Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the reconciliation bill that has been passed by Congress and talk about how it might affect the Virginia elections this year.

00:13.93

Sam Shirazi

But first, I just wanted to note a couple pieces of news. One is about 11th District firehouse primaries that happened last Saturday. I wanted to note the winner of the Democratic primary was James Walkinshaw.

00:48.05

Sam Shirazi

And then I also wanted to talk about an event that happened Tuesday. This was it was billed as a unity rally with the GOP ticket. So they had an event in northern Virginia. Governor Youngkin was there.

01:00.06

Sam Shirazi

They all spoke. All members of the GOP ticket spoke at the end. They were all on the stage together. frankly, they didn't you know warmly embrace it. Wasn't necessarily the most warm and cuddly event in the world, but they got enough of a shore of unity in the sense of they were on the stage together.

01:19.48

Sam Shirazi

Right after the Democratic primary, there were events with the Democratic ticket. And so it took a little bit longer for the Republicans to get there. i still don't think that they're super close to each other.

01:31.77

Sam Shirazi

and it's unclear if they'll be doing a lot of these events together. It doesn't seem like they're going on any sort of joint bus tour through Virginia or anything like that. So just something to keep you in mind that ah the event did happen. i think it was basically good enough, in other words, that people will stop asking, what when are you going to do an event together? i think you know that question has kind of been settled. I think the bigger question of how much are they actually going to work together, how much are they going coordinate together,

02:01.63

Sam Shirazi

In these types of campaigns, like you need a lot of message discipline. Typically, there are talking points that are sent around, you you want to be on message. I don't know if they're there yet. And I think there's a possibility that particularly John Reed at the lieutenant governor spot is kind of going to run his own campaign, talk about his own issues.

02:19.39

Sam Shirazi

he has a very unique style of communicating because he was a radio host. And I think he feels a little bit more willing to fly by the seat of his pants kind of communication style.

02:30.61

Sam Shirazi

And we'll see if how that fits in with the other people on the do Republican ticket. But I did want to just note that. So it seems like, you know, Republican ticket has kind of, to some extent, gotten their act together. Obviously, we have the Democratic ticket.

02:43.76

Sam Shirazi

And now, It is July, so we are in the middle of summer and the campaign is in full swing for the general election. Things are hot. Both the the Democrats recently had a bus tour, specifically Abigail Spanberger visited various parts of Virginia.

02:59.60

Sam Shirazi

i think with the July 4th holiday, there's been a little bit of a lull in the campaign, but I imagine it will pick up after the holiday. Okay. so Now, let's move on to the main topic for this podcast, which is the issue of the bill that has been passed in Congress. So I will give you a little bit of a background on the bill, and then I'll talk about how it might impact the Virginia elections this year.

03:23.19

Sam Shirazi

I mentioned, the the Congress passed a bill through a process called reconciliation. And so what that means is typically in the Senate, there's a filibuster where you will need 60 votes to break a filibuster.

03:37.15

Sam Shirazi

However, through this budget reconciliation process, the Senate only needs a bare majority in order to pass a bill. Now, there's some pros and cons to that. Obviously, the pro is a party that has a majority, it doesn't need any votes from the minority party in the Senate to pass anything.

03:53.11

Sam Shirazi

The con is you can't pass everything through this system. And typically it's more reserved for things affecting the budget. And there was a lot of talk about the Senate parliament parliamentarian. She struck down a lot of random things the Republicans were trying to put in this bill.

04:07.65

Sam Shirazi

But at the end of the day, they were able to get a budget bill essentially through the reconciliation process. So first, the Senate passed its a version of the bill by bare vote, and then the vice president broke the tie in the Senate.

04:23.40

Sam Shirazi

Then it was kicked back to the House. There was some hand-wringing in the House, but eventually the House passed the Senate version of the bill. And President Trump will obviously sign this bill because he has been the one pushing for this bill.

04:36.51

Sam Shirazi

And he called it the Big Beautiful Bill. Democrats took a while, I think, to come up with a name for it, but they called it the Big Ugly Bill. Obviously, there's a lot of time spent on trying to brand these bills.

04:48.29

Sam Shirazi

I will just generally refer to it probably as a reconciliation bill because that's what it is.

04:53.15

Sam Shirazi

i

04:54.02

Sam Shirazi

single Democrat voted against this bill in the Senate. Three Republican senators voted against it. And so I think it it shows you that there were some issues and even within the Republican caucus with this bill, and it didn't get unanimous support.

05:07.51

Sam Shirazi

And I'll just kind of big picture give you some of what's in the bill. I'm going to try to be fairly balanced in this, although obviously Republicans and Democrats have a different vision of what's in the bill.

05:19.22

Sam Shirazi

the Republican story of this bill is basically there's a bunch of tax cuts. It's going to grow the economy. And the way we pay for these tax cuts is essentially we are making it harder for people to, if for example, immigrants to to get some of these benefits such as Medicaid and SNAP. And then also we are ah cracking down on people who are not working and there's a work requirement in order to qualify for Medicaid to a certain extent. So I think that's all been added to the bill to kind of help pay for these various tax cuts.

05:55.31

Sam Shirazi

And so that's kind of the Republican version of the bill. Like we are cutting taxes and then we are paying for it by getting people who don't need these benefits off of it. And there was a quote from Governor Youngkin that I just wanted to read.

06:10.93

Sam Shirazi

He said, quote, I don't believe that there will be people who need services who will have to go without. And so I think he kind of worded it very carefully, Governor Youngkin basically saying like people who actually need the services kind of implying that the people who lose the services probably don't need them. Now, again, I don't, I'm not saying that's true or not. I'm just saying like that's the Republican version of this bill.

06:32.28

Sam Shirazi

I think a Democratic version, frankly, it took them a while to, I would say, really articulate a clear message with this bill. But at the end, they basically focused on the Medicaid cuts.

06:43.48

Sam Shirazi

So the Democratic message is this is tax cuts for rich people. And the way you're going to pay for it is through Medicaid cuts and other things such as SNAP cuts. And that's going to hurt working class people.

06:56.19

Sam Shirazi

And at the end of the day, this doesn't even balance the budget. So you're going to increase the deficit. You're to cut services. You're going to give tax cuts the rich. This doesn't make any sense. that's kind of the democratic message and i think given the two messages i mean overall i would say just purely from a political standpoint i think the democratic message is just a little bit clearer because all you're saying is people are going to lose their health care it's tax cuts for the rich it increases the deficit like not super complicated the republican message is like yeah i guess tax cuts are popular so i mean you always have the tax cut portion of it but it's like yeah some people are losing the health care but those people

07:31.67

Sam Shirazi

are lazy or they should be getting jobs. And, you know, the Republicans often use this talking point about a 35-year-old guy in his mom's basement playing video games who is on Medicaid, which, you know, I get trying to sell that version of people who are on Medicaid and that's kind of who you're cutting from the Medicaid rolls. But it's also, I don't know.

07:54.29

Sam Shirazi

I don't know how compelling that is outside the Republican base. I mean, I don't know if you're going to reach the average moderate voter by like bashing, know, 35 year old playing video games. Maybe it's popular. Maybe I'm, I'm not underestimating it. But all that's to say is like generally when you're kicking people off healthcare, care even if you think they don't need their that healthcare, care or even if you think they should be working for it, it's not going to be super popular.

08:15.66

Sam Shirazi

So I think a lot of the more moderate members were uncomfortable voting for this, even though they ended up voting, most of them ended up voting for it because of the Medicaid cuts. I think some of the more,

08:26.45

Sam Shirazi

Conservative members of the Republican caucus were uncomfortable because it did increase deficit spending. It also raised the debt limit, the debt ceiling, which the Republicans had often been railing about. And so lot of stuff going on and a lot of political stuff in D.C.

08:40.96

Sam Shirazi

a certain extent. But it does have real world consequences in the sense of people potentially could be losing their Medicaid. And that's how a lot of people in Virginia and across the country get their health care.

08:54.17

Sam Shirazi

I'm just going to go off the Congressional Budget Office estimate about how many people might lose their health care. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the version of the bill that passed through the Senate, roughly 12 million Americans eventually may lose their health care. and in terms of federal spending on healthcare, such as Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, it it might be reduced by roughly like $1 trillion dollars over 10 years.

09:17.50

Sam Shirazi

And so all that's to say is like, there are a lot of changes to federal spending. are going There's going to be less money coming in because of all these tax cuts. Now, some of the tax cuts do go to more working class Americans, but frankly, a lot of the tax cuts go to richer Americans.

09:33.89

Sam Shirazi

So overall, less money coming in into federal government and less money going out because there's going to be a reduction in spending for Medicaid. And, you know, I will say that in the 2017 Virginia elections, Medicaid was a really important issue.

09:51.08

Sam Shirazi

And because Virginia at that time was one of the states that did not expand Medicaid. And after that election, because the Democrats got a big win and I think the Republicans knew where things were going,

10:02.36

Sam Shirazi

in Virginia, Virginia did decide to expand Medicaid. And that means a lot of people in Virginia were eligible now for Medicaid. And so there are a lot of people in Virginia who are on Medicaid who potentially could be losing their Medicaid in this bill.

10:18.72

Sam Shirazi

And i think the main way there might be cuts to Medicaid is this work requirement. you know Obviously, from a Republican standpoint, that sounds good. But it also creates a lot of paperwork, a lot of red tape. People have to certify that they're working.

10:34.46

Sam Shirazi

anytime you create these sorts of additional barriers for people, there's a risk that they don't sign up they either because they aren't working or frankly, they're just forgetting to do it or they don't know how to do it. And sometimes it's not super easy to fill out this paperwork.

10:47.24

Sam Shirazi

And so I think there is a risk that people will lose their healthcare through Medicaid in Virginia. And certainly that's something that Democrats are going to be talking about this year in Virginia, and also just the fact that Virginia is going to get less money from the federal government as a result of this bill because part of the strategy is, you know, the states are going to get less money for Medicaid.

11:07.66

Sam Shirazi

That's how the bill starts saving money in order to pay for some of the tax cuts that it's going to be doing. All right, now let's talk about some of the, I would say, political fallout for this in the 2025 Virginia elections. And as I mentioned, kind of the premise of the podcast in the beginning was that we would be talking about the Virginia elections more so in terms of the cuts to the federal government and the federal jobs that have been cut.

11:35.48

Sam Shirazi

And I think certainly that's still an important issue. And obviously there's been people in Virginia affected by that. But as we all know, over the past couple of months, Elon Musk has basically left the federal government and he's not really doing a whole lot in the Trump world. And he's again, ah ah talked against this bill. And I think that put him not in a great place in terms of ah the Trump supporters. And so at the end of the day, Doge is kind of wrapping up his work. It doesn't seem like the changes are going to be as massive as maybe Elon Musk thought they might be at the beginning. And so think there's been relatively less federal fallout than we might have thought in January or February. Not to say that there hasn't been federal fallout. There certainly has.

12:18.91

Sam Shirazi

think there's certainly been a big hit to the Virginia economy because of what's happening in D.C., more so on the doge and the cutting of federal the spending and and jobs. But also realistically, like that impact is less now. It's less in the news. It's less practically than it was in, I would say, January, February time frame.

12:39.82

Sam Shirazi

So now we're talking about this issue and, you know, again, the podcast is called Federal Fallout. I mean, this is a federal fallout in terms of what's going on in D.C. I mean, this is the first major bill the Republicans have been able to pass through Congress, and it will have an impact on Virginia because of specifically the Medicaid issue.

12:59.62

Sam Shirazi

and the fact that people in Virginia could lose their health care and the fact that Virginia is almost certainly going to get less money for health care from the federal government. And so with all that going on, no doubt it's going to be a campaign talking point.

13:12.36

Sam Shirazi

One, because I think voters will have questions about it. But also, I mean, I think the Democrats are certainly going to be talking about this. I think, frankly, the Republicans, for the most part, have not been super eager to talk about this. This isn't like the thing they really want to run on, like, yay, President Trump passed this bill. Like, that's not at least the Virginia Republicans running this here statewide.

13:32.24

Sam Shirazi

This is not necessarily what they want to talk about. On the other side of things, Democrats certainly do want to talk about this. They want to talk about the impact it has on Virginia. And, you know, just kind of trying to be objective and look at the political impact of this bill.

13:46.11

Sam Shirazi

I mean, on the Republican side, there's a potential that To a certain extent, it energizes their voters because they're like, look, President Trump got this thing done. We're getting tax cuts. It's the general like Republican a message on the economy that people are going to have more money. Well, that's kind of what they typically talk about with these bills.

14:04.40

Sam Shirazi

I think the challenge there is that you know even among hardcore Trump supporters, I mean, I don't know that many people. who are kind of really love this bill and this is the number one thing that they like are really focused on. I think a lot of this bill was written more so in a way that would make traditional like Republican business interests happy. I mean, there are a few bones to maybe more of the Trump coalition thrown in there, but really this is basically the same kind of Republican bill that you know, for example, someone like Paul Ryan might pass with a little bit of changes here and there. And so to that extent, like, I don't know how much it's really motivating the hardcore Trump base who are more kind of populist, more working class voters. I mean, i don't know how much they're all, you know, loving what's going on with this bill. And frankly, the process of passing the bill, i mean, these bills always

14:54.70

Sam Shirazi

go through a crazy process and it just doesn't look great when, you know, the Senate is voting in the middle of night and all these crazy bills and people are switching votes last minute. So I think it just kind of generally is not something that, you know, typically with bills that presidents pass, it's you have a certain amount of political capital and you spend it on the bills.

15:15.42

Sam Shirazi

And so that happened, for example, with President Obama, with Obamacare, like he just really wanted to get that bill passed and he did, but he spent a lot of political capital on it. And so think it's similar here where President Trump really wanted to get this bill passed.

15:28.71

Sam Shirazi

He got passed, but he spent political capital. So all that means is like generally you're not going to be as popular after this bill passes, maybe on the long run or in the medium term, if the bill really does is really popular and it generates economic growth like people will love the bill. But I would say for the most part, i mean, these bills typically are not huge political winners, especially the reconciliation bills, which goes through this crazy process. And there's a lot of random stuff in there and it's hard to explain to voters. So it didn't really help Joe Biden. I mean,

15:59.78

Sam Shirazi

to the extent that they he was able to pass some of these bills to reconciliation, it didn't necessarily boost his popularity even though he he was able to get, for example, the and Inflation Reduction Act done.

16:10.82

Sam Shirazi

And then obviously on the Democratic side, as I mentioned, I think people are going to be generally fired up if if, for lack of a better word, if you're the Democratic base voter, you're going to be upset by this. you're going to be upset people are losing their health care. You're going to be upset that rich people are getting tax cuts.

16:25.49

Sam Shirazi

I mean, it's I will say at a time when the Democratic Party is really divided, this is the kind of bill that unites everyone. So it doesn't matter how moderate you are. It doesn't matter how left wing you are in the Democratic Party. and Basically everyone is against this bill in Congress. You saw that the most moderate member was against the bill. The most left wing member was against the bill.

16:44.99

Sam Shirazi

The current Democratic nominee, Abigail Spanberger, she is very much against the bill. So I do think it's a little bit of a political lifeline to Democrats at this moment when they're fighting each other and there's a debate about how moderate the party should be, how left wing it should be.

16:58.48

Sam Shirazi

I think This is the type of bill that unites everyone in the Democratic Party. And I think in that sense, it's a little bit of a lifeline to the Democrats. And it's certainly going to be a talking point on the campaign trail for the Democrats this year in Virginia.

17:10.42

Sam Shirazi

They will talk about all the impacts it's going to have. And as I mentioned, they are also not going to be, the Republicans are not going to necessarily really want to talk about this because this is not the type of issue that that really excites their base. And one thing I noticed at the rally that happened in Northern Virginia, I mean, there were a few different things going on. I mean, a lot of it was talking about, for example, the stuff that happened in 2021 with COVID and there was a lot of, you know, praise for Governor Youngkin and

17:40.57

Sam Shirazi

what he was able to do to lift some of the COVID restrictions. I mean, obviously that is popular among the Republican base, but I just don't know how salient that is in 2025. twenty twenty five But regardless, I mean, that's the type of issue that I think really motivates the Republican base and is something that can get them fired up. I think, you know, tax cut bill passed by Congress is not necessarily like the red meat that's going to get them to show up at the polls in November.

18:06.06

Sam Shirazi

And so, again, I think it's going to be tricky. I think it's going to be tricky for the for the Republicans are going to be asked about questions. Well, you know, do you support the bill? What about the Medicaid cuts? What about people potentially losing their healthcare? care What about Virginia getting less money?

18:19.81

Sam Shirazi

I imagine they're going to say something along the lines of, we support the bill, you know this is something that's necessary, and the people who may lose their healthcare, care you know they should just get a job kind of thing.

18:31.27

Sam Shirazi

Democrats, much clearer message. They can just say, oppose this, it's taxes for the rich, it's cutting people's healthcare, it's increasing the deficit. Just like very clear, crisp message you can, you know and Kuznicki- Three sentences explain why you're opposed the bill, I think the republican story is much more complicated.

18:45.73

Sam Shirazi

Jason Kuznicki- And i think frankly I know I don't think they're really going to want to talk about it I think they're just going to want to focus on these other issues that they tend to talk about. Jason Kuznicki- Whether it's schools or trans issues or immigration or crime, I mean I think that's really going to be the bread and butter of their campaign material this year in Virginia.

19:04.12

Sam Shirazi

and they're not gonna be campaigning, i don't think, on this bill. And so that all kind of sets up an interesting dynamic for November where we'll see how much this becomes the topic. And I think the advantage that Republicans have is by the time this gets implemented, it will not be November, 2025. I think this is a these types of bills take a little bit longer to implement.

19:27.53

Sam Shirazi

So I don't think the impacts are really gonna be felt in November 2025. You know, not to change topics too much, but I do think by November 2026, when there is the midterm elections and there are, know,

19:39.68

Sam Shirazi

competitive races in Virginia in the second district and potentially in the first district, i definitely think those races, this will be a much bigger issue. I think the practical impacts of it, I'm not sure how much will be felt by November 2025, but I do think it will be talked about in campaign trail. I think generally, you know, it gives Democrats perhaps stronger messaging for November, but obviously it also is a accomplishment that President Trump had and he can he can talk about it and the Republicans, if they want to, can talk about being able to pass this bill.

20:13.38

Sam Shirazi

But I imagine, as I mentioned, I don't think that they're going to want to be spending a whole lot of time on this bill. And so for that reason, I think this will be more of a something that Democrats talk about. And, you know, this is obviously going to dominate the news cycle for the next few days. There's also just an open question mark about whether this is going to be the thing that is going to be dominating the news in November. I think given how big of a bill it is, i do think it's going to have more of a long-term impact, and especially the Medicaid portion of it, just because that is more of a state issue and it's just something that, you know, it really does affect Virginia directly in terms of less money coming down to Virginia. So I think this will be something, a federal fallout that will be with us the rest of the campaign.

20:57.71

Sam Shirazi

And maybe now that some of the cuts with Doge and all that stuff is has quieted a little bit more, this will start to fill in the gap. And this is kind of the federal fallout that we'll be feeling in the November 2025 Virginia elections.

21:12.73

Sam Shirazi

i I talked about the name of the podcast is Federal Fallout, and it wasn't just focused on Doge. I think that that part of the reason these elections in Virginia are so impacted by what's going on in D.C. is things just keep happening, especially the first year of a president's administration. There's always things they want to get done.

21:30.74

Sam Shirazi

There's just a lot of stuff that's happening in D.C. and that always trickles down to the virginia Virginia elections because we are right across the river from the Potomac. We feel a lot of that impact. And so I think This is going to be an important example of federal fallout, and we'll just have to see how it plays out on the campaign trail. And i think it's going to be interesting to see how the candidates respond to what's going on.

21:51.69

Sam Shirazi

know i don't want to pretend like this is going to be the only issue or this is going to be the dominating issue, but I do think given that the bill passed, I think it's going to be important. It's important for us to keep track of it. And yeah I'll certainly do that along with the many other things going on this year in Virginia. so Anyways, busy busy as always on the Virginia elections. I will keep tracking it. i Hope everyone had a good July 4th, and I will join you next time for federal fallout.

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

Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is federal fallout to 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special bonus episode where we will go over the 11th district special election that is happening for the congressional seat in Fairfax County.

00:15.92

Sam Shirazi

Now, just for some background, the former congressman for that district, Jerry Connolly passed away and that was a huge loss for Virginia. And I know he was really well loved in Fairfax.

00:28.60

Sam Shirazi

And it's just a shame that he passed away. And, you know, obviously, we're all still thinking about him and sending his family our best wishes. But because he passed away, there was a special election called the actual special election is not till September. So that's the general election when the Republicans and Democrats will face off.

00:47.04

Sam Shirazi

However, the reality is this is a very Democratic seat. And so whoever becomes a Democratic nominee is almost certain to win the special election in September. And so We have the situation where both the Democrats and the Republicans this Saturday, when this episode is going to be released, will have what's called,

01:08.20

Sam Shirazi

It's a primary run by the parties. And the reason for that is Virginia just has this thing where when there's a special election, the state doesn't have a primary. It's the local political parties that select the candidates and local political parties can can select those candidates based on their own rules.

01:24.69

Sam Shirazi

Typically, what we've seen, especially for congressional races, is that there will be what's called sometimes you call it a firehouse primary. Sometimes it's called like a caucus. But basically, all it is is.

01:37.23

Sam Shirazi

People go in and they vote. They pick for the person that they want to be the nominee. and It's like a normal election, except the state is not running it. The local party is running it. And so both the Republicans and Democrats are doing this process.

01:51.36

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, the Democratic process is going to be more intense. Partly that's because there's more on the line. The winner of the Democratic primary will almost certainly win the special election.

02:01.59

Sam Shirazi

Also, there's just a lot more Democrats in in this district. So there's going to be a lot more turning people turning out. But it's important to note that both the Democrats and Republicans are going to pick their candidates. And the Democrats set the rules for doing that. And there was a little bit of controversy because various aspects of that selection process. But I would say the biggest issue is that there's no ranked choice voting.

02:24.26

Sam Shirazi

So whoever gets the most votes, it doesn't matter if it's 30%, if it's 40%, will win the nomination without having to get a majority through ranked choice voting.

02:34.95

Sam Shirazi

And obviously we just saw the Lieutenant Governor primary here in Virginia where the nominee was able to get less than 28% of the votes. So Virginia doesn't have ranked choice voting, at least for the statewide elections or the congressional elections. And so just like that, you will see a regular primary where whoever gets the most votes wins.

02:53.45

Sam Shirazi

In theory, because this is a party run process, they could have used ranked choice voting and there have been past times when ranked choice voting was used But for whatever reason, the Democrats in Fairfax in the 11th district decided not to use ranked choice voting.

03:08.02

Sam Shirazi

So that kind of shaped some of the dynamics in the race. And the way it basically works is there is a few days of early voting at one location for the Democrats. And then on the primary day itself, there will be a bunch of locations throughout Fairfax County. People can go there.

03:24.64

Sam Shirazi

they can go vote, fill out the ballot, who who they want to be the nominee, submit that, and then all that is counted. And then whoever has the most votes wins. The Republican process is similar. I would say the main difference is it's just a lot fewer people involved, lot fewer people going to vote. I think they only have one location because realistically, there's just not that many Republicans in this district.

03:45.30

Sam Shirazi

But it's important to keep in mind that they are also picking their nominee as well. All right. So because this is such a ah blue seat and Obviously, whoever wins this primary is almost certainly certainly going to be the next member of Congress from Virginia.

03:59.39

Sam Shirazi

There's been a lot of Democrats that have run for this seat, and I will go through all of them, although I will be honest, I will talk about the ones that have the most realistic chance of winning. There's also a lot of Republicans running.

04:11.39

Sam Shirazi

ah You know, to be honest, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the Republican side. i mean, we'll find out who the nominee is. And, you know, I'm sure that they'll run their campaign, but it's just it's very unlikely. in this environment with this seat that the Republicans are going to be able to flip a seat in Fairfax County, which has a lot of government employees, a lot of people upset at what's going on in DC. It just does not seem like the time right now where the 11th district is going to flip to the Republicans.

04:37.28

Sam Shirazi

So for that reason, and not going to spend a lot of time in the Republican primary. We'll find out who the nominee is. I did want to talk more about the dynamics in this Democratic firehouse primary. All right, so I will mention each candidate. Again, I don't know how realistic of a chance each one has, but I will mention them, and then I'll talk about the ones that or have more of a chance to win this Firehouse primary. So I'll go through the list of candidates.

05:01.44

Sam Shirazi

There is Candace Bennett, Ross William Branstetter, Dan Lee, Leo Martinez, Amy Papinew, Stella Pekarski, Priya Panuz,

05:15.84

Sam Shirazi

Amy Roma, Irene Shin, and James Walkinshaw. So as you can see, a lot of different candidates running and they all have different backgrounds, bring different perspectives. So I don't mean to minimize any of these candidates, but I did want to focus maybe on some of the more, the candidates that have more of a connection in terms of the political background and having a political network that they might be able to tap into to maybe win this primary. So I'll start with a Fairfax supervisor. His name is James Walkinshaw.

05:49.36

Sam Shirazi

And the important thing is he used to be Jerry Connolly's chief of staff. he has He has Jerry Connolly's endorsement. Before he passed away, Jerry Connolly endorsed him. And so I think right off the bat, that's going to give him a pretty big advantage because he just has that backing.

06:07.61

Sam Shirazi

And obviously that's important in a district where he represented it for a while and and he he passed away. And so people are going to consider that he wanted Walkinshaw to be the person who followed him into this congressional seat.

06:21.59

Sam Shirazi

However, he's not the only person running, as we can see. And are other elected officials. So there is State Senator Stella Prakarski. She represents parts of Western Fairfax. And so she was previously on the school board as well. So she has a fair amount of elected experience in Fairfax County.

06:39.64

Sam Shirazi

And then you have Delegate Irene Shin. She represents part of Herndon and Reston in Fairfax. And so she has an elected background. It's also important to note, so she is Korean American and the district itself has a fairly substantial Asian population.

06:57.90

Sam Shirazi

It's about 23% Asian. So that's pretty healthy number that she can use to to build a base on. And also, she's one of the younger candidates. And I think she's trying to run as a as a young candidate, trying to bring that perspective. Obviously, there's been a talk lot of talk in the Democratic Party about needing to run younger candidates.

07:15.52

Sam Shirazi

And then there is another candidate I wanted to talk about. And that's Leo Martinez. So he used to be a member of the Democratic National Committee. And then it's kind of interesting fact when he was in Venezuela, he was a member of the Venezuelan.

07:27.65

Sam Shirazi

parliament And so he moved to the America and became a U.S. citizen. But it's interesting he has that perspective. And the district's about 15% Hispanic. So that's another area, another group of voters he might be able to to look to to build upon.

07:41.24

Sam Shirazi

So I would say given their connections and their backgrounds, I mean, those are the ones in my mind that probably have the best shot at winning. Not to say that, and I don't want to discount the other candidates or kind of neglect the fact that they're running.

07:53.54

Sam Shirazi

It's just the reality. This was very quick. Obviously, Congressman Connolly passed away, the governor called a special election, and this primary was going to happen in a matter of weeks. And so it's not a lot of time to build up a political organization, not a lot of time to raise money, run ads, do all the things need to in a campaign because this special election has to happen and and the primary has to happen before that to select the nominees.

08:17.51

Sam Shirazi

So I think the general sense is those are the candidates that have more of a realistic shot Now, in terms of who might be able to win this thing, i think the advantage James Walkinshaw has is is one of them is, as I mentioned, he has the endorsement of Congressman Connolly before he passed away.

08:35.83

Sam Shirazi

He also is a supervisor in Fairfax and That's where Congressman Connolly originally came from. He was a supervisor in in Fairfax before he became ah ah congressman. So there's kind of that path to becoming the member of Congress.

08:50.03

Sam Shirazi

And also just the reality is when there's not ranked choice voting, whoever is able to get maybe 40 percent of the vote or is is the person who's able to kind of coalesce, coalesce kind of biggest amount chunks of votes is going to be the favorite.

09:02.82

Sam Shirazi

And so I think right now that's the advantage James Walkinshaw has. You have The other candidates running, and I don't want to say that they can't win, but I think there's some challenges in terms of being able to put together this coalition to maybe be the other candidate. and Because if you think about it, so for example, both Stella Pekarski and Irene Shin, in theory, they could be maybe the candidate that does well with women voters

09:26.96

Sam Shirazi

here when you have two prominent women elected officials running, i mean, there's a possibility that that vote might get split. And so I think that's kind of the challenge that they're going to have as they're trying to put together this coalition to win.

09:40.58

Sam Shirazi

And you know The other thing I should mention is the the turnout in this is going to be very interesting to watch because there's no mail voting. So everyone has to show up. They have to go to their polling place.

09:52.52

Sam Shirazi

It's not the regular polling place. It's the the designated areas that the Fairfax Democrats said that people can go and vote. And so you have to be kind of a committed person to do that. And you have to understand what's going on You have to understand the party rules.

10:05.73

Sam Shirazi

It's different than a regular primary. And so that's kind of a very unique set of people that come out to vote for that. And those people tend to be more traditional party loyalist type people, not all of them, but a good chunk of them are going to be.

10:17.10

Sam Shirazi

And maybe that's another scenario where someone like Connolly's former Congressman Connolly's endorsement is going to be important. So all that's to say is like, I think it's going to be difficult for anyone who's not James Walkinshaw to maybe win this thing. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible.

10:30.47

Sam Shirazi

And the thing with these firehouse primaries is they're really unpredictable because you're not seeing the regular primary turnout. It's going to be people who are really committed. And and if someone's able to bring out their base of voters, they might be able to pull off an upset.

10:43.23

Sam Shirazi

And I think that's happened in the past, certainly in in House races where there's been these firehouse primaries and and in state House races and state Senate races. So I think there there can be a surprise at the end of the day. And I don't want to say that this is is all decided already.

10:58.27

Sam Shirazi

And I think the other thing to keep in mind is overall turnout. I mean, we don't know. It could be 10,000 voters, could be 20,000. Obviously, there's a lot of Democrats in Fairfax. If they all feel and feel like showing up on Saturday, there's a decent amount of voting locations.

11:11.47

Sam Shirazi

We could get 30,000. I mean, it's just impossible to know how many people are going to turn out. And when you have those types of dynamics in a firehouse primary, I'm not going to make a prediction because I think it's almost impossible to know with any sort of certainty who's going to win.

11:23.21

Sam Shirazi

There have been some internal polls that been floating around, but those polls are... you know It's not a normal primary where you can kind of pull the electorate. It's just such a unique circumstance.

11:33.63

Sam Shirazi

So for that reason, I think it's just going to be very difficult to know who's going to win. you know if If I had to guess, I think front runner right now is James Walkinshaw. And the question really is, can anyone catch him?

11:45.91

Sam Shirazi

And the reason I can't give you a certain answer about who's going win is just it's not a normal primary. We don't know who's going to show up. We don't know what the turnout is going to be. So all all that says, like, I think it's going to be interesting. It might take a few days or I don't know how quickly they're going the ballots. It really depends how many people show up.

12:01.73

Sam Shirazi

yeah Hopefully by Sunday we might be able to know, if it in it but it might take longer and longer. We'll just have to wait and see who ends up winning the nomination. I did want to talk about it because this is an election this year that's happening in Virginia.

12:13.89

Sam Shirazi

i tend to focus on the state elections, but obviously I'm keeping an eye on what's going on in these federal elections. And this is an important race because the person who wins could possibly be in office for a long time because it's a very safe blue seat.

12:29.80

Sam Shirazi

And it's very unlikely that they were they would lose a general election. Obviously there there could be future primaries, but you know it's difficult to primary incumbents. And so at the end of the day, this is the type of race where whoever wins this could be in office for a while. And so I do think there's a lot on the line in this race. And You know, I would say that the state primaries have gotten a lot more of the attention. They certainly got more of my attention just because I was so busy focusing on that.

12:57.20

Sam Shirazi

And a lot of people are focused on the state elections and the governor. and And this is kind of happening in the background and all the candidates are running the races. But it's just hard. It's hard to reach voters. It's hard to kind of get the word out.

13:09.51

Sam Shirazi

People have to know it's it's not a regular primary. You can't go to your normal polling place. You have to go to these places that the Fairfax Democrats said that there's going to be a primary. And so it's just a lot of things to process as a voter.

13:21.03

Sam Shirazi

I do think we're going to have pretty good turnout. I do think there's going to be good engagement because this is a more politically active area. And obviously Fairfax County, a lot of people work in politics, work in government. So I think it will be interesting firehouse primary. I'm curious to see what the results are. I think pretty much once we know the Democratic nominee, I think we'll be pretty certain that person is going to be the next member of Congress from Virginia in the September special election. So certainly something to keep an eye on. You'll obviously find out the results when they are posted. I did want to just talk about this.

13:52.42

Sam Shirazi

Probably

13:52.46

Sam Shirazi

So we'll just have to wait and see what happens with this special election. But I appreciate everyone listening. I i know there was a lot going on in the primary. Now we're heading into the the main thing, the main general election.

14:03.71

Sam Shirazi

It'll be really interesting. So I appreciate everyone listening and giving me good feedback. But for now, this is Farrell Fallout and I'll join you next time.

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

Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus interview of Joe Szymanski.

00:11.73

Sam Shirazi

Joe, thanks for joining.

00:13.35

Joe

I appreciate you having me on tonight, Sam. Thank you very much.

00:16.42

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, so one of the things I respect about Joe is he's he's able to be very objective in his political analysis, which I think is a very hard thing to do. And I try my best to do it as well. But, you know, it's We all have our blinders, all have our biases. So I try to get different perspectives.

00:31.05

Sam Shirazi

And Joe comes from more of a Republican background. And I also want to get that perspective in terms of what's happening this year in Virginia. So I guess to start off, you know I'm going to talk a little bit about the GOP ticket. Obviously, they've been having some issues, but kind of recent news is that they're making some peace deals. And it appears there's going to be a rally next week in Northern Virginia with all the different Joe, do you think that November, you know, things are going to be good in terms of the ticket being able work together on the Republican side?

01:05.06

Sam Shirazi

joe do you think that by november you know things are going to be pretty good in terms of the ticket being able to work together on the republican side

01:12.73

Joe

You know, that's one of those things I think you'd say you hope so, right? Like you'd hope the ticket at that point will be working together. I mean, not to mince words. The environment looks pretty bad for my party. You know, that's not something to mince words about. It looks like going be an uphill climb.

01:26.47

Joe

I think no matter what the how you know friendly the ticket was with each other from whatever point it was on. But, you know, a United ticket, you know, can be the difference between, you know, a loss, but a loss that doesn't cost you, you know,

01:42.32

Joe

more than, you know, five seats in the House of Delegates versus, man, if you don't have any unity at all, then, you know, what's what's about to happen there is ah ah potentially a real blowout in House of Delegates and something that could very, very quickly lead to the Democrats trending towards majority in the lower house of the Virginia legislature.

02:04.02

Sam Shirazi

Yeah. And so one thing, I mean, I have this personal theory about ticket splitting and how it's pretty much dying out in Virginia. You know, depends. Sometimes you have strong incumbents that might be able to overcome.

02:14.88

Sam Shirazi

But, you know, if the Democrats are doing pretty well at the top of ticket, at first, I wanted to talk about Lieutenant Governor Attorney General. You know, you hear things that the Attorney General race could be more competitive because you obviously have an incumbent with a current Attorney General Jason Meares running for reelection.

02:32.14

Sam Shirazi

I mean, do you, what is your number in terms of the ticket splitting? You know, if it's within two points, is within four points? I mean, what do you think Meares needs to have a shot in the Attorney General race?

02:44.64

Joe

Well, I mean, we have kind of an example from when we saw and in the 2021 race, he had a similar scenario. He an incumbent attorney general running, this time on Mark Herring. You know, he he did about a point better than the rest of the ticket. I don't think his race was actually even officially called until the next day, unlike the races for governor and lieutenant governor, which were called that night.

03:05.77

Joe

i I don't believe they actually called Miara's Herring race until the next morning because of You know, he held it a little closer around Loudoun County in Northern Virginia, where he did a little better there where Herring was from.

03:19.65

Joe

so we got a little bit of an incumbency boost there, and that got him within about a point. Now, you know, does that mean, you know, does Miara's need this race, the other two races, to be within a point to be successful?

03:32.58

Joe

I think that's harder to say. Herring, you know, i think the big thing was with him, he faced a primary from now the 2025 nominee, And Jay Jones, faced that primary in 2021 from Jones.

03:45.74

Joe

You do wonder it to a certain extent, did that hurt him at all? You know you kind of did have these extra little bit of attacks that were coming in running coming from a primary. Meares has not had to face that at all on the Republican side. So you know maybe you give it... i'd say It would have to be a two-point difference, which it's very, very hard to see coming through for Republicans at this point. I would say for Mijares to win, i would say he have to least be you know i'd say two I would say two points, I think, would have to be the margin in the other two races in favor of the Democrats for there to be a real ticket-splitting result where Mijares could, I think, sneak through.

04:21.93

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And I think 2021 is a useful ah ah analogy. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, because I know we can kind of go through the races, but one thing that I appreciate about you, you periodically will post your Virginia House of Delegates ratings, which I respect because for me, I'm trying to figure out what's going on.

04:36.47

Joe

Yeah.

04:41.08

Sam Shirazi

And you know obviously there's certain seats that you think, okay, those are Harris seats that the GOP is holding. Those are going to be competitive. But even in some of those, there's pretty strong incumbents. So it's hard to really get a read on it.

04:55.28

Sam Shirazi

i mean, big picture, you know, what's your sense right now in the House of Delegates, keeping in mind some of the GOP incumbents and that some of them could survive under ticket splitting scenarios?

05:05.06

Joe

Yeah, so obviously with the House of Delegates, this has always been a really fascinating thing in Virginia. Republicans have always, even and kind of in this new era of politics, kind of post-2016 in Virginia...

05:18.33

Joe

Virginia Republicans have always had pretty strong success down as you get down the ballot. You look at these local races, you look at the House of Delegates, they've been able to overperform the presidential baseline a whole, whole lot in these races.

05:31.02

Joe

But the fact is, Democrats are going to start from a pretty strong position. They already have 51 seats from taking back the majority in 2023, narrowly. I actually have them at 52 currently. I have them currently flipping House District 57.

05:45.90

Joe

That is the suburban Henrico Eastern, I think three most eastern precincts in Goochland House District in the Richmond suburbs. That is held currently by Republican David Owen.

05:57.80

Joe

I have Democrats favored there currently. if you If you've been following at all of Virginia politics recently, you know that the Richmond suburbs have just continually gotten worse and worse. it doesn't really seem to matter what the year is and what the environment is. it just seems like the Richmond suburbs have just been getting worse and worse.

06:16.57

Joe

ONC is really the... Currently, really the only seat that truly defines that. There's one other that I'll get to just a little bit later here. But Owen's seat's the only one. So I've got them already started at 52.

06:27.62

Joe

I think it's very, very hard to see Democrats getting even to just their current number 51, I think, currently with how the environment's going. It's very, very hard to see Democrats doing any worse than what they have currently.

06:40.30

Joe

So that puts them already in a very, very strong position. And then you look at that what I've got. I've got seven toss-up seats currently right now. That includes actually a lot around the Virginia and Hampton Roads area. You have House District 82. That's the Petersburg area seat between Kimberly Pope Adams and Kim Taylor.

07:01.92

Joe

You've got House District 71. That's the Amanda Batten seat around Williamsburg and James City there. You've got House District 86. That's the AC Courts. Doza's seat, House District 89, Republican incumbent Baxter Ennis is retiring there.

07:15.57

Joe

That leaves an open seat in this already pretty competitive Chesapeake-Suffolk area seat. And then you've also got two, and they also have a Kerry Coyner seat, House District 75.

07:25.82

Joe

I have that currently rated as a toss-up. I know a lot of people disagree with me on that. Coyner is a very historically strong incumbent seat. But there are a lot of negatives to the numbers currently out there in Chesterfield. It's, I believe, around a Harris plus seven seat.

07:39.34

Joe

It's one of the weirder seats, I'll admit, in the entire, I would say on the entire house map. It's centered around ah Hopewell City, which is a... about, I think it's around 52% African-American city, but it's also a seat that has historically had awful, awful turnout. Again, no matter the advantageous to the year for Democrats, they've historically struggled to turn out their voters there, no matter really what it was.

08:06.27

Joe

So that's a really interesting thing ben and there. And then there two other toss-up seats I have. I have House District... I have 41, which is the Blacksburg-Montgomery seat around there. And then I have Hesedrick-22, which is the one Republican-held seat in Prince William County from ah Ian Lovejoy that I expect to be really competitive this year as well. So it's going be an interesting race.

08:24.45

Joe

There's a couple of other seats that I have as, like, leaning, likely Republican that could come on the board. If Democrats can, you know, kind of continue to improve in the poll numbers, if the year keeps looking really good for them, what other seats could come on the board? There's a couple of others ah in in the areas that I could really see, especially around Fredericksburg, I think could be a really key area that if Democrats continue kind of gain, you know, talking about Abigail Spanberger, you're talking, you know, get you say State Senator Ghazala Hashmi, you know, those are the seats that we're talking about here around Fredericksburg that could really, yeah I've got his leaning Republican right now.

08:58.39

Joe

That could immediately turn to be ah very competitive and could be flip targets if this year continues to trend better and better for Democrats.

09:05.12

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, i think that's really helpful. And, you know, those are certainly going to be like the top competitive seats. I did want ask you, guess, a follow up, because the last two Virginia governor's elections have basically been wave elections where there have been flips that were pretty unexpected the House in 2017 and 2021. And, you you know, what of maybe the lean or likely seats for the Republicans?

09:28.84

Sam Shirazi

You know, what's the kind of sleeper pick you have for maybe a surprise where if the Democrats have a good night in November, they'd be able to pick it up

09:36.08

Joe

I think there's two interesting ones for me. see, when you get what the thing with Virginia Republicans is that when you start getting into their lean and likely seats, you do start getting into seats that President Trump actually did win, and he didn't just win by like a point or two. We're talking about seats that he won by five, six, seven, eight points.

09:54.06

Joe

So that's when starting to talk about not just Winning the voters you already won and convincing the turnout. You're actually talking about probably winning some voters who did vote for President Trump in 2024 in some of these seats.

10:05.39

Joe

For me, I have two that I really have my eye on. The first one I think is more likely of the two to be surprised. I have House District 99. ninety nine It's currently held by Antateta.

10:16.96

Joe

She was first elected in 2023. She's a freshman member. ah This is about, I believe it's a Trump plus five seat, but this is a northern part of Virginia Beach that's seen some interesting trends left. I think technically the seat trended left it to against the way of the state.

10:33.74

Joe

I think in 2024, this is an interesting seat that I'm really interested in. Just kind of see how it acts this year. I think if there's a one that I have in the likely range currently that I could very quickly see moving into a very competitive territory, it's that one. I'm not super trustful of the Democratic candidate there.

10:51.28

Joe

I don't think they're going fund it, but we like you said, we've seen surprises before. I think AC Cordosa in 2021 more than Kim Taylor. Kim Taylor, was you know she had some funding. She had some backing.

11:02.75

Joe

AC Cordosa in 2021 kind of came out of nowhere. Someone who had zero money. Really had zero expectations. That's what we're going to be kind of talking about here. The other one I think is a more of a stretch, but I think should be noted. House District 52, the Lynchburg seat, had a big flip back to Trump towards Trump in 2024 from its 2020 version. But...

11:23.13

Joe

twenty twenty version but This is a seat where turnout can fluctuate. are some internal problems within the Lynchburg GOP that have seen some struggles in the local election. There's a lot of infighting there between very conservative wings and the conservative wing of the state of the local party apparatus there that's seen some issues with turnout.

11:42.48

Joe

In fact, Wendell Walker delegate there, won by less than 10 points. And what was certainly a bit of a surprise there because Republicans basically didn't do any early turnout vote there because some members of the Republican establishment there basically just don't believe in early voting.

11:56.80

Joe

So they basically hold all their chips until election day there. Sometimes that works out in high turnout elections, but when you're talking about sometimes these low turnout elections that you could be seeing, could that put House District 52 on the board?

12:07.58

Joe

I think that's really interesting question. We're to have to see it's going answered.

12:10.58

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, I think it would take really good night for Democrats. But obviously, it's happened in the past with some of these wave elections. Now, I want to kind of flip the script a little bit. I'll start with the House, because yeah I like talking you about the House, you know, a lot of these details in the House. And let's say, you know, what is the seat that the Republicans have the best chance at flipping? I mean, in my mind, the most serious candidate that the Republicans have against the Democrats, Tim Anderson in House District 97.

12:38.50

Sam Shirazi

obviously, that was a Harris, I think, plus six or plus eight seats, something like that. So it's it's pretty tough numbers. There's the House District 21 in Western Prince William, which on paper should be competitive, but the Republicans have not raised any money in that district.

12:53.14

Sam Shirazi

So what do you think in terms of the seat most likely to flip?

12:56.39

Joe

I think you hit the nail pretty well on the head there, Sam. On paper, it should absolutely be House District 21. I believe this was only about a Harris plus two or three seat. is the part of Prince William County that if you talk about after seemingly taking a pretty big shift towards the Democrats, have not just in local elections, but also in...

13:16.82

Joe

regular you know midterm and presidential year elections have taken this step back towards Republicans. House District 21, again, on paper should be the seat most targeted, but for whatever reason, it seems like Republicans just aren't going there.

13:30.24

Joe

None of the candidates that would be good for the bench there, neither the board or supervisors member or the school board member who I believe both would, who represent the The seats and on those two bodies of government who I believe both live in this district and would overlap if this district decided to run.

13:46.04

Joe

There's not really that great of a bench below that. A lot of people passed on the seat, according to my understanding. It seems like, like you said, it looks like Republicans are going to most go after House District 97.

13:58.10

Joe

They like Tim Anderson as a candidate there. And crucially, Tim Anderson has the ability to self-fund a little bit. He's got a business background that's given him some money. He's able to self-fundraise a little bit and be able to kind of fund his campaign in that way.

14:12.20

Joe

In a race that Republicans are gonna be doing a lot of defense in this year, that's going to be crucial in a race like 97. Do I think they flip it? No. Would it surprise me for that to be the closest race among current Democrat-held seats when we all the votes are counted in November of this year?

14:27.54

Joe

It absolutely would not surprise me to see if that one's the race that ends up being the closest of the lot.

14:32.50

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And that's kind of what I've been seeing, but I guess we'll find out in November. I did want to ask you something else, again, because I think oftentimes with election commentary and people on social media, they there's often groupthink. and And I think this year, the general consensus is Democrats are in for a good year.

14:53.89

Sam Shirazi

And it's hard to tell, is it going to be a big wave, little wave, but I'm trying to grapple with that. And part of what I'm trying to not fall into is to just assume, oh, yeah, the Democrats are definitely going to win because of historical patterns or whatever, because of fundraising or you know you look at all the metrics.

15:09.79

Sam Shirazi

I mean, could you try to paint a scenario where maybe the Republicans, even if they don't win, like make it kind of competitive and it's it's not this this you know easy cakewalk that everyone seems to think the Democrats have this year in Virginia?

15:23.41

Joe

Well, yeah, I think that's let's both – I think it's easier to say than and to be done. But I think you can you can paint a picture here, though, I think, for Republicans in in where they do a lot better than maybe one would expect this this upcoming year. I think it just won, you know, maybe some of the heat in the federal government calms down a little bit, you know.

15:44.20

Joe

Uh, maybe some of the cuts that you see so from Doge, it doesn't seem like a whole lot of those are really going to come through fruition that were reported. So, you know, the fact that those aren't going to really come to fruition, Does that maybe kind of cool down some of the anger in Northern Virginia in the aftermath of that? I'm not so sure of that, but let's again, we're playing hypotheticals here. So let's say that happens.

16:04.76

Joe

You know, you kind of see maybe a simmer down in Northern Virginia of that anger. know, things kind of cool down a little bit. Maybe you kind of see that heat cool down a little bit that can allow Republicans to get in here.

16:16.55

Joe

I also do want to point out here, I think if it was not going to be kind of this Democrat swing year that seems to be happening, I do think outside of, I think, of Abigail Spanberger, I do think primary voters for the Democrats surrounded her surrounded her with two very ideological candidates. Ghazala Hashemi was very clearly the progressive candidate.

16:38.58

Joe

kind of the major candidates for the Lieutenant Governor's seat. Jay Jones said, I think very clearly trying to take the more progressive stances between him and Shannon Taylor in the AG primary.

16:48.72

Joe

you know In theory, that's something I think if it was us you know maybe more of a fifty fifty year, that's something where I think Democrats would be hit on more.

16:58.84

Joe

Both of those folks were in the legislature. They both took votes in the legislature were certainly quite progressive. you know That's a very interesting thing that's happened here. You know, they vote, which could be, you know, held on to and grasp in a general election. There are things for hooligans to use there.

17:16.05

Joe

I just find it to be very hard to that really have the effect of just, I think, the pure anger that's going to be going on in Virginia at the current of the Trump administration. And what is a blue state and what a state that it did not vote for him. I think there's going to be too much anger there, but I think if you're talking about these hypothetical situations here, I think that's kind of where we're going to have to kind of come down to, kind of this cooling of tensions in Northern Virginia.

17:37.95

Joe

Maybe they're able to grasp on some of the more left-wing things that Hashby and Jones have supported. that kind of drags down the rest of the ticket a little bit. That's kind of the pathway it would have to be.

17:49.75

Joe

i don't think that's going to happen, but I think in the hypothetical that you're talking about there, talking about making it close, I think that's the angle where it would have to come from.

17:57.04

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, that that makes sense. So I guess what we have to look, the the question I have is, so you have Musk out of the picture.

18:05.63

Sam Shirazi

It sounds like he's kind of retired from politics, which overall is a good thing for the Republicans, I would say.

18:06.94

Joe

Yes.

18:12.64

Sam Shirazi

ah But obviously, you still have President Trump out there, and he's the leader of the Republican Party. And There's really not a lot the Republicans can do other than to run, if not with him, but at least, you know, they can't really keep too just too much distance from Trump.

18:26.24

Sam Shirazi

What do you think President Trump's role will be this November? do you think if he comes to campaign that would help the Republicans, hurt the Republicans? you think the his political advisors are saying, you know, maybe stay out of Virginia because it's one of those states that probably is not going to end well? What do you think the President Trump's role is going to be in this campaign?

18:44.85

Joe

I think at this moment in time, there's no doubt that President Trump is going to be a net negative on the Virginia Republican ticket in 2025, just as how he was a net negative on the ticket in 2017. I mean, and there's no I think there's no use denying that Joe Biden was a net negative for the ticket for Democrats in 2021. That's just kind of seemed to be in the pattern here for much of the past eight, you know, 12 years now, basically what we've been doing of those ah ah kind of governor elections here.

19:13.38

Joe

of the last eight years, that just seems to be kind of be the case here where if the president is unpopular, which he's been the last two times Virginia's held a governor's election,

19:24.28

Joe

he That will play a major effect in how these elections go. And that is a true thing. And I think you're right. I do think that in the end, President Trump's political advisors will probably see the winds are going in Virginia and will probably tell him it's probably not worth it to go campaign in Virginia. and Nor do I think really much of the ticket necessarily wants to campaign.

19:44.11

Joe

points of the campaign in Virginia right now at this moment. I think they're probably going to want him to kind of take a step back and let them try and campaign on their own goals and volitions. i mean, you have an incumbent lieutenant governor running for governor.

19:55.55

Joe

You have the incumbent attorney general running. They're going to want to try and run on their record in this election. Again, is that likely going to alleviate the the anger and the frustration that a lot of voters have with the Trump administration right now.

20:09.58

Joe

I do not think so. And I think it's very, very unlikely to. But that's what Republicans are going to want to run on. That's what they're going to try to run on. I do believe that's probably the best path. That's the path to the least s**t you know crappy result, I think, for Republicans there is to try and campaign on what they've done.

20:27.59

Joe

Obviously, John Reed being just a radio guy. As a lieutenant governor nominee he compared to Pat Harity, who if his heart hadn't had his heart issues and probably I think would have been the nominee, I think by signs that we've seen.

20:41.64

Joe

have been a pretty solid guy and a pretty solid background to run their race on of accomplishments. With John Reed and lieutenant governor, you don't have that anymore. you're still going to see, I think, Republicans try and do that run on the successes they perceive from the Youngkin administration, the Yara's, the successes he perceives from what what he's done in the attorney general's role and what he's done there.

21:02.71

Joe

That's what they're going to try and campaign on. I think that's at the very least a path to least demolishing, and at least demolishing and ah and of yeah which is not a great way to put that, I think, but the path to least likely to getting blown out, I think, this November is through talking about their accomplishments and not necessarily holding hands President Trump.

21:21.73

Sam Shirazi

Well, that all makes sense. And I think it's it's a pretty honest assessment. And and you know we'll just have to see how this November goes. i did want to ask you one last question, actually about next year or so. After State Senator Aaron Rouse came up short in the lieutenant governor primary, there was talk that maybe he will run for the second congressional district.

21:39.71

Sam Shirazi

Now, obviously, that's up to him and he'll make up his mind, I'm sure, at some point. And I don't i don't know if he's going to run or not. But let's just say hypothetically he jumps into the race against the current incumbent Republican Jen Kiggins.

21:52.66

Sam Shirazi

you know What do you see potentially if there's a Kiggins-Rouse matchup?

21:57.04

Joe

Well, you know you know what, Sam? I'm going to drop on some from news some news for your listeners here that I've heard. Because obviously, like you said, in the aftermath of that primary where Aaron Rouse dominated his home area of Hampton Roads, there's a lot of questions on whether or not he's going to run for Virginia's second congressional district.

22:15.25

Joe

And for lots of good reasons, he should be considered because I think he would be a very strong candidate there. Lots of people in Virginia Beach like Aaron Rouse. They see him as a good guy. see as a good politician, as someone who cares about the area.

22:27.90

Joe

And there's a lot of things to success there for Rouse. I do think one thing that knocks against Rouse when you're talking about running in that congressional district and not for a city council district or for a state senate seat.

22:41.83

Joe

is that Rouse is not a Navy veteran. That's something that not just not just Democrats, not just Republicans, but both sides have looked for for candidates in this seat. That's seemingly been an important thing.

22:53.34

Joe

Elaine Luria, who held the seat for two terms as a Democrat, was also a Navy veteran, played into that background very specifically. And I've also told that Rouse himself is not really that interested in making this run for Congress. I think he would do a good job in terms of being a candidate. In terms of being a candidate, I think he would do a good job. He would be a very tough race.

23:15.45

Joe

But I've been told numerous times by numerous people, both in the area and both on the Democratic campaign side, that there's not necessarily a whole lot of interest from Rouse as it stands to run a campaign, to run a campaign for Congress. is not a whole lot of interest in him going to D.C.

23:32.39

Joe

And that the D. Triple C has really focused their recruitment on former First Lady of Virginia, Pamela Northam. Uh, that's to my understanding that she is currently, uh, the one they're going after the most.

23:45.31

Joe

I've told that they're about, uh, that apparently those conversations are going very, very well. And in fact, she seems to be the candidate right now that DC triple C is currently targeting for that race. I certainly wouldn't count out Aaron Rouse,

23:58.59

Joe

He's someone who can certainly be convinced. i'm not gonna I'm not sitting here and saying to you and to your listeners that Aaron Rouse will never run for Congress, that he's not running for Congress in 2026 in Virginia's second congressional district.

24:10.47

Joe

I want to make that clear. i'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that, however, i don't know how interested it and he is. I think he's going to have to be convinced. And that's my understanding. The DCCC is currently focusing their recruitment efforts on Pam Northam as it stands.

24:23.100

Sam Shirazi

Well, that's some... that if you You heard it here. or if If that ends up happening, Joe gets major props for that. Obviously, we'll just have to wait and see. I think you know after you you run a race like that, you need a little bit of time to decompress and process everything. So i'm sure I'm sure he's getting calls. I'm sure he's going to think about it.

24:41.73

Sam Shirazi

yeah you know He's still young, and yeah I'm sure he's he's got a lot of different things he can do in his future. So he'll make up his mind, but but that is interesting. And and I agree that... you know We'll just have to wait and see who runs.

24:53.14

Sam Shirazi

I guess now that I have you and you have all this inside scoop, could you talk a little bit, i promise this the last question,

24:59.56

Joe

yeah No problem. We can talk as long as you want, Sam. I love it.

25:02.48

Sam Shirazi

box but Yeah, I mean, it's it's always good to talk to you. So I want to talk about the first congressional district.

25:08.24

Joe

yeah

25:09.06

Sam Shirazi

It's being targeted by the Democrats next year. I'm still unsure how realistic that is, but it seems they they seem to be looking at the trends and think it's looking good, even though obviously the current incumbent, Rob Whitman's.

25:21.90

Sam Shirazi

a strong candidate and he overperformed Trump a decent amount in 2024. So I guess one, you know how realistic do you think the first district is in 2026? It's a little bit early. I know we don't know the environment.

25:33.57

Sam Shirazi

And then two, like do you think anyone might jump in Obviously, Shannon Taylor's name's been floated after she came up short in the attorney general race.

25:42.02

Joe

Yeah, it's it's it's such the the the first congressional district Virginia is such a fascinating one to me because it's such a weirdly drawn seat. You know, it goes from kind of the peninsula, northern neck area. You know, you're talking about, you know, like Westmoreland County, you know, like York County's in there, James City, Williamsburg.

26:01.54

Joe

Kind of got that, you know, Hanover. have all that kind of part, which makes up – Just over, I think, 60% of this district. And then you kind of have this like hook that comes down in through Western Henrico County and then through Western Chesterfield County that that's going to be actually the really the main base Democratic support. There's certainly a base in, uh,

26:22.85

Joe

James City and Williamsburg and York, there are Democratic voters out there. Not necessarily a whole lot middle. And then, you know, really the strong base of Democratic voters in the Henrico and Chesterfield portion. And like you said, the trends in those portions of Virginia are only getting better for Democrats.

26:40.76

Joe

Like I said earlier in the show, that's kind of been the portion of Virginia that it seems like no matter the environment, it kind of just has gotten better and better for Democrats in that area of Virginia and that part there. ah You know, do I think it's going to be a main target for 2026? You know, I'm not sure.

26:58.74

Joe

i don't think so is my answer there. I think there are other targets. You know, I think even in Virginia, you know, you talk about the second district. I think that's certainly a more likely target at the moment.

27:09.50

Joe

You look across the country, there's potentially four races in Pennsylvania that you're targeting. There's multiple races in New York. You know, there's races in California that you're still targeting. you know And there's others across the country.

27:23.21

Joe

you know i think those are going to take more precedent than the ones that you see right now. And and you know Virginia won. But I think certainly, I think if you certainly see a really good result for Democrats there in the 2025 races, that's something that could really turn up the heat on Rob Whitman in 2026.

27:39.82

Joe

That's kind of what happened with Virginia's 7th Congressional District. To an extent where, you know, Democrats did, I think, relatively well there in that race and then kind of turned the heat up there Abigail Spanberger, who is now taking that wave and is running for governor with it.

27:55.40

Joe

it's going to be very interesting, I think, to see. Shannon Taylor would be a shout. You know, Rodney Wilt ronney willt has always kind of been a candidate there. to someone like a Skyler Van Valkenburgh decided to jump in. I think he'd be a very strong candidate.

28:07.99

Joe

you it's the again, it's such a weird seat. You have to, I think for Democrats, have to find someone who can kind of balance the interest of both. The Democratic voters in the western Richmond suburbs there in Henrico and Chesterfield. But also, you do have this base of Democratic support in your county in Williamsburg and James City, whose interests I do think are they're different than the ones to those in western Richmond there.

28:33.10

Joe

And you're going to have to find a balance there. That's, I think, the challenge for Democrats here. Obviously, the challenge for Republicans that because of that hook, the seat becomes competitive. But I think also because of that hook, you have two very different types of ah ah Democratic voters in this district that I think yeah yeah it's a hard balancing act to make. and that's what makes such an interesting, potentially competitive seat, in my opinion.

28:55.13

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I agree. I think it's it's one of those things that think at some point is going to be maybe closer to a true toss-up. I don't know if 2026, it'll get there, but we'll just have to wait and see. And that's the thing with Virginia. Every year there will be elections.

29:08.19

Sam Shirazi

Well, I really appreciate you taking the time and coming and talking to us. I think it's good to get your perspective. I always... you know Find your perspective interesting because, as I said, what I admire is you you tend to be very objective and try to just say it how it is. And so I think everyone's going to find that super interesting.

29:26.17

Sam Shirazi

So if people want to find out more or where to follow you on your social media, and I think you just restarted your sub stack.

29:33.40

Joe

Yes. Yes. So you can follow me on social media on X at at Joseph Szymanski. That's what see most of my. also did just recently restart a sub stack, excuse me, elections by Ski.

29:45.29

Joe

you can It's a free sub stack. I do not want you to pay for this, but I'm going be putting a lot of information out there about my takes. it won't just be about Virginia. It'll be about across the country, hopefully. So, you know, if you want to hear about that, go ahead. It's Elections by Ski on Substack if you want to subscribe there.

30:01.97

Joe

It's free. All you got to do is subscribe via your email. Again, free. I would really appreciate it. And Sam, I want to thank you for having me on. I always appreciate the chance to talk shop with anybody.

30:12.50

Joe

So it's been a great night.

30:13.85

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for coming on. And this has been Federal Fallout and I'll join you next time.

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

Hi, everyone. I'm Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus episode looking at some pretty shocking results in the New York City mayor primary.

00:12.72

Sam Shirazi

And you might think this is a podcast about Virginia elections. Why am I talking about a primary for a local office in New York City? Well, the reason why is there was a pretty shocking result in the primary. Now, we don't have the final, final result, but Basically, all of the first round votes are in. New York City uses ranked choice voting for the mayor primary.

00:34.47

Sam Shirazi

And in the first round, it looks like Zohran Mandani got the most votes. And pretty much everyone expects that he is going to be the Democratic nominee.

00:46.84

Sam Shirazi

There still needs to be some ranked choice voting reallocation. But he is at about 43% of the vote. The closest challenger, Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York, has basically conceded. He understands that he is almost certainly not going to win when the votes are reallocated during ranked choice vote voting reallocation.

01:08.66

Sam Shirazi

And so this is a huge political earthquake. A few weeks ago, I don't think anyone really expected this to happen. you know I would say it's similar to what happened in 2018.

01:20.16

Sam Shirazi

when AOC was able to defeat an incumbent Democratic congressman and eventually become congresswoman in in her own right. And it's just like a really big political moment because it's it's the first moment, I think, in this Trump 2.0 era where a young, certainly more progressive candidate has defeated the Democratic establishment, essentially. And, um you know, a little bit about Mamdani, he is considered... He calls himself a

01:54.24

Sam Shirazi

democratic socialists, very much close to Bernie Sanders, very much close to AOC. And obviously that wing of the party has had its ups and downs, but I think in this Trump 2.0 era feels like it is at a place where it can come back into power.

02:10.08

Sam Shirazi

And there were a lot of things going on in this campaign. I don't want to dwell on you know everything, but I mean, part of it was Andrew Cuomo for the establishment candidate was a pretty weak candidate, had a lot of baggage.

02:21.05

Sam Shirazi

So I don't want to say that this is some um huge result that shows the entire Democratic Party is changing, but I do think it shows a different direction and a desire for change within the Democratic Party.

02:33.21

Sam Shirazi

And you know one thing I should note is there will be a general election. So he he is almost certainly going to be the Democratic nominee, but Under New

02:44.94

Sam Shirazi

There's no sore loser provision. And so in theory, Andrew Cuomo can run. The current incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, is running. There's a Republican candidate. So this isn't necessarily a done deal.

02:56.06

Sam Shirazi

But it still is a really big election result in New York. And I wanted to just talk a little bit about how it might impact Virginia and compare and contrast a little bit.

03:06.75

Sam Shirazi

So I think the most direct impact on Virginia is the fact that this is probably going to be used by Republicans at some point to say, oh, look, the Democrats are all socialists. Look, the Democrats are going hard left.

03:20.04

Sam Shirazi

think they will try to paint the Democrats in Virginia and try to tie them to him in New York City. And I think that's a little bit of a challenge given who the Democratic nominee for governor is. But I do think the Republicans are going to do that. That's kind of a familiar playbook for them.

03:37.81

Sam Shirazi

But I also wanted to kind of compare and contrast both the Democratic nominees in Virginia and in New Jersey compared to New York. So both Virginia and New Jersey, I would say the Democrats nominated pretty centrist, mainstream voters.

03:52.20

Sam Shirazi

Democrats to be their candidates. However, i do think they're a little bit different than what people typically think of the establishment. So someone like Andrew Cuomo obviously has been in office for a long time, had a lot of baggage, and you know just was not a compelling candidate in this primary, didn't really excite anyone. And even the people who voted for him, I think it was more because they didn't want his opponent to win I will say, you know, both in New Jersey and Virginia, and I'll talk more about Virginia because I'm obviously more familiar with Virginia.

04:22.83

Sam Shirazi

I do think Abigail Spanberger, while she is certainly a different political ideology, much more to the middle, much less ideological, much more pragmatic.

04:33.42

Sam Shirazi

I do think part of her appeal is she does run on this kind of idea of anti-corruption, bringing a new generation of leadership. She's she's pretty young for a politician.

04:44.89

Sam Shirazi

while she was in Congress, she was trying to pass a bill to ban members of Congress from trading stocks. And if you saw, you know, for example, in the last week or so, she has done this bus tour when she's going around different parts of Virginia, meeting with voters, and she's posting on social media videos of her doing all that. and And I do think she's kind of reaching voters in a different way than maybe Democrats have in other races.

05:09.20

Sam Shirazi

And I do think in New York, part of the secret of success that Zohran had was that he was really, you know, he was out there a lot. He was meeting the voters. He was campaigning with with them.

05:21.40

Sam Shirazi

He was posting a lot on social media, had slick videos. And ultimately, you know the media likes to focus on the ideological nature of these races. I know he's a democratic socialist and he's left wing and all that stuff. And obviously that's part of his message. But I do think part of it too was just offering a different style of politics, different vision for the Democratic Party, different vision for the city.

05:43.69

Sam Shirazi

Now you may not agree with that vision. and You might think he's coming at things from a wrong perspective. You don't like his politics. You know, that's obviously, you know, not everyone's going to agree with that. But I do think following his campaign, it was interesting to see how he was able to reach voters. And clearly he did persuade most voters, at least Democratic primary voters in New York to vote for him. And i think there's a lot of important lessons that Democrats can get from this election.

06:11.56

Sam Shirazi

One of them is just you have to meet voters both online and in person, and you really have to kind of flood the zone. And and what I mean by that is he had a lot of content. i mean, it wasn't all super anti-negative Andrew Cuomo stuff, or it wasn't super inflammatory stuff. He just had a lot of content.

06:27.64

Sam Shirazi

lot of it was positive. I think that did reach voters, and they responded positively to that. And he also talked a lot ah lot about the cost of living issue. I think he wasn't out there necessarily drumming up all these... you know left-wing ideological issues. He was talking a lot about the practical concerns about cost of living and all those things.

06:45.91

Sam Shirazi

And so it's interesting that he was able to pull this off. I do think you know in Virginia, the Republicans will try to paint the Democrats as socialists and left-wing, and this proves that the Democratic Party can't can' be trusted and all these things that you know Republicans typically talk about.

07:02.91

Sam Shirazi

It will be interesting to see because I do think with the Democratic ticket, they are kind of presenting a different version of Virginia because they're all coming at this from a perspective that's not super...

07:18.62

Sam Shirazi

I guess another way of putting it is none of them have been around politics that long. So they they are in Virginia kind of a fresh face for the Virginia Democratic Party. So Abigail Spanberger, she first ran in 2018. She's been in politics less than 10 years, even though she's been a member of Congress for six years.

07:34.79

Sam Shirazi

She hasn't been around a whole lot in politics. Ghazal Hashmi, she won her first election in 2018. eighteen And so she's been around politics for less than 10 years.

07:45.30

Sam Shirazi

And then Jay Jones, he was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2017. And so, again, he's been around for less than 10 years and he's he's the youngest person on the ticket. So I think all these candidates, they bring a different style of politics. there They're younger.

08:01.97

Sam Shirazi

they There is this theme of change within the Democratic Party. And I think that is being... being ah that That is being shown in Virginia this year. And I think there's a possibility that Democrats, because of that, do well. And if you think about 2021, part of the reason they didn't do well was you had Terry McAuliffe, who was already a governor. He'd been in politics a long time. And it just seemed like maybe his time had passed and it was time for someone else. And then you had someone like Glenn Youngkin come in who was not a politician.

08:30.28

Sam Shirazi

This was his first run. And he did well in that election campaign. I think by now, after four years being governor, people have kind of shines worn off a little bit for Governor Yunkin, but he still, when he ran in 2021, had a different energy to him.

08:44.84

Sam Shirazi

And I think that paid off for him. So all that's to say is I think the Democratic Party is entering this new era in the Trump 2.0 era where people are starting to move on from the old politics. They want something new. They want something different.

08:56.55

Sam Shirazi

and We clearly saw that paying off in the New York City primary. I

09:00.51

Sam Shirazi

it'll be interesting to see, you know, I've talked a lot about the New Jersey election. I haven't talked a lot about the New York City mayor election, but I think it's going to get a lot of attention this year and in the political world and maybe take some of the attention away from Virginia.

09:14.14

Sam Shirazi

And I do think there's a scenario where you see these kind of contrasting visions of the Democratic Party winning in november So in Virginia, you'll have Abigail Spanberger winning as more of a kind of centrist, moderate type Democrat.

09:28.54

Sam Shirazi

And then in New York City, you could see Zohran Mamdadi winning as more of a leftist, progressive Democrat. And while there's obviously a lot of political differences, a lot of ideological differences between the two of them, the the the substance is very different. and

09:43.07

Sam Shirazi

But I do think there's a place where you can see the Democratic Party is changing. and I don't think these two wings of the party are have to be at war with each other. I think it's less about left and right or left and middle within the Democratic Party. And I think it's more about establishment versus maybe a fresher style of politics, a different style of politics, offering more change. even if And again, I think most voters are not super ideological. I think it's more about, does the candidate inspire you?

10:12.36

Sam Shirazi

And i think in New York City, that was what we saw where this candidate inspired people, even if not everyone agreed with every single issue. And I think in Virginia, there's also with these slate of Democrats, there's a possibility that voters get excited, even if maybe Spanberger for some Democrats is not as progressive as they'd like her to be. I think she still kind of can inspire them given her where she comes from and this type of campaigning that she does. So anyways, lots going on. I will mainly be sticking to Virginia, but I did want to kind of give you my quick thoughts on what happened in New York City.

10:46.62

Sam Shirazi

And I'll be back Saturday with a regular podcast, but just wanted to give you this special bonus. So for now, that's 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 the Virginia primary that happened on Tuesday and I also wanted to look ahead to November and some lessons that could be learned from the Virginia primary.

00:14.77

Sam Shirazi

Now, I did a podcast appearance on the Virginia Press Room with my friend Michael Lee Pope, who has that podcast. I recommend listening to that podcast, both for the episode that I was on, but also generally because I think he does a really good job covering Virginia politics. Maybe some of the things that I don't necessarily do, which is more the statehouse coverage. I do more elections. But if you want to check out Virginia Press Room, really good, comprehensive coverage of what's going on in Virginia.

00:40.86

Sam Shirazi

And in my Virginia Press Room appearance, I talked a little bit kind of the lieutenant governor's race, attorney general race. I went through some of the House of Delegates races. Obviously, I did the podcast right after the primary where I gave you my initial thoughts and I was a little bit tired. I had little bit more energy now to talk about the primary.

01:00.42

Sam Shirazi

And so instead of just kind of going through who won, who lost, I thought what I would do is I'd look kind of big picture what happened and what it might mean for November. and And what I mean by that is I think there's some interesting general information about what's going on in Virginia and what happen in November.

01:17.15

Sam Shirazi

So to begin with, let's start with the lieutenant governor's race. And, you know, I talked about it. I think the big surprise in lieutenant governor's race was that Ghazala Hashmi was able to win the Richmond area by a lot.

01:29.74

Sam Shirazi

And LeVar Stoney relatively didn't do as well in Richmond. And the other thing I thought was interesting, both in the AG race and in lieutenant governor's race, is Northern Virginia. I feel like all the candidates spent a lot of time in Northern Virginia. They were all competing. And frankly, Northern Virginia was pretty much awash in both the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General race, because I think all the campaigns spent all this time and money there. It was pretty much tied. And so while obviously there's a lot of votes in Northern Virginia, the candidates needed to do well there.

01:56.22

Sam Shirazi

they They all did pretty much what they needed to do in Northern Virginia. So the races were actually decided in other parts of Virginia. And I think the Lieutenant Governor's race really was decided in the Richmond area because Ghazala Hashmi and LeBar Stoney were really competing for the votes.

02:09.94

Sam Shirazi

And Hashmi was able to come out on top and she was able to win Richmond City. And, you know, I kind of want to talk about the Richmond area and looking forward to November. And the reason I say that is I think during the first Trump administration, the story of Virginia was really...

02:26.78

Sam Shirazi

the solid blue nature of Northern Virginia. So Northern Virginia had always been pretty blue, but during the Trump years, it just kept getting bluer and bluer. When Trump first came into office, there was actually a decent amount of House of Delegates seats in places like Fairfax that were controlled by the Republicans, which is kind of crazy to think about right now. But the Republicans lost a bunch of seats in Northern Virginia during the first Trump era.

02:49.51

Sam Shirazi

Northern Virginia became really, really deep blue. and I think, you know, at some point Northern Virginia because has kind of hit its ceiling for Democrats.

03:00.41

Sam Shirazi

they're pretty much at the point where they've gotten as many people to become Democrats in Northern Virginia as they can. And I don't know if it's going to keep getting bluer and bluer. And, you know, obviously that could be a problem for Virginia Democrats if they don't find new votes and potentially they might be losing more rural voters.

03:17.69

Sam Shirazi

And that's where Richmond comes in. And I liked what Chaz Nadiqom said about the Richmond area for the lieutenant governor's race. It was essentially like the king and or queen maker of the primary because...

03:29.98

Sam Shirazi

Richmond area is becoming more Democratic. And I think more of the focus in the future for the Democratic Party in Virginia will be the Richmond area because they have a lot of room to grow in the Richmond area. Partly that's because people are moving down from Northern Virginia down I-95 to Richmond because it's more affordable relatively to Northern Virginia.

03:48.81

Sam Shirazi

And I also think Richmond area has what are called like ancestral Republican area. So it used to be that places like Henrico and Chesterfield were actually pretty Republican. And now those have both become relatively more democratic.

04:02.65

Sam Shirazi

But there are still kind of outer Richmond suburbs, places like Hanover and Goochland that are still pretty Republican, but they're starting to become less and less Republican. And so I think there's this combination of population growth in the general area and then people becoming more Democratic.

04:20.48

Sam Shirazi

And I think there is a story potentially in November of the Richmond area becoming kind of more of a center of power for the Democrats in Virginia. And i could see a scenario where in Trump one, it was really about Northern Virginia for the Virginia Democrats.

04:37.66

Sam Shirazi

And in Trump two, this focus shifts to the Richmond area, and that's where they're going to see a lot of their gains. And so we saw a little preview of that, I think, with the lieutenant governor primary, where Richmond really became one of the ground zeros of that campaign. And it was a little bit won and lost in the Richmond area for Ghazal Hashmi and LeVar Stoney, respectively.

05:00.84

Sam Shirazi

Now, I did also want to talk about some of the primaries in the House of Delegates that happened. And i'm not the way I'm going to do this is I'm not going to go primary by primary, but I'm going to talk about three House seats in the Richmond area,

05:13.51

Sam Shirazi

that the Republicans currently control that had primaries on Tuesday. So those seats are House District 57, House District 73, and House District 75. And all three of those seats, basically the Democrats that I expected to win those primaries ended up winning those primaries. So in House District 57, the Democratic nominee will be May Navarre.

05:36.68

Sam Shirazi

In House District 73, the Democratic nominee will be Leslie Mehta. And in House District 75, the Democratic nominee will be Lindsey Daughtry. And so all three of those districts are somewhat similar. I'd say House District 57 and House District 73 are more similar in that they are more traditionally Republican seats that each cycle has become more friendly to the Democrats.

05:58.79

Sam Shirazi

House District 57, I often mention, is the most likely seat to flip. House District 73 is going to be a ah tougher lift for Democrats, but certainly they have an opportunity there. And House District 75 is a little bit of more of a mix of suburban and working class areas.

06:13.58

Sam Shirazi

But I also think the Democrats have a good shot at that seat. And so those are three Richmond area seats that the Democrats could potentially flip. And so you're seeing this scenario where the Richmond area could potentially be really big for the Democrats this November. And if you think about it,

06:31.21

Sam Shirazi

At the top of the ticket, Abigail Spanberger comes from the Richmond suburbs. Ghazal Hashmi comes from the Richmond suburbs. So I think there's going to be a lot of interesting dynamics in play. And, you know, it's just something to keep in mind where basically now Northern Virginia might be kind of set in in the sense of it's pretty much, you know, pretty static in terms of the vote share that the Democrats and Republicans are gonna get.

06:55.66

Sam Shirazi

I will say in outer Northern Virginia, places like Loudon and Prince William, there there still might be a little bit of movement, but places like Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, for the most part, I mean, ah ah kind of set in in their voting patterns.

07:08.86

Sam Shirazi

And so I do think there's gonna these interesting shifts that might happen more in the Richmond area. And so that's something to keep an eye on. and And we definitely saw the influence and strength of the Richmond area in the Lieutenant Governor primary.

07:19.90

Sam Shirazi

All right. Now let's move on to the attorney general primary, because I think it was a little bit of a different dynamic. As I mentioned, Northern Virginia was almost a tie. I think Shannon Taylor did ah slightly better in Northern Virginia, but not by enough that she could win.

07:32.92

Sam Shirazi

And then in the Richmond area, it was, again, pretty close. I think Shannon Taylor ended up getting a decent margin from Henrico, but J. Jones was able to do better than he needed to in Richmond and Chesterfield. And so that kind of made Richmond also a wash in the attorney general's race.

07:50.56

Sam Shirazi

Really, the place that Jay Jones won the attorney general primary was in Hampton Roads. That was his base. He always needed to do wear well there. And he did well there. He got a lot of votes out Norfolk.

08:01.19

Sam Shirazi

And that general area with ah ah Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Hampton. And so I want to focus on Hampton Roads because I think it often doesn't get as much attention certainly as Northern Virginia. But Hampton Roads is is actually a pretty big area. There's a lot of different jurisdictions.

08:19.99

Sam Shirazi

So you don't always hear about one city. But combined, there are a lot of people that live in Hampton Roads. And typically it's more of a political battle battleground. I would say it certainly leans towards the Democrats, but it does see big swings between elections.

08:35.04

Sam Shirazi

And the the voting patterns here are, I would say, more similar to other parts of the South, like the New South, like areas like North Carolina, Georgia. You have more college-educated white voters there that are starting to move towards the Democrats and away from the Republicans.

08:51.25

Sam Shirazi

And so I think Hampton Roads is another area where Spanberger potentially could be making gains, especially with white college educated voters who may have traditionally been Republicans, but maybe this cycle will end up voting for her.

09:04.28

Sam Shirazi

I think the big question mark for the Democrats in November in Hampton Roads are African American voters. I think it helps that Jay Jones is going to be on the ticket. He's from Hampton Roads. He's African American.

09:15.27

Sam Shirazi

That will help motivate some of those voters to come out. And you often see that sometimes the issue is not that these voters are voting for the Republicans. It's just that they don't turn out, especially in these off-year elections.

09:26.87

Sam Shirazi

And there are some House seats in the Hampton Roads area that certainly could flip. And one of them had a primary on Tuesday. That's House District 89. And both the Republicans and Democrats had a primary.

09:39.76

Sam Shirazi

And pretty much the candidates we expected to win those primaries won them. That was Michael Lamine. Actually, I think he goes by Mike. Mike Lamine. And then for the Democrats, it was Karen Robbins Carnegie.

09:52.96

Sam Shirazi

So those were... who I expected to win those primaries. And that district specifically has a decent African-American population. Obviously, the Democrats need to get out those voters in order to win that district.

10:04.20

Sam Shirazi

And so that is one of the dynamics I'm going to be looking for. And, you know, I think it was kind of interesting. I had kind of kept saying, yeah, Northern Virginia super important for both the LG and AG race. Like, we really need to figure out what's going on in Northern Virginia.

10:19.10

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, all the candidates also thought that. And I mean, it makes sense. That's where most of the votes are. But what you had this weird dynamic where both in LG and AG, Northern Virginia was pretty much split by all the candidates. And so the the race was decided in other places. And I think in the attorney general race, um was decided in Hampton Roads in favor for Jay Jones.

10:41.40

Sam Shirazi

So a lot of people had commented that this is the first time the Virginia Democrats didn't have a Northern Virginia candidate in a long time. And I think people have gone back and tried to figure it out.

10:52.97

Sam Shirazi

Technically, I think this is the first time since 1985 that the Virginia Democrats have not had a Northern Virginia person on the ticket. And i think in some ways that helps them because, you know, the reality is Northern Virginia has seen a lot of the federal fallout. It's already pretty democratic. It has a lot of college educated voters. It already has a lot of high propensity voters.

11:14.07

Sam Shirazi

Reality is Northern Virginia is probably going to come out this November. And so we talked about some of the dynamics with the Richmond area and also with Hampton Roads. We talked about that dynamic. So I think it's important that the ticket for the Democrats actually doesn't have a Northern Virginia candidate because it gives more regional diversity.

11:32.48

Sam Shirazi

And one of the issues i mean, this isn't why the Democrats lost in 2021, but in 2021, the entire ticket was from Northern Virginia. And you did see the the turnout in Hampton Roads not as high as other parts of Virginia.

11:44.38

Sam Shirazi

And so I think keeping in mind these regional dynamics for November will be important because they were certainly important in the primary. And if you looked at the different maps of the LG and AG race, it really was based on regional dynamics the way that the race was decided.

12:01.01

Sam Shirazi

All right. One other thing I wanted to talk about was total turnout. So I had mentioned that...

12:07.04

Sam Shirazi

So it looks like the final turnout is going to be for the Democrats somewhere in the ballpark of 485,000 votes. I think we're still waiting on some of the final vote total. So it's kind of unclear exactly what the final is going to be. But we're going to see roughly 485,000 to 490,000 votes in the Virginia Democratic primary, which I think is a very strong number.

12:29.58

Sam Shirazi

considering that the last time the Democrats only had a lieutenant governor and attorney general primary without a governor's primary was 2013. There were only 145,000 votes that time.

12:40.29

Sam Shirazi

Now, granted, early voting was much more difficult back in 2013, but still, i mean, you're seeing over three times the amount of votes that have been cast since then. And if you think about what happened in 2021, the total primary turnout was about 495,000. And that had a governor primary with five candidates running. And so you have just these two ah ah statewide offices that are not the governor's office in 2025, you have almost the same amount of turnout. So I think overall, that's a pretty good sign for the Democrats.

13:13.24

Sam Shirazi

Now, some people have said, well, that's not that much turnout. I mean, there's so many voters in Virginia. I mean, true, in the grand scheme of things, it's not the entire population of Virginia that came out for these primaries, but you have to keep in mind, I mean, these are usually pretty sleepy affairs. And I think the fact that they were both really competitive this year meant that there was going to be a lot of turnout.

13:31.69

Sam Shirazi

And two, the fact that ah people are engaged more, I would say, because of what's going on in DC. I mean, that always happens where the party out of the white house gets more engaged because they're upset at what the president's doing.

13:44.71

Sam Shirazi

It's part of the reason why the party in the, out of the white house always, almost always does well in the Virginia elections. And so i think overall, the Democrats have to be pretty happy when they're looking to, to November.

13:57.16

Sam Shirazi

And one thing to keep in mind is, you know We talked about the regional balance on the ticket. I also think that there's a little bit of a balance between the different communities in Virginia. So you have Abigail Spanberger at the top of the ticket.

14:08.92

Sam Shirazi

Ghazala Hashmi, I mentioned this before, is the first South Asian statewide candidate. That's a growing community in Virginia, has growing political influence. In the 2024 election, I think the Democrats were struggling somewhat with South Asian voters. So we'll see if Ghazala Hashmi being on the ticket might help.

14:25.98

Sam Shirazi

the Democrats struggled last year in Loudoun. And there was a famous moment when Loudoun released its vote total and the Democrats were doing not as great as they were wanting to do in Loudoun. And that was an early preview of how the night was going to go.

14:38.13

Sam Shirazi

And then you had someone Ghazal Hashmi She is both South Asian and she's Muslim. She's the first Muslim candidate to statewide office. So I think she can reach out to both the South Asian community and the Muslim community.

14:51.70

Sam Shirazi

Those are both communities that have swung away from the Democrats. The Democrats have had trouble with those voters recently. And I think there is an opportunity for a candidate like that to come in and maybe shore up the Democrats a little bit and win back some of those voters.

15:05.34

Sam Shirazi

And then obviously at the attorney general spot, you have Jay Jones. We talked about how he could help with the African-American community and get those voters out. And I think the Republicans really have to ask themselves, you know, looking at these results, you you know, what are they going to do to counter this ticket? Because at the end of the day, you know, they are having some problems between the the governor and lieutenant governor.

15:28.96

Sam Shirazi

And it is not going to be an easy task going against this ticket in November. I mean, obviously, they're going to put out their statement. They're going to say it's extreme. I mean, both sides try to paint each other as extreme and out of touch and and all that. And I get it. i mean, that's politics. That's what you do with your opponent.

15:43.65

Sam Shirazi

But they also have to be realistic that they are facing. especially the top ticket with Abigail Spanberger, someone who does have appeal to more middle of the road voters.

15:53.93

Sam Shirazi

And now that she's on a ticket with these two other people who have appeals to different communities in Virginia, I had i talked about how perhaps a area where Spanberger might struggle was with African-American voters. Now she has an African-American person on the ticket that can help her reach those voters, get those voters out.

16:12.71

Sam Shirazi

I think the Republicans have to start thinking about, OK, what is the plan now for November? Because general elections on the ah early voting starts in in late September. So it basically starts in three months. Early voting is pretty crazy to think about. But early voting starts in three months. The general election is about four and a half months away.

16:33.23

Sam Shirazi

And there's not a whole lot of time to get things in order for the Republicans. given the way ah the Democrats have you know been able to put together this ticket. They clearly have a lot of voters who are engaged, voters who came out. those voters i mean One thing is if you're going to if you turn out for a primary, you're almost certainly going to turn out for the general election. So you have a base of voters now that the Democrats are going to be able to build on for the general election.

17:00.48

Sam Shirazi

And I will say in all the battleground districts, Democrats pretty much got the candidates that they wanted. I would say the the candidates that were endorsed by the House leadership were the candidates that were selected.

17:12.80

Sam Shirazi

I don't think the Democrats have any candidates that are super problematic. On the Republican side in some of these battleground districts, you know the candidates, at least in one district, so we'll talk about House District 21, I like to talk about that district,

17:26.67

Sam Shirazi

There weren't too many people who showed up for that primary on the Republican side. that was in Western Prince William. And not that many people showed up for that primary. And so these House races, I think there's a risk that the Republicans are getting a little bit you know, in a place where their voters aren't necessarily super enthusiastic.

17:46.79

Sam Shirazi

I will say there was one thing that i noticed that was kind of interesting. And that was in an open house seat in Western Virginia. And that was house district 46. It was actually the only house district that I got wrong in my primary prediction. So I didn't go through the whole list on my primary prediction podcast.

18:04.79

Sam Shirazi

But I did have an article on Blue Virginia where I gave my predictions for every single House of Delegates primary. I got all nine of the Democratic primaries right, and I got seven out of eight of the Republican ones wrong. The only one I got wrong was House to District 46.

18:19.21

Sam Shirazi

And I picked Tolbert to win that primary because Governor Youngkin endorsed him. But his opponent, Cornett, was able to win that primary. and I was pretty shocked by that because certainly like two years ago, if Governor Youngkin had endorsed someone in a Republican primary, it was almost certain that person was going to win.

18:38.87

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, to be perfectly honest, I didn't follow all the ins and outs of that race. But the fact that the candidate endorsed by Governor Youngkin didn't win that primary, I think that's telling us a little bit about what's going on in the Virginia GOP.

18:51.68

Sam Shirazi

And the fact that Governor Yunkin is on his way out, and I don't know how much influence he has over the Virginia GOP anymore. And I will be honest, there's a little bit of a split, I would say, between the lieutenant governor candidate and the current lieutenant lieutenant governor who's at the top of the ticket with Winston Earl Sears and John Reed.

19:11.30

Sam Shirazi

And I think there's a little bit of a tug of war about who's really going to be driving the train this year in Virginia. And um I will say this, I live in Arlington. i saw a lot of Democratic signs in yards, which makes sense because that is what happens in Arlington because most people are Democrats in Arlington. It's a very blue part of Virginia.

19:32.63

Sam Shirazi

However, I did see a Republican sign in the yard. And the sign was for John Reed. It was not for Winston Earl Sears. And I thought that was very interesting because it's pretty rare if you don't have a primary to see the sign of the lieutenant governor candidate, but not the governor candidate, not the attorney general candidate.

19:49.26

Sam Shirazi

And I'm just curious to see if we're going to see that dynamic this November where are some people who are John Reed fans. There are some people who don't like John Reed. There are some people who like Winston Earl Sears. are some people who don't like Winston Earl Sears on the Republican side.

20:03.65

Sam Shirazi

And I think that's going to create a difficult dynamic for the Republicans as they're trying to navigate this challenging political environment, which is already challenging, given the federal environment with all the cuts and what's going on in D.C.

20:15.64

Sam Shirazi

And now they have these issues in Virginia. And, you know, i think there is a scenario where the Democrats generally have their act together. um think my sense was,

20:28.52

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, the candidates that lost and their supporters disappointed at the outcome. I mean, that's what happens in a primary. you know The people who lose aren't, you know it's difficult and you know you put a lot of your heart and soul in this one campaign and then you come up short. That's never a good feeling.

20:43.04

Sam Shirazi

But my sense is, at least publicly, like they are all backing the ticket. there There is a lot of support. I think people generally feel like it's a balanced ticket.

20:54.00

Sam Shirazi

It's what the Democrats need right now in Virginia. And you look at the Republican side and very clearly there is some tension between the governor and lieutenant governor candidate. And that just generally is not great for morale. If you're a Republican, it's also not super clear what's going to be happening um in November.

21:11.31

Sam Shirazi

Are they going to have joint campaign appearances? I mean, all that's up in the air. And I think the primary answered some interesting questions about who the candidates are going to be for the Democrats.

21:22.84

Sam Shirazi

Republicans, I think they have to really start taking November seriously because there isn't too much time left. And I'm not really sure what the plan is. Obviously, Governor Yunkin could try to come in and try to spend money and try to influence the election. But as we saw in this one primary where he endorsed someone, it didn't really work out for him.

21:42.27

Sam Shirazi

President Trump has a lot going on in D.C., both in Congress trying to pass this bill that is having some challenges. And then obviously internationally, he's dealing with a lot. And so I don't know if his top priority right now is the Virginia elections. And I don't frankly, I don't know if him coming in into the Virginia elections would actually help the Republicans. But in theory, it could energize them.

22:02.16

Sam Shirazi

And so you have a lot of Democrats in Virginia who are fired up, who are pretty happy about their ticket. They're ready to go to November. And Republicans, you know, they have to deal with that reality. And I think there is a scenario where Spanberger, particularly at the top of the ticket, is looks like she's going to win this thing. And, you know, some people might care about Lieutenant Governor and Attorney in General, but most people focus on the governor's race. And so if if you are either not coming out as a Republican because you're you're somewhat demoralized about the governor's race or you may end up even voting for Spanberger the top of the ticket, there may be more tickets splitting this year because Spanberger might get a bigger win.

22:44.97

Sam Shirazi

but still big enough that it dragged everyone across the line. I think those are all things to look for this year in Virginia. um I'm not saying the Democrats are guaranteed to win. I'm not saying the primary proves the Democrats are in a great place and they're going to win and everything's fine for them.

22:57.96

Sam Shirazi

But I do think we just have to be realistic about the nature of things. And, you know, one of the hard things is a electoral analysts, a political analyst is to try to be objective and try to see where things are.

23:09.41

Sam Shirazi

And, know, I'm trying to do my best to figure out where things are in Virginia. I think the next thing at some point, I'm going to look at all the House of Delegates races, try to figure out how many of the races are actually competitive. Democrats are talking a big game, talking about going after a lot of Republicans, like realistically, how many seats could they end up winning in November?

23:26.49

Sam Shirazi

And so all that is really interesting to look for. You know, I hope I hope you guys keep following along as we're doing this podcast. I

23:36.28

Sam Shirazi

ah Hopefully people got a lot of and good information about the primary from my previous podcast. I think most of my primary predictions held up pretty well. i did underestimate LeVar Stoney. do think The candidates that came up short in the primary, it'll be interesting to see what their next moves are.

23:53.32

Sam Shirazi

I mentioned Aaron Rouse and Shannon Taylor have been mentioned for potentially running for Congress next year. Obviously, it's up to them, and I don't know they'll eventually make their decision if they want to do that.

24:04.03

Sam Shirazi

I think it'll be interesting to see what the other candidates end up doing. But overall, really interesting primary in Virginia. I think ah ah it kept everyone glued to their results pages as the results were coming in. I'm sure people enjoyed watching that. And it was pretty nerve wracking for the candidates, I imagine, until we got the results. But anyways.

24:23.26

Sam Shirazi

All right, everyone. I hope yeah you've enjoyed listening. We're going to take a little breather from the primary. Obviously, we're going to get into general election soon. But for now, that has been federal fallout. And I hope you join me next time.

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

Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus episode where I'm going to quickly go over some of the things that happened on the in the Virginia primary. I will do a longer episode during my regular podcast which will come out Saturday morning, but I did want to just kind of do this quick podcast.

00:19.54

Sam Shirazi

As you can probably tell, I'm a little bit tired. I'm recording this Tuesday evening. Definitely a lot happened during the primary and I want to talk about it quickly. Again, i want to put this out just give a quick update. I'm mainly going to be talking about the statewide offices for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General for the Democrats. I will talk about the House of Delegates on the podcast on Saturday, but did want to just kind of quickly update you on what happened in Virginia on Tuesday night during the Democratic primary, and then also just give you my hot, hot take, and i will give you another take on Saturday once I have a little bit more time to process all the data. So,

00:59.87

Sam Shirazi

Let's talk about the lieutenant governor's race. So it was super close. I was frankly surprised that it was a three-way race. I think former Richmond mayor LeVar s Stoney did better than I expected, and i think better than most people expected. However, it looks like the winner is going to be she declared victory, and I think Abigail Spamberger, her top-of-the-ticket running mate, has said that Ghazala Hashemi will be the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.

01:28.52

Sam Shirazi

She is a state senator from the Richmond suburbs, and she will become the first South Asian person to be on a statewide ticket in Virginia. And I think that's pretty notable because that's a growing community in Virginia. it has growing political influence.

01:44.67

Sam Shirazi

There's already a member of Congress from the 10th district, Suhasu Abramiam, who is South Asian. So I think it's kind of important and interesting to note that she will be on the ticket.

01:55.97

Sam Shirazi

All right. So like, how did she win? You know, why was she the one that was able to put together that coalition that was able to get to the magic number? I I had said the magic number was going to be 35%. The magic number was actually much less than 35%.

02:07.94

Sam Shirazi

It looks like the magic number to win for the lieutenant governor primary was about 27 and a half percent, which is just crazy. It's crazy to think how fractured the field was. It's crazy to think there was no ranked choice voting. So the winner was able to get less than 30% of the vote, but Ghazal Hashmi was able to win.

02:24.75

Sam Shirazi

So, you know, I want to kind of just go over how she was able to do it. I think it was pretty straightforward. She did what she needed to do in the Richmond suburbs where she's from. She won Henrico, she won Chesterfield, and then she did pretty well in Northern Virginia. She won Fairfax, she won Arlington pretty narrowly, but she won them.

02:42.01

Sam Shirazi

She actually did surprisingly well, I would say, in Western Virginia, which I don't think a lot of people anticipated. But that also, frankly, ah given how close it was, I mean, that gave her a decent margin out of Western Virginia.

02:55.05

Sam Shirazi

And so it wasn't a huge surprise that Aaron Rouse did well in Hampton roads. I think the reason he did, he wasn't able to win is he just didn't get the margins he needed in Northern Virginia and with black voters in South side, uh, Richmond mayor, LeVar Stoney. I think he did really well in Northern Virginia, a lot better than I expected.

03:15.12

Sam Shirazi

And he did well with black voters in South side of Virginia. I think the issue really for him, which was a killer was he just didn't get the numbers he needed from the Richmond area. Obviously Richmond is his base. Um,

03:26.15

Sam Shirazi

Ghazal Hashmi actually won Richmond City, which is just crazy to think about because Levar Stoney was the mayor of Richmond. I think if he was able to get a better margin out of Richmond, he probably would have won. But at the end of the day, Ghazal Hashmi was able to put together that coalition that was able to win.

03:43.29

Sam Shirazi

So I think it'll be interesting to see her on the ticket with Abigail Spanberger. And we'll talk about the third spot on the ticket with Jay Jones for Attorney General.

03:54.66

Sam Shirazi

And I think given the numbers, he pretty much did what he needed to do in Northern Virginia. That was really the story of the Attorney General race. I think, frankly, he did better than I was expecting in Northern Virginia.

04:08.64

Sam Shirazi

He won Arlington, which I didn't necessarily think he'd do. he got He kept it pretty close in Fairfax, a lot in Prince William. And given the margins he was able to get out of Hampton Roads, and that was enough where it kind of, it was enough for him to overcome the margins that Taylor was able to get in the Richmond suburbs of Henrico. And, you know, it was surprising that J. Jones actually won Chesterfield and Richmond City. And I think so it's kind of the story of J. Jones did well in,

04:39.73

Sam Shirazi

Hampton Roads, he kept Richmond area close and he kept Northern Virginia close and just the margins he was able to get out of Hampton Roads, he was able to win. I will say that I think relative to where she started, Shannon Taylor did pretty well and obviously came up short by just a little bit. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, like that was a very competitive primary and J. Jones was able to pull it out.

05:04.77

Sam Shirazi

So a lot of stuff going on. i did want to talk about two things for November and actually for next year. So for November, the Democratic ticket is set. so you get Abigail Spamberg at the top of the ticket.

05:15.49

Sam Shirazi

You have Ghazal Hashmi in the middle spot. And then you got Jay Jones in the attorney general role. And I think the fact that there is going to be one black person on the ticket,

05:26.99

Sam Shirazi

that will help with turnout of the Black community. And there is also a person from Hampton Roads. So you do see some regional diversity, even though Abigail Spanberger and Ghazal Hashmi are both from the Richmond area.

05:42.68

Sam Shirazi

Jay Jones is also relatively young, certainly for a politician. He is 36 years old and obviously there's been a lot of talk about how the Democratic Party needs to start nominating perhaps more younger candidates and Jay Jones certainly is that and I think will add a little bit of ah youth to the ticket, although even even though Abigail Spanberger, governor nominee, is also relatively young as well for a politician. so I think that's kind an interesting dynamic. I think you'll see an interesting matchup with Lieutenant Governor Winston Mayweather Sears, the Lieutenant Governor candidate for the Republicans, John Reed, and the current Attorney General, Jason Meares. And I think obviously the Republicans also have a diverse ticket. So it's kind of interesting. Both sides have these diverse tickets. They all bring their strengths and it'll be a really interesting general election.

06:29.86

Sam Shirazi

I did want to note one thing that's more online speculation. I frankly don't even know if these people are interested in it. But obviously, Aaron Ross came up short in lieutenant governor's race and Shannon Taylor came up short in the attorney general's race. And happens to be that both of those people live in areas and districts where the Democrats are targeting next year.

06:51.89

Sam Shirazi

with the second congressional district in Hampton Roads, specifically the Virginia Beach area. And then you have the first district, which is Richmond suburbs and goes into the Chesapeake area of Virginia, but that includes Western Henrico, where Shannon Taylor is from. So if either of those people are interested potentially in a congressional run, I do think they both you know obviously came up short, but ran strength, strong campaigns, came up short by just a little bit. And so I think they do have a big name ID, obviously they have a political organization behind them.

07:25.72

Sam Shirazi

And so if they decide to run next year, i think that'll be really interesting to see some of the effects of that. Again, I have no idea if they want to do that. It's very possible they don't run. I don't want to like speculate for them. I'm just saying that's been thrown out there by people online, including you know some national observers of politics and congressional races.

07:45.20

Sam Shirazi

All right. You know, as you can tell, I'm a little bit tired at this point. Election nights are always fun, but they they often go a little bit too long. And it's probably time for me to log off. And, you know, you'll hear this on Wednesday morning. I did want to just kind of give you my initial thoughts. Hopefully they are somewhat coherent. I will try to do one for Saturday morning that is more of a comprehensive look at everything.

08:11.11

Sam Shirazi

probably repeat some of the things I've already said, but also just kind of give some more detail. I did want to go over the House of Delegates because I think there were some important races, both for the battleground districts in November and also some safe seats where the winner is almost certainly going to win the general election. So lot of stuff going on in Virginia.

08:29.23

Sam Shirazi

and think tomorrow when this podcast comes out, this is going to be like the beginning the general election. There's going to strength in November. lot of stuff going on. Really interesting. i I'm glad people are uh, listening to the podcast. I've gotten good pee feedback. hopefully I will continue to be able to do this all the through November and give people my latest updates on what's going on in Virginia.

08:51.37

Sam Shirazi

Really interesting Virginia primary. I think, uh, as the results came in, we were all in suspense for a little bit, trying to figure out who's going to end up on top. And I frankly thought the lieutenant governor's race was going to take a while to call, but it looks like Zahal Hashmi going to be able to pull it out. So anyways, the Virginia elections are always a wild ride. And that's why i made this podcast. There's always something to talk about. It's always super interesting. So I appreciate everyone listening.

09:17.60

Sam Shirazi

This has been Federal Fallout. Please listen to the longer version of the primary recap on Saturday morning and feel free to share this with anyone. this podcast with anyone who's interested in Virginia politics.

09:29.84

Sam Shirazi

But for now, that this is 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 a special bonus episode to give you some of my primary predictions before the virginia primary and i wanted to do this because people asked me and i thought it'd be interesting to kind of give you my take on what's going to happen and Now, honestly, I'm not a huge fan of predictions for various reasons. One, and think it's inherently very difficult to make predictions, especially in a primary.

00:26.65

Sam Shirazi

And two, we're going to find out who's going to win on Tuesday night. So there isn't too much left before we find out who the actual nominees will be. But I do think it's interesting to talk about what might happen on Tuesday and give you a little bit of a rundown about what I think is going to happen.

00:43.17

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, full disclosure, these are just my educated guesses. I don't have some magical ability to to see what's going to happen in the future. There have been times in the past where I've got predictions right and there's been times in the past where I've got predictions wrong.

00:54.95

Sam Shirazi

So definitely take what I have to say with a grain of salt. I will try to kind of share what I'm seeing. My goal is not to discourage anyone from voting for a certain candidate if they want to vote for that candidate. I encourage everyone to vote for who they think is the best candidate, not necessarily who they think is going to win.

01:12.01

Sam Shirazi

i do just want to kind of give you my rundown, but obviously I could be wrong. I'm not trying to say that what I'm about to lay out is going to happen on Tuesday night. It's just what I'm seeing as perhaps the most likely scenarios.

01:26.95

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, before I get into the meat of it, I did want to kind of lay out the different regions in Virginia in a Democratic primary. I'm going to focus on the statewide op offices on the Democratic side for lieutenant governor and attorney general.

01:39.97

Sam Shirazi

Generally, there's three different major regions for a Democratic primary. You have northern Virginia, which is obviously the largest region in Virginia and has the largest population and the largest amount of Democrats.

01:50.65

Sam Shirazi

Then you have a Richmond area, which again has a good chunk of Democrats. And then you have Hampton Roads, which also has a decent amount of Democrats, although

02:01.04

Sam Shirazi

And I don't want to ignore Western Virginia, places like Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Roanoke, certainly a good chunk of Democratic votes there. But the reality is, unless it's very close, I don't think Western Virginia is going to be deciding the Democratic primary.

02:14.95

Sam Shirazi

And as you'll see, there's a lot of regional dynamics based on where the candidates are from. And I think a lot of what's going to be happening on Tuesday night are going to be the regional dynamics. So keep that as in mind as the results start coming in.

02:25.97

Sam Shirazi

So you might see one result coming in from Hampton Roads and one candidate doing really well. That doesn't necessarily mean the candidate's going to win the entire election because They might be the Hampton Roads candidate and you have to wait for Northern Virginia to come in before making a final call on the race. And I'm going to try to be pretty conservative when I do make my call on Tuesday night, unless it's really close and otherwise it will take even longer. But I suspect if it's not super, super close, we'll probably know Tuesday night.

02:53.99

Sam Shirazi

So all that's to say is there's like a lot going on. There's a lot of regional dynamics. I'll talk about some of those regional dynamics and then we can go on and talk about, you know, What might end up happening and who might end up on top. And again, i would say with these primaries, it's very hard for anyone to know for certain who's going to win. So take everything I have to say with a grain of salt. But if you're interested, know keep listening.

03:15.49

Sam Shirazi

All right. So first, we will start with the lieutenant governor's race where there are six Democrats running. It's very competitive. It's hard to know who has the edge right now. but I'm going to lay out what I think I'm seeing and what might happen.

03:27.46

Sam Shirazi

And I did this a couple weeks ago, so I don't want to just repeat what I said on the previous podcast. So i'm going to say a little bit different things that I said than the last time to give you a sense of what's going on, because this podcast is right at the end.

03:38.84

Sam Shirazi

So first we will start off with state Senator Aaron Rouse. He is from Virginia beach. So right off the bat, I think he is going to be doing pretty well in Hampton roads. Now, One thing that I'm looking for on Election Day and as the results are coming in is where is there going to be a turnout surge and is there going to be a turnout surge in Hampton Roads? And the reason I say that is for a couple of reasons. One, I would say so far, African-American areas, including Hampton Roads, have had relatively strong turnout in the early vote.

04:08.67

Sam Shirazi

And then the other thing that I think is interesting, really in the weeds dynamic is Virginia Beach. So obviously, Aaron Rouse is from Virginia Beach. And one thing that I noticed is this time Virginia Beach only had one early voting location and it didn't have any satellite voting locations.

04:23.72

Sam Shirazi

And I imagine the reason for that was they just didn't see the need to have satellite voting locations because ah ah it wasn't going to be like presidential election turnout. But that means that there's only been one place to vote in Virginia Beach in person this entire election early voting cycle.

04:40.52

Sam Shirazi

And if you think about Virginia Beach has a big population, has is big geographically. So if you live on the other end of Virginia Beach, you may not be driving over to vote at your early voting location. and And that means that you're more likely to come out on Election Day. So I do think there's a scenario where there's maybe a bit of a surge in Virginia Beach, particularly if Rouse is able to bring out his supporters.

04:59.95

Sam Shirazi

And that's one of the things I'm going to be looking at. And I think one of the reasons a little bit inherently unpredictable what's going to be happening Tuesday night as the results start coming in. All right, now let's move over to the next candidate who is state senator Ghazala Hashmi.

05:13.89

Sam Shirazi

She comes from the Richmond suburbs, and I imagine she's going to be doing pretty well in the Richmond suburbs. But you cannot win as a statewide candidate just with the Richmond suburbs, and I think she knows that. And that's why she's also been focusing a lot on Northern Virginia and the Northern Virginia suburbs, and particularly among women voters in Northern Virginia. I think there's a path for her.

05:33.19

Sam Shirazi

And again, I'll talk a little bit about the early voting nuance and in the weed details. So I would say inner Northern Virginia, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax has really picked up recently in the early vote at the end.

05:45.06

Sam Shirazi

And there's been a decent turnout surge, which is pretty expected because those parts of Northern Virginia have a lot of politically engaged people. And usually you see pretty high turnout in Arlington, Alexandria, of Fairfax.

05:56.63

Sam Shirazi

I think one thing that's been interesting is Loudoun and Prince William, which I i call more outer Northern Virginia, has had relatively less turnout, I would say. Even compared to other parts of Virginia.

06:08.12

Sam Shirazi

And I don't know why that is I mean, it's possible people are just waiting for election day. And one thing to keep in mind with those areas, in terms of for Hashmi specifically, those areas, Loudoun in particular, has a decent South Asian community.

06:21.77

Sam Shirazi

And so if she's able to connect with South south Asian voters, that's another block of voters that she might be able to to have on her side as the election results start coming in. So again, there might be this turnout surge in outer Northern Virginia and Loudoun and Prince William. For whatever reason, people might not have wanted to go early vote because maybe the early voting locations were not super close to them because those are big counties.

06:44.50

Sam Shirazi

All right. So the next candidate is former Richmond mayor, LeVar Stoney.

06:48.92

Sam Shirazi

I think he's going to be expecting to do pretty well in Richmond city. The wild card again is Northern Virginia. And if you think about it, you know, who is competing for the Northern Virginia votes?

06:59.86

Sam Shirazi

All the candidates. But I do think Stoney, his angle is he has the backing of former Governor Terry McAuliffe. And if you see some of those more moderate suburban voters,

07:12.24

Sam Shirazi

who are looking for their candidate, who they're going to back. And if they end up choosing Stoney because of the McAuliffe endorsement or because of you know his time with the Democratic Party, then it's possible that Stoney starts to break through in Northern Virginia, particularly somewhere like Fairfax, where Terry McAuliffe is from and has you know been campaigning for Stoney. If he's able to break through in Fairfax, a lot of votes in Fairfax, and if he becomes kind of the Northern Virginia candidate, you can kind of see him putting this together, this coalition of know black voters, Richmond voters, ah voters from Northern Virginia, and then he might be able to to break through and and kind of get enough votes where he's going to end up on top.

07:50.10

Sam Shirazi

All right. Next candidate is Prince William County School Board Chair Barbara Lateef. As I mentioned, Prince William County has not necessarily turned out as much as other parts of Virginia yet. But again, if that changes on Election Day, there's a huge surge of turnout in Prince William County.

08:04.48

Sam Shirazi

That should help Lateef. He's also come out really strongly against the Fairfax Casino. And if a lot of voters in Fairfax, if their number one issue is the Fairfax Casino, I think, again, you'll be seeing him doing well. And that could get him a lot of votes because Obviously, Fairfax County is the biggest county in Virginia.

08:22.29

Sam Shirazi

mean, I think the challenge for him is the rest of his statewide numbers are a little bit unknown. And i don't know how much support he's going to get in in Richmond area or Hampton Roads. But in theory, if he can really run up the score in Northern Virginia, then there could be this path for Lateef in Northern Virginia. Then there could be this path where Lateef gets enough votes out of Northern Virginia.

08:44.98

Sam Shirazi

Okay. And finally, the last two candidates. Again, i think I've talked about this in the past podcast. I think they just have a harder time breaking through when you have these other candidates running. There's former DOJ prosecutor, Victor Salgado. I think he'll do relatively well in Northern Virginia, relatively well with Hispanic voters. But again, I don't know if that's enough to get the votes he needs.

09:04.63

Sam Shirazi

And then you have former labor official, Alex Bastani. I think he will be doing... you know, he'll relatively well with more progressive voters. Again, I don't know how many of them are actually going to come out and what percentage of the primary that's going to be. So I just, it's, it's hard to see the him putting together the coalition he needs.

09:21.29

Sam Shirazi

All right. So as you can see, a lot of different candidates, a lot of different paths to winning It's really and impossible to know which one is going to put together that coalition that's going to be able to get them to the number they need to win. i think it really depends who shows up on election day. And I can't model that. I can't predict that, particularly in a primary, there's really no way of knowing.

09:42.22

Sam Shirazi

I did want to lay out two scenarios. And I will say I've kind of copped out of giving a final prediction with one candidate winning this primary. I'll give you my overall thoughts on what's going to be happening.

09:53.43

Sam Shirazi

I think there's one scenario where there's this turnout surge in Hampton Roads and specifically Virginia Beach because of the satellite voting location issue. And then you see Rouse doing better with black voters and then he gets what he needs in Northern Virginia. And then you can see a scenario where Rouse ends up on top. He puts together that coalition.

10:12.19

Sam Shirazi

that he's able to get to kind of the magic number of 35%. So I would say if there's kind of a surge in turnout in Hampton Roads, then I would rate the race basically tilt-rouse. All right, but let's talk about a different scenario. And that's where we see a Northern Virginia surge.

10:27.10

Sam Shirazi

And for example, if Loudon and Prince William really start coming out in big numbers, and then have

10:32.72

Sam Shirazi

And then Hashmi is able to break through in Northern Virginia, for example, with women voters or with South Asian voters. And she's just really doing better with that demographic and is able to kind of become the Northern Virginia candidate. And then she has the Richmond suburbs.

10:47.22

Sam Shirazi

You would think, okay, that should... give her a path where she might be able to win. And, you know, there's kind of maybe this scenario where Rouse and Stoney are maybe splitting some of the black vote and she's connecting more with the suburban voters, then you could see a scenario where she ends up on top. And so i would say if there is this Northern Virginia surge and if it if it benefits Hashmi, then I would rate the race as maybe Tilt Hashmi.

11:14.88

Sam Shirazi

You know, I would say s Stoney's path is somewhat similar in that it he could be if he becomes a Northern Virginia candidate and then maybe if he does better with black voters, then he would have a path. I think the challenge he has is he doesn't have the natural you know connection where Hashmi has a base with women voters that, you know you know, a certain amount of the voters are just going to back Hashmi because.

11:36.52

Sam Shirazi

She's the only woman in the race, and that tends to help women candidates. think the issue Stoney has is he's competing with both Hashmi and Rouse. And so with Rouse, he's competing for the black voters. And then with Hashmi, he's competing for suburban voters.

11:51.51

Sam Shirazi

And there's a scenario where he just doesn't necessarily get the numbers he needs with either community. And then he ends up not winning the race. So I'm not saying that's going to happen. I think that's one of the scenarios that could happen. Now, in theory, if he again, if he does better with black voters, he does better with suburban voters, then you can see him putting together this coalition where he ends up on top.

12:10.57

Sam Shirazi

But I would say if I had to pick, gun to my head, the top two, Right now competing on Tuesday night are going to be between Rouse and Hashmi. Again, I could be wrong about that.

12:21.35

Sam Shirazi

I think Stoney definitely has a chance, but I'm just you know trying to lay out what i'm I'm seeing. And that's not to say that I don't think Stoney can win. It's just if I had to pick, that's kind of what I'm seeing right now.

12:34.10

Sam Shirazi

And for Lateef, it's kind of a ah ah similar story where, um know, in theory, I could see him getting the margins he needs in Northern Virginia to pull it off. I just think, you know, the question mark is what are his votes going to look like in Richmond and Hampton Roads? And I just don't know if he's able to get those numbers in the other parts of Virginia. But obviously, if he does get really high margins in Northern Virginia, then that could be enough for him.

12:55.94

Sam Shirazi

And then the other two candidates, you know, Salgado and Bastani, as I talked about, I think it's harder for them to put together a coalition to win. So all that's to say is like, I typically don't like to do these cop out type predictions. I typically like to pick someone.

13:10.47

Sam Shirazi

If I could, I probably would. i would just say this race is just really, really close. And we just don't know who's going to show up on election day. And for that reason, I actually think that's going to drive turnout. And there's going to be probably more turnout on election day because...

13:23.97

Sam Shirazi

all the candidates are working out to to get their voters. They're all voting, focusing on their different voting bases. And I think it's going to be really interesting. I'm really curious what overall turnout is going to be. I think that's going to be one of the stories after the primary. And obviously I'll talk about that once we have the final turnout number, but really interesting LG race. I think it's going to be really fascinating to see what the results are going to be.

14:03.31

Sam Shirazi

All right, now let's move on to attorney general, which in some ways is very is much simpler because we only have two candidates. However, I do think there's a similar Hampton Roads versus Northern Virginia dynamic.

14:14.42

Sam Shirazi

So in terms of the attorney general race, I've talked about this in the past. think the thing that changed recently in the last two weeks or so has been the big donations that Shannon Taylor has been getting from Dominion.

14:27.72

Sam Shirazi

Last I checked, the total number that Shannon Taylor has gotten from Dominion this entire primary cycle has been $800,000, I think that any that any primary that Dominion's gotten into.

14:40.08

Sam Shirazi

I will say Jay Jones has been getting support from Clean Virginia. So he's getting the Clean Virginia money and Shannon Taylor is getting the Dominion Energy money. That's leading to a lot of ads on both sides, a lot of focus on Northern Virginia, because I think that's where the race is going to be decided.

14:54.01

Sam Shirazi

And again, I think it's a similar dynamic. Is there going to be a surge in Hampton Roads and or is there going to be a surge in Northern Virginia? So if there's a surge in Hampton Roads, I think that definitely benefits Jay Jones.

15:05.26

Sam Shirazi

His base is in Norfolk. I think he's going to a good margin out of Norfolk. I think he's going to do well generally in Hampton Roads. And so if if we're seeing more voters turning out in Hampton Roads, you know, it's going to be pretty easy for Jay Jones to put together a coalition where he gets good margin from Hampton Roads, he gets a good margin with black voters, and then he keeps it pretty competitive in Northern Virginia, and then he's able to win.

15:28.14

Sam Shirazi

And I think the advantage that Jay Jones has compared to the lieutenant governor race is he's the only black candidate in the race. And so it it isn't going to be split like it is in the LG race between Rouse and Stoney. And so I think for all those reasons, I think he has the easier path to victory. And I do think if there is this more Hampton Roads surge scenario, then I would rate Jones as a favorite in that scenario.

15:52.41

Sam Shirazi

However, i think there's a similar dynamic if there is this surge of voters in Northern Virginia, particularly if there's a lot of women coming out in Northern Virginia and Shannon Taylor is able to break through with the women voters and she's able to use the money that she's been able to get from Dominion to reach those voters, you can see a scenario where she kind of breaks through, she becomes the Northern Virginia candidate and she's able to win.

16:14.100

Sam Shirazi

It's a little bit what happened, I would say, in 2021 where Mark Herring got really big margins in Northern Virginia. I think the challenge for Shannon Taylor is like, i don't know if she's going to be able to match the Mark Herring margins in Northern Virginia or even really get close to them because Mark Herring was from Northern Virginia.

16:31.96

Sam Shirazi

Shannon Taylor is from Richmond. I think she'll do well in the Richmond suburbs, but I just don't know if she'll be able to be getting the numbers she needs in Northern Virginia, given the fact that Jay Jones is going to get a good amount of vote votes out of Hampton Roads. So, you know,

16:46.68

Sam Shirazi

Because this is a one-on-one race, I feel like I have to pick a candidate and I can't do some sort of cop-out thing like I did in the LG race. So you know my gut is telling me just given the the easier path that Jay Jones has, he even if there is some sort of Northern Virginia surge, I still think he would be the favorite, although it'd be kind of slight at that point.

17:07.45

Sam Shirazi

I do think there is a scenario where Shannon Taylor can win, so I don't want to discount that possibility. But I did want to kind of pick. And if if there's kind of a, if I had to pick, I would say Jay Jones should win the attorney general race.

17:19.98

Sam Shirazi

And again, I felt like a one-on-one race, I have to pick someone. I think in the LG race, because there were six candidates, I felt a little bit more comfortable copping out and not giving one prediction because I think it's just very difficult to make a prediction when there's a six way race.

17:36.15

Sam Shirazi

All right, now let's move on to the House of Delegates. And i don't want to go through race by race because I think House of Delegates races just inherently are very hard to predict what's going to happen, especially if it's not a super high profile House of Delegates race. So I don't know I'll give you my whole list of predictions for the House of Delegates.

17:55.15

Sam Shirazi

I will say, you know, there are three incumbents facing primaries, two on the Democratic side, one on the Republican side. you know I could be wrong, but in my opinion, I don't see any of the incumbents this year who are facing primaries lose in the Virginia House of Delegates.

18:10.03

Sam Shirazi

Just because I think it's going to be interesting to talk about the battleground districts, I will go through each battleground district that faces a primary and talk about who I think will end up on top. So first, I will start with off with the Democrats, and I will start off with House District 57 in the Richmond suburbs.

18:25.94

Sam Shirazi

I've talked about this district before. This is the one that I think is most likely to flip. So there are two Democrats running. And in my opinion, given just the endorsements and the money she's been able to raise, I think May Navar is likely to be the Democratic nominee in this district, which will set up a competitive race with the Republican David Owen.

18:44.29

Sam Shirazi

And I think if the Democrats are having a good night, this is probably going to be the first seat that will flip for the Democrats in November. So we'll see how that race shapes up. I will move over to House District 73, also in the Richmond suburbs. And this is another one where I feel pretty comfortable that I think the Democratic nominee is going to be Leslie Mehta.

19:03.48

Sam Shirazi

And the reason I say that is she's gotten a lot of the endorsements. She was the and Democratic nominee in the first House District in 2020. So I just think there's a lot of dynamics where it makes sense that she would be able to win that primary.

19:15.92

Sam Shirazi

And while this one is a was only a plus one Harris district in 2024. I do think the Democrats, if they're having a good night in the suburbs in November, this is a type of seat that could flip.

19:27.26

Sam Shirazi

So we'll see an interesting race between, likely we'll see it between Leslie Mehta and the Republican incumbent Mark Early. All right, one more seat in the Richmond suburbs, and that's House District 75, where the current incumbent is Republican Kerry Conyer.

19:43.65

Sam Shirazi

I think this is kind of an interesting primary because there's three three people running. um I had to pick, I would say there's a slight advantage to Lindsey Daughtry just because she's raised more money.

19:54.77

Sam Shirazi

i will say I think there's a chance that Stephen Miller Pitts might also be able to win because the district has a decent black population. And I think if he's able to bring out those voters, he might be able to be the nominee.

20:05.55

Sam Shirazi

But if I had to pick, I'd say right now, maybe Lindsey Daughtry is a little bit favored, just given the fundraising she was able to do. So that's where I'm seeing that race. And I think, again, very competitive race in November because Harris won that seat by six points.

20:20.47

Sam Shirazi

All right. One more Democratic primary in a battleground district. And this is in House District 89 in the Suffolk-Chesapeake area. The incumbent Republican has retired.

20:31.41

Sam Shirazi

And this is roughly a plus three Harris seat from 2024. And I think there's a decent chance that Karen Carnegie will be the Democratic nominee in this district, just given the amount of money that she's been able to raise. So that'll be interesting to see if she's able to flip this seat now that it's open.

20:48.49

Sam Shirazi

All right, might as well talk about the 89th district on the Republican side because this is an open district. So there will also be a Republican primary on election night. And I would say that in this district,

21:03.62

Sam Shirazi

Mike Lamine would be the favorite to be the Republican nominee, just given the amount of money he's raised. And I think he has the endorsement of the current delegate, Baxter Ennis. So if I had to guess, I'm guessing we are going to be seeing a Lamine versus Carnegie matchup in November in this district.

21:20.10

Sam Shirazi

All right. Two more battleground districts with Republican primaries. So first, I will talk about the 21st House district. This is in western Prince William County. Current incumbent is Democrat Josh Thomas.

21:31.40

Sam Shirazi

There are three Republicans running to face him. Honestly, this is probably one of the hardest primaries to pick because, frankly, none of the campaigns has raised a lot of money. None of them have really decided. distinguished themselves.

21:42.63

Sam Shirazi

So I really don't know who's going to pick. If I had to pick a name out of a hat, basically, I am going to go with Gregory Lee Gorham. I, that's basically just I think he might be a little bit more well-known in the district, but honestly, it's really hard to know who's going to win that seat, uh, for the primary.

22:01.26

Sam Shirazi

Whoever wins will end up facing Josh Thomas. I think the Republicans have their work cut out for them because Josh Thomas has a big, war chest right now and none of the Republicans have raised much money, although obviously that can change after the primary. So another race to look out for in November.

22:35.92

Sam Shirazi

All right. And actually, I'll do two more primaries and then I'll wrap it up. And these are in open seats that are safe Republican seats. So I think it's important to talk about the primary and who I think might win because the winner is likely going to be the next delegate because these are very red seats.

22:52.37

Sam Shirazi

All right. And my pick for who's going to win is Adam Tolbert. And that's mainly because he has raised more money and he's gotten the endorsement of Governor Glenn Youngkin, which you would think in a Republican primary should help him. So I'm going to go without Adam Tolbert for winning this nomination. And if he does win the nomination, he's almost certainly going to be the next delegate from this district.

23:12.12

Sam Shirazi

All right, one more Republican district, this is House District 62 current incumbent Nick Friedus is retiring and my pick for winning the primary. is going to be Karen Hamilton, the main reason I picked her is because she gets the endorsement from Nick Friedus so you would think that that would help, although.

23:29.22

Sam Shirazi

I also think it's possible that Clay Jackson might pull off the upset, but I'm going to go with Karen Hamilton. And again, take all this with a super grain of salt because House of Delegates primaries are even more difficult to predict in some some cases. Some cases they're pretty easy to predict, but I think in some other instances, it's very hard to predict House of Delegates primaries. So I just did that more to kind of talk about the fact that there are House of Delegates primaries and Hopefully people find it interesting to when I also talk about the House Delegates primaries.

23:57.76

Sam Shirazi

However, as I mentioned, I think the vast majority attention on primary day will be on the statewide races for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General. i hope ah ah you found this interesting to go over some certain scenarios and what might be happening on the Democratic primary.

24:13.26

Sam Shirazi

Again, i want to caveat everything, like take everything I say with a grain of salt. I could be wrong. I do think one thing I find annoying about pundits is that they typically only highlight the times they are right and they don't highlight the times they are wrong.

24:27.38

Sam Shirazi

And i will give you some full disclosure. i think I've had ah more success predicting Virginia stuff than federal stuff. So I'll give you my history or my recent history. So in 2023, I was able to predict that the Democrats were going to win the state Senate and that were at least going to tie in the House of Delegates, if not get a majority. And that's what ended up happening.

24:48.44

Sam Shirazi

Now, I will give a shout out to Chaz Nuttycomb. He actually predicted every single House race in that in the House of Delegates and in the state Senate. So he got all 140 seats right. I did not go that far and make predictions in individual races. I made kind of chamber predictions.

25:04.55

Sam Shirazi

So definitely Chaz Nadecombe gets a shout out for 2023 because he was correct in the predictions. 2024, I was correct in the Virginia primaries for the congressional seats. I got all the congressional primaries correct in 2024.

25:18.66

Sam Shirazi

However, in full disclosure, I did get the 2024 general election wrong. Nationally, I did get the congressional races and the Senate seat in Virginia correct in 2024. in terms of those races.

25:30.51

Sam Shirazi

However, I did get the 2024 national predictions wrong. And that kind of taught me that maybe I should say that national politics um and my predictions are maybe a little bit better in Virginia elections as opposed to national politics.

25:42.74

Sam Shirazi

However, i so I lay all that out there to say that I've had a mixed record. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. I think it's important for pundits to be honest and transparent about when they get things right, they get things wrong.

25:53.74

Sam Shirazi

These races very much I could get wrong. I think especially with the statewide Democratic primaries, there's a level of volatility that's really inherently unpredictable. Who's going to show up on election day is very unpredictable.

26:06.58

Sam Shirazi

There is no way for me to make any sort of prediction with any sort of sense of confidence about who's going to be winning. But I did want to lay out different scenarios and different paths people have to victory.

26:17.48

Sam Shirazi

And, know, hopefully people found it interesting instead of bugging me about who who they think, who who I think is going to and win. They can listen to this podcast. And I appreciate everyone.

26:28.61

Sam Shirazi

joining and listening. um I'll obviously have more coverage of the primary once the results come in. And then once we get through the primary, I mean, that's really general election. So we've been focused on the primary a lot.

26:39.53

Sam Shirazi

Then we will get to the general election and it's going to be a sprint to the general election, a little over four months until we get till November. And there's going to be a lot going on. and I will cover it all. And I think it's going to be super interesting. So appreciate everyone listening to this podcast. Hopefully if you enjoy it, feel free to write a review it it helps people learn about the podcast. And obviously if you think people are interested in what's going on this Tuesday in Virginia, feel free to share this podcast with anyone who you think is interested, but otherwise I will be seeing you Tuesday night as I post the results as they come in. And then I will probably do a another podcast for you.

27:18.53

Sam Shirazi

for Wednesday morning just to kind of give everyone an update on how everything turned out. So should be an exciting night and make sure you you vote if you haven't already and you are able to vote in Virginia. And I will join you next time for a federal fallout.

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

Hi everyone, I am Sam Shirazi and this is federal fallout the 2025 Virginia elections, this is a special bonus episode looking at potential foreign policy fallout in the Virginia elections and i'm going to be talking more so about the historical fallout and three Virginia elections in 2001. Sam Shirazi, 2005 2021 and obviously the reason i'm bringing this up is because of the conflict right now between Israel and Iran.

00:24.59

Sam Shirazi

And I just wanted to kind of touch base about that and why it might influence the Virginia elections. I did want to note that obviously Tuesday is the Democratic primary. you got to hear from Chaz about some of his insights about what's going to be happening on Tuesday. I'm hoping Monday morning I will be releasing my final predictions for the Tuesday primary. thanks.

00:44.78

Sam Shirazi

ah You'll have to wait a little bit longer to get my input on that. But I did want to talk about this issue right now that's going on ah in the Middle East because obviously it's possible things die down and it doesn't end up being that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things and no one will really remember in November. It's also possible that it becomes a prolonged conflict that ah perhaps drags in the United States. Obviously, the immediate impact has been a spike in oil prices. So there's also a risk of long term rises in oil prices.

01:16.67

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, one of the things that hurt President Biden during his term was the spike in oil prices and the rise in in gas prices because of the Ukraine war. And it's possible that would happen again ah with this current conflict.

01:30.25

Sam Shirazi

And I did want to note that there are um people in Virginia who have family and friends both in Iran and Israel, and obviously it's a difficult time for those individuals. um And I just wanted to talk about this issue because i think a lot of times with the Virginia elections, we think of them as you know state elections, just domestic policy. But I do think there have been those three instances where foreign policy has gotten into the Virginia elections. And I wanted to kind of talk about that from a historical perspective.

01:56.10

Sam Shirazi

And then talk about, you know, perhaps what would happen this year. So in terms of the historical perspective, I think the first really in modern history, big election where foreign policy influenced the Virginia elections was in 2001. And it's pretty crazy to think about it now. But obviously, there was the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, which were Awful. And, you know, most people think of the Twin Towers in New York, but the Pentagon was also hit in Arlington, Virginia, and that is in Virginia.

02:25.64

Sam Shirazi

a lot of people don't think of Virginia as being attacked on 9-11, but ah there was a... terrorist attack in Virginia on 9-11 and tragic tragically people lost their lives.

02:36.20

Sam Shirazi

So, you know, there was a direct big impact to Virginia from those terrorist attacks. And then obviously the next month, the the U.S. began ah military operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban.

02:47.92

Sam Shirazi

And that was all going on while the Virginia elections were going to happen in early November 2001. And, you know, it was a little bit before my time. I don't quite remember everything related to the Virginia elections. I remember 9-11, but I don't remember um its impact on the Virginia elections.

03:03.79

Sam Shirazi

And I looked at some old articles and basically it seemed like the campaign was paused for a while because obviously the country was going through a lot and people were processing it and they weren't really super tuned into a Virginia state election. And I do think it kind of Lowered the temperature of the election. um It's a little bit hard to imagine now, but there was a time after nine eleven immediately after 9-11, where Americans really came together and there wasn't this huge partisanship that we see today.

03:29.77

Sam Shirazi

And Americans were a lot more united. So I think there was a sense that neither campaign really wanted to attack each other. And, you know, i think while all that was going on in the background, it's kind of amazing that it didn't have a bigger impact on the election. And I think both sides just kind of wanted to focus on more of the domestic issues and not really bring nine eleven into the Virginia elections, even though it had happened, you know, and it was just fresh in everyone's mind. And if you were around after 9-11, obviously that was basically the only thing people were thinking about.

04:02.56

Sam Shirazi

And so, yeah. It was kind of an amazing thing that, you know less than two months after that, ah Virginia had an election. It's also kind of amazing that Mark Warner was able to win that election, considering ah how popular The Republican president, George W. Bush, was at the time because of the aftermath of 9-11 and a rally around the flag kind of feeling in the country. So that was the first Virginia elections where I think there was a big impact by foreign policy. But it's kind of ironic that it mainly just kind of slowed things down and made the campaign a little less intense and and kind of put it in the back burner, which.

04:35.73

Sam Shirazi

I guess ultimately helped Mark Warner because it was more focused on some of these domestic issues and he was able to win, even though the Republican president at that time was very popular. And so that's kind of interesting because usually you think the the president is not popular and that's why the party out of the White House does well in Virginia elections. But there you had a Virginia election where the party in the White House at the time was very popular and yet Mark Warner was still able to win.

05:01.11

Sam Shirazi

All right. Now let's move on four years to 2005 when George W. Bush was no longer popular, even though he was reelected. I talked about this in a previous episode.

05:11.30

Sam Shirazi

pause. In 2005, the impacts of the Iraq war were really starting to be felt, both in terms of the cost of the war, the number of troops that were dying. And it was one of those things where people were seeing the images every night, troops dying in Iraq, and it wasn't going well. And obviously, Virginia is very impacted by

05:31.29

Sam Shirazi

The military, it's a military dependent state. People knew people their friends and family were being sent over to Iraq, and sometimes they were being sent on multiple tours and it was creating a strain on the military. And while I think initially the war was supported by most Americans, I think by the time 2005,

05:50.07

Sam Shirazi

started to um happen, the war was a lot less popular. And I think ah Americans felt that they were being trapped in you know a civil war in Iraq, where a lot of people weren't even sure why we were there anymore.

06:03.63

Sam Shirazi

And so I think all of that was in the backdrop. I don't think explicitly the election was necessarily about the Iraq war because it was a Virginia local state election. But I think it, one, energizes a lot of Democrats and Democratic activists to get involved in that election.

06:17.52

Sam Shirazi

And certainly it really dragged down George W. Bush's approval ratings to the point that um he came and campaigned late in that election and it didn't really help the Republicans. And if anything, it backfired on the Republicans. So I thought it was interesting that you had this election where it wasn't.

06:33.86

Sam Shirazi

purely a referendum on Iraq, but it it was in the background. And I think that helped the Democrats and that helped him came win in 2005 with that election and being able to ah follow more corner into the governor's mansion.

06:47.09

Sam Shirazi

All right, so um I would say the next few Virginia elections weren't really heavily influenced by foreign policy, but we can fast forward to 2021 where there was the withdrawal from Afghanistan that happened in the summer of 2021.

07:00.61

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, while I feel like most Americans probably supported leaving Afghanistan, The way that it happened and the chaotic nature of it and the fact that um some U.S. troops were killed and there were images that were difficult to watch of Afghans trying to cling on to the U.S. planes while they were leaving. I think that all created a obviously a negative impression on the American people about the way President Biden was handling the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

07:26.76

Sam Shirazi

um I think Virginia being a military heavy state, a lot of people may have served in Afghanistan. I think seeing the way that it ended was difficult for many people. And, you know, at the end of the day, President Biden was in office, and I think he took the blame for the way it it was handled, even though, as I mentioned, I think most people wanted to leave Afghanistan. They didn't want to necessarily see it end like that. And the fact that Taliban were able to take over Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrew.

07:54.38

Sam Shirazi

And, i you know, kind of reading between the lines, you you hear from some of the McAuliffe campaign people that, you know, it was pretty competitive ah before the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But then after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, I think that's when things really went south for the McAuliffe campaign. And not to say that that was everything and that's the reason they lost. I mean, there were other issues. There was COVID, there was a schools issue. um But I think in the background, there was that ah withdrawal from Afghanistan that led to kind of a pretty sharp decline in President Biden's approval ratings. And it never really approved, his approval never really rebounded after it went down after the um withdrawal from Afghanistan. So I think all that's to say is, ah you know, it was one of the many factors, maybe one of the straws that broke the camel's back in 2021, where most people had thought at the beginning year, the Democrats were going to win Virginia because President Biden had won it and by 10 points in 2020.

08:48.18

Sam Shirazi

And then by the end of um 2021, Glenn Youngkin was able to win Virginia by two points because of all these factors and it was this perfect storm. And I do think one of the perfect storms was Afghanistan because if you look at the vote in Hampton Roads, which is a very military dependent area, ah the Democrats just generally didn't do well in Hampton Roads in 2021. And I think that was part of the reason.

09:10.92

Sam Shirazi

All right. And, you know, I don't want to speculate too much right now because what's going on between Israel and Iran is obviously very fluid. There's a lot of ways it could end. um You know, there was a few weeks ago where it looked like maybe ah India and Pakistan were about to go to war, but that seemed to have been averted.

09:27.73

Sam Shirazi

So you never really know, especially in something as unpredictable as this. But, um you know, I will say that it's possible this gets dragged on and by November there there could still be things going on um related to this conflict and that might influence American politics. Obviously, America could get um dragged into the war if um it feels like it needs to be defending Israel and needs to um you deploy troops and and other resources to the Middle East.

09:55.79

Sam Shirazi

And I think it's just one of those things where foreign policy is very unpredictable. And it often has these impacts in elections in a way that you just can't control for other like other things where are a little bit more predictable.

10:09.64

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, obviously um one of the things that hurt Democrats last year was um the war in Gaza. And, you know, that happened in October 2023. But um the effects were still felt a year after that in November 2024. And i think that's one of the reasons. Obviously, there were many reasons why the Democrats lost in 2024. But I do think the war in Gaza was one of them.

10:29.06

Sam Shirazi

So while, yes, we're in the middle of June, um it's possible by the November, no one remembers this. It's also possible these things tend to drag on. Obviously, the Ukraine war started in 2022. It's still going on.

10:40.49

Sam Shirazi

um You know, once these wars start, sometimes they're hard to end. And the longer a war drags on, but usually the worse it is for the party in the White House because people blame the president when a conflict is not resolved.

10:53.26

Sam Shirazi

So I'm not saying that's going to happen this time. i do think there's a possibility. um you know i don't imagine this election is going to be a referendum on what's going on necessarily in the Middle East. But if you think about...

11:06.08

Sam Shirazi

the potential rise in in oil prices, and you think about some of the bigger implications on the economy, it's possible, it's part of the overall impression about what's going on in DC. And you know part of what President Trump ran on in 2024 was this promise to bring back um stability and and order and strength. And you know he criticized President Biden for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

11:29.52

Sam Shirazi

And if people don't really feel like the world's getting more orderly and things are more peaceful, um it's possible Republicans will pay the price because um they campaigned on that. And the Democrats certainly didn't benefit from the fact that there were wars going on in 2024. And um so we'll we'll just have to wait and see. I don't want to dwell on it too much. I do think...

11:50.39

Sam Shirazi

The historical analogies are kind of interesting to think about when foreign policy fell into the Virginia elections. um I kind of wanted to do this episode to talk about something a little bit different because next few days are going to be really about the primaries, um even though all this other stuff is going on in the world. So keep your eye keep keep an eye out. I do want to release a podcast right before the primary about the Virginia elections.

12:15.57

Sam Shirazi

ah primary and ah about my predictions. I think it's going to be a little bit hard to make any sort of final calls, but I'll try my best to come up with something. And so hopefully you listen to that. I hope you found the ah podcast with Chaz interesting to hear from his perspective.

12:30.80

Sam Shirazi

And I appreciate everyone listening. um you know There's going to be a lot of twists and turns in this campaign. It's still you know crazy to think that we're over four months, four and a half months away from the election. a lot of things can still happen. So please follow along. I've gotten good feedback and i appreciate everyone who's been listening and sharing the podcast and writing reviews and feel free to keep doing that if you enjoy the podcast. But I will join you soon with my primary predictions.

12:59.14

Sam Shirazi

And this has been Federal Fallout and I hope everyone has good weekend and then I'll see you on Monday.

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 have our first return guest with Chaz Nadecombe.

00:11.51

Sam Shirazi

Chaz, thanks again for coming back.

00:13.29

Chaz Nuttycombe

Hey, Sam. It's so good to be back. Thanks for having me on.

00:16.38

Sam Shirazi

Yeah. So before we turn to Virginia and the primaries on Tuesday, I did want to talk a little bit about State Navigate. I've been watching what you guys have been doing. Really cool stuff, including the map you have of all the House of Delegates districts this year in Virginia. So did you want to talk a little bit about what State Navigate is and and how people can find out more about the elections this year in Virginia?

00:38.17

Chaz Nuttycombe

State Navigate is a 501c3 nonpartisan nonprofit. So all donations are tax deductible. We don't have a dog in the fight. You know, we just like data.

00:48.81

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, that's precinct data. That's ideology data. We don't have that out for Virginia yet. just launched it in South Carolina for calculating the ideology of the legislators using W nominate, which has been used for Congress for 35 years.

01:03.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

we are getting into, um, trying trying to conduct polling, public polling for, you know, races for governor and and house of delegates districts. You know, there's no such thing as say, let's say of district public polling, right?

01:15.88

Chaz Nuttycombe

it's all like, oh, whether you get your hands on an internal or something, uh, We aggregate news. We forecast elections. We show the demographics of districts. We list in one nice, easy table the every donation received and every expenditure made by candidates campaigns.

01:36.94

Chaz Nuttycombe

and that's just kind of the beginning of what we have so far. And we got more coming down the pipeline. you know, we're, uh, starting on list of committees, list of legislators, list of bills, what bills have legislators sponsored and co-sponsored, right.

01:52.08

Chaz Nuttycombe

that's kind of the next phase of development. And I'm hoping that we're going to get it done in a couple of weeks, end of July, You know, i think this is the biggest brunt of the of the site.

02:03.88

Chaz Nuttycombe

after that, you know, we may just kind of juggle around see what states we can get out. We're trying to open up and at least half of the states this year. I think at most we would get to 38.

02:14.01

Chaz Nuttycombe

are currently up in Virginia and South Carolina. After that is Utah. So, yeah. And I am the ah president of the organization.

02:23.85

Sam Shirazi

Well, congrats on getting that up and running, and I definitely recommend everyone go check out State Navigate to learn more about state legislatures, including in Virginia this year. So speaking of Virginia, let's turn to the primaries that are coming up on Tuesday. so There's a there's a decent amount of House Delegates primaries, but I did want to focus more on the statewide races for the Democrats, because I think that's where most of the attention is going to be.

02:52.31

Sam Shirazi

First in the lieutenant governor's race for the Democrats, there's six Democrats running. And I think it's pretty hard to get a sense of who's up, who's down. and My sense is it's pretty competitive and may not find out who's going to win until later in the night on Tuesday, depending how close it is.

03:11.09

Sam Shirazi

So, Chaz, can you kind of give us your sense of what's going on in the lieutenant governor primary for the Democrats?

03:16.66

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah. So, you know, we've been kind of looking at just early vote and turnout. Last week was a pretty good week for the Stoney campaign terms of Richmond City, especially the African-American parts of the city in the East End and North and and South, which is Stoney's base in the Richmond area.

03:37.54

Chaz Nuttycombe

has been kind of catching up, it's still, when we were looking at votes as of Tuesday, was still falling behind Chesterfield and Henrico.

03:48.18

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think that, you know, I mean, Stoney does have a lot of money, but um I would be kind of surprised if he won. I wouldn't say it's impossible. I would say this is largely now between, I, if I had to pick, I would say it's largely now between Hashmi and, uh, uh, Rouse.

04:09.16

Chaz Nuttycombe

So I think it's probably going to be one of them too. You know, maybe Stoney is going to do well or do more importantly, do better with black voters and Rouse does.

04:22.31

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. That would be one of those things for, for a path to victory. You know, Rouse has come in and, uh the what like a week uh until the campaign or just under a week and you know is going after stony for the whole water crisis thing and so they're swinging at each other hashmi hasn't really taken any swings or thrown any you know and i would think that hashmi is going to win henrico and chesterfield and

04:50.98

Chaz Nuttycombe

Powhatan, Hanover, Goochland, you know, those, those counties in the suburbs and exurbs. think the question is, you know, like how does Southside go for Stoney and Rouse?

05:06.33

Chaz Nuttycombe

Cause they're probably going to come in first and second there, i would think. I'm also interested in, you know, just like, the West, I think, and the West isn't going to have that many votes, but you know, you still have like Roanoke city and, and Blacksburg and Radford and, you know, just some rural votes out there.

05:24.36

Chaz Nuttycombe

I, I don't think anybody knows who's really going to place for us with those voters. I'm going to guess Rouse. but it's, it's, there's no data to this, right? Like everybody's, everybody's saying, you know, both publicly and privately, Oh, we're up, we're up, we're up, you know, like everybody's trying to, and that's the job of the campaign.

05:43.47

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, if you're you're you're running a campaign or you're working on it, you you want to say we are going to win We are going to win. Right. You don't want to demotivate your voters or people will think that you don't have a shot at the nomination. Then they won't vote for you.

05:57.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, yeah. And then, you know, when it comes to Hampton Roads, Rouse is going to dominate there. I think the the question is Nova. I think Hashmi is going to do well in um and.

06:08.16

Chaz Nuttycombe

Like I would say that, ah you know, I think that's the question of just how Nova goes. But like Nova has such a lower turnout rate compared to its 2021 votes.

06:22.37

Chaz Nuttycombe

the Richmond area is just skyrocketing in terms of looking at its 2021 vote. Hanton roads is also up, just South side and Richmond ah Metro, mar Metro area, you know, meeting market.

06:36.75

Chaz Nuttycombe

has a ah large increase and, you know, that's good for Rouse and Stoney. So, you know, I think at the end of the day, this is probably going to be between Hashmi and Rouse.

06:49.36

Chaz Nuttycombe

I could see Stoney winning if, you know, he's not as toxic in the and the suburbs around Richmond as I think I and a lot of others on both sides of the aisle think he will be in a primary.

07:01.93

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, he's drawn ire from white moderates and white liberals. Right. And I think that will, ah you know, be be an issue when it it comes to like finding votes for a ah ah statewide path. Right.

07:16.29

Chaz Nuttycombe

If he does a little bit better with, would say, especially white moderates and he, you know, beats Rouse in Southside and beats Rouse in Nova, then I think he has a shot.

07:32.12

Chaz Nuttycombe

but you know, and one of the things that I think is important to note when we talk about, you know, Rouse throwing swings at Hashmi is I would say he, or Rouse throwing swings at Stoney.

07:42.37

Chaz Nuttycombe

I would say he's actually kind of throwing swings at Hashmi, uh, or at least throwing like swings into trying to chip away some of her boats. cause Hashmi is going to get a lot of the Richmond, especially Richmond liberal,

07:55.31

Chaz Nuttycombe

anti-Stoney vote, uh, which I would say is probably going to end up being a majority of the, uh, you know, top three localities, know, uh, Henrico, Chesterfield, uh, Richmond.

08:08.72

Chaz Nuttycombe

but you know, if Rouse is the only one swinging, then, you know, maybe those like, you know, people who hate LeVar Stoney so much would want to, Richmond, would want to end up voting for Rouse.

08:21.37

Chaz Nuttycombe

so, you know, that's, that's going to be interesting to, uh, to watch, And then, you know, I think, uh, Bob or Latif, uh, question is what does he win Prince William?

08:32.70

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know, could he, could he maybe come second or third in Nova? Right. ah ah yeah we could see a scenario where like Stoney Rouse place, uh, you know, like third or fourth or something. think with Latif's presence.

08:44.85

Chaz Nuttycombe

I don't think Latif really has path. because I don't think he has a lot of name recognition in Nova. Right. I mean, let's remember. her name uh the the she ran for lieutenant governor from norfolk yeah mcclellan right i think the conventionalism is that mcclellan was gonna do well in hampton roads she didn't even win win norfolk right gonna win her home locality

08:59.50

Sam Shirazi

McClellan.

09:12.86

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, So, um you know, I think that that's going to be something to watch is where Lateef plays in and Nova.

09:22.07

Chaz Nuttycombe

So i think I think I've kind of gone over everything off the top head.

09:25.27

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think it's going to be you know tough to make a call about who's going to end up winning. It's just one of those races where, especially since the winner is likely going to get yeah know less than 40%, possibly you know less than 35%, it's just going to be you know really hard to to pick who's going to win.

09:38.91

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right.

09:43.46

Sam Shirazi

So I agree with you.

09:44.19

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, there there's no science to forecasting primaries in general. You can't. Right. that They're too volatile of electorates. There's no science to it. It's all hearsay. And, you know, like internals or something and that can be on the campaign or that can be on an organization side.

10:01.76

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. There's probably been a few of those or at least one in trying to figure out who's ahead. Right. We have no public polling. of the attorney general, lieutenant governor primaries.

10:12.82

Chaz Nuttycombe

So anybody that says, I know who is going to win on on Tuesday, i think, you know, maybe they just have a whole bunch of great internal data or, you know, they're,

10:26.60

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know, just trying to gas up a candidate or something, you know, there's, again, there's, there's no scientific method to, you forecasting the outcome of anything on Tuesday.

10:36.84

Chaz Nuttycombe

think you can like you can say on the House of Delegate primaries that, and this is a very boring season, I think that's also why it's kind of easy predict. It's like, oh yeah, some incumbents are going to win and then But you know then you have like okay these candidates who are spending $10,000, $20,000, which is going to make no difference. They're all newcomers.

10:55.54

Chaz Nuttycombe

which is going to make no difference right and you know they're all newcomers No difference in determining like the effect of who's going to win the primary.

11:05.70

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, it's just, it's just kind of a, a crap game and, and trying to predict those. So.

11:11.52

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, well, I did want to ask you about another race that's maybe a little bit more easier to talk about, and that's the attorney general race, because there's only two candidates. And, you know, I'd say but in the about a month ago,

11:24.82

Sam Shirazi

You had Jay Jones who had more of the endorsements. He had more money. had like a bigger base in Hampton Road. So you think, okay, he seems to be doing pretty well. And then Dominion came in last minute, has dumped a lot of money in the race. I think overall Dominion has given roughly $650,000 Shannon Taylor.

11:44.47

Sam Shirazi

who I think and I think that's like the most Dominions ever given in a primary. So it's definitely like throwing things off a little bit at the end. And, you know, Shannon Taylor, she's going using that money to go up in air and Nova.

11:57.79

Sam Shirazi

I think her play is to kind of do well with women in Nova and and all other voters in Northern Virginia.

11:57.82

Chaz Nuttycombe

Mm-hmm.

12:03.20

Sam Shirazi

And so that She might have a path. I mean, personally, I still think Jay Jones probably has an easier path just because all he needs to do is do well in Hampton Roads, do well with black voters and then keep no Nova competitive.

12:16.23

Sam Shirazi

Chaz, what do you think about this race?

12:18.35

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah, I think that's the thing with Nova. I mean, Jay Jones got blown out in Nova, right? I mean, Herring got like 77% in Loudoun and probably 67% in Fairfax County, if I recall correctly, the top of the dome.

12:33.70

Chaz Nuttycombe

I don't think, but you know, Herring is from Nova. I don't think that he's, I don't think Jay Jones is going to, have that big of an issue compared to then. Right. I would be surprised if those margins repeat themselves.

12:45.87

Chaz Nuttycombe

He's probably going to do better in Hampton roads this time. But, you know, I mean, he was, Jay was, Jay Jones was competitive in Richmond. Right. I mean, knew there were pretty much all the localities for 50, 50.

12:58.57

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, and then I think, you know, what was interesting is that those liberal college towns, Jay Jones didn't do well, right. Herring won those. that gets a little bit of the vote. So, I mean, yeah, look, uh, I doubt that, yeah, I, you know, it's, it's been what, like a month or something like that since Dominion got involved, right. Or, or got really, really involved.

13:21.45

Chaz Nuttycombe

and that's probably because, you know, name recognition for both of these candidates is going to be low and you know, this is going to be decided in the last two weeks, pretty much of the campaign,

13:31.52

Chaz Nuttycombe

And probably saw that, whether it would be in the candidates internals or something. Right. I mean, neither of them are like big names. Right. In terms of, you know, maybe I would guess Jay Jones has a little bit of a bigger name recognition.

13:50.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

But. you know they yeah They wanted to go in and fight with Clean. you know it's it's I've been doing this you know virginia and Virginia analysis and and prediction stuff for eight years now. and you know it's It's been eight years since that fight started between Clean and Dominion.

14:10.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

so i mean yeah i think i think that the Jones campaign got kind of got caught with his pants down. Maybe it saw itself in you know, we are the nominee.

14:20.93

Chaz Nuttycombe

and, uh, that they, and I think a lot of people, not just the Jones campaign, but i think a lot of people counted Taylor out. ah yeah, like I'm not, I feel like I, I think I know who's going to end up on top.

14:36.75

Chaz Nuttycombe

I'm not gonna say publicly, like, I don't like predicting, uh, you know, like so saying one winner or something, right? Like, I'm fine with, uh, you know, saying like, uh, the LG is going to be between like two candidates, you know, and then just kind of narrowing it down.

14:52.29

Chaz Nuttycombe

That's the best that I would do, but this is already a two way race. So a two person race, for AG. So, those who have my number can text me and and I'll tell you.

15:02.82

Chaz Nuttycombe

but,

15:02.20

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, you got to pick one of them. And I guess we'll we'll know for sure on Tuesday. So I guess we'll find out. I did want to ask you maybe more so about the general election.

15:14.07

Sam Shirazi

And specifically, I guess we can start with the fundraising numbers, because I think they were pretty interesting, both at the top of the ticket with Spanberger and then with the House of Delegates. i mean, what did you make of the fundraising and the fact that Democrats are doing you know a lot better than than the Republicans?

15:28.43

Sam Shirazi

Yeah.

15:29.03

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, this is, this is a really good time that we're recording. because, I had a meeting with Dr. Steve Rogers today. it, who's on one of our committees. ah He's a political scientist. Um, a really, really, uh, really good book for like data nerds and, and for state legislature specifically, it's, I think it's, it's, uh,

15:52.21

Chaz Nuttycombe

it's accountability and state legislatures. I got to read in undergrad. And so we got this data from VPAP. VPAP gave us this data because I pitched to them, you know, i could give it to the,

16:07.22

Chaz Nuttycombe

professor and he can run an observation to figure out, you know, what is the effect of campaign finance spending in house delegates races, accounting, you know, or controlling for district partisanship and come and see that sort of thing.

16:21.26

Chaz Nuttycombe

And so the observation was ran yesterday. And so we have our house the delegates forecast coming out at our forecast launch.

16:32.78

Chaz Nuttycombe

event on June 29th here in Richmond. If you want to find out more, you can go to state navigate.org and go under donate, then scroll down and go to forecast launch fundraiser.

16:46.61

Chaz Nuttycombe

There are going be 18 districts, I believe, that are within a 10-point margin. So I recall correctly, thinking back to 2023, that's a little bit more than, or it's about the same in terms of which like which districts are competitive, by margin or you know by rating and whatnot.

17:09.52

Chaz Nuttycombe

But yeah, so our forecast has you know almost 20 districts that are going to be within 10 points most likely. and you know when it comes to campaign finance spending, we're now, apply that.

17:19.04

Chaz Nuttycombe

The thing is, is like, it doesn't, uh, according to, uh, Dr. Rogers findings, it, it's not really that big of a difference. I mean, we, it can be a difference when you have a huge spending gap. Right.

17:33.96

Chaz Nuttycombe

and I think that's something to watch for this year. Cause when we think about back to 2023, Republicans and Democrats were pretty much on parity. I mean, at this point in 2023, Republicans actually had a spending advantage in 2023 and in those pre-primary reports in a lot of those competitive districts, you know, including House District 82.

17:59.64

Chaz Nuttycombe

for example, which was, you know, decided by what 50 votes or something like that. yeah Taylor spent like $50,000 more. and now, uh, Pope Adams has spent $200,000 more in this cycle. Right.

18:14.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

i mean, here's the thing that I think is, is an issue for Republicans this year. Um, Um, um, is in terms of fundraising, what is the pitch, right? Like what, what is, you have to make a pitch to, the Republican donors, people that are can donate, four, uh, five, six, even seven figures of like, why should you put your money there?

18:36.87

Chaz Nuttycombe

and the, this, this is, and look, I've only been doing this for eight years, so I can't think of the last time, uh, and when it was the last time Virginia has had a pretty much safe democratic race for governor?

18:49.26

Chaz Nuttycombe

Cause, cause Abigail Spanberger is going to be the next governor unless someone has some huge oppo, right. on, on her, she has some sort of scandal or something. There has to be some sort of meteor that hits this race.

19:02.86

Chaz Nuttycombe

so, and then, you know, with Lieutenant governor, I think that kind of depends on the primary, but I would say likely it's probably going to follow the same,

19:12.32

Chaz Nuttycombe

I mean, I can see, depending on who the nominee is, John Reed doing worse than Winsome Sears or you know vice versa. I think it would kind of depend on the LG nominee.

19:25.22

Chaz Nuttycombe

And that can also affect house seats. Like when you have an effectively done deal at the top of the ticket,

19:36.29

Chaz Nuttycombe

and you have no shot of a trifecta, I mean, you weren't gonna they they they weren't going to have a trifecta anyway because of the state senate. You know, state senate's not up, right?

19:46.15

Chaz Nuttycombe

think I think that's an issue. Like, Democrats are already... heavily outraising, heavily outspending the Republicans at this point in the year in most of the competitive races.

19:57.47

Chaz Nuttycombe

And still in 2023, Democrats had those huge spending advantages by November. So I would think it's probably going to get worse for them from here in fundraising fundraising.

20:10.04

Chaz Nuttycombe

doesn't again like have a huge impact but it can if there is a large enough gap we're talking tenths of percentage points we're talking maybe like one or two points uh in uh in the model we have um um our call corrects off the top my head i mean like you know let's look at let's look at like house district what is it uh 21 21 right up in prince williams You know, Republicans are trying for that seat last time and now they aren't right there. None of their nominees are raising, spending any money.

20:42.81

Chaz Nuttycombe

And the effect of that is going to be like a plus one, one percentage point or maybe more. depending on, you know, how things shake out and and fundraising over the next several months for the incumbent Democrat Josh Thomas.

20:56.55

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, you know, it's it's going to depend like like when they're on parity, it's not as much of an issue, right? But even if like Democrats outspend like one point two five percent or one point one point five percent more than a Republican, I recall correctly from the findings,

21:16.14

Chaz Nuttycombe

It's not even half a percentage point if if I'm doing it correctly my head. um But, you know, Dr. Rogers is going to be kind of writing more on that. um did send the the observation and just kind of a a ah small summary that he wrote to me last night, sent that over the to BPAP, and we'll see if they want to do visualizations with those.

21:38.41

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, I mean, there's other interesting tidbits in there. Like, for example, being a freshman incumbent is actually a slight net negative in terms of how your margin is going to go.

21:49.73

Chaz Nuttycombe

It's not huge. I think it's like less than a point or at least less than half 1.5%. I don't remember exactly. But yeah, so I think that's one of the things to keep in mind is if Republicans can't find a pitch to stay competitive, that could that could effectively end the Republican Party of Virginia.

22:11.38

Chaz Nuttycombe

for, you know, it could it could end it for a quarter century because if they're getting heavily outspent and spending, I'm not saying like this level of being outspent.

22:25.21

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think it is damaging to their odds of, you know, being able to, you know, stay in the high 40s in House of Delegate seats and um um But, you know, if if they're losing a whole bunch of seats because, you know, the spending gap has gotten so wide, right, and it's it's adding more and more just, just, ah you know, to the margin in these in these districts, especially these ones that, you know, Republicans represent that voted for Kamala Harris, um then that could that could pretty much, they there could be a point of no return. There would have to be a real line then.

23:01.35

Chaz Nuttycombe

And I think that is like the only pitch Republicans can make is that it's do or die this year. this, this is a map that is a lot harsher than the map in 2017 when Democrats, you know, picked up 15 seats, not in terms of what they can gain in net seats, but in terms of what threshold of the chamber they can get.

23:24.72

Chaz Nuttycombe

So I think I think that's kind of the issue for them. You know, back in right after 2023. I tweeted that if Trump wins next year, know, just like right after the 2023 election, week or two after I said, if Trump wins next year, it could be the color Colorado a occasion of the of of Virginia and my Colorado if occasion.

23:50.80

Chaz Nuttycombe

I mean that, you know, Democrats could end up getting a supermajority. it's It's unlikely, I think.

24:00.100

Chaz Nuttycombe

it is still in the realm of possibilities. um And... You know, i mean, it's just going to be tough for Republicans to hold on those competitive seats.

24:09.95

Chaz Nuttycombe

ah But, you know, it's it's going to depend on the money. It's going to, you know, I mean, where is Glenn Youngkin in his spending? Right. Pretty much nowhere.

24:19.70

Chaz Nuttycombe

And is he's probably gearing up for a 2028 run for that. Right. Which makes sense because why would you, he's a, he's a smart businessman. Why would you want to ah spend money where you can't change the outcome of government?

24:33.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. Cause either way, there won't be a Republican trifecta this year. It would make sense for him to do it when he was, you know, governor in 2023 and they had a shot at the majority, the trifecta, but

24:43.80

Sam Shirazi

I did want to ask you about a couple other things before I let you go. One of them is this poll that you I think you were the first one to find that you didn't do the poll, but you did kind of share it pretty widely from NextGen America.

24:56.12

Sam Shirazi

about the youth vote and they did an oversample in Virginia. Now, caveat, this is more of a progressive organization, so you would expect it to be a little bit more favorable to Democrats, kind of like an internal.

25:07.15

Sam Shirazi

But basically what they found in Virginia was that with the 18 to 29 year old voters, Abigail Spanberger was getting 54 percent and Winston Earl Sears was getting 32 percent.

25:18.38

Sam Shirazi

And this is just like my personal theory. In these off year elections, like the young voters who are coming out are like high propensity young voters, like typically either in college or college educated. So those probably are going to be more Democratic leaning type voters as opposed to the voters that come out in a presidential election. That's my personal theory.

25:37.10

Sam Shirazi

Chaz, you think that's kind of what's going to happen? Do you think the Democrats are going to bounce back with young voters this year in Virginia?

25:42.78

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think I think there's I think that's a true. What I would say is that I also think they do bounce back. Right. What we're seeing with, know, young voters in polling is that they have becoming much more increasingly hostile compared to Election Day 2024 to Donald Trump.

26:02.15

Chaz Nuttycombe

And this this is a very volatile, you know, it's a volatile age. It's it's, you know, when you're talking about that 18 to 24 demographic, right, that's when you're even, you know, just a few years younger than that.

26:12.55

Chaz Nuttycombe

That's when you're developing your worldview, right? And, you know, we all we had like a recession scare. Was there going to be recession and, you know, all the tariffs and whatnot? There's a stock market crash, right? Like voters are reactionary. Voters are interested in their self-preservation. It's it's human nature.

26:29.86

Chaz Nuttycombe

There's nothing wrong with it. And when we talk about how people develop. Your outview on life and what you believe is, you know, is is kind of those formative years.

26:41.55

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, right. I mean, that's why we had like Democratic dominance in America for decades because of the Great Depression happened under a Republican. So, you know, young voters are not happy with what is going on in federal government right now.

26:55.08

Chaz Nuttycombe

Now, what I will say is, I mean, look, yeah, I mean, this is a progressive organization. That being said, I mean, progressive organizations can do good polling. That is accurate. um know, like the for progress is a pretty good pollster.

27:06.10

Chaz Nuttycombe

think the main flag with this oversample and look, i'm I'm glad we have this oversample. Right. And nobody's done this. And I'm really interested in the youth boat. And, you know, there are four college districts that are going to be at least somewhat on the board this year. That's ah Harrisonburg district with JMU. That's the Liberty district um Lynchburg.

27:27.47

Chaz Nuttycombe

That's Blacksburg, Virginia Tech district and the Williamsburg, William & Mary district. Um, and i think the main thing to look at in this for the main caveat is, you know, when we talk about the over or not the over sample, the, uh, just the sample itself and the 2024 presidential recall, uh, they broke down Harris plus 17 and Atlas Intel, which, you know, was, ah ah they had a really good year last year, not just in Virginia, but nationwide.

27:56.44

Chaz Nuttycombe

you know, I looked at that and Harris was only up three in their crosstab. that being said, it's a crosstab, so it's going to be a little bit more, uh, wider of a margin of error, but you know, still, I mean, it's, it's Harris plus 17 and, uh, now Spanberger is up 22 with that sample.

28:14.13

Chaz Nuttycombe

And then, you know, when they're asked about 2026, it's Dem plus 31, which is a nine point difference. so I think that, uh, you know, Spanberger does have some ground to gain with young voters, a lot of ground, honestly,

28:28.78

Chaz Nuttycombe

because of how hard to the right they went last year. they're, you know, like, especially still in college, when we're talking about these, these, these college town districts that are going to be competitive.

28:39.40

Chaz Nuttycombe

And yes, I do think that if you are, if you're in college, and you are in, you know, you're in that age range,

28:48.54

Chaz Nuttycombe

and you voted for Trump and you still approve of Trump, it's less likely that they're going to come out and vote, right? One of the great predictors of whether you're going to vote is age. So I think that is true. But I think for those defectors who are, you know, who or maybe those who who voted for like third party, right? There was a decent amount third party voting and in Blacksburg, if I recall correctly. And, know, like VCU and all that on these college campuses, right?

29:13.08

Chaz Nuttycombe

them and, uh, or those that didn't turn out to vote, um, are upset with the administration, they'll, they're going to want to come out to vote. and that can either be, you know, and I listened to Ben Tribbett's episode on your show. And I think the, I think he breaks, broke things down really easily in terms of like how voter persuasion works. Right.

29:31.94

Chaz Nuttycombe

If, uh, you know, you're a young person and you're liberal releaning, you didn't come out to vote last year, you're coming out to vote this year. That's a plus one, right. For the Dems. If voted for Trump last year and now you're going to vote for Abigail Spanberger and you're, you know, one of them college students, that's plus two. Right.

29:51.68

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, I mean, that that's and that's something I'm interested in this year. Like there's four districts that are going to come down to that are on the board that you know, college students play a big part in.

30:03.98

Chaz Nuttycombe

when we talk about those that aren't going to turn out, I mean, Liberty did not turn out in 2023, right? Terrible turnout. When you look at how much of a share of the electorate it made in houses for 52 in 2024 compared to 2023.

30:15.10

Chaz Nuttycombe

And that's why Wendell Walker only won by eight points. because it's, you you know, it's like 99% Republican or something, right? It's like either the most or the second most Republican precinct in Virginia, right?

30:26.19

Chaz Nuttycombe

with Tangier up there. So I think that there's not really anything that the Dems can gain in, in Liberty, but you know, there's, there's those small colleges, Randolph and, you know, university Lynchburg and whatnot.

30:40.13

Chaz Nuttycombe

But still, I mean, if they're not turning out, that's, that's minus one for the Republicans, right? You know, those Liberty kids aren't coming out.

30:49.23

Sam Shirazi

I did want to ask you one last thing before I let you go. And i saw you know you tweeted about this a couple of times about Loudoun.

30:56.91

Sam Shirazi

So in 2024, Loudoun was kind of infamous because there was a drop of the vote in Loudoun. And I think it showed early in the night that Trump was probably going to win and because there was a big shift to the Republicans in Loudoun.

31:08.28

Sam Shirazi

But then earlier this year, there was a couple of special elections for the state Senate and House of Delegates, and the Democrats ended up winning those pretty handily. And so and you would think with the federal fallout of what's going on in D.C. and all the federal workers in Loudoun, you would think Loudoun would maybe come back to the Democrats.

31:26.12

Sam Shirazi

But You know, you and I are probably the only people spending all their day looking at early voting data in Virginia. And ah ah do notice that Loudoun is kind of lagging behind even after their satellite voting locations open. So, Chaz, what do you think about Loudoun? Do you think the Democrats are going to go back and kind of make all these gains? Or do you think the Republicans are going to be able to keep it relatively close in Loudoun this year?

31:50.22

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think relative to the environment, I think Loudoun is a problem for the Dems. I mean, yeah, look when Loudoun County dropped at 7.30 PM, you know, you know My phone is blowing up and, you know, I was i was like, look, this is not my job.

32:06.16

Chaz Nuttycombe

But, you know, i mean, I am interested in what's going on. and So I looked at him like, oh, he won. You know, ah so Trump won, you know, like and for those of us who look at elections, that's when we knew, right.

32:18.83

Chaz Nuttycombe

You don't have to wait for Wisconsin or Michigan or all that sort of stuff for to know how the presidential election went. Loudon came. That was it. and, you know, I think the Asian American vote, uh, not, not the Asian American vote, but specifically, you know, part of the Asian American vote, the Indian indian- American vote is interesting because, you know, uh, again, and maybe I brought this up in your podcast or I've tweeted it, you know, quite a bit, but it's like, why did they move to the right? They're college educated, they're wealthy, right. In, in terms of, uh, like comparison to all these other demographics that moved to the right, 2024. Right.

32:52.36

Chaz Nuttycombe

So so it was it's interesting. But yeah, I mean, turnout in Loudoun is not great for the Dems in this.

33:02.04

Chaz Nuttycombe

did they but And then also, like they barely overperformed in those specials. Like what, two or three points? That's like nothing. The average special election overperformance nationally, as of right now, is like 13.1%.

33:16.04

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. So that's like a 10 point difference. Now, public opinion is in a much different place compared to then. But even still, you would think that, you know, the the Dems would do a little bit better, especially yeah when we talk about those and what was going in the beginning of the year, what was about to be going on.

33:34.66

Chaz Nuttycombe

You know, you think they would have a little bit of that turnout and advantage in their favor. I mean, hell, my district, John McGuire State Senate District, that special election, had a bigger overperformance for the Democrats, Democrats spent nothing there.

33:50.11

Chaz Nuttycombe

So, yeah, I think Loudoun is a problem for the Dems this year. i think I think when I'm thinking of... their biggest, I would say it's a bigger problem than black turnout because black turnout in this primary is, is higher than 2021.

34:04.82

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. and the second biggest overperformance, in a state legislative special was in a, either polar, uh, plurality black or majority black district. You know, it's like somewhere in that range since South Carolina.

34:21.67

Chaz Nuttycombe

Right. and And we have this kind of notion of like, oh, well, you know, black voters are hard to turn out in these off years. Right. So but that kind of defied that.

34:31.58

Chaz Nuttycombe

I think black voters are amped up and they're ready to go. um So I think the main issue I'm seeing for the Dems this year in terms of like where they would have problems is it's probably Loudoun looking at everything that I've i've seen throughout this year.

34:46.27

Chaz Nuttycombe

looking back to last year, nobody's giving me a good explanation for why the Indian American vote went right. Right. Nobody. yeah. so yeah

34:55.58

Sam Shirazi

Well, we're definitely going to have to keep an eye on it. And I think the Loudon drop this November will be very interesting, although I have a feeling it's not going to be as ah friendly to the Republicans this year. But I think the exact number is going to be really interesting. So anyways, Chaz, always really interesting to get your perspective on things and just hearing from what you're seeing out there. I know everyone's going to be following Chaz.

35:20.04

Sam Shirazi

your social media and make sure to check out state navigate too, because I think they have a really cool way of looking at all the districts and just really good data on there. So Chaz, thanks so much for coming on.

35:30.38

Chaz Nuttycombe

Yeah. and And real quick, we are going to be mapping the primary election results. come to our site. go to State Navigate, click on Virginia, statenavigate.org, click on Virginia, and you'll see it on the page there.

35:43.47

Chaz Nuttycombe

And you'll be able to see the results as they come in. And we'll be doing race calls as well. And thanks for having me on, Sam. Appreciate it.

35:50.05

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, no problem. And this has been Federal Fallout, and I'll see you next time.

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

Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special bonus episode to go over some recently released Virginia campaign finance reports.

00:12.89

Sam Shirazi

So I'm going to go over three basic things. One, I'm going to look at the big picture governor numbers for the Democrats and the Republicans. Then I'm going to look at the upcoming Democratic primary and some of the fundraising numbers that were released and what it might mean.

00:26.90

Sam Shirazi

And then finally, I'll take a look at the House of Delegates. So the reason there was this fundraising report deadline that happened recently was because the primary is coming up on June 17th. And as part of that, this is kind of the last campaign finance reports that are required to be filed before the primary. So people have a sense of where the money is coming from.

00:47.04

Sam Shirazi

And given that the primary is coming up and it's pretty interesting on the Democratic side for lieutenant governor and attorney general, I thought it'd be a good time to touch base about what's going on with the campaign finance stuff.

00:58.02

Sam Shirazi

But before we turn to the primaries that are happening on June 17th, I did want to talk about the top of the ticket, the governor's race. Now, for both the Democrats and the Republicans, there is no primary for the governor's race, the Democratic nominee will be former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger. The Republican nominee is current Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle Sears.

01:18.67

Sam Shirazi

And in terms of fundraising, congresso former Congresswoman Spanberger certainly has a big leg up on fundraising during the filing period. And the period that this report covered was April 1st through June 5th.

01:30.17

Sam Shirazi

So of a little over two months. ah former Congresswoman Spanberger raised over six and a half million dollars and she has 14.3 million dollars cash on hand.

01:42.37

Sam Shirazi

So obviously she's posting some big numbers and you know going back to the days of her congressional races, Congresswoman Spanberger has always been good at raising money. And so I think you're seeing that here where she's got a big amount of money raised and she has a ah ah very healthy cash on hand number.

02:00.74

Sam Shirazi

Now, for Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle Sears, she is lagging behind in the fundraising category. So she's raised during this time period about three and a half million dollars, and she has less than three million cash on hand.

02:13.78

Sam Shirazi

So that means that the Democrats at the top of the ticket with Spanberger have over ten million dollars more cash on hand in the bank. And what that means is Congresswoman Spanberger is she's building her war chest so so to speak. So she's not spending a lot of money right now because most people aren't tuned in.

02:31.94

Sam Shirazi

And so she's just able to raise money, put it in the bank, and then obviously save most of that for the November election.

02:39.97

Sam Shirazi

Winston Earle Sears, she's trying her best to kind of catch up and raise money and, you know,.Not to say three and a half million dollars is nothing, but certainly at least is not keeping pace. And obviously, the longer this race goes on the there's a risk that the further and further she falls behind.

02:55.59

Sam Shirazi

And at the end of the podcast, I'll talk a little bit more about why that might be and why the Republicans are struggling a little bit this year with the fundraising. But I think. It's just one metric among many to think about how is this year leading so far. And I think most people who get the sense that Democrats in Virginia have a little bit of an advantage.

03:13.23

Sam Shirazi

And I think you're seeing that on the money side of things. Now, I should say money is not everything. And obviously, there's been campaigns where people have more money and they end up losing. And we don't know what the next report is going to look like. We don't know if there's going to be any sort of big donations from some of the big Republican donors. So I don't want to dwell on it too much right now because a lot of things can still change.

03:33.63

Sam Shirazi

But I think just purely looking at the numbers right now for the governor's race, you you'd say on the fundraising side, Spanberger definitely has an advantage. And we'll it'll just have to wait and see how that evolves in the summer as the next report will come out and we can take a look at the numbers then.

03:50.30

Sam Shirazi

All right. I did want to move on to the primaries that are coming up on June 17th. There are some House of Delegates primaries. I don't want to spend too much time on that because I don't think the numbers really made too much of a difference in those primaries. I did want to spend most of the time in Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General primary.

04:06.88

Sam Shirazi

for the Democrats, because i think that's gotten a lot of the attention. I think that's where most people are focused right now in terms of the primary on June 17th. And I'll start with the lieutenant governor's race. So there's six people running on the Democratic side for lieutenant governor. I think it's a competitive race. It's still not clear who has the advantage.

04:23.62

Sam Shirazi

And I'll probably talk about Before the primary, one more podcast about what I think is going on. But if you look purely at the lieutenant governor numbers, I think all the major candidates raised a decent amount.

04:35.26

Sam Shirazi

They all raised, you know, in the in the neighborhood about $750,000. And they're all spending a lot of money. They're all on air. So, you know, it's one of those things where I think they're all doing pretty well in terms of fundraising, but no one is you know blowing it out of the park.

04:52.78

Sam Shirazi

and raising millions and millions of dollars more than the other candidates. So I think all the major candidates are doing what they need to do to compete and to run ads, but none of them has a great fundraising advantage where it's going to make the difference. And so I don't think this is the type of race where the money is going to make the difference. I think there's a lot of other factors you' have to look at, and I'll talk about it in a separate podcast about where I think maybe the lieutenant governor's race is going to end up.

05:16.00

Sam Shirazi

None of the candidates raise like a crazy amount of money where you look at it and you say, OK, well, they're going to be able to drown the airwaves that adds. I just don't think that's what's going to be happening in the lieutenant governor's race. And so I don't think we got much more clarity about who who the front runner might be based just on the fundraising numbers.

05:33.47

Sam Shirazi

Okay, but I did want to spend a little bit more time on the attorney general race because I think there's been a lot of interesting last minute things that are going on with the campaign finance. I think it's important to spend a little bit of time just focusing on that because I think it may change the dynamics in that race a little bit.

05:50.44

Sam Shirazi

So in the last campaign finance numbers, the former delegate Jay Jones had a decent fundraising advantage over Henrico Commonwealth's attorney, Shannon Taylor. And I think in terms of cash on hand, he had almost, I believe, twice as much cash on hand as Shannon Taylor in the old campaign finance report.

06:09.74

Sam Shirazi

However, since that time, Shannon Taylor got a big injection of cash from Dominion Energy. And if you follow Virginia politics, you know that Dominion Energy is one of the big donors. They often donate a lot of money to members of the General Assembly.

06:25.57

Sam Shirazi

And on the other side, you have an organization called Clean Virginia. And Clean Virginia is a nonprofit, and oftentimes they will go and support candidates who pledge not to take Dominion money. So in this race, Jay Jones is backed by Clean Virginia, and Shannon Taylor has been backed by Dominion.

06:44.39

Sam Shirazi

And that's not an uncommon thing you'll see in many races, more so in the General Assembly, where clean Virginia will back one candidate and then Dominion might back the other candidate, particularly in Democratic primaries. That sometimes happens.

06:56.85

Sam Shirazi

So it's not totally unusual. And that's kind of a normal dynamic you see in Virginia elections, at least recently. I will say the thing that's a little bit unusual here is the amount of money that Dominion is giving to Shannon Taylor because,

07:09.65

Sam Shirazi

you know, in most races, Dominion will give maybe like 50,000 or a hundred thousand. I mean, that's kind of the ballpark of a lot of their donations. Uh, and at the very end of this campaign, Dominion energy has given Shannon Taylor, you know, I think I've lost track of the exact amount, but I think it's over $600,000, which I think is the most they've given in one cycle to one candidate in one primary. So definitely Dominion is spending a lot of money in this race and they're spending a lot of money on Shannon Taylor.

07:38.84

Sam Shirazi

And on the clean Virginia side, they've tried to highlight how this might create a conflict of interest and how it it doesn't really make sense for a ah the attorney general candidate to be getting this much money from one donor where they may have to step in and try to regulate Dominion.

07:57.33

Sam Shirazi

And the other thing to keep in mind, Dominion has also backed Jason Miyares, the Republican incumbent.

08:01.76

Sam Shirazi

And then Clean Virginia is giving money to Jay Jones. And so this has all created kind of a lot of last minute spending in the attorney general race. And so what it's done is in the last campaign finance numbers, Shannon Taylor was able to catch up to Jay Jones in terms of the money that she was able to raise.

08:16.76

Sam Shirazi

And that's allowed her to spend more on ads than she has been in the past. I will say because Jay Jones had a bit of a larger war chest to begin with, I think he's still been been spending more on ads. It's just that Shannon Taylor been able to catch up.

08:30.53

Sam Shirazi

And I think the real difference is Shannon Taylor has been able to spend more money in Northern Virginia, because if you think about it, the other media markets in Virginia, while they are you know not cheap, The DC media market is like a different level of spending that you need to be able to put an ad in the DC media market.

08:49.53

Sam Shirazi

And for most of the race, Shannon Taylor hasn't been able to spend a lot in DC, but with this new money that she's gotten from Dominion, she's been able to go on air in the Northern Virginia DC media market.

09:01.05

Sam Shirazi

And Jay Jones has also been on that market. So all that's to say is like, there's been a lot of spending last minute in this race. And I think it creates a little bit of uncertainty about what's going on, because, know, if you take out the Dominion money, you know, Jay Jones would have had a big money advantage and you would assume, OK, with some of the other advantages he had in terms of the endorsements and in terms of Hampton Roads, that should if it make him the pretty clear favorite. I think with this last minute spending that's been coming in for Shannon Taylor, I think she's hoping that it will get kind of boost her name ID in Northern Virginia.

09:34.57

Sam Shirazi

And if she can get a big enough margin in Northern Virginia, then she might be able to win, even though Jay Jones has more of the endorsements and he has, I would say, a larger base in Hampton Roads.

09:45.38

Sam Shirazi

However, as I point out, while I think it's made Shannon this race more competitive, it's not like Dominion gave the amount of money that it's like a total game changer. I think it's it's allowed Shannon Taylor to go up in Northern Virginia and compete with Jay Jones in terms of the spending in Northern Virginia. But I just don't, it's not the amount of money unless they put in even more because frankly, they can put in more at the very last minute.

10:07.84

Sam Shirazi

But I think, you know, the fundamentals of the race are in some ways the same. And I will do a different podcast probably right before the primary where I kind of go over the races and who I think might be up, who I may

10:19.60

Sam Shirazi

who I think might be down. But at the end of the day, like it definitely is adding a lot more uncertainty into the attorney general race. would still say, just given all the fundamentals, you know Jay Jones has the advantage that he has a bigger base in Hampton Roads.

10:33.92

Sam Shirazi

And so that that should help him. And the question mark is Northern Virginia. And just like the lieutenant governor's race, the question mark is Northern Virginia. And I think that question mark is still fundamentally the same. And so while I think it's added a little bit of intrigue to the attorney general race at the end, know I'll let you know but my final predictions, but I don't know if it's like fundamentally changed the entire race.

10:56.52

Sam Shirazi

All right. And the last thing I want to talk about before I wrap up, this podcast is about the House of Delegates. And again, I don't want to go through every single House of Delegates race. I'm looking more for the general election in terms of the candidates who have been raising money. And I will say overall, I think the Democrats are doing a better job raising for the House of Delegates. And, you know, there's a few reasons for that. I think the fact, the reality is they're already in the majority.

11:24.12

Sam Shirazi

And most of the donors know that more likely than not, that Democrats are going to maintain their majority. you you you know, it's just easier to raise money when you're in the majority and people think you're going to keep your majority.

11:35.67

Sam Shirazi

So if you look at all the Republicans and all the Democrats, so the Democrats raised, you know, roughly four point six million all of the Democrats in the House of Delegates, whereas the Republicans only raised about two point one million.

11:48.25

Sam Shirazi

I'll just highlight ah one district, the 82nd district in Petersburg and that part of Virginia.

11:55.29

Sam Shirazi

You have incumbent Republican Kim Taylor, and then you have the Democratic challenger, Kimberly Pope Adams. This was a seat that Harris won by four points, and it was the closest seat in 2023. So the Republican incumbent, she raised a little over 64000, which, you know, is a decent amount of money. And she has over 34000 cash on hand,

12:16.23

Sam Shirazi

you've got to compare that to the Democrats. So the Democrat, Kimberly Pope Adams, she raised a whopping $262,000 in this reporting cycle. And she has over $289,000 cash on hand.

12:27.33

Sam Shirazi

So she has over $250,000 more cash on hand than the Republican incumbent. and I think it's just like pretty rare to see a Democratic challenger or any challenger have that much more money than an incumbent.

12:39.40

Sam Shirazi

particularly in a state election. But I think it just shows you some of the challenges the Republicans are having this year with the fundraising in the House of Delegates. As you saw at the top of the ticket, they're having some challenges with fundraising. And now you're seeing at the House of Delegate level some fundraising challenges. And why is that?

12:54.58

Sam Shirazi

I mean, i want to say that I think the last four years, Glenn Youngkin has been able to kind of prop up and keep afloat the Virginia GOP with some of his personal money and also the money he's been able to raise because, you know, realistically, he's got a decent network of donors that he's been able to count on to chip in large amounts of money to his PAC.

13:16.15

Sam Shirazi

And then Glenn Youngkin would give some of that money out to all the various candidates running in the General Assembly. He gives them to the Republican Party of Virginia, who would then give it to the candidates. So there were a lot there was a lot of money coming from Glenn Youngkin through his donations and through the money he was able to raise.

13:33.63

Sam Shirazi

And I think that's papered over a lot of the problems the Virginia Republicans have had in the past with fundraising. And he was able to kind of, again, prop up the Virginia Republicans. And this year, the Democrats, they have a lot of grassroots enthusiasm and the big institutional donors want to spend a lot of money in Virginia.

13:49.68

Sam Shirazi

And so they're going to have a lot of money. And the question is, where the Republicans going to get their money? So one possibility is Glenn Youngkin goes out and raises a bunch of money and then he gives it to the Republicans and they're OK.

14:00.86

Sam Shirazi

You know, to be honest, that hasn't really been showing up in the campaign finance reports so far. I mean, it's possible he's kind of saving his money, waiting to see which are the most important races, which are the races where the money is really needed.

14:13.73

Sam Shirazi

It's also possible he's saying, like, you know, I've done my time as you know governor of Virginia and I don't need to do this anymore in terms of going out and raising all this money and giving it to all these Republican candidates. It's kind of.

14:24.54

Sam Shirazi

Winston Merrill Sears turned to do that. i've done I've done my time and he might be thinking about his next steps. And so it's possible, you know, he'll give some donations, but not to the level that he's been giving in the last few years.

14:36.64

Sam Shirazi

You know, I think we've talked about Elon Musk. That doesn't seem like that's going to happen in terms of money for the Virginia Republicans. mean, obviously, there's a lot of other wealthy donors the Republicans have nationally. It's always possible one of those wealthy donors comes in and, you know, throws a lot of money at the Virginia Republicans.

14:52.68

Sam Shirazi

As I mentioned, Virginia doesn't have any campaign finance limits. So if someone wants to donate $10 million dollars and you know that'll make a big chunk and and take take a little pressure off the Republicans if if they get a big donation like that.

15:06.07

Sam Shirazi

I think the challenge for the Virginia Republicans is that they kind of get into this cycle where they're not doing too well. There's not a lot of fundraising. And so the donors don't want to fund even more because they think it's just throwing money away. And The money's not there and it just doesn't show up. you know i I think it's a little bit early to make that final call, but it is something that Virginia Republicans have to think about.

15:27.65

Sam Shirazi

And they have to, when you go to donors, you have to give them a credible path to victory and not just kind of tell them, you know can I please have some money? Because donors, they're looking into the midterms. There's other candidates calling them all the time.

15:40.49

Sam Shirazi

And you have to kind of give them a convincing reason why they should give the money to you. And I think that was one of the things Glenn Youngkin was good at. And in 2021, he showed that he was able to win in Virginia and that enabled him to get donations, particularly in 2023. He got a lot of donations because I think he he proved he proved that he was able to win in Virginia.

15:58.79

Sam Shirazi

And the challenge is if he looks like he's not fully engaged and there isn't a whole lot going on in terms of the top of the ticket or the and and, you know, I should mention the entire Republican ticket is not totally unified. And John Reid's running his own campaign. And there's a lot of things going on right now with the Virginia GOP. And if if that's just kind of how it keeps going, could be in some trouble come November. And, you know, November is not that far away. Early voting is starting in a little over three months in late September and Election Day is less than five months away. And so

16:33.89

Sam Shirazi

If you think about the hole the Republicans are in both at the top of the ticket and in these House of Delegates races, I mean, there isn't a whole lot of time to start raising money. And the Democrats are just they're continuously raising money. So it's not like the Republicans can just you know catch up very quickly. So I think these are all things to think about.

16:53.06

Sam Shirazi

I'm not saying in and of itself the money is determinative, but I do think it's one of those things we have to just keep an eye on as we're moving towards November 2021. There'll be other campaign finance numbers. I'm sure there'll be changes. I'll talk about them. I don't want to assume just because this cycle, this this report, these things look one way.

17:11.58

Sam Shirazi

That's how it's going to be in November. But I do think, you know, the closer we are getting to November, the less time there is to raise money and to kind of compete in these races. So all that's to say is I think.

17:22.66

Sam Shirazi

There's a lot of interesting things going on in this campaign finance report. I'll try my best to cover the future campaign finance report. The next week is going to be very busy as we run up to the June 17th primary. That'll be the primary focus of the podcast, no pun intended.

17:36.73

Sam Shirazi

And then after the June 17th primary, we'll shift the general election and we can talk all about that. So A lot of stuff going on. Very busy in Virginia. Hope you follow along with me. Hope you find this interesting. Feel free to send it to other people if they're interested in the Virginia elections. But 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