Hi everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, I am really excited to have Chaz Nuttycombe on. He is the director of State Navigate, and he’s been doing a lot of great work with the polling, with his model, with early vote tracking. So just a lot to talk with him about. So I’m really excited to have Chaz on. Thanks for joining me.

00:22.66

Chaz Nuttycombe

Hey, thanks for having me on You know, i like Virginia years more than the even.

00:24.57

Sam Shirazi

So Chaz, before we get into it, I just wanted to see how you’re doing. I know it’s a really crazy time of the year and like, how are you balancing everything?

00:36.21

Chaz Nuttycombe

i mean, like last year, this time a year ago, was like writing a book pretty much. I wrote like maybe two or 300 something pages on state level elections, whereas, you know, I’m just writing an article and just you know, following up with folks and just making sure that you know, our our forecast is as good as it gets.

00:58.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

And preparing for election night with the NAVCAS, which will project the winners, as well as what is the live projected margin using the results coming in.

01:09.53

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, just really at this point preparing for final final forecast stuff and and election night.

01:18.08

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, well, I know everyone’s going to be keeping a close eye and I recommend on election night having State Navigate open as well as following Chaz on social media. So I did want to get to these polls, which, you know, it’s really awesome that you are doing these polls, particularly the House of Delegates polls, because basically no one does that in a public way. And I think, you know, yeah there were polls in House District 86, House District 73. People can go look those up. But I did want to talk about the last House of Delegates poll you’re going to be releasing, which is in House District 64. So can you tell me about that poll?

01:51.49

Chaz Nuttycombe

Justin Fields’ know, first off, I want to thank the people who have donated for these polls, or know we had a sponsor for our first house delegate district poll as well

02:04.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

I am very fortunate that we were able to do this. I’m very fortunate to be working with the talented team, putting these together, people who are a lot smarter than me, frankly.

02:16.07

Chaz Nuttycombe

And yeah, so this last poll for a House of Delegates seat that we did is in House District 64. this is in Stafford County where Paul Mildy is running for reelection for his, you know, he just got elected first term in the house in 2023 running against Democrat Stacy Carroll.

02:39.99

Chaz Nuttycombe

And this one is full of federal workers. And I figured, well, you know, Sam, we got to debut this on federal fallout. given the shutdown going on especially i was interested in seeing you know if there’s maybe any kind of effect here and it does seem like there is a little bit so i’ll just kind of dive right into the numbers we’re recording this at 10 a.m on on friday happy halloween and this will be coming out toward the end of today today and then tomorrow we’re releasing our statewide

03:15.20

Chaz Nuttycombe

I’ll go over the statewide next, but let’s start on 64. So 64 is a, it’s mostly a non-college district in terms of its electorate.

03:28.56

Chaz Nuttycombe

Just like 50 some percent of voters don’t have a college degree, at least in 2024. And it is becoming increasingly diverse, both in age and race.

03:42.14

Chaz Nuttycombe

It’s like, maybe 20 something percent black, which I was surprised by. i and then I think it’s like 10% Latino, 3% Asian, something like that.

03:55.28

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, this is a very competitive seat. We have this as a race that’s going to be decided by less than 2% either way. In our forecast, we have Paul Milding narrowly favored.

04:08.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

So the race for governor, it is 4948 spamburger this seat voted for trump by oh let’s see here i’ll have to pull up state navigate uh and go to our site to find out the number uh i believe it voted for trump by one to two percent let’s see here 64 voted for trump last year by 1.9 percent so just about two points so this district is moving, leftward on, uh, you know, in the race for governor, comes as no surprise.

04:43.64

Chaz Nuttycombe

so that is, you know, about a three point swing towards Bamberger. and then, and that’s kind of interesting. We look at our 73 poll because there was only a two point swing towards Bamberger from 2024, in, in that result.

04:57.36

Chaz Nuttycombe

Uh, and then, in the race for Lieutenant governor, John Reed has a three-point lead, 50 to 47, over Ghazala Hashmi. And then 50 to 46 lead in the race for Attorney General, where Jason Mieris has a lead over Jay Jones.

05:13.94

Chaz Nuttycombe

And then Paul Mildy has just a one-point lead, 49, 48, Mildy, in the actual House of Delegates race here. And I think that it’s not surprising the House of Delegates result. It’s not surprising at all.

05:29.71

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, Millie’s been getting just heavily outspent on the airwaves. I feel like he’s been kind of lazy in his campaign this year. I think he hasn’t really taken his race that seriously. And i think in general, the Republicans haven’t.

05:45.45

Chaz Nuttycombe

But, you know, i I think that at the end of the day, we have him narrowly favored. Our poll has him narrowly favored. So, you know, if he wins, a win’s win. But this race is too close for comfort for him.

06:00.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

And I would also note that out of all of these polls that we’ve done for the House stuff, This one is definitely has the least amount of certainty.

06:10.95

Chaz Nuttycombe

it doesn’t have as many respondents as our other two House polls. And then it was also harder to get younger voters in here and non-college and minorities.

06:22.97

Chaz Nuttycombe

We still waited the 2024 electorate with those demographics and everything. But like in the actual raw sample, it was hard to get them. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this district flipped, quite frankly.

06:36.30

Chaz Nuttycombe

But I think the most interesting thing here is that Mieris only has a four-point lead in this seat that Trump won by two points, right? That House is District 73 poll, he had seven-point lead in a seat that voted for Harris by one point, right? That was a very good poll for him.

06:52.78

Chaz Nuttycombe

So he’s not really making up much ground here. And I’m wondering if It’s just because of the shutdown. I mean, but so we asked, we asked in the survey, who do people blame for the shutdown?

07:07.59

Chaz Nuttycombe

And I think ba if I’m remembering correctly with what we had in 86, this one’s a little bit larger with blaming Republicans. So 43% blame Trump slash Republicans in Congress.

07:21.16

Chaz Nuttycombe

38% blame Democrats. 17% blame both. blame democrats seventeen percent blame but And then we also asked how much of an impact is the federal government shutdown going to have on your vote this year?

07:35.47

Chaz Nuttycombe

33% impact at all. said barely any impact. impact. twenty percent said some impact twenty seven percent said large impact and thirteen percent said the biggest impact and you know when this poll comes out you’ll be able to see like you know who’s saying it’s having an impact and who isn’t but yeah so i think that is honestly unlike the 73 poll yesterday i think the 73 poll in chesterfield which is early versus meta was a good poll for the republicans relatively speaking i would say this one is a good one for the democrats even though you know know um

08:23.00

Chaz Nuttycombe

so you know, they’re they’re down one point in the House of Delegates race. I think, relatively speaking, especially that AG number, that’s a good number for them.

08:33.00

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, so super interesting stuff. I appreciate you going through all that. I did want to kind of follow up with a specific question about the shutdown and also kind of the federal fallout from Doge earlier in the year.

08:44.82

Sam Shirazi

i mean, do you think, I mean, there’s some kernels in here. Obviously, it’s one poll, but I wanted to talk compare it also to the eighty six House of Delegates district poll where the Democrats did pretty well in that poll.

08:57.59

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, Nova, Hampton Roads feeling more of the federal fallout potentially than the Richmond area. do you think there’s this dynamic where Democrats are benefit benefiting from federal fallout shutdown?

09:10.24

Sam Shirazi

could make an impact in the House of Delegates in and Hampton Roads, Nova, and then potentially, obviously a lot of votes in Nova potentially could save Jay Jones in the sense of people are just going to vote straight ticket because they’re mad about what’s going on with the Republicans in D.C.

09:27.01

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, I think that I guess the answer is maybe. I mean, it’s, you know, I’m in Richmond, so I’m a little blind to like the impacts of federal government stuff, the federal government shutdown.

09:41.49

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think that, think that may be part of it. We didn’t ask in the 86 poll how big of an impact the shutdown is having, but, you know, a plurality of respondents said they blit and blame Republicans.

09:56.36

Chaz Nuttycombe

and, but, you know, I mean that, that Cordoza number running behind, with some Sears is mainly just because of the negative ads gone against them.

10:07.13

Chaz Nuttycombe

so, I mean, I think that the shutdown is having an effect in some of these seats. It looks like I would say with 64 86.

10:16.96

Chaz Nuttycombe

73, not so much. I think that’s a valid theory. i think also, you know, with 73, I think why that wasn’t a great poll for Dems is because of just the kind of, let’s let’s say, ancestral Republicans there.

10:30.98

Chaz Nuttycombe

But, yeah.

10:32.45

Sam Shirazi

Well, I had one other question on this poll before we move on, because I know we got so much else to cover. Both in the 86th district and in this district, I think kind of traditionally the Republicans have a turnout advantage.

10:45.19

Sam Shirazi

And you noted that there’s kind of younger voters now moving into this district, more diverse district. Is there a potential that, you know, maybe if you just poll it like... It shows the Democrats are doing well, but then when the actual votes come in, the Republicans end up overperforming because the Democrats just can’t get the turnout there they need in the district.

11:03.72

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, I think that’s a good point. I mean, look, in our in our waiting for our statewide poll, and you can see this in other previous Virginia elections, the election is usually wider than the presidential result.

11:17.66

Chaz Nuttycombe

But I think it’s silly to like, you know, like so so our House polls are weighted to the 2024 recall, just about. But we also look at the EV, the early vote is or the or the overall vote for this district is probably going to be even between Trump and Harris instead of like Trump plus two.

11:36.72

Chaz Nuttycombe

Looking at everything thus far, I think this is going to be a nail biter, quite frankly, in House seat. But, you know, if you’re going to wait to the recall, you got to wait to the demographics that were up that year as well by age and race.

11:48.55

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think it is... I think anyone that doesn’t has an agenda. If you’re not going to wait, you’re going wait by the overall electoral result, but not the electoral demographics. And what are you doing?

12:00.60

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right? Like that you’re, you’re, it’s like, it’s, it’s not really the like scientifically sound, I guess, for lack of a better term.

12:11.36

Chaz Nuttycombe

But yeah, I mean, look, you know, we we’re, I would be surprised if middle day became the underdog in our forecast. but you know, he doesn’t even have like a 60% something chance of winning in our final forecast. Probably.

12:26.61

Chaz Nuttycombe

I mean, right now, as we’re recording this on Friday, he has just a 58% chance of winning, right? He’s up by 1.3%. and i mean, his, his early vote looks quite frankly, pretty bad, from everything that I’ve seen.

12:42.100

Chaz Nuttycombe

uh and and this is part of why you know i think that he’s he may get caught sleeping at the wheel election day or election night i should say but you know we’ll see i think at the end of the day he’ll probably still be favoring our forecast by election day so but yeah

13:03.48

Sam Shirazi

All right. Well, super interesting stuff. Really appreciate doing these House of Delegates polls. As I mentioned, you know but you basically never get them, at least publicly released. So just appreciate all the work State Navigate has done and you know your team has done and the donors to to get the these polls out. And I thought you did a good job doing one in Hampton Roads, one in Richmond, one in Nova, so we can compare and contrast.

13:24.71

Sam Shirazi

So I did want to turn to the statewide poll because obviously most people who aren’t following the ins and outs of the House of Delegates are probably more interested in the statewide numbers, particularly for governor and attorney general.

13:35.79

Sam Shirazi

So I will turn it over to you to go over the statewide poll.

13:40.34

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, absolutely. I’m going to skip the executive approval stuff. Obviously, we all know that Governor Yunkin is going to be, you know, in a good place compared to Donald Trump.

13:52.66

Chaz Nuttycombe

So those numbers will be out. I know that everybody’s just interested in the top line, so we can go over the top lines here. So the overall vote in the governor race in our poll,

14:07.77

Chaz Nuttycombe

is 54 to 41 for Spanberger. 54% of vote likely voters say they’re voting for Spanberger. 41% spanberger forty one percent save air voting for Sears and 4% do not know. And then the race for Lieutenant Governor, it’s a little bit closer, but not by much. 53% say they are supporting Hashmi.

14:26.42

Chaz Nuttycombe

41% say they are supporting Reed and 5% don’t know. they are supporting read and five percent don’t know And then obviously the closest race is that for attorney general.

14:38.10

Chaz Nuttycombe

And it’s closer than compared to our previous one. And I’ll talk about a little bit of kind of a change in methodology or weighting really for this one compared to the previous one.

14:48.88

Chaz Nuttycombe

But for attorney general, is 49% Jones, 46% Mieris, 5% don’t know. forty six percent mieris five percent don’t know And then in the House of Delegates generic ballot 53% say they will support the Democratic candidates 42% say will support the Republican candidates so three point lead for Jones 11 for the House of Delegates generic ballot 12 for Hashmi 13 for Spanberger.

15:20.39

Chaz Nuttycombe

We also asked the about which of the following issues would have the biggest impact on your decision of who you’ll vote for in the upcoming election. Select up to three.

15:31.03

Chaz Nuttycombe

So this is kind of the thing that separates our poll from these others, right? I think like something that is annoying that I see is like when pollsters just ask, what is your most important issue? It’s like, okay, they’re going to select the economy, right? It’s always going to be economy or like something like that.

15:47.14

Chaz Nuttycombe

what is your most important issue and they don’t actually ask more often than not like what is what is actually going to have an impact on your vote this year right so we asked that and let people select up to three uh so we had inflation cost of living protecting democracy health care immigration crime and public safety education transgender policies jobs political violence and something else so uh 53 of respondents selected inflation slash cost of living 44 selected protecting democracy 42 selected care selected immigration selected crime selected education

16:33.63

Chaz Nuttycombe

seventeen percent selected transgender policies sixteen percent like a job sixteen percent so i could political violence and four percent selected something else so this it looks like it’s pretty good for the Dems I mean spamber has been just pounding on the issue of inflation slash cost of living Sears who has made transgender stuff the vocal point of her campaign you know only uh 17 percent of

17:04.83

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know, respondents selected that as one of their issues. So, and, you know, protecting democracy being up there, that’s probably going to more Dem-leaning, I think,

17:15.94

Chaz Nuttycombe

that’s a good sign for them. Also, immigration only being at 30 and crime and public safety being at 25, I think is also a sign of the changing electorate compared to last year, right?

17:28.42

Chaz Nuttycombe

Immigration, not really as salient compared to 2024. That was an issue that Republicans won on. And and Yeah, so those were the horse race questions we had.

17:42.96

Chaz Nuttycombe

So a little something different from this poll compared to the previous one. I’ll have, I guess, a little bit of a mea culpa. So we waited the previous poll between 2017 and 2021 exit poll.

17:56.38

Chaz Nuttycombe

However, upon rereading Catalyst, which is a Dem group, but you know their their data is very neutral on this project. They put something together talking about what happened in Virginia in 2021 and have a lot of comparisons between previous Virginia electorates going as far back as 2009.

18:18.37

Chaz Nuttycombe

And the biggest difference is that our previous sample was too college educated. Probably narrow majority of likely voters this year are going to not have a college degree.

18:33.18

Chaz Nuttycombe

and then another difference is the way we weighted party ID. our independents were more democratic leaning, uh, than the previous one, for the previous sample.

18:45.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

so what I did is I still looked at, a, uh, so, uh, instead of looking at the, uh, exit polls, which do not push party ID.

18:56.19

Chaz Nuttycombe

Chris Price- What I did in our elections coordinator Michael Foley did was we looked at previous ap vote cast data, these are these big let’s kind of say exit polls with raw data and to play around with it, so we use the same way that we create our lb samples just thereabouts.

19:15.96

Chaz Nuttycombe

And we’re able to look at the AP vote cast in Virginia in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2024. And then just looking at previous Gallup quarterly numbers to look at where the likely party ID is going to be.

19:33.55

Chaz Nuttycombe

So instead of just waiting by the non-pushed party ID, non-pushed meaning like without leaners, right? You know, we asked a follow-up question that people say who are independent the first time.

19:44.79

Chaz Nuttycombe

which party you generally lean toward right so we’re now waiting on this that follow-up with like the total the cumulative amount of like how many people say they are you know they affiliate themselves with the democratic party or they lean toward a democratic party same with republican or neither so right now we have a plus eight party id So 49% of likely voters say that they identify with the Democratic Party, they lean toward it. 41% with Republicans and 10% neither.

20:19.75

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, I feel better with this approach compared to the previous one. Just given, you know, the AP Vocats data and the Catalyst data, I’m glad that I reread that.

20:32.79

Chaz Nuttycombe

and Because like the 2017 exit poll is hot garbage, pretty quite frankly. I mean, it was totally inaccurate. It had like 20% black, for example, when in actuality in 2017 and 2021, it was 17% black.

20:48.48

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, we’ve also just changed a little bit of weights all around with, you know, race and education, age as well. So our overall like demographics, I guess, kind of got more friendly to Republicans, but like with the party ID, which was also not quite accurate in those, you know, those exit polls look like, we changed it to looking at AP VoteCast data and Gallup data for their national quarterly stuff.

21:18.80

Chaz Nuttycombe

And so like a D plus A party ID would track pretty much with where things are expected to land, given that Trump is in the White House and is deeply unpopular and where things were in previous AP Votecast stuff.

21:33.09

Chaz Nuttycombe

i posted I posted those numbers on Twitter, as well as where the Gallup quarterly numbers are, which I think was like D plus seven in Q3 nationally, which is higher than Q3 2017. yeah. that’s so yeah so that’s And at the end of the day, what’s going to change it the most, were talking about waiting for like, you know, those top lines are going to be that party stuff.

21:58.35

Chaz Nuttycombe

but still the demographics for this are, I guess kind of more friendly to Republicans compared to the previous one. Uh, cause we actually went with the hard data, the voter file, all that sort of thing.

22:09.17

Chaz Nuttycombe

rather than these like kind of messy exit polls, particularly the 2017 exit poll, which is very messy.

22:15.66

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, so super interesting stuff. And I mean, I really appreciate giving people a breakdown of how you came up with those numbers. And I thought it was interesting, even though, you know, you tried to make some more favorable assumptions to the Republicans, or or at least kind of trying to make it more balanced.

22:29.83

Sam Shirazi

The outcome hasn’t really changed that much from your previous poll. And I wanted to ask you about that, because when you when your previous poll came out and it showed a good result for the Democrats, I think You got some flack, people saying, oh, yeah you know you’re obviously like biased, and which I don’t – I know State Navigate has to be neutral, and I know you really know Virginia well, and you want to be right. I think that’s your number one goal.

22:50.35

Sam Shirazi

And you know since your poll, there was the YouGov poll, which found Spanberger up by like 15, which also is a universe where things could be going pretty well for the Democrats. Yeah. you know Could you explain you know why you think this poll makes sense in the context of a lot of other pollsters being very, i would say, not politically conservative, but just kind of, I think, shell-shocked from 2024. They really don’t want to get it wrong again, and they are trying to make a lot of assumptions that are very favorable to the Republicans, showing Spanberger’s still up, but just not maybe as much as your poll is showing.

23:24.96

Chaz Nuttycombe

Sure, absolutely. Look, my motto when it comes to forecasting, I guess now polling as we get into this is I don’t care who wins. I care about being right.

23:36.82

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. At the end of the day, my job as a forecaster is to look at previous data that can inform the present and look at, you know, obviously current data but that can inform the future.

23:53.16

Chaz Nuttycombe

so I’m a student of Virginia history in a lot of ways. but favorite class in college but or one of my favorite classes in college, but you know also not just like actual, you know like the kind of thing you learn in class, but like also, you know it’s important to compare to previous, you know, editorial elections or really any election in Virginia.

24:14.84

Chaz Nuttycombe

The party ID in Virginia in 2024 with pushed respondents, you know, that meaning like you include the leaners and everything, right?

24:28.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

was like D plus three. You have a lot of pollsters who like, bless their heart, are waiting to 2021, 2021, 2021, which I think is a mistake because in every single gubernatorial election over the last pretty much 50 years, the out party has had a turnout advantage.

24:49.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

It can be a slight advantage, but or it can be a big advantage right talk about 2009 for a big advantage talk about you know 2013 for only a slight advantage right republicans still had that turnout advantage compared to the previous presidential election right so i’ll just read all these party id numbers with ap votecast stuff it was d plus 10 in 2020 plus in uh 2018 for six in twenty eighteen Uh, that was with a lot of independents though, who probably skewed toward the Dems. That was 12% independent.

25:22.77

Chaz Nuttycombe

it was R plus three in 2021. so for me to, like, I’m not one to herd. I don’t care what other pollsters have to say.

25:35.05

Chaz Nuttycombe

i just look at the previous data and look at like, okay, using the actual hard data, And, you know, i’ve I’ve learned as, you know, compared the previous one, that exit polls are not really good hard data.

25:49.25

Chaz Nuttycombe

But, you know, like looking at the actual hard data, this is probably what the electorate is going to look like, I think it’s, it’s hackish to say that this electorate is going to be like anything better, anything better than like,

26:08.84

Chaz Nuttycombe

Harris plus six. I think that you have found the last quaalude and you’re riding that to high heaven if you think that this electorate is going to be redder than 2024.

26:24.49

Chaz Nuttycombe

You can say like, okay, well, maybe it’s only Harris plus seven. and I think there’s reasonable argument for that. That is only a hair bluer, kind of like 2013, right? And the inverse of that.

26:34.64

Chaz Nuttycombe

where it was only a little bit redder. But, you know, especially like 2021, though, where in demographics and partisanship, it was, you know, everybody was angry at Biden.

26:48.23

Chaz Nuttycombe

And so you had a lot of Republicans come out in droves. I was at the Jason Mieris rally, actually, kind of on this note, I think about 2021. I think, you know, I’ll just, like I tweeted out because it was very apt that you know the room was probably don’t know not even a third of the size that it was in 2021 yonkin had a rally there at this mieres thing it was so quiet you could hear a mouse fart and you know i had was standing right next to i don’t know like some lady with chesterfield county republican party that she was talking to i think someone on mark early’s campaign and she was saying like you know we aren’t really getting

27:29.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

like many volunteers this year. We need volunteers, I guess, because, you know, Donald Trump’s in the White House. And so people kind of want to sit out. I mean, this is just a thing, right? It goes against Virginia history to be like, oh, yeah, we’re waiting this to 2021.

27:43.95

Chaz Nuttycombe

This is what, like, this is another 2021. Now, that being said, that being said maybe in the statewide margin for ag it can actually be closer to 2021 or jason meares gets a narrow victory but it’s not going to come from like a very republican friendly electorate it’s going to come from him winning over democrats in our current poll and our previous poll he’s getting seven percent of spamburger voters right and then if there’s like two or three percent

28:12.61

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, like, like’s say, let’s say he’s, he’s capped at seven now, because this poll was conducted, you know, about a week after the previous one. Let’s say he’s capped at seven. He probably needs like two, maybe 3% of Spanberger voters to not vote for the AG base. base. And obviously you can play around with that math. If it like, okay, then maybe he gets 8% of Spanberger supporters or something. Right.

28:35.21

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think at the end of the day, like the, the point of no return, for me, Aris is like, if Spanberger is winning by, i don’t know, 10, maybe, maybe 11, depending on how these undecideds break.

28:51.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. for where he can’t win. I would be surprised, very, very surprised. I think it’s possible, but I just have hard time seeing it where Spanberger is winning by like 12 and me Aris is pulling it out by an ad highbrow or something.

29:07.40

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. But yeah, I mean, look, I think it is, you know, and and anybody who looks at polling can tell you it is good that there isn’t hurt. We have these buckets of Republican pollsters who, are trying to do, are trying to satisfy their clients, and putting out numbers that are not in reality.

29:28.37

Chaz Nuttycombe

Bamberger only has like a two 5% lead. right Cough Cough Trafalgar putting Donna Charles on the ballot, getting 4%.

29:40.65

Chaz Nuttycombe

Bowtie boy over here just, you know, puts out very, very funny polls. So, and then you have the second bucket, which is like the colleges who are doing these weightings to like, you know, maybe they’re doing 2024 2021.

29:56.81

Chaz Nuttycombe

Not all of them. I don’t think, I don’t think that GMU weighted 2021 2024. and think that’s how they got spamburger plus 12. and then you have these other buckets which that we are in where spammers lead by double digits more often than not that has a democratic turnout advantage which would be more in line with virginia history for when the republican is in the white house so you pretty much have three buckets of these polls

30:27.42

Chaz Nuttycombe

and one of those three buckets is going to be right. so, you know, we’ll have to wait and see, where things land and which one of those buckets is right.

30:40.20

Sam Shirazi

Well, it’ll certainly be interesting when the results start coming in, what ends up happening. I did want to shift a little bit to your forecast, although I will bring up the polls as necessary.

30:51.08

Sam Shirazi

I will go through governorne Governor and Attorney General first, although I did want to spend more time on Attorney General. So the State Navigate forecast, really good. Recommend everyone go take a look at it.

31:01.72

Sam Shirazi

For governor, it’s pretty dramatic. It says at the top, Democrats are virtually certain to win the race for governor. You give Abigail Spamberger a 98% chance of winning.

31:12.32

Sam Shirazi

You say that she will get, you’re projecting her to have 55.6% of the vote versus 44.4% for Winston Earl Sears. And I should say that this is as of time of recording, these slightly change with more polls and other things.

31:27.72

Sam Shirazi

That’s around where your poll is. i mean, could you explain Just, you know, how the forecast is giving such a certain number for Spanberger to win.

31:38.71

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, absolutely. And look, you can go to our website to read more on our methodology. you know, we have a certain percentage of the weighting towards fundamentals. And, you know, looking at like the current economy, pretty much since the start of a presidency, looking at approval ratings for the presidency.

31:57.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

That kind of and so that’s part of why, like, you know, Jones has a narrow lead in our forecast, for example. so because I’ve been burned by polls before, so it’s like, no, we’re not just going to build a purely poll model. That would, that would be a polling average. Right.

32:13.20

Chaz Nuttycombe

so we actually look at the fundamentals of partisanship, looking at, uh, you know, economic indicators like, uh, change in inflation from the beginning of the presidency, uh, through current, uh, changes in unemployment, that sort of thing.

32:29.94

Chaz Nuttycombe

and you can read all about it. By going to state navigate that org slash Virginia and go into our articles and looking at our methodology. But yeah, I mean, yeah, look, Spanberger is going to governor.

32:40.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

That’s just a fact of life. If you think that Spanberger isn’t going to be governor, you know, i’ve I’ve got a nice lifelong house for you on Tanger Island.

32:51.20

Chaz Nuttycombe

which will totally not sink in your lifetime, right? that’s the That’s the Virginian little joke there. But yeah, so I mean, she’s going to win. The question is by how much Spanberger’s going to win the governor race by. And the Republicans know that.

33:06.30

Chaz Nuttycombe

The Republicans know that, all of them in Virginia, right? Like it was in the summer where Terry Pilko was like, we’re just trying to make this 2001 where we get the AG to scrape by, right? So yeah.

33:18.49

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, not a whole lot to say about governor, given given those odds. I did want to just briefly talk about lieutenant governor because it doesn’t get a lot of attention of the statewide, of the three statewide races. you say or State Navigate says Democrats are strong favorites to win the race for lieutenant governor.

33:32.87

Sam Shirazi

You give Ghazala Hashmi an 89% chance. She is projected to get 52.2% the vote versus for John Reed, 45.8%. Again, this time of recording. point eight percent again time of recording I think the question for LG, and there’s been some polls where Hashmi is only up by like 2%. I mean, I think that’s mainly name ID. Most people just expect straight voting in the LG race.

33:55.72

Sam Shirazi

I mean, how much ticket splitting do you realistically see in the LG race?

33:59.52

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, I mean, look, Abigail Spanberger becoming governor is as certain as his son coming up in the morning, whereas Hashmi becoming lieutenant governor is as likely as it is, you know, each day that it’ll rain in Seattle.

34:13.66

Chaz Nuttycombe

There are some sunny days, right? There’s a one in 10 chance where Reid wins. and so I’ve seen those one in 10 chances happen. You do have some polls where, you know, Hashmi only has a narrow lead.

34:26.66

Chaz Nuttycombe

But they’re more undecideds and they absolutely lean Spamburger. And, you know, really have much ticket splitting in our poll. I think like Hashmi, if I had to guess, maybe 4% of the most run but runs behind Spamburger. I would be kind of surprised if it were more than that.

34:43.53

Chaz Nuttycombe

But I think predicting ticket, I mean, look, predicting ticket splitting for any of these races is really hard. But I would say, especially for LG, because it’s just like you have so many undecideds.

34:54.81

Chaz Nuttycombe

but yeah, we have, you know, Hashmi leading by six, Spanberger leading by 11. So we’ve got like a five point gap, in our forecast. So I, you know, I can see that happening.

35:05.41

Chaz Nuttycombe

question is whether those undecideds are gonna, you know, who are voting for Spanberger are gonna go to, uh, Hashmi or whether, you know, to John Reed’s campaigns slogan or or whatever in their advertising, are they gonna want a check on Richmond because they know that Spanberger is gonna win, right?

35:21.98

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, but either way, i mean, Hashmi is incredibly likely to become the Lieutenant Governor.

35:26.24

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, not not too much of a surprise there. I did want to spend or ask specific questions about attorney general race. Obviously, that’s going to be the big statewide race in terms of the results coming in. We didn’t necessarily think it would be that close, but obviously in the last month, the change the race has dramatically changed.

35:42.86

Sam Shirazi

Still, you say, or the State Navigate model says Democrats are moderate favorites to win the race for attorney general. Jay Jones is projected to get 51.2% of the vote, and Meares is projected at this stage to get 48.8%. Obviously, that could change before Election Day.

35:59.86

Sam Shirazi

In terms of the percentage of who might – the chances of who’s going to win, you give Jay Jones 68% chance. You give Meares 32%, so about 2 to 1 for Jones. think people – i think people I’ve seen a lot of people saying like a lot of polls are coming out, you know, Miara’s is like 48, 46, or it’s Miara’s like 46, 45. And so almost every poll except yours, Miara’s is typically up in the polls.

36:23.00

Sam Shirazi

And so I think a lot of, People who just look at the straight polls are like, well, yeah, Miara’s is going to win because he’s like up in every poll. I did want to point out in 2021, in most of the polls, except maybe some of the Republican polls, Herring was up in in most of the polls. So I do think it’s more complicated. As you mentioned, ticket splitting is super complicated.

36:41.70

Sam Shirazi

In a race like this, it’s going to be like ultra complicated. You know, given the kind of conventional wisdom, like Miara’s has the money, he has the scandal, all this stuff. you know Why do you still at this stage give Jay Jones a 2-1 odds that he’s going to win?

36:55.72

Chaz Nuttycombe

Well, look, it has to do with the fundamentals part of the model, right? I mean, again, we just did polling, a polling average, but yeah, the units would be ahead. But I’ve been burned by polls too many times before. So using actual fundamentals and previous ticket splitting history is is useful.

37:12.08

Chaz Nuttycombe

Going back to, i think I think our model for previous ticket splitting, I think it goes back to 2005. So, but, you know, there’s probably going to be more tickets. I think we’re probably going to see as much but a difference in the margin between go and AG, if I had to guess, as just about there was in 2013, when there was an 11-point difference between lieutenant governor race and attorney general race.

37:38.92

Chaz Nuttycombe

But yeah, I mean, look, Mieris has skyrocketed in our forecast for the last few weeks. I mean, bar bar none. that’s That’s a fact of life. Jones has been losing a lot of ground.

37:48.77

Chaz Nuttycombe

I mean, Mieris had like what, 7%, 8% chance at the beginning the month. He’s now at a 32% chance. jones is only ahead by what uh 2.2.3 right and look our poll is going to come out uh it hasn’t even added to the model uh you know this poll that is right off to you it will tomorrow and then you know there’s atlas intel coming out and emerson coming out and you know we will we will see maybe miris can take ahead

38:21.60

Chaz Nuttycombe

But, you know, I think at the end of the day, the thing that’s hurting him the most is, like, you know, the the fact that Spamberg is leading by, like, 11.

38:31.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, but look, I mean, Mieric is probably going if I had to guess, he’s probably going to be around, like, you know, he’s probably going to be at least a 35% chance, maybe, like, 40-something percent chance that he wins.

38:45.25

Chaz Nuttycombe

If I had to guess where things... move in our model toward election day, but I don’t know because I i don’t know what other pollsters are showing. don’t even know what our poll or our model is going to show when we add our poll and take out our old one, right?

39:00.00

Chaz Nuttycombe

So at the end of the day, i wouldn’t be surprised if Mieris won. I wouldn’t, right? But I think to your point where Mieris is typically getting 46% of the vote,

39:13.86

Chaz Nuttycombe

that is i think the question are the is the shy j jones voter theory real right and i think there’s like some evidence of that you know there’s a typical non-response bias among candidates or supporters of of voters of candidates i should say not supporters but voters of candidates who have scandals i’ve the only situation that it hasn’t happened in my time of looking at elections is the governor race in North Carolina last year where the polls got it right on the margin.

39:55.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

But yeah, I mean, look, Mieris is favored to win a lot of Harris counties or counties that flip from Biden biden to Trump. He’s favored to win Prince Edward County by almost five points. He’s favored to win Surrey County by almost two, Virginia Beach by one and a half.

40:12.67

Chaz Nuttycombe

Stafford by almost four. Montgomery by almost one. Radford by almost two. Chesapeake, he’s up by about half a percentage point.

40:23.95

Chaz Nuttycombe

And then, you know, he’s only down half a percentage point in like James City County. So this thing is going to come down to the wire. I mean, I would be surprised if this race is called unless people are very fast with reporting results at the registrar’s offices.

40:38.90

Chaz Nuttycombe

I’d be surprised if this race is called before 9 PM or like 8 30.

40:45.23

Chaz Nuttycombe

So this thing is going to be pretty tight, I think. But yeah.

40:50.89

Sam Shirazi

All right. Yeah. I mean, statewide AG, everyone’s going to keep their eyes on that on election night. I did want to also talk about House of Delegates. I’ve said this before. It doesn’t get a lot of coverage, but I think these are super fascinating races. State Navigate does a good job covering the House of Delegates.

41:07.40

Sam Shirazi

In terms of your model, Democrats are overwhelmingly favorites to win a majority in the House of Delegates. I don’t think anyone is really, you know, sitting up thinking, are the Democrats going to win a majority? I think it’s pretty obvious the Democrats are going to win a majority.

41:19.95

Sam Shirazi

You’re giving them a 94% chance of winning the chamber with a 12% chance of a supermajority. Republicans only have a 6% chance of winning it. you You know, the the model will kind of change as the final polls are entered. So but at a time of recording, you have the Democrats flipping eight seats.

41:38.39

Sam Shirazi

And I think the question specifically in the House Delegates that I’m grappling with, you know, I’ve kind of given up doing the race specific stuff because I think some of these are just so close. And I told people, you know, I defer to you. and mean, my prediction is Democrats are going to win a majority, but go look at State Navigate and go look at Chaz for the specific projections.

41:57.83

Sam Shirazi

In some of these races, I mean, literally, you know, we know it’s probably going to come down to a few hundred votes, potentially a few dozen votes. I mean, at that point, like, how do you really project? I know you have the model, but like, like, how do you how do you pick? Because for some of these, it’s so hard to to get a sense of, okay, who’s going to pull it out by like a few hundred votes?

42:18.42

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, so look, we use a whole bunch of stuff. We use previous presidential, we use previous house, we look at fundraising, we look at trends and you know any any non-public data that kind of goes in on the back end.

42:34.96

Chaz Nuttycombe

yeah, mean, so yeah i mean I feel pretty good about the forecast, but look, I know kind of a claim to fame I have in Virginia is, oh, he got every single state, let’s say district right in the Virginia General Assembly in 2023.

42:47.28

Chaz Nuttycombe

I don’t think that’s going to happen this year. Point blank period. I don’t think I’m going to get it You know, that in this forecast I worked on with Jack, my development director, i don’t think we’re going to get 100 out of 100. And the reason why is because it’s like very hard to predict these gubernatorial years in terms of like what the electorate is going to look like, right?

43:05.59

Chaz Nuttycombe

where it’s like 2023 or like, you know, just any election where you have both the Senate and house out before that presidential, you already have like two whole elections to work with, uh, to where you’re able to see what the electorate is looking like in these, years where the presidency isn’t on the ballot. You’re able to see just how fired up the party out of power is.

43:25.25

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. and you, you want to look more on methodology. You can go to the methodology article. you know, I feel our goal. has always been from the beginning to just get 97 seats, seats. And I’m happy.

43:38.70

Chaz Nuttycombe

gubernatorial years previously, Jack and I worked on a forecast for the house and that got, uh, 2021 and that got 96, right? 2017, when I did this, it’s a hobby. I got 96, right? If I get a 97, with, or in this, you know, Jack and I get a 97 in this forecast, then we’re happy.

43:59.80

Chaz Nuttycombe

So there are like five seats that I feel like I would not be terribly surprised that they went the other way. one of them is actually Ken Taylor’s.

44:10.42

Chaz Nuttycombe

I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if she won. Democrats aren’t great at giving out black voters out of the Affematics. But Petersburg is seeming to catch up a little bit in the EV in the last stretch of this campaign.

44:23.15

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, I mean, we have, Kim Taylor with like only a 20% chance of winning 21 be exact as we’re supporting. So still a heavy underdog. But I wouldn’t be surprised despite the forecast that one going the other way, just knowing what goes on south of the Appomattox River.

44:41.19

Chaz Nuttycombe

Same thing with Carrie Poiner. She’s got Hopewell. If you read a great article I did on what I call the curse of Hopewell, it pretty much always bolts to the right, trends to the right of the state in the gubernatorial years.

44:54.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

Black voters in Hopewell just do not come out these gov years, right? Like Ralph Northam barely won Hopewell in 2017.

45:02.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

But it actually didn’t trend to the right in 2021. So maybe the curse is broken. We’ll see. We have Carrie Coiner as a slight underdog, down by two and a half, 64% chance she loses.

45:15.34

Chaz Nuttycombe

The other ones that I would not be terribly surprised they went the other way Milday, Green, and Higgins.

45:26.51

Chaz Nuttycombe

So that’s 30, 69, and 64. So they’re like, I think on a worst case scenario night, it’s kind of like, Kevin Nielsen, 2021 to where like you know we had a 5248 Republican House right became by a different path I had Rodney will it and when could I just losing. Kevin Nielsen, And then you know the forecast also showed Kim Taylor and AC cordoza losing instead all of them one. Kevin Nielsen, And we still have the 50 to 40 Republican House, but just by a different path so worst case scenario, I think our forecast only gets 95 seats right, which I would not be very happy with.

46:01.52

Chaz Nuttycombe

Kevin Nielsen, But. you know the goal is 97 that is my floor the floor i have for you know the kind of tradition i have now of like whether i get to open a nice bottle of scotch and you know i get it from scotland i was just there this summer and and picked up a bottle in glasgow and it looks delicious i only get to open the bottle if our forecast gets 97 seats right and all three statewide contest right.

46:31.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

So we’ll see if I get to open the bottle or not.

46:33.81

Sam Shirazi

Well, I hope for your sake you get to have some nice scotch on election night if your forecast doesn’t end up being correct. And yeah, so I wanted to ask you kind of a combination question because you had posted about this theory you had, and I also wanted to ask about early vote.

46:40.37

Chaz Nuttycombe

yeah

46:49.97

Sam Shirazi

So I think a lot of... you know, election forecasters and stuff are kind of stuck in 2020 when they think, you know, early vote is super Democratic and Election Day is super Republican. think every year since 2020, there’s kind of been this depolarization of voting methods.

47:06.27

Sam Shirazi

you know it’s hard I think election day is always this wild card. You don’t know who’s going to show up. 2021, there was a bit of a rural surge that really helped Yunkin win.

47:16.43

Sam Shirazi

i think there’s a possibility this year that if Democrats can get out younger voters, they can get out black voters, there could be more of a blue surge. But then again, those people might not show up because Democrats just can’t get them out.

47:29.02

Sam Shirazi

Could you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in the early vote and then what you think election day might look like?

47:35.72

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, satellite Saturday is going to coming tomorrow. Be interested to see what happens in these especially large blue localities and everything. You know, I think Democrats have a Loudoun problem, and I think they know that, particularly with Asian voters there in southeast Loudoun.

47:55.26

Chaz Nuttycombe

Question is if they come out on Election Day, maybe they come out on Election Day and the Dems are fine Loudoun. David Price- Republicans, I think, are definitely more struggling the early vote you know, despite the satellite delays in like Richmond I mean Richmond still at 63% or really day. David Price- amount votes in 2024.

48:14.34

Chaz Nuttycombe

it’s same day amount of vote in twenty twenty four That’s running just a little bit behind Hanover at 67%. The statewide average is, or so sorry, not statewide average, of statewide as a whole for same day amount of votes cast early this day in 2024, give or take a day, is 61% as it is reporting.

48:35.26

Chaz Nuttycombe

Even though there are these delays in Fairfax and Prince William, Fairfax at 56 and a half, Prince William at 57.4. But these like localities where Republicans really need good turnout are not really coming out strong. Like there aren’t any satellite delays or anything in Campbell. It’s at 59 half.

48:52.06

Chaz Nuttycombe

Andrew Bickford, Bedford 60, Roanoke 61. That’s just running even with the state. And then like you have all these Southwest counties, you know, Buchanan at 47, Dickinson 52, Wise 49, Lee 49, Scott 49, right? So you can, and then, you know, but so it’s just like these big counties that are Republican leaning, that are populous.

49:17.82

Chaz Nuttycombe

that were pretty much the reason why Yunkin won 2021, they’re not really having this EV advantage compared to this time a year ago. And look, the EV is probably on the low end, going to be like 40%. For like overall electorate, early votes probably going to be like 40% of the entire electorate.

49:39.08

Chaz Nuttycombe

I would guess probably going to be closer 44 to 46%.

49:45.12

Chaz Nuttycombe

But it’s hard, like trying to think about election day is hard. But that being said, I feel like it’s pretty ingrained that we’re going to get lower turnout compared to 2021. It could be anywhere between 46 to 53 percent.

50:02.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

If I were to guess right now, it’s a big range, but it’s just hard to think about who’s coming out on election day. And election day is going to interesting. I mean, Mieris is going to win election day, but Spanberger might. In 2024, election day was Trump plus five.

50:20.18

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, it was about 10 or 11 percent right of the statewide result. But this election day has been getting bluer and bluer as, you know, Republicans have been doing a better job at getting out their voters to vote early.

50:36.59

Chaz Nuttycombe

And keep in mind, it was like 2020 when we had the beginning of this, you know, expansion and access to early voting, right? 45 days of early voting and everything. 2024, 52% of the entire Virginia electorate voted early. Again, and when i say voted early, it’s either by in-person or by mail, early in-person or early by mail.

50:58.94

Chaz Nuttycombe

So we’re probably tracking closer to 2024, guess, because like 2021, only 36 or 37%.

51:03.70

Chaz Nuttycombe

only thirty six or thirty seven percent of the overall electorate voted early. So, yeah. And here’s the thing about election day. i mean, besides like, I’m not expecting like enormous turnout on like 2021.

51:18.24

Chaz Nuttycombe

But what what I think is going to be interesting just something that kind of popped in my head is like, there are more low and mid propensity Democrats than there are Republicans in Virginia, right?

51:31.61

Chaz Nuttycombe

That’s just fact. But Republicans have done a better job of getting their low and mid prop voters out to vote early. But I think they have kind of a structural advantage and that they have had a a motivating reason for these folks to come out and vote early because of Biden.

51:52.10

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. Through twenty twenty one through twenty twenty four. It’s like, hey, let’s go stick at the Biden. Come out and go early. Right. And so it’s like those Democrats, those low mid prop Democrats who are probably.

52:06.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

i don’t know how much of the overall electorate they’re going to make up, but, you know, questions whether they come out, they didn’t really have a reason to come out to vote in 2021 through 2023. Maybe they came out for one two at the most or maybe none.

52:21.94

Chaz Nuttycombe

And maybe some of them didn’t even come out in 2024 because they’re like, well, I don’t want to vote for Kamala because Kamala’s just Biden, right? I think that’s fair. And so question is whether they come out this year.

52:35.51

Chaz Nuttycombe

Those folks who haven’t come out since like 2020 and early voting in person and all this is new to them. They’re like, okay, I early voted during mail or by mail in 2020 because of COVID, right?

52:47.46

Chaz Nuttycombe

Are they going to come out on election day as they did before? Like, are they pissed off with Trump to where they’re like, well, I guess I got to go vote. now right i’m interested to see if that’s the case because that would kind of turn the whole narrative in lessons of last year of like higher turnout benefits republicans right which i think there is a very very uh there’s a lot of concrete evidence for that right but i’m wondering if those people get off the sidelines come out if they don’t i think it is an indictment of the coordinated campaign uh virginia

53:22.26

Chaz Nuttycombe

because you would think they would have a better time at getting them out by election day. But yeah, so but you know, look, on election day, we’re gonna dial up the registrars, me and my, my good friend and our political, or sorry, our data science chair, Charlie Kramer, gonna dial up the registrars and tracking turnout.

53:46.84

Chaz Nuttycombe

In some places by the precinct level, most places just by the county level. And so we’ll have a sheet. I’m going to be doing a YouTube live stream throughout the day. going to call it Nuttycomb Watch, you know, and we’ll be talking about, you know, votes as they come in throughout the day and trying to look at, okay, what does this mean for a few hours from now on the polls close?

54:09.19

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, well, I mean, I know you’re probably the most invaluable resource on Election Day. I mean, most of what I’ll be doing is just posting what you post because I think, you know, you know this stuff inside out. I think we’re really going to have some interesting in election days. Always interesting. There’s always a lot of speculation. We’ll obviously get the results on election night.

54:28.87

Sam Shirazi

I guess the last question i have, and I really appreciate you taking the time to go over this. I think this is you know super, super interesting stuff. I mean, what are kind of some things you’re looking for on election night and or kind of what are like last thoughts you want to share before you know we get the results on Tuesday night?

54:44.12

Chaz Nuttycombe

look maybe if you do not have state navigate on your screen you’re going to be behind i promise you cross my heart hope to die you’re going to left behind with uh knowing who won i feel good about our ability to confidently and quickly call the races uh for the winners of election night we have a lot of great interactives to where you’re going to be able to see you know, the live projected art margin, current margin, all that sort of thing that our development director, Jack Kirsten, has been working on.

55:18.97

Chaz Nuttycombe

And yeah, I mean, that’s that’s really it. Please come to the site and look, I would very much appreciate it. You know, if your audience has been enjoying the work that State Navigate’s been doing, please donate. It’s tax deductible.

55:37.10

Chaz Nuttycombe

And most importantly, it’ll help go to buying all of our staff pizza on election night. For those who have been following my stuff since the scene analysis days 2021, you know, the the pitch has always been like, buy us a pizza we can get from a room back when I was in college.

55:56.18

Chaz Nuttycombe

And now, you know, I’ve got a staff all over the country. So it’s like, All right, well, going to buy everybody pizza. So please donate to State Navigate. It’ll go to that.

56:07.02

Chaz Nuttycombe

And, you know, we are staffed and working very hard on this election. We’ve been working hard in these other states that we’re going to be looking at next year and working hard at getting out these other states over the next several months.

56:22.64

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, well, I definitely second that. And I second going to State Navigate, checking out all the resources, following Chaz. Really, really great resources. So Chaz, thanks so much for joining us and giving us your final thoughts before the election.

56:35.73

Chaz Nuttycombe

Thanks so much for having me on, Sam.

56:37.44

Sam Shirazi

All right. 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 the 2025 Virginia Election. This is a bonus episode where we will go over the final campaign finance reports before the election. And the reason that there was these reports is so that the public can know how much money the campaigns have raised, how much they’ve spent.

00:16.97

Sam Shirazi

And it covers the period of October 1st through October 23rd. I’m going to go through all the statewide offices, then I’ll spend some time on the House of Delegates, Primarily, I will focus on the House of Delegates and the Attorney General race because i think that’s where there was the most interesting campaign finance information.

00:34.23

Sam Shirazi

And then I also wanted to think through, you know, what is the point of all this money? What are the campaigns trying to accomplish? And I will say for the Attorney General and House of Delegates races, it’s all about ticket splitting and the campaigns trying to either increase ticket splitting or minimize ticket splitting.

00:48.94

Sam Shirazi

And I’ll talk about both those strategies in the Attorney General race and House of Delegates. But to begin, let’s start with the governor’s race, because obviously that’s the big big race on election night.

01:00.02

Sam Shirazi

And I’ll go through the numbers, and I’ll talk a little bit about what it might mean. So in terms of fundraising, Abigail Spanberger still had the edge, but when some Earl Sears narrowed it, this report, Spanberger raised about a little over $11.7 million, whereas Earl Sears raised about $9.5 million.

01:18.44

Sam Shirazi

Spanberger has more cash on hand, so she has $4 million cash on hand compared to $1.25 million for Earl Sears. And then finally, Spanberger spent more than Earl Sears. She spent about $13 million, whereas Earl Sears spent about $9.9 million.

01:32.24

Sam Shirazi

So obviously, consistently throughout this race, Spanberger has been leading in the money, and even in this last campaign finance report, Spanberger is ahead. However, Earl Sears has made up ground, and this looks better for her than previous campaign finance reports.

01:46.26

Sam Shirazi

You could argue it’s a little bit too little too late. Obviously, it helps Earl Sears that she has this money and she’s been running more ads. But frankly, for most of September and even earlier, Spanberger was really dominating the airwaves and Spanberger had a bigger war chest. She was able to go up earlier.

02:02.86

Sam Shirazi

Yeah. and earl sears has been catching up the whole time now you could argue this report is maybe showing that the republicans are taking the governor’s race a little bit more seriously i don’t know it’s cause they think they’re going to win the governor’s race i think it’s more so that it isn’t a total blowout at the top of the ticket and obviously that’s going to be important for the attorney general race that’s going to be important for some of these house of delegates candidates So you are seeing the Republicans spending more money on Earl Sears in the hopes that it isn’t a blowout at the top of the ticket.

02:31.78

Sam Shirazi

Again, you could argue maybe it’s a little bit too little too late. Spanberger obviously still has more money. She’s running more ads generally during the the entire campaign cycle. And I think if you if you think about the money that Spanberger has, she still is trying to reach those independent voters. You know, Earl Sears, it’s a little bit unclear what her strategy has been.

02:53.75

Sam Shirazi

First, she was talking about the trans issue. Then she was talking about the Jay Jones text. You know, unclear if any of those really stuck. I think there have been some pieces where she’s trying to reach independent voters.

03:05.09

Sam Shirazi

But because of Spanberger lead in terms of the money and her going up early and consistently in all the polls, Spanberger has been ahead with independent voters. And I think the governor’s race, it’s one of those things where,

03:17.61

Sam Shirazi

Spanberger still enjoys the campaign finance advantage and Earl Sears just cannot make up that gap in terms of the polling, given that she’s behind in the money, given the environment. So all that’s to say is like, obviously, the Republicans are probably taking the governor’s race a little bit more seriously now.

03:33.59

Sam Shirazi

But, you know, I just don’t know if it’s ultimately going to change the outcome. And if you think about it from a Republican standpoint, I mean, the point of the governor’s race is not necessarily to win it. I think the point is to get Earl Sears to within maybe seven, six points of Spanberger.

03:48.07

Sam Shirazi

That would be a good night for the Republicans. And that’s kind of the range where... Miara’s might be able to hang on. I think if Earl Sears is losing by 10 or more, I think that’s the range where Jones definitely can pull it off. So the Republicans, they’re starting to spend big in the governor’s race.

04:03.67

Sam Shirazi

I think more so to maybe help Miara’s at the attorney general spot. And we’ll talk about the attorney general spot in a second. I did want to just quickly go over the lieutenant governor’s race. Not as interesting just because the money is not as big, but I’ll just go over it.

04:16.76

Sam Shirazi

Ghazala Hashmi, the Democratic nominee. Still enjoys the fundraising advantage. She raised about $1.85 million, whereas Jean-Reed has been far behind. He raised about $454,000.

04:28.25

Sam Shirazi

Reed does have more cash on hand, but that’s because Hashimi spent a lot more money. So Reed has about $350,000 cash on hand compared to $335,000 for Hashimi. But Hashimi had a bigger war chest. She basically spent all her war chests, which makes sense because it’s the end of the campaign and she wants to run her ads.

04:46.03

Sam Shirazi

Hashmi spent about $4.6 million compared to just $491,000 for John Reed. And this has been pretty consistent where Hashmi’s had the fundraising advantage. John Reed’s just never really been great at raising money.

04:57.77

Sam Shirazi

you know He’s pretty good at getting earned media, but it’s not the same as running ads. Hashmi spent her war chest. she’s not but She’s not running as many ads as these other candidates, but she’s certainly running a decent amount of ads for herself. So Overall, I mean, I think the main advantage, I mean, Hashmi does have the fundraising advantage. I think the main advantage Hashmi has is that top of a ticket Spamburger is going to win by decent amount. Hashmi doesn’t have the issues that Jay Jones has. So I think while she’s not polling as well as Spamburger, a lot of that is just name ID. And I think at the end of the day, but

05:28.54

Sam Shirazi

Unless something crazy happens, Hashmi should be able to pull it out. you know Fundraising helps a little bit, but ultimately the main advantage that Hashmi has is her top of the ticket versus John Reed’s top of the ticket. So not a lot else to say for the lieutenant governor’s race.

05:42.66

Sam Shirazi

I did want to spend a lot of time on the attorney general race because that’s the most interesting race in terms of being the most competitive of the statewide offices on election night, as well as interesting numbers in the fundraising category.

05:55.55

Sam Shirazi

So not a huge surprise. After the Jay Jones tech story came out, Jason Miara has got a bunch of money. The Republicans were willing to spend a lot on him. And in October, just up until October 23rd, Jason Miara has raised over $8.6 million.

06:12.01

Sam Shirazi

And that compares to just around $1.9 million for Jay Jones. Uh, Meares also has more cash on hand. He has about 2.5 million cash on hand compared to about 685,000 for Jones.

06:25.67

Sam Shirazi

And even, even though Meares has more cash on hand, he also spent more. So we’re seeing a lot of Meares ads because he spent 9.5 million compared to about 4.7 million for Jones. Now Jones did have a little bit of a war chest. So he’s also spending his war chest. It’s not like there are no Jay Jones ads. He’s running his ads, but ultimately In this race, obviously, Miárez has the advantage.

06:47.40

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, the Republicans are pouring a lot of money in to try to save Miárez. And we’ll see how much of a difference it makes. And I talked about the point of the money in this race. For Miárez, it really just comes down to ticket splitting. And his goal is to get people who voted for Spanberger at the top the ticket to vote for him.

07:05.21

Sam Shirazi

In the attorney general race, obviously, Jay Jones has the opposite goal. He wants to make sure that people who voted for Spamberger vote for him in the attorney general race. And it’s kind of an open question how much the money is going to matter. i mean, obviously, Meares having the cash means he can run his ads. He can kind of remind voters of the story. He can push the story out to more voters.

07:24.36

Sam Shirazi

But the reality is... A lot of voters already are aware of it. They are probably going to make their mind based on other factors, such as whether they want to send a message about President Trump.

07:36.32

Sam Shirazi

And you know the fundamental dynamics of the race are the same. It’s basically...

07:40.80

Sam Shirazi

What’s more important to voters? yeah Are the tax more important or is Trump more important? And I think while the money can help Meares try to boost up his numbers a little bit, it’s unclear if at the end of the day, people will go into the polling booth and vote for Spanberger at the top of the ticket and Meares in the attorney general spot. Of course, there will be some ticket splitting. The question is how much.

08:01.50

Sam Shirazi

And I think both Jones and Meares are kind of stuck in the higher quality nonpartisan polling at around 45, 46 percent. So you see that they are getting a decent amount of support from the base of their party.

08:14.23

Sam Shirazi

The question is those undecideds who haven’t necessarily backed one of the candidates or the other, what do they do? Do they split their ticket? Do they vote straight ticket? Do they undervote, which basically means they skip that race?

08:25.83

Sam Shirazi

I think those are all possibilities. I think there’s a lot of different factors you have to look at. you have to look at turnout. you have to look at how much of the exact combination of straight ticket versus ticket splitting versus undervotes there’s going to be.

08:37.39

Sam Shirazi

And so all that makes this race inherently unpredictable. I don’t think either of the candidates are going to have a clear advantage going into election day. I think it’s just one of those things we’re going to have to wait and see. And while there might not be a whole lot of suspense on election night with the governor’s race at the top the ticket, I do think a Attorney General’s race is going to be very interesting.

08:55.55

Sam Shirazi

And it’s also just kind of a test of the environment versus a candidate-specific issue. Because if you look at the specific issues for the candidates, obviously, Meares is a fundraiser. Jay Jones had those.

09:06.38

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, Meares has... Obviously, Miara’s has the fundraising advantage. He has incumbency. He has the issues that Jay Jones has with the tax. So a lot of things going Miara’s way. The question becomes,

09:17.43

Sam Shirazi

OK, is that enough to overcome the overall environment where Trump is unpopular? More more people disapprove of Trump in Virginia than approve of him. Spanberger is going to win by a decent amount at the top of the ticket. OK, is that enough for Joy Jones owes to hang on? And really, there’s no way of knowing. We’ll find out in less than a week when the results start coming in. But yeah, anyway, so interesting numbers in the attorney general race.

09:42.52

Sam Shirazi

I did want to spend a decent amount of time on the House of Delegates because, again, i think the House of Delegates are often overlooked. Most people are focusing on the statewide offices, particularly Governor and Attorney General. However, as we saw this week with redistricting, so the General Assembly came back to Richmond. They started the process of potentially amending the Virginia Constitution and putting a referendum on the ballot.

10:02.99

Sam Shirazi

That is primarily or almost exclusively in the purview of the state Senate and the House of Delegates. So the House of Delegates are important for that amendment, for other amendments that might happen in the future. They’re important for regular old bills.

10:15.58

Sam Shirazi

And I do think because there’s so much attention to the governor and attorney general race, the House Delegates is not getting a lot of attention. But the numbers were really striking in this fundraising a report in the House of Delegates. So in terms of the overall fundraising, the candidates Democrats are running versus the candidates Republicans are running.

10:32.30

Sam Shirazi

The Democratic candidates raised over $21.7 million. dollars So huge, huge haul for the Democrats in the House of Delegates, whereas the Republican candidates only raised a little over $6.7 million.

10:44.81

Sam Shirazi

So we’re seeing that the Democrats in the House of Delegates have raised more than three times the amount that the Republicans have raised. Some of these competitive battleground districts where the Democrats are trying to beat incumbent Republicans, just crazy amounts of money being raised in the 30th House district.

11:02.43

Sam Shirazi

The Democrat John McAuliffe has raised over two million dollars. In the 22nd House District, Elizabeth Guzman has raised over $1.6 million. In the 71st House District, Jessica Anderson has raised over $1.5 million.

11:15.73

Sam Shirazi

And basically, it’s kind of the same story. Those were the biggest numbers, but basically every single seat the Democrats are targeting, trying to defeat incumbent Republicans, they have raised more in this campaign finance report.

11:27.42

Sam Shirazi

And you know they’re definitely on the offense. They’re trying to get as many seats as possible. I think they want to send a message in terms of beating a lot of incumbent Republicans. And, you know, I talked about this before. I think the issue the Republicans are having is that Meares is sucking up a lot of the fundraising and the oxygen. And so if you’re a Republican donor, you’re thinking about saving the attorney general spot.

11:48.88

Sam Shirazi

Basically, that’s only a thing the Republicans have a good shot of winning this year. And so he’s getting a lot of fundraising. These House of Delegates candidates are not getting a lot of fundraising. Now, you could argue the amount of money the Republicans are spending at the governor’s race and that the attorney general race is going to help down ballot, because obviously, if Earl Sears is not getting blown out and then Miara is either wins or keeps it close, that’s probably going to help the House of Delegates candidates down ballot. So you could argue it kind of makes sense.

12:15.48

Sam Shirazi

if you think about, you know, what what are the Democrats trying to achieve with all this spending, it’s kind of the exact same thing that Meares is trying to achieve, except the other way. So,

12:25.16

Sam Shirazi

Spanberger, she’s going to be doing well at the top the ticket. I expect that she’s going to be winning most of the competitive battleground seats in the House of Delegates. What the Democrats are hoping to do is just get straight but straight ticket voting. just You fill out Spanberger and you fill out everyone else in the bubble, including the House of Delegates candidates.

12:43.21

Sam Shirazi

Republicans obviously are hoping that even if Spanberger wins these districts at the top of the ticket, they can get their incumbents to survive through ticket splitting. And it’s an open question. I mean, I think obviously money helps. If you can run ads, you’re going to raise your name ID. You could try to attack the Republicans in some of these districts.

12:59.68

Sam Shirazi

That’s going to minimize ticket splitting. The question is, can the Democrats get enough? Does the map money really matter? How many candidates? how many Voters are really focusing on the House of Delegates races to the extent that they’re either going to ticket split or to the extent that they they’re not not going ticket split.

13:16.22

Sam Shirazi

So again, House of Delegates, super interesting because there’s so many of these individual races and it’s just a really interesting dynamic. And one thing I was surprised about was the fact that basically every...

13:27.45

Sam Shirazi

Republican but incumbent got some money. And I don’t think the Republicans, quote unquote, triaged anyone because i think their attitude was if you’re an incumbent Republican, you decide to run again. Even if you’re in a tough race, we’re going to be willing to back you.

13:40.99

Sam Shirazi

And so I’ve talked about House District 57. This is in the Richmond suburbs. Democrats are very likely going to flip this seat. However, the incumbent Republican, David Owens, still got $423,000 in October, which was really surprising to me because that’s more than some of the other incumbents in tough races.

13:56.65

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, May Navarro, the Democratic nominee, still outraised him. I think the reality is that unless something crazy happens, she’s going to win. And so you’re seeing the Republicans still spending in that race. And, you know, you could say it might not make a whole lot of sense. But I think from the Republican perspective, they don’t want to necessarily cut anyone loose.

14:15.16

Sam Shirazi

And it’s tough. It’s tough when you’re an incumbent and you’re expecting support from the party, even if you’re in a tough race. So anyways, that’s the House of Delegates. I mean, i think a lot of people, particularly the election nerds, are going to be looking at, okay, what’s the final margin at the top of the ticket?

14:31.02

Sam Shirazi

And then how many seats can the Democrats get up to? I think i think the Democrats are probably – Hoping to get 60. I think 60 psychologically is a big number. If they can flip nine seats, get up to 60, I think they can say that they had a really good night in the House of Delegates.

14:46.100

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, Republicans are trying to minimize their losses, try to keep the chamber competitive. Even if it doesn’t flip in 2027, maybe they can hope to flip it in 2029. And yeah, we’ll we’ll see.

14:58.11

Sam Shirazi

i think it’s these campaign finance numbers kind of confirm what we already knew for the governor’s race. Spanberger has the advantage and Earl Sears is trying to play catch up, but it might just be a little bit too late to really change the outcome in that race.

15:13.45

Sam Shirazi

Lieutenant Governor Hashmi has more money. Generally, she’s going to benefit from straight ticket voting. And so she’ll she’ll probably end up being able to be winning that race after Spanberger is able to win at the top of the ticket, if that’s what ends up happening. Attorney General race, Republicans really spending a lot trying to save Meares. We’ll see if he’s able to do that or if Jay Jones is able to survive through straight ticket voting.

15:36.11

Sam Shirazi

House of Delegates, consistently the the Democrats have had a big advantage. We’ll see if it actually gets translated into actual seats. All the money gets translated into seats. So Long story short, fundraising, super interesting, but kind of confirms what we know. Interesting to see the actual numbers and see it on paper.

15:54.39

Sam Shirazi

But yeah, I mean, ultimately, we are about, you know, six days out. And it’s going to be really interesting to see what ends up happening on election night. I’m going to try to cover everything.

16:05.96

Sam Shirazi

I mean, there’s so much going on. There’s redistricting, there’s the shutdown, you know, and there there’s all these polls coming out and I can’t even cover every single poll because that would just be too much. I will try to do some more podcasts before the election just to give people a sense of where everything is going, what I’m seeing.

16:22.93

Sam Shirazi

You know, I gave you my update now with both campaign finance and where I think the state of the race is in these different campaigns. Appreciate everyone who’s been listening. There’s been a lot going on. Hopefully this is helpful.

16:35.05

Sam Shirazi

you know Feel free to follow me on social media for all the updates. So much going on in the Virginia elections. It’s been a wild ride, and I think it’s going to be a wild end and really interesting to see what happens on the final days on the campaign trail.

16:47.66

Sam Shirazi

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 am Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout to 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over the House of Delegates and just take a look at the seats that might flip on election night.

00:11.78

Sam Shirazi

Now, to be perfectly honest, I have not spent a lot of time recently on the House of Delegates because there’s been so much else going on. particularly with the attorney general race. And then there’s been the shutdown, which is pretty crazy to think the shutdown still going on. And you know I don’t even have time to talk about it. I’m sure i will talk about it if it’s continuing in another episode.

00:28.66

Sam Shirazi

But this episode, I really did want to focus on the House of Delegates because it just doesn’t get a lot of attention in terms of the national and the state media, because there’s just so much focus that the on the statewide races.

00:40.39

Sam Shirazi

But all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up for re-election. Democrats currently hold a 51-49 majority. There are a lot of really interesting races. I think in some ways for the political nerds, this is kind of the most interesting part of the campaign because there’s 100 different elections.

00:55.14

Sam Shirazi

Realistically, there aren’t going to be that many competitive races. And I’m going to mainly focus on the races the Democrats are trying to flip this year in Virginia. I will not be making predictions in every single House of Delegates race. I may tip my hand who I think has the advantage To be perfectly honest, I tend to defer to Chaz Natty-Comb and State Navigate on the House Delegates stuff because he did a really good job in 2023.

01:18.85

Sam Shirazi

He predicted all 100 seats in the House of Delegates so and all 40 seats in the state Senate. He has a model and State Navigate has a model. So I would recommend everyone take a look at that.

01:29.42

Sam Shirazi

you know In terms of individual predictions, I would kind of defer to that. Again, I will tip my hand a little bit. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to say that the Democrats are very favored to hold their majority in the House of Delegates.

01:41.44

Sam Shirazi

To be perfectly honest, Republicans are not even competing in half the districts or seriously competing in half the districts. They’re only really attempting to compete in 50 of the districts. There’s one Democratic seat held seat that the Republicans are competing and in. That’s House District 97. I think unless there’s a red wave, which you know right now seems relatively unlikely, I think the Democrats should be able to hold that seat.

02:04.64

Sam Shirazi

So I’m going to mainly focus on the seats the Democrats are targeting. They already have a 51-49 majority. I think there’s a good chance their majority is going to expand. I think the good, the big question is how many seats do they pick up? Do they pick up a couple seats? They pick up five seats. They pick up 10 seats. I think that’s really hard to know. A lot of that will depend on the top of the ticket.

02:23.42

Sam Shirazi

There’s obviously no way of knowing that right now. you know We just have to wait and see how much the Spanburger win by and how much ticket splitting is there. And then in some of these seats, there’s also going to be a turnout dynamic in terms of younger voters, in terms of black voters. So I will talk about each race. I’ll spend some more time on the more interesting races. I think, frankly, some of these are are less interesting, either because they’re not going be super competitive or just because there isn’t a whole lot to say.

02:49.84

Sam Shirazi

I’ll start off with the seats the Democrats are more likely to flip, and then I will go to kind of the toss-up seats that it’s a little bit unclear who has the advantage right now, and then I’ll end with the districts the Republicans are more favored to retain.

03:03.58

Sam Shirazi

All right, so to begin, i will start with House District 57. This is in the Richmond suburbs. This is currently held by Republican David Owen. It is about a Harris plus nine district.

03:16.48

Sam Shirazi

And I believe that Abigail Spanberger lives in this district. So, you know, this is the part of Virginia that the Republicans are going to have a huge problem on election night with, you know, David Owen, he’s trying his best, but I think the Democrat Maine Navarre has raised a lot more money. You know, she’s got a lot of backing, uh,

03:34.44

Sam Shirazi

you know if If seats are starting to flip, this is going to be the first leap to flip. And I think there’s a decent chance or more than a decent chance that the Democrats are going to pick up this seat. So you know right off the bat, I think Democrats are going to pick up at least this one seat. If if that happens, you know obviously it’s going to be very hard for them to not get the majority in the House of Delegates or or for the Republicans to flip the House of Delegates. So part of the reason that they’re so favored in the House of Delegates to retain the majority is because they are favored to flip this seat. And so if you’re already flipping a seat, you know there’s really no way for the Republicans to get a majority.

04:04.23

Sam Shirazi

So all that’s to say is House District 57. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it because, frankly, there’s not a whole lot to say other than the Democrats are pretty favored to flip it right now. Okay, let’s talk about another district. This is House District 71.

04:17.93

Sam Shirazi

This is in the Williamsburg area. The current incumbent is Amanda Batten, and she is being challenged by Jessica Anderson. So this was about a Harris plus 5% district.

04:28.41

Sam Shirazi

I think Spanberger is a good fit for the district. I think she’s going to be winning the district pretty comfortably. i think there isn’t going to be a whole lot of ticket splitting or enough to save Amanda Batten. So again, if there are seats flipping, I think this is probably the second seat to flip on election night.

04:43.29

Sam Shirazi

So we’re already seeing if there’s kind of even a normal type election, not a huge wave, Democrats are going to flip these two seats pretty easily. I think if Spanberger is winning by at least five or more,

04:54.35

Sam Shirazi

at the top of the ticket. All right, now let’s move on to a different district. These next batches of districts, I would say that these are more, I don’t want to say toss-ups because I think some of the parties might have a slight advantage in each one, but I could see them going either way. And it really depends how good of a night Democrats have. I think if they have maybe...

05:12.54

Sam Shirazi

you know, a normal night, not a huge win. I think some of these seats, the Republicans can definitely hold on to them. I think if there’s a blue wave, these are the types of seats where it’s going to be very difficult for the Republicans to hang on in a blue wave environment.

05:25.94

Sam Shirazi

And I’ll start with House District 89. This is in Hampton Roads. The current Republican incumbent is retiring. And so I think that’s one of the reasons Democrats might have an advantage in this district. It was about a Harris plus 3% district, and it’s about 25% Black The one thing I will flag with this district, African-American turnout, black turnout in Hampton Roads is a big question mark for the Democrats. So if for whatever reason, Democrats cannot get those voters out, I do think there’s a scenario where the Republicans are going to be able to maintain this district.

05:55.71

Sam Shirazi

However, if you kind of have a normal election, Democrats are getting out, the voters to a certain extent, you know I can see this seat definitely flipping. All right, now let’s go to a another district with a decent amount of African-American voters. This is House District 82. It is in Petersburg and some of the surrounding suburbs.

06:13.81

Sam Shirazi

The district is actually... more than 45% Black. So I think that’s definitely going to be an important factor. How much turnout do Democrats get with Black voters? It voted for Harris by about 4%. The Republican incumbent is Kim Taylor.

06:27.22

Sam Shirazi

She is being challenged by Kimberly Pope Adams, who also ran in this seat in 2023. i think, again, this is really a turnout dynamic race, and it’s going to be very hard to predict who’s going to be able to win this seat, partly because I think it’s just...

06:41.65

Sam Shirazi

you know In theory, the Democrats on a good night should be able to win this seat, but I can see this scenario, even if Spanberger is getting a pretty healthy win where for whatever reason, Democrats are just not coming out in this district. I could, in theory, see Kim Taylor holding on.

06:55.45

Sam Shirazi

So again, i don’t want to make a prediction, but I do think in terms of what to be looking for, it’s kind of a turnout dynamic in this district in Southside and Petersburg. All right, now I’m going to talk about the neighboring district, which is House District 75. This is in Hopewell and then parts of Chesterfield County.

07:14.34

Sam Shirazi

Again, a district with a large Black population. It’s about a third Black. The current Republican incumbent is Carrie Coyner, and she is being challenged by Democrat Lindsey Daughtry.

07:25.48

Sam Shirazi

I think this is another one of those districts where It really depends about on turnout for Democrats with African-American voters. I think they know that. I think they’ve been focusing more on that this time than they did in 2023 because they kind of half-heartedly targeted this seat in 2023. I think obviously this time they’re taking it much more seriously. They’re putting a lot of money into this district.

07:44.70

Sam Shirazi

As a side note, just wanted to – Carrie Coiner, you may have heard her name in the news because – She was the Republican delegate that Jay Jones had sent those texts to. And so you’ve seen her in the news.

07:56.85

Sam Shirazi

you I don’t know how that is going to factor into this election, whether it’s going to factor into the election. Again, you know she’s hoping to get ticket splitting. I don’t know if that’s going to happen for various reasons.

08:09.37

Sam Shirazi

The thing that’s a little bit weird about this district is I can see the Democrats doing really well or doing better in the Chesterfield part of the district than they have in the past because it’s more suburban. but then turnout in the Hopewell part of the district not being that great for Democrats.

08:22.69

Sam Shirazi

So again, it’s kind of a turnout dynamic in this district, and it’s really hard to tell who’s going to be able to pull it out. you know I think if the Democrats have a good night and they’ve spent the money in this district, I think there’s a good chance they could flip it. If it’s more of a kind of neutral environment, then I think there is a scenario where Kerry Poirier could hang on.

08:41.73

Sam Shirazi

Okay, now let’s go down to Southwest Virginia, different part of Virginia, but a similar turnout dynamic. This time the turnout is with younger so younger voters, particularly students who go to Virginia Tech. So the Republican incumbent is...

08:56.66

Sam Shirazi

Chris Obenshain, he is running again against Lilly Franklin, and they faced off in 2023. The thing with this district, it’s actually a Trump district. So Trump won it.

09:06.82

Sam Shirazi

It’s a little bit hard to know the exact margin, but he won it by about three to 4%. I think the reason Democrats feel like they could win this seat, because it really does come down to students showing up. If students show up, particularly if they are able to come out on election day, Virginia has same day registration. If you’re seeing those students excited about voting, you see them come out.

09:26.95

Sam Shirazi

This is the type of seat that could flip. Lily Franklin has run before. She knows how to get those students out. It’s just, can she get and enough of those voters out? Again, purely going to come down to turnout,

09:38.51

Sam Shirazi

the seat is very oddly drawn as I’ve talked about. It’s basically the college town of Blacksburg and then a bunch of rural areas who is better at getting out their base. Really no way of knowing that until the votes come in. The one thing I will flag about this race, because students can same-day register, I do think there’s going to be a same a decent amount of provisional ballots because same-day registrations are counted as provisionals.

09:59.95

Sam Shirazi

So we may not know on election night who wins because the provisionals take several days to count. So just flagging that, even if the Republicans are ahead election night, doesn’t mean they’re going to win because there could be enough same-day registrations to give Lily Franklin the edge.

10:13.60

Sam Shirazi

All right, now let’s move back to Hampton Roads and this time talk about House District 86. I talked about this in my previous episode because State Navigate very helpfully did a poll in this district.

10:25.94

Sam Shirazi

And it found that the Democrat was up in this district. So the Republican incumbent is AC Cardoza. He has not necessarily the strongest incumbent. The Democrat is Virgil Thornton.

10:36.78

Sam Shirazi

I think it was roughly a Harris 1.5% district. is turnout thing. again this ist turnout thing The district is about 25% black. that The voters for Democrats there are in the city of Hampton.

10:50.24

Sam Shirazi

Can they get those voters out on election day? And, you know, the Republican turnout in the city of Pocosin, which is a very red district, tends to be stronger. Is this going to be the scenario where maybe the turnout is enough to save Cardoza? Democrats are pouring a lot of money into this race. you know The State Navigate poll seems to say that Democrats have a good chance of winning it.

11:10.13

Sam Shirazi

So again, a lot of these districts, it really does come down to turnout, either with younger voters or with black voters. A lot of the districts I flag so far, it’s hard for me to pick a winner because it really just comes down to

11:23.14

Sam Shirazi

And if you look at every single district I talked about for the past few ones, House District 89, House District 82, House District 75, House District 41, House District 86, those are basically turnout type districts. I mean, there is going to be a little bit of persuasion and ticket splitting dynamic, but really it just comes down to do Democrats get those voters out?

11:44.33

Sam Shirazi

Because if the Democrats can’t get the voters out in those districts, it’s not going to matter. They’re not going to be able to win. And I think that’s going to be the difference between a blue wave and a normal Democratic victory. victory And in 2023, you know, the Democrats did pretty well. They flipped. They were able to win both chambers of the House of the General Assembly, both the state Senate and House Delegates, but they didn’t get this massive blue wave because some of the turnout just wasn’t there for some of those districts.

12:09.42

Sam Shirazi

So maybe we’ll see if this year they can flip these now that there might be a more favorable environment. All right. Now I will be talking about a few different districts. Most of these are basically persuasion type districts. so what’s the difference?

12:23.98

Sam Shirazi

difference is these are more suburban districts. People are going to come out because they’re college educated, they’re wealthier. The real question in a lot of these districts is ticket splitting because most of these districts, Spanburgers should be able to win them.

12:36.88

Sam Shirazi

The question becomes, okay, if Spanberger is winning, how much ticket splitting is there going to be? Because typically, if you think about the Spanberger House of Delegates ticket splitter, it’s kind of a traditional Republican voter who either doesn’t like Trump or maybe just likes Spanberger because she seems more moderate.

12:55.05

Sam Shirazi

But they they kind of traditionally have voted for the Republicans, specifically for the House of Delegates. So I could see a decent amount of ticket splitting in these races. And again, it’s hard to know who’s going to win because we just don’t know how much ticket splitting there’s going to be right now.

13:09.04

Sam Shirazi

And the first district I will talk about is House District 22. This is in middle Prince William County in Northern Virginia. The incumbent is Ian Lovejoy, and the Democrat is Elizabeth Guzman. I think the thing that’s going be interesting in this district is just to think through, okay Is Elizabeth Guzman maybe a little bit too progressive for this district? Because she’s definitely known for being a progressive Democrat. Now, maybe that’ll motivate Democratic voters to come out and you know vote for her, to knock doors for her.

13:36.49

Sam Shirazi

But I do think there’s a potential for some more ticket splitting here because she is, again, more of a progressive Democrat. And maybe if you are a moderate swing voter in the district, you you may vote for Spamberger at the top of the ticket.

13:48.13

Sam Shirazi

but you’ll vote for Lovejoy for the House delegates. And this is a district that Harris won in 2024. However, for the House vote, the Republican House candidate in House District 10 in 2024 was able to win this district. So we have seen some ticket splitting last year in this district, and we’ll see if it happens again.

14:07.36

Sam Shirazi

Okay, next district I will talk about is House District 30. thirty This is in Western Loudoun and Western Falkir. The current incumbent is Gary Higgins.

14:18.10

Sam Shirazi

He is being challenged by Democrat John McAuliffe. And again, one of those districts, suburban, kind of going into more exurban parts of Northern Virginia, typically has been a Republican district. I think there’s a decent chance Spanberger is going to win this district.

14:33.13

Sam Shirazi

Question is how much ticket splitting does McAuliffe get and and does Higgins get because I could see some voters spilling their ticket. But then again, maybe voters in Northern Virginia will go just straight Democratic on the ticket. So another really interesting race in Northern Virginia.

14:52.81

Sam Shirazi

I will talk about one other Northern Virginia seat, and that is House District 64. That is in Middle Stafford County. The current incumbent Republican is Paul Milday, and he is being challenged by Stacey Carroll.

15:06.51

Sam Shirazi

This was a slightly Trump district. Again, Northern Virginia, federal fallout, suburban district. People traditionally have voted for the democrat for the Republicans. excuse me And I think, again, good chance that Spanberger is going to win this district.

15:21.99

Sam Shirazi

Question comes down and to ticket splitting and can the Republicans hold on in this district? OK, one more district in terms of kind of the toss up type districts. that I will talk about, and that’s House District 69.

15:35.74

Sam Shirazi

This is back down in Hampton Roads in the York area, in York County. Again, this has been a traditionally Republican part of Hampton Roads. The current incumbent Republican is Chad Green. He is being challenged by Mark Downey.

15:50.74

Sam Shirazi

Slightly, think, a 1% or 2% Trump district in 2024.

15:55.72

Sam Shirazi

So same story. I think there’s a decent chance Spamberger is going to win at the top of the ticket. How much ticket splitting is there? Is it possible for the Republican delegate to hold on here? So basically all those districts that I talked about, the last few ones are basically kind of toss up type districts where it really just comes down to persuasion and ticket splitting at the House of Delegates level. So Actually, I forgot to do one more. I mean, there’s so many of these seats the Democrats are targeting.

16:24.91

Sam Shirazi

I’ll talk about this last one, which is a similar type district, which is House District 73. This is in the Richmond suburbs in Chesterfield County. and The current Republican incumbent is Mark Early, and he is being challenged by Leslie Mehta.

16:39.13

Sam Shirazi

I think Harris very slightly carried this district. And as as I was saying before, I forgot to include this district. Same story. Just you know traditionally Republican voters. I think Spanberger is going to be doing well in the 73rd district as well because she used to represent Chesterfield. She comes from the Richmond suburb.

16:55.44

Sam Shirazi

So question just becomes, you know, I’m kind of a broken record, but in all these districts, house district 22 house district 30 house district 64 house district 69 house district how much ticket splitting can the republicans get or do the democrats just get straight ticket voting and these house of delegates candidates get right spam workers coattails and we’ve seen that before in previous virginia elections where when there’s a blue wave or a red wave at the top of the ticket 2017, a bunch of delegates rode the coattails of Northam.

17:28.23

Sam Shirazi

Democrats picked up a bunch of seats. 2021, a bunch of House Republicans were able to ride the coattails of Glenn Youngkin, and they were able to get a majority. So really unclear how much of a wave there’s going to be and then how much ticket splitting and riding of coattails there will be in these districts that, you know, it’s hard for me to make a prediction in some of these races.

17:48.78

Sam Shirazi

All right. I did want to talk about a couple other seats the Democrats are targeting. To be perfectly honest, I think at this stage, the Republicans have more of advantage in these districts. Doesn’t mean the Democrats can’t flip them on a really good night, but I think realistically, you you know unless there’s a really big blue wave, I think that the Republicans should be able to hold on.

18:09.51

Sam Shirazi

The first district is House District 66. The current Republican incumbent is Bobby Oroc, and he is being challenged by Democrat Nicole Cole. I think this was a Trump 2-3% district 2024.

18:22.52

Sam Shirazi

A little further down on 95, a little further from Northern Virginia, kind of a similar dynamic of persuasion and a little bit of turnout. I think the challenge Democrats are going to have in this district is Bobby Oroch’s been there a long time. So he’s a well-known incumbent.

18:36.68

Sam Shirazi

I think that will probably give him enough ticket splitting to survive, even if Spanberger is able to carry the seat at the top of the ticket. So I think this one of all you know of the seats, it’s probably the...

18:49.32

Sam Shirazi

one one of the ones that it’s most unlikely the Democrats are going to be able to flip. And then there’s one other seat that the Democrats are targeting. They kind of added this seat late. This is House District 34. It is in the Shenandoah Valley in Harrisonburg.

19:03.51

Sam Shirazi

And the Republican incumbent is Tony Wilt. He’s being challenged by Democrat Andrew Payton. I think this is the most Republican seat that the Democrats are challenging. It was about a hair a Trump plus seven seat in 2024.

19:17.62

Sam Shirazi

you know I think the Democrats are just hoping that, like in House District 41 in Virginia Tech, they’ this district is JMU, and they’re going to hope that they’re going to get same-day registration. College students are going to come out.

19:30.89

Sam Shirazi

They might be able to flip the seat. I think it’s just it’s hard because... A lot of red rural areas around there. And you know it’s just hard to know how many students are actually going to come out. in Are there going to be enough for the Democrats to be able to flip the seat? I think if there’s a really, really good night for the Democrats, potentially it’s going to happen. i just think you know given the polling, even the best case scenario pollal polling, I don’t think we’re kind of quite there yet where this seat will flip, but you never know. So definitely a seat to to watch out for on election night.

19:59.98

Sam Shirazi

All right, so I kind of went through all those districts pretty quickly because I didn’t want to kind of get too bogged down in any specific district. But big picture, as you can see, I mean, I think there’s a decent chance the Democrats are going to pick up at least two seats right off the bat. And so you’re seeing the Democrats get up to 53 seats in the House of Delegates.

20:18.13

Sam Shirazi

Then the question becomes, okay, of these much larger number of and this you know toss-up type seats, how many can the Democrats pick up? And you know if I had to guess, they’re going to pick up some of them. I don’t think...

20:30.63

Sam Shirazi

53 is going to be the ceiling for the Democrats. I think they they could get up to 55. And then the real question is, you know, how much of a red wave so or how much of a blue wave is there going to be? I mean, are they are we going to start seeing seats flip left and right to the point where the Democrats are getting up to 60 seats?

20:47.25

Sam Shirazi

I think it’s possible. There’s really no way of knowing right now because there’s kind of a range. you know I think if Spanberger wins by about 5%, we’re obviously on the lower end of what the Democrats are going to be able to pick up in the House of Delegates, maybe like 53.

21:02.40

Sam Shirazi

i think if there’s a really good night, Democrats winning by 10% or Spanberger is winning by 10% or more, that’s where we start getting into the 60-seat territory. And the Democrats are certainly playing to win a lot of seats. They’ve, as I mentioned, raised a lot of money.

21:17.33

Sam Shirazi

They’re spending a lot of money. The Republicans are definitely on defense. And I think in some of these races, they are throwing a decent amount of money at it. But some of these races, frankly, the Republicans are just telling the incumbents, you know, either we don’t think you’re going to make it. So sorry, you’re not getting much help. Or they’re telling the incumbents, you know i think you’ll be OK. You can handle it. And they’re not getting too much money.

21:39.38

Sam Shirazi

yeah know Republicans just don’t have the money in the House of Delegates to throw at these individual incumbents. And you know obviously, there’s been a lot going on with the attorney general spot on the ticket. And generally, that has been good news because there’s a chance that Jason Meares might be able to pull it out.

21:55.22

Sam Shirazi

the for the attorney general race. But that also means all the donors know that and all the donors are starting to give Meares a lot of money. And you know to a certain extent, that’s going to help him and it may help some of the House of Delegates candidates, but there isn’t a lot of money being spent on the House of Delegates because I think the mentality that Virginia Republicans have is we just got to save Meares because he’s pretty much the only one who can survive. And you know House of Delegates...

22:19.51

Sam Shirazi

We’re going to lose it anyways. you know We’ll probably... We might be able to pick some of these back up in another cycle. This cycle is just not the cycle where we can win the House of Delegates. So there’s no point in putting a lot of money into it.

22:30.86

Sam Shirazi

yeah They seem really focused on trying to get Meares over the line. And it makes sense to a certain extent. But I do think there’s a risk that the House Delegates starts getting really dicey for the Republicans. And you know we’ll see what happens.

22:43.88

Sam Shirazi

I think conversely, the Democrats... They’re feeling good about the House delegates. They want a big majority. i think that’s part of the message they want to send is picking up a lot of seats. Obviously, the more seats you have, the easier it is to pass bills.

22:55.88

Sam Shirazi

And so we’ll see. I mean, i again, we’ll we’ll defer to Chaz Nettie-Kohm on the individual predictions. My personal opinion is that the Democrats are going to be picking up seats. They’re going to retain their majority. And, you know, I talked about this all the way back in the beginning of the year.

23:12.75

Sam Shirazi

So the House of Delegates, it’s important for passing laws, obviously. But I think one thing that just has not gotten a lot of attention this year in Virginia has been these constitutional amendments.

23:21.97

Sam Shirazi

Because the governor doesn’t play a role. The lieutenant governor doesn’t play a role. The attorney general doesn’t play a role. The constitutional amendments in Virginia are purely the purview of the House of Delegates and the state senate. And the state senate is not up for election this year. It’s up for election in 2027.

23:37.23

Sam Shirazi

So the Democrats, if they win the House of Delegates, which is increasingly looking like it’s going to happen, they are going to put three constitutional amendments on the ballot for the voters to decide in 2026.

23:48.43

Sam Shirazi

One of them is on reproductive rights. One of them is on putting the ending the ban on same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution and protecting same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution. And one of them is to end the disenfranchisement of people convict convicted of felonies so that someone, when they’re released from prison, will automatically get their voting rights back.

24:09.17

Sam Shirazi

I think very likely those all three of those are going to be on the ballot in 2026 in Virginia because the Democrats are going to win the House of Delegates. Those are going to be important changes to the Virginia Constitution.

24:19.40

Sam Shirazi

And I do think... It doesn’t get a lot of attention, but that’s the reality is those things are going to be on the ballot in 2026, in all likelihood, given the Democrats are going to win the Virginia House of Delegates unless something really crazy happens.

24:34.16

Sam Shirazi

And I also think, you know, not to get too ahead of ourselves, but, you know, obviously, Democrats can start that process all over again for 2028. So if the Democrats win the House of Delegates this year in Virginia, they can start proposing new constitutional amendments for 2028. Now, they would have to win the 2027 elections, both the House of Delegates and the State Senate.

24:55.44

Sam Shirazi

But, you know, with Trump in the White House and the way Virginia swings against the party in the White House, I think there’s a decent chance Democrats are going to maintain their majority in the General Assembly in the 2027 elections.

25:06.88

Sam Shirazi

Obviously getting way ahead of ourselves. But I do think the reason I wanted to flag this is because... While there’s so much focus on the governor’s race, there’s so much focus on the attorney general’s race. Obviously, those races are important, but the House of Delegates is also really important.

25:19.86

Sam Shirazi

And House of Delegates, particularly in the constitutional amendment space, has more much more power or basically has all the power along with the state senate. So I don’t want people to lose sight of that. I don’t want people to lose sight of the stakes for the House of Delegates. you know it’s It’s easy to forget about them because is there’s so much going on.

25:36.41

Sam Shirazi

There’s stuff going on with Trump. There’s stuff going on with the shutdown. There’s stuff going on governor’s race. There’s stuff going on with the general race. But House of Delegates, super important and for constitutional amendments, but also just for passing regular old laws. And, you know, I do think those constitutional amendments are going to be important in 2026.

26:24.06

Sam Shirazi

But these things are important. And, you know, that’s why these elections are happening. I think there’s a lot of line in the Virginia elections. I will, I’m sure, talk a little bit more about the House of Delegates down the line. But, you know, there’s so much else to cover that it’s going to be hard for me to spend a whole episode again talking about it.

26:40.47

Sam Shirazi

But I did want to just do this one. Obviously, closer we get to election day, there’s a lot of stuff kind of go going on and I want to cover it all. But I did want to make time for this final check-in, I would say, at least for me personally on the House of Delegates.

26:53.70

Sam Shirazi

And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I will do my best to keep everyone updated. 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

00:00.70

Sam Shirazi

Hi, everyone. I am Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special extra interview that we’ll be doing with John McAuliffe. He is the Democratic nominee in the 30th House District in House Delegates District in Western Loudoun and Western Fauquier County, and it is one of the top battlegrounds in Virginia.

00:20.12

Sam Shirazi

The current Republican incumbent is Delegate Gary Higgins. I’m happy to have him on at a different time if he would like to come on the podcast. But today we have John. Thank you for joining me.

00:30.51

John M

Yeah, I’m so thrilled to be here. Thank you for everything you do. And and yes, it is an exciting year to say the least.

00:36.65

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, so so before we get into it, I did want to say, you know, honestly, just in terms of places I like to visit, the 30th District is one of my favorite districts in Virginia, just a really beautiful part of Virginia and Western Loudou and Western Fauquier.

00:49.93

Sam Shirazi

lot of beautiful scenery, especially this time of the year with the leaves changing. So if anyone wants to make the trip out there, I really encourage them to do that. So in terms of the race, John, what made you want to run for office?

01:03.67

John M

Yeah, absolutely. I decided to do this just about 10 months ago. I left the the Biden administration after after three and a half years there, where I had the privilege of working for Department of Agriculture, where it was my job to help farmers get access to renewable energy.

01:21.22

John M

That could look like solar panels on the roof. That could look like a small turbine. That could look like geothermal or a biodigester. Whatever they needed, we would get them a grant to to help them put that on the farm because that is their biggest bill in many cases and and the one that’s going to happen every single year no matter how good the harvest is.

01:40.52

John M

right You still have to pay your energy bills. So I decided to do this because I realized that the biggest energy crisis in the country is actually right here in my backyard. We have Loudoun County has 200 data centers.

01:53.09

John M

There’s another hundred coming online. And this is a place where the impact of that is being felt by every single person. And so I realized that I could use everything I’ve learned and a apply it right here at home, where I have my small business, a little bed and breakfast over in Warrington, and where I have lots of nonprofit boards I’ve been on and things like that, that that I felt like I really understood my community really well.

02:16.39

John M

and So that’s why I decided to do this.

02:18.26

Sam Shirazi

Well, you know, that that’s all very interesting. I will get to data centers because I know it’s a big issue in your district. I did want to talk about the first thing you mentioned. So used to work for the federal government. Obviously, as of the ti the time of the taping of this podcast, there is still a government shutdown going on, and it seems unlikely it’s going to end anytime soon.

02:35.57

Sam Shirazi

What has been the impact of the government shutdown in your district?

02:39.62

John M

Yeah, honestly, Sam, it’s been heartbreaking. i have never run for office before. I have certainly never run for office during a shutdown before. Back in in the administration, we had to prepare for one, but it never ended up happening.

02:53.72

John M

This has been very different experience because every day I’ve been knocking doors in communities where folks are federal employees, federal contractors, two income families are now one income families.

03:03.95

John M

two income families or sometimes zero income families. And that doesn’t stop the bills. And so people are going to pick which bills to pay, right? Whether it’s tuition or taxes or energy bills, folks are having to make really hard decisions, taking out loans, trying to figure out how long this is going to last.

03:24.42

John M

And quite frankly, it’s horrifying. Like we are, it is embarrassing that Washington cannot make the most basic decisions to keep the government open.

03:38.41

John M

And i think people are angry that Republicans are playing politics with their livelihoods just to stop us from having health care tax credits that we’ve all signed up for.

03:49.70

John M

And it’s it’s going to be a really, really big impact, regardless of what happens, whether it the government reopens without those tax credits or whether it it reopens with them. you know, folks are folks are really, really feeling this impact.

04:04.18

Sam Shirazi

And kind of related to that, there’s kind of the separate issue of the federal firings. Obviously, that was a big deal in the beginning of the year with Doge. That kind of died down a little bit. Now it seems to be coming back with the shutdown.

04:16.80

Sam Shirazi

Can you talk about some of the impact of the federal fire firings in your district?

04:20.54

John M

Yeah, I mean, we’ve we’ve had a lot of folks who have lost their jobs and who have chosen to leave either as part of the rifts or just because they had reached retirement.

04:31.19

John M

HD30 is sort of the outer edge of sort of the company town that is Washington, right? So once you go past Leesburg, you are out in beautiful, beautiful country.

04:43.15

John M

We have dozens and dozens of wineries, breweries, farm visits, agritourism at its finest. And we really rely on all the visitors from Arlington, Fairfax, Washington, and then Maryland to be able to come out here.

04:59.74

John M

And those folks are currently worried about their mortgage and their rent and their tuition payments. And they’re not really worried about where they’re going on the weekend. So that impacts our economy directly.

05:10.28

John M

And I’ve talked to dozens of businesses this summer who have seen it already. And there was a report that came out this morning that Northern Virginia is zero growth as of right now, zero literally 0.0 in Northern Virginia.

05:25.68

John M

that can’t sustain here. And I don’t think it will. I think we’ve got lots and lots of incredibly talented people. I wanna make sure they stay. There’s a lot we can do with the state government to make that easier.

05:37.44

John M

But I wanna make sure they stay and I wanna make sure we can find roles for them in some of the other extremely lucrative high-tech industries that are here, including renewable energy, where a lot of the folks that built the battery storage systems that we use around the country live right here in Northern Virginia. And a lot of the companies so that have that innovative streak live right here in Northern Virginia. So there’s a lot we can do.

05:58.28

John M

But right now, to be honest with you, Sam, the defining characteristic of every conversation I have on the doors is anxiety. Almost every conversation has that element in it.

06:10.24

John M

And it’s, it’s know hard to be surprised.

06:12.70

Sam Shirazi

Yeah. and And so just to follow up on that, in terms of the anxiety, it anxiety about what’s going on in D.C., anxiety about the state of the country, anxiety about just the political environment? I mean what is it that you’re hearing from the voters?

06:24.04

John M

Anxiety about their own personal lives, right? Not sure where the next paycheck going to come from for folks that are currently furloughed. Not sure where the next job is going to come from for folks that have been riffed or have chosen to leave for any number of reasons.

06:40.46

John M

And not sure what our lives are going to look like here in Northern Virginia. Because it’s one of the least affordable places to live, especially here in Loudoun County, anywhere in the country.

06:51.39

John M

And It’s not a place where folks can go you know months and months without a paycheck or a plan. We have to have the state step up here, right? the The federal government has stepped back from its traditional role in our lives. We have to have the state step up.

07:06.93

John M

And that looks like expanding unemployment insurance. That looks like ensuring we have a livable minimum wage so folks can get gap jobs. They can actually pay their bills. That looks like making sure that either the federal government maintains the health care tax credit or the state fills the gap and and builds that tax credit in. So, I mean, I’m i’m on the exchange because...

07:30.54

John M

Running for office is not a paying job, but I wanted to make sure that that I put everything I had into it. And so I’m doing this full time all year. And you know I don’t take advantage of the tax credit, but a lot of folks do.

07:42.25

John M

And that can take their their monthly costs from a couple of hundred bucks to five or 600, which is unaffordable for a lot of people, which means they’re going to cancel and deal with the deal with the tax penalty.

07:53.78

John M

So there’s a lot we have to do in Richmond next year. It’s going to be a really, really busy session.

07:59.43

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, well, i it sounds like there’s a lot going on in your district in terms of the federal fallout. I did want to shift to a little bit of a different topic, but I know it’s a really important topic in your district, which is data centers.

08:08.42

John M

Sure.

08:12.28

Sam Shirazi

I know a lot of people have probably heard the term. Could you explain kind of what data centers are and why they’re such a big deal in your district?

08:20.29

John M

Yeah, so data centers are are two things. They are the the sort of hub for all of the things we’re doing on our phones and our computers and in the cloud. So I don’t know, maybe a decade ago, all the talk was the cloud, the cloud, the cloud. Well, this is what built all of that infrastructure.

08:38.23

John M

And because so much of the internet traffic in the world runs through Northern Virginia, the data center hub that back in the early 2000s started here has gone completely out of control.

08:51.33

John M

It went from 50 data centers back in 2013. And then in 2014, they passed a new zoning amendment that allowed them by right in five places, five five different zoning districts.

09:02.79

John M

And that has resulted in an expansion of of nearly 200. And now with another 100 in the pipeline, The reason I say data centers are two things is because that’s not really the reason for the explosion. The reason for the explosion is artificial intelligence, right?

09:21.97

John M

There was an article yesterday, Sam Altman, who of course is the is the chairman of OpenAI, And he said that the plan for their company, just their company alone, not AI development at Google and all the other companies that are doing this, would be to put the equivalent of India’s peak load power on the grid by 2027. So we’re talking data centers that are consuming the electricity of up to a million homes per data center.

09:50.99

John M

And Virginia and Loudoun County specifically is the first choice for those companies. And they bring significant revenue when they do that, but they don’t really bring the level of jobs that we would expect from somebody investing that kind of revenue.

10:06.10

John M

So there’s a lot we need to do. And there’s such a big deal because right now in Virginia, all of the energy infrastructure, meaning those transmission lines, those substations that are being used for the data centers are being paid for by the rate payer, meaning you and me.

10:28.43

John M

When we pay our electric bill, we are paying for this infrastructure that is going purely to the profit margins of the world’s biggest companies. This is a basic unfairness that does not need to be this way.

10:42.06

John M

So the first thing we have to do next year is fix that. And I hope the industry will join me in working on this because I think they understand that it also is unfair. They’ll take it if we’ll give it to them, of course. But I think they understand that that they want to be good partners in the community, I hope.

10:57.53

John M

And part of that is paying their own way. And and Abigail Spanberger, who I hope is our next governor, has said she’s going to make sure that they do. and i And I really appreciate that because the places around the data centers are the places most impacted by the cost increases.

11:12.21

John M

And as I mentioned at the top of this podcast, for most farmers and most families, the energy bill is one of the biggest that they pay all year round. And here we’re paying some of the highest.

11:22.97

John M

So there’s a lot we can do. That’s just the start. But this is gonna be a multi-year multiyear arrangement. Next year will be a really great opportunity to do it because the data center tax credit is coming up for review.

11:36.87

John M

And I assume they’d like to do it again, if I had to guess. And this is a a tax credit on the sales

11:44.20

John M

for for the data centers. And I’m sure they’d like to do it again. That was about $900 billion. dollars and with an M 900 million last year, which could give every teacher in Virginia $10,000 raise. So if they’re going to ask for that, they better be prepared to, to give us something in return here.

12:02.84

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I think that’s really helpful background. And I had a specific question about Loudoun because Loudoun is kind of known as like the data center hub of the world.

12:08.17

John M

Yeah.

12:11.78

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, when I’m driving out there, land is really expensive. People want housing. you know Why are there so many data centers in Loudoun? Because I think of places like Southwest Virginia, they need economic development. I’m sure they would be much more willing to have data centers next door. Obviously, the infrastructure is not necessarily there right now, but but why does everyone why do all these data centers want to be in Loudoun and Prince William as opposed to like Southwest Virginia?

12:37.04

John M

Yeah, so so part of it’s the energy infrastructure, excuse me, the internet infrastructure, which was built here in Ashburn. And so because of that sort of initial hub, it became the place that that data centers wanted to build.

12:52.87

John M

It’s also a talent question. We have a huge amount of really, really smart high-tech folks in our industry here. And a lot of that is because of the expansion of the federal government and federal contracting.

13:04.26

John M

in the internet age. So a lot of the really, really bright folks came from around the world and around the country to live here in Loudoun County during that during that big expansion. We’re obviously now in a contraction phase for for the government. but And so we’ve got talent and we’ve got the existing internet infrastructure that they love.

13:22.55

John M

We used to have cheap land as well, which when they started this process, that was appealing. That is obviously no longer the case. And so what they’re doing now is they’re buying single family homes, tearing down entire neighborhoods and putting up data centers because that is cheaper and easier than trying to get large chunks of of land. But that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped trying to get those large chunks of Greenfield.

13:45.43

John M

And, you know, right here in Fauquier County, one of the the members of the board of supervisors sold his family farm to a data center in in Remington for $1,000.

13:55.68

John M

I think over a hundred million dollars, not, not jump change, uh, and has the opportunity, you know, now to also vote on that on the board. So we’re talking about a lot of money here, uh, which makes people make decisions like that.

14:08.96

John M

because they’re going to look to do it wherever they can, but counties can decide, right? Loudon could decide tomorrow. We don’t want any more. I think we’re probably at that point, given how many are still coming online.

14:19.10

John M

I’d like to see the supervisors take that really seriously. Uh, Fauquier could decide that too. Other counties have decided that, towns have decided that, and other counties have said, no, please bring them in. We need that economic development here in our county.

14:33.46

John M

And I think that’s great, right? So folks folks need to be able to make that decision for zoning at the county level. I don’t think I’m changing my opinion on that. What we need to do at the state level is make sure that the utility is correctly regulated in such a way that that Virginians are not paying for the cost of profit for for all these companies.

14:52.74

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s really helpful to have that information on data centers. I did want to ask kind of question about other things you’re hearing on the doorstep, specifically about you know the the nature of your district being kind of suburban exurb. Obviously, there’s a lot of growth coming in from Northern Virginia, and the district is still kind of rural. And I imagine that the residents like that feel of the district. So can you talk about some of the tension where there’s growth coming in versus the traditional rural lifestyle of the district?

15:21.97

John M

Yeah, I mean, you’ve hit right on it. So i I’m proud to be endorsed by Saverall Loudon, which is an organization that’s been around a long time that has been doing their best to preserve through conservation easements and things like that as much of our rural land here as we can. Because what we are is we are the rural part of Northern Virginia.

15:44.80

John M

And as we’ve seen in Loudon, the the Board of Supervisors can decide you know how much of an area is getting used for for new homes and for industrial use.

15:56.43

John M

And when you drive around the eastern part of my district, which is sort of the Aldi area, which is the fastest growing suburb anywhere in Virginia, they’ve done it in such a way that you have subdivisions on subdivisions with huge footprints, right? So large square footage, because that’s what you can sell the house for.

16:14.30

John M

The bigger the square footage, the the more profit you make. Right next to each other. just like suburbs, but with no actual infrastructure, meaning that folks are living there and driving 20 minutes to the grocery store, 20 minutes to a coffee shop, 20 minutes to a gas station, because they weren’t required to do mixed use in those areas, which is just foolish. So those folks obviously don’t have the amenities that that you’d expect somebody to have.

16:43.94

John M

And they also have huge class sizes because of how quickly that area has grown and how quickly the board allowed new subdivisions to be built there. And so those are the kind of problems that they’re having out there. And the rest of our district, which is pretty much quite similar, we have obviously the Falkier side, which is conservation easements are much more common.

17:04.76

John M

And it is significantly less dense than than most of most of the rest of the district. But there’s a common ethos through through all those folks, which is we want to preserve what we have we want to make sure that anything new coming in is reviewed understood and the community has time and the ability to push back if they want to that’s it it’s not it’s not a huge ask to be honest with you it is folks want the ability to have some local control over over what happens in their communities whether that’s data centers or housing developments or hotels or whatever and and just as an example of that when i started my little bed and breakfast 10 years ago

17:43.03

John M

we had a six month permitting process to get a special use permit cost, I think about $30,000 to get that process done. Cause you had to go to the planning commission and the council, then back to the planning commission to do their edits and then back to the council to get final approval.

17:58.29

John M

And you know, if they had too much going on that month, they would skip it and go to the next month. And the problem with what happened in data with data centers in Loudoun County, is that they allowed them by right in all those places, meaning they didn’t have to go through the special use permitting process, they could just build them.

18:13.52

John M

And that’s how they got so close to folks’ homes. Stafford this morning just put a 750-foot setback, which is, I think, the biggest in the in in Virginia now. So they’re allowing them, but but requiring them to be set back from communities pretty significantly. So I think that’s that’s helpful.

18:30.38

John M

Beyond that, I think a lot of folks care a lot about supporting our farmers out there because it’s not just land use, right? It’s not just, i want pretty trees to look at.

18:40.33

John M

The culture that comes with agriculture of farm stands and being able to buy all of your groceries and all of your meats from people you know folks move out here to have that and if you don’t have enough acreage to farm meaning that if you don’t own the farm and you’re a leased farmer which we have many of here and in western loudon and northern faulk here uh the farm i live on leases as well so this is you know, if they don’t have the acres they need to lease, they’re going to go to the West and find places where they can make a profit.

19:15.17

John M

And then you’ll have land and it’ll be an easement, but it’ll be dead quiet. And so folks care a lot about that here. Education is huge because this is such an expensive place. I mean, affordability is is rough across the board.

19:29.63

John M

But because it’s such an and in an an expensive place to live, teachers are commuting from Maryland and West Virginia to teach at Loudoun County Public Schools.

19:40.33

John M

And they’re commuting from Prince William to teach at Fauquier County Public Schools, which means that they’re not, they’re one, they’re on the road probably two hours a day, which is time they’re not spending with the kids. But it also means that they can’t invest in those communities in the same way they’d like to.

19:56.18

John M

So I think that is, you know we’re still in the bottom 25 states in teacher pay. I think that’s something we can we can fix and need to fix in the very near future here. So folks can actually afford to live in the communities they teach.

20:07.69

John M

But the end of the day, i this this election, you know there’s always a lot lot of flack going back and forth, but this election is going to be about the North Virginia economy.

20:17.92

John M

We’ve done a great job since COVID in our small towns because folks discovered them and we’ve done a good job of keeping folks coming in to Main Street.

20:28.18

John M

But we have to make sure that if we’re heading into a period of zero growth or perhaps negative growth in Northern Virginia, then we need to do everything we can to keep that churn on Main Street, meaning that when someone decides to retire or when their business idea didn’t work,

20:42.60

John M

We have to get somebody else in the door because all it takes is a couple of vacancies for a Main Street to start to look dead. And I used to run our Main Street Association. I’ve been endorsed by the National Main Street Alliance for this reason, because I want to make sure that that that we can do as easily as possible for our towns. And I think the right way to do that is a small tax credit.

21:03.06

John M

I think if we’re going to give a giant tax credit to data centers can give a small tax credit to our first time entrepreneurs who want to start businesses because often that first cost, right, that first month’s rent. And I talked to small business owners all the time that do the do the farm market.

21:18.06

John M

Sweet meaning that they you know go to five or six farm markets in a in a week or something like that. They’re looking for their first, you know, physical place to be and their first brick and mortar and having a tax credit to help them pay their first month’s rent, I think would be incredibly helpful.

21:34.84

John M

So I’d love to see something like that. And beyond that, you know, every town’s got its own its own set of issues. I’m sure we could do a whole other podcast on each one. And so our job will be to make sure that folks have access to the resources down in Richmond to help fix their water infrastructure, help fix their, know,

21:53.87

John M

you know, budget gaps, whatever it is that they need to get done to make sure that the folks who live there can thrive.

22:00.76

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, and you you mentioned water as well. I wanted to follow up on that because there’s a lot of talk about data centers and electricity, but I think obviously water is a really important resource as well. What are some of the issues you’re hearing about water in your district?

22:12.94

John M

Yeah, so here in Western Loudoun, we are on a cars formation that is fairly porous. And so the groundwater level has been dropping, depending on where you are, between 10 and 40 feet in the last 20 years, which means that wells are starting to run dry.

22:32.78

John M

And those wells can cost 10, 20, 30 grand to replace. And so as we start to decide what else is going to be built out here, and developers are always you know looking for new opportunities, but we have to understand what impact that’s going to have on all of us.

22:50.19

John M

We can’t just do things without thinking this through now. And what that probably looks like is a state level water management district like they have in Virginia Beach, which would require the state to review large large well uses of more than 300,000 gallons. I think that’s a good way to do this.

23:07.50

John M

I think the county also needs to start taking a a bigger role in thinking about what this looks like, because if you let the groundwater level go too low, The primary users of that are farmers, wineries, breweries, and data centers.

23:23.27

John M

Data centers pull from the Potomac, but of course the Potomac pulls from the groundwater as well. And you start to lose all of those things, not even talking about individual folks having to incur that large expense or perhaps deciding not to incur that large expense and saying, well, I’m gonna retire, move to Florida and and sell my place to someone who’s gonna tear it down and put up a mega a mega mansion or something like that.

23:47.90

John M

You know, this is something that everyone, that will impact everybody in the not too distant future if we don’t take big steps now. And Northern Falkir is part of that same same formation. So we’ve got a lot of work to do.

23:59.28

Sam Shirazi

Well, this has been a lot of really interesting policy discussions about the things impacting your district. I did want to talk about politics a little bit because this is one of the most competitive House of Delegates races this year.

24:11.69

Sam Shirazi

Trump barely won the district in 2024, and you’re obviously trying to win it this year. and What has it been like to run in the district, in a battleground district, in a 50-50 district, and just that experience on the campaign trail?

24:25.14

John M

Yeah, no, it’s it’s been incredible, to be honest. i I’ve been doing this since since the last time it was cold. It’s starting to get cold again. But it’s such an incredible place. And you pointed out the top of the podcast how beautiful it is. It’s a huge district. It’s about 650 square miles.

24:41.69

John M

I drive at least two hours a day every single day. But I get to drive through incredible country and I get to meet incredible people. But the the bottom line is that my family’s been here for hundreds of years. We care a lot about what happens to these communities.

24:58.86

John M

And I have a privilege to be able to to have my name on the ballot. Nothing really prepares you for having, you know, your name and your face splashed all around the district and in all sorts of media and people accuse you of all sorts of things. You know, I didn’t know that the traffic tickets from when I was 18 or I forgot to play replace my headlight or something like that was going to be such a hot topic in the campaign this year. But, you know, I think On the whole, it’s an amazing experience. And we’ve met so many wonderful people.

25:32.73

John M

And I can’t wait to to take my seat in a few months and and start to get down to work.

25:38.88

Sam Shirazi

Well, I did have kind of one final question that I like to ask candidates because i I love going out to the district. If you love wineries, breweries, you know, pumpkin patches that has all that, you know, what is your favorite part of the district or what is something that you would like people to come out and visit in your district?

25:55.60

John M

Yeah, great question. So just yesterday, and folks should do this now if they hear your podcast, because the leaves are incredible at the moment. If you go to the very, very, very edge of the district, right near Bluemont, as you start to get into Clark County, we went yesterday to a great little place called Bear Chase, which has incredible views of the Shenandoah Valley without having to go all the way up Skyline Drive into Shenandoah National Park.

26:24.11

John M

And there’s also a brewery right across the street. And you can basically walk between it. You can walk on the Appalachian Trail for a while. I’ll be honest, the district has dozens of places like this. But this one’s super easy to get to.

26:36.22

John M

And I highly recommend it.

26:38.20

Sam Shirazi

Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the podcast. If people are interested and want to learn more about your campaign, how would they do that?

26:45.19

John M

Yeah, you can go check it out at john4va.com, the number four, john4va.com. And please reach out. goes right to my goes right to my email. so

26:55.36

Sam Shirazi

All right. Well, thanks so much for joining me. This has been Fittable 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 is a bonus episode where we will go over some breaking news about redistricting in Virginia and just try to unpack it.

00:12.93

Sam Shirazi

Now, to be perfectly honest, there’s a lot of unknowns right now, and I’m going to try to give everyone some answers to questions they might be having because the news has just come out. And obviously, we’re going to have to we’re gonna have to wait and see what happens. But I’ve seen a lot of people have questions, and I want to kind of explain as much as I can some of the reasons why what’s going on is going on. And then we can talk about what it might mean for redistricting in Virginia.

00:38.76

Sam Shirazi

And to be perfectly honest, I mean, this is just pretty crazy to think about another October surprise. i don’t think a lot of people saw this coming because my sense is it was kept pretty closely tight within the Democrats in the general assembly. And then obviously the news came out.

00:54.35

Sam Shirazi

We’ve had a lot going on in October in Virginia. This is just another thing that is going on. don’t, you know In theory, it could impact the election, to be perfectly honest. I don’t really think most voters are that tuned in where they’re really kind of following the nuances of this.

01:09.05

Sam Shirazi

So I don’t think it’s going to have a huge impact on the election here in 2025, but it could have a big impact in 2026 in the midterms. And so I wanted to kind of do this podcast just to give people an update.

01:19.95

Sam Shirazi

you know To be perfectly honest, i you know we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out. There’s a lot of unknowns right now. I’m going to do my best. So there’s so much going on in the Virginia elections that, you know, I’m going to try it to also do my best to also figure out what’s going on with redistricting. But but to be very perfectly honest, most of the next 12 days are going to be focused on the Virginia elections.

01:39.77

Sam Shirazi

And then we can talk about redistricting, depending on how it plays out. But I did want to do this. I want to give everyone a little bit of a primer about where we are. So big picture.

01:50.77

Sam Shirazi

At the beginning of the decade, Virginia, like every other state, redo their congressional maps because that is mandated every 10 years after the census comes out. In 2020, Virginia voters passed a independent redistricting commission.

02:05.76

Sam Shirazi

So the General Assembly did not draw the lines in Virginia. It was supposed to be drawn by the redistricting commission. Unfortunately, the redistricting commission was not able to do that because there was a lot of partisan issues. And long story short, redistricting commission did not draw the lines in Virginia. It got punted to the Virginia Supreme Court. They appointed two special masters. The special masters drew the lines.

02:28.36

Sam Shirazi

Currently, Virginia has a 6-5 Democratic delegation to the Congress. That means there are six Democrats from Virginia and five Republicans. so that’s kind of redistricting big picture in Virginia.

02:41.54

Sam Shirazi

Earlier this year in Texas, there was a big push to redistrict. They redrew their lines. That helped the the Republicans. Obviously, they benefited. They gained a a decent amount of seats.

02:51.88

Sam Shirazi

There’s been talk about redistricting in some other states. I think it’s already happened in Missouri. There’s talk about Indiana. There’s talk about other states. So the Republicans very clearly are trying to redraw the lines in several states because in their minds, it’s going to help get them some extra seats next year during the midterms.

03:07.98

Sam Shirazi

And obviously they’re they’re going to have an uphill climb to retain the House of Representatives in 2026, because typically the party that’s in the White House doesn’t do that well in the midterms. And so I think Republicans are expecting to probably lose some seats And so in their mind, if they’re able to redraw the maps in some states, that’ll help gain some more seats.

03:27.04

Sam Shirazi

There’s also been, I forgot, North Carolina as well, there’s been the maps being redrawn. So long story short, I mean Republicans are trying to get as many seats as they can to potentially deal with a rough midterm next year.

03:40.05

Sam Shirazi

And the Democrats have been a little bit slow to respond. I would say the only state where they’ve seriously responded is in California. So in California, There is a referendum on the ballot this November to try to temporarily change the maps in California because California also had a redistricting commission.

03:56.94

Sam Shirazi

It looks like almost certainly that redistricting amendment is going to pass in California. So the maps are going to change in California in all likelihood, and that’ll gain some seats for the Democrats, but it’s not going to make up for all the seats the Republicans are gaining.

04:09.94

Sam Shirazi

And so there’s been talk in other states like Maryland or Illinois about also redistricting. Long story short, there’s been a lot of kind of national conversation about redistricting. It kind of was kicked off by the Republicans redistricting in some states, and now the Democrats are trying to play catch up.

04:24.38

Sam Shirazi

And the question becomes, you know, what’s going on in Virginia? And in Virginia, just to give people... Some context, I did a podcast earlier in the year on this topic. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think the Democrats were going to move forward with redistricting this quickly. I thought eventually they may think about some long-term changes to how redistricting is done in Virginia, try to change things before the 2030 census.

04:46.60

Sam Shirazi

I have my personal opinion about some of the problems with the redistricting commission in Virginia. There’s a lot of things that could be changed about how Virginia does its Redistricting. However, i was not expecting the Democrats to do anything quickly to change the maps in Virginia.

05:01.16

Sam Shirazi

However, theoretically, it was possible. And so what it seems what’s going on, at least what’s been reported, is the Democrats in the General Assembly are thinking about moving forward with changing the maps potentially before the 2026 midterms.

05:15.22

Sam Shirazi

And to give people context, so currently the Democrats have a majority in both the state Senate and the House of Delegates. It’s a narrow majority. So in the state Senate, they have 21-19 majority.

05:26.05

Sam Shirazi

In the House of Delegates, they have a 51-49 majority The House of Delegates, all 100 seats are up for election this year. In all likelihood, the Democrats are going to maintain their majority. And if anything, they’re going to expand the majority.

05:37.40

Sam Shirazi

So think the Democrats feel pretty good that they’re going to win the House of Delegates again this year. And so that’s kind of where we are in terms of you know the present. And so I think the question becomes, OK,

05:48.42

Sam Shirazi

Why are the Democrats doing this now? Because I’m getting that from a lot of people. Like, why, you know, 12 days before the election would you announce this? It’s obviously going to distract people from the state elections. It’s also potentially going to energize the Republicans. It could energize the Democrats, but it could energize the Republicans. So people are confused. Like, why is this happening right now?

06:07.28

Sam Shirazi

Well, there’s a very specific reason it’s happening right now. Under the Virginia Constitution, there is really only one way to change the Constitution. And remember, I said in 2020, 2020, voters passed a constitutional amendment to create the Redistricting Commission.

06:20.44

Sam Shirazi

And so in order for the maps to change in Virginia, there needs to be an amendment to the Virginia Constitution. And the only way to amend the Virginia Constitution is a pretty you know complex process, and I’ll just kind of lay it out.

06:34.02

Sam Shirazi

The way you amend the Virginia Constitution is, first, the General Assembly, the House of Delegates in the State Senate pass an initial version or the initial, the first time they pass a bill saying there’s gonna be a referendum to amend the constitution.

06:48.43

Sam Shirazi

So that happens in one year. The Virginia constitution says there has to be an election for the House of Delegates in between So what that means is there has to be another election before there can be a referendum. So in other words, Democrats have to do this before the election, there needs to be an election, and then the Democrats need to do it again next year. So you have to do it two years in a row with an election in between.

07:13.89

Sam Shirazi

So that’s basically a long way of saying the way you amend the cup Virginia Constitution General Assembly passes it. There’s an election. General Assembly passes it again. And then it goes to the voters and the voters get the ultimate say.

07:25.22

Sam Shirazi

And so in order for there to be a potential constitutional referendum next year on the red redistricting in Virginia, it has to happen before the election. And so that’s why the Democrats are doing this right now.

07:37.45

Sam Shirazi

Now, you could argue the Democrats waited till the last minute. And so it’s not really giving voters a whole lot of notice about this. i think part of the idea about having the election in between is so that voters can maybe decide whether they want this or not. But long story short, Virginia Democrats, they have a very short timeframe to get this done.

07:55.75

Sam Shirazi

They would have to do it in the next 12 days. So let’s just assume you know they do this. They pass it in the next 12 days, the initial version they would have to win the elections this year for the House of Delegates. So it doesn’t it doesn’t matter what happens with the governor, doesn’t matter what happens with lieutenant governor, or even really attorney general. Basically, this is all down to the House of Delegates.

08:16.90

Sam Shirazi

And remember, the state senate is not up for election. Democrats already control the state senate. So what would happen is, Democrats pass the bill once, they win the House of Delegates elections this year, which seems pretty likely. And then...

08:28.68

Sam Shirazi

They would have to come back in January and they would have to pass the bill again in order to have the referendum. So if they pass it in January, the Virginia Constitution then says there can be a referendum within 90 days. So it can’t be the next day. It has to be within 90 days.

08:44.36

Sam Shirazi

So that means, let’s say you pass something in January. Theoretically, the referendum could be in April. So that’s kind of the timeline. Democrats pass it in the next 12 days. They win the House of Delegates. They pass it again in January.

08:56.13

Sam Shirazi

And then in 90 days, they do a referendum in April. And so that is all the steps that would need to be taken in order for there to be a change to the Virginia Constitution so Democrats could redistrict in 2026.

09:09.20

Sam Shirazi

Now, that’s already a lot. and And again, this is assuming the voters pass it. The voters could say no, they could reject it. I think what the Virginia Democrats are seeing is they’re seeing what’s going on in California. They’re seeing that the California Democrats look like they’re going to be able to pass this thing.

09:25.12

Sam Shirazi

And so maybe the the Virginia Democrats are thinking, you know, we’re going to be able to pass it too. Now, keep in mind, Virginia is a lot less blue than California. So maybe they’re miscalculating. But long story short, let’s assume the voters end up passing this in 2026. What happens then?

09:40.98

Sam Shirazi

So the problem is the maps have to be redrawn and the primary is typically in June in Virginia. And so that’s going to be very quick turnaround and all of that stuff.

09:53.91

Sam Shirazi

There has been talk that maybe the date of the primary will be changed. In theory, maybe you could change the date of the filing deadline, but all that would require laws being passed.

10:04.55

Sam Shirazi

You don’t need to amend the Virginia Constitution to do all that. You would just need to pass laws changing the date of the primary. And you know honestly, I haven’t thought through all of this. I mean, I’m sure there were some legal pitfalls. I’m sure it’s complicated. I’m sure it’s not that easy to get all this stuff done.

10:22.77

Sam Shirazi

And i think that’s been kind of but the initial reaction that it’s going to take a lot of specific things have to happen in order for this redistricting to happen in 2026. I think, you know, my personal opinion is I think the Virginia Democrats are probably not going to want to do something drastic change to Virginia redistricting for the rest of time. They’re going to kind of do the California way where California basically said, this is an exception just till the end of the decade for these next few elections because the Republicans in Republican states gerrymandered their maps.

10:52.74

Sam Shirazi

We in California have a exception toward normal redistricting where we will basically redraw our maps for the next few elections. I think the Virginia Democrats likely will go down that route.

11:04.70

Sam Shirazi

In theory, in 2028, they could do a different referendum to change long term the way the maps are drawn in Virginia. But at least for the referendum, if it’s going to happen in 2026, the likelihood that it’s going to succeed will really come down to it being more of a temporary measure. Because I think if you just try to completely repeal nonpartisan or or you you repeal the independent redistricting commission, I think it’s going to be very difficult to get that passed. So long story short, I think this will be a short term change to redistricting for the next few cycles.

11:37.24

Sam Shirazi

And then the question becomes, you know what do the maps look like? I think you know if the Democrats are going to go through all this hassle, you know my my gut is telling me they’re going to try to redraw the maps to in order to get three more seats.

11:49.90

Sam Shirazi

Now, if they’re cautious, they could redraw it to only get two more seats. But again, i think you know if you’re going through all this hassle, you might as well try to get as much as you can. So I think it’s possible for the Democrats to draw 9-2 map.

12:02.90

Sam Shirazi

for virginia So that means nine Democrats, two Republicans. Currently, there are six Democrats, five Republicans. So that would be a three-seat pickup for the Democrats. Frankly, I don’t think it’s that hard to draw 9-2 map.

12:15.14

Sam Shirazi

I think that would it would it be compliant with the Voting Rights Act. You could... you know Just play around a little bit. Essentially, all the Republicans would have left would be a district based in southwest and southside Virginia, and then they probably have a district based in the Shenandoah Valley and central Virginia.

12:32.69

Sam Shirazi

And then every every other district could basically be you know parts of northern Virginia, parts of Richmond, parts of Hampton Roads. You know, people have played around with it. I’ve played around with it. It’s not that complicated to come up with a 9-2 map.

12:45.40

Sam Shirazi

You know, if if they’re being cautious and they don’t want to go too crazy, they could draw an 8-3 map. But again, if you’re going through all this hassle, you might as well kind of do it do it to the max. So, I mean, that’s all this stuff going on in Virginia.

12:59.04

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, a lot of open questions, a lot of question marks from... The starting point, I mean, do do the Virginia Democrats have the votes in the General Assembly? Because they have very narrow majorities.

13:11.02

Sam Shirazi

As I mentioned, you you know they can’t lose anyone on either in either chamber. Presumably, you know theyre they they should be somewhat unified if they’re going to be bringing this out into the public. So it’s hard for me to imagine they don’t have the votes. But obviously, and we’ve seen in some of the Republican states, there’s been pushback. And it’s possible that the Virginia Democrats to begin with don’t get the votes. So that would kind of kill it this year.

13:34.80

Sam Shirazi

I think if it passes this year, you know it’s likely to pass next year. I mean, theoretically, if the Democrats don’t win the House of Delegates this year, which I think is relatively unlikely, it could not pass in the General Assembly next year. i think I think almost certainly Democrats are on track to win the House of Delegates. So...

13:51.52

Sam Shirazi

Anyway, so the other thing that could trip them up is potentially the voters just saying no, that they could lose the referendum next year. Again, you know that’s kind of a long ways off. The other thing too, some of the nuances about passing a law and changing the potential primary date, all that stuff would have to go through like regular legislation.

14:13.82

Sam Shirazi

And that does involve the governor. So open question whether Spanberger would be on board with some of this stuff if she ends up winning. Obviously, she she’d have to win the governor’s race, but that’s kind of how it’s looking right now.

14:24.85

Sam Shirazi

The other thing are the legal challenges. i mean, obviously, there’s going to be complicated stuff going on. Almost all of these redistricting efforts in other states have led to lawsuits. Most of them have been unsuccessful, but there are lawsuits.

14:37.46

Sam Shirazi

And actually, you know, talking about the attorney general race, Potentially, if there’s a lawsuit, you know it’s an open question, what is the next attorney general going to do? Obviously, if Jason Meyers wins re-election, he could decide he’s not going to defend any of this.

14:51.77

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, if Jay Jones wins the attorney general race, he was much more likely to defend what the Democrats are doing, or almost certainly going to defend what the Democrats are doing. And Virginia Supreme Court, it is an interesting judicial body. it is It tends to be nonpartisan. So I think it’s hard to read how they would handle cases. It’s not like they are hacks. I think everyone in Virginia, Democrats and Republicans, generally respects the Virginia Supreme Court. I think they try to be independent.

15:21.57

Sam Shirazi

they They have a reputation for being little c legal conservative, so they are not you know necessarily super progressive judges, but it doesn’t mean that they will go along with whatever the Republicans want them to. They are not those types of you know big C conservative judges.

15:37.48

Sam Shirazi

So long story short, I mean, a lot a lot of unknowns. I think it’s a big surprise that this happened. I personally didn’t think the Democrats were necessarily on board. I think my guess is They have been seeing what’s going on both at the governor’s level and in the House of Delegates.

15:54.06

Sam Shirazi

They felt pretty confident they’re gonna win the governor’s race. They feel pretty confident they’re gonna win the House of Delegates. They’ve been looking at what’s going on in California where it looks like the redistricting amendment’s gonna pass easily. And so they’re thinking, you know why don’t we do this in Virginia? We can pick up three seats.

16:07.92

Sam Shirazi

I think that would make it a lot easier for the Democrats to win the House of Representatives in 2026. So definitely a lot on the line for redistricting in Virginia. i will do my best to keep everyone updated. Like I said, to be perfectly honest, there’s so much going on with the election. it’s just It’s been a crazy October in Virginia, and it just keeps coming.

16:30.32

Sam Shirazi

I hope this kind of answers some of the questions people have. I mean, I don’t have every single answer, but my goal is to kind of explain what’s going on, explain how this might happen.

16:41.40

Sam Shirazi

It is a complicated process. There are a lot of road bumps. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen. But this has been kind of the first indication that Democrats might be going there in Virginia. We’ll have to just keep an eye on it. you know Again, I doubt it’s going to actually impact the election because the people who are in the know enough to actually understand what’s going on with the redistricting are probably pretty engaged voters, and they’ve probably already made up their mind one way or another. So...

17:08.19

Sam Shirazi

I don’t actually see it impacting the election that much. However, obviously, Republicans are trying to use this to say, you know, Democrats shouldn’t change the maps. Democrats, my guess is Spanberger and the other Democrats are going to probably not want to focus on this. They just want to get the votes done and then focus on the election.

17:24.80

Sam Shirazi

You know, we’ll see how it actually plays out in the closing days of the campaign. There’s a lot going on. There’s a shutdown. There’s, you know, all the stuff coming out of DC. So hard to know how much of an impact this is going to have.

17:38.00

Sam Shirazi

i will try to keep, keep doing my best to cover it all. There’s so much going on in Virginia. i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. There will be a lot of podcasts coming out. I hope people find them useful. They’re going to be covering all the different things going on in Virginia. And yeah, so stay tuned. Never a dull moment in the Virginia elections. 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 is a special bonus episode where I will go over a bunch of polls that we have gotten in recent days just to see where the campaign is and specifically taking a look at the attorney general race, because I think that’s shaping up to be the most competitive race this year in Virginia.

00:19.64

Sam Shirazi

So before I go over some of these polls, I did want to caveat that there’s a lot of what I would call partisan or partisan aligned polls coming out from both sides. Frankly, it’s more on the Republican side. There have been a few Democratic ones, but typically these are more on the Republican side.

00:35.62

Sam Shirazi

And it’s not that I completely ignore these polls, but I often have some skepticism on either side when a poll is being put out, because obviously there’s a reason the polls are but being put out. Sometimes the poll method methodology isn’t very clear. Sometimes there isn’t a lot of information about the poll in terms of The crosstabs. And so I have more skepticism of these partisan polls.

00:58.46

Sam Shirazi

And it’s, again, not like I totally ignore them. I take a look. I try to think about, okay, what are they telling us? But I will be honest with you, I’m not going to go over all of those in this episode, because I just think that’s a lot of polls. And, you know, some of them are good. Some of them are bad, i think.

01:14.77

Sam Shirazi

Some of them have more thorough methodology and they explain kind of how they came to their results. Some of them really have very little information. So I just think it’s not really worth spending a lot of time, especially since we’re going to be getting a lot of these partisan polls in the last few days of the campaign to really dwell on them.

01:31.07

Sam Shirazi

What I’m looking for are the nonpartisan polls, particularly from places that have either history in Virginia or have polled Virginia before. I think that’s going to be really helpful. Because, you know, you can kind of get a more realistic picture on those nonpartisan polls as opposed to the partisan polls, which obviously have a little bit of agenda and there’s a reason they were putting out there.

01:51.34

Sam Shirazi

Whereas the nonpartisan polls typically, you know, they’re trying to give a more accurate assessment of what’s going on. So I will start off with a poll from State Navigate. So State Navigate is an organization, nonprofit created by Chaz Netticombe, who has been a guest on this podcast and Chaz has been doing Virginia election stuff for a while.

02:11.90

Sam Shirazi

He started in 2017. He did it in 2021. 2023, he did a really good job in predicting every single race in the General Assembly. So I think Chaz has a good sense of what’s going on in Virginia.

02:22.84

Sam Shirazi

He helped put this poll together and he helped try to make sure that it was balanced and there was a good representation of what’s going on in Virginia. And so while I think You never want to just focus on one specific poll. I did take a closer look at this one because it’s nonpartisan and I know Chaz knows Virginia really well.

02:42.84

Sam Shirazi

So I want to go over that poll. I will say, I think this poll is more favorable for for the Democrats compared to other polls that have come out. And I think Chaz is maybe assuming a slightly bluer environment as opposed to some of these other polls.

02:57.20

Sam Shirazi

And I think when you’re modeling and putting together a poll, you’re always thinking about, okay, what is the electorate of the people in the poll? Because you don’t want to just have Democrats in the poll. You don’t just want Republicans in the poll. You want to have a good representation.

03:11.51

Sam Shirazi

And there’s other kind of demographics you want to take a look at. You want to take a look at race. You want to look at college education. And I think Chaz has tried to put together this poll, what he thinks it might look like on election day in Virginia.

03:23.81

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I just want to kind of caveat by saying this is kind of one scenario about what Virginia might look like on election day, which is maybe more of a blue wave type scenario.

03:34.57

Sam Shirazi

And I will say, I think a lot of pollsters are scared to kind of go there because in previous elections, particularly the presidential elections, they’ve been kind of burnt on what’s been going on in polling.

03:45.82

Sam Shirazi

They miss some of the Trumpier voters who are less likely to respond to polls. And I think Chaz has tried his best to, you know, get a poll that is accurate for this year in Virginia and specifically for this environment, not necessarily looking back to 2024, not looking back at 2021, but trying to figure out, okay, what’s going on in 2025 in Virginia?

04:07.74

Sam Shirazi

This is kind of the snapshot from the state Navigate poll, so I’ll go over that right now. All right, so for governor, it had Democratic nominee Abigail Smanberger at 55%, and it had Winston Merle Sears, the Republican nominee, at 42%.

04:20.91

Sam Shirazi

For lieutenant governor, it had Ghazal Hashmi 53%, and it had John at For Attorney General, the State Navigate poll had Democratic nominee Jay Jones at 50% and the current incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Meares at 45%. And then for House of Delegates, it had the Democratic ballot, generic ballot at 53% and the Republican won at forty one at 41%.

04:46.54

Sam Shirazi

So obviously this poll got a lot of attention because it’s much more friendly to the Democrats overall than most of the other polls that have been coming out. Now, keep in mind, a decent amount of those polls are GOP-aligned polls. So it kind of makes sense that this more nonpartisan poll would be friendlier to the Democrats.

05:02.34

Sam Shirazi

And I think the big surprise was really the attorney general number, because we’ve had a lot of talk about how you know Jason Meares is now in the driver’s seat. He might win. i think there’s certainly a possibility that Meares can win. But I think the problem Meares is having, and even in most of the GOP-aligned polls, is he’s having a ceiling around 45%, 46%. And you see that in this poll. So Meares is definitely the best performing Republican.

05:28.30

Sam Shirazi

I think he’s going to do the best out of the three statewide Republicans running. The question just becomes, you know, is he going to hit 46% and that’s kind of his ceiling or can he get up to 50%?

05:39.88

Sam Shirazi

And typically in most polling, Meares is not getting up to 50%. I think the thing that was surprising in this poll was that Jones was able to hit 50%. So Meares is getting 45%. I think that’s pretty expected.

05:52.67

Sam Shirazi

There’s been a lot of questions about can Jones get up to 50% because we talked about it before. There’s the issue of ticket splitting. There’s the issue of undervotes. And so this poll is saying that enough people are or backing Jones that he’s able to get up to 50%.

06:09.70

Sam Shirazi

and And, you know, it’s it’s an unknown. i think I think there is a very strong tendency among voters to come home at the end of the day and just vote straight ticket, particularly if you’re partisan, particularly if you’re upset at what’s going on in D.C. and you’re upset at President Trump.

06:22.54

Sam Shirazi

There’s going to be a strong temptation to just fill in the deep, deep bubble in every single race. and i And I think in terms of the as Australian general race specifically, i will just be honest. i mean, we live and breathe Virginia politics. if you’re listening to this policy, if you’re you’re listening to this podcast, I’m sure you are well aware of everything going on in Virginia.

06:40.99

Sam Shirazi

A lot of voters are not as tuned into as we are. And frankly, some of them probably have not heard about the text. And even if they have heard about it, just have very vague idea about what’s going on.

06:52.79

Sam Shirazi

You know, I think a lot of us have to keep in mind, particularly younger voters, how they have a very different way of approaching elections. You know, they get tuned in at the very, very end.

07:04.05

Sam Shirazi

And if they show up, they typically don’t know much about any of the candidates. And you know they might not even, frankly, know much about the governor candidate, let alone the attorney general candidate. But the way it works for a young voter is you wake up on election day, you realize there’s an election, you go to the polling place, and then you just vote for whatever party you feel like voting for. so i think you know as much as the people...

07:28.16

Sam Shirazi

who are closely following this election really live and breathe and know all the nuances of every single story. i mean, there are a lot of voters who are not like that. The question becomes how many of them show up on Election Day. And obviously, young voters are notorious for not showing up in in elections, particularly non-presidential elections.

07:45.24

Sam Shirazi

So it’s possible a bunch of them don’t show up. It’s possible a decent amount of them show up and their same day orration registration in Virginia. And they just vote straight ticket Democratic because, you know, whatever reason they’re upset at what’s going on at D.C. or they want to send a message. and And they just are not thinking that critically about every single race.

08:03.15

Sam Shirazi

So, anyways, all that has to say is like, I think with the Attorney General race, you just have to keep in mind, you know, there are different types of voters and some voters are very familiar with the tech story and there’s some voters who might barely even know about it. So, anyways, that in terms of the State Navigate poll, I think it was a helpful poll. I think it’s helpful to have a poll that’s maybe modeled a little bit more.

08:25.88

Sam Shirazi

In a typical off year election in Virginia, which typically in these off year elections, the party out of the White House tends to do better, tends to get out more of their base. And so I think if if this is like a typical year in Virginia, this poll is kind of showing you that. And that’s one possibility this year in Virginia, where you kind of have a 2017 type scenario.

08:46.70

Sam Shirazi

where people are upset at what’s going on in D.C., they’re upset at Trump, they just want to send a message, they vote for the Democrats. I think if that happens on election night, this is kind of the scenario you’re you’re looking at. All right, now let’s take a look at the VCU poll. So VCU at the Wilder Center put out a poll and they do periodically polls in Virginia.

09:04.31

Sam Shirazi

I will say typically the VCU polls have a decent amount of undecideds. And so you’ll see that in this poll. And I think while it’s helpful to have the poll, it’s also a little bit difficult to kind of get a full read on the race when you have the VCU poll having so many undecideds.

09:17.54

Sam Shirazi

I think the VCU poll is more like a type environment where Democrats are going to do decent in Virginia because it slightly leans to a blue state, but it’s not going to be this crazy blue wave according to the VCU poll.

09:33.05

Sam Shirazi

It’s not going to be a red wave either. I think it’s more kind of a typical Virginia elections. Democrats have the advantage. And you’ll see some of these numbers. There are a decent amount of undecideds specifically below the top of the ticket.

09:43.48

Sam Shirazi

And i think that makes it particularly hard to figure out in this poll what’s going on in the attorney general race. So

09:49.86

Sam Shirazi

All right, so I’ll give you the numbers in this VCU poll. For Governor, Abigail Spanberger is at 49%. Winston Merrill Sears is at 42%. For Lieutenant Governor, Ghazal Hashmi is at 44%, and John Reed is at 43%.

10:04.58

Sam Shirazi

And then for Attorney General, Jason Meares is at 45%, and Jay Jones is at 42%. is at forty two percent Okay. And they also did a generic ballot for the House of Delegates, and that was 47% Democratic and 44% Republican.

10:20.95

Sam Shirazi

And again, we’re seeing a decent amount of undecided. I mentioned Miárez, he’s at 45%. Again, he’s kind of at the ceiling where he hits 45%, 46%. I think he’s going to get up to 45%, 46%. The question is, again, how much higher can he go?

10:35.49

Sam Shirazi

And there’s something that I haven’t talked about, which you know you hear thrown around, the idea of shy Jay Jones voters. So what that means is maybe in a poll, for whatever reason, they don’t tell the pollster that they’re going to vote for Jay Jones. Maybe that’s because they don’t want to admit that they’re voting for him.

10:51.07

Sam Shirazi

Maybe they are undecided, and then at the last minute they decide to vote for him. So there’s this... potential where, you know, if you’re at 45, 42% in a poll, obviously that there is going to be a decent amount of undecideds there, about 13%. So where did those people go? Do they go to Meares? Do they go to Jones?

11:09.99

Sam Shirazi

Do they get split? If there is this late movement towards Jones for whatever reason, because Democrats come home or maybe the late deciding voters are kind of out of it and they don’t even really know about the tech story and they just all go to Jones, I do think even if Meares is showing a little bit of a lead at the end,

11:25.60

Sam Shirazi

If he can never kind of get above the hump and get to 50%, there is this possibility that Jones is able to pull it off at the end. And obviously the top of the ticket margin for the attorney general race is the most important thing. So I think if Spanberger is winning closer to the VCU number of 7%, I think that is going to be tough for Jones. And that’s kind of the environment where Jason Mears might be able to win.

11:46.85

Sam Shirazi

If we’re closer to the state navigate environment where Spanberger is winning by 13%, I think that’s clearly more in the area where Jones is going to be able to pull it out and vrs is going to have a much harder time if we’re we’re looking about double digit win for Spanberger at the top of the ticket.

12:02.03

Sam Shirazi

And again, I wanted to give you these two polls. They’re nonpartisan. They’re kind of giving you different potential outcomes in Virginia. yeah it’s it’s never a good idea to kind of hyper fixate on one poll. It’s good to have kind of a sense of, okay, this is what one poll is showing. This is what another poll is showing. Again, i just wanted to kind of flag the nonpartisan polls at this time.

12:20.33

Sam Shirazi

You know, if you want to look it up, you can look it up all the partisan polls. I think it’s just too much. And again, some of the partisan polls, I trust a little bit more than the others. Some of them I’m very dubious about because they just don’t have a very clear explanation of how they reach those results.

12:35.12

Sam Shirazi

So, I think both State Navigate and BCU put out a bunch of cross tabs, put out their numbers. You can go look at it. I think, you know, it’s, I think what it’s telling us is Spamburger is definitely in the driver’s seat to potentially win this year in Virginia.

12:50.93

Sam Shirazi

the Question is, does she get a big win, a smaller win? I think the bigger the win for Spanberger, the bigger the down ballot implications are going to be. And potentially, Jay Jones could win for a Attorney General and Democrats can flip a lot of seats in the House of Delegates.

13:05.34

Sam Shirazi

The smaller the Spanberger win, obviously, you’re going to have the opposite effect. And, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see how things shake out. I did want to talk about the House of Delegates because it doesn’t get a lot of attention because so many people are focused on the governor’s race and now the you attorney general’s race. But the House of Delegates is super important. And I think for this week on Saturday, I will go through the House of Delegates races because I just think we’ve reached the point.

13:47.12

Sam Shirazi

So I think it’s really helpful to have that. And so this week, State Navigate released a poll regarding House District 86. So this is in the Hampton Roads area. It includes part of the cities of Hampton and Pocosin, and also includes a small part of York County.

14:03.01

Sam Shirazi

And this is a close seat in 2024. Harris barely won it by about 1.5%. The current incumbent Republican is A.C. Cardoza, and he is being challenged by Democrat Virgil Thornton.

14:17.02

Sam Shirazi

I will say, you know, Cardoza has some issues, and he he even before the issues came out, he is not considered necessarily the strongest incumbent, partly because he hasn’t fundraised a lot, partly because he hasn’t been there that long. He only won in 2021.

14:33.13

Sam Shirazi

And the other thing to keep in mind is the Democrats are spending a lot of money in this district. I think that was a big surprise in the campaign finance reports, how much money the Democrats were spending in this district.

14:44.77

Sam Shirazi

Because frankly, in 2023, it really wasn’t much of a battleground. It was kind of an afterthought. This year, very much the Democrats are targeting it. And I think the State Navigate poll shows that there’s a reason the Democrats are targeting it.

14:57.69

Sam Shirazi

And frankly, I’m sure the Democratic internals are also looking pretty good for them. Because they wouldn’t be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars if they didn’t think there was a chance they could win this seat. So I will go over the State Navigate poll now.

15:09.62

Sam Shirazi

All right. So in terms of the State Navigate poll for specifically the House District 86, for governor, it had Abigail Spanberger winning this district 52% to 47%.

15:21.07

Sam Shirazi

For lieutenant governor, it had Ghazala Hashmi winning the district 50% 49%. percent to forty nine percent For Attorney General, it had Jay Jones winning this district 50% to 49%. And finally, for the House of Delegates, the the two candidates running in this district, it had the Democrat winning 52% to 46%.

15:39.84

Sam Shirazi

And so there’s a lot going on in this poll. Generally, this is showing that... the environment is going to be bluer, at least at the top of the ticket, than 2024, because in 2024, Harris won this sheet by about 1.5%. Here, Spanberger’s winning the seat by 5%. I think the thing that was really surprising about this poll was the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General race, specifically that in the Attorney General race, there wasn’t much ticket splitting.

16:04.90

Sam Shirazi

especially basically it was the same as the lieutenant governor’s race. Now keep in mind Hampton Roads, Jay Jones comes from Hampton Roads, so he’s probably going to be doing doing a little bit better there. This district is about a quarter black, and I think Jay Jones in terms of the voters most likely to stick with him. with with him They’re basically black voters in Hampton Roads.

16:21.62

Sam Shirazi

So a little bit of caveat there. I think the other thing obviously interesting in this poll is the Democrats, at least according to the State Navigate poll, are on track to flip this seat 52% to 46%. Partly, I think that’s because AC Cardoza is not a strong incumbent. Partly, I think it’s because the Democrats are investing a lot in this district.

16:40.00

Sam Shirazi

So, I mean, if they flip this seat, it’s going to be a very good night for them in the House of Delegates. You know, the one thing I wanted to caveat about this district specifically is I mentioned the district’s about a quarter black in Hampton, and most of those are in the city of Hampton.

16:55.43

Sam Shirazi

I think there is a scenario where the Democrats just don’t get the same amount of turnout potentially in the city of Hampton. And I mentioned another city in the district, Pocosin, that’s a much more Republican district district.

17:08.98

Sam Shirazi

people tend to come out in that part of the district. It’s not a huge city, but it just gets pretty high turnout. So I think there could be this turnout dynamic where maybe on a poll, if you just pulled the district, you think the Democrats would be able to win. But when the turnout ends up happening, more Republicans come out. So the Republicans are able to pull it out. So again, it’s one poll. I wouldn’t necessarily obsess over it. I think a lot of things on election night come down to turnout and,

17:37.49

Sam Shirazi

particularly down ballot.

17:39.21

Sam Shirazi

Okay, so one last thing I wanted to cover is just The idea of turnout versus persuasion, I think at the top of the ticket, it’s pretty clear that Spanberger is getting a decent amount of persuasion. I think she’s going to be the strongest performing Democrat.

17:52.40

Sam Shirazi

So, you know, we can put the governor’s race aside because I think both sides are kind of coming to the conclusion that’s going to be very unlikely that for the Republicans to win that race.

18:02.72

Sam Shirazi

I wanted to focus more on the attorney general race, to be honest, and you know to a certain extent, this also has implications for the House of Delegates. I think for those races, it’s going to be less persuasion because people are more kind of loyal to the party that they typically vote for down ballot. So I think there’s going to be less Republicans voting for the Democrats down ballot than potentially at the top of the ticket.

18:26.82

Sam Shirazi

And voters in the middle, if you if they lean conservative, they may vote for Spanberger, but I think they’re going to stick more with the party that they’re usually loyal to down ballot. So I think a lot of the House of Delegates and the Trade General is going to come down to turnout.

18:40.76

Sam Shirazi

Specifically, I’ve talked about this before. Black voters in Hampton Roads, both for House of Delegates and the Attorney General race. I also think increasingly for the Attorney General race, students are going to be important. Students are important in the House of Delegates as well.

18:54.40

Sam Shirazi

I say students, but really young people, college students. because those voters tune in very late. And like I said, they typically don’t think too much about down down ballot. And so you can see this scenario where there’s kind of a surge of Black voters, there’s a surge of young people at the end, and that will help the Democrats in the House of Delegates. That should help Jay Jones for a Attorney General.

19:15.99

Sam Shirazi

So I think that’s one scenario. And maybe the State Navigate poll is kind of thinking that’s going to be a more likely scenario. I think there’s this other scenario where For whatever reason, because it’s an off-year election or voters aren’t paying attention, that doesn’t happen. So the black turnout isn’t that great.

19:31.94

Sam Shirazi

Younger voters don’t come out. And I think that’s going to be tougher for the Democrats in the House of Delegates, tougher for Jay Jones. And so as we’re getting closer and closer to Election Day, I think it’s important to think about turnout.

19:43.58

Sam Shirazi

And I just wanted to note one last thing that happened. It was announced that the Saturday before the election on November 1st, there will be a rally in Norfolk with a former President Obama, who’s going to come to campaign for Spanberger.

19:56.89

Sam Shirazi

Now, some people are saying, well, why is Obama coming to Virginia if Spanberger is winning? i mean, he’s come to Virginia in every single election since 2005. So this is just kind of been a tradition. Obama comes to Virginia. If you’re a campaign, I said this, it’s pretty much malpractice to not have Obama come because why you get a lot of free earned media. So obviously a former president campaigning, you will get a lot of local news coverage. You’ll get national news coverage. So it’s just a bunch of free media. You know, it’s kind of obviously you’re going to want that.

20:25.81

Sam Shirazi

Also, your base is going to get enthusiastic. President Obama is very popular among the Democratic base. And then finally, specifically with black voters, i mean, he is a popular figure with black voters, and you would want them to get energized and to go out and vote and to tell their friends to vote. And so i think for all those reasons, it makes sense for Obama to come out. And it’s certainly going to be a boost for Smanberger. I think the question is, how much does it also boost Jay Jones for attorney general? Does it also boost some of the House of Delegates candidates? We talked about the 86th district.

20:53.97

Sam Shirazi

It’s one fourth black. It’s in Hampton Roads. Norfolk is obviously the same media market as Hampton, the city of Hampton. So all this is going on in order to kind of get that blue wave potentially for the Democrats. doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but I think that is why you’re seeing certain things happening on the campaign trail.

21:10.77

Sam Shirazi

We’ll see if it happens. We’ll see if State Navigate, their poll ends up being right, or maybe we’re closer to a VCU environment. Who knows? I wanted to kind of lay out these polls as we’ve we’ve seen them.

21:21.56

Sam Shirazi

we there There will be more polls. I will typically only report on the good polls, the ones I think are nonpartisan, the ones I think have good methodology. I’m not going report every single poll. Just be weary when you see a bunch of random polls out there, especially from people and organizations that you you may not be super familiar with. you know i will I will flag the more important polls. in my final podcasts before the election.

21:44.94

Sam Shirazi

So I appreciate everyone who’s been listening a lot going on. As I said, I’m going to be putting out more episodes. Some of them are more interviews. Some of them are going to giving you my thoughts. You know, it’s, it’s the, it’s the final countdown until the election. It’s really exciting. 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 is a special bonus interview with Todd Truitt. He is an attorney in Arlington, and he also spends a lot of time working on education policy. And I wanted to have him on because obviously there’s been coverage of education in this election, but I think sometimes the actual policy discussion is missed. And I think Todd is well regarded on both sides of the aisle. And in terms of his knowledge of education, he’s a father of kids who go to public schools in Virginia. I also have kids who go to public school in Virginia, so I thought it’ would be interesting to hear from an actual parent on this issue as well.

00:41.05

Sam Shirazi

So, with that Todd, thanks for joining me.

00:43.65

Todd Truitt

No, thanks for having me, Sam. It’s a, it’s an honor to join your podcast. I’m a big, big listener.

00:48.77

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, so to to begin, you know what made you interested in education?

00:53.85

Todd Truitt

Well, you know, I am a first generation. I was a first generation college student and, you know, I, I just, now I have two kids in public schools. I’m involved in the public schools, and Arlington public schools, which very much a big fan of Arlington public schools, but, you know, I, I just see from kind of a lived experience perspective.

01:13.19

Todd Truitt

like what kids have that have kind of two educated parents versus kids that don’t have, and the expectations that are set at home versus kids that don’t have those kind of resources in-house and kind of like what public schools should be providing.

01:28.50

Sam Shirazi

That makes sense. And, you know, I think your background is helpful in terms of the work you’re doing on education, because obviously there’s been talk about education in this election. I find the media tends to just focus on the trans issue, which, you know, frankly,

01:44.13

Sam Shirazi

I know a lot of parents who have kids in public schools is probably the least of their concern. They’re mostly concerned about things related to reading, writing, math, trying to make sure their kids are learning, and that often gets missed in the political conversation.

01:58.76

Sam Shirazi

So can you kind of talk about how education policy fits in, even though you don’t always hear about it on the campaign trail?

02:05.31

Todd Truitt

Well, yeah, and no, Sam, I expressed your disappointment, too, with kind of this year. And i would say this, you know, I think first to just talk about the trans issue, it’s not a great polling issue for Democrats. It splits activists from the rank and file voters.

02:20.01

Todd Truitt

But I think Republicans love to talk about it to kind of, quote unquote, own the libs. And the amount but the amount of press coverage it’s gotten is just really kind of mind boggling from the kind of effect that it has versus kind of really bread and butter issues as to.

02:35.44

Todd Truitt

kids learning. And i think you’re exactly right that like what regular parents care about are kids learning or not. You know, i think say second point is that if you saw that, you know, I didn’t watch all the debate, but but I read up on it.

02:50.11

Todd Truitt

And I think other than the trans question that came up and correct me if I’m wrong, the only other k through 12 ed question was about the, know, the Terry McAuliffe kind of throwaway question from 2021. that correct?

03:03.49

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, i don’t think at the debate, education was a big part of it. And I i think, to your point, you know, at the policy level, there’s a lot of things that actually the parties agree on. And I think there is a lot of things that that is somewhat bipartisan, both in the General Assembly, and in terms of the governor’s office. So I I think part of it is, you know, there’s more in common than we than we like to think sometimes in terms of the actual policy side side of things.

03:32.69

Sam Shirazi

So I think that’s part of it. I think that the campaign in the media likes to highlight the contrast. And so think it’s interesting to talk about, you know where there might be actually bipartisan agreement on some of this education policy.

03:44.80

Todd Truitt

Yeah, and that’s kind of where I got involved a year and a half ago, almost two years ago, is that yeah I was seeing these things, kind of these press articles like Republicans say this, Democrats say that.

03:55.77

Todd Truitt

And there’s just so much kind of things that actually both have in common. And yeah I just started writing on these things and you know unfortunately to find places to kind of publish Education analyses in Virginia is just you know few and far between, but yeah I’ve published in the kind of conservative-leaning blog, Bacon’s Rebellion.

04:15.90

Todd Truitt

To his credit, James Bacon will publish everyone. He publishes Paul Goldman and David Toscano and others. I just did an interview with Skylar von Valkenberg on his and Dan Helmer’s big SOL testing reform efforts coming up.

04:32.37

Todd Truitt

They passed a law this last year. They’re going to there’ll be another bill this session. And it’s it’s bipartisan. It’s got a lot of bipartisan input. And it’s going to be nine-figure kind of reform. Probably one of the biggest things that we’re going to do in the state in the next four years, five years.

04:50.58

Todd Truitt

And it’s it’s a rigor-raising, know, raising the bar, kind of make our schools better. It’s great. I also have another interview with Skylar again. Well, it’s the same lunch over tacos and Skylar’s district on the account accountability, the new accountability system. and and that was done by the Yonkin administration, but Schuyler, Senator von Valkenberg, Russette Perry, and Cannon Sreenivasan actually killed a bill in the Senate in the last session that would have delayed that system, and that that that new accountability system.

05:23.07

Todd Truitt

And that wasn’t reported on the press too. So, and I also did an op-ed in the Richmond Times Dispatch this past summer, but but yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, It’s is there a market for that level of of press coverage that can is financially worth it? That’s a question. So it’s up to kind of volunteers to fill fill the void like you do on election and analysts analyses.

05:45.71

Sam Shirazi

Well, yeah, it’s good to have like voices also like regular people who have kids in school, because I think a lot of times the space is dominated by kind of people who don’t really have stake in the game. So I did want to ask you about a specific policy question, because to be perfectly honest, you know, I grew up taking a lot of tests in school and I’m, I have some skepticism of it because I do worry about teaching to the test, but I know that there needs to be some way to measure

06:07.14

Todd Truitt

Thank

06:12.60

Sam Shirazi

if kids are learning. So can you kind of walk through some of the nuances of testing and the pros and cons and what you think, how it makes sense to use testing in education context?

06:23.64

Todd Truitt

Yeah, no, no. And this is one where I’m a lawyer. I geek out on this stuff. So the testing is actually required. So by federal law, there you must have state standardized tests in grade three through eight for math and for English.

06:38.74

Todd Truitt

And you have to do and then one for one year in high school. And for science, you must do it once every three years in grades three through five, six through eight, and then in high school.

06:50.77

Todd Truitt

And then We have state kind of testing requirements for social studies, and I might be missing a few things. But I think the thing that gets lost about the testing is, is that 2015, so there was no child left behind in 2002.

07:06.86

Todd Truitt

And that is what made our 2001 and that is what mandated statewide testing and the states had a few years to implement it. But in 2015, we roll back some of No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Act.

07:20.19

Todd Truitt

You know one one thing to notice is that the co-author of that bill was U.S. Representative Bobby Scott and from Virginia. And in his focus, he actually added a lot of things to that bill to to raise the rigorous to the least performing schools that were just really, really great.

07:37.100

Todd Truitt

But I digress, though. But the reason why that testing is in there is because civil rights organizations are big advocates of it. They they they are. I saw a presentation by Denise Ford, who’s the head of the Education Trust. That’s one of the leading education groups for civil rights.

07:56.92

Todd Truitt

And she was talking about how they’re just scared to death that the Trump administration would waive testy because it is so important to see insights into how those least performing, the kind of least advantaged kids are performing. So I think that’s one thing that gets lost in the conversation.

08:11.100

Todd Truitt

Are standardized tests perfect? No, not not at all. You know, if there was a better system, i am all for it. But, and I think that, you know, in my interview with Skylar, like Virginia’s tests are pretty outdated and, you know, they need to be updated.

08:26.56

Todd Truitt

And I agree with him that, you know, no one disagrees with teaching to an AP exam. But, but yeah, I mean, I, I’m very hopeful this next legislative session that we’re going to get the funding to really kind of bring our testing system into the 21st century, uh, into, yeah, 21st century and into, to this decade and basically into the next decade.

08:49.83

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, looking ahead to the next governor and next General Assembly, you know, whoever ends up winning, i mean what do you think some of the areas are that the parties can work together to try to make some progress on education? Because I know a lot of people move to Virginia specifically for the schools. And obviously, we want to keep the schools really top notch. You know how do you think the parties can do that while there’s all this other division with other stuff going on?

09:16.79

Todd Truitt

Well, you know, I think you see a kind of push in both parties to really kind raise the standards. And I think that if you go back 10 years, and and I call it the federal fallout in education, because that’s when the federal government stepped back.

09:31.30

Todd Truitt

And the idea was is that the states would fill the void. And we saw in much of the United States, including in Virginia, they didn’t. There was a number of changes that, you know, you’ll never hear Republicans admit it, but they were bipartisan to kind of cut back on testing, cut back on, you know, we lowered the bar on accreditation. There was a number of changes And the results are in after 10 years. And you see states like Mississippi and Louisiana kicking our butt. And pretty much if you look at the NAEP scores, for if you look at the demographic subgroup scores, you know it’s Mississippi is outperforming us and for African-American kids, for Hispanic kids, for economically disadvantaged, the least advantaged kind of demographics.

10:12.40

Todd Truitt

But then you look at like white kids and economically advantaged kids and Mississippi outperforms us on those subgroups as well. The same with Louisiana. So I think that, you know, you see both parties, it’s really a new generation on ed policy that’s in charge versus 10 years ago.

10:30.02

Todd Truitt

And both parties are talking about kind of raising the rigor. I think One kind of change is if Democrats are in charge, you’re going to see a lot more money going to the public school system. I do think that the, you know, i am a Democrat. I think that the there should be more funding for a state of our wealth to our public school system. Now, I think states states like Mississippi and Louisiana have really kind of proven that it’s not just about money, but I’m all about an all of the above approach.

10:58.53

Todd Truitt

Mississippi was very big and Louisiana had been very, very big on kind of raising standards, you know, pushing those high standards as civil rights groups push for. So but I do think that from a perspective of like, you know, the Sears, if Sears wins, it’s kind of a black box.

11:16.77

Todd Truitt

I would think that she will continue with what Youngkin has been pushing. But if you look at her website, she has like a paragraph on Ed Policy, You Spanberger put out a very, very detailed kind of plan on EdPol. And a lot of this stuff is about upholding Virginia’s high standards. There’s a lot of stuff on kind of raising the standards, raising the rigor of the schools also while sending the money.

11:40.62

Todd Truitt

But Sears really just kind of talks about school choice. And that’s it. I saw an interview, too, with a group called Capital News Service. It’s an article detailing the EdPlan.

11:51.46

Todd Truitt

They reached out to the Sears campaign like multiple times and for an ed plan and that would they they did not send one. So it’s kind of a black box, kind of a long answer. But I think that the General Assembly is really kind of probably you know like what the what has been proposed with the s SOL testing reform.

12:11.05

Todd Truitt

With, you know, one thing that you could also see is we have a very, very outdated finance system here in Virginia. Antiquated is putting it lightly. And that really needs to get updated. We fund school systems, not the actual students.

12:25.85

Todd Truitt

It’s an extremely complex issue. But I know both parties want to change that. There’s a whole funding kind of amount issue. I think that that probably becomes more likely if Spanberger wins versus Sears.

12:39.60

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I wanted to pick up on the specific examples of Mississippi and Louisiana, because, you know, there are parts of Virginia that the schools have had issues. You know, you often hear about Northern Virginia, the schools are so great. But I do think parts of Virginia, more economically disadvantaged urban areas like in Hampton Roads and possibly, you know, more rural areas in Southwest Virginia, the schools could use a lot of improvements, both, you know, from a physical standpoint, improving the schools themselves, but also, you know, the test scores and and making sure the students are learning better.

13:10.56

Sam Shirazi

How do you think Virginia can help close the gap between, you know, the really high performing schools in Northern Virginia and some of the other schools that could do better?

13:19.42

Todd Truitt

Look, I mean, I’m an education realist. Look, there’s there’s a lot, and you know this, Sam, there’s a lot of learning that happens outside of school. There’s a lot of, you know, just socioeconomic benefits to, you know, kids growing up in a family with two advanced degrees. But I do think schools, you public schools is probably the biggest kind of social mobility equalizer in society.

13:41.44

Todd Truitt

And so when you look at like and, you know, there’s some stories being told, some success stories being told that are not being told in Virginia. And one is Wise County in southwest Virginia.

13:52.64

Todd Truitt

Very poor county. There’s a guy down there, Matt Hurt, not Matt Hurt from Twitter fame, of the Arlington Republic County, a Republican County, but another guy. He runs this program called the Comprehensive Instructional Program in Virginia.

14:06.45

Todd Truitt

they have about 40 districts down there that they handle but i mean the results they are getting there are just phenomenal and i talked to a lot of like democratic policy makers and a lot of them don’t know of that story of of what matt is doing down there and i think that you know there’s some major highlights i think also a lot of what was on the prior accreditation system It was spitting out numbers for decade plus that said, you know, basically 90 percent of schools are accredited, 10 percent or not, with no distinguishment in those 90 percent of schools.

14:39.10

Todd Truitt

And it had a lot of kind of opaque metrics. And I think that that’s going to help our, and you know, that was I was a big supporter of the new accountability system. You there’s a lot of success stories in Virginia that are just not being told to the public.

14:52.12

Todd Truitt

And to state lawmakers, too. And I’m very optimistic that that can be told. But, you know, it’s a long answer. But yes, I’m very big on that Virginia needs to increase its funding as well.

15:04.07

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I think there are some bills that have been passed in the previous General Assembly and you have previewed some that might come up in the next General Assembly.

15:14.88

Sam Shirazi

you know What do you think the role of the General Assembly and the governor is in setting education policy versus the local school district? Because you often hear about that kind of tension between the the state, the local, and now we have the federal government in some instances trying to get involved with local school board decisions. So, I mean, how much do you think the local school board is important versus some of the state level decisions?

15:41.78

Todd Truitt

Yeah, and I think that not to completely wonk out, but I think your your listeners that are a big in politics will like this, is that there’s really kind of what I call four quadrants of kind of education kind of politics. And you have a split on the Democratic side between kind of these local controlled Democrats who are a lot of like the unions, the school boards, the superintendents.

16:04.08

Todd Truitt

And then you have kind of reform oriented Democrats. And those are you the civil rights groups. You have a lot of kind of suburban parents. and And then on a Republican side, you have these kind of reform oriented Republicans.

16:16.39

Todd Truitt

It’s a lot of suburban kind of Republicans. And then you have this popular populist parent rights Republicans, which has gotten yeah a lot bigger in the last five in the last five to 10 years. So you kind of like look at that split.

16:31.51

Todd Truitt

And I think that, you know, in i just think that having watched a lot of school board meetings and there’s a new study by David Houston, he co-authored, he’s a George Mason professor, really like watching a bunch of school board meetings.

16:47.27

Todd Truitt

And the amount of time they spend on actually out academic outcome data is very limited. I mean, their their expertise to do so is is very limited as well. And you’ve seen kind of the results on that the last 10 years as the federal federal government kind of stepped back from doing that.

17:04.48

Todd Truitt

And the state has that, you know, the scores have gone down. And you look, I don’t blame these kind of like, you know, stakeholders in education. I’ve been a lawyer in highly regulated industries for 20 years.

17:18.08

Todd Truitt

No one likes regulation. But I think the results are kind of speaking for themselves. And you really kind of see legislation-wise the past five years, not just the Yonkin administration, but also kind of Democrats and the legislators saying, look, we’re we’re funding these schools with a lot of money.

17:35.22

Todd Truitt

The results are not showing. We’re going to step in. So, you know, I want to just... call out a few things. There was a Virginia letter Literacy Act that was passed in 2022, amended in 2024.

17:47.44

Todd Truitt

That was Luis Lucas, Jennifer McClellan, Carrie Coiner. There were some other folks, too. There was also the cell phone ban in schools. That was the Yunkin administration. Really kind of led on that. But all of the legislators, except for two, voted for this they you know ban of bell to bell.

18:04.76

Todd Truitt

very popular with parents. There’s this advanced math auto enroll law. Hasn’t gotten the press that it deserves, but that was Delegate Katrina Coulson. There’s a high quality instructional materials bill that was passed by Sam Rasool, Skylar von Valkenburg, Kerry Koiner.

18:21.61

Todd Truitt

So you could kind of go on and on. And I think the meta level, what you’re looking at is you’re looking at both parties in Virginia saying, hey, we’re taking back a little bit of data power here From schools with with regards to academic outcomes, you know, they’re probably not going to say that blatantly because you get you have people on both sides, Republican and Democratic side that are fiercely for local control.

18:44.70

Todd Truitt

But I think on this academic outcome areas where you’re going to see the state continue to kind of creep up on the power of local localities to kind of take it back.

18:53.79

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. And I think that cell phone ban has in schools is or limiting cell phones in schools. but It’s a good example, because I think almost everyone was behind that. And as an example that education can be less polarized than it often is portrayed, i guess one question would be, you know, going forward.

19:14.46

Sam Shirazi

you know how do we or the education community try to kind of depolarize the school’s issue? Because my sense is a lot of parents don’t want to these schools to become this kind of cultural battleground hotbed. They just want to focus on learning and I think that’s a frustration that a lot of parents have that both in the media and some of the political spaces, it’s become so polarized.

19:41.03

Sam Shirazi

You know, is there any way to do that, to depolarize it, or is it just the reality that now it’s become kind of this cultural battleground?

19:49.26

Todd Truitt

I mean, look, I think that, you know, you’ll, yeah yo you people, you know, complain about the demise of local press. And I think that’s, that’s part of the reason because, you know, there’s just less of a demand for these kinds of things financially. And you’ve seen a lot of local press coverage that would, you know, typically cover these things is just not doing so anymore. Because, I mean, see massive layoffs at the Richmond Times Dispatch, rounds of layoffs, you know, it’s like, you know, I don’t know who’s keeping the lights on over there, but, know,

20:19.26

Todd Truitt

you know i think that’s one thing and i i’m hoping that there’ll be some more kind of independent people that kind of step in the void to cover these things from public interest perspective you know because people ask me my kids do a bunch of sports you’re like they’re like are you volunteering to do sports i’m like well i i volunteer and do a a different activity that i i hope that is kind of helping out the larger community

20:41.26

Sam Shirazi

Yeah. And so to that a point, let’s say you have a you know quick meeting with whoever’s elected the next governor. What would you tell that person about what they should be doing on education policy in Virginia?

20:54.26

Todd Truitt

Well, yeah, I mean, I think that they you should be working with, as I’ve told both sides that, you know, you should be talking to each other. i just think there’s so much room for agreement. I think that what we’re seeing with both parties really now wanting to kind of get in and rate raise the bar.

21:12.52

Todd Truitt

I think there’s a lot of room for agreement. And, you know, look, there’s a lot of political theater. I get it. You know, I’m not I’m never going to be an elected official because I have no interest in it And you you see the political theater that goes on. You can’t compliment the other side because you got an election coming up. It’s frustrating, but it’s the world that we live in. And that’s the that’s how laws are made.

21:36.87

Todd Truitt

We don’t have a benevolent dictator here in the United States. So but but I do think, you know, I think that the Spanberger campaign has it in there.

21:47.43

Todd Truitt

in their policy platform. And Ghazal Hashmi had a bill last time. Like on Math Ed, I think there needs to be a significant, and this is kind of one of the things I write about. I think that there needs to be a significant focus on Math Ed. I mean, and the Virginia Literacy Act, and not to get too wonky, but for years, the biggest thing out of ed schools were ways to teach kids kids to read that did were not proven to work.

22:13.89

Todd Truitt

And there’s ideological reasons that yeah we could do. There’s an excellent eight part podcast on it called Sold a Story. But that’s what kind of Luis Lucas and others did with the Virginia Literacy Act is to basically roll that out and tell schools, no, you need to teach kids the proven ways that are proven to teach kids to read.

22:34.10

Todd Truitt

And I think that there could be something done on the math side. you know, we were 50 first state for math ed recovery on the national test that’s done called the NAEP. And the Spanberger campaign is definitely talking about that.

22:47.96

Todd Truitt

Hashmi had a bill last session with Shelly Simons to kind of do like what a VLA did the Virginia Literacy Act did. i will say I like that bill. I did not think it had enough guardrails around it as to sending the money to districts to make sure they they spend on those evidence-based methods and i’m hopeful if it gets re re-proposed that that evidence-based based language will be you know re-included because you know districts just are not doing enough on that and so i think that’s one one big thing for uh for the next session as well

23:26.04

Sam Shirazi

Well, let’s try to close that closer on a happier note. Let’s say, what do you think Virginia schools are doing right? Because I i mean, i’m in Northern Virginia, the schools in Northern Virginia are very good. People move to Virginia for the schools. you know What do you think, at least some things that they’re doing correct and that they could potentially build upon going forward?

23:46.83

Todd Truitt

No, I think that, you know, Virginia school, like from what I have seen in Arlington and I know a lot of other districts, there’s a lot of ways for parents to get involved in kind of school.

23:58.48

Todd Truitt

Like we have various different curriculum committees. They’re very, very open to parent feedback, you know, in terms a lot of different ways to do so. So, and I know other districts are like that. Well, you know, some people will complain about, wow, they don’t listen to us, et cetera.

24:13.84

Todd Truitt

But the fact that they’re there and actually listening and everything, I think from a parent perspective, is just very, very refreshing. I mean, look, we have a very highly educated populace here.

24:25.62

Todd Truitt

And so I think that you know a lot of times the schools are with a lot of kids that are born on third base. And we offer some amazing academic opportunities.

24:36.13

Todd Truitt

I do think in Northern Virginia, we could do better. There’s a number of schools with some very, you know people are like oh, Northern Virginia is so rich. There’s a lot of you know pockets of very kind of underperforming, you know so low socioeconomic kids.

24:49.85

Todd Truitt

And I don’t think that we are doing enough to help those kids. And the NAEP scores show it, the test scores show it. And unfortunately, we had a system in place previously with the prior accreditation system that just wasn’t telling that story for the public. Nobody knew about it.

25:06.81

Todd Truitt

And I think that, you know, with the new, whenever the new system releases its results, it’s going to kind of tell a story to these kids. left-leaning communities that, hey, look, you know, we need to be doing more to kind of helping out these kind of underprivileged districts. But but otherwise, i think that, you know, would the opportunities that these schools in Northern Virginia offer kids in terms of advanced academics and things is really just unbelievable. You know, one thing that’s kind of hot right now in the ed policy circuit too that I got to mention is raising what’s called the cut scores.

25:40.42

Todd Truitt

And that’s the kind of proficiency, what’s considered proficient to pass the standardized tests for math and reading. And, you know, what’s not been talked about is that the U.S. Department Education comes out Every two years with where those kind of benchmarks meet versus state standards in Virginia has had the lowest benchmarks in the country for the last like five plus years and the young campaign.

26:04.15

Todd Truitt

The Youngkin 2021 campaign ran on this. They’ve been working on it for three and a half years. There’s been a proposal now that the Board of Ed is gonna vote on on Thursday to raise those scores kind of similar to what Massachusetts is doing, Maryland is doing, Colorado is doing.

26:21.39

Todd Truitt

you know You see these Northern Virginia school districts raising just this huge ruckus. It’s actually a four or five year phase in period. and It’s just really been disappointing because I know our populace here believes in high standards, but it kind of going back to this conversation we had about the state, both parties in the state taking back power, is is that this is a better way for the state to monitor, for state policymakers to kind of monitor what’s going on and for parents.

26:51.15

Todd Truitt

So, you know, I’ve been a little pretty disappointed in the Northern Virginia school districts for this kind of knee-jerk opposition to it. but But overall, i have a fifth and a sixth grader. Like, I love the Virginia public school system. Look, I mean, it has problems like any institution does, public or private.

27:11.90

Todd Truitt

But I think everything is on the table that these things can be, you know, fixed. And I’m all for all of the above approach, raising standards, raising funding. And I’m just very kind of bullish in the next 10 years of where our school system will be.

27:27.78

Todd Truitt

when everything gets implemented over the next 10 years.

27:31.26

Sam Shirazi

Well, that’s good to hear. i did have one final question about this issue, because, as you mentioned, there isn’t a lot of news coverage about it, which is disappointing. If someone is interested in Virginia learning more about this next year, General Assembly, what the next governor does, you know what are some of your recommendations of how to follow along with what’s going on?

27:54.68

Todd Truitt

You know, I mean, well, I’m going to be writing about some of these things for sure, because, you know, and and there is some press coverage. I find some through Google News, obscure things, obscure publications.

28:08.05

Todd Truitt

Twitter, if you want to go into that cesspool, it’s addictive. I’m on it. And you find a lot there’s a lot of kind of Virginia. yeah Skyler von Valkenberg, he loves to tweet about ed policy.

28:19.85

Todd Truitt

And I follow him for a lot of that as well. And so so, yeah, I mean, it is at this point, it’s really kind of ad hoc is the local press is kind of you know falling away on this kind of on these issues.

28:31.49

Sam Shirazi

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and also for you know so spending your time highlighting these issues and trying to be an advocate for you know education policy because I do think it’s unfortunately lost in a lot of the debate about what’s going on in the schools. So anyways, thanks so much for joining me.

28:48.87

Todd Truitt

Thank you, Sam. Greatly appreciate it.

28:50.82

Sam Shirazi

All right. 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 is a packed episode where we will go over a lot of things. So I wanted to start with the Attorney General debate that was on Thursday night. Everyone was paying close attention to that because of the revelations that came out about Jay Jones’s text.

00:20.30

Sam Shirazi

So we’ll start first with that. debate And then we will move on to campaign finance numbers that also came out this week for the month of September. We’ll talk about that, what it might mean for the campaign.

00:32.84

Sam Shirazi

And then finally, i wanted to just quickly touch base about the... Start of expanded hours and locations for early voting. It’s going to start this weekend. And just wanted to kind of touch base on early voting generally because there’s been kind of a lull right now where it’s been pretty steady, but nothing too dramatic. And I think in the next couple weeks, obviously, as the election gets closer, there’s going to be a lot of stuff going on with early voting. Just wanted to kind of set that up and then we’ll we’ll talk about it down the line.

00:59.16

Sam Shirazi

So lots to talk about this week. Lots of going on with the Virginia elections. I wanted to start with the attorney general debate because I think In terms of big moments left in the campaign, I mean, obviously there’s something unknown that could happen. But in terms of things we knew that was coming, there was the governor’s debate and then the attorney general debate.

01:16.33

Sam Shirazi

And usually the attorney general debate is not a super high stakes thing. Frankly, not that many people usually watch it. However, this year I think was different because of the story that came out with Jay Jones and the techs.

01:29.71

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, that really shook up the attorney general race. And I think all eyes were on Jay Jones specifically in the debate to see how he would handle it. And we can I’ll play you a few clips of the debate and then we can talk about it.

01:42.19

Sam Shirazi

Before I get into the actual substance of what was discussed at the debate, I did want to note that the format of the debate I think was very interesting, very different than the governor’s debate format. Governor debate was kind of a typical...

01:53.77

Sam Shirazi

media run debate, short sound bites, like 30 second answer sessions. And, you know, I think that this format in the attorney general debate was a lot stronger in many ways because the candidates were given more time to speak.

02:08.58

Sam Shirazi

The Virginia Bar was the one moderating the debate. One thing I noticed, for example, and a lot of people were surprised, there was four minute opening statements. And I actually thought that was good because it gave the candidates enough time to explain their positions.

02:21.15

Sam Shirazi

And then during the actual engagement of the debate, The candidates weren’t interrupting each other. I think they were both told to act in a lawyerly manner or like they were in court as opposed to a political debate. I thought that really served the debate well. I thought both of them carried themselves well.

02:37.74

Sam Shirazi

And people on both sides, you know regardless of who you thought won the debate, basically said that the debate was the format of the debate made a lot of sense. And people were just generally happy that it was a more substantive debate.

02:51.74

Sam Shirazi

than, for example, the governor’s debate where specifically Winston-Mariel Sears was interrupting more. And it was kind of hard to get a full answer from either of them because there was a lot of back and forth. So long story short, that was kind of the substance, though sorry, not the substance of the debate, the format of the debate.

03:08.06

Sam Shirazi

And we can go over the substance and talk about a few things that happened during the debate. I will say before I play you a few clips, I don’t think the debate was a game changer either way. So I don’t think all of a sudden you know, the race is back where it was before the text.

03:23.06

Sam Shirazi

I don’t think the race is over. I think it was basically what we expected. To the extent there was more expectations, I think Jay Jones had the harder task in this debate because he obviously had to step in there, deal with the text issue, and then try to talk about other things. And I think he did that I don’t think the debate either side had a huge gaffe. I don’t think there’s something where everyone was talking about the attorney general debate. I think, you know, it got some attention, but ultimately it kind of was basically what we expected in that Jay Jones had to address the text. He kind of pivoted you

03:59.55

Sam Shirazi

trying to link Jason Meares to Donald Trump. And then obviously Jason Meares was talking more about the text and trying to attack Jay Jones. So not super surprising in many ways, but I will kind of play you some of the clips just so you get a sense of how things were.

04:16.37

Sam Shirazi

So the first clip I will play is Jay Jones at the beginning of the of of the debate directly addressing the text issues.

04:51.72

Sam Shirazi

All right. So that was Jay Jones addressing the issue with this text. Now let’s see how Jason Meares responded to that apology from Jay Jones.

05:35.84

Sam Shirazi

All right. So that was Jason Miara is talking about the text issue. And so I wanted to kind of get that out of the way, because frankly, that’s kind of how the debate went, where obviously it was going to be the first topic. Both sides would want to deal with it.

05:49.54

Sam Shirazi

I think Jason Miara is during the debate was trying to bring it up again and again, you know, The reality is the moderators weren’t going to spend an entire hour just talking about text. They wanted to talk about different issues.

06:00.48

Sam Shirazi

They brought up other questions. And you know some of them were a little bit more into weeds, legal stuff. But I think overall, they were trying to have a debate that touched on voters’ concerns, but also talked about some of the issues that are going to come up for whoever ends up winning the election.

06:17.12

Sam Shirazi

And I wanted to talk a little bit about Jay Jones’ strategy after apologizing. So very clearly, he was trying to link... Jason B.R. is to Donald Trump. And that has been the strategy of the Democrats for the most part the entire year. As I’ve said, the Virginia elections tend to just become a referendum on the incumbent president.

06:35.23

Sam Shirazi

And so the Democrats, given that President Trump, most polls have him at negative approval in Virginia. The Democrats strategy is to just link the Republicans with Donald Trump.

06:45.100

Sam Shirazi

If you like Donald Trump, You’re going to vote for the Republicans. If you don’t like Donald Trump, you’re going to vote for the Democrats. If that happens and it really does become a pure referendum, Democrats are probably going to win because almost certainly President Trump’s going to have a negative approval in Virginia. He never won Virginia.

07:01.14

Sam Shirazi

And so that’s just the Democratic strategy. And we’ll I’ll play a clip of Jay Jones doing that just to get a sense of how he was doing it in debate. in the debate

07:42.81

Sam Shirazi

All right. So that was Jay Jones talking about Jason Miara is not going after the Trump administration. Again, that was his strategy. And I think this race, the debate didn’t change the fundamentals. The race will come down to what is more important for voters.

07:57.66

Sam Shirazi

Are the texts the most important issue in this race? And are voters going to make up their mind mainly on the text issue? Obviously, Republicans would like that to happen. If that happens, obviously, pretty likely that Jason Miara’s will win the race.

08:11.26

Sam Shirazi

Or our voters, their primary concern, what’s going on in D.C., sending a message to Donald Trump. If that’s the way it happens, and obviously Jay Jones and the Democrats want that to happen, if that happens, then obviously, more likely, the jy Jones is going to win. And I think the debate can’t really answer that question.

08:29.21

Sam Shirazi

The only people can answer that question are the voters. And we’re going to just wait and see what the results will be on election day when the votes start coming in, because that is how this race is going to be decided at the end of the day.

08:41.36

Sam Shirazi

You know, I know that There’s a lot of different things going on. There’s a lot of important issues. But most voters, they’re either going to remember one or two things about the candidates and make their decision based on just a split-second decision about whether they like Trump or maybe they don’t like these texts.

08:58.76

Sam Shirazi

And that’s kind of how they’re going to decide this race. And I think you know to the extent the the debate mattered, I don’t think this hurt Jay Jones anymore, or at least the debate didn’t hurt him in the sense of,

09:10.89

Sam Shirazi

I saw some Democratic officials put out statements after the debate supporting Jay Jones. So for example, Lamont Bagby, he’s the chair of the Democratic Party in Virginia. He’s also a state senator. He put out the standard statement, you know, Jay Jones won the debate, which is not super surprising. And that’s what you expect him to put out. But I think in this context, it the statement itself was a bit of a statement because it showed that he was backing Jay Jones in the attorney general race.

09:36.47

Sam Shirazi

So to that extent, I think the debate kind of was one of those moments where it it put to rest some of the concerns Democrats had. And so I think on the Democratic side, there’s going to be a little bit more consolidation behind Jay Jones, if I had to guess.

09:52.31

Sam Shirazi

I think the big question mark are independents. I think independents are going to decide the race. Miárez needs to win the independents. He’s very clearly going after them. And you know i think it’s going to be very difficult to know the state of this race, even if we get nonpartisan polling.

10:07.33

Sam Shirazi

And the reason I say that is with These types of races, when candidate has some issues, it is hard to get people to poll to pull people correctly because they don’t always give you who they’re going to vote for. And oftentimes there’s a lot of undecideds and there’s a lot of undecideds until the end. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we see polls coming out 46, 45 for candidate.

10:30.37

Sam Shirazi

for either candidate And basically that’s very difficult to know who’s going to win at the end. If you’re, you know, the last poll you get is 46, 45, it could go either way. Voters could break one way or another.

10:43.08

Sam Shirazi

i think the other thing to think about is there’s a lot of talk about ticket splitting. So ticket splitting, obviously Miare, his strategy is to try to get Spanberger voters or a certain chunk of Spanberger voters to vote for him for attorney general.

10:56.16

Sam Shirazi

You know, obviously most of the polls show Spanberger ahead. So if Spanberger wins, by definition, Miárez will need some Spanberger voters to vote for him in order to win. He can’t, you know, Miárez is hoping there isn’t going to be straight straight ticket voting.

11:11.19

Sam Shirazi

And so I think that’s certainly going to happen to a certain extent. But I think the open question is what’s called undervoting. So that’s basically when someone may may vote for the Democrats for the governor race, but either they skip the attorney general ballot or they write someone in.

11:27.08

Sam Shirazi

So they don’t actually give Meares their vote. And I think that may happen to a certain extent in this race. so And obviously that helps Meares because it’s a vote that Jay Jones isn’t getting, but it’s not as good as ticket splitting because ticket splitting, you know, Jay Jones is down one, Meares is up one.

11:44.28

Sam Shirazi

But if there’s an under vote, then Jay Jones is basically down one, but Meares isn’t up one. So I think this All that makes this race very inherently hard to predict because you have to take into account voters who may not be telling the pollsters who they’re going to vote for. You have to take into account ticket splitting. you have to take into account undervotes.

12:07.62

Sam Shirazi

You have to take into account that traditionally people tend to come home to the party that they vote for at the top of the ticket, especially if this is a referendum on the president and people are just upset at Trump. So all that is very, very complicated stuff in a race like this.

12:23.41

Sam Shirazi

And to be perfectly honest, I mean, I hope we get some nonpartisan polls. I’m sure we will. I still think even after the nonpartisan polls, unless they show very clear results, like someone’s winning by 10 and is above 50 percent,

12:35.34

Sam Shirazi

I still think this is going to be very inherently hard to predict who’s going to win. You know, it’s just one of those things where you you have to get into the individual minds of each voter.

12:46.12

Sam Shirazi

And it’s it’s very hard because I think some voters might think right now, well, I don’t love what he did. Some Democratic voters might think, I don’t love what Jay Jones did. But a common refrain that, for example, Representative Don Breyer basically said is, you know, I don’t – the texts were awful, but – Trump has also done bad things. And I think that’s what you might hear from a lot of Democratic voters at the end of the day.

13:10.31

Sam Shirazi

And so I just don’t know. how everything’s going to shake out at the end. And so we’re just going to have to wait and see. And yeah, anyways, so Attorney General debate, very interesting.

13:21.12

Sam Shirazi

I don’t want to dwell on it for the whole podcast because there’s a lot of other stuff going on. Definitely, if you’re interested, you can watch the debate. It’s online. Watch the whole thing. Don’t think it was a game changer.

13:32.24

Sam Shirazi

Essentially, the race is going to come down to what’s more important for people. sending a message about president Trump or maybe these texts and the fact that people don’t like what happened. And so we don’t know, we don’t, there’s no way of knowing. We’re going to have to wait and see.

13:46.72

Sam Shirazi

So anyways, that was the attorney general debate. All right. Now let’s turn to the campaign finance numbers that came out this week. So these reports were covering basically the period of September and, uh,

13:59.64

Sam Shirazi

It covered the period that ended on September 30th. So it’s important to keep in mind these are not totally up to date to the current moment. And why is that important? Obviously, there was a lot of news that happened in October.

14:13.01

Sam Shirazi

There was the revelation about the Jay Jones text. Also, the shutdowns happening in the background. So lot of stuff happened in October that these reports aren’t necessarily going to capture. But wanted to kind of big picture talk about the statewide races. And I wanted to spend a little bit more time this time on the House of Delegates, because I think this report, the House of Delegates, was actually much more interesting than the statewide numbers. So the statewide numbers...

14:35.46

Sam Shirazi

Actually, the Republicans were doing much better than I would say in previous reports in terms of money that was raised for the governor’s race. So it just in one month, Abigail Spanberger raised about $12.5 million, whereas Winston Earl Sears raised about and a little over $9.1 million.

14:53.12

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, Spanberger is still ahead in the money, but that was a respectable haul, certainly much better than Winston Earl Sears has been doing in the past. So I think in the governor’s race, the money is still...

15:04.24

Sam Shirazi

Democrats have the advantage, but the Republicans are doing a little bit better. And so you don’t see this huge gap like you’ve seen in previous fundraising reports. Lieutenant governor wasn’t super interesting because there wasn’t the same amount of money being raised.

15:16.68

Sam Shirazi

Like previous reports, John Reed didn’t re raise a whole lot of money. He raised about $451,000, whereas Ghazala Hashmi raised over $1.4 million. So Hashmi has the advantage in the lieutenant governor’s race, but neither of them have like huge amounts of money. So I don’t think the lieutenant governor’s race is you super interesting in terms of the campaign finance.

15:37.82

Sam Shirazi

Attorney General, obviously lot going on in the attorney general race. I thought it it’s – the problem with the attorney general race is I think there’s been a huge – These reports are a huge lag from what’s been going on. So Jason Meares has gotten a huge injection of cash because now the Republicans think he might be able to win that race. However, that basically all happened after October 1st.

15:57.21

Sam Shirazi

So I’ll give you the numbers in this report. And frankly, Jay Jones and Jason Meares were pretty close in this report. Jason Meares raised... about a little over 3.5 million, whereas Jay Jones raised 3.3 million.

16:09.67

Sam Shirazi

So we see that the attorney general race was very competitive in terms of the fundraising. However, I caveat all that by saying that’s by September 30th and a lot of stuff happened in October. So We’re going to get one more campaign finance report before the election.

16:24.41

Sam Shirazi

And that’s going to be very interesting, primarily for the attorney general race, just to see how much money Jason Meares has gotten. So I don’t want to spend a lot of time in the statewide offices because, frankly, like they’re kind of confirming what we knew.

16:37.72

Sam Shirazi

Governor Spanbaker Spanbaker has the advantage, but... Earl Sears is catching up in fundraising. Lieutenant Governor Hashmi has consistently had an advantage. And then Attorney General, it’s been pretty close.

16:48.38

Sam Shirazi

But the problem is, at least for our knowledge, is we don’t know exactly how much it’s changed over the the couple weeks we’ve been in October. So that’s the statewide stuff.

16:58.93

Sam Shirazi

I did want to spend more time talking about the... House of Delegates, because typically in the House of Delegates, I don’t spend a whole lot of time on the campaign finance because there’s so many races and I didn’t want to kind of dwell on every single race.

17:11.65

Sam Shirazi

However, this campaign finance report, I think the really interesting numbers were in the House of Delegates. So as a reminder, all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up for a reelection. The Democrats currently have a 51-49 majority, and they’re really on the offense. They’re hoping to flip a lot of seats.

17:29.51

Sam Shirazi

Republicans are much more in the defense. And while theoretically it’s possible for Republicans to get a majority, I think it’s very difficult. And the fundraising, again, really confirms that. So in terms of these 100 seats in the House of Delegates, if you look at all the seats the Democrats are competing in and the Republicans are competing in, Democrats raised over $16.3 million. dollars And that’s a lot of money, and that’s just in a one-month period. Compare that to Republicans where they raised...

17:57.73

Sam Shirazi

a little over 5.6 million. So Democrats, almost three times as much raised in the House of Delegates. And if you look at individual races, I won’t go through every individual race, but some of them, I mean, the Democrats are raising really big amounts of money. And and we’re talking basically from congressional level of money. So I’ll give you a few examples.

18:18.70

Sam Shirazi

There were four races where the Democrats raised more than a million dollars. House District 75, House District 82, House District 89, House District 97. So House District 75, this is a very competitive seat that Harris won by six points in the Richmond suburbs. The Democrat raised $1.5 million. dollars I mean, that’s really, you know, a huge chunk of change, especially for a House of Delegates race.

18:44.19

Sam Shirazi

And that’s been that was kind of consistent across the House races where the Democrats are targeting incumbent Republicans. They all basically raised a lot of money. On the Republican side, there certainly were some seats where the Republicans were spending a lot of money to try to save some of their incumbents.

19:00.97

Sam Shirazi

And then there were other seats where, frankly, the Republican incumbents are trying to basically hold on where it seems like they’re out on their own. you know In these situations, sometimes what happens is Let’s say you’re in a you know light red seat, but the Democrats are targeting you. Your House leadership might be telling you, look, we got some incumbents in really tight races. you know We think you’re going to be OK. You can handle it, essentially. And so they’re not necessarily getting boatloads of money because –

19:32.26

Sam Shirazi

For whatever reason, they might think either the seat is lost or they or they might think the seat is not going to end up flipping. and and And that’s kind of the cold calculation that happens at the end sometimes.

19:43.99

Sam Shirazi

and you know and And this happens to parties on both sides in different cycles. And you know sometimes you’re told as an incumbent, you know you’ve got this, don’t worry about it. we’re There’s no money coming your way. And I’m sure some of the Republican incumbents would like to have more money. But the reality is given where the fundraising is, the the Republicans don’t necessarily have as much to give to each individual incumbent that’s in a tough race.

20:11.08

Sam Shirazi

And at some point, probably when we get closer to the election, maybe after the next fundraising report and after we get some more nonpartisan polls, I want to really go race by race in the House of Delegates because I think the House of Delegates races are super interesting, but they don’t get that much attention because everyone’s focused on the governor’s race. Now everyone’s focused under u attorney general’s race.

20:32.58

Sam Shirazi

But there are a lot of seats where the Democrats are targeting the Republicans. And I could see everything from the Democrats picking up a couple seats to the Democrats picking up 10 seats. And it’s really hard to tell right now certainly the Democratic mindset is they are trying to flip a lot of seats.

20:48.83

Sam Shirazi

And there are some of these seats where they’re spending a lot of money, which necessarily which aren’t necessarily the top tier battlegrounds, where you know earlier in the year, you would say they’re kind of reached seats. And you know who knows, maybe the Democrats...

21:01.33

Sam Shirazi

are being a little bit too ambitious. Maybe the Republicans will be able to hold on to the majority of these seats. But the money is certainly telling you that they are investing big to try to flip some of these seats.

21:12.86

Sam Shirazi

And i think we’ll see if that’s successful. I will say, you know, money isn’t everything. I mean there are a lot of races where the side that has more money doesn’t win. and Money is important, but it isn’t going to decide every single race. A lot of them comes down to the exact amount of ticket splitting, the amount exact turnout in a district.

21:33.64

Sam Shirazi

And it’s very hard to predict individual races, especially when you’re getting down to the House of Delegates. I tend not to predict individual races because i think it’s so difficult. Chaz Naticombe, who’s been a guest on the podcast, his State Navigate site has a really good model where they do forecast who may win each House of Delegates race. I think it’s very thorough. That’s kind of my go-to because it some of these races are going to be very close.

22:00.04

Sam Shirazi

It’s going very hard to make a call. So... I think in probably a couple of weeks, as we’re almost at the election, I will give you, i don’t want to call them my personal predictions, but I will kind of tip my hand to the extent I feel comfortable about who may be ahead in some of these races.

22:16.12

Sam Shirazi

And I think one thing it’s interesting where the money is being spent, it tells you where the parties think the races are competitive. I think that’s what money is really good at telling you.

22:26.39

Sam Shirazi

It might not tell you who’s going to win at the end of the day, but I think it’s good at telling you who the parties think might be able to win, if that makes sense. And again, i will give you this example one more time because it’s my favorite race that is kind of didn’t really happen this year.

22:44.01

Sam Shirazi

so I will talk about House District 21. This is in western Prince William County. The incumbent is Josh Thomas. I’ve talked about the seat before. It was the closest seat in terms of 2023 margin and in terms of 2024 margin.

22:57.25

Sam Shirazi

So in terms of the seats the Democrats hold, this should be the closest seat and in theory should be a battleground. But the Republican candidate in this district only raised $1,238 and he has $937 cash on hand, not 937,000. He has $937 cash on hand.

23:16.39

Sam Shirazi

So what that is telling me is the Republicans are not competing here. They are not taking this race seriously. If they were taking this race seriously, they would be throwing a lot of money at it. That’s not what’s happening. So you know I’ll go out on a limb and say House District 21 is not a top-tier battleground just based off the fundraising.

23:35.02

Sam Shirazi

I don’t want to say it’s impossible for the Republicans to ever win this seat. I don’t want to say it’s safe Democratic. But I think at this point, you know it’s pretty clear – the Democrats have the advantage in this seat. And so that’s kind of how fundraising can be used.

23:48.56

Sam Shirazi

I don’t want to go seat by seat and just purely look at the fundraising. Maybe I will allude to fundraising when I do my episode going through each House of Delegates district. But anyway, long story short, super interesting fundraising report, more so at the House of Delegates level and House of Delegates level, Democrats have a big advantage and we’ll see if that gets translated into the actual results and if they’re able to pick up a bunch of

24:09.73

Sam Shirazi

All right. One last topic. And I know this has already been a packed episode, but I wanted to talk about early voting and touch base on it. So to be perfectly honest, early voting has been in a little bit of a lull. I think we’ve pretty much been plateaued where there’s been some consistent voting, but nothing overly dramatic in terms of things have changed in the past few weeks.

24:30.49

Sam Shirazi

As of recording of this podcast, there are over 600,000 early votes, lot of early voting. We’re going to Definitely get record early voting for a state election. i don’t think any of that has changed.

24:42.79

Sam Shirazi

again say it’s too early to draw big conclusions from early voting. The thing I wanted to flag is we’re entering kind of the home stretch of early voting. a couple of things are going to happen. One, starting this weekend, there’s going to be a lot more early voting locations opening up.

24:58.32

Sam Shirazi

And they’ it’s kind of staggered because each locality has its own hours and locations. And so it’s not like on one day all the early voting locations are going to open. It’s going to be different in each city and county.

25:10.51

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, if you’re interested in early voting, check with your local city or county to make sure you know the hours, you know the locations. The first big one is going to be this Sunday. So this Sunday, Prince William County is going to open all of its early voting locations.

25:24.12

Sam Shirazi

And right now, there’s just currently been only one early voting location in all of Prince William County. Prince William County, big county, takes a while, a lot of traffic. So relatively, the early vote has been lower than the rest of Virginia. But I knew that was going to happen because decent amount of people particularly on the I-95 corridor, are are waiting for the satellite early voting locations to open.

25:47.16

Sam Shirazi

Why? Because the early voting location for Prince William County, the one that’s open right now, is not on the I-95 corridor. And if you know that area, there’s a lot of traffic to try to get around. So long story short, Prince William County is going to open up this Sunday. And then they’re open pretty much except next Sunday all the way up till the end of early voting. All those locations are going to be open And that’s going to happen in various parts of Virginia at different times. It’s going to happen in Fairfax County, in Loudoun County, in Virginia Beach.

26:17.04

Sam Shirazi

yeah All these different parts of Virginia are going to start having more and more early voting locations. There’s also going to be two Saturdays, the last two Saturdays of the election, there’s going to be early voting across Virginia.

26:29.70

Sam Shirazi

But I wanted to note something about the satellite early voting locations. I actually went through, and I think almost all of them are going to be in localities that Harris won in 2024.

26:40.66

Sam Shirazi

So that means the vast majority of people who are going to have more early voting locations are going to be in blue counties. And not obviously, everyone not everyone in those go counties are Democrats, and a decent good amount of them are going to vote for the Republicans as well.

26:57.85

Sam Shirazi

But I mean, I don’t think it’s that big of a leap to say, Probably the majority of people who are going to be voting at these satellite early voting locations are going to be Democrats. And that’s just something to keep in mind. And and so I do think the early voting composition going to start changing as the satellite early voting locations are going to open up.

27:15.59

Sam Shirazi

However, the other thing to keep in mind is closer we get to Election Day, more people are going to early vote, more people are going figure out there’s an election. So I do think there’s going to be a lot of Republicans also coming out to early vote, particularly this time because they’re getting more comfortable with in-person early voting. They’ve been encouraged to early vote. So I do think it’s going to be interesting to see in the homestretch of the campaign, how is early voting changing? How is it staying the same?

27:40.18

Sam Shirazi

What are the numbers looking like? The one thing I’ve kind of consistently warned about is I wouldn’t go too crazy with early voting analysis, even at the very end, because I think it’s just it’s hard to draw big conclusions from early voting.

27:54.61

Sam Shirazi

I think we’re going to get a sense of turnout from early voting. Maybe at the end and like right after the end of early voting, we can really try to and analyze it in kind of a more systematic way and try to think through, okay, what does this mean for the election? But especially for something like the attorney general’s race, there’s going to be ticket splitting and undervotes and all these things. And it’s just hard to make predictions.

28:18.08

Sam Shirazi

based on early voting data because we don’t know how people have voted. we know the numbers of people who voted, but we don’t know who they’re voting for. So I caution, you’re going to see a lot of stuff about early vote. you know I wouldn’t go crazy either way, thinking too hard about it. The thing I just wanted to flag is there’s going to be more locations opening up for early voting. The numbers are really going to spike.

28:39.19

Sam Shirazi

So that’ll be interesting. And I will at some point obviously update everyone on early voting. As you can see, there’s like a lot going on in the Virginia elections. We haven’t even talked about the shutdown, which is still going on, which is pretty crazy to think about.

28:52.78

Sam Shirazi

I’m sure I will talk about it if it’s continuing. So much going on in the Virginia elections. I will try to release more episodes as things are happening. And i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This is the homestretch. A lot going on.

29:03.69

Sam Shirazi

stay Stay tuned here for all the coverage. 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 Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus interview with Rich Meagher. He is a professor of political science at Randolph-Macon College, and he is also the host of another great podcast about Virginia, which is called RVA’s Got Issues. So definitely make sure to check out that podcast as well. Rich, thanks for joining me.

Rich Meagher

No problem. As they say, long time, first time. So glad to be on here with you, Sam.

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, so I wanted to have you on to talk about a few things. I think one thing that’s different or interesting about your background, you have more of an academic background, have a PhD. Could you just talk about that background and what that kind of brings to your both political commentary and podcasting?

00:45.92

Rich Meagher

Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to like, it’s not about pulling rank or anything like that. Right. I i do not believe that a PhD makes you with like a, a better person than anyone else. Uh, and there’s lots of folks with PhDs political science who don’t know anything about their local political context.

Rich Meagher

And that’s fine. Right. It’s, it’s not, it’s not what every academic has to do, but for me, I’ve always been interested in how things that we talk about abstractly in political science, right? Concepts and and theories and things like that, how they play out locally.

01:22.57

Rich Meagher

And I found like very early on when I got to Richmond, that some of the stuff, you know, I occasionally get a call from a reporter and and they were asking me about stuff that was like, well, I, yeah, i know about that. We study that.

01:35.18

Rich Meagher

And, and the things that we study, i can actually, i hope help explain to you and your listeners. And I don’t want to say like a dumbed down way, but just not with the jargon and all that stuff.

01:45.88

Rich Meagher

And, and that hopefully it helps people understand a little bit more about what’s actually happening. what the fight is about, what the stakes are, and and how it might shake out. you know i I try to stay away from election predictions because nobody, even if political science, knows anything about that still.

02:04.17

Rich meagher

the The models are always like, here’s what happened last year, and we can explain what happened, but a little less less good at predicting. But so you know i just I’ve always felt like the stuff we learn and the stuff we know in political science is is helpful for the rest of the world. So I try to share it whenever I can.

02:21.20

Rich meagher

and And I hope that it’s helpful and not like confusing when I when i do

02:24.94

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, and I want to talk about your podcast because I think that’s a really interesting way where you can bring some of this academic stuff into more of the political discourse. And I know not just in political science, but a lot of different academic fields, history, other fields, like there’s a question about how much...

02:41.35

Sam Shirazi

It should be kind of more academic, you know, for lack of better term, more Ivy Tower versus like it should be more public. There should be more engagement. You know, which one do you think academics should do more? what what is the role of the academic?

02:54.50

Rich meagher

Yeah. I mean, I’m definitely on the side of more public engagement. And I think there’s a growing movement in political science about this. you know there’s There’s this whole question about our our national organizations, right? There’s like the American Political Science Association. There’s big meetings every year.

03:12.04

Rich meagher

And some folks in the discipline are like, hey, what are we doing about this whole, i don’t know, like democracy falling apart thing? What are we doing about this whole... like march towards authoritarianism all across the globe. Like, can we help at all? Because it seems like we know a little bit about politics. We should be involved.

03:29.66

Rich meagher

And for me, that stuff’s really interesting and important. But for me, it’s always been about local community, right? The local context. I’m much more interested in what’s happening in city council than I am in at the UN.

03:42.10

Rich meagher

and And that’s just my own kind of personal preference. I do think like I’ve always tried to offer a corrective because I think most of your regular citizens would say, oh yeah, i understand that UN n stuff is really scary and and it’s important, but they don’t think the same way about their city council all the time, right? They’re not thinking about their county board of supervisors meetings as as affecting their lives just as much as, you know, what Donald Trump is doing today, but but it really does. And so that’s been, you know, sort of my motivating even evangelical factor, right? Is just to raise the alarm and sound the,

04:17.47

Rich meagher

let’s get the word out about, you know, your local context. You know, what’s going on in, in the city, what’s going on in Richmond. And so the, the podcast for me has been an outgrowth of that work that I’ve been doing for years about like local politics. I mean, i wrote a book in 2020, you know, always be plugging your book, right?

04:36.26

Rich meagher

That was, that was local politics matters. i mean, that was the big argument was that, you you know, not only does the stuff that happened at the local level matter as just as much as anything else, but, You can, you have impact. I mean, you can meet these people. Like you can go to these meetings and they they can get to know you, you get to know your representatives.

04:51.69

Rich meagher

I don’t hang around buddy, buddy with Tim Kaine, but you know, I, I knew who my city council folks were in Richmond.

04:57.72

Sam Shirazi

Yeah. and And kind of talking about the podcast a little bit, you know, I want to definitely recommend people interested in Richmond area issues to listen to the podcast. I know recently you had the mayor of Richmond, Mayor of Lula on, and I thought that was a really interesting podcast for many reasons, including that he announced he was going to run for reelection, even though he’s not up for reelection until 2028.

05:18.52

Sam Shirazi

But I thought it was interesting to hear from the mayor and what it’s been like as he has come into office this year. i mean, I think most people outside of Richmond, the story they’ve heard in the last year is kind of the water crisis.

05:31.92

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, how is that going? And has things have things gotten better? and And what are the citizens in Richmond thinking about in terms of, you know, hopefully that never happening again?

05:42.08

Rich meagher

Yeah, I think, I mean, we hope it will never happen again. The odds are something, don’t want to say disastrous will happen, but, you know, we’re still a city with aging infrastructure and there’s only so much you can do about that overnight. And this is a big, like a national problem, right? It happens at the local level, but our infrastructure all across the country, you know, bridges and roads and, and water systems and sewers are, are aging, right. And, and we haven’t invested in them. We haven’t paid enough attention to them. And that was like brought home for everybody.

06:13.06

Rich meagher

At least most of all, you know, mayor of Vula when he stepped into the office here in Richmond. So I don’t think it’s the last time we’re going to have infrastructure problems. I don’t think it’s the last crisis the city’s going to face.

06:25.37

Rich meagher

maybe Maybe and hopefully it won’t be as bad as it was where we just didn’t have water for a week. But I mean, i think that conversation with with Mayor Avula is exactly the kind of of thing that we like to do on our podcast, right? Because you can get him, you know, his his newsletter and you can get a sense of what he says at his press conferences, but we really get to sit down with a guy.

06:47.95

Rich meagher

and you know, he’s a politician. He’s he’s very... polished person. I mean, I do think he seems to be very genuine. People like and and respond to him that way, but he gets a chance to talk in depth about some things. And so you get to hear about, yeah, like, oh yeah, I’m i’m going to run again. oh yeah. Like that that, you know, not quite an announcement, but a a way saying it.

07:06.68

Rich meagher

He also, I mean, one of the things I think that, that I didn’t hear a lot of people talk about on that, about that podcast was, you know, he he’s getting you know political violence. There’s threats, you know incredible threats that he has to worry about as a politician.

07:20.74

Rich meagher

And you know mayor of Richmond is not exactly a big job or it’s one where you’re really among the people all the time and you can’t be isolated to do that well. And I don’t think he wants to do that well.

07:31.72

Rich meagher

But, but he’s got to deal with this whole new reality, right. And in a really visceral way, you know, in a way that I think members of Congress don’t always have to, because they’re sort of whisked from limo to, to plane or helicopter or whatever. but you know, here’s this guy who’s just sort of like hanging around his neighborhood and walking around the city.

07:50.06

Rich meagher

So, I mean, I do think that that part of what we try to do in the podcast is just kind of humanize these folks who are active and in city government. And and again, you you can get to know them. You can get to see them. So I think that it’s a real genuine connection you can make with people like that.

08:05.62

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, it’s always a good reminder that politicians are human beings, too, as much as, you know, it’s hard to think of them that way.

08:09.38

Rich meagher

Yeah.

08:11.64

Sam Shirazi

But they have to face a lot of issues, even even though it’s it’s often a thankless job. And, you know, obviously, he’s just stepping into it. So we’ll see how how he does in the rest of his term.

08:23.69

Sam Shirazi

I did want to ask you about... kind of Richmond area, en Richmond City as well. But, you know, I moved to Virginia in 2006. And six and when when I was moving here, you know, Northern Virginia was the place where a lot of growth, a lot of people are moving to Northern Virginia. I think over time, it’s kind of hit its peak. There’s housing issues.

08:43.12

Sam Shirazi

And so i I know a lot of people are moving to the Richmond area. It’s growing relative to Northern Virginia. There’s obviously housing issues now because so many people are moving and housing costs have gone up.

08:54.12

Sam Shirazi

mean, have you seen that in the Richmond area? And how do you think the Richmond area is changing because of that?

08:59.26

Rich meagher

Oh, for sure. i mean, it is a huge topic of discussion here and and not to knock you folks in Northern Virginia, right? But Northern Virginia is sort of like the, the specter of the future hanging over Richmond. i mean, there are some folks here, particularly there’s a great website called RVAMag where they do a lot of car arts and culture commentary and reporting.

09:20.90

Rich meagher

And they’re a big thing. The folks there have been about like condo culture and and really trying to preserve Richmond’s identity in the in the wake of of all of the new people moving here.

09:33.32

Rich meagher

but There’s a sense that you know newcomers are welcome and and new investment is great, but it too many you know wealthy professionals coming down from the DC area, too many you know sort of like white folks from outside the city.

09:47.11

Rich meagher

you know, it’s a it’s a problem and and it’s not just a Richmond problem, but because Richmond, I think, has a distinct identity, there is this concern like you don’t want to become southern northern Virginia, you know, and I hear that a lot from people just sort of out and about.

10:01.81

Rich meagher

i read about it a lot and I experience it, too. I mean, I recently moved outside of the city borders, not, you know, for a variety of reasons and family release reasons and things like that. But, you know, i I would have liked to have stayed within the city.

10:15.71

Rich meagher

but because of family needs and and schools and things like that, just didn’t work out. And it would have been a lot easier to work out you know a decade ago, right? Because I i would have had more options. And it’s just the options are drying up for a lot of people at a lot of different income levels.

10:31.46

Rich meagher

And of course, it’s the the most vulnerable people are really suffering from that. But I think everybody is feeling pinch. Now, again, this is where Richmond is like the rest of the country. This is a national problem of housing affordability and housing burden and and And that’s affecting low income folks. It’s affecting high income folks. Not everybody can find a place to live where they want to live.

10:52.40

Rich meagher

And it is causing all kinds of you know, sort of cultural problems and concerns as well as like economic problems and concerns. So it’s definitely this part of the story of Richmond right now is what’s the future of Richmond going to look like?

11:05.46

Rich meagher

And everybody kind of like talking through how do we keep what’s so unique about the city and the region while still allowing for this growth, which is great and good for the economy and good for for everybody’s, you know, sort of pocketbooks in general.

11:19.49

Sam Shirazi

And you know one thing i think about is you know Richmond is obviously the capital of Virginia. And how does that aspect of the city fit into the culture? And what is it like when the General Assembly is in session? And i mean, I know people are just kind of going about their daily lives, but is it something that impacts the city or or do you feel it when the General Assembly is in session versus when it’s not?

11:42.92

Rich meagher

I mean, I i don’t know if if it’s really like a feel. I mean, certainly there are more people in the city and and I think it does have long-term effects over the year though. Like if you’re a downtown and hanging, if you work downtown or you go downtown during the sessions, big different vibe there.

11:58.05

Rich meagher

And you know, there’s there’s protests every day and people gathering the park and and just lots more people in suits and and fancy pins running around. there’s definitely an energy to the downtown area, but I think the longer term effect on Richmond is is more important. and And that helps people like me who are you know into politics for a living because it means that Richmond is a city.

12:20.38

Rich meagher

i mean, i always say this about Richmond, culturally, politically, economically, it’s a city that punches above its weight class. I mean, we’re not a big city, but I think we have a big impact. And so when I want to do something like start a podcast about local politics, I think one of the reasons why I can do that is I think we’re more politically attuned here in Richmond, right? Even though people might you know, not be involved in state government even though they’re not working directly for, you know, Glenn Youngkin or for a legislator, they still are are much more kind of connected to it. they’re more aware they’re thinking about politics. Politics is in the air a little bit more in Richmond than it might be elsewhere.

12:58.81

Rich meagher

So it’s easier for me to make the case, like if we talk about the city of Richmond, there are people here whose jobs are in state government or who are lobbyists or government relations people they’re advocates or nonprofit folks.

13:11.79

Rich meagher

And they’re going to pay attention to what’s going on in city hall because they’re attuned already to think about politics much more than your, your normal person. Who’s, you know, a lawyer out in Bristol say, or, uh, you know, a teacher out in,

13:27.48

Rich meagher

you know, another part of the state where they’re they’re not kind of thinking about it so much. So I do think that really helps bring politics alive a little bit more in the city so that even if we’re talking about what’s happening in the county or in in City Hall, I think people are are more likely to care about it. So that that’s helpful to me as a guy, you know, a local politics guy who’s trying to get people excited about about what’s happening in those places.

13:52.38

Sam Shirazi

That makes sense. And, you know, shifting gears towards the elections this year, i think Richmond area is is taking center stage for a few reasons. One is because two of the candidates on the Democratic side,

14:04.62

Sam Shirazi

Abigail Spanberger running for governor and Ghazal Hashmi running for lieutenant governor are from the Richmond suburbs. And then on the Republican side, John Reed running for lieutenant governor is is from the Richmond suburbs.

14:15.62

Sam Shirazi

And then also there’s several competitive House of Delegates seats in the Richmond area. How do you think Richmond... fits into this election, Richmond area. And do you think this is kind of a new area of focus in Virginia politics as Northern Virginia has kind of settled into its voting patterns? Maybe Richmond is becoming more of a center in Virginia politics.

14:36.65

Rich meagher

Yeah, I think that’s a good way to put it, right? Because Northern Virginia is the, I think, the center of political power and political gravity and in the Commonwealth. And I think, you know everything sort of tilts northward.

14:48.70

Rich meagher

But that means also that it’s kind of less interesting up there. No offense, right? But a lot of the the kind of battles that were shaking out like 10 years 20 years ago, twenty years ago over those competitive districts in Northern Virginia are kind of settled down, right? There’s just too many Democrats around to make it, i don’t want to say interesting, but but to make it competitive. Whereas the the competition has shifted to these more, you know, suburban districts in Central Virginia to a lesser extent out in the Tidewater area. But, you know, that urban corridor that runs from Northern Virginia through Central Virginia and out to the to the ocean is really where

15:27.38

Rich meagher

you you know, the Democrats are, it’s where the cities are, it’s where the kind of, a again, center of gravity is in this state that’s, that’s trending blue or is blue, or at least is purplish blue. And so the competition is going to happen along that corridor. Again, Northern Virginia, just because there’s so many Democrats now is less competitive. So I do think the sort of, when we’re looking at Virginia and what’s going on in Virginia, and particularly because we have these weird off year elections, when the whole country looks at Virginia,

15:55.36

Rich meagher

They’re looking more and more now to central Virginia as the place where stuff is happening and where people are coming from, just because everything’s so settled up in Northern Virginia, right? The power structures, the powerful Democrats are up there already. They’re kind of centered in their’re theyre in what they’re doing. And and it’s just, it’s it’s where the action is, I think, central Virginia. So so Richmond is is playing an outsized role in this election.

16:41.12

Sam Shirazi

And looking at the election big picture, you know, from your academic hat, you know, what is it that you are kind of seeing maybe that you haven’t heard other political commentators saying or or something that maybe your academic background kind of informs with this election that you’re not necessarily seeing other people talk about?

17:00.47

Rich meagher

Yeah, I mean, I don’t know that people aren’t talking about it, but the way I would put it in a very political science-y way is the nationalization of state and local elections, like the continuing nationalization of it.

17:12.78

Rich meagher

And it’s possible this was the case back in the late 1800s. Like we have reverted to a really, really partisan movement. politically divided, ideologically divided environment in in the country over the last 20, 30 years.

17:27.46

Rich meagher

And that’s not unprecedented. That’s the way politics kind of worked in the late 1800s, too. But it’s really shaking down the sort of partisan divide is is trickling down, you know like, i don’t know if it’s injecting down what the metaphor you should use is to state races and to local races. So that, you know, for example, the, the Jay Jones texting scandal that we’re seeing right now, I mean, to me, this is an ultimate test of partisan power, right? Are people going to focus on this guy and his particular, you know, scandals or concerns about this, this particular race, or are they going to vote DNR, right? is Is that what’s going to determine this race? And I think,

18:07.07

Rich meagher

If Jay Jones wins this race, despite everything that, you know, he’s sort of these self-inflicted wounds he’s given himself over the last couple of weeks. If he wins this race, that suggests to me that this nationalization is really, really dominating our elections right now to the point where you can do just about anything.

18:23.85

Rich meagher

As long as you’ve got that letter in your name, that’s going to be what people vote for. So that’s what I’m looking for. Like, and again, i’m not making a prediction here about how this is going to shake out. But but to me, that’s a trend that we measure in political science.

18:37.69

Rich meagher

That is a sort of concept that we’ve been kind of looking at and that I think really can help us understand what happens in an election. If something happens, and you’re like, why did that happen? Well, here’s an example. Nationalization, all this partisan divide is is really just kind of dominating our politics so much that that’s how voters think now.

18:55.97

Sam Shirazi

That makes sense. and And I think one thing that I’ve seen in a lot of the academic literature and and also in the political commentary is the fact that we’ve become so kind of isolated. So Richmond is really blue, but then you go you know a little bit outside into more rural areas and it’s really red. And you know i remember not too long ago when it was...

19:16.65

Sam Shirazi

more even where things weren’t so red and blue. And I’ve seen a lot of different explanations. Some of it is social media, some of it is redistricting, some of it is self sorting. I mean, there’s so many different of explanations for why things have kind of shaken out the way they have and we’ve become so polarized, as you say. i mean, from your research or your sense, even why do you think things have gotten so polarized these days?

19:41.72

Rich meagher

Yeah, I should say it’s and it’s not my area of focus, really partisan polarization. But in general, the technological argument is really compelling to me, like just the the media environment, the algorithms of our social media, the way that people consume news and information these days is is really just become divided into different streams that are catering to our ideological interests.

20:08.87

Rich meagher

You know, not that the world was perfect back when everybody watched CBS News and Walter Cronkite and all that stuff. Like, I’m not that, you know, like like the history is is not, it’s not like we didn’t have problems before.

20:20.50

Rich meagher

But but the the the the lack of a kind of monoculture, the lack of any kind of, and I don’t know, the the the way that we’re just sort of self-selecting our own and the technological tools we have are enabling us to to choose more and more of the stuff that we agree with, I think is a big problem.

20:39.16

Rich meagher

I mean, and then the other thing that the technology connects to is the the sort of bowling alone thesis. That’s Robert Putnam wrote a but famous book. He’s a big... former head of of political science associations and and very famous political scientist and social scientist who argued that you know the lack of of what he called social capital, the lack of of civic engagement, the lack of connections at the community level between people is really driving this home even further, right?

21:06.92

Rich meagher

Where 30 years ago, you may still have been strongly Republican or Democrat, but you bowled with people who were different from you. right You saw them at church. You maybe joined a rotary club or you were you know active in the Boy Scouts and whatever. You saw all these people that had different were different walks of life and different interests and different ideologies.

21:28.12

Rich meagher

And we’re less and less likely to do that now. We’re less and less likely to join up with groups that might bring us in contact with people we disagree with politically. and And that’s being fed along with our our technological and media consumption.

21:40.91

Rich meagher

So I think those two things together, the sort of technology piece, which affects our media and social media, and the this sort of lack of community engagement is is really driving us apart in this in this way.

21:53.79

Sam Shirazi

Well, to try to close out on more optimistic but note, do you think local government is a way to maybe bridge the divide?

22:00.75

Sam Shirazi

Because I often notice, at least in my local government, there are a lot of issues that are basically nonpartisan, you know fittic filling in potholes. I mean, these types of things where we don’t have to be debating super hot button issues.

22:13.17

Sam Shirazi

Do you think there’s a way to use local government to maybe, and don’t say counter the polarization, but maybe bring people together to talk about kind of less partisan issues?

22:23.20

Rich meagher

Yeah, it’s a great question, Sam. And I do believe it, but we have to be careful about just saying, well, go local and everything will be fine. I mean, the the book I wrote in 2020, Local Politics Matters, I actually argue that there are right answers in local politics. Like we know that we should invest in transit. We just don’t because of political and like lack of political will and resources.

22:46.26

Rich meagher

But we know the benefits of it and we know we should do it. We know we need affordable housing. It’s just question how to do it exactly. But we we just know. So I do think there’s agreement, there’s good data, there’s a lack of, like you say, the kind of partisan heat that we can get from from local politics if we get more people involved.

23:04.69

Rich meagher

The only problem is that the kind of structural inequalities that we have in America get reproduced at the local level. And political scientists have studied local politics and they at least currently right The kinds of folks who get involved in local politics are often sort of wealthy property interests, right? Either rich people, property owners, like homeowners, you know, like HOA associations, all this kind of stuff.

23:29.95

Rich meagher

And so it’s not equitable. and And participation needs to be more equitable at the local level. i’m I’m not saying that’s always the case. and And certainly folks in Richmond, and there’s been some recent efforts by the city, for example, the the people’s budget effort, right? They really tried to bring it to the the people, the the idea of of asking citizens, what what do you want to pay for, like, here’s a chunk of money. What kind of things do you want to spend that money on?

23:55.57

Rich meagher

They really tried to work on outreach and there’s a lot of programs and and and nonprofits and and governments that are trying to do that. But I think we need to do more. Like we should have childcare available at city council meetings. We should feed people.

24:08.62

Rich meagher

Mike Jones, when he was a city council member here in Richmond, was always like, you’ve got to feed people at meetings because it’s it’s not just that that that gets them to come. It’s like it’s just an equity issue. Like people aren’t going to come if they have to choose between coming your meeting and and eating dinner like they need to need to eat and they don’t have time.

24:25.05

Rich meagher

you got to feed them. like And so that kind of ethos, that kind of like, yes, local politics can help bridge the divide, but we have to set up the structures of local government and local politics and local engagement to make sure that we’re not reproducing other divides that we see elsewhere.

24:42.60

Rich meagher

So that’s what I sort of caveat about. I really do believe that that local politics can be part of the answer, but we’ve got to create a local politics that is a sort of open hand to everybody so that it’s easy for them to participate rather than just letting the same voices kind of dominate.

24:57.85

Sam Shirazi

That makes sense. And food and meetings is always a good idea. So I think that’s yeah that’s a creative way to do it.

25:00.51

Rich meagher

Always feed them. Always feed them.

25:04.13

Sam Shirazi

Well, one last question about the Richmond area. If people want to visit either for vacation or for a day trip, what is something in the Richmond area that you enjoy or something that you think is is not as well known that people should go visit?

25:17.65

Rich meagher

Oh, that’s a really good question. Yeah, that’s that’s a tough one too because it just depends on on who you are. I mean, I always point to museums, right? And I hate to be like the museum nerd, but if you’ve got a kid who’s even like yeah a tween, like a teenager, the science museum is just like a great way to spend the day. i mean, I have fun when I go there with my kids.

25:40.72

Rich meagher

I’ve been in a few years, like but I sometimes think like my youngest kid’s now 16. sixteen I’d like to kind of drag her back to the Science Museum just because it’s it’s fun for everybody. And the VMFA, right, is it just this beautiful little urban park outside of it. I think they’re renovating it right now, but it’s like it’s free every day, and you can spend 15 minutes in there or five hours, but to like to just go stick your head in the museum and then just sit outside among sculpture in this beautiful park.

26:08.68

Rich meagher

that’s That’s the way to go. I mean, I just think you got to take advantage. I know those are sort of like easy answers, but I just kind of feel like those are the gems of the city. and And if you’re in the city, you should you should go and and hang out with those places.

26:22.51

Rich meagher

I mean, take a grown-up, go on a date to the Science Museum. You guys can have fun there banging on things and running around. Even grown-ups can have a good time there.

26:31.56

Sam Shirazi

Well, museums are always great. So those are some good recommendations. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. Check out RVA’s Got Issues, another great podcast. So Rich, thanks so much for joining me today.

26:42.29

Rich meagher

Anytime, Sam. Thanks so much.

26:43.68

Sam Shirazi

All right. 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 Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus interview where I will be interviewing State Senator Danica Rome. She represents the 30th State Senate District in western Prince William County. It also includes the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.

00:19.41

Sam Shirazi

And I really appreciate the state senator for taking the time to join me.

00:23.15

Danica Roem

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Sam.

00:25.41

Sam Shirazi

Yeah. So I wanted to talk about a few different things, but I think it’d be interesting to hear your background, how you decided to run for office. And I did want to also plug your book, Burn the Page, which I think gives you know the full story. But if you wanted to just give a brief background on yourself and why you decided to run for office.

00:44.74

Danica Roem

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so so kindly, especially for mentioning the book, too. So I’m a lifelong resident of the greater Manassas area. you know, I was born at Prince William Hospital off of Sudley Road at Manassas September 30th, 1984.

00:57.83

Danica Roem

And, you know, I was our local news reporter for the Gainesville Times, the Prince William Times here. for nine years, two months, and two weeks from 2006 to 2015. twenty fifteen and covered everything during that time that you can imagine from you know high school sports to you know interviewing candidates for governor and U.S. s senator, all the like.

01:17.26

Danica Roem

And you know i’ve really focused a lot on political coverage as well as you know stuff just going on in the community in general, specialized in transportation, of course. And after in 2015, I took a job as the news editor of the McAmarin County Sentinel over in Maryland. So had a nice little commute from Manassas there.

01:36.50

Danica Roem

And i had also spent from 2009 to 2013, four out of five years at one point, just like, well, from 2009 to 2013, I was a staff writer for the hotline at National Journal in DC, where I was covering state and federal campaigns every single day, starting at six of them the morning.

01:55.63

Danica Roem

And so for four out five years at one point, I was working two full-time jobs. And then 2015, I went over to the Sentinel. And at the beginning of 2016, after you know I had earned a degree in journalism in 2006 from St. Bonaventure University, go Bonneys.

02:14.09

Danica Roem

i And i had you know spent you know the next decade of my life reporting the news. It did get to a point for me personally in my own transition where I didn’t want to just stay neutral on everything when the Virginia General Assembly that year had nine anti-LGBTQ bills that had come up.

02:36.57

Danica Roem

And so very early in January 2016, I had asked my editor at the Sentinels like, hey, I’d like to go down to Richmond so I can go advocate against some of these bills.

02:46.88

Danica Roem

And, but at the same time, you know, I’m a news editor, I’m a reporter, i know, you know, i have to be a neutral, dispassionate third party observer. And, you know, telling me, he’s like, well, just because you became a reporter didn’t mean that you lost your right to redress grievances with your government. So he pretty much told me, like, you know, be smart, don’t do anything stupid, and you I got your back.

03:06.32

Danica Roem

And he’s also told me, he was like, The last time I checked, Richmond, Virginia was not in the circulation area of Montgomery County, Maryland, correct? I’m like, right. Well, then, okay, then you’re fine. So I was like, okay.

03:16.61

Danica Roem

So i drove down, advocated against these bills, and we defeated seven of them before they even got to the floor. Another one we ran out the clock on, and then then Governor McAuliffe vetoed the last one live on WTOP.

03:29.41

Danica Roem

And during my advocacy... I had stopped over at an Equality Prince William meeting so I could kind of brief a bunch of folks in Prince William about what was going on with these bills.

03:40.32

Danica Roem

And I came across the 2015 Democratic nominee for the 13th District of the Virginia House Delegates, which at the time was represented by Bob Marshall. The Democrat who had lost was Don Shaw. And I told john Don, you know, in passing, hey, I voted for you, you know, and bla bla blah, blah, blah.

03:55.36

Danica Roem

And we just got to chatting. Well, fast forward that summer, I’m working a second job as a you know, weekend delivery driver, you know, making $5 an hour plus tip out of my 92 Dodge Shadow, you know, because journalism, just community journalism is not a great financial decision for you to, you know, pay the bills. It’s essential, important work, but it’s, you know,

04:18.48

Danica Roem

It was tough. And so I had to have a second job. And I was doing these 11, 12, 13 hour weekend delivery driving shifts and such. And was one day i get this email, August 4th, 2016. And Don asked me, hey, i have to move out of the area. Have you considered running? You’d be really good.

04:36.80

Danica Roem

And i laughed out loud and I closed my laptop. I didn’t even think twice about it. And then the next day i got a phone call from State Delegate Rip Sullivan, who is recruiting chair for the House Democratic Caucus.

04:47.42

Danica Roem

And he asked me, hey, you know, have you considered running? you be really good. And I said, well, I know what i would run on, which is fixing my mom’s commute. She’d been driving from Manassas to get to her job in near Dulles for you know nearly 40 years at that point.

04:59.60

Danica Roem

And I said, you know, the guy who was in office at the time is more concerned about where I go to the bathroom than how my mom gets to work. So let’s go something about it. And well, I knew at that point for all the years I had covered campaigns, I had never been on the inside of a campaign.

05:15.09

Danica Roem

And so I i knew i needed to get trained. And I was aware of the LGBTQ Victory Institute’s candidate campaign training program. So I applied for it. I couldn’t believe that I got in, but I did. And it was like right after the 2016 election, we met up in Dallas for four days over there. And I learned from an insider perspective about how campaigns run.

05:38.82

Danica Roem

So I decided to run over the next two months. And in that decision making, James Parrish from Equality Virginia put me in touch with Julie Copeland, who is the then executive director of Emerge Virginia.

05:52.92

Danica Roem

And he said, hey, we’ve got someone who’s running against Bob Marshall, by the way, it’s trans women. So just want to let you know that she’s out there. And Julie’s like, yes, send her to me. And so I went into this three day boot camp and it was all these Democratic women who are put our names on the ballot that year.

06:11.39

Danica Roem

And we all learned how to ran for off run for office together. And meanwhile, at the same time, the 2017 Emerge Virginia Signature Program was going on. And there was a particular a person in that class who now all of Virginia knows because her name was Abigail Spanberger.

06:29.41

Danica Roem

And from that class, actually, Delegate Elizabeth Bennett Parker was in that class, among many others. And our classes overlapped for one day together in Alexandria on a Saturday.

06:41.59

Danica Roem

And so, you know, that election in 2017, we flipped 15 seats red to blue in the House of Delegates that night. It was, you know, some of the likes of which we had not seen in a very long time.

06:54.24

Danica Roem

And of those 15 Red to Blue seats, 11 of us were women. And of the 11 women, nine of us were Emerge alums. And of those nine, eight of us had gone through that boot camp that year.

07:06.24

Danica Roem

And so, you know, it was a real big banner moment for Emerge because at that point, only Jennifer Boisko and Kathleen Murphy, both of whom had flip seats Red to Blue, by the way,

07:17.56

Danica Roem

were Emerge alums in the House of Delegates, and there were no Emerge alums in the State Senate. Well, fast forward today, now there are 17 Emerge alums in the Virginia House of Delegates.

07:27.74

Danica Roem

There are five State Senate Emerge alums, myself included, along with Jennifer Carroll-Foy, Stella Prokarski, Jennifer Boisko, as I mentioned before, and Russell Perry. And this year, we also have another 16 Emerge alums who are challenging Republicans in House Delegates districts.

07:44.28

Danica Roem

We’ve got another six Emerge alums who are running for local office. And biggest change from 2017 to now for me personally is I’m now the executive director of Emerge Virginia. And I took over in February of 2022. And that’s kind of brought us where we are today.

08:01.06

Sam Shirazi

Well, that’s a really great background. And before we get to the individual candidates, I did want to ask you about Emerge Virginia virginia generally. you know What is it that you provide the candidates and why do you think it’s important that candidates get that kind of training?

08:14.16

Danica Roem

Oh, absolutely. Great question. So what Emerge Virginia provides for the candidates is not only the actual training where they’re hearing from experts, from people who have run campaigns before as candidates, as well as staffers, and they’re hearing a whole world of different perspectives.

08:32.50

Danica Roem

They get the network. They get each other. when i was When I was first sworn in in 2018, 2018, most of my closest you know allies in the General Assembly at that time were the Emerge women who I trained with.

08:45.94

Danica Roem

And it was really, really incredible to have that network and that commonality that we all kind of fall back on. And to this day, that’s still a sentiment that is really strong in the Virginia General Assembly, where a lot of the Emerged alums are really close with each other in both chambers.

09:05.36

Danica Roem

And i think that that’s also really important because you have that sense of commonality and you know the same information. And that’s allowed a lot of Emerge alums to exchange a lot of ideas with each other, which I think is really, really, really critical. And so, yes, of course, you are learning everything from how to raise money, how to, you know, get volunteers out for you, how to, you know, do all the paperwork and get your, you know, websites online and stuff in all the community organizing, how to talk to press, how to hone your own message, working on your public speaking,

09:39.61

Danica Roem

We go through all of that in our signature program, and the next signature program is going to start November 8th and 9th. It’s going to be the first weekend, of once a weekend for every five months that we’re going to do. and we’re going to have some days that are to be in Richmond, some days that are going virtual.

09:56.03

Danica Roem

There’s more information about it It’s on the Emerge website. You can check it out at va.emergeamerica.org. And... you know So I’m really, really excited for everything that’s coming from it. But the thing I always tell everyone about this is it’s the network. We’ve trained more than 300 Democratic women how to run for office in Virginia since its founding in 2014.

10:17.41

Danica Roem

And you know considering how many that we have in office today and how many we have on the ballot this fall, you know it’s it’s really something else. It’s a very special network.

10:28.02

Sam Shirazi

Well, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of your alum who are running this year in Virginia. And I wanted to ask about a specific race and then obviously feel free to talk about any of the other races. So specifically in middle Prince William County is House District 22.

10:42.85

Sam Shirazi

Former Delegate Elizabeth Guzman is running in that seat. And part of that district overlaps with your district. So I know you know that that area really well. What are you seeing in that race and then in any of the other races across Virginia?

10:56.56

Danica Roem

Oh, sure. I think especially for your audience who’s interested in learning about how, you know, federal fallout is impacting the down ballot is impacting what people are talking about.

11:08.30

Danica Roem

You know, HD 22 without question is one of the top seats in the state. You know, that’s super competitive right now where. all the, you know, the rifts that have just been after the reduction in force, along with the original doge cuts, along with just basically the scale back to the federal government in general, where is it hitting right now? Well, it’s absolutely hitting in Western Prince William in Mid-County right now, without question.

11:33.31

Danica Roem

It’s a you know, very pressing issue that’s come up here. And, you know, at the same time, you know people’s energy bills. That’s another thing that’s you know really important because data center sprawl, huge issue, especially in Bristow.

11:47.74

Danica Roem

And you know former Delegate Guzman, she’s a very vigorous campaigner. No one’s ever questioned about that. That’s you know her chief skill set that she brings to office. She’s very, very you know good on doors and making sure that she’s you know well-funded. She’s one of the Democratic challengers who’s out-raised a Republican incumbent this year, which is actually pretty common for a number of our Emerge alums, which is, you know, really exciting to see.

12:12.60

Danica Roem

And at the same time, I think there’s this notion right now that when we hear about, you know, federal fallout affecting, you know, House of Delegates races and stuff, that it’s Northern Virginia and then, well, maybe a little Hampton Roads, but it’s Northern Virginia where you’re going to really see this.

12:28.76

Danica Roem

And sure for sure. And, you know, the races between not just, you know, for former Delegate Guzman running in the twenty second but You know, Josh Thomas running in the 21st district. And then I think next door, you know, John McAuliffe, who’s running to flip a seat.

12:41.90

Danica Roem

Josh is running to retain his seat. jo And John is running to flip a seat in Western Loudoun and Northern Falkir. You know, that’s clearly going to be an issue out there as well. But I’ll highlight another Emerge alum who is hearing a lot about this as one of the top three issues in her race. And that’s Casey Carnegie in the 89th district. And so this is in Chesapeake and Suffolk and Hampton Roads.

13:04.24

Danica Roem

And for a lot of federal workers who work in Norfolk specifically, they actually live out in some of the more suburban areas of Hampton Roads. And even though you know it’s like a lot of cities right for Hampton Roads.

13:19.00

Danica Roem

you know They’re still kind of you know in sort of the way that you would kind of look at Prince William, very similar sorts of development very often. And what Casey’s been hearing about in Suffolk and Chesapeake, you know as she’s trying to represent you know her home community and everything.

13:35.95

Danica Roem

she hears a lot at the doors. She’s been telling me about the impact of all the federal cuts and stuff. And if I was to tell you, you know if I’m handicapping who are going to be some of our you know most likely seats to flip red to blue this fall, 22 that you just mentioned, I’m looking directly HD 89. That’s a really good bellwether. I think we’ve got a strong candidate in Casey where When she came into the signature program for 2024, 2025, she’s a local attorney. She’s mom. She’s got really, really strong connections to her district.

14:12.38

Danica Roem

And at the same time, she was new to campaigning. And so she had a lot of questions about, hey, I want to really, really learn a lot about all the aspects of what it takes to run a successful campaign.

14:23.28

Danica Roem

So she came in from there, you know kind of you know at that baseline. And then she went on. And she won every single precinct when you look at the reallocated votes from early voting and from in-person early voting or from mail-in ballots and in-person early voting.

14:38.36

Danica Roem

She won every precinct in her primary. And I would say that you know she’s in a very good position right now to win this fall. you know So I think she’s got a very strong message. I think she’s doing great. And you know as she was training in her class, we also had Nicole Cole, who’s now running against Bobby Orrick, who’s the dean of the House of Delegates.

14:58.38

Danica Roem

And this is the first time that this district has really been put in play in a competitive way since the 90s. I think this is, you know, if Spotsylvania and Caroline flip this year, you’re talking about, you know, Democrats in all 14 of those targeted red to blue seats, you know, really having a chance of a clean sweep at that point.

15:19.07

Danica Roem

At the same time, Nicole, Casey, Elizabeth, We have eight Emerge alums who are running in these top 14 red to blue seats right now, and a number of whom are, you know, previous candidates as Doug Guzman is.

15:33.50

Danica Roem

Lily Franklin in the 41st district running for that Montgomery County seat that’s anchored in Blacksburg. and guess she’s got little bit of Rona County. that’s That seat, I think, is Lily is... It’s really interesting because I always talk to her. I talk about Lily Franklin, what she brings to the table, in the same way that you would talk about someone in the performing arts as being a triple threat and that they can sing, act, and dance.

15:56.34

Danica Roem

Lilly is a really special case here where you got someone who is so strong on policy because she worked in the General Assembly as a chief of staff. She knows policy really well.

16:07.06

Danica Roem

Incredibly good campaigner. you know She almost won this seat in 2023 despite being very much underfunded. And a lot of people would tell you that.

16:18.02

Danica Roem

And then the third part on that is she’s good at public speaking. And I’ve watched her develop in that role too. And so I think she’s you know she’s she’s really got what it takes to win. And meanwhile, Kimberly Pope Adams right now in that Petersburg anchored seat that’s got Dinwiddie, it’s got a bunch of rural Virginia south of Richmond,

16:39.81

Danica Roem

We’re talking about someone in Kimberly Pope Adams case here who a lot of people did not believe would win her primary in 2023. She had actually dropped out of it for like one day in 2023, came back and just won this huge by huge margin surprise victory in her primary, came within a recount in the general election.

17:01.16

Danica Roem

And Kimberly Pope Adams is, I mean, she speaks the language of her district so, so well. And she’s been excellent, excellent with her ground game. I’m really, really particularly pleased with how well she’s been executing, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and handling the basics and getting the basics right of the campaign.

17:21.92

Danica Roem

And, you know, I would not be surprised to see Carolee Pope Adams in the, you know in the winner’s circle this fall at all.

17:28.13

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, well, you did a really good job breaking down some of the big races and some of the alum that yeah have been trained and are now running. and And we’ll see how many of them make it to the General Assembly in January.

17:40.27

Sam Shirazi

I did want to ask, because you in 2017 ran and then you won in a blue wave and there was a big class of people coming in to the General Assembly. What do you think it would be like for the new class of delegates who come in and what advice would you have for them?

17:55.51

Danica Roem

Sure. So i kind of theorize this in two ways. One is, what if we have 2017 part due, right? you know What if you know Democrats catch lightning in a bottle this year and you find out that, hey, Democrats end up flipping a whole bunch of seats in the House of Delegates?

18:16.01

Danica Roem

I think for the Emerge alums who win, they’re going to have not only the network of themselves as brand new members to the Virginia House of Delegates, what they’re also going to have that we didn’t have with the same volume is they’re going to have the existing eMERGE network that’s already in the House, where we’ve got 17 incumbents at this point.

18:40.22

Danica Roem

Whereas when i was you know when we had the nine of us who won in 2017, you know, we had Jennifer Boyce go in Kathleen Murphy there and that was it, you know, for the Emerge alums. We had other women for sure, but these days Emerge alums make up, you know, overwhelming majority of the house democratic women at this point and just adding more to that all the better. So I think they’re going to have a strong network amongst themselves. They’re have a strong network among the incumbents who are already there.

19:11.83

Danica Roem

the thing I would tell them that I think is really important is that when the House of Delegates conducts its own training and it’s bipartisan, it’s for all the new members.

19:24.89

Danica Roem

And so you’ll have Republicans, Democrats alike who come into, you know, who come into it. It’s so important that you not only talk to other Democrats, you need to talk to Republican, you know, you know, delegates elect as well.

19:39.14

Danica Roem

It’s really, really important to have relationships on both sides of the aisle as soon as you can. And that training opportunity, remember, most people are meeting the other people in that in their class for the first time during that training.

19:55.45

Danica Roem

And so It’s going to be really important that you have a good first impression and get along with people because you don’t know how long those relationships can go on for. For example, you know, State Senator Emily Jordan, she’s a Republican.

20:09.75

Danica Roem

Her and i we won our elections, you know, at the same time in 2017. We actually got along really well in our training together. And, you know, we are very different on policy, you know, a lot of ways, you know different politics, different, lot of that.

20:22.05

Danica Roem

But you know we’ve maintained a cordial relationship you know over last eight years too. And that’s something i I think I would just really stress to people is making sure that You’re talking to people on both sides, even if Democrats, you know, hey, we get a trifecta, everything’s great.

20:38.69

Danica Roem

Virginia is a pendulum politically. And so, you know, we have seen there’s the 20 year majority that the Republicans had for the House of Delegates. That’s long gone.

20:49.16

Danica Roem

But now we’ve also seen, you know, just in my terms that I’ve been there, i had Kirk Cox, the Speaker of the House, Eileen Fillercorn, a Speaker of the House. Todd Gilbert, is Speaker of the House. And then I went to the Senate.

21:02.50

Danica Roem

And now we have Don Scott, a Speaker of the House. We’ve had four speakers of the House in the eight years that I’ve been in office, just under eight years. And so I think it’s very, very important for people to make sure that they’ve got good relationships on both sides of the aisle.

21:18.81

Sam Shirazi

Well, I think that’s good advice, especially in these days where things have become so part partisan. i did want to ask one kind of interesting question for people who really are in the weeds about Virginia politics.

21:30.30

Sam Shirazi

you were You served both in the House of Delegates and now you’re in the State Senate. Could you talk about kind of the differences, similarities and what it was like to serve in both those bodies?

21:39.15

Danica Roem

Yeah. So in the house of delegates, house delegates funnier, that’s for sure. you can have, uh, you have a lot more, we’ll just say a flaring of emotions.

21:51.64

Danica Roem

and And not all negative. Sometimes, you know, it can be a very funny place to work. Paul Nardo, who is the clerk of the House. I mean, like just like Paul just is the House of Delegates in a lot of ways. He like he you know, he’s he’s very well respected both sides of the aisle, even though you he came up as Bill Howell’s chief staff. But, you know, it’s just, you know, he’s very well respected. And I think biggest difference between the two is that because the House Delegates is a hundred member body.

22:19.36

Danica Roem

And you have members, unless you sit on an aisle or you sit in the back row, you have members who are squeezing and shoving, trying to get themselves behind other so people in their seats as you’re trying to get to your seat and stuff. And so it’s, we’ll just say it’s a very cozy environment in the house.

22:37.02

Danica Roem

And because of that, There are members who absolutely take the initiative to walk over to the other side of the aisle during downtime and, you know, talk to other members. And i think that’s really, really important, you know, skill set to have.

22:52.57

Danica Roem

At the same time in the Senate, that’s every day, every day in the Senate, because you have 40 members instead of 100. You have a physically smaller room. And decorum in the Senate is a very big deal.

23:09.29

Danica Roem

Whereas in the House during my time there, decorum, every speaker will talk about the importance of it. I think... In the House, you’ll have members who just who who shout at each other you know you know on camera, on the mic, and have very heated rhetoric that go back and forth between each other.

23:26.56

Danica Roem

Absolutely, that happens. In the Senate, that’s more frowned upon. And it’s very, very much like, look, the members on both sides of the aisle, you’re on four or five committees.

23:38.71

Danica Roem

You’re going to be working with just about everyone at different points. you’re going to be interacting with each other on members from both sides of the aisle, whether you want to or not very, very frequently.

23:52.27

Danica Roem

And so i would say the house of delegates was a really good training for me to have had over six years going into the Senate. It gave me such a headstart on policy, on understanding the dynamics of the Senate, because I had, you know gotten to know a lot of the senators over the years.

24:10.90

Danica Roem

And at the same time, it wasn’t coming to the Senate completely green. That said, you don’t have to have served in the House of Delegates to you know go into the Senate, but a lot of us do.

24:22.47

Danica Roem

The other thing in the Senate is the four-year term absolutely comes with a different perspective because in the House, Kirk Cox used to say,

24:34.40

Danica Roem

The first day of your next campaign is election day of the campaign that you just won, because that’s when you’re meeting voters and you’re greeting them and everything.

24:46.45

Danica Roem

And immediately you’re getting started fundraising and, you know, doing community outreach and stuff for the next two year cycle. You’re already doing it. It’s just you’re in the nonstop campaign mentality when you’re in the House.

25:01.05

Danica Roem

And in my case, having flipped a seat from a 26-year, 13-term incumbent, having you know a really vigorous challenge in 2019, still a battleground challenge in 2021, but that one wasn’t actually like you know super well-funded. It was really, I was told, hey, you you know we’re not going to ask you to give extra caucus dues.

25:23.37

Danica Roem

but you’re going to have to run your own campaign because you know we’ve got other priority seats. And you know that was its own challenge in and of itself, without question, 2021, especially with the headwinds that came in.

25:33.79

Danica Roem

And I actually outran my top of the ticket in my district by 0.13, which is kind of interesting. And then 2023, race... you know my race what’s What’s interesting in the 2023 one is there were other races that were getting funded well, and I had the second worst thing that could happen to you as a candidate. The worst thing that happens to you as a candidate is you lose.

25:56.52

Danica Roem

The second worst thing it happens to you as a candidate is that you have a really good poll that comes in for you right before the start of early voting. And I did. And so at that point, it’s like, all right, Janica, you’re not going much of a priority right now. We really got to shift money into...

26:12.35

Danica Roem

some of these other seats. And i was like, oh no. And so I knew i was not going to win that election by the amount that that early polling showed us. And that is like, okay, we had 41 negative slash contrast you know mailers with negative you know you know messaging against me come into the district that my campaign I knew about.

26:34.71

Danica Roem

And then there were the TV ads, then there were digital and all this other stuff. And we did not have nearly as much mail. We didn’t have nearly as much TV digital. Well, actually, pretty close, i would say on that. But they got started before we did it in some regards.

26:49.06

Danica Roem

And we just kind of had to you know, really win that that campaign on the ground until the last week of the campaign when we knew the other side was going to go up with, you know, just about half million dollar buy.

27:02.79

Danica Roem

And so we had to, you know, make sure that we did what we had to do on that one and put up something similar. And we did. you know, one at the end of the day, it was just, you know, really, really took one on took one for the team in that campaign. And, you know, and that’s that’s okay. You know, whatever it takes for you to get to that majority, that’s what we did.

27:20.93

Danica Roem

So the biggest difference though, otherwise for the Senate versus the House, I think because of the volume that you’re dealing with of legislation and committee, the volume that you’re dealing with on the floor,

27:34.64

Danica Roem

and the number of committee assignments that you have. There’s a lot of people who come to you when you are a new member of the Senate with a certain air of respect that they project to you that they don’t always project project on new members of the House.

27:55.79

Danica Roem

I had people who would come up and talk to me in the Senate who I don’t believe would have given me the light of day my first term in the House. And that’s not among other members. That’s just like, you know, people who come in and out of Capitol Square pretty much.

28:11.13

Danica Roem

And so that was, i think there is a certain respect that’s afforded to first year senators that a lot of delegates need several years in order to just gain over time or depending on what their committee assignments are or anything. So, you know, I think those are some of the key differences.

28:32.80

Sam Shirazi

Well, certainly had some interesting experiences, and I’m sure you’ll have more as you continue in the state Senate. I did want to ask kind of one last question about Emerge Virginia, specifically about and of local offices, because and know when you were a reporter, you covered a lot of local politics.

28:49.86

Sam Shirazi

And oftentimes, the big organizations tend to overlook that they focus on the state level stuff. and What do you think the importance of local politics is? And How can there would be more of an emphasis on that? Because I think oftentime it gets oftentimes it gets overlooked.

29:04.99

Danica Roem

Oh, I mean, like, here’s a great example right now. you know, so for Emerge, we’ve got six Emerge alums who are running for local office right now. We’ve got Lauren Coliver running for re-election for Blacksburg Town Council.

29:18.45

Danica Roem

Keish Evans for in Stafford County. And actually, what’s interesting is the the sheriff of the city of Richmond, Antoinette Irving, she was actually in my 2017 boot camp for Emerge. And, you know, so she’s running for another term.

29:31.32

Danica Roem

Trina McLaughlin and Danville for school board. That’s a special election down there. Lucy Pullen here in Manassas Park, Commissioner Revenue. She’s unopposed, you know so you know she’s a lock for that seat.

29:42.06

Danica Roem

And then Blythe Scott, who’s running for re-election for Norfolk, Commissioner Revenue. What’s really important if you’re into politics and campaigning is very often this is where your farm team comes from.

29:56.07

Danica Roem

right This is where a lot of people, you know they get their start in local government before they run for you know higher office. Great example of this this year right now is Nicole Cole.

30:08.20

Danica Roem

Nicole Cole you know running in that Spotsylvania, Carolina County seat. She flipped a seat on the Spotsylvania County School Board. It’s important to note that school board races are officially nonpartisan, but the parties make endorsements rather than nominations.

30:25.12

Danica Roem

But that’s the sort of thing where it’s just like, okay, she’s held elected office before, so she’s a little bit more a known quantity. And I think that’s really important in a district like that. And also a side note, you know between her race and, say, Stacey Carroll next door you know in Stafford County, who’s running the flip a seat, who’s another Emerge alum,

30:45.68

Danica Roem

These are also areas to watch for some of the long distance federal commuters because, you know, the VRE stops in Spotsylvania. It stops in Stafford. And so I’m very interested to see, you know, kind of how that plays out down the 95 corridor a bit.

31:02.49

Danica Roem

So otherwise for the local offices, we don’t have as many up in Northern Virginia this year because we had a lot of those elections this past year.

31:11.72

Danica Roem

That said, we do have a special election for Gainesville District Supervisor this year, longtime Republican-held seat, an incumbent who died, who knew very well over a long, you know almost 19 years.

31:23.64

Danica Roem

So we’ve got a couple candidates running there. in the city of Manassas, we’ve got both of our constitutional offices up, Commissioner of Revenue and Treasurer, City of Manassas Park, we’ve got a special election for city council, plus we’ve got Treasurer and Commissioner of Revenue.

31:37.36

Danica Roem

And if you want your local government to function well on a day-to-day basis without having the sort of infighting, dysfunction, all the sorts of problems that you see where you have people who you know just get it wrong, for lack of better words.

31:58.44

Danica Roem

You’ve got to have good candidates who are well-intended, who are running for these local seats. And a great example, Lucy Pollan, our Emerged alum who’s running for Commissioner Revenue in Manassas Park,

32:10.86

Danica Roem

She’s coming directly out of the office of the commissioner of revenue for the city of Manassas. I think the fact that she has such significant experience directly in the line of work that she’s running for right now is probably part of the reason that she’s unopposed this year, because just she’s going to do a good job. And like, I think, I think she’s, you know,

32:31.71

Danica Roem

really got a good shot there, which is which is great. you know I’m very excited to see to see how she goes. But you know from there, i think if you look in the House of Delegates, we have a lot of former local elected officials who are now serving in the House. you know just Among some emerged folks, Elizabeth Bennett Parker, for example, she was on on the Alexandria City Council. I think she was actually vice mayor before she ran for the House. Karen Keyes-Gamara, former school board member for Fairfax County.

33:01.52

Danica Roem

She was actually up in a special election in Fairfax in 2017. And i actually took a part of a day to go knock doors. in her district, which overlapped with Carrie Delaney’s House Delegates District that she was running for, so we can help them out. So my team and I, we actually took a field trip to Fairfax that day to help them with the special, and they won, which was great.

33:20.92

Danica Roem

And Laura Jane Cohen, she’s another Emerged alum who’s a former elected Fairfax County School Board member. are And then even someone like, you know, Brianna Sewell, she wasn’t elected to local government, but she had significant local government experience before she came in.

33:36.71

Danica Roem

Tusa Reesers, another former school board member who’s an Emerge alum in the House. So, you know, i think it’s really, really significant that we’ve got, you know, people looking at having strong people elected locally who can make a difference later. And by the way, for those folks, every vote counts.

33:57.09

Danica Roem

Shelly Simons, Emerge alum, is a prime example for why. She had been a school board member, ran for House of Delegates, 2015 lost. When she ran in 2017, it was a tied race that was decided by a what I like to call fishbowl drawing in Newport News. And that was the reminder that every single vote counts. So she won in 2019. She’s doing great now. i expect her to be reelected this fall.

34:22.07

Danica Roem

But yeah, you know so we’ve got a lot of people who’ve been elected at local levels so who then run for the House. And if you look at the members of Congress from Virginia right now, almost all of them, all of them except for Eugene Vindman, came from either state or local government.

34:37.82

Danica Roem

If you include Don Beyer in his role as presiding over the Senate in particular, you know for he had been Lieutenant Governor. When you look at James Walkinshaw in Northern Virginia, he had come from the Fairfax Board.

34:50.16

Danica Roem

When you look at Suha Subramanian, he was my seatmate in the General Assembly, both the House and the Senate. And then All the Republicans had local elected experience. Jim McClellan was a state senator and a former member of the House Delegates.

35:03.87

Danica Roem

Bobby Scott served in the General Assembly way back when, too. So just, you know, if you want to know who the elected officials at the statewide and federal level of tomorrow are, let’s start looking at who’s in office today, because, you know, that’s where the farm team comes from.

35:19.16

Sam Shirazi

Well, that that makes sense. And I imagine there might be some new members on the team as as the elections happen this year. I usually like to end with something about a person’s district. And so I think most people, they think of your district, maybe Manassas Battlefield comes to mind. What is something like in your district that you really enjoy or something that people don’t often think about in your district?

35:40.78

Danica Roem

Oh, all right. So I’ll give you. So the one that you just mentioned from Manassas National Battlefield Park, when people come to the battlefield, most people go to Henry Hill, which is basically where the visitor center is.

35:54.27

Danica Roem

It’s the site, the the main site for where the first battle of Manassas was fought. in 1861. It was the first pitched battle of the Civil War. A lot of people overlook the part of the battlefield that is dedicated for the second battle that happened in 1862. Horrendously bloody affair, terrible affair.

36:16.67

Danica Roem

What a lot of people don’t know about that one also, by the way, is A sharpshooter almost most picked off Robert E. Lee there. He was coming up the Warnton Turnpike, and they grazed his cheek, almost like almost took him out. And the nephew of Stonewall Jackson was actually killed at the Second Battle of Manassas.

36:36.86

Danica Roem

I would urge any anyone, if you come to see the Battle of Manassas or you come to the Massas battlefield, please, by all means, come enjoy Henry Hill. Come enjoy the Visitor Center. you know Walk around, go see the Union Monument, everything. you know it’s it’s It’s really breathtaking to be out there.

36:51.82

Danica Roem

Make time to go to Deep Cut, where the fighting of the second battle was so intense that soldiers on both sides started picking up stones and throwing them at each other because they were out of the ammunition. I mean, like go see the Brooklyn monuments that the state of New York You know, delivered here a little after the turn of the 20th century to commemorate their war dead where I always pronounce their name wrong, but I’ll just say it how I always say it with the Zouaves.

37:21.99

Danica Roem

They were just massacred, but they held the line and actually allowed Pope to retreat in the first place and get out of there before he got captured. So, you know, it was very, very crucial stand that they actually had there and even in the losing effort.

37:35.37

Danica Roem

And because of what happened at the Second Battle of Manassas, that’s actually what set up Antietam. And Antietam is what directly led to the Emancipation Proclamation. And so Second Battle of Manassas, not only important historically, but today that is the area that is most threatened by data center development. Now, the data data centers want to be coming on federal property itself, but directly next door to it is where you know the Prince William Digital Gateway would set up if it were actually successful in court. It lost in the you know it lost most recently over the public notice requirement that’s now being appealed.

38:15.39

Danica Roem

But Go to Bronner Farm. Go check out that second battlefield of Manassas and really take in an appreciation for the fact that an area like that still exists in Northern Virginia. And by the way, if you like just wildlife and trees and such, great place to see that too. Go hike the trail there.

38:35.58

Danica Roem

And for a non-battlefield experience with that, go out to Silver Lake. Go out to Silver Lake. It’s called the Gem of Prince William County. It’s on Haymarket. It’s a very tranquil, passive-wrecked place to go to as well. So if you like outdoors, like stuff like that, check it out.

38:51.92

Danica Roem

Otherwise, if you like really big and loud, we’ve got Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow in my district. My very first concert ever was at AusFest 99 over there when it was still in the Nissan Pavilion. So, you know, we’ve got, people for people who like being around a whole bunch of other people in a very loud environment. And then we’ve got the pristine beauty of the battlefield and Bull Run mountain and, uh, Silver Lake. So, you know, my district really has a lot to offer.

39:17.69

Danica Roem

And even here in the city Manassas park, we actually have three parks in Manassas park for a little two point something miles long, uh, city. And, I love hiking over at Blooms Park. It’s great.

39:28.94

Danica Roem

It’s actually one of the few areas that we’re reforesting in Northern Virginia, which is amazing. It former golf course, now being allowed to just regrow. And we got Signal Hill Park. They got like ball fields, you know, pool and a bunch stuff over there. And then Costello Park actually came up playing ball there when I was a kid.

39:47.13

Danica Roem

That’s still around. That’s where the Mass Park Community Center is. And then City Manassas, head on into Old Town. We’ve got First Friday in Old Town. So the first Friday of most months, it’s a big street party festival, lots of bands and food and all this other stuff. So it’s always good time. And then last Friday in Manassas Park, they’ve got one too with our downtown that’s under construction. so Yeah, just want to say Sam, thank you so much for having me today. Also, we’ve got a couple other Emerge alums in those top eight seats. Just want to quickly mention as well, Leslie Mehta, Lindsay Doherty, who are running for these Chesterfield seats.

40:20.26

Danica Roem

I think I mentioned our other six. If I’ve missed anyone, I’m so sorry to them in advance. But I just want to highlight that, you know, we’ve got some incredible candidates who are on the ballot this fall.

40:30.56

Danica Roem

We’ve got a lot more emerging candidates too. And just because someone loses an election one year doesn’t mean they won’t put their name on ballot again for a future year. And we’re seeing that happen right now. So thank you so much. Thanks for talking about the district. Thanks for plugging my book. It’s called burn the page. It’s an audio book, ebook and hardcover.

40:47.88

Danica Roem

And if you want any more information about our program and merge, please visit va.emergeamerica.org. We’ve also got a big event that’s coming up in Richmond on November 8th over at Strange Ways Brewery off of Dabney Road. So come on out. Love to see you.

41:03.87

Sam Shirazi

Well, thanks so much for taking the time to come on. And it’s been really interesting to hear all about that. And I’m sure once the results come in, i wouldn’t be surprised if some of your alumni end up winning this year. So anyways, thank you so much. 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