00:00.60

Sam Shirazi

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

00:13.42

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

00:16.90

Sam Shirazi

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

00:26.22

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

00:40.45

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

00:53.02

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

01:12.06

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

01:26.58

Sam Shirazi

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

01:43.54

Sam Shirazi

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

01:54.46

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

02:24.53

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

02:36.31

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

03:01.30

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

03:45.65

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

04:03.22

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

04:16.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

04:29.38

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

04:52.24

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

05:09.03

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

05:33.70

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

05:47.92

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

06:00.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

06:13.90

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

06:31.75

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

06:49.39

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

06:57.81

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

07:09.86

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

07:22.98

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

07:36.75

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

07:47.06

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

08:17.54

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

08:38.74

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

09:03.61

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

09:13.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

09:36.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

09:47.14

Sam Shirazi

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

10:17.58

Sam Shirazi

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

10:31.20

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

10:48.42

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

11:25.07

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

11:36.33

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

11:51.68

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

12:06.02

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

12:22.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

12:39.58

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

12:52.59

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

13:05.31

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

13:15.06

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

13:25.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

13:38.85

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

13:48.20

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

14:04.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

14:15.80

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

14:25.99

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

14:55.37

Sam Shirazi

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

15:10.13

Sam Shirazi

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

15:15.02

Chaz Nuttycombe

And can I make a quick plug, Sam?

15:16.50

Sam Shirazi

Yep.

15:17.16

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

15:31.48

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

15:42.87

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

16:02.84

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

16:08.93

Sam Shirazi

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

16:33.64

Sam Shirazi

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

16:41.74

Chaz Nuttycombe

Mm-hmm.

16:41.71

Sam Shirazi

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

17:12.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

17:22.08

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, that’s true.

17:37.18

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

18:20.09

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

18:33.40

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

18:49.35

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

19:09.50

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

19:25.19

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

19:44.94

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

20:11.26

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

20:43.74

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

21:00.99

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

21:16.49

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

21:40.53

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

21:57.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

22:10.62

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

22:26.60

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

22:36.25

Sam Shirazi

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

22:46.62

Sam Shirazi

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

23:00.99

Sam Shirazi

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

23:03.32

Chaz Nuttycombe

Mm-hmm.

23:05.43

Sam Shirazi

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

23:15.51

Sam Shirazi

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

23:44.49

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

24:20.90

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

24:33.29

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

24:43.81

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

24:58.26

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

25:15.87

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

25:27.85

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

25:47.15

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

26:06.78

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

26:21.96

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

26:42.39

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

26:57.45

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

27:11.22

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

27:44.91

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

27:55.78

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

28:14.32

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

28:25.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

28:39.24

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

28:52.83

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

28:56.70

Sam Shirazi

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

29:03.03

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

29:33.51

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

29:54.85

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

30:06.36

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

30:21.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

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

30:28.55

Sam Shirazi

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

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

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

00:12.92

Sam Shirazi

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

00:24.84

Sam Shirazi

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

01:01.86

Sam Shirazi

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

01:17.58

Sam Shirazi

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

01:49.02

Sam Shirazi

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

02:03.54

Sam Shirazi

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

02:15.99

Sam Shirazi

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

02:29.18

Sam Shirazi

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

02:43.10

Sam Shirazi

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

02:54.22

Sam Shirazi

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

03:07.30

Sam Shirazi

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

03:24.05

Sam Shirazi

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

03:40.63

Sam Shirazi

that’s about a 25% margin for Republicans.

03:45.08

Sam Shirazi

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

04:08.36

Sam Shirazi

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

04:40.15

Sam Shirazi

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

04:52.74

Sam Shirazi

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

05:05.09

Sam Shirazi

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

05:18.76

Sam Shirazi

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

05:29.71

Sam Shirazi

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

06:04.36

Sam Shirazi

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

06:16.24

Sam Shirazi

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

06:31.41

Sam Shirazi

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

07:01.04

Sam Shirazi

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

07:17.68

Sam Shirazi

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

07:29.14

Sam Shirazi

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

07:46.18

Sam Shirazi

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

08:00.100

Sam Shirazi

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

08:12.04

Sam Shirazi

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

08:23.40

Sam Shirazi

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

08:34.64

Sam Shirazi

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

08:54.10

Sam Shirazi

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

09:19.85

Sam Shirazi

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

09:32.22

Sam Shirazi

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

09:45.74

Sam Shirazi

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

09:59.92

Sam Shirazi

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

10:18.56

Sam Shirazi

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

10:34.82

Sam Shirazi

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

10:57.80

Sam Shirazi

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

11:11.90

Sam Shirazi

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

11:23.74

Sam Shirazi

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

11:44.84

Sam Shirazi

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

11:55.40

Sam Shirazi

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

12:13.78

Sam Shirazi

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

12:59.46

Sam Shirazi

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

13:11.36

Sam Shirazi

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

13:22.100

Sam Shirazi

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

13:44.50

Sam Shirazi

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

13:58.36

Sam Shirazi

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

14:16.90

Sam Shirazi

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

14:31.40

Sam Shirazi

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

14:41.52

Sam Shirazi

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

14:52.85

Sam Shirazi

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

15:24.36

Sam Shirazi

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

15:34.83

Sam Shirazi

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

15:55.30

Sam Shirazi

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

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

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

00:31.29

Sam Shirazi

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

00:49.50

Sam Shirazi

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

01:04.27

Sam Shirazi

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

01:45.99

Sam Shirazi

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

02:24.87

Sam Shirazi

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

03:03.68

Sam Shirazi

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

03:27.80

Sam Shirazi

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

03:43.09

Sam Shirazi

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

04:19.02

Sam Shirazi

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

04:37.71

Sam Shirazi

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

05:20.49

Sam Shirazi

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

05:41.71

Sam Shirazi

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

05:52.52

Sam Shirazi

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

06:05.74

Sam Shirazi

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

06:25.58

Sam Shirazi

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

06:39.07

Sam Shirazi

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

06:49.31

Sam Shirazi

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

07:10.01

Sam Shirazi

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

07:49.43

Sam Shirazi

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

08:16.96

Sam Shirazi

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

08:49.71

Sam Shirazi

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

09:07.12

Sam Shirazi

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

09:23.40

Sam Shirazi

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

09:41.97

Sam Shirazi

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

10:05.71

Sam Shirazi

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

10:33.46

Sam Shirazi

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

10:48.52

Sam Shirazi

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

11:02.74

Sam Shirazi

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

11:18.96

Sam Shirazi

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

11:38.93

Sam Shirazi

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

11:49.29

Sam Shirazi

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

12:02.46

Sam Shirazi

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

12:15.92

Sam Shirazi

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

12:41.53

Sam Shirazi

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

12:57.58

Sam Shirazi

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

13:42.01

Sam Shirazi

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

13:56.63

Sam Shirazi

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

14:16.77

Sam Shirazi

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

15:10.62

Sam Shirazi

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

15:28.12

Sam Shirazi

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

16:18.22

Sam Shirazi

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

16:29.86

Sam Shirazi

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

16:48.18

Sam Shirazi

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

17:40.64

Sam Shirazi

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

18:16.46

Sam Shirazi

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

18:34.83

Sam Shirazi

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

18:53.29

Sam Shirazi

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

19:03.84

Sam Shirazi

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

19:18.69

Sam Shirazi

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

19:33.84

Sam Shirazi

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

19:55.66

Sam Shirazi

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

20:29.68

Sam Shirazi

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

20:46.97

Sam Shirazi

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

21:01.13

Sam Shirazi

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

21:32.36

Sam Shirazi

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

22:10.06

Sam Shirazi

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

22:47.32

Sam Shirazi

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

23:01.82

Sam Shirazi

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

23:14.46

Sam Shirazi

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

23:26.01

Sam Shirazi

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

23:44.76

Sam Shirazi

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

23:55.55

Sam Shirazi

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

24:42.36

Sam Shirazi

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

25:08.100

Sam Shirazi

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

25:32.71

Sam Shirazi

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

25:55.81

Sam Shirazi

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

26:17.38

Sam Shirazi

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

26:29.19

Sam Shirazi

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

26:45.48

Sam Shirazi

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

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

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

00:14.71

Sam Shirazi

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

00:45.94

Sam Shirazi

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

01:04.36

Sam Shirazi

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

01:30.37

Sam Shirazi

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

01:57.64

Sam Shirazi

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

02:09.51

Sam Shirazi

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

02:39.61

Sam Shirazi

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

02:53.27

Sam Shirazi

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

03:26.78

Sam Shirazi

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

03:39.94

Sam Shirazi

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

03:51.56

Sam Shirazi

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

04:04.23

Sam Shirazi

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

04:15.04

Sam Shirazi

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

04:32.74

Sam Shirazi

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

04:54.69

Sam Shirazi

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

05:18.32

Sam Shirazi

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

05:30.97

Sam Shirazi

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

05:42.57

Sam Shirazi

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

06:05.09

Sam Shirazi

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

06:35.98

Sam Shirazi

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

07:22.01

Sam Shirazi

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

07:39.88

Sam Shirazi

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

08:03.50

Sam Shirazi

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

08:14.97

Sam Shirazi

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

08:36.44

Sam Shirazi

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

08:48.44

Sam Shirazi

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

08:59.07

Sam Shirazi

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

09:13.79

Sam Shirazi

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

09:25.08

Sam Shirazi

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

09:37.47

Sam Shirazi

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

09:58.03

Sam Shirazi

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

10:21.22

Sam Shirazi

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

10:32.55

Sam Shirazi

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

10:44.02

Sam Shirazi

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

11:12.43

Sam Shirazi

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

11:22.90

Sam Shirazi

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

11:42.87

Sam Shirazi

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

12:09.23

Sam Shirazi

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

12:20.98

Sam Shirazi

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

12:35.76

Sam Shirazi

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

13:04.95

Sam Shirazi

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

13:33.17

Sam Shirazi

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

13:53.44

Sam Shirazi

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

14:17.10

Sam Shirazi

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

14:34.99

Sam Shirazi

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

14:51.50

Sam Shirazi

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

15:10.67

Sam Shirazi

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

15:26.10

Sam Shirazi

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

15:59.51

Sam Shirazi

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

16:13.95

Sam Shirazi

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

16:56.29

Sam Shirazi

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

17:35.63

Sam Shirazi

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

17:45.39

Sam Shirazi

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

18:26.71

Sam Shirazi

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

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

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

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

01:00.71

Sam Shirazi

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

01:26.03

Sam Shirazi

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

01:38.82

Sam Shirazi

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

01:49.77

Sam Shirazi

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

01:59.94

Sam Shirazi

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

02:24.33

Sam Shirazi

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

02:39.35

Sam Shirazi

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

03:20.82

Sam Shirazi

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

03:43.73

Sam Shirazi

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

03:55.79

Sam Shirazi

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

04:07.51

Sam Shirazi

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

04:21.27

Sam Shirazi

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

04:35.56

Sam Shirazi

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

04:54.61

Sam Shirazi

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

05:13.13

Sam Shirazi

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

05:23.05

Sam Shirazi

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

05:39.18

Sam Shirazi

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

05:57.60

Sam Shirazi

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

06:10.37

Sam Shirazi

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

06:21.62

Sam Shirazi

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

06:34.05

Sam Shirazi

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

06:52.84

Sam Shirazi

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

07:07.64

Sam Shirazi

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

07:24.74

Sam Shirazi

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

07:42.05

Sam Shirazi

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

08:01.28

Sam Shirazi

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

08:39.81

Sam Shirazi

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

09:00.88

Sam Shirazi

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

09:22.96

Sam Shirazi

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

09:56.24

Sam Shirazi

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

10:10.80

Sam Shirazi

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

10:34.58

Sam Shirazi

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

10:55.33

Sam Shirazi

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

11:06.62

Sam Shirazi

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

11:36.29

Sam Shirazi

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

12:14.18

Sam Shirazi

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

12:25.00

Sam Shirazi

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

12:49.31

Sam Shirazi

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

13:00.58

Sam Shirazi

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

13:16.84

Sam Shirazi

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

13:28.58

Sam Shirazi

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

13:44.86

Sam Shirazi

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

13:56.60

Sam Shirazi

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

14:08.74

Sam Shirazi

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

14:32.96

Sam Shirazi

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

14:47.87

Sam Shirazi

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

15:25.68

Sam Shirazi

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

15:38.10

Sam Shirazi

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

15:52.54

Sam Shirazi

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

16:04.73

Sam Shirazi

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

16:18.14

Sam Shirazi

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

16:32.57

Sam Shirazi

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

16:51.39

Sam Shirazi

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

17:07.47

Sam Shirazi

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

17:24.38

Sam Shirazi

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

17:52.30

Sam Shirazi

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

18:29.61

Sam Shirazi

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

18:44.19

Sam Shirazi

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

18:55.17

Sam Shirazi

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

19:18.79

Sam Shirazi

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

19:35.99

Sam Shirazi

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

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

20:07.39

Sam Shirazi

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

20:30.64

Sam Shirazi

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

20:42.86

Sam Shirazi

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

21:01.62

Sam Shirazi

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

21:36.86

Sam Shirazi

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

22:04.66

Sam Shirazi

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

22:29.82

Sam Shirazi

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

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

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

00:16.02

Sam Shirazi

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

00:26.74

Sam Shirazi

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

00:41.72

Sam Shirazi

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

01:04.82

Sam Shirazi

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

01:20.70

Sam Shirazi

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

01:33.02

Sam Shirazi

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

01:50.26

Sam Shirazi

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

02:20.41

Sam Shirazi

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

02:41.44

Sam Shirazi

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

02:57.76

Sam Shirazi

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

03:29.88

Sam Shirazi

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

04:08.12

Sam Shirazi

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

04:24.60

Sam Shirazi

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

04:54.17

Sam Shirazi

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

05:06.90

Sam Shirazi

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

05:26.49

Sam Shirazi

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

05:42.16

Sam Shirazi

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

05:57.26

Sam Shirazi

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

06:26.67

Sam Shirazi

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

06:45.25

Sam Shirazi

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

07:03.03

Sam Shirazi

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

07:16.76

Sam Shirazi

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

07:46.20

Sam Shirazi

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

08:00.91

Sam Shirazi

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

08:16.91

Sam Shirazi

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

08:31.37

Sam Shirazi

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

08:47.50

Sam Shirazi

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

08:59.21

Sam Shirazi

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

09:11.18

Sam Shirazi

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

09:28.45

Sam Shirazi

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

09:50.92

Sam Shirazi

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

10:08.52

Sam Shirazi

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

10:23.45

Sam Shirazi

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

10:41.92

Sam Shirazi

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

10:55.95

Sam Shirazi

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

11:11.62

Sam Shirazi

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

11:36.88

Sam Shirazi

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

11:53.62

Sam Shirazi

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

12:30.59

Sam Shirazi

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

12:45.29

Sam Shirazi

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

12:56.84

Sam Shirazi

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

13:09.09

Sam Shirazi

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

13:33.46

Sam Shirazi

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

13:44.57

Sam Shirazi

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

14:01.19

Sam Shirazi

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

14:13.30

Sam Shirazi

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

14:41.91

Sam Shirazi

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

14:54.68

Sam Shirazi

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

15:21.96

Sam Shirazi

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

15:42.99

Sam Shirazi

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

16:02.86

Sam Shirazi

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

16:30.06

Sam Shirazi

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

16:52.49

Sam Shirazi

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

17:11.04

Sam Shirazi

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

17:22.44

Sam Shirazi

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

17:34.42

Sam Shirazi

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

17:53.04

Sam Shirazi

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

18:04.43

Sam Shirazi

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

18:27.66

Sam Shirazi

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

18:42.66

Sam Shirazi

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

19:08.18

Sam Shirazi

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

19:36.73

Sam Shirazi

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

19:49.45

Sam Shirazi

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

20:22.59

Sam Shirazi

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

20:35.11

Sam Shirazi

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

20:49.03

Sam Shirazi

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

20:59.24

Sam Shirazi

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

21:39.93

Sam Shirazi

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

21:51.38

Sam Shirazi

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

22:06.92

Sam Shirazi

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

22:24.25

Sam Shirazi

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

22:49.57

Sam Shirazi

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

23:02.18

Sam Shirazi

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

23:24.80

Sam Shirazi

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

23:48.65

Sam Shirazi

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

24:03.78

Sam Shirazi

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

24:25.54

Sam Shirazi

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

25:01.62

Sam Shirazi

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

25:25.75

Sam Shirazi

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

25:37.75

Sam Shirazi

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

25:51.87

Sam Shirazi

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

26:11.07

Sam Shirazi

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

26:26.56

Sam Shirazi

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

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

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

00:19.57

Sam Shirazi

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

00:54.62

Sam Shirazi

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

01:12.08

Sam Shirazi

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

01:29.64

Sam Shirazi

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

01:38.41

Sam Shirazi

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

02:05.40

Sam Shirazi

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

02:20.25

Sam Shirazi

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

02:49.75

Sam Shirazi

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

03:07.10

Sam Shirazi

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

03:17.82

Sam Shirazi

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

03:55.78

Sam Shirazi

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

04:17.20

Sam Shirazi

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

05:19.05

Sam Shirazi

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

05:32.52

Sam Shirazi

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

05:49.96

Sam Shirazi

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

06:01.17

Sam Shirazi

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

06:12.98

Sam Shirazi

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

06:29.73

Sam Shirazi

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

06:40.51

Sam Shirazi

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

06:56.88

Sam Shirazi

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

07:11.04

Sam Shirazi

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

07:21.64

Sam Shirazi

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

07:37.93

Sam Shirazi

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

07:56.06

Sam Shirazi

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

08:17.06

Sam Shirazi

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

08:40.43

Sam Shirazi

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

08:53.24

Sam Shirazi

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

09:05.81

Sam Shirazi

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

09:19.21

Sam Shirazi

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

09:34.32

Sam Shirazi

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

10:01.59

Sam Shirazi

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

10:22.98

Sam Shirazi

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

10:42.18

Sam Shirazi

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

11:29.66

Sam Shirazi

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

11:51.13

Sam Shirazi

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

12:04.39

Sam Shirazi

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

12:24.79

Sam Shirazi

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

12:43.80

Sam Shirazi

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

13:16.57

Sam Shirazi

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

13:27.58

Sam Shirazi

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

13:37.77

Sam Shirazi

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

13:56.01

Sam Shirazi

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

14:12.77

Sam Shirazi

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

14:40.74

Sam Shirazi

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

14:55.30

Sam Shirazi

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

15:13.25

Sam Shirazi

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

15:31.57

Sam Shirazi

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

15:58.68

Sam Shirazi

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

16:14.60

Sam Shirazi

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

16:39.81

Sam Shirazi

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

16:50.86

Sam Shirazi

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

17:03.52

Sam Shirazi

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

17:16.56

Sam Shirazi

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

17:45.83

Sam Shirazi

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

18:09.50

Sam Shirazi

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

18:26.75

Sam Shirazi

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

18:44.96

Sam Shirazi

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

19:19.72

Sam Shirazi

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

19:38.70

Sam Shirazi

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

19:56.07

Sam Shirazi

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

20:21.85

Sam Shirazi

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

20:35.32

Sam Shirazi

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

20:47.22

Sam Shirazi

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

20:59.90

Sam Shirazi

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

21:18.66

Sam Shirazi

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

22:09.07

Sam Shirazi

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

22:45.11

Sam Shirazi

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

23:27.54

Sam Shirazi

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

23:40.29

Sam Shirazi

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

23:57.63

Sam Shirazi

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

24:17.33

Sam Shirazi

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

24:28.63

Sam Shirazi

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

24:42.29

Sam Shirazi

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

25:07.03

Sam Shirazi

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

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

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

00:16.15

Sam Shirazi

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

00:38.46

Sam Shirazi

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

00:48.65

Sam Shirazi

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

01:17.16

Sam Shirazi

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

01:54.12

Sam Shirazi

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

02:38.25

Sam Shirazi

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

02:50.44

Sam Shirazi

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

03:27.92

Sam Shirazi

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

03:50.44

Sam Shirazi

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

04:23.28

Sam Shirazi

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

04:41.82

Sam Shirazi

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

05:08.64

Sam Shirazi

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

05:25.66

Sam Shirazi

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

05:45.18

Sam Shirazi

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

06:07.81

Sam Shirazi

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

06:27.46

Sam Shirazi

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

06:40.14

Sam Shirazi

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

07:09.02

Sam Shirazi

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

07:41.38

Sam Shirazi

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

07:53.03

Sam Shirazi

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

08:07.30

Sam Shirazi

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

08:46.89

Sam Shirazi

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

09:18.24

Sam Shirazi

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

09:35.56

Sam Shirazi

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

10:03.39

Sam Shirazi

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

10:13.79

Sam Shirazi

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

10:48.36

Sam Shirazi

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

11:03.79

Sam Shirazi

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

11:14.51

Sam Shirazi

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

12:01.61

Sam Shirazi

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

12:12.04

Sam Shirazi

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

12:35.44

Sam Shirazi

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

12:50.74

Sam Shirazi

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

13:10.36

Sam Shirazi

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

13:40.10

Sam Shirazi

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

14:01.26

Sam Shirazi

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

14:28.30

Sam Shirazi

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

14:51.84

Sam Shirazi

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

15:18.96

Sam Shirazi

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

15:33.26

Sam Shirazi

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

15:48.59

Sam Shirazi

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

16:02.80

Sam Shirazi

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

16:14.82

Sam Shirazi

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

16:41.78

Sam Shirazi

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

16:56.46

Sam Shirazi

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

17:31.24

Sam Shirazi

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

17:47.74

Sam Shirazi

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

17:58.65

Sam Shirazi

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

18:39.50

Sam Shirazi

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

19:11.24

Sam Shirazi

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

19:22.67

Sam Shirazi

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

19:36.20

Sam Shirazi

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

19:59.36

Sam Shirazi

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

20:12.90

Sam Shirazi

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

20:26.98

Sam Shirazi

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

20:41.100

Sam Shirazi

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

21:07.82

Sam Shirazi

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

21:51.17

Sam Shirazi

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

22:02.07

Sam Shirazi

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

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

00:00.47

Sam Shirazi

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will dive into a lot of legal issues, specifically with redistricting and just to see what is going on with some of the legal challenges the Republicans are bringing to redistricting.

00:15.48

Sam Shirazi

So to set the stage, the Democrats in the General Assembly are full steam ahead in terms of trying to have a referendum this year in Virginia on redistricting.

00:25.85

Sam Shirazi

They have proposed a bill that would set the date of the referendum as April 21st. And they have also... given their proposed language for what should go on the ballot in terms of the question for the referendum. And the question is, quote, should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census. So clearly they are, you know, the Democrats have phrased the question in a way that they think is more likely to get people to vote for it. I think the Republicans think the phrasing of the question is unfair and obviously skewed from their perspective.

01:15.06

Sam Shirazi

against the Republican position. And you know I’m not sure if there’ll be any legal challenges to that, but that is the bill that the Democrats are proposing. So have a referendum on April 21st, have that as the question.

01:27.95

Sam Shirazi

And you know if that gets passed, then the next step would be to actually enact a new map in Virginia, including moving the primary deadlines so that the elections could happen this year under the new maps. The one thing that we are still waiting on from the Virginia Democrats is what their proposed map is going to look like.

01:48.69

Sam Shirazi

And it seems like that map will be coming out next week.

01:52.86

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, when that happens, I will do a podcast because that’s going to be a big deal. But before we get to that, I wanted to talk about the Republican strategy and really they’re the Republican legal strategy.

02:03.93

Sam Shirazi

And we’ll go into kind of the ins and outs on of that. But before I get into like the specific legal stuff, I wanted to just talk about kind of where the Republicans are at. Because I think in terms of running a redistricting referendum campaign in basically three months, the Republicans are not in a good place. I think they know that. I don’t think they really or have a plan if they have to run a referendum campaign.

02:28.26

Sam Shirazi

And it reminds me of a quote from the classic movie Rocky III, So a reporter is asking Clubber Lang, who was about to fight Rocky, a question about what’s his strategy.

02:40.33

Sam Shirazi

And Clubber Lang’s response is don’t need any. And I think in some ways, maybe that’s the Virginia Republicans position in that they don’t think they really need a strategy for the referendum campaign because they seem pretty confident in their legal position in this lawsuit that they brought. And you know honestly, it could be wishful thinking.

03:00.14

Sam Shirazi

My sense is it could also just be they have nothing else. They really are just hoping that the lawsuit works out. They don’t have to run a referendum campaign because I think if the referendum is happening, I don’t really see a way where they’re going to be able to mount a a strong campaign. It’s going to be in April. You’re going to have Democrats really fired up.

03:19.21

Sam Shirazi

So I think it’s going to be a really uphill climb for the Virginia Republicans if they have to have a referendum. They seem to kind of understand that. And that’s why they’re basically going in all in on this legal case that they brought. And I kind of want to set up the Republican argument, the Democratic argument, I can kind of give you my personal opinion.

03:37.57

Sam Shirazi

I don’t often go into these like super detailed legal analysis. From my training, I am an attorney, I attended the University of Virginia. I don’t always talk about it on here because most people are pretty bored about legal stuff. But I thought it was kind of interesting To give people, if you’re an attorney, you might find this interesting. If you’re not an attorney, you’ll kind of get a sense of how attorneys analyze legal questions.

03:59.57

Sam Shirazi

And so I’ll kind of do quick rundown about what’s going on and what the courts might interpret in this case. I did want to say, you know, this is kind of standard preference that lawyers like to give, you know, I’m not giving legal advice. I’m not telling people what arguments they should make. I’m just laying out kind of what I’m seeing in the legal landscape just for people’s analysis. And, you know, they can come up with their own conclusions in terms of with what they think is going to happen. This is kind of my personal opinion about this legal issue, but obviously it’s complicated. And, you know, just because I’m

04:37.74

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I’m not saying the case is going to go one way or another. I think it is an interesting legal question. It really boils down mainly to Virginia state constitutional law. There might be a small federal angle to this, but generally this is more of a state issue.

04:51.99

Sam Shirazi

I think the highest court that will hear it is the Virginia Supreme Court, and it’s unlikely to really be decided by the federal courts. So I’ll talk about some of the legal issues going on.

05:02.58

Sam Shirazi

The Republicans have brought a lawsuit in Tazewell County in Southwest Virginia. That’s a deep red county. I think clearly they did what’s called forum shopping. They wanted to pick where they thought they’d have the strongest chance of winning.

05:15.38

Sam Shirazi

at the lower court level. You know regardless of what happens at the lower court, the reality is this case is almost certainly going to go to the Virginia Supreme Court to be ultimately decided because it’s such a significant legal issue. It’s such a thorny constitutional state constitutional issue. So I think you know one way or another, the Virginia Supreme Court is going to have to sort this out. And you know essentially the question is based on the state constitution and then a specific provision of the state law under the state constitution. So I’ll kind of go through the different provisions and kind of, you know, go through that analysis. So I think, you know, the Democrats initial position is that the state constitution is pretty clear. And I’m going to read the,

05:59.27

Sam Shirazi

language from the state constitution. This is Article 12 of the Virginia Constitution, Future Changes, and it’s section one about amendments. So it basically says, you know any amendment has to first pass the House of Delegates and the state Senate in one session.

06:14.21

Sam Shirazi

And then it says that amendment will be referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.

06:26.76

Sam Shirazi

And those that that phrase, after the next general election, is really the crux of this legal issue. Because what the Democrats are arguing is that language is very clear.

06:38.66

Sam Shirazi

You pass it one in one session, and then you have’t after the next general election, you pass it again in the next session. And so the logical reading of next general election is literally election day. So you have an election and then the next session after that election, you can vote on it again. And that’s basically what happened. You know, the Democrats, they passed this bill essentially the week before election day.

07:02.23

Sam Shirazi

Election day happened, they won. And then in January, they passed it again. And so the logical reading of this without any sort of overthinking about it is. You pass it before the election, and then you pass it after the election. And that’s kind of the plain reading of the state constitution. It’s pretty clear about that.

07:17.63

Sam Shirazi

I think that’s a decent constitutional argument just from the text. But the Republicans make a bunch of arguments that basically...

07:24.52

Sam Shirazi

you know, the election was essentially already underway. Early voting had been going on. The purpose of this provision is to give voters a chance to vote if they want to reelect the House of Delegates and and to allow this sort of amendment to go forward. And so you’re kind of really undermining the purpose of the requirement that it be passed in two different sessions with an election in between.

08:14.74

Sam Shirazi

00:00.47

Sam Shirazi

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will dive into a lot of legal issues, specifically with redistricting and just to see what is going on with some of the legal challenges the Republicans are bringing to redistricting.

00:15.48

Sam Shirazi

So to set the stage, the Democrats in the General Assembly are full steam ahead in terms of trying to have a referendum this year in Virginia on redistricting.

00:25.85

Sam Shirazi

They have proposed a bill that would set the date of the referendum as April 21st. And they have also... given their proposed language for what should go on the ballot in terms of the question for the referendum. And the question is, quote, should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarilyily temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census. So clearly they are, you know, the Democrats have phrased the question in a way that they think is more likely to get people to vote for it. I think the Republicans think the phrasing of the question is unfair and obviously skewed from their perspective.

01:15.06

Sam Shirazi

against the Republican position. And you know I’m not sure if there’ll be any legal challenges to that, but that is the bill that the Democrats are proposing. So have a referendum on April 21st, have that as the question.

01:27.95

Sam Shirazi

And you know if that gets passed, then the next step would be to actually enact a new map in Virginia, including moving the primary deadlines so that the elections could happen this year under the new maps. The one thing that we are still waiting on from the Virginia Democrats is what their proposed map is going to look like.

01:48.69

Sam Shirazi

And it seems like that map will be coming out next week.

01:52.86

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, when that happens, I will do a podcast because that’s going to be a big deal. But before we get to that, I wanted to talk about the Republican strategy and really they’re the Republican legal strategy.

02:03.93

Sam Shirazi

And we’ll go into kind of the ins and outs on of that. But before I get into like the specific legal stuff, I wanted to just talk about kind of where the Republicans are at. Because I think in terms of running a redistricting referendum campaign in basically three months, the Republicans are not in a good place. I think they know that. I don’t think they really or have a plan if they have to run a referendum campaign.

02:28.26

Sam Shirazi

And it reminds me of a quote from the classic movie Rocky III, So a reporter is asking Clubber Lane, who was about to fight Rocky, a question about what’s his strategy.

02:40.33

Sam Shirazi

And Clubber Lane’s response is don’t need any. And I think in some ways, maybe that’s the Virginia Republicans position in that they don’t think they really need a strategy for the referendum campaign because they seem pretty confident in their legal position in this lawsuit that they brought. And you know honestly, it could be wishful thinking.

03:00.14

Sam Shirazi

My sense is it could also just be they have nothing else. They really are just hoping that the lawsuit works out. They don’t have to run a referendum campaign because I think if the referendum is happening, I don’t really see a way where they’re going to be able to mount a a strong campaign. It’s going to be in April. You’re going to have Democrats really fired up.

03:19.21

Sam Shirazi

So I think it’s going to be a really uphill climb for the Virginia Republicans if they have to have a referendum. They seem to kind of understand that. And that’s why they’re basically going in all in on this legal case that they brought. And I kind of want to set up the Republican argument, the Democratic argument, i can kind of give you my personal opinion.

03:37.57

Sam Shirazi

I don’t often go into these like super detailed legal analysis. From my training, i am an attorney, I attended the University of Virginia. i don’t always talk about it on here because most people are pretty bored about legal stuff. But I thought it was kind of interesting To give people, if you’re an attorney, you might find this interesting. If you’re not an attorney, you’ll kind of get a sense of how attorneys analyze legal questions.

03:59.57

Sam Shirazi

And so I’ll kind of do quick rundown about what’s going on and what the courts might interpret in this case. I did want to say, you know, this is kind of standard preference that lawyers like to give, you know, I’m not giving legal advice. I’m not telling people what arguments they should make. I’m just laying out kind of what I’m seeing in the legal landscape just for people’s analysis. And, you know, they can come up with their own conclusions in terms of with what they think is going to happen. This is kind of my personal opinion about this legal issue, but obviously it’s complicated. And, you know, just because I’m

04:37.74

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I’m not saying the case is going to go one way or another. I think it is an interesting legal question. it really boils down mainly to Virginia state constitutional law. There might be a small federal angle to this, but generally this is more of a state issue.

04:51.99

Sam Shirazi

i think the highest court that will hear it is the Virginia Supreme Court, and it’s unlikely to really be decided by the federal courts. So I’ll talk about some of the legal issues going on.

05:02.58

Sam Shirazi

The Republicans have brought a lawsuit in Tazewell County in Southwest Virginia. That’s a deep red county. I think clearly they did what’s called forum shopping. They wanted to pick where they thought they’d have the strongest chance of winning.

05:15.38

Sam Shirazi

at the lower court level, you know regardless of what happens at the lower court, the reality is this case is almost certainly going to go to the Virginia Supreme Court to be ultimately decided because it’s such a significant legal issue. It’s such a thorny constitutional state constitutional issue. So I think you know one way or another, the Virginia Supreme Court is going to have to sort this out. And you know essentially the question is based on the state constitution and then a specific provision of the state law under the state constitution. So I’ll kind of go through the different provisions and kind of, you know, go through that analysis. So I think, you know, the Democrats initial position is that the state constitution is pretty clear. And I’m going to read the,

05:59.27

Sam Shirazi

Language from the state constitution. This is Article 12 of the Virginia Constitution, Future Changes, and it’s section one about amendments. So it basically says, you know any amendment has to first pass the House of Delegates and the state Senate in one session.

06:14.21

Sam Shirazi

And then it says that amendment will be referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.

06:26.76

Sam Shirazi

And those that that phrase, after the next general election, is really the crux of this legal issue. Because what the Democrats are arguing is that language is very clear.

06:38.66

Sam Shirazi

You pass it one in one session, and then you have’t after the next general election, you pass it again in the next session. And so the logical reading of next general election is literally election day. So you have an election and then the next session after that election, you can vote on it again. And that’s basically what happened. You know, the Democrats, they passed this bill essentially the week before election day.

07:02.23

Sam Shirazi

Election day happened, they won. And then in January, they passed it again. And so the logical reading of this without any sort of overthinking about it is You pass it before the election, and then you pass it after the election. And that’s kind of the plain reading of the state constitution. It’s pretty clear about that.

07:17.63

Sam Shirazi

I think that’s a decent constitutional argument just from the text. But the Republicans make a bunch of arguments that basically...

07:24.52

Sam Shirazi

you know, the election was essentially already underway. Early voting had been going on. The purpose of this provision is to give voters a chance to vote if they want to reelect the House of Delegates and and to allow this sort of amendment to go forward. And so you’re kind of really undermining the purpose of the requirement that it be passed in two different sessions with an election in between.

I think there are some policy arguments about why that might make sense. I think the challenge Republicans have with that argument is that the text of the provision doesn’t talk about early voting, it just literally says after the next general election.

08:14.74

Sam Shirazi

And I think if that was it, if that was the entire case, it would be pretty clear cut and it wouldn’t be super complicated. However, it gets even more nuanced because there is a provision of the state law, not the state constitution that kind of throws a wrench into everything.

08:32.08

Sam Shirazi

And I think this past week, There was a hearing in Tazewell County where the Republicans brought their lawsuit. And it sounded like the judge was you know skeptical of the Democratic position.

08:43.72

Sam Shirazi

Is that because you know he thinks it’s a strong legal argument? you know Perhaps it’s because he’s a more Republican-friendly judge, I think. you know Very clearly, the Republicans were doing some forum shopping. I don’t want to question his independence. I’m just saying you know this is maybe a judge that might be more sympathetic to the Republican argument for whatever reason than perhaps another part of Virginia. And so anyways, long story short, it sounded like the the judge was sympathetic.

09:09.100

Sam Shirazi

It’s hard to read the tea leaves during oral arguments. Sometimes you think, oh, yeah, the judge is definitely going to rule against the party. And then you find out that they rule for the other way. So you can’t read too much into oral arguments. And again, as I mentioned, regardless of how the judge rules, whether he rules for Democrats or whether whether he rules for the Republicans, it’s going to get appealed. So this individual judge is not the final say. And I think ultimately we have to think about the Virginia Supreme Court as deciding this.

09:35.66

Sam Shirazi

Okay. So what did the judge, you know, well why was he somewhat skeptical of democratic position? Well, there’s this provision in the state law that, that basically says that the clerk of the House of Delegates at the end of the session will compile a bunch of stuff, and that includes the proposed constitutional amendments, and then he will send the constitutional amendments to the individual courts throughout Virginia.

10:02.54

Sam Shirazi

And then I’m going to quote from the statute. It says, quote, every clerk of the circuit court shall complete the posting required not later than three months prior to the next ensuing general election of members of the House of Delegates, end quote.

10:16.78

Sam Shirazi

So what that means is essentially that what the statute says is the house the clerk of the House of Delegates will send to all the courts a notice that there is a proposed constitutional amendment, and then the clerk of those court of that court will post 90 days before the election each of those referendum notices.

10:35.98

Sam Shirazi

And so I think... what the Republicans essentially arguing is like, this is pretty clear in the state law. Like you can’t just pass a referendum at the last minute because the state law says you have to post this thing for three months before the election. And I think Obviously, the clerks at the courts were not able to do this because the Democrats did this essentially the week before the election.

11:02.30

Sam Shirazi

and And so there is some tension here where it looks like the state law is maybe in conflict with what the Democrats were doing.

11:11.98

Sam Shirazi

However, it gets even more complicated. And as you can see, when you’re a lawyer, things tend to get up complicated and one side will pick something up and then the other side will pick something up. So I went back and I looked at the old Virginia Constitution.

11:26.10

Sam Shirazi

So Virginia changed its constitution in 1971. So the current version of the Virginia Constitution comes from 1971. The old version of the Virginia Constitution comes all the way back in 1902. So that was the constitution Virginia used from 1902 to 1971. It’s actually kind of an interesting story about why that happened. Honestly, part the main reason the constitution was changed was The 1902 Constitution was kind of from the Jim Crow era era and had lot of things that were, you know, basically institutionalizing racism. 1971, right after civil rights movement, there was a feeling that Virginia needed a new Constitution.

12:01.95

Sam Shirazi

So the current version of the Virginia Constitution comes from 1971. But I went back and looked at the text of the 1902 Constitution. And in the part about amendments, it’s pretty similar to the 1971 Constitution, except it has a little bit of a difference that’s super important. And I’m going to read that section.

12:20.83

Sam Shirazi

So again, this is the 1902 Constitution. It says that the General Assembly, each house, shall pass and a proposed amendment. And then it will refer it will be referred to the General Assembly at the first regular session held after the next general election election of members of the House of Delegates.

12:39.75

Sam Shirazi

And this is the important part, quote, and shall be published for three months previous to the time of such election. And so if you notice, that language is in the 1902 Virginia Constitution, but that language is not in the 1971 current version of the Virginia Constitution. So clearly, that three-month requirement was removed from the Virginia Constitution and it is no longer there.

13:04.95

Sam Shirazi

However, it is still in the state law. And what the Democrats are arguing is you know that random provision of the state law, which is kind of buried in the state code, it’s basically about the duties of the House of Delegates clerk and the local circuit court clerks, that essentially was not supposed to be in there. was honestly just a mistake that it was not removed because no one updated the code after the constitution was changed.

13:31.93

Sam Shirazi

And so it’s really essentially a dead letter, if not just something that is not a requirement on the House of Delegates. Like even if you and interpret the state law as the clerks of the county court have to post these things three months before the election.

13:48.13

Sam Shirazi

That’s only a requirement on the county clerks. That is not a requirement on the General Assembly. It doesn’t say the General Assembly has to pass this thing three months before the election. It doesn’t say you know anything about the General Assembly. It essentially just says the clerk will send these proposed amendments to the clerks. And obviously, if the clerks can post them, the the clerks will post them. But it was not possible for the clerks to post this thing a week before the election.

14:13.74

Sam Shirazi

And the Democratic position is that’s fine. Like the clerks, you know, they didn’t publish it, but it’s not like a fatal flaw in the redistricting process. Because again, if you look at the plain text of the current Virginia constitution, the Democrats did everything they needed to do.

14:29.71

Sam Shirazi

And this other kind of thing that’s buried in the Virginia law is not really what’s controlling. What’s what’s controlling is the state constitution. Because remember, like this is just basic legal principle. The constitution is always higher than the law.

14:43.17

Sam Shirazi

And so if there’s some inconsistency or there’s some tension, the constitution will trump the law. And so if the law is saying, well, the clerks have to post this for 90 days, But the state constitution is saying the General Assembly, all it has to do is pass it once and then an election in between and pass it again.

15:01.34

Sam Shirazi

General Assembly did that. And the fact that the clerks weren’t able to post the notice for 90 days, I mean, that’s that’s on that’s not a something that binds the General Assembly. That’s just something that the clerks have to do.

15:12.80

Sam Shirazi

And frankly, according to the Democrats, you know it shouldn’t even really be in the Virginia Code. I don’t want to go too much into the legal weeds, but there were some things the Democrats are trying to do where they’re trying to retroactively change that provision and basically say, you know, that was always a dead letter. And so just ignore that part of the law.

15:32.29

Sam Shirazi

They’re also trying to they’re also trying to move the lawsuit that Republicans brought from Tazewell County to Richmond County, Richmond City, excuse me. And basically the argument is that is that Richmond is the proper place to bring this type of lawsuit, because obviously most of the election administration is done in Richmond.

15:49.26

Sam Shirazi

And so it was not, you know, the the Republicans lawsuit shouldn’t be brought in Tazewell, should be brought in Richmond. You know, the Republicans. seemed somewhat upset at this, understandably, and they argued that it’s a violation of the US Constitution, the ex post facto portion of the US Constitution. I don’t want to go into it too much, but there is this small hook where, in theory, you could see them bringing a federal challenge if that becomes the crux of the issue.

16:17.38

Sam Shirazi

Long story short, I’m going to focus just based on the tension between the state constitution and the statutory provision. i can kind of give you my personal opinion and my personal analysis.

16:28.20

Sam Shirazi

you know i’m I’m trying to just think through how is the Virginia Supreme Court going to interpret this legal issue? Because I’ve talked about it before. Virginia Supreme Court, I would say, is a pretty nonpartisan court.

16:41.04

Sam Shirazi

It is known for being little c legal conservative. So they are not by any means, or the Virginia supreme Supreme Court is not known as a liberal court by any means. But at the same time, i don’t think the judges on the Virginia Supreme Court are hacks. I don’t think they make their decisions based on political preferences.

16:58.63

Sam Shirazi

You know, some state Supreme Courts are super political, especially the ones that are elected. And basically, you could say this person is going to rule this way because the Democratic or Republican judge.

17:10.48

Sam Shirazi

Virginia is not really like that. I do think the... Judges in Virginia tend to be small c legal conservative. And what that means is they tend to be very textualist. So textualism is this idea that you should really just focus on the text of the constitution and the statutes.

17:26.56

Sam Shirazi

You shouldn’t really look beyond that. You shouldn’t be looking too much at intent of why a law was passed. And so I think that cuts a lot of different ways. In this case,

17:37.78

Sam Shirazi

In my opinion, if you’re a textualist, the state constitution is very clear. The Democrats didn’t need to do this you know three months before. If you’re just looking at the state constitution, all the state constitution says is you pass it in one session,

17:51.50

Sam Shirazi

there’s an election, after that election, you pass it again. And so it’s pretty straightforward from a state constitution standpoint that you can just do this you know right before the election and then there’s an election and then you do it after the election.

18:05.20

Sam Shirazi

I think what makes it much more complicated is this state provision, state state legal provision, the the statutory provision. And you know the the interpretation of that is you know, if you want to post, you you have to, the clerks have to post the the notices 90 days before the election.

18:24.99

Sam Shirazi

I think what’s what’s complicated about that is It doesn’t say, again, the General Assembly has to do this. it doesn’t you know It’s not in the state constitution. It’s kind of buried somewhere in the Virginia code. And it’s kind of a big deal if the General Assembly had to pass this 90 days before the election. You would think that would be in the state constitution, or at least you would think the state code, the state statutory code, would be very clear about that and say the General Assembly needs to pass this 90 days before the election.

18:53.01

Sam Shirazi

you wouldn’t think that just kind of randomly buried in the state code, it says that the county clerks have to post this 90 days before the election, and that actually means that the General Assembly has to pass it 90 days before the election. So I think you really have to stretch the statute a lot.

19:08.30

Sam Shirazi

I’m not saying Republicans don’t raise valid policy arguments, But the Virginia Supreme Court tends not to be very policy oriented. They’re not super sympathetic to policy arguments. They tend to want to just stick to this to the statute.

19:22.10

Sam Shirazi

And I could see the Virginia Supreme Court writing an opinion where they’re basically like, This is a little bit ambiguous. There’s some tension here. We’re going to go with the language the state constitution because clearly the state constitution was changed from 1902 to 1971.

19:37.78

Sam Shirazi

I do think You know, it’s perhaps a more cleaner argument, just given the change in the Constitution between, you know, 1902 and 1971. But, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see.

19:50.83

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I could also see, you know, for the Republican side, if the Republican Virginia Supreme Court really wants to be hyper textualist about the text of the statute, they could say, yeah, well, yeah, maybe the Virginia Democrats complied with the Constitution, but there’s also the statute and you know the clerks had to post it for 90 days and they weren’t able to post it for 90 days. Again, i think there’s a possibility they could rule that way. i think it’s It’s a bit of a stretch because it doesn’t say the General Assembly has to pass this 90 days before. and And so to say that a clerk having to post this for 90 days is the same as the General Assembly has to definitely pass this 90 days before the election, I think is reading more into the Constitution that than is there and is reading a lot into a state provision that arguably, as the Democrats argue, shouldn’t even be there.

20:42.94

Sam Shirazi

You know, the Virginia Supreme Court can say, like, it’s the law, like, we have to interpret it, it’s there. i do think given the change between the constitutions, perhaps the Democrats have the stronger argument.

20:54.96

Sam Shirazi

But ultimately, we’re goingnna have to find out what the Virginia Supreme Court says. And at the end of the day you know, i don’t want to make a prediction. i do think the Republicans are really hopeful that this is going to get them out of it. Essentially, they’re hoping the Virginia Supreme Court bails them out and they don’t actually have to run a referendum campaign.

21:11.84

Sam Shirazi

You know, you you may argue that’s wishful thinking. you may argue the Democrats are overconfident and that they didn’t think through all the legal implications, you know, I wouldn’t worry about it one way or another because eventually the Virginia Supreme Court is going to rule on it. And, you know, if they rule for the Democrats, wouldn’t be a huge surprise and things will just kind of go full steam ahead. I think if they rule for the Republicans, that would be a pretty big shocker and I think would reset the midterms in Virginia. And obviously I’d do a podcast about it and kind of,

21:41.28

Sam Shirazi

talk about all the implications. But anyways, so that’s that’s kind of the Virginia redistricting challenge. Hopefully people found the legal analysis interesting. You may either really be interested in the law now or really think the law is super boring. So either way, you got a little taste of it.

21:58.53

Sam Shirazi

All right. Well, I wanted to end on one other note, and that is a separate legal issue, but one that’s like super fascinating and kind of ties into another referendum, and that’s about restoring voting rights to people convicted of felonies. So I’ll just quickly give you an overview of this legal issue. So in Virginia, it’s one of the only states that...

22:18.40

Sam Shirazi

If you are convicted of a felony, you are barred for voting for the rest of your life unless the governor restores that right. There’s obviously a referendum that would give people back the right to vote automatically once they leave prison. That’s going to be on the ballot this November in Virginia.

22:51.70

Sam Shirazi

However, there has been a pending lawsuit where people have challenged that provision of the Virginia constitution because they are arguing the act that allowed Virginia rejoin the union after the civil war

It barred Virginia from disenfranchising people except for certain common law felonies. And these are kind of like the big felonies like murder. And you know the the lawsuit talked about or was based on the idea that a lot of people convicted of drug felonies are being prohibited from voting the rest of their lives.

23:09.04

Sam Shirazi

When really at the time that the Virginia was re-admitted to the union, The felonies they were thinking about were really like murder and rape and like the super serious felonies. So long story short, that was the legal argument is that Virginia, Virginia is violating the federal law.

23:24.78

Sam Shirazi

And a judge, a federal judge this week agreed with the plaintiffs who brought that lawsuit and basically said, you’re right. Virginia cannot prevent people from voting who were convicted of felonies, except that There’s a certain kind of common law felonies that Virginia can prohibit people from voting, but like a drug offense, that’s a felony that that is not good enough to prevent someone from voting.

23:51.12

Sam Shirazi

And another interesting thing is that the previous attorney general, Jason Meares, was fighting that lawsuit. and defending the Virginia law. And we’ll see what the current attorney general, Jay Jones, does. He hasn’t yet indicated whether he’ll appeal.

24:06.82

Sam Shirazi

In theory, he has the power not to appeal. And if he doesn’t appeal, then unless someone else intervenes, that ruling is going to be on the books. And while it’s similar to the constitutional amendment that’s coming up, it’s slightly more nuanced because with what the the judge said was essentially people convicted of these you know newer non-common law felonies, you can’t take away the right to vote to begin with. They can register to vote. So if you’re convicted of a drug felony, you can still register to vote in Virginia according to this judge’s ruling.

24:41.38

Sam Shirazi

However, what the constitutional amendment is going to do is you you still lose your right to to vote under the constitutional amendment. It’s just once you get out of prison, you will get that automatically restored. So it’s a little bit of a different question.

24:54.09

Sam Shirazi

In some ways, solves the crux of the problem, but I don’t think the lawsuit would be automatically moved even if the constitutional amendment is passed because there’s slightly different legal issues.

25:04.84

Sam Shirazi

And so all that’s to say is like there’s a lot of interesting stuff In these legal cases, especially this case, it brings up a lot of things about reconstruction. you know Why was that law passed that prohibited Virginia from disenfranchising people? Clearly, the people who allowed Virginia to come back to the union were worried that Virginia would start disenfranchising people.

25:27.59

Sam Shirazi

And the concern was probably that they that they would disenfranchise Black people. And so they made part of the law that Virginia couldn’t disenfranchise people except for certain common law felonies.

25:40.23

Sam Shirazi

And all all the way now in 2026, we are still talking about this. It’s still the the subject of a court case. And we’ll have to see where the court case goes. We’ll have to see where the redistricting referendum goes. But y all it goes to show you, I mean, part of the reason i like law is it it does involve a fair amount of history and you go back and you have to analyze, you know, why were certain laws passed?

26:00.14

Sam Shirazi

What do they say? And I thought it was a creative legal argument from the people who brought this lawsuit because they found this old law that basically no one remembers and tried to apply it in the modern day. And I think a lot of people initially were skeptical, but this judge agreed with them. You know, we’ll see if Attorney General Jones decides to appeal it. You know, in theory, maybe someone else could try to come in and appeal it, even if it’s The attorney general’s office doesn’t want to appeal it.

26:23.48

Sam Shirazi

And yeah, so super interesting stuff. Don’t always go into the ins and outs of all these legal nuance arguments, but I thought it’d be interesting because you will be hearing more about the redistricting lawsuit for sure.

26:38.62

Sam Shirazi

And I just wanted to give people a little bit of sense of what the lawsuit’s even about and the likelihood that it may or may not succeed. We’ll just have to wait for it. i think my next episode will almost certainly be on the proposed maps the Democrats are trying to roll out in Virginia.

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

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the transition of power that will happen today in Virginia as the inauguration of the new governor and lieutenant governor and attorney general happened today in Virginia.

00:17.36

Sam Shirazi

And then we will go over some news in terms of what’s been going on with the redistricting referendum, which aside from the transition of power, the big news in Richmond is a lot of speculation about how things are going to be going with the redistricting referendum. And we got a little bit more clarity this week, so I’ll go over that. But first, I did want to talk about the inauguration, obviously historic inauguration for governor as we will the Virginia will have its first woman governor.

00:46.26

Sam Shirazi

for Lieutenant Governor, another historic inauguration for her because Ghazal Hashmi will become the first Muslim person and the first South Asian person elected statewide in Virginia.

00:57.15

Sam Shirazi

And Jay Jones will become the first Black Attorney General in Virginia history. Now, every time there’s an inauguration like this, either at the presidential level or at the state level, I often think about the beginning of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration speech, in my opinion, one of the best inauguration speech speeches in American history. and There’s kind of the a quote that i always remember.

01:22.24

Sam Shirazi

It doesn’t matter if the Republican or Democrats being inaugurated. I remember this quote from John F. Kennedy. He said, quote, we observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing in an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. And I think that captures...

01:40.82

Sam Shirazi

You know, the fact that, you know, these inaugurations, while obviously they’re celebrating one person winning the election, it really is a celebration of the fact that there is democracy in this country, for elections, freedom. And I think that’s ultimately what we’re celebrating because a lot of parts of the world don’t have don’t get the opportunity to do that. Obviously, there’s been. a lot of unrest going on in Iran, for example, and you see that people there are really struggling for their freedom.

02:09.82

Sam Shirazi

And it’s nice to see here in Virginia that we will see a transition of power from a Republican to a Democrat. And, you know, there had been some tension between outgoing Governor Glanionkin and an incoming Governor Spanberger over the search for the UVA president. And there were some letters that went back and forth. But at the end of the day,

02:31.22

Sam Shirazi

This week in Richmond, they have seemed to patch things up and we’re all friendly with each other. And that’s nice to see in the sense of, you know, it’s important that there’ll be orderly transition of power.

02:44.07

Sam Shirazi

And anyways, so... We will see the inauguration today, and then obviously Governor Spanberger and the other elected officials will be hi the hitting the ground running with their new administration trying to implement the agenda that people elected them to do, primarily focusing on the cost of living issue. I think Governor Spanberger, that will be her first priority because she knows that was what a lot of people voted for her to do is to try to make things more affordable. And so I’m sure that will be one of her top focuses as governor.

03:17.97

Sam Shirazi

And I think, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see how things go in terms of the General Assembly, what kind of bills they send her. And yeah, anyways, I mean, in some ways, the inauguration is kind of the culmination of the election that happened last year in Virginia. It’s kind of the final Final moment that officially marks the transition of power as we saw the blue wave that came into Virginia last year come into office as the Democrats will have a trifecta for the first time since Governor Northam left office.

03:49.42

Sam Shirazi

And it’s the first time, I think I mentioned this fact before, it’s the first time an incoming governor will have a trifecta in Virginia since Doug Wilder all the way way back after the 1989 election. So definitely historic election here in Virginia, historic inauguration. And, you know, I’m sure it’ll be interesting to see what Governor Spanberger says in her inauguration speech. So i don’t want to dwell on it too much. i think we’ll just have to wait and see how everything plays out. I did want to shift focus to a slightly different topic.

04:19.06

Sam Shirazi

which is the redistricting referendum. Because as much as there is a lot of focus on affordability and things that, you know, more bread and butter issues, I think in terms of the pure politics of it, the redistricting referendum in the short term is going to take up a lot of oxygen for the General Assembly as they work to pass that through.

04:39.62

Sam Shirazi

And then the other big thing that will have to happen is the campaign for the redistricting referendum will happen in the winter and spring. And that’s already starting to take shape. And just this week, we got more clarity about what the redistricting referendum is going to look like.

04:56.62

Sam Shirazi

So just for some context, the General Assembly actually so met on Wednesday before the inauguration of the new governor and lieutenant governor. and Attorney General. And so you had this you know three-day period where the executive branch was still controlled by the Republicans, yet the legislative branch was controlled by the Democrats. It was interesting to see Lieutenant Governor Earl Sears, she, in her final days in office, still presided over the Virginia Senate because she is still the Lieutenant Governor.

05:24.10

Sam Shirazi

And I think you know she did that job. I’m sure it’s not easy after a tough campaign and and having a loss like that, but she came in and did her job and you know, at the end of the day, the Democrats are were in control of the state Senate and the House Delegates. And so typically what happens is they are trying to get the redistricting referendum going as soon as possible because they know that the clock is ticking in terms of trying to get that done this year. So really, the first thing the Virginia Democrats have done is try to move forward these constitutional amendments with redistricting getting the most attention. However, it’s important to remember redistricting is not the only referendum. There are three other referendums that the Democrats are trying to pass this year in Virginia.

06:06.86

Sam Shirazi

Those are on reproductive rights. trying to enshrine that in the Virginia Constitution, trying to rep repeal the ban on same-sex marriage and enshrine the right to same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution, and then also restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies once they leave prison. So those are all also happening, but obviously the big national attention is on the redistricting referendum.

06:29.33

Sam Shirazi

that is going to happen in the spring. And I wanted to update kind of a couple of things on the legal side of things and then on the political side. So on the legal side, there is a court case that is working its way through the system.

06:41.08

Sam Shirazi

The Republicans challenging the redistricting referendum, basically on kind of procedural grounds that they Virginia Democrats didn’t properly follow the Virginia constitution. The lower court didn’t stop the Democrats this week from moving forward with the redistricting referendum. And that’s not super surprising. Typically courts don’t want to get involved in the middle of a legislative process. Once everything is finalized, then the court might come in. And that’s basically what the lower court said. They basically said it was too early for us to get involved and we’re not going to tell the legislature what to do. Once they pass whatever they want to pass, then we can take a look at it. So the case is not settled.

07:21.10

Sam Shirazi

I think once the final votes are in and and the referendum is going to be placed on the ballot, I think the Republicans will then go to the courts and try to block it. We’ll see what the lower court says. We’ll see if it eventually gets to the Virginia Supreme Court. So just keep in mind, there is that legal process in the background going on.

07:38.86

Sam Shirazi

you know As I mentioned, I think courts are often hesitant to get too involved in these political questions, particularly in Virginia, where you have a less political court system. So we’ll see if the you know legal challenges will go anywhere. But you know for now, let’s assume that redistricting will move forward. I think we got some clarity from the Virginia Democrats this week about what the redistricting referendum is going to look like.

08:02.12

Sam Shirazi

So the big question that we’re still waiting on is whether the map that will finally be passed if the redistricting referendum is successful, will there be a 10-1 map or a nine two map? Will there be a map with 10 Democrats and one Republican, or will it be nine Democrats and two Republicans? We still don’t know the answer to that, but we got a little bit of a clue about when we might get an answer because the Virginia Democrats basically said they will release the maps before the redistricting referendum and they said they would do it by January 30th. And so we’ll see what happens. I mean, i assume it’s going to be one map and they’re going to say, you know, vote for the referendum and you’ll get this map. It’s possible they release a few maps and say, well, one of these will be the maps.

08:49.01

Sam Shirazi

We’ll just have to wait and see. And I think that’ll answer the big question 10192.

08:54.81

Sam Shirazi

I think there’s a lot of speculation about which one it’s going to be. Obviously, we’ll just have to wait and see. And once the maps come out, I’m sure I’ll do a podcast and do a whole episode on you know what the maps look like, what what happens if it passes.

09:09.54

Sam Shirazi

And this week, we also kind of saw the beginnings of the redistricting campaign. I think the Democratic side or the yes side started putting out its first ad. And we can already see that both sides are going to have campaigns, yes and no.

09:24.64

Sam Shirazi

The National Democrats and National Republicans are going to fund both sides. So I think... that will be something that will be happening in the next few weeks and months in Virginia. And you know I wanted to kind of just think through what is the likelihood that this referendum will pass? I think on the side saying it will pass is basically the idea that if they be if the Democrats are able to make this a referendum on Trump,

09:48.86

Sam Shirazi

I think there’s a higher likelihood it’s going to pass because you know the the actual question about redistricting and the maps, I think most people aren’t going to get into the nuances of that. They’re basically going to say, you know this is a way to maybe stick it to Trump or this is a way to stick it to the Democrats. you know if If you want to stick it to Trump, you’ll vote yes on the referendum. If you want to stick it to the Democrats, you’ll vote no on the referendum. I think that’s ultimately what the referendum is going to become. And if and if it does become that, that’s going to be good news for the Democrats.

10:16.70

Sam Shirazi

I also think the Democrats are better organized. I think, you know at least in the short term, they kind of have to plan. they’ve beene They want to execute this. The Virginia Democrats are kind of riding high after the election results. And so they’re in a good place to try to run a campaign.

10:31.87

Sam Shirazi

I think on the side of no, you know what do they have going for them? I think it’s basically Virginia is not that blue of a state. And so all you would need is basically all the Trump supporters to vote no. And then you just have to peel off some independents.

10:48.66

Sam Shirazi

You know, people who, you know, they might not like Trump, but they don’t like the idea of redistricting mid-cycle. i think there is a chance that could happen. But, you know, that was basically Jason Meyers’ strategy in the attorney general race. His strategy was, you know, I’ll get all the Republicans to vote for me and then I’ll peel off independence.

11:05.12

Sam Shirazi

And he really wasn’t able to do that because the attorney general race, again, kind of became a referendum. Do you like Trump or you don’t like Trump? And so I think the Virginia Republicans do have a challenge. What they have going for them, like I said, is Virginia is not that blue of a state. I mean, Harris only won it by 6% in 2024. Obviously, Spanberger had a big landslide last year by 15%. And again, you know, what is the turnout going to look like?

11:30.20

Sam Shirazi

you know If it’s a lower turnout, that’s probably better for Democrats because they’re more fired up. They have more high propensity voters. So I think the lower the turnout, frankly, the better for the Democrats in the redistricting referendum.

12:12.36

Sam Shirazi

So I think it’s going to be a really interesting campaign. you know Virginia typically doesn’t have these one-off referendum campaigns. When there are referendums in Virginia, they’re usually on the general election ballot.

12:26.66

Sam Shirazi

And so I think this is a pretty unique election for Virginia. pretty That makes it unpredictable because we don’t really have a lot of previous precedent for this type of thing. And yeah, so it’ll be it’ll be really interesting.

12:39.64

Sam Shirazi

to see how the campaign plays out. I think we got a little bit more clarity about what might happen. i think the maps are the really big question mark at this point, and we’re just going to wait and see what it looks like.

12:52.92

Sam Shirazi

And I wanted to kind of explain some of the dynamics between 9-2 and 10-1. So I think the people pushing 10-1, that means 10 Democrats and one Republican, I think the logic from that side of the Democratic aisle is basically After California, Virginia is the only other state that’s going to redistrict mid-cycle. And we don’t know what the Republicans are going to do in Florida. it’s It’s possible they’re going to try to gerrymander Florida to the max even more. I mean, Florida is already gerrymandered and it’s possible they’re going to gerrymander to the max in Florida. And so we in Virginia need to gerrymander as much as we can because we’re basically the only state that can gerrymander at this point. And so the logic being, you know, we got to push this 10-1 and, you know,

13:37.56

Sam Shirazi

If some incumbents aren’t happy, you know it is what it is. If the Republicans aren’t happy, you know whatever. like It does ultimately doesn’t matter. This basically has become a referendum on Trump. And no matter what map we propose, if people are upset at Trump, we’re going to win the referendum campaign. I mean, that’s kind of the logic behind 10-1 map.

13:55.54

Sam Shirazi

I think, and so the people, you know, my sense is the people supporting a 10-1 map are more the national Democrats. You know, it kind of logically makes sense that Hakeem Jeffries and the House Democrats will want the Virginia Democrats to go maximum.

14:07.62

Sam Shirazi

I think you’ve heard certainly State Senator Luis Lucas, who is the president pro temp of the Virginia Senate, being very vocal about wanting to be 10-1, and even Speaker Don Scott in the House of Delegates. He has also been open to the idea of a 10-1 map. So you you kind of have, it seems like the General Assembly is,

14:25.56

Sam Shirazi

wants to do more of a 10 one type map and even David Bussi, M.D.: people who you wouldn’t necessarily think of as supporting a 10 one map like state Senator Skylar Van Valkenburg, who was a big supporter of the redistricting amendment back in 2020 David Bussi, he has said he’s open to a 10 one map because I think This essentially seems like a very unique situation, kind of an exception because of what happened in Texas and potentially Florida and and North Carolina and some of these other states. So that’s kind of the 10-1 side of things.

14:53.91

Sam Shirazi

I think on the 9-2 side, they’ve been less vocal. you know this is just me maybe reading the tea leaves. My sense is Spanberger potentially could be more supportive of a 9-2 map.

15:05.34

Sam Shirazi

Partly, I think that’s kind of her political temperament. She’s less partisan, I would say, than some other Democrats. Partly, I think she’s also maybe being realistic. A 9-2 map would be more likely to win in a referendum because if you if you show someone a 9-2 map,

15:20.32

Sam Shirazi

and say, will you vote for the referendum? you know They might be somewhat favorable to that, like an independent voter. But if you show them a 10-1 map, they might have some doubts because it seems too extreme. So I think there’s kind of this pragmatic argument that you know while you know whatever, 10-1 in the ideal world might be best, I think we should be safe, do 9-2. That way, the referendum is more likely to pass.

15:42.20

Sam Shirazi

I can see Spanberger potentially you know making that argument. And then, you know I’m just again speculating, I think some of the incumbents you know may prefer a 9-2 map because you can draw a 9-2 map where basically most of the incumbents are protected. they won’t Their districts look roughly the same as they are right now.

16:02.66

Sam Shirazi

And essentially all you would do is make the fifth district a Charlottesville to Roanoke seat, and that only hurt really hurts the Republicans. Whereas if you draw a 10-1 map, I think all the incumbent Democratic Congress people will have to have slightly different maps, and some of them will have to have very different maps. And I think they’re going to be hesitant to do that just because that opens them up to primary challenges. you know I’m just being realistic about the nature of how people you know politicians think and and their main concern. So you know you kind of see this dynamic that maybe Spanberger and the Virginia House des congressional Dems might be

16:38.78

Sam Shirazi

more in favor of a 9-2 map, and then you have the General Assembly and the Hakeem Jeffries trying to push a 10-1 map. And, you know, I guess the one other thing I should say is you often hear things like, oh this is all within the General Assembly. you know, Spanberger doesn’t play a role. I mean, generally it’s true that referendums to the Virginia Constitution are completely within the General Assembly. The governor doesn’t play a role putting them on, at least getting them passed initially in terms of potentially having a referendum.

17:08.58

Sam Shirazi

However, the mechanics of having a referendum, putting it on the ballot, funding a referendum campaign, and then the mechanics of actually having the new maps in 2026, for example, changing the primary dates, that all requires legislation. So Spanberger does have a role You know, theoretically, if we had a Republican governor, this wouldn’t be happening because the Republican governor could just veto everything.

17:31.59

Sam Shirazi

I don’t anticipate Spanberger vetoing this, but I think behind the scenes, maybe she’ll be using some of her influence to try to and see what the final maps look like. And, you know, at the end of the day,

18:25.56

Sam Shirazi

It was done by the Virginia Supreme Court because the redistricting commission was not able to draw the maps. So the person who probably got hurt the most by Virginia redistricting was a Elaine Luria. So her district became somewhat more red and she ended up losing in 2022. But I think the second biggest loser of Virginia redistricting the last round was Spanberger because one, her district kind of shifted from central Virginia and the Richmond area up to northern Virginia.

18:52.40

Sam Shirazi

And then two, you know her district, while it did become bluer, I think was still a competitive seat and in territory that she was not super familiar with. She decided to run in that district. She didn’t face a primary challenge.

19:06.90

Sam Shirazi

And then she won the general election in a pretty competitive race. So I think Spanberger has gone through the redistricting process. She knows what it’s like to have that uncertainty.

19:17.14

Sam Shirazi

So it’ll be kind of interesting to see a governor who has also served as a member of Congress, has gone through redistricting, knows what that’s like. And I think she’s kind of the biggest wild card here because she has power, she has influence. I don’t think she’s going to you know, in public go out and say a lot about redistricting, but I do think behind the scenes, it’ll be interesting to see the role she plays. So, yeah, I mean, i i kind of wanted to kind of explain what I’m seeing with Virginia redistricting right now. I will have more info and more speculation as we get more info. I think the big the big unknown is just

19:52.04

Sam Shirazi

what do the proposed map by the Democrats look like? We got a little bit clarity, because I i wasn’t sure if the Virginia Democrats were actually gonna release the map before the referendum. They’ve confirmed that they’re gonna do that. They said that they’re gonna do it by January 30th.

20:04.70

Sam Shirazi

So that’ll be a big date when they do release the new maps. I’ll probably do a podcast immediately after that. And so anyways, I will continue to cover things in Virginia, always interesting.

20:17.73

Sam Shirazi

And yeah, I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fallout. And i’ll join you next time.

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