely behind the Democrats. But perhaps in Virginia, Things are not as blue as they were in 2025, partly because the redistricting, partly because Democrats got a trifecta.

07:29.14

Sam Shirazi

And yeah, so I mean, I don’t want to overread what happened in the Virginia special election as meaning, you know, Democrats are definitely going to lose the redistricting referendum. That’s certainly not the case. I think it’s just an indication that maybe the Republicans have woken up a little bit since 2025.

07:46.18

Sam Shirazi

I won’t go and do this kind of deep dive early vote analysis right now. I think it’s too early. But, you know, there have been some indications that Republicans generally are turning out more than they did in 2025 for early voting. Again, I think it’s very early to read too much into that.

08:00.100

Sam Shirazi

And again, 2025 Republicans did pretty bad. So the fact that they’re doing better than 2025 is not necessarily saying a whole lot. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to win.

08:12.04

Sam Shirazi

But it does show that I think perhaps 2025 was kind of a low point for the Virginia Republicans. And I do think they’re going to start rebuilding a little bit in 2026. Having said that, I mean,

08:23.40

Sam Shirazi

They were in a 15 point hole for the governor’s race. And so to dig out of a 15 15 point hole in the governor’s race is a lot. And let’s say the Republicans do like 10 percent better than they did last year at the governor’s race.

08:34.64

Sam Shirazi

i mean, they’re still going to lose by like 5 percent. So I think it’s important to have some perspective, even as the Republicans are doing better. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to win. Now, having said all that, I also wanna have some humility and just kind of think this through because one of the things I noticed with, as I was thinking through the California, Virginia comparison.

08:54.10

Sam Shirazi

So in California, the redistricting referendum passed overwhelmingly. And I think that gave Democrats in Virginia some confidence that this redistricting referendum was going to pass. And it kind of reminded me of something that happened in 2021. And not to give Virginia Democrats some bad memories, but I did kind of come to my mind. So 2021, obviously, there had started to be a backlash to the Democrats as President Biden came into office.

09:19.85

Sam Shirazi

And there was a recall referendum. in California for the governor, Gavin Newsom, and he was able to successfully fight that off. And that was before the Virginia elections in 2021.

09:32.22

Sam Shirazi

And I remember when Gavin Newsom won the recall, I think there was a sense among Virginia Democrats, it’s not that big of a deal. We’re okay. And obviously in 2021, the Republicans were able to win with Glenn Youngkin.

09:45.74

Sam Shirazi

And so I guess what I’m getting at is just because the rejection referendum passed by a lot in California doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily going to be a slam dunk in Virginia. And so I do think it’s important for the Virginia Democrats not to take anything for granted.

09:59.92

Sam Shirazi

i think the Republicans are more fired up than they were last year. i think certainly independents, some of them who voted for Spanberger going to be a little bit skeptical of this proposal. i think the idea of gerrymandering kind of sits wrong with them, even if they understand that President Trump was the one who’s kind of started the redistricting wars.

10:18.56

Sam Shirazi

I think they understand that, you know, in their mind, maybe two wrongs don’t make a right. On the other side, obviously, Democrats are generally upset at what’s been going on in D.C. And that has continued into 2026. And they understand that this redistricting referendum in Virginia is a way to kind of fight back in their minds.

10:34.82

Sam Shirazi

And there’s certainly a lot of independents who perhaps they don’t like gerrymandering. But their number one issue is also sending a message to President Trump. We saw this in 2025 with the attorney general race where Jay Jones was able to win with a pretty comfortable margin because ae a lot of independents basically said, I would rather send a message to President Trump and vote the Democrat than to vote for Jason Muir as a Republican.

10:57.80

Sam Shirazi

And I think you could see something like that here where some independents may not like the concept of gerrymandering, but they want to send a message to President Trump. So all that’s to say is like, I think at a minimum, the redistricting referendum is going to be closer than the governor’s race in 2025.

11:11.90

Sam Shirazi

twenty twenty five Now, that’s not saying a whole lot because Spanberger winning by 15 was the biggest margin that Democrats got in Virginia in a long time. So it’s not a huge surprise to say that the redistricting referendum is going to be closer than 2025.

11:23.74

Sam Shirazi

twenty twenty five But the question is, is it going to be Within 10 points, within five points, or are we kind of entering a territory where the Republicans could actually win the redistricting referendum? I think that still kind of seems unlikely at this point, but I do think the special election, some of the early voting data suggests that Republicans do have some momentum compared to the Democrats at this point.

11:44.84

Sam Shirazi

However, and I always caveat people with early vote because it’s way too early to draw big conclusions with early vote. Why mail mail ballots take a time a while to process.

11:55.40

Sam Shirazi

It takes a while for them to be sent to the voters, for the voters to to read to get them, to fill them out, to send them back in, to have the... paperwork process for a mail ballot. So I think mail ballots are going to continue to be added to the system. And those typically tend to be overwhelmingly democratic and they come from overwhelmingly democratic places.

12:13.78

Sam Shirazi

And then the other thing is just the satellite voting locations. Most satellite voting locations are located in democratic localities and those tend to open later in the early voting cycle. And I think especially this time, there is going to be less satellite voting compared to 2025. So I think The Democratic early voting might be less than 2025. There might be more early voting on Election Day just because the satellite voting locations have reduced hours and in some places reduced locations as compared to 2025. So all that’s to say is it is still very early. There is still over a month until the redistricting referendum. I don’t think either side can really take it for granted. i don’t think either side can confidently feel like they’re 100 percent going to win.

12:59.46

Sam Shirazi

I do think it’s a little bit of a different vibe than 2025. 2025, I think for most of that election, at least at the governor’s level, almost everyone kind of had a gut feeling that Spanberger was going to win. I don’t think it was a huge surprise when Spanberger won.

13:11.36

Sam Shirazi

think we all had a feeling that was going to happen. Here, I think most people feel that Democrats have an advantage in a redistricting referendum, but it’s not necessarily this overwhelmingly slam dunk. You know, there’s no way the Republicans can win.

13:22.100

Sam Shirazi

So all that’s to say is I think it’s important to always be paying attention to the pulse of what’s going on and not necessarily go off the last election or to kind of go off what know you think should happen, given the NYMEX in California and with the redistricting referendum. Every election is unique. You really have to kind of keep your pulse on it.

13:44.50

Sam Shirazi

And I do think the Republicans have started to kind of right the ship a little bit in Virginia relative to 2025. Keep in mind that they had a very bad 20, 25 and the Democrats, you know, I don’t think that they’re in that much trouble.

13:58.36

Sam Shirazi

However, when you get a big election win like 20, 25, there often does get tend to be a sense of complacency, a sense of, you know, obviously Virginia is a deep blue state now and we’re to, you know, we don’t have to work anymore. And I think, I think that’s just not the case. Virginia turned blue during the first Trump administration,

14:16.90

Sam Shirazi

And then it turned back into, at least at the state level, a more purple state. And I do think here there is a possibility, even if President Trump’s in the White House, that the Virginia Democrats still need to work on this redistricting referendum.

14:31.40

Sam Shirazi

And I guess the last thing I’ll i’ll say about the redistricting refer referendum is... you know My sense is the the hardcore Republicans and the hardcore Democrats understand what’s going on.

14:41.52

Sam Shirazi

They’re really motivated. They’re going to vote. The question becomes kind of the low propensity Democrats, the low propensity Republicans. In 2025, Democrats did a better job getting out their low propensity voters.

14:52.85

Sam Shirazi

I think there’s a possibility in 2026, perhaps the Republicans right now are doing a better job getting out or at least and educating their low propensity voters. voters And so I think the Democrats also have to think about not just their highly engaged voters, but the low propensity voter, you know, the working class voter that’s, you know, perhaps in Hampton Roads or the college student, you know, are those people who voted in 2025 going to come out again in 2026? And I think it’s a little bit of an open question. Some of those early voting data hasn’t been great for the Democrats.

15:24.36

Sam Shirazi

But the good news is they still have a lot of time over over a month left to get out those voters. And then also Democrats have a financial advantage. So I think that’s certainly going to help them.

15:34.83

Sam Shirazi

They have you know heavy hitters like President former President Obama has been supporting the redistricting referendum. So I think there are a lot of things going right for the Democrats. I’m not necessarily trying to. freak them out or say that the Republicans are going to win. I’m just trying to kind of lay it out as I see it, that things are not necessarily as much of a slam dunk as 2025.

15:55.30

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, anytime an election is going to be within single digits, which I think there’s a possibility this election is going to be single within single digits, it’s hard to confidently say, you know, one side or another is definitely going win. So I think we’re going to keep an eye on it. I will keep doing these updates on the redistricting referendum. I wanted to do a podcast this time that’s really in the weeds about Virginia elections because my last podcast was a little bit less focused on Virginia, but I want to get back into it, especially now that the redistricting referendums been heating up. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time.

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

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out of Virginia Elections. This is a special episode where we will go over the impact of the conflict in the Middle East, specifically the conflict between Israel, the United States, and Iran, and see how it is going to impact the elections here in Virginia and across the country And I was waiting to do this episode because I wasn’t sure how long things would continue. The conflict has gone on for over two weeks now and doesn’t seem to be like there’s an end in sight. So I thought it was a good time to maybe talk about it.

00:31.29

Sam Shirazi

Talk about the impact both in Virginia and across the country. And the reason I thought it made sense to talk about it in this podcast is obviously the podcast is called Federal Fallout. And this is going to be an important federal fallout both in Virginia, across the country this year in the elections, the midterms, because really.

00:49.50

Sam Shirazi

So there’s both the impact domestically in terms of the economy, and then we’ll talk about some of the international implications of what’s going on. So I thought it would be an interesting time to do a little bit of a different podcast. Obviously, I’ve been focusing a lot on Virginia redistricting referendum.

01:04.27

Sam Shirazi

I’m not going to talk about it too much in this podcast because I don’t think it’s going to have a direct impact of what’s going on in Middle East. It’s going to have direct impact on the redistricting referendum. However, once the referendum is over, obviously, we’re going have the midterms here in Virginia and across the country. And I do think the conflict has gone on long enough now that there will be an impact that will be felt all the way even in November, even if the conflict conflict ends relatively soon because of some of the impacts to the national and global economy. So anyways, I thought it’d be interesting to do a little bit of a different podcast, something that’s not exactly hyper-focused on Virginia, but still back impacting Virginia. And I think just an interesting topic in general.

01:45.99

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, i try to stay in my lane, talk mainly about Virginia elections. However, i also know a decent amount about the Middle East for various reasons. One, I studied Middle East foreign in as a foreign affairs major at the University of Virginia. So I’ve spent some time studying the Middle East, specifically Iran. And, you know, full full disclosure, my family originally, we come from Iran. So I generally have a good sense of what’s going on in the country. i have kept an eye on things for a while. Don’t really talk about it a lot on this podcast because usually it’s not super relevant, but now obviously it is relevant and I thought people might be interested in my perspective.

02:24.87

Sam Shirazi

So I’ll try to keep it, you know, not focused on my specific experience, but more what the conflict in the Middle East is doing globally in terms of the economy, how that’s having an impact here domestically and what it might mean for the midterms this year in november So to begin with, I want to talk a little bit about just like the practical domestic impact of what’s going on in the Middle East. And obviously the big thing that’s been on the news domestically has been the impact on gas prices. Obviously, Middle East, Iran, countries that order it are big companies. oil producers.

03:03.68

Sam Shirazi

And the big thing that’s happened since the conflict began, Iran has tried to essentially close the Strait of Hormuz. So the Strait of Hormuz is a narrow part of water that connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the ocean. And obviously oil that’s coming from places like Iran, Iraq, Kuwait have to go through the Strait of Hormuz to reach global markets.

03:27.80

Sam Shirazi

And I think Aaron has pretty effectively essentially shut down shipping through the strait, and that is causing oil prices to go up a decent amount. And the price of oil has hit almost roughly $100 a hundred dollars barrel.

03:43.09

Sam Shirazi

And anytime oil hits that number, about $100 a barrel, I mean, that’s going to have significant significant impact both here and internationally. And just practically, I mean, everyone has seen at the the gas station that the price of oil, sorry, the price of gas has gone up and people are paying more. And obviously, Americans don’t like that. That was a big drag on President Biden when that happened. And it was probably a big reason why the Democrats lost the election in 2024, even though gas prices had come down from their highs in 2022. So 2022, Russia invades Ukraine. That causes another oil shock.

04:19.02

Sam Shirazi

The price of gas goes up. And it never really came that down to the pre-war levels until I think recently. And so even though the initial jump in prices in 2022 caused a huge shock, it still had an impact years later on.

04:37.71

Sam Shirazi

And The thing is, it’s not just gas. I mean, most Americans have cars that use gas, and so they feel that when they’re filling up the pump. But if you notice, if you look, the price of diesel has also gone up a lot. And diesel, while most of us don’t buy diesel, it’s important for shipping. So think a lot of things run on diesel, like most big trucks that transport goods runs on diesel trains, a lot of things run on diesel. And so when the price of diesel goes up, that means that the price of transporting a lot of goods or almost every single good will go up a lot. And that was one of the things we saw in 2022. mean, I think there’s been, there was a lot of talk about, oh, inflation was high when, when Biden was president. And that’s true. But

05:20.49

Sam Shirazi

Part of the reason for that and a big part of it was because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that caused an oil shock that caused the price of gas to go up. It also caused the price of diesel to go up. And so once the price of diesel goes up, the price of almost everything else starts going up. And I do think the longer this goes on in the Middle East, the longer that there’s a risk that there will be inflation, inflationary shocks.

05:41.71

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, the thing with inflation, it usually takes a little bit of time until we really see it, especially in the formal data in terms of the inflation rate. And so we saw that in 2022.

05:52.52

Sam Shirazi

There was kind of initial jump in prices. And then eventually that kind of got reflected throughout the economy. And I do think that there is going to be something similar happening in the next couple weeks, potentially a couple of months.

06:05.74

Sam Shirazi

And even if the war ended tomorrow, I mean, these shocks are still going to be felt in the system. Obviously, the sooner it ends, the less likely it’s going to have as big of impact. But I do think already we’re starting to see the immediate impact with the gas prices. And I do think next few weeks there’ll be a broader impact on on other goods throughout the economy.

06:25.58

Sam Shirazi

So you know I talked about this previously in my podcast. Most people, they’re most the the most important issue is the economy. People had been struggling before the conflict had began. The affordability crisis has been going on for several years.

06:39.07

Sam Shirazi

And that was one of the big reasons that Donald Trump got elected in 2024. And I think people expected him to fix that issue. And I think a lot of people have felt that that had not gotten better.

06:49.31

Sam Shirazi

That was one of the big reasons. Now, Governor Spanberger got a big win in 2025. She focused a lot on the affordability issue because people had a sense that things were not getting better, even though the Republicans had come in and and, you know, there have been a lot of different policies that necessarily didn’t necessarily make things better in terms of affordability, such as the tariffs.

07:10.01

Sam Shirazi

And I do think now with this conflict, there is going to be another round of potential rises and costs for the American people. And I think that’s obviously not going to be great for the Republicans if that happens and they will potentially be facing an even harder November where where they were already facing a hard November. I think it’s going to make their lives that much harder, specifically because, you know, if inflation at least starts rising again, probably won’t get up to like the 10 percent that it got under Biden. But even if it goes up to four or five percent, I mean, I think you draw a clear line where you say, you know, President Trump’s decision to go to war in the Middle East, that has

07:49.43

Sam Shirazi

direct impact on the economy and and the Democrats will certainly make that argument that his decision to go to war has increased the cost to the American people. So even if most people are not spending all day you know focusing on what’s going on in the Middle East and what’s going on with the Strait of Hormuz, we are all going to feel the impact when we go to the gas station and eventually when we start buying things at the grocery store because of this conflict that is so far away.

08:16.96

Sam Shirazi

Now, I also wanted to talk a little bit about of the political implications in terms of President Trump’s decision to start this war, because yeah obviously there are are a few catchphrases President Trump had during his campaigns. Probably his most famous one is make America great again. But I do think one that is also pretty famous is America first. And I think that was Originally, his main foreign policy ideology was American first. I think it’s a pretty you know vague statement. And you know people had a sense, OK, that means focus on America.

08:49.71

Sam Shirazi

But what did it actually mean in terms of foreign policy? And we saw during his second term, particularly after what happened in Venezuela, when the president when President Trump ordered American troops to go and seize the president of Venezuela and bring him to the U.S. for trial,

09:07.12

Sam Shirazi

There was a little bit clearer articulation of what America First meant, at least in in terms of kind of an ideal ideology that was somewhat consistent. and And basically what that meant was, according to this kind of idea of America First, the idea was...

09:23.40

Sam Shirazi

America was going to move away from this post-World War II idea that it’s going to be the policeman of the world, that it will kind of ensure this global liberal you know free trade order that wasn’t really what America should be doing, shouldn’t be you know subsidizing all these countries’ defenses like in Europe.

09:41.97

Sam Shirazi

What America was going to do is look out for its own interests. So and specifically what that meant is America was going to look out for the Western Hemisphere because in President Trump’s view, America is the leading power in the Western Hemisphere. And that is kind of its sphere of influence. And so it’s in America’s interest to protect itself and to protect its interests in the Western Hemisphere. And all these other things going on in the rest of the world really aren’t America’s problems.

10:05.71

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, you may disagree or agree with that, but I think at the end of the day, it was somewhat consistent or at least somewhat coherent. And so while Venezuela, what President Trump did was certainly intervention overseas, he could kind of defend it as saying, like, look, we’re looking out for what’s going on in our backyard. And that’s why I went into Venezuela. And I think President Trump had been critical, obviously, of various foreign entanglements the United States has gotten itself into.

10:33.46

Sam Shirazi

And I think his worldview is, for example, something like the war in Ukraine. It’s not really our problem. You know, Eastern Europe, maybe that’s more of Russia’s sphere of influence. Let the Europeans deal with it. You know, the EU, their sphere of influence is Western Europe and Central Europe.

10:48.52

Sam Shirazi

If they have a problem with Russia, they should deal with Ukraine. It’s not really America’s problem. you know China, their sphere of influence could be maybe East east Asia, India will have a sphere of influence in South Asia.

11:02.74

Sam Shirazi

And then the Middle East, it had seemed that maybe he was basically arguing you know Israel and the Gulf states, you know they can have a sphere of influence in the Middle East and the Middle East isn’t really America’s problem anymore. and That seemed to be kind of the America fair first ideology.

11:18.96

Sam Shirazi

And so I think a lot of people were puzzled when President Trump decided to start this war with Iran, because it in some ways it kind of goes totally against that. You know, President Trump in 2016. One of the reasons he got the Republican nomination is he was one of the only Republicans to basically say the Iraq war was a mistake. He wanted to the US out of the Middle East. I think that’s what a lot of people voted for him.

11:38.93

Sam Shirazi

They believed in this idea that the US had spent all this time and money and energy in the Middle East and was not paying attention enough to what was going on in America.

11:49.29

Sam Shirazi

And so I think it was a kind of an odd decision now that President Trump decided to launch launch this you know relatively large scale war with Iran because it kind of goes against all that. you know It’s in the Middle East, very far from America.

12:02.46

Sam Shirazi

It’s you know in an area where you have other strong states like Israel, Saudi Arabia, that you know even if Iran really is a problem, those states could maybe deal with it and it’s not really America’s issue anymore.

12:15.92

Sam Shirazi

And so I guess the question now becomes, you know why did President Trump decide to to do this at this point? i mean, I think my sense was after what happened in Venezuela, when the US went in and took the Venezuelan president Maduro, they took him out and they were able to work with his vice president and set up, while not a totally different regime, certainly a more favorable government towards the United States. I think President Trump felt really good after that.

12:41.53

Sam Shirazi

And you know who knows what some of his advisors were telling him But he felt that maybe he could do something similar in Iran. Obviously, the United States joined Israel in that conflict. Israel was able to kill the Supreme Leader or the former Supreme Leader, Khamenei.

12:57.58

Sam Shirazi

And maybe President Trump had a sense of, well, we can bring someone else who might be more reasonable into power in Iran, and then that will solve a foreign policy crisis in the Middle East. I think it’s not exactly played out that way, and we can kind of talk about why. But I think that’s part of the the challenge that is is happening right now, because perhaps President Trump thought that once Khamenei was out of the way, there would be a better government in Iran. I think most people who understand Iran knows that that was unlikely to happen. i think Iran is very different than Venezuela, for example. And it didn’t really make sense that you could kind of come in overthrow just the supreme leader, and all of a sudden the government will get a lot better.

13:42.01

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, just talk a little bit about Iran for for a moment. i mean, I do think a lot of the Iranian people have turned against the government generally over the past few years because it is a very repressive government.

13:56.63

Sam Shirazi

The economy has not been doing well. So I do think there were a lot of Iranians who were against the regime. I think the challenge is the regime is very entrenched, it’s very powerful, and it’s just hard to overthrow through something with like airstrikes. And I do think once Khamenei was taken out, there wasn’t really...

14:16.77

Sam Shirazi

going to be someone else who could come in and be a moderate in that situation. Obviously, the country had just started, had just been bombed. Even in Venezuela, the United States didn’t kill Maduro. They were able to seize him take him to the United States, and are going to put him on trial. You know, killing another country’s leader, it’s going to be pretty hard for the other leaders in that country to all of a sudden say, okay, we’re actually going to work with you now once you killed our leader. I think the natural response from the Iranian regime is that they’re going to start attacking the Middle East. And a lot of people are kind of surprised, I think, that they started attacking not just Israel, but countries like Qatar and Kuwait and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. But I think from the Iranian regime standpoint, their mindset is that they are going to cause as much trouble as possible. They are going to hurt the economies of those countries. They are obviously trying to hurt

15:10.62

Sam Shirazi

the global economy with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. And so I think from their perspective, their idea their idea of fighting this war is they know they’re not going to win militarily because Israel the United States has has a much stronger military, but they’re going to cause a lot of economic harm.

15:28.12

Sam Shirazi

And the pain that that causes will cause primarily the United States to eventually just stop and not no longer want to fight the war. Now, that hasn’t happened yet, but we’ll see where it goes. And I do think From their perspective, a lot of the Gulf states are getting nervous because places like Dubai and Doha, you know, in Qatar, they their economy is now geared more towards tourism, more towards banking, being kind of a center of commerce. And I think the conflict has really hurt that image and has hurt their ability to do that. And so certainly I think behind the scenes, they are trying to get this conflict resolved. It seems like Israel, on the other hand, because they’re more far removed from much of the consequences, wants to kind of see this through and and try to end the conflict. And ideally, from their perspective, end the regime, even though that seems pretty difficult to accomplish.

16:18.22

Sam Shirazi

So the question becomes, you know, what is the United States going to do? How long will President Trump continue this conflict? Most people seem to have thought that he would eventually just say, know,

16:29.86

Sam Shirazi

essentially declare victory. you know We took out their leader and the regime is weaker. And so we won. Most people still think that’s going to be the end game. But I think the markets are starting to realize this is going to drag out longer. And I think that’s why the cost of oil has started to go up more and more. And I think at the end of the day,

16:48.18

Sam Shirazi

You know, that there’s this idea that in an ideal world, the Iranian people would rise up, overthrow the regime. I think the challenge with that is if you put yourself in the place of the average Iranian, you know, their country is being bombed. The U.S. s and Israeli military are telling civilians to be careful. The regime has very explicitly said that, you know, anyone who is caught, you know, protesting, they will just execute them essentially because it’s a time of war and they’ve essentially declared martial law. And even before the war, if you were caught protesting, you might be killed. So the idea that people in this environment are going to be willing to go out and protest, I think is unlikely. And a lot of Iranians are just you know hunkering down, trying to survive. And so I think it’s a little bit unrealistic to think that the regime would be overthrown in this environment. And so we’re kind of left in this situation where

17:40.64

Sam Shirazi

The regime domestically, I think, feels like it isn’t under huge pressure. Its military is being battered, but it still has these asymmetric abilities to strike back with drones and missiles.

18:16.46

Sam Shirazi

Anyway, so we’re kind of reaching a point where... the longer the Strait of Hormuz is closed, the bigger the impact to the global economy, the more difficult it will be for things to get back to normal. And I think the Iranian regime knows that, and they’re trying to put the pressure, especially on the United States,

18:34.83

Sam Shirazi

to eventually just wrap this up. and And they’re essentially just trying to wait out Trump. And and their their sense is, oh, he’s just going to get bored of this. He’s going to move on. And you know that might be the case. However, I do think President Trump is also the type of person who doesn’t like it when he doesn’t win and he doesn’t get what he really wants.

18:53.29

Sam Shirazi

And so there’s also a possibility that he will just continue to do this. And the longer it goes on, the bigger the impact both to the global and American economy.

19:03.84

Sam Shirazi

So kind of tying this all to back to kind of the midterms and what it means, I mean, I think at the end of the day, this is just another thing that is probably going to help the Democrats this November for various reasons. One, we’ve talked about the economy.

19:18.69

Sam Shirazi

Two, we’ve talked about this idea that people don’t want the United States to be in another war in the Middle East. I think most Americans have been exhausted after what’s been going on. with Afghanistan and Iraq, that they don’t want another you know forever war.

19:33.84

Sam Shirazi

And there’s also just kind of a sense that the war is not necessarily going the way that we had hoped that it would be quick and the regime would fall and there’d be a new, better government in Iran. And I think that hasn’t happened and there’s not any indication that’s going to happen anytime soon. So for those reasons, I think it’s generally going to hurt the Republicans in November.

19:55.66

Sam Shirazi

Now, having said that, it really depends when it ends. I think if it ends, you know, late March, April timeframe, perhaps by November things have basically moved on. Not that many people remember it. There’s been an impact to the economy, but the economy has been able to basically take it. And at the end of the day, it’s not going to be a huge factor in November. I think that’s one possibility. And the other possibility is, especially if it continues, I do think there’s this risk that the war will, you know, continue to drag the Republicans down. And, you know, you know I think,

20:29.68

Sam Shirazi

when you’re thinking about midterms, you’re always looking at comparators. And I think obviously the comparator for Trump is the 2018 midterm because that’s when Trump was last in office. But I do think perhaps there’s another comparator, which is 2006. Now, the economy was doing pretty well.

20:46.97

Sam Shirazi

2006, the economy wasn’t doing that great. it was you know We were starting to see the first signs of what would eventually become the Great Recession. And obviously, 2006 was the height of the Iraq War. And I think both those things really hurt the Republican Party.

21:01.13

Sam Shirazi

It allowed the Democrats to have a comeback. Democrats were able to win both the House and Senate in 2006. And so in some ways, the blue wave in 2006 was actually bigger than the blue wave in 2018. because I think it was more of a national blue wave. We saw it blow both in blue states and red states. And I do think that that the longer this war goes on, the bigger the impact of the economy. I do think we could be entering more of a 2006 type environment as opposed to maybe a 2018 type environment, because i I just think at some point,

21:32.36

Sam Shirazi

The war, I think the problem the Republicans have is both the practical impact of the war in terms of the cost of the economy, and then also the kind of political or ideological divisions is creating in the MAGA movement, if you want to say that, in terms of some of some parts of the movement, particularly the more pro-Israel sides of the movement, support the war. But then you have people on the other side who are more on the America first side of things who think that this is not really in America’s interest. And so you’re you’re seeing how these ideological divisions within the Republican Party, and then you’re seeing the economic impact of the war here domestically.

22:10.06

Sam Shirazi

And I guess the last thing I’ll leave you with is is maybe more of a Iranian perspective or Iranian-American perspective, because I think that is often lost in this type of conflict when there’s obviously focus on so much going on, both in terms of the domestic economy, world economy, Strait of Hormuz, gas blockage, you know all these things that you hear about, but you don’t necessarily hear about the perspective of Iranians both in Iran and around the world. And you know i I think the thing that I hear over and over again is a lot of mixed feelings. I think a lot of Iranians do not like the regime. i think that’s an understatement.

22:47.32

Sam Shirazi

Certainly the Iranians that left Iran, they did so because they did not like the regime. They did not support the regime. Some of those people outside of Iran are some of the biggest supporters of the war because they feel like this is the only way to get rid of rid of the regime.

23:01.82

Sam Shirazi

A lot of Iranians outside of Iran, however, also oppose the war because they feel that this is not the right way to get rid of the regime. And if anything, it’s going to strength strengthen the regime, at least domestically.

23:14.46

Sam Shirazi

So I think there’s a lot of mixed feelings, conflicting feelings. And then I think people in Iran... probably are feeling the same thing. Some of them were probably happy when they heard that the Supreme Leader was killed.

23:26.01

Sam Shirazi

And they were they were hopeful that maybe this could lead to a different direction for Iran. But I think one thing that I have felt... Having studied the Iranian regime for a long time, is it is more versatile and more adaptive than I think people give it credit for.

23:44.76

Sam Shirazi

I think there’s an image of it as some sort of backward Islamic theology theocracy, and obviously it has those components, but at the end of the day, it is also...

23:55.55

Sam Shirazi

a very strong repressive state and it has been able to maintain power for 45 years with large portions of the population not supporting it. And I think part of the reason it’s done that is it has created ways to survive and has both the military and political strength to survive a lot of internal uprisings and a lot of pressure from the outside in terms of sanctions. This has been the first time it has really faced significant military pressure from the outside since the Iran-Iraq war when Saddam Hussein invaded the country and launched an eight-year war that was, and he was unable to defeat the regime

24:42.36

Sam Shirazi

Ultimately, I think it’s really important in these situations to be realistic. As much as I don’t like the regime and I wish that it would change as much as a lot of Iranians don’t like the regime, as much as obviously many people in the region and around the world don’t like the regime, I think you have to be realistic, understand the nature of the regime, understand how it’s able to survive, how it is able to adapt and do things that make life difficult for everyone. And so ultimately,

25:08.100

Sam Shirazi

I guess what I’m getting at is it’s important to be realistic in this situation and not necessarily just wish away the regime or wish that will fall or wish that there will be regime change. Anything is certainly possible. It’s an unpredictable situation. I certainly hope for the best in terms of a better direction for the Iranian people so that they could live in freedom and democracy. That’s my hope. That’s my hope.

25:32.71

Sam Shirazi

for a long time. And i hope it comes true one day. But I am also realistic that I’m not sure this sort of conflict is the environment that will cause that to happen. And so we’ll just have to keep an eye on it. Ultimately, it is going to have an impact in Iran, in the region, around the world, in America, certainly going to have an impact on the Virginia elections.

25:55.81

Sam Shirazi

on the midterms generally this November. So that’s why I thought I’d do this episode. And yeah, I mean, i’m I’m curious to see how long this goes on. I may do some more specials on Iran and give some more information about the conflict. This was kind of my beginning episode to give people a little bit of better sense of what was going on. If it continues, I will do more episodes.

26:17.38

Sam Shirazi

I still obviously want to cover Virginia elections, want to cover the redistricting referendum, certainly very important. But I thought I’d do a little bit of a different thing this episode and talk about what’s going on in the Middle East.

26:29.19

Sam Shirazi

so this keep paying attention. I think I will do my best to cover it all. Federal fallout, I’ve enjoyed doing it. i think sometimes you do have to cover the actual federal fallout about what’s going on because this has obviously been driven by a decision that President Trump did at the federal level.

26:45.48

Sam Shirazi

And I will continue to cover it. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. So this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time.

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

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over a ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court and then also preview the start of early voting this Friday in the redistricting referendum.

00:14.71

Sam Shirazi

So the big news that came out on Wednesday was that the Virginia Supreme Court had issued a ruling. We had been waiting for it. And finally, it had issued a ruling. Unfortunately, didn’t give us the final answer on Virginia redistricting, but did give us an answer on whether the referendum was going to move forward. And the Virginia Supreme Court said that the redistricting referendum itself, the voting can take place. So the court was very clear that the Redistricting referendum is going to happen. Early voting was going to start on Friday.

00:45.94

Sam Shirazi

However, there’s an important caveat where they put some language in there basically saying that this is not the final order. we have not made our final decision. And so we’re going to let people vote. And then after that, we will give you our final say on whether this was legal or not. And so I think that’s leaving a lot of uncertainty in the air.

01:04.36

Sam Shirazi

But we did get some kind of short-term answers. People will start voting on Friday. And then obviously there’s going to be a campaign. And then on April 21st, we will have election day and we will see whether the registry referendum passes or not. So a lot to talk about. The first thing I wanted to do was kind of break down the Supreme Court decision and kind of explain what happened. And I think a lot of people were a little bit confused about why the court is kicking the can down the road.

01:30.37

Sam Shirazi

So to give you some background, the Virginia Supreme Court had previously said that the redistricting referendum could go forward. However, there was a new lawsuit and a judge in Tazewell County in entered a new temporary restraining order basically saying that the referendum couldn’t go forward. So it was pretty clear that the Virginia Supreme Court was going to have to say something because at least Tazewell County was unsure whether it could actually start the holding the referendum and having early voting start.

01:57.64

Sam Shirazi

So it was very clear that Supreme Court, we were expecting that they were going to do something, but it took a while. And I was kind of surprised. It almost went at the last minute, two days before start of early voting, they gave their decision.

02:09.51

Sam Shirazi

And it’s an interesting one. so So one of the things the court said was this was not really a temporary restraining order. It was actually an injunction. An injunction is basically a more long term thing, whereas a tmporary restraining orders in more short term. So the Supreme Court like was like, this is a big deal. What the court did was a big deal. So we have to rule on it. And I think what was interesting is they were grappling on what to do. They were grappling on whether to make the final decision now or basically wait until after the referendum.

02:39.61

Sam Shirazi

So the Virginia Supreme Court really emphasized this court case from 1912. And this court case is called Scott versus James. And they kept citing this court case. So I think this was really important. And they felt like they really had to abide by this decision.

02:53.27

Sam Shirazi

And this decision basically said that you first have to let the people vote, and then you can decide on the legality of it. And you can tell in the Supreme Court decision, they’re really grappling with this. I think they they don’t really like this outcome, but they feel like they have no other choice. They feel like for various reasons, it’s not within their power to really stop the election. And it it would be basically undemocratic for the judicial branch to basically say to voters, you can’t vote. However, they also said, well, once the voting is done, then we can decide what ends up happening.

03:26.78

Sam Shirazi

And I think it creates this odd scenario where hypothetically the redistricting referendum could pass and then the Virginia Supreme Court could say, actually, this is not legal and so redistricting is not going to happen.

03:39.94

Sam Shirazi

the court was very explicit that it will not rule if the redistricting referendum is not passed. Because the the court basically said that it’s going to be a moot issue. There’s no point in us ruling.

03:51.56

Sam Shirazi

However, the court did open the door and very was explicitly said that they could overturn the referendum if after they hear all the arguments and they think about it, they decide that this was not legal.

04:04.23

Sam Shirazi

And I think really you could tell in this opinion, They didn’t want to rush the decision. They really wanted to think this one through. They knew it was important. Obviously, the clock’s ticking. Early voting is going start.

04:15.04

Sam Shirazi

They knew they had to put something out there. And so I think their ultimate call was that they are going to allow the redistricting referendum to go forward, and then they’re going to make the the final call later. And essentially, it’s kicking the can down the road again. They kicked the can down the road last time, and this time they again kicked the can down the road.

04:32.74

Sam Shirazi

And I think the other part of the opinion that got a lot of attention was towards the end. So they basically talk about, okay, there’s all these issues that parties have raised, that this was done without enough notice, that the notices were not posted, that the language of the referendum is biased. So, you know, Republicans have raised a lot of arguments, and the court kind of summarized them all.

04:54.69

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, at the end, The court put the sentence in there and it said, quote, these issues are of grave concern to the court. And I think I’m a lawyer. Anytime you’re a lawyer and you hear a court saying something is of grave concern, that is going to trigger you because you’re that that’s telling you the court’s grappling with something.

05:18.32

Sam Shirazi

And so... The exact language is important. So the court said these issues are of grave concern. Not we have grave concerns. They said these issues of of are of grave concern.

05:30.97

Sam Shirazi

And I think you can read this two ways. One of them is grave concern just basically means like it’s super important. Like we get it. Like this is an important issue. We’re going to take our time. We’re going to think this through.

05:42.57

Sam Shirazi

We’re going rush it. So it’s a grave concern and we don’t want to you know come up with something you know right before early voting. We want to think this through. I think the other way you can read this, and this is certainly how the Republicans want to read it, is grave concern means they have grave concerns and they’re really worried about this. They just felt like it was not the correct procedural posture to strike down the referendum.

06:05.09

Sam Shirazi

But they’re leaving the door open and so they’re kind of you know this is put in the opinion to show that they’re actually you know skeptical of what the Democrats are trying to do. They just couldn’t stop it right now. I mean, I don’t know. I think you can read it both ways. We’re ultimately going to get the final answer after redistricting referendum, if it passes, when the Supreme Court will have to make their final call. you know I think the the last one of the last lines of opinion, it says, issuing injunction to keep Virginians from the polls is not the proper way to make the decision. So I think really the court...

06:35.98

Sam Shirazi

Bottom line, did not want to be rushed into it. I think the the Virginia Republicans, when they filed the second lawsuit and got the the judge in Tazewell County to issue the injunction, they were trying to get the Supreme Court to make a final decision very quickly. They were trying to force the court’s hand.

07:22.01

Sam Shirazi

My gut was the court was not going to have its hand forced. basically where these important decisions are made in this posture, like right before a deadline and the court makes the ultimate decision. I think the Virginia Supreme Court didn’t want to be put in that position. i think they didn’t really appreciate having to rush their decision. And so I think at the end of the day they kicked the can down the road.

07:39.88

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, the Democrats, they’re going to take that. They want to live to fight another day. They want to see the referendum happen. They think they’re going to win the referendum. And so Democrats were generally happy. i think, you know, in an ideal world for Democrats, the entire issue would have been resolved and they don’t have to worry about it anymore, but they’ll take it. I think Republicans obviously were disappointed because they didn’t want to fight the redistricting referendum.

08:03.50

Sam Shirazi

But they’ve accepted that it’s going to happen. I think they have a little bit of hope with some of this language in the opinion that maybe the court is actually very skeptical and they will end up striking it down. Although,

08:14.97

Sam Shirazi

I think the thing I’ve heard from a lot of people is if the state goes through this whole process of having a referendum and then potentially, you know, two million plus Virginians are going to vote and then it passes. i mean, is the Virginia Supreme Court in you know May really going to say, actually, this whole thing was illegal. It shouldn’t have happened.

08:36.44

Sam Shirazi

And we’re just going to throw it all out. I mean, in their opinion, the Virginia Supreme Court said we reserve the right to do that. And so I think you can’t discount the possibility that that can actually happen.

08:48.44

Sam Shirazi

However, you also have to think about these judges. They’re human beings. They understand the optics of that. I think perhaps in their mind, they think that the redistricting referendum is not going to pass.

08:59.07

Sam Shirazi

or at least there’s a chance it’s not going to pass. And so that will really fix the problem for them. Maybe that’s wishful thinking because I think, you know, more likely than not, my gut is telling me it’s going to pass. So I suspect we’re going to be right back here.

09:13.79

Sam Shirazi

And there’s going to be a there’s goingnna decision is going to have to be made after the referendum if it passes. Because remember, let’s assume it passes. you know Filing deadlines are coming up.

09:25.08

Sam Shirazi

People need to know, are they are they running in the old maps or are they running on the new maps? And so as much as the Virginia Supreme Court like kicking likes kicking hat the can down the road, at some point they are going to have to make a decision.

09:37.47

Sam Shirazi

And give the candidates running an answer. Are they running in the old maps? Are they running in the new maps? I think right now most people are assuming that the new maps are going to happen because of that you know the unlikelihood that the Virginia Supreme Court is going to say, actually, we’re just going to throw out the referendum and it should never should have been run.

09:58.03

Sam Shirazi

Anyways, a lot of really interesting legal stuff. you know I think at the end of the day, you know we all wish that the Virginia Supreme Court would you know give us the final opinion. But I respect the their thought process. And you know no matter what you think, like they do not want to be rushed into this. and And I understand that. And it’s it’s an important decision. And I guess the last thing I’ll say about the Virginia Supreme Court, I mean, every once in a while, they they’re in the news.

10:21.22

Sam Shirazi

But these kind of very weighty constitutional issues do not come up that often at the Virginia Supreme Court. It’s not like the United States Supreme Court where all they do is constitutional issues and really important cases.

10:32.55

Sam Shirazi

i mean, there are also normal Supreme Court cases, but there’s also like you know every term there’s going to be one or two really big cases. Virginia Supreme Court’s really not like that. And so I think they’re a little uncomfortable being in this position.

10:44.02

Sam Shirazi

They don’t love the idea that they are going to have to decide this really important issue. They know no matter how they rule, one side is going to be upset at them. And so I think at the end of the day, like they don’t like it, but you know, they’re the highest court in Virginia. They get paid the big bucks to make these decisions. they’re They’re going to have to make the call one, one way or another, unless the referendum doesn’t pass. And then I guess they’re off the hook, but either way, we will find out what the Virginia Supreme court does. And I’ll obviously follow, follow, um,

11:12.43

Sam Shirazi

All that and you know update you as it goes along. So let’s move to early voting because 100% early voting is going to be starting this Friday across Virginia.

11:22.90

Sam Shirazi

All parts of Virginia, there there is going to be in-person early voting. Anyone who’s a registered voter can go down to their local election office and cast the ballot. And then also this Friday, absentee ballots are gonna be mailed out. Primarily, this is gonna be people who are on the permanent absentee list.

11:42.87

Sam Shirazi

I’ve talked about this before. The permit absentee list tends to be very Democratic. So lot of Democrats are going to start getting mail ballots. you know Realistically, I don’t know how many people are going to early vote on the first day or the first week in person, but the mail ballots are going to be going out. And I think that’s one of the advantages off the bat that Democrats are going to have is You know, people are going to be getting ballots in the mail and then they’ll realize, oh, there’s a referendum.

12:09.23

Sam Shirazi

You know, I think information is a big deal. Like Virginia typically does not have these referendums in the spring. A lot of people probably don’t know that there’s a redistricting referendum.

12:20.98

Sam Shirazi

And so. I think both sides are trying to educate their voters, trying to say, why are we doing this referendum? For the Democrats, who trying to explain why people should vote yes, why this is necessary. For the Republicans, obviously the opposite. They’re trying to explain why they people shouldn’t vote for this.

12:35.76

Sam Shirazi

Then there’s the people in the middle, the independents, who have to be convinced one way or another. And then you know there’s going to be a lot of spending by both sides. I think the Democrats right now seem to have the financial advantage And, you know, they seem to be more fired up, have more momentum. I’ve seen a lot of comments about I can’t believe how many ads there are on the yes side of the referendum. Why aren’t there more ads on the no side from people who don’t support the referendum? So I think, you know, there’s a lot going on.

13:04.95

Sam Shirazi

I suspect early voting is not going to be super heavy at the beginning. I think we’re not going to be seeing. Governor level early voting numbers, if I had to guess, this is going to be less, maybe more, maybe not even like a midterm, maybe like closer to 2023. So 2023, Virginia had state elections just for the state Senate and the House of Delegates. I think we might see that level of turnout for early voting. Although, you know, who knows? I think one of the interesting things will be to see how much early voting there is.

13:33.17

Sam Shirazi

Can you extrapolate how much turnout there might be? You know, there’s going to be the over and overananalyst analysis of early voting, which always happens. Are red counties voting or blue counties voting? You know, that stuff kind of gets a little bit old. But at the end of the day, you know, but we’ll have some data. I’ll try to give you my input when we get a little bit of it.

13:53.44

Sam Shirazi

Overall, it’s going to be kind of an interesting campaign. I’ll try my best to cover it all. And yeah, I mean, it’s it’s a little bit up in the air how things are going to shake out But we’re going to just you know take it one day at a time. I think the other crazy thing about this redistricting referendum – so so on on the one hand, you have the referendum stuff and the yes and no campaign and early voting and all that.

14:17.10

Sam Shirazi

you know Behind the scenes, I mean the candidates are going to have to start announcing and some have already announced and start running in these new seats potentially. with this uncertainty that maybe they’ll be running in the old seats if the if the referendum doesn’t go through or if the Virginia Supreme Court steps in at the last minute after the referendum passes.

14:34.99

Sam Shirazi

So in the background, there’s going to be all these primaries, and I haven’t even talked about that because like there’s been so much else to cover. So you know it’s going to be interesting to see how those candidates are doing it. you know are they running are going Are they going to wait till the referendum’s over and then really go into high gear?

14:51.50

Sam Shirazi

Some of the candidates are really already hitting it hitting the trail, doing all the things they need to do. So you have a lot going on both with the referendum, but a parallel to referendum, there’s going to be primaries on the Democratic side. The Republicans have a lot of problems on their end in terms of trying to fight the redistricting referendum.

15:10.67

Sam Shirazi

And then some of their incumbents or all of their incumbents are basically threatened either in the primary or the general election. So a lot, a lot, a lot to talk about in Virginia. I guess the last thing I should end on, you I should note that obviously you know this past weekend,

15:26.10

Sam Shirazi

There was the start of military operations in the Middle East against the Iranian regime. That is taking up a lot of energy and news and focus. And so I don’t know how many people are thinking about the redistricting referendum versus what’s going on there. So I think that’s going to Greg Foncannon, grab a lot of the headlines and and in some ways, perhaps distract from the redistricting referendum, I don’t really know which side that helps, I would say. Greg Foncannon, To the extent that Republicans need more focus on the redistricting referendum about why it shouldn’t happen.

15:59.51

Sam Shirazi

Because I think the Democrats generally, they’ve had the leg up for the most part. i think the challenge the Republicans going to have is they have to, one, inform the voters that there’s a redistricting referendum and then tell them, two, to not vote for it.

16:13.95

Sam Shirazi

And I think when there’s all this other stuff going on or it’s just not in the news, I think it’s going to be harder. And we’ve talked about this like in other contexts where you know the more a race kind of becomes – the focus of things and the republicans can get out their base the better the more a race is kind of under the radar that’s actually going to be better for the democrats because the democratic base is more i would say engaged these days because they’re so upset at what’s going on in dc so a lot of interesting dynamics like it’s kind of an interesting time to have a redistricting referendum everything going on in the world everything going on in the country it’s spring people aren’t expecting an election this is the only thing on the ballot there’s no

16:56.29

Sam Shirazi

candidates running right now. So you know I’ll do my best to cover it all and you know give you the updates both on the legal side and on the election side. I mean, obviously the election is going to take precedent for the next few weeks. Then I can turn to the legal side of things. The last thing I’ll i’ll mention before I close out this podcast is I talked about At beginning, I said this is federal fallout, the Virginia elections. I’ve kind of dropped the 2025 because we are going to have another election, the redistricting referendum special election. So I think I’ve kind of moved into the next phase of Virginia elections, so to speak. And then after the redistricting referendum, we’ll do the redistricting.

17:35.63

Sam Shirazi

primary and then there’ll be the general election. So still a lot of fun stuff to cover in Virginia. I think for the next few weeks, there’s going to be a lot going on. April 21st is going to be a big date.

17:45.39

Sam Shirazi

The political world is going to be focusing on Virginia on that date because that’s when the referendum results will start coming in. So I’ll give you the updates as we start getting them in terms of polls and you know early voting numbers and all that good stuff. So I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I will continue to do this as the wild ride that is the Virginia elections never seems to stop. And, you know, maybe one day we’ll finally get the the final Virginia Supreme Court decision on whether this whole thing is legal. But for now, early voting is starting. Make sure you go out and early vote if that’s what you’re interested in doing. And or you can wait till election day. But definitely if you’re in Virginia, plan to vote by April 21st in the redistricting referendum. So,

18:26.71

Sam Shirazi

This has been Federal Fallout, and i will join you next time.

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

Hi Everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout. This episode we will go over the fun that is Virginia redistricting as it continues to unfold and how there a lot of twists and turns, and different things happening. So I want to cover everything that happened this week wtih redistricting.

And it’s a little bit of deja vu all over again because a couple things happened that were big. First, the court in Tazewell County entered a temporary order to block the referendum from going forward, and we’ll cover that. And then there was some changes made to the map that we’ll talk about specifically in the second district. So this week is like all over again. We are just talking about the same thing, legal challenges to the redistricting. We’re talking about the maps slightly changing. So A lot of stuff still in flux, even though in theory, if everything goes to plan for the Democrats, early voting is supposed to start on March 6th, which is not too far away.

01:00.71

Sam Shirazi

And so obviously there’s a lot going on. And it just kind of goes to show you that I guess nothing’s really finalized until it’s finalized. And we just have to wait and take it one day at a time with the redistricting stuff. So the first thing I’ll talk about is the court order that came out of Tazewell County. So if you remember, there was originally a court order from Tazewell County that seemed to suggest that there were some legal challenges the Democrats had with the referendum.

01:26.03

Sam Shirazi

That lawsuit made all made its way all the way up to the Virginia Supreme Court. The Virginia Supreme Court essentially said, the thing the court ordered was not that specific, so we’re just going to you know punt this to after the referendum.

01:38.82

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, the parties were paying attention to that because very quickly, the Republicans filed another lawsuit in the same county with the same judge.

01:49.77

Sam Shirazi

And this time, they asked for a lot more and they named a lot of defendants other than the local county clerk. They named people like the head of the Department of Elections.

01:59.94

Sam Shirazi

And the goal, really, from the Republican standpoint was this judge already ruled with us. He agrees with us on the law. If you remember my podcast on the Supreme Court ruling, really the issue in the original court order that that got its way up to the Supreme Court was that the order was very narrow. All it ordered was that the Tazewell County clerk with posts, the referendum notices. It didn’t say the referendum can’t go forward.

02:24.33

Sam Shirazi

And the Supreme Court kind of seized on that and says, look, we don’t have to make a decision because this order is so narrow. Well, I think the judge and the parties learned their lesson. And this time the judge made very specific instructions and he made very specific instructions to specific people.

02:39.35

Sam Shirazi

So essentially the Virginia Supreme Court can’t find a procedural way to get out of this. It seems like they will have to rule on it. But before I talk about the Virginia Supreme Court, I wanted to talk about the order the judge issued itself. And I won’t honestly go that much into the legal details because, frankly, it’s pretty much the same arguments that we’ve been talking about. Really what changed in this decision, the most important thing was the actual thing the lower court ordered. And that was the main problem for the Republicans in the last time they went to Supreme Court is the order was too narrow. And so this time the ne the order is a lot more broad and covers a lot more things, but it’s still a temporary order. And we’ll talk about why that’s important.

03:20.82

Sam Shirazi

Okay, so here is what the lower court in Tadswell County ordered. He said, quote, all defendants temporarily restrained in their official capacities from administering, preparing for taking any action to further the procedure of the referendum or other otherwise moving forward with causing an election to be held on the proposed constitutional amendment.

03:43.73

Sam Shirazi

So very broad. And this applied to a bunch of people, including on the Department of Elections. And so essentially what the court is saying is you guys can’t do anything to move the referendum forward.

03:55.79

Sam Shirazi

And I thought it was interesting that. The court went even so far as to say that they can’t prepare for the referendum, which I think is really important because obviously early voting is supposed to spark on March 6th.

04:07.51

Sam Shirazi

So the fact that they can’t even prepare for the the referendum certainly is putting a lot of limits on these people. And I think, again, I think the judge learned his lesson is that you have to be very specific in what you are ordering someone to do.

04:21.27

Sam Shirazi

when you issue this type of order. And you know the other thing I wanted to really flag about this order from the Taswell court was that it’s it’s what’s called a temporary restraining order. So you might commonly hear that as a TRO.

04:35.56

Sam Shirazi

So there are different types of things that courts will issue called equitable relief. So equitable relief is that basically any sort of non-monetary relief. And you can get a TRO, a preliminary injunction, a permanent injunction. So but the TRO, temporary restraining order, as its name implies, is temporary.

04:54.61

Sam Shirazi

And it really is kind of an emergency kind of thing, like something, time is of the essence. The court can’t sit around on this for months. It has to rule quickly. Obviously, from a Republican standpoint, they made the argument, this is very urgent. Early voting is going to start. We need to stop this, nip it in the bud, because it’s illegal. That was a Republican position.

05:13.13

Sam Shirazi

And the the lower court agreed here. But importantly, TROs, I mean, they’re supposed to be temporary. I mean, they’re called temporary restraining orders. This isn’t going to last forever.

05:23.05

Sam Shirazi

And the lower court itself put an end date to this specific TRO, which was March 18th. So this specific order is essentially going to expire on March 18th. Obviously, before then, probably the court will issue what’s called a preliminary injunction or permanent injunction.

05:39.18

Sam Shirazi

But this isn’t supposed to be forever. However, early voting starts March 6th, so obviously it will accomplish much of its goal of maybe stopping a referendum if the the early voting doesn’t start on March 6th. And ultimately what the judge will issue is either a preliminary injunction or a permanent injunction.

05:57.60

Sam Shirazi

So a preliminary injunction is kind of like a TRO, but it’s a little bit more serious, and it usually doesn’t have an expiration date. That’s kind of at the beginning of a case you issue a preliminary injunction. Then at the very end of the case, you can issue a permanent injunction.

06:10.37

Sam Shirazi

often i mean, it’s it’s pretty rare to get a preliminary injunction and not get a permanent injunction eventually. So the real distinction is between a TRO and a preliminary injunction. And this was a TRO.

06:21.62

Sam Shirazi

And I think the legal significance of that in this context is that typically the appellate courts, they tend to review TROs, temporary restraining orders, much more quickly because in theory,

06:34.05

Sam Shirazi

It was usually granted without much argument. There isn’t much time for the lower court to think about this because something is happening that requires immediate attention. And so that will that means it’s going to get appealed really quickly. Attorney General Jay Jones has said he’s going to appeal this.

06:52.84

Sam Shirazi

Some people had even speculated that on Friday we would get some sort of order either from the Intermediary Court of Appeals or even from the Virginia Supreme Court. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. This weekend, but perhaps on Monday, we will get an immediate order.

07:07.64

Sam Shirazi

But long story short, I mean, clearly, this is for the time being pause the Democrats plans. But I think this is the type of thing that would certainly be fast tracked by the intermediate court of appeals and potentially just go straight to the Virginia Supreme Court to make the final call.

07:24.74

Sam Shirazi

And I think the Republican strategy here is to just force the Virginia Supreme Court to make a final ruling. I mean, clearly last time the Virginia Supreme Court essentially found a procedural way to avoid ruling before the redistricting referendum and kind of punt the final ruling till after the redistricting referendum.

07:42.05

Sam Shirazi

The Virginia Republicans... are trying to force the issue. They’re basically telling the Supreme Court, we’re not going to let you wait wait it out. You have to decide before the the referendum whether this is legal or not. Now, you could argue that’s going to backfire. You may not want to put the court in that position, but the Virginia Republicans felt like they had no choice.

08:01.28

Sam Shirazi

And the thing is that after this goes up for the appeal, there’s a lot of different ways the Virginia Supreme Court can handle this. They could essentially rule 100% for the Republicans and say, yeah, the lower court’s right, we’re going to keep this temporary restraining order in place. And that might be pretty much be the end of the redistricting referendum if that happens. However, that, you know, it’s it’s risky because I think there’s another alternative where the Supreme Court doesn’t do that and and makes kind of a quick decision to basically stay the lower court order and just say, you know, we’re not taking this right now and just issue a very short order.

08:39.81

Sam Shirazi

There’s something called the shadow docket. So the shadow docket is typically talked about with the US Supreme Court. So what the shadow docket is, is that you know traditionally when you have a case before the Supreme Court, the parties will file briefs, there’ll be an oral argument, there’ll be months of kind of deliberation from the justices, kind of very thoughtful, long process to get to a decision on the merits.

09:00.88

Sam Shirazi

However, in these kind of emergency situations where something has happened or something that requires immediate attention, parties will go to the court and try to get immediate relief. We’ve seen that a lot recently in the last 10 years or so with executive orders being issued and lower courts would issue stays or block the executive order.

09:22.96

Sam Shirazi

And then that would get to the Supreme Court very quickly. the Supreme Court would have to rule pretty quickly. And they would issue with what are called shadow docket rulings. So these are not full rulings on the merits, but essentially quick orders the Supreme Court’s doing. And kind of the criticism of them is that really this is what the case is going to be decided upon. So sure, we could wait six months to see what the Supreme Court’s finally going to do with this. But we all know... If the Supreme Court rules a certain way, it’s almost certainly going rule that way in the future. I think there’s been a few exceptions, but generally whatever happens on the shadow docket ends up usually happening in the final version of the case.

09:56.24

Sam Shirazi

And so there’s this term that has come up called the shadow docket. And, you know, I think the Virginia Supreme Court is going to have to do that whether it wants it or not, because this thing’s going to be decided one way or another. And no matter what the Supreme Court does, like the Supreme Court could ignore it and just do nothing.

10:10.80

Sam Shirazi

which obviously means that the lower court order would happen. The Supreme Court could overturn it. The Supreme Court could affirm it. I mean, no matter what the Supreme Court does, it will have an impact and it’s going to be important. And so we’re we’re kind of seeing this Virginia Supreme Court shadow docket essentially And very clearly, the Republicans wanted it to to go this way because they weren’t satisfied with what the Virginia Supreme Court did the first time.

10:34.58

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I mentioned the importance of this being a temporary order, temporary restraining order. You know, typically courts are hesitant to give these kinds of TROs. And I think appellate courts are more willing to kind of step in and think through the yeah TRO because the order itself talks about this. TROs are typically supposed to maintain the status quo.

10:55.33

Sam Shirazi

And so I think the question here is what is the status quo? Because the Virginia Supreme Court has said the referendum can happen. So obviously, Virginia Supreme Court is the highest court in Virginia. So you kind of have to listen to them.

11:06.62

Sam Shirazi

So if the Virginia Supreme Court is saying the referendum is happening on April 21st, Isn’t that the status quo? Isn’t that what has to be maintained? Or as the Republicans and the lower court judge are arguing, well, the status quo is no referendum because the referendum is not valid. So it’s going to actually hurt the parties if the referendum goes forward. So we’re going to do the status quo, which is actually no referendum. And I think there’s arguments you could make on either side. I don’t know if that’s ultimately how the Virginia Supreme Court is going to decide it.

11:36.29

Sam Shirazi

I suspect we’re going get a ruling next week because obviously we are coming up on the start of early voting and the Virginia Supreme Court needs to give The party has enough time to kind of get this thing going one way or another. I mean, honestly, if if it’s not going to happen, the Virginia Supreme Court should just say that and save everyone the hassle and the time. If it’s going to happen, the Virginia Supreme Court is going to need to go quickly so that the early voting can start on March sixth. And I guess the last thing I’ll end on the legal side of things is just, you know, to be perfectly honest, the fact that Virginia Republicans are going all in on the legal stuff is telling me, you know, they don’t really want to run this referendum.

12:14.18

Sam Shirazi

They don’t really have a plan. They don’t really have the money. i think they are pretty realistic about where things are right now in terms of the political side of things.

12:25.00

Sam Shirazi

They definitely think if this is going to go down, the only way it’s going to go down is down the legal avenue. And so that’s why they’re spending so much time and money an effort to try to get to go down the legal avenue. And, you know, it was interesting. This lawsuit was actually brought by the National Republicans and a couple of the congressmen and definitely brought a more full throated case against the redistricting referendum.

12:49.31

Sam Shirazi

The original lawsuit was filed all the way back right before the Democrats voted on this. And a lot of that was tied up in like technical stuff in the House of Delegates

13:00.58

Sam Shirazi

It was kind of a different legal issue at that point. The referendum hadn’t been passed. And so that’s part of the reason why the original relief that was granted was so narrow. And so now when you bring this lawsuit, you have a lot more meat to the bones because obviously we’re kind of close to the end of the process.

13:16.84

Sam Shirazi

And so the judge learned the lesson from his previous order and definitely made this one have a lot more teeth. And the Democrats certainly felt it when the issue, when the order came out.

13:28.58

Sam Shirazi

However, it’s not the end of the day. And I do think ultimately, this is going to be decided by the Virginia Supreme Court. Okay, a lot of legal stuff. So I will move on to more kind of practical political stuff. And I wanted to talk about the second big news event of the week.

13:44.86

Sam Shirazi

which was the changes that were made to the proposed map by the Democrats. And, you know, when the Democrats released their original map, everyone thought, okay, you know, this is it. The Democrats said they’re going to be releasing their map.

13:56.60

Sam Shirazi

And it almost was, but they released a new map on Thursday. And essentially it didn’t make a whole lot of changes, but it did make a couple changes.

14:08.74

Sam Shirazi

big ones that you know I think is worth talking about here. and And just so people have the kind of procedural background on this, essentially the original map was kind of coming out of the House of Delegates. And you can kind of tell that because definitely of the the rumors behind the scenes about which map was working its way through the system, this definitely looked like a map that was more drafted by the House of Delegates.

14:32.96

Sam Shirazi

However, as we all know, a bill has to pass both the House of Delegates and the State Senate. And so the bill moved forward in the House of Delegates, then it went to the State Senate, and the State Senate was able to amend the bill kind of normal legislative sausage making.

14:47.87

Sam Shirazi

And it made not a huge change, but it made a little bit of a change that i do think is important. So essentially what the... Virginia State Senate did was it made the second district bluer. And I think most people thought that the biggest problem with the maps that the Democrats have proposed was that the the second district was not blue enough. And and most people on the Democratic side, obviously the Republicans had a lot of problems with it, but on the Democratic side, I think the biggest issue that people had was that the second district wasn’t bluer. So the second district in the original map was about

15:25.68

Sam Shirazi

plus two Harris district, which is bluer than it was now, but certainly not as blue as it could be. And the new version of the second district in this map is actually a Harris plus five district.

15:38.10

Sam Shirazi

And it did that by making the third district a little less blue, but honestly, it’s still very blue. So the third district in the new map is about a Harris plus 27 district. So it doesn’t you know really affect that much. Still very blue district.

15:52.54

Sam Shirazi

And the changes that were made were kind of interesting. Essentially, they were just precinct swaps in the city of Chesapeake. So Chesapeake is a city in Hampton Roads, a kind of interesting city. Some precincts are pretty red. Some precincts are pretty blue.

16:04.73

Sam Shirazi

So just kind of swapping precincts here and there can actually change the district a lot. And that’s what the Democrats ended up doing. You know, overall, the second district kind of looks the same, but just has those swaps in Chesapeake.

16:18.14

Sam Shirazi

And I also think the other interesting thing was You know, everyone kept thinking, OK, the second district was going to have part of Norfolk because in the old version of the second district, it had part of Norfolk. Elaine Lurie is from Norfolk. So it’s like if going to change the second district, you would think it would include parts of Norfolk.

16:32.57

Sam Shirazi

But that’s not what happened. There was no changes to Norfolk. It was just Chesapeake. So long story short, second district got a little bit bluer. I think for this year, it’s not super important in the sense of, honestly, even the old version that the Democrats originally proposed. I think that was going to flip in 2026, no matter what.

16:51.39

Sam Shirazi

But it certainly makes life easier for the Virginia Democrats, and they may not have to spend as much money to flip the second. And I think what’s really going to be important is 2028 and 2030. So 2028, obviously, could be a more neutral environment. Typically, presidential elections are more neutral.

17:07.47

Sam Shirazi

or more neutral, less drastic as compared to midterms. So I think that’s going to make Democrats’ life easier in 2028. And certainly in 2030, I think that’s the really big deal is 2030. Because 2030, obviously, we could have a Democratic president by then.

17:24.38

Sam Shirazi

the In midterms, the party in the White House typically struggles. so I think the idea behind this new version of the district was potentially Democrats could still win this in 2030, even if there is a pretty good night for the Republicans. Whereas I think the old version of the district, most people thought, you know, if the Republicans have a good night, it’s going to be flipping in 2030. So anyway, some interesting changes in the second district. And and that bill to to pass this new map,

17:52.30

Sam Shirazi

That has passed both the House of Delegates and the State Senate. So now it’s up to Governor Spanberger and all indications are that she’s going to sign it. So the legislative side of things is moving, but we still have to wait on the legal side. I did want to kind of note a couple other things before i sign off for the week. There was a not super surprising development in the 7th Congressional District, and this is the new version of the 7th Congressional District, which is kind of the lobster district that goes from North Arlington, and then part of it goes out into Western Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, and part of it goes down into like the Richmond area.

18:29.61

Sam Shirazi

And the reason I call it as a lobster district is if you look on it on a map, like it kind of looks like a lobster, and everyone calls it the lobster district. So this is kind of the open seat if the maps go through. There is no incumbent that’s going to be claiming it, but it’s a pretty blue seat.

18:44.19

Sam Shirazi

And so the expectation is that maybe more people will be running. But the person who went announced this week was Delegate Dan Helmer. Obviously, he has run for Congress twice before.

18:55.17

Sam Shirazi

I think there’s a sense that he was interested in running again for Congress. And you know some people speculate that this district was drawn specifically for him. And so I think he’s definitely going to have probably an advantage in this race. And I would call him the front runner right now, although we’ll just have to wait and see who else runs. Currently, the other person running He is a former prosecutor who worked under Jack Smith.

19:18.79

Sam Shirazi

His name is JP Cooney. So he is also running. I could see some other people potentially jumping into the race. We’ll have to see. Or it’s also possible that Delegate Helmer essentially clears the field and it won’t be that competitive at the end of the day. And he might be able to kind of coast his way to the nomination.

19:35.99

Sam Shirazi

We’ll have to wait and see. That’s all going to happen after the... Legal stuff has to play out after the referendum. So definitely not guaranteed any of that. And we’ll just have to wait and see how that goes.

A couple other pieces of things I wanted to talk about. So it was announced that Governor Spanberger would be giving the Democratic response to the State of the Union. I think that’s, it’ll be interesting to to see. I think in recent years, there has been kind of the sense that the response to the State of Union is kind of a thankless job.

20:07.39

Sam Shirazi

And at certain times, people have even been mocked for various reasons. But i think I do think there have been times where it has been well received. A couple examples are when Governor McConnell in 2009 gave the response to the State of Union, and he actually gave that in the Virginia House of Delegates. And I think that was overall pretty well received at the time.

20:30.64

Sam Shirazi

The last Democrat, Virginia Democrat, to give the response to the State of the Union was in 2007. That was Jim Webb right after he got elected. And again, I think that was generally well received.

20:42.86

Sam Shirazi

And also in 2018, Delegate Elizabeth Guzman, she gave the Democratic response in Spanish to the State of the Union that year. And Delegate Guzman is back in the House of Delegates now. And so, you know, I think overall, it certainly lifts your national profile. I do think...

21:01.62

Sam Shirazi

It’s a risk and reward. You will get a lot of eyes on you and it’ll it’ll raise your profile, but there’s also a risk that if something goes wrong, then maybe it won’t go so well for you. So pressure’s on, I guess, for Governor Spanberger, but she certainly fought a good campaign last year and made it out with a big 15-point victory, so she knows what it’s like to be under pressure. So we’ll just have to wait and see how that goes. And one last thing to note, which is a sad piece of news, is that the delegate from Virginia Beach has passed away.

21:36.86

Sam Shirazi

That’s Delegate Barry Knight. I just want to send condolences to his family and friends and colleagues. He had been on the House of Delegates for a while and I know was respected on both sides of the aisle. So sad news whenever he someone passes away, especially one person who’s given good chunk of their life to public service. So wishing Delegate Knight family and friends and colleagues the best in this difficult time.

22:04.66

Sam Shirazi

So, yeah, I mean, other than that, not a whole lot else. I’m kind of kidding because obviously very, very busy. And and I was thinking about it as I started the podcast at the top of the hour. I talked about the fact that this is still called the 2025 Virginia elections federal fallout. And i may change that title at some point. I don’t know. We’re still living in the shadow of the 2025 Virginia elections in many ways.

22:29.82

Sam Shirazi

However, obviously things are are moving forward. Very, very busy, time in Virginia politics. It seems like there’s never a dull moment. I’m hoping finally we will get some clarity in the next couple of weeks. Is this referendum actually going to happen? And once it happens, that’ll be certainly fun to cover. So a lot going on. I will try to do my best to keep everyone updated. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time.

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

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court about redistricting and the fact that they allowed Virginia redistricting to go forward.

00:16.02

Sam Shirazi

However, they also left open the possibility that after the redistricting referendum, they might make a final ruling. This was basically an interim ruling or interim order.

00:26.74

Sam Shirazi

And so I kind of want to unpack all that. And then I want to talk about the redistricting referendum. But long story short, the short version is the Virginia Supreme Court allowed the redistricting referendum to go forward on April 21st.

00:41.72

Sam Shirazi

Early voting will start on March 6th. So really right around the corner. And so I think overall, you have to say this is a good outcome for the Democrats, at least in the short term, because in theory, the Virginia Supreme Court could have said the redistricting referendum couldn’t go forward or could have made a very complicated legal decision where really left open the doubt about whether the redistricting referendum is going to happen.

01:04.82

Sam Shirazi

I think the Virginia Supreme Court was very clear that the redistricting referendum is moving forward. I think after that, they’re a little bit less clear about what’s going to happen. But I think for now, the Democrats will just take that. They’re going to run the redistricting referendum, and then we’ll see what happens there.

01:20.70

Sam Shirazi

And ultimately, there’s still some legal questions hanging around. So it’s not like 100% certain the Democrats have won the legal case. But in the grand scheme of things, they certainly got the better end of it.

01:33.02

Sam Shirazi

And I think after this order came from the Virginia Supreme Court, I think Democrats were feeling pretty good. Republicans were a bit demoralized. And so I want to kind of unpack first all the legal issues, like what the Supreme Court actually said, why it said it, what it might do.

01:50.26

Sam Shirazi

And then after that, I’ll talk about the redistricting referendum itself, because that’s 100% going to move forward. So just to give you a little bit of background, the reason this has gotten to the Virginia Supreme Court is because a lower court in Tazewell County entered a ruling which on the merits mainly ruled for the Republicans, but significantly had a very narrow relief for the parties. And I’ll go through all what all that means, all that legalese stuff.

02:20.41

Sam Shirazi

But I guess my point is, that there there was a lower court ruling and made it to the Virginia Supreme Court. And I guess when I did my podcast on that ruling, I kind of neglected to spend time on the actual thing the court ordered. And I want to spend more time analyzing that now because I think it’s really important to understand why the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the way it did.

02:41.44

Sam Shirazi

And I think part of what I’ve been thinking about, the more I thought about the lower court decision, over the past couple of weeks, the more I kind of had a feeling this Virginia Supreme Court might go down the route they did. And i’ll kind of explain why that’s the case and i’ll kind of unpack that.

02:57.76

Sam Shirazi

So what the lower court found in the actual ruling, like on the merits of the case, you know, was the redistricting referendum process correct or not. So very clear the lower court found the Democrats didn’t follow the right process. However, I think the really strange part of that opinion is the order act the order the thing that it ordered or the actual relief that Republicans got was very, very narrow. And so you had this kind of big opinion that basically said the Democrats did everything wrong.

03:29.88

Sam Shirazi

But then the actual relief that the lower court ordered was very narrow. So I’m going to read what the lower court So, ordered in terms of the actual relief. So it said the court hereby grants a temporary and permanent injunction requiring the clerk of the circuit court of Tazewell county to pose to post the proposed constitutional amendment at least ninety days before the next ensuing election of the members of the house of delegates election so Basically, the the only thing the lower court said was the local clerk in Tazewell County has to post the redistricting referendum notices.

04:08.12

Sam Shirazi

That’s all the court said. The court didn’t say Tazewell County can’t hold a redistricting referendum, didn’t say the state state of Virginia can’t hold a redistricting referendum. Nothing applied to the Virginia Department of Elections. like it literally just told the local clerk, you have to post the notices.

04:24.60

Sam Shirazi

And I think the Virginia Supreme Court really latched on to the fact that this was a very narrow order in terms of what was actually the relief the Republicans got. Because the Virginia Supreme Court said, given the limited scope of the injunctive relief issued at the circuit court’s order, and then it it reads the circuit court order, it says, the denial of motions to say has no effect on the referendum scheduled on April 21, 2026.

04:54.17

Sam Shirazi

So what that basically means in a lot of legal language is the April 21st redistricting referendum is allowed to move forward because the lower court didn’t say anything about the redistricting referendum itself.

05:06.90

Sam Shirazi

And you know it’s kind of odd that that the lower court issued such a very narrow relief in terms of what the Republicans were trying to get. So I wanted to just kind of break that down for the non-lawyers out there. So i mentioned this before, I’m an attorney, and so I like to think about legal issues.

05:26.49

Sam Shirazi

And one of my favorite classes in law school was called Remedies. And Remedies is basically what do you get after you win a lawsuit because you can win something on the merits. So you might be right legally, like, yes, your position is correct. You win on the law.

05:42.16

Sam Shirazi

But then the rubber hits the road in what you get. And so in some things like a car accident, it’s pretty straightforward. You’re going to get money. If you get in a car accident, you get hurt and you win your lawsuit, you’re going money. And that’s not super complicated.

05:57.26

Sam Shirazi

I think where it gets complicated is in non-monetary cases and what are called equitable cases where the Virginia Republicans are going to the court and are asking for something. And I think as a lawyer, it’s very important, one, to make sure you ask for the right thing, and two, to always keep in mind what did the court give you. Because what happened in the Tazewell County Court is that the judge basically, in the opinion, said all these things. Yeah, the Republicans are right.

06:26.67

Sam Shirazi

Democrats did everything wrong. But at the end of the day, he didn’t give the Republicans that much. He literally just told the local clerk, post the notice. And what the Virginia Supreme Court is saying This is being appealed. We’re taking the appeal and we’re going to create a scheduling order for when we’re going to get briefs and all that.

06:45.25

Sam Shirazi

But there’s nothing about the redistricting referendum itself that we need to rule on right now because the lower court didn’t make any sort of finding about the redistricting referendum. So whatever we’re ruling on today in this order, it does not stop the redistricting referendum. And you can make an argument.

07:03.03

Sam Shirazi

That’s because the Virginia Supreme Court is basically saying, like we don’t have the power to stop the redistricting referendum because that’s not what’s before us. But what before what’s before us is the lower court order. Lower court order is ordering the Tazewell County clerk to post the notices.

07:16.76

Sam Shirazi

We’ll review that, but we’re not reviewing the actual referendum itself. And so we have no power to say yes or no to the referendum at this stage. However, I think the other odd thing about the Virginia Supreme Court opinion was at the very end, they put the last sentence of this ruling. It said, nothing in this order shall prevent the parties from raising the underlying arguments and issues as this matter goes forward. And so that kind of vague statement is telling me Virginia Supreme Court’s leaving the door open.

07:46.20

Sam Shirazi

to kind of a final ruling after the redistricting referendum. And if you look at the the briefing schedule that the Virginia Supreme Court has laid out, basically the briefing will be done a couple days after the redistricting referendum.

08:00.91

Sam Shirazi

So basically, the Virginia Supreme Court is saying we’re not going to be rushed into this. We’re going to let the redistricting referendum happen. And then we’ll get some briefs. And if we want oral arguments, we’ll ask for oral arguments. But basically, expect a ruling from us sometime, probably in May.

08:16.91

Sam Shirazi

And we’ll let you know later. And we’re not going to stop the redistricting referendum. So again, overall, I would say good news for the Democrats, but they’re not 100% out of the woods yet because the Virginia Supreme Court has left open the possibility about a final ruling.

08:31.37

Sam Shirazi

And I think there are essentially three possibilities about how the Virginia Supreme Court. One possibility is the redistricting referendum is not approved by the voters. And that’s kind of the easy case for the Virginia Supreme Court, because if the voters don’t approve it, they can just say the case is moot.

08:47.50

Sam Shirazi

You know, there’s no point for us to rule because this isn’t going happen and there’s nothing for us to rule on. I think where it gets more complicated is if the voters say, yes, we approve this referendum.

08:59.21

Sam Shirazi

And then the Virginia Supreme Court has to make a final call. I think they could say, be basically buy all the Democrats’ arguments. The Democrats are right on the law and everything was valid with the redistricting referendum and there’s no problem.

09:11.18

Sam Shirazi

I think that’s one way it could end. the other. The other way it could end is kind of a trickier version of that, which is essentially, yeah it’s futile, the redistricting referendum was already granted, or approved, so there’s no point in us, you know, striking it down at this stage, it’s basically too late.

09:28.45

Sam Shirazi

So what the circuit court ordered was essentially so narrow that there’s really nothing for us to do. We can’t, on appeal, you know undo the referendum. I think that’s also a possibility. They basically just find a procedural way to get out of it, and or they just kind of lean on the fact that the voters approved it, and we as a court, we’re not going to come in and overturn what the voters approved.

09:50.92

Sam Shirazi

I think that is a possibility as well. I think the last possibility, which is kind of the Hardest one to imagine, but I don’t think the Virginia Supreme Court has foreclosed it, is that they say basically the Republicans are right, the redistricting referendum never should have happened, and so we’re going to declare it null and void.

10:08.52

Sam Shirazi

I think that’s going to be really – you know Unlikely in some ways, because I think it’s just going to be so strange for a court to allow referendum to go forward that costs millions of dollars and then to just say, actually, we shouldn’t have allowed it to go forward or it shouldn’t have been held.

10:23.45

Sam Shirazi

Not saying that it’s impossible that that would happen because the Virginia Supreme Court did leave open that possibility. However, I think most people rightly assume, you know, the Virginia Supreme Court, if if they really thought that this referendum was illegitimate and invalid, they would have stopped it from happening.

10:41.92

Sam Shirazi

And it’s kind of unfair to the voters to make them go through this whole hassle to vote, potentially approve it. And then at the end, the Virginia Supreme Court basically says, you know what, we were kidding. The referendum shouldn’t have happened. And so that was a complete waste of time.

10:55.95

Sam Shirazi

I mean, I don’t want to say that’s impossible, but I think it seems somewhat unlikely that the Virginia Supreme Court would do that. So long story short, we’re just going have to wait and see. I think the legal stuff for now is going to take a backseat because obviously redistricting referendum is going to happen.

11:11.62

Sam Shirazi

And that’s going to be the main focus of what’s going to be going on forward. So anyway, super interesting stuff. I mean, i think me for me as a lawyer, I find it interesting thinking about this stuff. Most non-lawyers are probably thinking, you know, this is all a little bit crazy. The the lower court opinion with such a narrow relief granted to the Republicans, the Virginia Supreme Court punting all this to later until after the referendum.

11:36.88

Sam Shirazi

But I do think, you know, I’ll stop talking about legal stuff in a second. But the last point is just really, it is really important to think about what is the relief that is being sought? What is the relief that is being granted? Just because you win a case on the merits doesn’t mean you’re going get what you want.

11:53.62

Sam Shirazi

And there’s a lot of ways, both at the lower court and the appellate court, courts can use kind of procedural things or all these different tactics to kind of get to a ruling eventually, even if they don’t rule on the underlying case. So I think the Virginia Supreme Court may be playing a little bit of that game here. And, you know, at the, at the US Supreme court, there’s something called the shadow docket where basically the Supreme court is making rulings without hearing the entire case. And I do think this was a little bit of Virginia Supreme court shadow docket ruling where they didn’t make the final decision about the case, but I think,

12:30.59

Sam Shirazi

it’s a signal letting the redistricting referendum going forward that maybe they are more likely to vote to side with the Democrats because I think if they thought the Republicans had a really strong case, you know, you would imagine they might try to stop the referendum.

12:45.29

Sam Shirazi

But again, courts are unpredictable. I think this was, kind of an unlikely outcome that happened in this interim ruling. And so it goes to show you, we don’t know what the Supreme Court’s going to do.

12:56.84

Sam Shirazi

I think there’s a lot of different ways this could go. And so we’ll just have to keep an eye on it. But I do think in the short term, things are definitely going to be shifting away from the Virginia Supreme Court and to the actual redistricting referendum itself.

13:09.09

Sam Shirazi

Okay, now let’s turn to the politics of the redistricting referendum. Because Now we know for certain there will be a redistricting referendum on April 21st. And we also know that early voting will be starting on March 6th. So that is very soon. That’s definitely coming up and not a whole lot of time for both sides to organize, to educate their voters, to convince voters, to get out their voters.

13:33.46

Sam Shirazi

This isn’t like a general election where everyone knows this is happening, you know, months and years beforehand. We’ve known basically since the end of October, this might be happening.

13:44.57

Sam Shirazi

But I think the Republicans particularly had been waiting for the ruling for the Virginia Supreme Court. I think they really didn’t want to run a redistricting referendum. I think when the ruling for the Virginia Supreme Court came out, I think it was pretty obvious the Republicans were pretty demoralized.

14:01.19

Sam Shirazi

Democrats were happy. Now that might be short lived, but at least in the short term, very clearly Republicans are not happy. They don’t want to run a redistricting referendum. I think they know it’s going to be very difficult for them.

14:13.30

Sam Shirazi

And so I kind of want to game out. you know what is the Democratic path, path what is the Republican path? I think the Democratic path is pretty straightforward, and I think it’s probably the one that the side that has the advantage right now. I would say the Democrats have an advantage. And you know there was some polling that suggested that a majority of Virginians supported the redistricting referendum. And I think it’s a pretty straightforward playbook for the Virginia Democrats.

14:41.91

Sam Shirazi

You basically, from their perspective, turn this into a referendum on Trump. You know, if you don’t like Trump or you want to send a message to Trump or you don’t like redistricting in other states, vote for the referendum. Yes.

14:54.68

Sam Shirazi

And that way, Virginia Democrats will redistrict and that will be a way to push back on Trump. And I think that’s a very straightforward message. Donald Trump’s never won Virginia.

15:21.96

Sam Shirazi

You can debate whether it makes more sense to focus it on the redistricting angle versus just generally making it about Trump. But I think very clearly that’s a Democratic strategy. And given the results last November where Democrats got big win, blue wave came to Virginia, I think you have to say the Democrats right now are in the driver’s seat for the redistricting referendum.

15:42.99

Sam Shirazi

However, doesn’t mean the Republicans have no path whatsoever. I think the Republican path is pretty straightforward from their perspective in terms of what they have to do. Not to say that it’s easy, but I think that the the plan is pretty straightforward in that you have to get out your base. You have to fire up your your your Republican supporters, get them out.

16:02.86

Sam Shirazi

I mean, on a really good night, that might get you close to 45%. And then, you know, you just have to convince enough independents in the middle that you know you might not like Trump, but this is you know politics at its worst, and the Democrats are trying to steal these seats and rig the elections and change the maps that are fair maps. And so you make all those arguments and you hope you can get up to 50% based on just getting a good margin with independents.

16:30.06

Sam Shirazi

And not to say that’s impossible, but I think the Republicans just fundamentally have two problems. One is I think the Democrats are going to have a turnout advantage. I think they’re really fired up. They really want to send a message to Trump. And the Republicans after last year’s elections in Virginia have been pretty demoralized, pretty, you know, shell shocked, for lack of better word. So it’s going to be hard for them to turn out all their supporters.

16:52.49

Sam Shirazi

And then with the independents, mean, I think certainly some independents are going to vote against this because they just don’t like the concept of gerrymandering. But I think a lot of independents, I mean, their top priority is Trump and maybe sending a message to Trump. And so for those independents, you know, they’re they’re going to vote for the referendum.

17:11.04

Sam Shirazi

And I think, you know, I talked about this before, know, this could be something similar to the attorney general race where that was Jason Miyares strategy. Jason Miyares’ strategy was I’m going win all the Republicans and then win enough independents and win.

17:22.44

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, he did better than the top of the ticket. But at the end of the day, like most independents didn’t want to vote for Jason Miyares or at least enough of them didn’t want to vote for Jason Miyares because they wanted to send a message immediately.

17:34.42

Sam Shirazi

about Trump. And so that’s why Jay Jones was able to win the attorney general race in a pretty comfortable margin. And it really wasn’t that close at the end. And so I could see something like that happening again. Another example we have is the California redistricting referendum. So last year, California did the same thing that Virginia Democrats have done. The California Democrats wanted to redistrict.

17:53.04

Sam Shirazi

They needed a referendum because they had they needed to change the state constitution. And, you know, at the beginning of that referendum, it it looked like maybe it’s going to be close, but by the end, it was just complete blowout. And,

18:04.43

Sam Shirazi

California Democrats won by a bigger margin than Harris won in 2024. Now, obviously, California a very blue state. So you could make the argument that Trump’s even more unpopular and in California. and But at the end of the day, like that referendum became a referendum on Trump. And I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to say the Virginia redistricting referendum, there’s decent chance it’s just going to become a referendum on Trump.

18:27.66

Sam Shirazi

And I think the Virginia Republicans just have to be honest about them with with themselves about how are they’re going to convince people. Because I think there’s this elephant in the room about Trump and they don’t want to talk about it And they didn’t want to talk about it in 2025. It didn’t work in 2025.

18:42.66

Sam Shirazi

And I saw something interesting from Delegate Tom Garrett, who used to be a congressman, which is kind of interesting. He used to represent the 5th District. He made a political comeback and is now a delegate in the Virginia House of Delegates. So he’s obviously still involved in Virginia politics. And I saw him basically say something along the lines of, you know, tell me why we should support this redistricting referendum without mentioning Trump and without mentioning any other states.

19:08.18

Sam Shirazi

And I think that’s sometimes this rhetorical device that people use, but it’s like not that convincing because it’s like, yeah, okay, well, the reason we’re having this is because of Trump and because he asked other states, Republican states, to gerrymander. And so like if you don’t want to have that conversation like and you as a Republican and you just kind of want to say the Democrats are bad and it’s not fair they’re doing this, like that’s fine, but that’s not going to convince anyone because if someone is in the middle and they’re like,

19:36.73

Sam Shirazi

I don’t like Trump. I don’t like he told Texas and North Carolina and Missouri they’re gerrymandering their maps. Like, I don’t want to just sit here in Virginia and do nothing. And if you’re the Republicans and you’re like, we’re not going to talk about Trump, we’re not going to talk about other states.

19:49.45

Sam Shirazi

We’re just going to say the Democrats are bad and we’re going to say that this is not fair. That’s not going to convince someone who’s like, yeah, I’m worried about Trump. What are you doing to convince that person? And I don’t think the Republicans really want to admit that that’s the fundamental problem they’re facing. They don’t want to admit that’s what the referendum is going to be about. And I don’t really know what defense they could make other than, you know, Virginia is different. It’s more of a middle state. It doesn’t it’s it’s not fair or i mean, I think the only thing I’ve heard is this gerrymander is like even more extreme than a Republican ones, because

20:22.59

Sam Shirazi

It would create a 10-1 map and basically Virginia is kind of this middle of the road state. So it doesn’t make sense to have a 10-1 map in the middle of the road state. But then there’s other middle of the road states that the Republicans in the past have gerrymandered.

20:35.11

Sam Shirazi

And so I think it’s just a difficult argument. Like North Carolina is also a middle of the road state and it was already gerrymandered to begin with. And then the Republicans gerrymandered again to try to get one more seat out of North Carolina.

20:49.03

Sam Shirazi

Like, you know, you can make in this argument that in North Carolina is basically a light red state and like Virginia is a light blue state. In 2024, know, the state,

20:59.24

Sam Shirazi

very narrowly for Donald Trump, but the House said the the house of Representatives seats, the Republicans won 10 of them, the Democrats only won four of them. And you know you could argue maybe the that de the Virginia gerrymander is even more extreme than that. But at the end of the day, like it might not be that convincing or the people in the middle might not feel that sympathetic to the Republican position because they’re just like, look Republicans have gerrymandered these other states. And for sure, Democrats have also gerrymandered certain states like Illinois. And you know I get that there is this sense of you know we don’t like gerrymandering. People are sick of gerrymandering. But at the end of the day, like I think the fact that this is temporary, what I hear from a lot of people is

21:39.93

Sam Shirazi

who who are leaning towards supporting this is just like Virginia Democrats need to do something and they can’t just allow these other states to be doing this. And anyway, so I do think it’s a difficult position.

21:51.38

Sam Shirazi

And I do think just kind of sitting around all day saying this is not fair without addressing why the Virginia Democrats are doing this, what’s going on in other states, what’s going on with Trump. Like I do think that’s going to be a losing strategy for the Virginia Republicans. It, it,

22:06.92

Sam Shirazi

That’s what kind of what they tried in 2025. They just didn’t want to talk about Doge. They didn’t want to talk about the federal cuts. They didn’t want to talk about Trump. And it’s like, look, at the end of the day, like there’s an elephant in the room. In politics, you have to talk about it. You can’t just ignore it. You can’t just wish it away. You can’t put your head in the sand.

22:24.25

Sam Shirazi

That’s kind of what Winsome Earle-Sears did. And it didn’t really work out for her. And she lost by 15 points. So I do think there’s a world where the Virginia Republicans just ignore the fundamental problem and the reason why the Democrats feel like they need to do this, then you know i think that I think there’s a good chance they’re going to lose. I don’t know if they’re going to lose by 15 points but or maybe just closer to the governor number, sorry, the attorney general number, about 7%.

22:49.57

Sam Shirazi

But I do think it’s hard for the Virginia Republicans to get 50.1% of Virginians to vote against this. If all they’re talking about is this this is unfair. I mean, you know, and I get it. I get it from a Republican perspective.

23:02.18

Sam Shirazi

This seems unfair. But I think from my what the Republicans may be missing is if you’re a Democrat or you’re middle the road voter who’s sitting in Virginia. you know You might be thinking, i don’t want to do this, but we kind of have no choice because of what Donald Trump did in Texas and Missouri and North Carolina by asking these other states to redistrict.

23:24.80

Sam Shirazi

And you know I think it’s not that much of a leap to say if Texas and Missouri and North Carolina didn’t redistrict, Virginia wouldn’t have redistricted. I mean, there are valid arguments to be made, but just ignoring the problem and just saying you know this is 100% the fault of Virginia Democrats, I think is just missing the bigger picture. And and I don’t think it’s going to be persuasive at the end of the day. And I and i really do think that

23:48.65

Sam Shirazi

this is you know going to be a very important redistricting referendum. I think both sides know that. I think there’s going to be a lot of money being poured in. you know I think it’s going to be interesting to see how the campaign plays out, what arguments both sides make.

24:03.78

Sam Shirazi

But at the end of the day, you know this could decide the House of Representatives. I mean, my sense is Democrats are doing pretty well. And so I don’t know if they strictly need the additional seats from Virginia, but it definitely pad their margins, make it easier to take back the House, make it easier for Democrats to flip these seats and spend less money in Virginia than they would have otherwise.

24:25.54

Sam Shirazi

So I think from their perspective, they definitely want to do this. And I think from a Republican perspective, it’s going to be pretty demoralizing if this passes, if the Virginia Supreme Court allows it to happen. I don’t think in Florida there will be enough seats that the Florida Republicans will be able to gerrymander to kind of make up for Virginia. And so it’s possible at the end of the day, after all the redistricting fights in all the states play out, it’s possible the Democrats could come out ahead, which is kind of crazy to think about when this all began. And I think specifically for the Virginia Republicans, it’s going to be very demoralizing if after what happened in 2025,

25:01.62

Sam Shirazi

They lose probably four seats in the House of Representatives. That’s going to be really, really demoralizing. And then in 2027, they’re going to have to face another state Senate and House of Delegates elections where they’re going to be pretty low, low and feeling like they’re not a lot of things are going their way. So right now things are going well for the Virginia Democrats. Not to say that things can’t change in the future.

25:25.75

Sam Shirazi

and I do think the Virginia Republicans will remember this and potentially down the line. I don’t know if they’ll try something similar, but certainly I think they feel very bitter at what the Virginia Democrats are doing.

25:37.75

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, probably for as a country, it would be best if both sides kind of come together, come up with a solution, basically end the gerrymandering wars. I don’t think that’s going to happen in the short term, but maybe in the medium and long term.

25:51.87

Sam Shirazi

That might be able to happen. But anyways, long story short, Virginia redistricting referendum is going to happen April 21st. We will have to wait and see what the Virginia Republicans end up doing in terms of a campaign. We’ll see what the Virginia Democrats end up doing. Then we’ll have to wait for the final election.

26:11.07

Sam Shirazi

a ruling for the Virginia Supreme Court. I’m sure that will be really interesting. if If the maps go into place, then we’ll have to do the primary and then the general election. So still a lot, a lot of stuff to cover. I enjoy following all this stuff. Hopefully people have enjoyed my commentary on it.

26:26.56

Sam Shirazi

I will probably in the next few episodes talk more about the redistricting referendum, talk about some of the dynamics, See what I’m, you know, explain what I’m seeing out there. And yeah, we’ll have to start it all over again in terms of a statewide campaign. Should be really interesting. Never a dull moment in Virginia election. So I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been a Federal Fallout and i’ll join you next time.

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

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal of Fallout, the 2020 by Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over the new map that has been proposed by the Virginia Democrats after they have undergone the process of potentially doing redistricting this year in Virginia. Now, caveat all that with first, they have to make sure that they...

00:19.57

Sam Shirazi

overcome any legal challenges the Republicans are bringing, then there will have to be a referendum on April 21st, and the voters will have to approve redistricting this year in Virginia. But if all of that happens, then potentially this map that the Virginia Democrats have just released will be the maps that will be used in 2026. And there’s some really major changes in some districts. Other districts, there aren’t that many changes. So what I thought I’d do is I’d go district by district and kind of explain the changes, explain who won, who lost, why the districts look a certain way, and what were some surprises that we saw in this new map.

00:54.62

Sam Shirazi

And so anyways, I’ll go district by district. I wanted to say big picture. what this district What this map does is essentially give Democrats a 10 to 1 delegation for it likely in 2026. So what that means is the Democrats will be able to elect...

01:12.08

Sam Shirazi

10 Democrats in Virginia versus just one Republican. Currently, there’s a 6-5 map. That means there are six Democrats, five Republicans. Not every single district is deep blue. And potentially in a competitive election cycle, the the Republicans could win some seats that under this map.

01:29.64

Sam Shirazi

However, the goal, I think, for the Virginia Democrats is really to get in 2026 and probably in 2028.

01:38.41

Sam Shirazi

2030, lot of things could be different. We could have a Democratic president by 2030. And so it’s it’s possible the Republicans will win some seats under this map in 2030. But I don’t think the Virginia Democrats are too worried about 2030 because that’s the last election these maps will be used. They’ll be redistricting again because of the new census data. So this map is really for 2026 and 2028. And I think it does what it needs to do, it it seems like. And then I’ll go district by district.

02:05.40

Sam Shirazi

And really the way the Virginia Democrats redrew the map, the main change was that they basically cracked Northern Virginia. There’s two ways of gerrymandering. You either crack or you pack. And cracking is often thought of as you crack...

02:20.25

Sam Shirazi

in an area to disadvantage the other side, but you can also crack an area to advantage yourself. And obviously Northern Virginia is very blue. And so you could have a few very blue districts in Northern Virginia, or you could crack Northern Virginia and get a bunch of blue districts. And that’s basically what the Democrats have done. They’ve also packed in a couple of districts. So in the ninth district, they basically packed all the Republicans in this in the Western part of the state in the ninth district.

02:49.75

Sam Shirazi

The sixth is technically a kind of a pack, although it’s a pack of Democrats. So the Democrats have basically found a bunch of different areas in Virginia where there are Democrats and they kind of pack them together. So long story short, I will go district by district because I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on.

03:07.10

Sam Shirazi

And so I will start off with the first district. So the first district is currently represented by Rob Whitman. It’s basically a Richmond area seat and then it kind of scoops down and goes into Hampton Roads.

03:17.82

Sam Shirazi

Under the old map, Trump won the district by about five points in 2024. The new map, Harris won it by about seven and a half points in 2024. So obviously we’re going from kind of a light red seat to a light blue seat. And I think in 2026 environment, it’s going to be pretty likely the Democrats are going to be able to win this seat. The current incumbent, Rob Whitman, he is going to be one of the losers of Virginia redistricting because his district has gotten a lot... bluer And he doesn’t even really live in this new first district and we’ll talk about it. And so I don’t even know if he’ll run in the first district if it ends up happening.

03:55.78

Sam Shirazi

So the new first district is is kind of an interesting looking seat. It kind of goes from all the way from Fairfax And then it kind of goes down I-95 all the way down to the Richmond suburbs. So it’s basically kind of like an I-95 district from Northern Virginia down to Richmond.

04:17.20

Sam Shirazi

And honestly, I think this is the district that Eugene Vindman, who currently represents the 7th district, I think Vindman is going to run in the 1st district. because his home of Prince William County, like the Woodbridge area, most of that is in the first district. And so I think Vintman’s probably going to run in that district if I had to guess. And, you know, both for the primary In the general election, I think Vindman would be the favorite. Now, obviously, they could, someone could run against him in the primary, depending on, you know, what happens. But I do think Vindman overall is is a winner of redistricting.

05:19.05

Sam Shirazi

Okay, let’s go to the second district. And honestly, the second district was one of the biggest surprises of the night. Why? Because it didn’t change that much. And you know you would think this is one of the seats the Democrats are trying to win in Virginia, flip.

05:32.52

Sam Shirazi

So you think they want to change it a lot, but they actually didn’t change it that much. So it went from kind of a very marginal Trump plus 0.3 district in 2024 to now it’s about a plus 1.3 Harris district. So about, you know, one point or so bluer.

05:49.96

Sam Shirazi

And obviously that helps Elaine Luria, but the Democrats could have done even more. And the district really didn’t change that much. I was expecting the district to include parts of Norfolk.

06:01.17

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, have a kind of a Norfolk, Virginia Beach district. I don’t think it includes any of Norfolk and it actually includes part of Chesapeake. So it’s kind of swapped some parts of Chesapeake.

06:12.98

Sam Shirazi

Didn’t really expect that. I thought the second was going to change a lot more than it did. And, you know, there’s a lot of speculation about why that is. It’s potentially because the third district, Bobby Scott, he’s the dean of the Virginia delegation. It’s possible that he has some influence and he didn’t want his change his district changed that much.

06:29.73

Sam Shirazi

I don’t really know. But regardless, I think the second district, Luria, still comes out ahead because it’s a bluer district. I think she’s not going to face any serious primary challenger.

06:40.51

Sam Shirazi

So I think Luria is in the driver’s seat for the second district. You know, Kiggins, at the end of the day, the current incumbent, Jen Kiggins, like she could have gotten a much worse gerrymander against her. And so I guess in some ways, you know, things aren’t that bad for her. But I still think in 2026, she’s going to be the underdog.

06:56.88

Sam Shirazi

There’s been a lot of federal fallout. Hampton Roads has felt a lot of that. So I do think In the second, Luria is favored, although it was a bit of a surprise that the district didn’t change that much. And it basically kind of looks like the same district with a little bit of changes here and there.

07:11.04

Sam Shirazi

So I would say, you know, second district, Elaine Luria is, you know, the favorite, but not necessarily a slam dunk for the Democrats.

07:21.64

Sam Shirazi

So I talked a little bit already about the third district. So the third district, the incumbent is Bobby Scott. The district goes from about a 34.5 Harris district in to about 31.5 Harris district. so honestly, not a lot of change.

07:37.93

Sam Shirazi

Bobby Scott’s probably one of the biggest winners of the redistricting because his district is basically the same and it’s as blue as it was before or just slightly less blue. So he’s, you know, in a pretty safe position. And so anyways, not a whole lot to say about the third district in that sense.

07:56.06

Sam Shirazi

All right, now let’s move on to the fourth district. So the fourth district is currently represented by Jennifer McClellan. It was about a 32.5 Harris district in 2024. And the new district is going to be about a 16 point plus Harris district. So still pretty safe blue seat in Virginia.

08:17.06

Sam Shirazi

I think the changes in this district were kind of on the margins. You basically got – she gave up some of the some parts of Richmond and Henrico and got a little bit more of Southside. So that’s why her district got less blue. But at the end of the day, like Jennifer McClellan still came out on top because she’s got most of Richmond, which is her base.

08:40.43

Sam Shirazi

And then the district is still you know pretty blue. And so I don’t really anticipate her her having many much problems in the the primary or the general. So fourth district, not a whole lot to talk about.

08:53.24

Sam Shirazi

I will move on to the fifth district because this district district changed a lot. So the current incumbent is John McGuire. And the district is about 12-point Trump district from 2024.

09:05.81

Sam Shirazi

Under the new lines, it’s almost a nine-point Harris district. So big swing. Democrats are going to be pretty safe in that seat. And the way it’s changed is the the fifth district currently is kind of a Charlottesville Southside district.

09:19.21

Sam Shirazi

And actually, it doesn’t include any of Charlottesville. And it’s been shifted over to the Richmond suburbs. So it’s basically like the Richmond suburbs and then parts of Southside. And, you know, John McGuire is in a pretty tough spot because I don’t really think he can run in this district.

09:34.32

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, in the primary, it’s always possible that different people would run. But I do think Shannon Taylor, who’s already announced, is going to run. So even though Shannon Taylor is announced for the first district, I do think she’s going end up running in the fifth district because of her base of Henrico and the Richmond suburbs is going to be in the fifth district. So I think, you know, anything, anything’s possible. But I do think in the fifth district, Shannon Taylor’s potentially the front runner and John McGuire is in a pretty tough spot.

10:01.59

Sam Shirazi

Okay, now let’s move on to the 6th Congressional District, which saw a huge change as well. So this went from basically being a Trump 24 district and in 2024 to now it’s a Harris plus three or so district in 2026 if these new maps stay. And so the thing is,

10:22.98

Sam Shirazi

In terms of this district, I think you know the current Congressman Ben Cline is in a really tough spot. Obviously, his district has been basically eviscerated. And this new district has been created that is essentially, people have called it a Collegetown District because it goes from Charlottesville and then it goes up to Harrisonburg and Staunton.

10:42.18

Sam Shirazi

And then it goes down to Lynchburg, goes down to Roanoke and Salem, and then goes all the way to Blacksburg and Radford. So it’s It’s taking a bunch of college towns in Western Virginia and basically grouping them all together. So you could kind of say that the Democrats have packed a bunch of Democrats into this seat so that the they get a pretty blue seat. Not super blue, but I think in 2026 should be blue enough. And, you know... The current front runner, if I had to guess, would be Tom Perriello. He’s announced in the fifth district, although I think he’ll end up running in the sixth district. And I think given you know he was previously a congressman in the district, I think he will probably be the favorite both in the primary and in the general election. So if I had to guess, I think Tom Perriello is in a good spot for the sixth district.

11:29.66

Sam Shirazi

Okay, let’s move on to the 7th district. So the current 7th district was about a Harris plus 3 district 2024. And now it’s going to be about a Harris plus 8.5 district. Now, as I mentioned, the current Congressman Eugene Vindman, I don’t think he’s going to end up running in the 7th district. I think he’s going to end up running in the 1st district.

11:51.13

Sam Shirazi

And so that means the 7th is basically kind of a wide open seat with no one really claiming it, in in my opinion. There’s been a lot of rumors that Dan Helmer, Delegate Dan Helmer, will want to run in the 7th.

12:04.39

Sam Shirazi

He is currently in the House of Delegates. He represents Fairfax. He ran for Congress in 2018 and 2024. In 2024, he ran in the 10th district, came really close, but lost in the primary. And it’s going to be of a free-for-all potentially if Helmer’s not able to clear the field because this district is really oddly shaped. It goes...

12:24.79

Sam Shirazi

All the way from North Arlington, then it goes into Fairfax, and then it goes near Manassas, goes down to Culpeper, and then it goes way about into the Shenandoah Valley. And so just scoops up a lot of different areas. Obviously, most of the population and the the Democratic base is going to be in the Northern Virginia part of the district.

12:43.80

Sam Shirazi

and Fun fact, that this is actually my district, so if if these maps happen, I will be in the new 7th district, and I will make a bold announcement here that I will not be running in the 7th district because I don’t want to take time away from podcasting. I’m kind of kidding, but anyways. So 7th district is going to be really interesting, going to be one to watch, and I’ll be curious to see you know what potentially happens in a primary and one of the districts that it’s just not clear who the front runner would be.

13:16.57

Sam Shirazi

Okay, now let’s talk about the eighth congressional district that’s currently represented by Don Beyer. Very blue seat currently, it’s about a Harris plus 49 district.

13:27.58

Sam Shirazi

Under the new lines, completely kind of watered down to Harris plus 18 district. So still very blue, But not as blue as it currently is.

13:37.77

Sam Shirazi

And I think this district has been like totally changed. So it basically goes from South Arlington, Alexandria and Northern Virginia, all the way down the Potomac. So it just kind of flows along the Potomac and goes all the way down to Hampton Roads, you know, basically to the Yorktown area. So.

13:56.01

Sam Shirazi

You know, this district has become this totally different district, still kind of the base, Democratic base is Northern Virginia. i think Don Beyer, you know, all indications is he’s going to run for reelection. And I think if he runs for reelection, it’ll be in this district, you know,

14:12.77

Sam Shirazi

In theory, you know could he face a primary challenger now that the district is totally different? Like, yes, but there aren’t a lot of Democrats in the other part of the district, to be honest, because it’s kind of a mix of more rural areas. And you know at the end of the day, I think Bayer does have a good shot of winning the primary because it includes all of his base of Alexandria and includes part of Arlington. So I do think even though the district has changed a lot, I think Bayer still is the favorite in this district.

14:40.74

Sam Shirazi

And so that’s the 8th district. Let’s go down to the 9th district. This is the one that has actually gotten redder. So the 9th congressional district, currently the congressman is Morgan Griffin. It was about a 44 plus Trump district in 2024.

14:55.30

Sam Shirazi

And it has now become about a 49% Trump district. So this is essentially just a Republican pack. So Democrats just pack all the Republicans in this district. So include Southwest Virginia, parts of Southside Virginia, parts of Western Virginia. So just packing a lot of Republicans in this district.

15:13.25

Sam Shirazi

And i think the the question mark is who runs in this district? I assume Morgan Griffith, the current incumbent, will want to run here. Does Ben Klein want to run here, who’s in the sixth district right now? Does John McGuire, who’s in the fifth district, want to run here? And potentially if all three of them run, that would be a pretty crazy primary.

15:31.57

Sam Shirazi

so we’ll see. but But obviously this is the one seat the Republicans will be able to win no matter what Okay, let’s go back up to Northern Virginia for the 10th district. So the current incumbent is Suhas Subramiam. It was about an 8-point Harris district in 2024, and now it becomes a 13-point Harris district in this new map. And essentially, it’s kind of the old 10th district. So the 10th district...

15:58.68

Sam Shirazi

Back for the last decade was essentially a Loudoun-based seat that went into the Shenandoah Valley, included parts of Fairfax. And it’s kind of become that again. And I think Suhas Subramiam is in a strong position. All of his base of Loudoun is in one district held together.

16:14.60

Sam Shirazi

So I think in the primary, he’s going be favorite. In the general, he’s going to be favorite. So I think Suhas is is you know in pretty good shape in 10th district. And we’ll wrap things up in the 11th district. So the 11th district currently very blue about a Harris thirty plus 34 district in 2024, and it has become a Harris plus 14 district in 2024. The current congressman is James Watkinshaw.

16:39.81

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, in theory, he might face a primary just because the district has changed a fair amount. Right now, it’s currently 100% in Fairfax County and Fairfax City.

16:50.86

Sam Shirazi

The district now is basically, you know, McLean, Northern Fairfax down to Fairfax City. And then it goes all the way out along I-66 out into the Shenandoah Valley. yeah.

17:03.52

Sam Shirazi

Walkinshaw’s district’s been changed a lot. I still think given that you know most of the district is based in Fairfax County, I still think he has a pretty good shot of winning the primary. And then if he wins the primary, he’s going to be a strong contender in the general election.

17:16.56

Sam Shirazi

So anyways, that’s kind of the the district by district analysis. you know Long story short, I think most of the incumbents, are the Democratic incumbents are in pretty good shape, potentially potentially Beyer or Watkinshaw could face a primary. Obviously, the Republican incumbents are in pretty bad shape, except Morgan Griffith, kind of his district was kept, but he could face a primary with Ben Cline or John McGuire.

17:45.83

Sam Shirazi

And at the end of the day, like, you know, people have had various comments, but I do think the map basically does what the Democrats needed to do. It gets them to 10-1 in 2026, probably gets them to You know, if there’s a red wave in 2030, if there’s a Democratic president, you know, conceivably they would lose some seats. But at that point, the House was probably going to be lost anyways.

18:09.50

Sam Shirazi

And so I think the map for the Democratic perspective, you know, is pretty good. i think the main issue I’ve heard people comment on is the fact the second district could have been bluer. And again, that was a kind of a surprise that it wasn’t bluer. But at the end of the day they should be able to flip it.

18:26.75

Sam Shirazi

You know, the other thing to note is the map doesn’t look that clean. This is very clearly a gerrymander. I mean, sometimes you can kind of do a stealth gerrymander that looks clean and you’re like, you know, it doesn’t look that bad. This is not one of those. i mean, this is definitely, you know you look at it and it’s pretty obvious that it’s a gerrymander.

18:44.96

Sam Shirazi

I think the Democrats attitude is like, it doesn’t matter because obviously the Republicans in Texas, for example, gerrymandered. and their map doesn’t look good. And their attitude is, you know, people are not going to be looking at the nuances of this of the districts. I mean, they may take a look at the map, but that’s not what the debate is going to be about. The debate is really about Donald Trump, his, you know push of getting Republican states to gerrymander and Democratic states need to respond. And just even beyond the kind of gerrymandering debate, it really is is kind of a more bigger picture debate about

19:19.72

Sam Shirazi

democracy and the threat to democracy. and And really above that, it’s basically, do you like Trump or do you not like Trump? Or do you want to send a message to Trump or you don’t want to send a message to Trump? Okay, so what are the next steps? So the next steps are there’s going to be a legal challenge. That legal challenge has basically been fast tracked to the Virginia Supreme Court.

19:38.70

Sam Shirazi

So the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be hearing that legal challenge. We’ll see how that goes. I mean, as I mentioned in my previous podcast, both sides feel pretty confident that they’re going to win the legal challenge. Obviously, only one side is going to be right. Either the Virginia Supreme Court is going to let the referendum happen or they’re not going to let the referendum happen.

19:56.07

Sam Shirazi

And you know there’s really no way of knowing that until we get the ruling. So I don’t want to dwell on it too much right now. But let’s assume that the Virginia Supreme Court lets the referendum go forward. There will be the referendum campaign. The election will be on April 21st. I think most people assume that the Democrats are going to be able to pass that referendum if it if it goes to the voters.

20:21.85

Sam Shirazi

And actually, we got a new piece of data since the last time I had a podcast, and that is a new poll that came out from the CNU Christopher Newport University Wason Center.

20:35.32

Sam Shirazi

And you know that was interesting because it was the first basically poll this year or public poll that gave us information about the current referendum campaign.

20:47.22

Sam Shirazi

And that poll showed that for redistricting, 51% support it and 43% oppose it. And so I think, you know, that’s one data point that is is giving you the sense that maybe this thing is going to pass.

20:59.90

Sam Shirazi

The other thing is, honestly, it’s going to be kind of a proxy of partisanship or do you like Trump, you don’t like Trump. And you know most indications are that Trump has negative approval in Virginia. That same CNU poll had Trump’s approval as 62% disapproved, 34% approved.

21:18.66

Sam Shirazi

Now, I don’t know if his disapproval is that high in Virginia, but even if it’s you know in the 50s, that should be enough where the Democrats are going to be able to pass this referendum. So let’s assume the referendum passes. then the General Assembly will have to do some work in order to implement the new maps and then to change probably the primary date because the filing deadline coming up and you know you obviously need to give time to the candidates to be able to file in the districts. You need to give them time to, you know at the end of the day, run their campaigns for the primary. and they they Right now, you don’t really know which districts you’re going to be running in because potentially the legal challenges will strike down the referendum. Potentially the referendum doesn’t pass, although it seems likely that it will. So anyways, the primary day has it changed.

22:09.07

Sam Shirazi

The candidates will have to run in the primary. The primary will happen. And then obviously the general election will happen. So still a lot of things have to go right for the Virginia Democrats in order for these new maps to be implemented. But I think they’re really excited that it was at least finally revealed. I think the Democrats had gotten to the point where we just want to get the maps out. There was a lot of kind of information being shared about backroom deals and sausage making and kind of rumors. And I think most people just wanted to see the map and, you know cut to the chase. Let’s look at the maps. Let’s not kind of dwell on all the backroom dealing and wheeling. And so the maps have come out. They are what they are.

22:45.11

Sam Shirazi

I think for the Democrats purposes, they serve them. i do think it was I don’t think it was a surprise that it was 10-1. But, you know, at the end of the day, the Democrats did go ten one There was a question whether they go 9-2. They went ten one I know there was you know there was some reporting that Spanberger was hesitant about 10-1, but she’s basically come out and said, you know we can implement a 10-1 map. She didn’t really come out against this. So it seems like she’ll go along with it, especially if the voters end up endorsing it in the referendum. And so I think i think for the most part, things are on track for the Virginia Democrats. Frankly, the biggest unknown for them is just the legal challenge. The Republicans are talking a lot about the legal challenge.

23:27.54

Sam Shirazi

I do think that they may be overestimating or overplaying their hand because you know courts are unpredictable and you know Generally in Virginia, the courts are hesitant to get too involved in the political process.

23:40.29

Sam Shirazi

And given that these are not the final maps yet, the voters still have to endorse the referendum process in the referendum process. I do see there’s i could see a world where the Virginia Supreme Court just says, you know, we’re not we’re not going to get in the middle of this, like let the voters decide. It’s it’s ultimately up to them.

23:57.63

Sam Shirazi

And if that’s the case, that’s not going to be great for the Virginia Republicans. But maybe they’re right and maybe the Virginia Supreme Court will will buy some of their arguments and none of this will even matter. And all this work has been for nothing because the referendum won’t happen. Either way, we’ll find out hopefully sometime in February.

24:17.33

Sam Shirazi

you know I do encourage everyone to go look at the maps. They’re interesting. you know I’ll probably have more insights on them down the line, but that was kind of my first impression, and I wanted to kind of go through district by district.

24:28.63

Sam Shirazi

Hopefully people found this interesting. I will continue to cover things. I do think the primaries are going to be interesting. Potentially some of the general elections might be interesting, although I still think no matter what, the Democrats probably are going to get a 10-1 in 2026.

24:42.29

Sam Shirazi

under these lines if they happen. But yeah, I mean, certainly a big day in Virginia politics when the maps came out and, you know, I’ll continue to cover everything. And I appreciate everyone who’s who’s been been following me on this long ride. You know, these maps are going to be important in 2026 and they’re only really happening because the Democrats won in 2025. So 2025 is still very important, even though we are in 2026.

25:07.03

Sam Shirazi

We’ll just have to wait and see what happens with the redistricting referendum in Virginia. But I did want to go over the map and I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time.

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

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out of the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over a big decision that came out in Virginia at the lower court level where a judge ruled in favor of the Republicans and basically said that the...

00:16.15

Sam Shirazi

process the Democrats used to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot for a referendum was not valid. So obviously a big ruling. However, keep in mind that the Virginia Supreme Court will have the ultimate say in this case, and it’s going to be appealed obviously. So as important as the decision as this individual judge made, it is not necessarily the end all be all.

00:38.46

Sam Shirazi

And we’re going to have to wait to see how the Virginia Supreme Court ends up ruling on it. But I’ll kind of give you the background and then I’ll talk a little bit about this specific opinion by this judge.

00:48.65

Sam Shirazi

I did do my last podcast on this exact topic and really went into the weeds. So if you’re interested, listen to that podcast. And then this podcast, I’ll do a little bit more on the decision and then I’ll talk a little bit about the implications. I should note that. Basically, this is the whole issue in this case it revolves around the 2025 Virginia elections. And so this podcast, even though we’re in 2026, the long shadow of the 2025 Virginia elections is still with us.

01:17.16

Sam Shirazi

And basically, the issue is whether the Democrats correctly passed this proposed referendum right before the election, if that’s valid, or if they had to do it earlier in the year, last year. And that’s essentially the main issue in this case. So it all goes to show you 2025 was a really important year in the Virginia political world, obviously, and it’s still with us. And these questions about did everything go correctly with this referendum process are still with us. So I’ll kind of go over the opinion, then talk about the Virginia Supreme Court.

01:54.12

Sam Shirazi

And so at the end of the day, the Republicans clearly had a strategy. They filed this lawsuit in Tazewell County, which is deep red Virginia. I think they clearly thought that this judge and this court would be sympathetic to to their arguments. And during the oral argument, it was very clear that the judge was skeptical about the Democratic position. And this opinion basically ruled almost entirely for the Republicans and against the Democrats and basically said, you know, the process the Democrats used to push forward with this constitutional amendment to have a referendum was not valid.

02:38.25

Sam Shirazi

So the first thing the judge found was the legislature didn’t really follow its own internal procedures. And I won’t go into the ins and outs of it, but essentially the Democrats had to do this in a special session.

02:50.44

Sam Shirazi

And there’s kind of some questions about whether they follow their own internal procedures. So it’s essentially, did the legislature do everything it needed to do from a process, stand legislative process standpoint? And so that was the first thing the judge found. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I have a hard time believing this will be upheld on appeal. I think this is the least likely grounds for the decision to be upheld, if it is upheld, because typically courts are very skeptical to get into the legislative procedure. They kind of leave that to the legislature. I think there’s a big separation of powers issue.

03:27.92

Sam Shirazi

if the judiciary starts telling the legislature, you know, you have to do this and you have to do that. And you said you were going to do this, but you didn’t do that. Typically, the judiciary just gets involved once the law is passed. You know, if the legislature passes something, then the judiciary will review it. But to kind of review the process by which a bill became law, I think would be pretty unusual.

03:50.44

Sam Shirazi

for each a court to do that. And, you know, at the end of the day, both these, both the state Senate and the House of Delegates passed this twice with majority votes. And so for a court to come in and be like, oh, actually, you shouldn’t have done that, or or you didn’t do the the correct, but you didn’t pass it in the majority vote in the correct way. I think is a little bit odd and, you know, might be viewed as both a separation of powers issue and a kind of anti-democratic principle in the fact that, you know, you’re not even getting to the substance of the issue. You’re really looking at the process behind getting majority votes.

04:23.28

Sam Shirazi

And again, I think the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be pretty hesitant to go there and pretty hesitant to decide the case on those grounds. So, We’ll see. But that was kind of the first reason the judge ruled for Republicans. And again, I think that’s probably the most shaky ground of this opinion.

04:41.82

Sam Shirazi

The second reason why the judge ruled for the Republicans, he basically looked at the Virginia state constitution and looked at the phrase after the next election And he essentially said the election was underway when the Democrats passed the proposed constitutional amendments. Early voting had been going on for a long time. And you know this is a criticism the Republicans had of the whole process. And the judge basically agreed with that.

05:08.64

Sam Shirazi

Again, I’m a little bit skeptical if the Virginia Supreme Court is going to uphold that. The reason is did it may be a valid policy point that it’s not fair to the voters for early voting to have started and then the Democrats sprung this redistricting referendum.

05:25.66

Sam Shirazi

However, I don’t know if that’s necessarily against the what the Virginia Constitution says, because the Virginia Constitution says it has to be passed after the next general election. It doesn’t say, you know, three months before the general the Virginia general election, it has to be passed. It doesn’t say you can’t you can’t pass it after early voting started.

05:45.18

Sam Shirazi

so a lot of that is being read into the Virginia constitution when it’s not there. All the Virginia constitution says is it has to pass once before the election. And then after the next general election, it has to get passed again. And so I think there is a lot of reading being done into the Virginia constitution by making the decision that way.

06:07.81

Sam Shirazi

So anyways, I have a feeling maybe the Virginia Supreme court’s not going to go there either for the second reason. The court, I think kind of understands that because they, they basically said for the third reason, they’re like, even if the first two reasons aren’t, you know, are okay. And the Democrats followed the proper procedure, they, the main issue they have, or or perhaps the biggest issue they have,

06:27.46

Sam Shirazi

is this third question that the court court ruled on. And I do think you know this is probably the one where the Virginia Supreme Court will have to decide, and it’s perhaps the closest call.

06:40.14

Sam Shirazi

And the question was essentially about the state statutory provision. So it’s not part of the state constitution, it’s part of the state law. It says that after this General Assembly session, the clerk of the House of Delegates will send a notice to each of the courts in Virginia basically saying that there have been proposed constitutional amendments. The clerks of each of those courts, the law says, shall post these notices three months before the election.

07:09.02

Sam Shirazi

So obviously that didn’t happen here because the election was basically less than a week away when the Democrats passed this. So I think from a just pure text of the statute issue, this is probably the strongest issue that Republicans have. And I think if the Virginia Supreme Court ends up ruling for the Republicans, I suspect it will be on these grounds because there’s specific language in the Virginia law that the court can point to. As I mentioned, the other two things I think are more...

07:41.38

Sam Shirazi

are kind of shakier and and have a lot of assumptions built into them. This one, you can just kind of look at the law and say, hey, the notices weren’t posted for three months before the election, so this is not valid.

07:53.03

Sam Shirazi

I explained this in my last podcast that the Democrats argued this is essentially a quirk in the law. The Constitution was changed. This three-month requirement was removed from the Constitution, but it was never removed from the state law.

08:07.30

Sam Shirazi

you know i think you know that might be the case i could also see the virginia supreme court saying like you know, it is what it is. Like, it’s still part of the law and we can’t just ignore the statute. And so what do you do with this statute? I think clearly the judge that ruled for the Republicans, he basically said, you know, it’s pretty clear. You have to post this three months before the election. It was not posted three months the before the election.

08:46.89

Sam Shirazi

And I could see it going going both ways. However, it is important to note that the statute itself does not impose any requirements on the General Assembly. So the statute is basically about the duties of these clerks. And so You could argue that this is just kind of, even if you put aside the fact that it should have been removed from the the code and it’s basically a dead letter, if you assume it’s still a valid part of the law, you know the argument is, okay, this imposes some requirements on the clerks for the circuit courts.

09:18.24

Sam Shirazi

But it doesn’t impose any sort of requirement on the General Assembly. If there was some sort of broad requirement on the General Assembly that these had to be posted for three months before the election, that has to be written down somewhere. it has to be written down in the state constitution. At a minimum, it has to be written down explicitly in the state code.

09:35.56

Sam Shirazi

And this idea that this random provision what you really should interpret it from this random provision is actually the general assembly has to pass this three months before the election.

10:03.39

Sam Shirazi

You know, it is what it is. Like the law says that it has to be posted three months before the election. And these were not posted for three months before the election. And, you know, the Democrats are out of luck.

10:13.79

Sam Shirazi

Perhaps they should update the statute now they have a trifecta. But, you know, as for now, they are not going to be able to move forward. So now I basically have to look at my crystal ball and try to predict what the Virginia Supreme Court will do. you know I’m not going to do that. I think it’s very difficult. I could see them ruling either way on this matter. i you know Both sides feel confident. The Republicans feel like they’ve been vindicated. They feel like... We knew that the the Democrats didn’t do the correct procedure and this judge ruled for us and he basically endorsed all of our arguments and this is a very clear cut case. So that’s a Republican position.

10:48.36

Sam Shirazi

I think the Democrats, they are confident this is gonna be overturned on appeal. Their position is essentially that this judge was handpicked by the Republicans to rule in this case. He was obviously gonna be favorable to them and that once it gets the Virginia Supreme Court,

11:03.79

Sam Shirazi

who has you know a reputation for being pretty nonpartisan, they are gonna see this pretty straightforward that the Democrats did follow the procedures.

11:14.51

Sam Shirazi

So both sides feel confident. And ultimately, this is probably gonna decide the issue. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I think if the referendum does happen, the Democrats will have a big advantage right now. And so ultimately, the justices of the Virginia Supreme Court are probably the ones who are going to decide if redistricting is going to happen this year in Virginia. And that’s pretty crazy to think about because These are the same justices who drew the maps that are the current congressional lines. Now they they got two special masters to do most of the work. However, they they blessed and endorsed and signed off on the final map. So it’s pretty crazy to think about that essentially the Virginia Supreme Court in some ways has been the most important player in Virginia redistricting this decade.

12:01.61

Sam Shirazi

They drew the congressional maps. They drew the entire General Assembly maps and the General Assembly maps are gonna stay no matter what. the the This redistricting is just about the congressional maps.

12:12.04

Sam Shirazi

So the Virginia Supreme Court has already drawn all the maps. And now that the Democrats are trying to redistrict and put this referendum on the ballot, the Virginia Supreme Court is going to decide whether it is legal for the Democrats to do that or not. And so, you know, as much as the Democrats have been They won a lot in 2025. They have a trifecta. They have a lot of power.

12:35.44

Sam Shirazi

You know, there is also checks and balances and the judiciary has its own ability to review things. And the Virginia Supreme Court is going to have to play its part as a co-equal branch of government. Now, having said all of that,

12:50.74

Sam Shirazi

I do think the Virginia Supreme Court tends to be pretty deferential, especially in political things, to the elected branches of government. And so, you know, either explicitly or implicitly, I could see them saying, you know, at the end of the day, the legislature did this. It it was passed in two separate sessions of the General Assembly with majorities.

13:10.36

Sam Shirazi

And do we really want to come in and strike this down, especially when this is not the final say? Ultimately, the final say, if the referendum goes forward, is with the voters in Virginia. So the voters are the ones who ultimately have to approve this. And in theory, they could vote it down if you know the Republicans make the arguments that its it shouldn’t go forward. And so, you know, as much as I don’t think the justices of the Supreme Court are thinking about R versus D, red versus blue.

13:40.10

Sam Shirazi

you know Do we rule for the Democrats or do we rule for the Republicans? I do think they are trying to think this through from a legal standpoint. I also think from more of a practical consideration, they are thinking you know is this the type of issue where we, the Virginia Supreme Court, want to step into this and stop the process and stop the voters being able to make the ultimate call?

14:01.26

Sam Shirazi

And you know I don’t know how they’re going make the decision. I suspect it’s going to be pretty based on the law and whatever interpretation of the law they end up having.

14:28.30

Sam Shirazi

So all that’s to say is redistricting in Virginia is a little bit in a limbo and it’s kind of an interesting time for that because the maps are supposed to come out any day now. I thought this week I would do a podcast on the maps when they came out, but instead I’m doing a podcast on this opinion and we’ll have to see what the maps look like. And obviously I’ll provide commentary once those come out.

14:51.84

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I think the last thing I’ll say is, you know, what happens if Virginia redistricting does not move forward? I think we’ve all kind of assumed that it would happen this year, but now there’s a little bit of a question mark. You know Democrats still seem very confident that Virginia redistricting is going to move forward. And so I don’t think they’ve changed their fundamental assumption that the maps are going to be redrawn. and we’ll see we’ll see if they’re right that that’s what’s going to end up happening.

15:18.96

Sam Shirazi

But if the current maps are in place for the November general election, it’s not like the end of the world for the Virginia Democrats. It’s not like the sky has fallen out and all of a sudden the Virginia Democrats are in in a tough spot.

15:33.26

Sam Shirazi

I think they have a decent... if not a very good opportunity to flip one, if not two seats this year in Virginia. Obviously the second district is kind of the perennial swing district. Almost every election it’s competitive and it tends to flip in midterms.

15:48.59

Sam Shirazi

So I think the second district certainly is going to be a top pickup opportunity for the Democrats. And the Democrats have made a lot of noise about wanting to compete in the first congressional district. It has trended towards the Democrats for a while now.

16:02.80

Sam Shirazi

And they think in this environment, this is the type of seat that can flip. The the first also voted for Spanberger. So in theory, Democrats could pick up two seats under the current map. And you know if that happens,

16:14.82

Sam Shirazi

yeah especially if the first district is flipping, I think there is a very decent chance the Democrats are going to have a majority in the House of Representatives. So all have to say is the Democrats don’t need redistricting necessarily in Virginia. They don’t need it to flip the House in 2026. I do think, obviously, from their perspective, they would prefer to have redistricting, one, because that means they probably have to spend less money in Virginia because those flips are going to be more certain.

16:41.78

Sam Shirazi

And two, because depending on what the final proposed map looks like, they want to flip at least one, if not two more seats in Virginia with the fifth district and potentially with the sixth district. So obviously, if you’re the Democrats, you want redistricting to move forward.

16:56.46

Sam Shirazi

But I don’t want to make it seem like it would be the end of the world for the Democrats if redistricting doesn’t happen, because I do think at the end of the day, the Virginia map it has two seats that Democrats could pick up. And then the national picture, given that Republicans, a lot of their redistricting efforts didn’t move forward in a number of states. I do think it hasn’t been the huge gain that they thought it would be. And at the end of the day, you know, the House looks like the Democrats currently are favored to win the majority, although obviously a lot can happen between now and November. so

17:31.24

Sam Shirazi

All that’s to say is like this is a very interesting legal case. There’s a lot going on, both politically and the legal side. But it’s not necessarily the make or break moment for the national Democrats or even the Virginia Democrats. I think it would be a setback for the Virginia Democrats.

17:47.74

Sam Shirazi

I think you know they’ll be disappointed. Some of their base will be disappointed. The Republicans will feel like they finally have gotten a win in Virginia after such a demoralizing defeat last year.

17:58.65

Sam Shirazi

But I don’t think it fundamentally changes the fact that there are two good pickup opportunities for Democrats. And, you know, at the end of the day, we’ll have to wait and see what happens. I do think it’ll be interesting to see what the different members of Congress end up doing, what the candidates who are running do. I mean, they’re essentially just waiting. We’re all waiting for the Virginia Supreme Court to rule. I do think The Virginia Supreme Court will be relatively quick in its review. I mean, a I suspect they’ll try to get an opinion out in February. They probably have to get some briefing on this issue. I don’t know if they’ll want to have oral arguments.

18:39.50

Sam Shirazi

It is essentially going to be a very quick decision that they’ll have to render. And oftentimes, you know, that can lead to the lower court being affirmed if the court doesn’t want to get involved. But I think with a case like this, which is very time sensitive, very complicated, Virginia constitutional law issue, very big, high profile case, I mean, I think the Virginia Supreme Court is one is going to want to come in here and essentially just make the call and be the one that decides and not necessarily defer to the

19:11.24

Sam Shirazi

lower court. So overall, you know really a little bit of a surprise in the sense that I think most people have thought this thing was going full steam ahead and this is a little bit of kink.

19:22.67

Sam Shirazi

However, to be perfectly honest, I think both sides at least with this lower court judge, had a feeling that the ruling would probably go against the Democrats. And now both sides, I think, are very confident at their position with the Virginia Supreme Court.

19:36.20

Sam Shirazi

And so it’ll be interesting. I think one side will be really disappointed at the Virginia Supreme Court, depending how it goes. And I think if The Democrats end up losing at the Virginia Supreme Court. you know They’ll be disappointed, but I think they’re just going to you know roll with the punches, you know be double down on their efforts in the second district and the first district, and try to pick up the two seats in Virginia.

19:59.36

Sam Shirazi

I do think the Republicans are in a really tough spot if they lose at the Virginia Supreme Court, because now their hopes are kind of up. Oh, yeah, we were right. The Redistricting referendum it wasn’t valid. Democrats didn’t follow the proper procedures.

20:12.90

Sam Shirazi

If the Virginia Supreme Court comes back and lets the Democrats do the referendum, and you know in all likelihood, I think that the Republicans are just going to roll over and play dead. And I don’t think they’re going to even really seriously contest the referendum. I think the referendum would pass.

20:26.98

Sam Shirazi

You know, we’ll have to see what the final map is. i think that Republicans wouldn’t really even try to save the incumbents because, you know, the maps are going to be drawn in a way that probably wouldn’t help the incumbents. And, you know, at the end of the day, it’ll be it’ll be bad, I think.

20:41.100

Sam Shirazi

It’s kind of you know crazy to think that the Republicans had such a bad 2025. Now they feel like they have something going their way. i do think the air is going to come out of the balloon pretty quickly if the Virginia Supreme Court rules against them. 2026 is going to look really rough for the Virginia Republicans after a rough 2025. 2027 is going to be rough for the Virginia Republicans in all likelihood. 2028, we’ll see, will probably be rough as well.

21:07.82

Sam Shirazi

And frankly, even if redistricting, like I said, doesn’t end up happening this year in Virginia, I think 2026 could be pretty rough for the Virginia Republicans. You know, I don’t want to speculate too much, but, you know, I i would say right now in the second district, even on the under the current lines, Elaine Luria, who used to represent that district, might be the slight favorite just because of the impact of the federal cuts to Hampton Roads and the fact that that district just swings so much from election to election, midterm to midterm. So that district, it flipped in the 2022 midterm, it flipped in the 2018 midterm, it flipped in the 2010 midterm, it flipped in 2008 during the blue wave. So it’s a district that flips a lot.

21:51.17

Sam Shirazi

And I do think there’s a decent chance that the Democrats are going to be able to flip that no matter what. First district’s a little bit different because you have stronger incumbent. You have a district that’s a little bit more Republican.

22:02.07

Sam Shirazi

And we’ll see. I think the Democrats definitely have a shot there, but I think it would be a tougher lift for them to be able to flip the the first district. So all that’s to say is like either way, you know i’ll I’ll be covering it all. If the redistricting happens, that’ll be interesting in its own way. If the redistricting doesn’t happen, it’s going to be interesting in its own way. Both sides feel confident in their legal position, and we’ll just have to wait and see. so You know, the wild ride, which is the Virginia elections, never ends. So I will keep covering it all. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And i I’ll do my best to keep covering it. And this has been Federal Fallout. And I’ll join you next time.

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