Transcript

00:01.14

Sam Shirazi

Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special Senate episode.

00:12.13

Sam Shirazi

Just like the Senate yesterday, the votes are there for cloture, so let us proceed. So it was a crazy week in the Senate, and I wanted to just quickly talk about what happened and then switch gears about how that what happened in the Senate might affect Virginia this year.

00:31.81

Sam Shirazi

And you might think, well, these are totally different things. But obviously, this podcast is called Federal Fallout because we're looking at how what's going on in D.C. and the federal government affects what's going on in Virginia this year with Virginia's state elections.

00:48.71

Sam Shirazi

So let's just set the scene. What happened?

00:53.52

Sam Shirazi

So, the funding for the federal government was going to end on Friday at midnight.

00:59.62

Sam Shirazi

And Republicans in the House had passed a bill and then they had left town because They wanted to punt the bill over to the Senate and they didn't want an opportunity to have to vote for a different bill.

01:11.55

Sam Shirazi

The Republicans obviously wanted their bill to get passed and it was sent to the Senate. And Republican senators had set up the vote for Friday because that obviously applies maximum pressure on the Democrats, because if the bill did not pass on Friday, then there would be a government shutdown.

01:31.56

Sam Shirazi

So that was kind of the the scene of what happened on Friday. Now, on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer came out and said that he would support what's called cloture. He would vote for cloture to allow the bill to proceed, but he would not end up voting for the final bill. But essentially, if you vote for cloture, you're going to let the bill proceed and it was going to pass.

01:54.26

Sam Shirazi

Just to kind of explain some. Senate procedures, there is a 60 vote threshold to basically move a bill forward, most bills.

02:05.34

Sam Shirazi

And sometimes you'll hear people refer to it as Democrats could have filibustered the bill. Sometimes you hear it as the Republicans are trying to invoke cloture and proceed to voting on the bill.

02:18.33

Sam Shirazi

Long story short, in order to pass most bills in the Senate, you need 60 votes. Democrats have 47 seats in the Senate.

02:28.63

Sam Shirazi

And as a result, obviously Republicans need some Democratic votes to pass bills. And what happened was... There were some Democrats and frankly, most Democrats felt that the Democrats should use their votes to block this bill. Essentially filibuster the bill, don't allow the Republican plan to fund the government to move forward.

02:54.35

Sam Shirazi

Well, what would happen would be obviously there would be a government shutdown because the funding would expire. And the Democrats thinking was, well, most Democrats were thinking, well, all right, there's a shutdown, but Republicans could come back.

03:09.64

Sam Shirazi

They can negotiate with us. We can pass what's called a clean CR, which means it would just continue filling the federal government without some of the other things Republicans put into this bill. And so that was, I would say, what most Democrats ended up voting for. They voted to block the bill, but there weren't enough votes. So after Schumer came out and said that he would vote to advance the bill, there was a question mark. A lot of grassroots organizations started making calls, started really pushing back, saying, no, we can't push this bill forward.

03:41.59

Sam Shirazi

But eventually enough Democrats on Friday voted to advance the bill. It passed. So the bill was moved forward 62-38 and then it eventually passed with fewer Democrats supporting it at the final stage.

03:58.13

Sam Shirazi

But as I mentioned, really, the battle is about whether the bill could get 60 votes and it got 62 votes. And so there was a huge kind of upheaval within the Democratic Party because a lot of people felt that Democrats should have stood firm. They shouldn't have allowed this bill to move forward.

04:13.65

Sam Shirazi

There were a lot of different opinions on it. I think the the Democratic senators who voted to advance the bill, their thinking was, well, we're in a difficult position. if If there's a government shutdown, we might get a lot of the blame.

04:27.28

Sam Shirazi

Also, who knows? This won't be a normal government shutdown with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. We don't know what they're going to be doing. And so the safer option would be to just allow this bill to move forward. The government would be funded And we can kind of pick other battles to to stand up to the Trump administration.

04:46.29

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, a lot of Democrats felt that that doesn't make a whole lot of sense because there aren't a lot of opportunities to stand up. And this was really one opportunity where the Democrats had the ability to push back with the 60 vote threshold I should note that Virginia's two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both voted no on cloture. That means they voted no to advance the bill.

05:11.15

Sam Shirazi

But said Democratic senators from other states move voted to advance the bill. Enough of them, at least, that the bill was able to move forward. Now, again, this is a podcast about Virginia state elections. So why does this matter? Well, a couple reasons.

05:25.30

Sam Shirazi

First, This bill essentially funds the government through the end of September. And guess what happens at the end of September? That is the beginning of early voting in Virginia.

05:37.30

Sam Shirazi

So the government funding deadline will expire, I believe it's September 30th, which will be right when early voting is going on in Virginia. And obviously there's a high likelihood that there will be some sort of shutdown deadline looming.

05:54.20

Sam Shirazi

And part of the reason some Democrats said they had to be really strong and and take a hard line this time and not allow this bill to move forward is Republicans are just going to do the same thing next time, except next time they know that Democrats are going to blink and never allow a shutdown.

06:11.20

Sam Shirazi

So next time the Republicans are going to put even more things in the bill to essentially make it very difficult for Democrats to vote for it, but get what they want out of Democrats to be able to advance a bill.

06:24.61

Sam Shirazi

And so I will have to wait and see. Obviously, September 30th is a long way off. It's always possible there could be some compromise. They could pass a normal budget. But I think there is risk that there could be some sort of CR battle, and CR stands for continuing a resolution, where basically what happened on Friday will happen all over again at the end of September.

06:48.41

Sam Shirazi

I should note that the reason why this might actually matter in September is something like that very similar to this happened both in 2013 and in 2023. So in 2013, there was a government shutdown right at the end of the Virginia governor's campaign.

07:05.66

Sam Shirazi

And the conventional wisdom is that helped Democrats and Democrat Terry McAuliffe was able to win that election. And the thinking was that it was because there was a blowback to the Republicans at that time shutting down the government over Obamacare.

07:22.75

Sam Shirazi

And 2013 was the only time since 1977 when a Democrat was able to win the Virginia governor's election while there was a Democrat in the White House. And you could argue part of that was because of the shutdown.

07:37.75

Sam Shirazi

Now, in 2023, there were state elections. It wasn't a governor's election, but every seat in the Virginia House of Delegates and State Senate was up for election.

07:47.96

Sam Shirazi

There was a lot of pressure behind the scenes to avoid a shutdown because the Republicans were worried about how it would affect the Virginia elections. That time, the fight was over funding for Ukraine.

08:00.70

Sam Shirazi

There was a compromise at the end where the the government was funded without the Ukraine funding, and it didn't really affect the Virginia elections. But it just all goes to show you that these government funding fights do...

08:12.70

Sam Shirazi

sometimes potentially affect the Virginia elections because they are happening in odd years. Usually in election years, the parties don't have shutdown fights because they know it's going to be bad for politics and their election chances.

08:26.98

Sam Shirazi

But The members of Congress aren't up for election in odd years like they are in Virginia. So they're more likely to have a shutdown fight in these odd years. And that often creates issues in the Virginia elections.

08:40.23

Sam Shirazi

This time, the shutdown was avoided. We will see what happens the rest of the year and if there will be another shutdown fight in September right before that funding deadline.

08:54.27

Sam Shirazi

Now, the other thing I should mention... about the Virginia elections and what happened in the Senate is that we saw a huge backlash from the base of the Democratic Party.

09:07.37

Sam Shirazi

And I don't think it was just an ideological thing. So it wasn't just progressives that were upset by what happened. It was interesting to see that more moderate and establishment figures within the Democratic Party were not super happy with how some of the Democrats in the Senate voted, such as Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. And you saw someone, for example, like Senator Mark Warner, who's more in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. He voted no on cloture.

09:35.89

Sam Shirazi

And it just shows you this isn't necessarily an ideological battle within the Democratic Party. I think it's more about tactics and when and how to stand up to the Trump administration for Democrats.

09:49.10

Sam Shirazi

And you know why does that matter in Virginia? I think there's a large amount of grassroots organizations that have started to come out as a result of what's going on in D.C. on the and the Democrats.

10:03.32

Sam Shirazi

The base of the party is frustrated with what's going on. They don't see a really coherent Democratic response in Washington. And some of these grassroots organizations are organizing separate from the Democratic Party to put pressure both on the Democratic Party and on the Trump administration to protest, to do things that are not necessarily always endorsed by the Democratic Party because they feel like there isn't enough going on in Congress to to push back on the Trump administration.

10:35.12

Sam Shirazi

And it might affect Virginia because those groups are going to get involved in the campaign. I think it injects a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of volunteers, a lot of potential donations for Democrats.

10:47.70

Sam Shirazi

At the same time, I think a lot of those people who are getting involved are going to expect the people running in Virginia this year to have a plan to stand up to the Trump administration. They aren't just expecting you know a normal campaign. I think they are they do want to hear more about how the state government, if Democrats get in are going to push back against the Trump administration. Obviously, the state government, there's limited things that they can do in Richmond.

11:13.79

Sam Shirazi

But I mentioned in the first podcast episode, the attorney general has the ability to sue the administration in power if they choose to. There could be a Democratic attorney general after this year's elections.

11:27.52

Sam Shirazi

The governor of Virginia often has a national profile to speak on some of these issues. We saw that with Governor Youngkin during the Biden administration. He would often wade into national politics.

11:39.01

Sam Shirazi

There's obviously other ways the state government can try to push back on the Trump administration. And I think some of these more grassroots democratic organizations are going to expect the politicians this year in Virginia to not just talk about hyper local state issues. I think there is a sense that they want more and want to hear more from politicians.

12:01.38

Sam Shirazi

all Democratic politicians, but obviously the ones who are on the ballot this year about how they can potentially stand up and do do more to to push back on the Trump administration. And I think, as I mentioned in previous episodes, the firing of federal workers is having a big impact on Virginia.

12:20.71

Sam Shirazi

And I think there's a lot the state government could do, both providing resources for those employees, but also trying to just push back on some of the things that Trump administration is doing.

12:32.15

Sam Shirazi

Now, the last thing I wanted to mention on this topic is the topic of primaries. So after what happened in the Senate, a lot of people talked about, well,

12:43.62

Sam Shirazi

It's time to change leadership and even more drastically maybe change the members of Congress through primaries. And you've heard the term thrown around like a progressive or democratic Tea Party. So the Tea Party movement started after Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and started pushing the Republican Party more to take right wing positions.

13:08.50

Sam Shirazi

And that included primary in some members of Congress who they perceived as not being sufficiently right wing. And I think There could be a similar movement, more so in the 2026 midterms for some of these members of Congress on the Democratic side who may not be doing enough in the minds of progressive activists to stand up to the Trump administration that they might face primaries.

13:33.51

Sam Shirazi

I think what's interesting this year in Virginia, relatively, there have not been a lot of primary challengers. in the House of Delegates. So the House of Delegates, all 100 seats are up for reelection.

13:45.10

Sam Shirazi

There are 51 Democratic delegates right now in Virginia. There has been a lot of enthusiasm. So there's been a lot of Democratic candidates filing. There's been a lot of Democratic candidates filing in Republican seats, even seats that are realistically probably not going to be winnable in November. But you see candidates out there who want to contest the seats and give voters an option.

14:10.01

Sam Shirazi

and that's not super surprising because that that basically happened in 2017, we saw a similar thing where Democrats were able to flip a lot of seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. So it's not surprising a lot of Democrats are running and they're running in Republican seats.

14:23.20

Sam Shirazi

I think the only thing that's a little bit surprising is there haven't been a lot of Democrats running in Democratic seats currently held by Democrats. And especially there haven't been a lot of primary challengers.

14:35.31

Sam Shirazi

Now, I will do an episode on primaries and in the House of Delegates, the filing deadlines, April 3rd. I'm just going to wait for that to pass. Realistically, most of the candidates have already filed, and I don't think there's going to be a lot more coming out of the woodwork because April 3rd is coming up.

14:53.85

Sam Shirazi

there'll probably be a few primary challengers to incumbent Democratic delegates. And again, I'll cover that in a future episode, but I thought that was a little bit surprising that we didn't see more of that this year in Virginia, particularly because in 2023, there were a lot of state senators, Democratic state senators who faced primaries and a number of them went down to defeat in the primary.

15:17.50

Sam Shirazi

And so there was a huge changeover in the Virginia Senate in 2023. In theory, there could have been something like that similar in 2025. in the Virginia House of Delegates. I don't necessarily think that's going to happen.

15:28.35

Sam Shirazi

And so anyways, we can talk more about the primary in a future episode. But I did want to just kind of give you this bonus Senate special election. It was a crazy week on Capitol Hill.

15:40.54

Sam Shirazi

I wanted to just kind of touch base on how that might have affected the Virginia elections. Anyways, there's a lot going on, lot of federal fallout from what's going on in D.C.

15:50.68

Sam Shirazi

on the Virginia state elections. I will do my best to cover it all. And thank you for listening. And I will join you next week 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

Transcript

00:01.38

Sam Shirazi

Hi, everyone. I'm Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will look at tariff troubles and how they might affect the 2025 Virginia Elections.

00:17.28

Sam Shirazi

Then we will switch gears and talk about how you can get get involved this year in Virginia. Now, to set things up, the name of this podcast is Federal Fallout. And its initial assumption was that the main fallout in Virginia from what's going on in Washington, D.C. would be based on the firing of federal workers and the impact of that to the Virginia economy.

00:40.15

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, that is a major issue here in Virginia. And that is something that will continue to be an issue all the way through the November election in all likelihood.

00:50.31

Sam Shirazi

But now we are seeing the effects of other federal changes, namely President Trump imposing tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. And this has had a number of effects.

01:05.11

Sam Shirazi

Initially, there has been a lot of uncertainty in the economy about what might happen.

01:12.17

Sam Shirazi

So all of this has battered the stock market with the uncertainty. Stocks have had a rocky ride and have recently been going down. And I think part of that is due to the uncertainty when President Trump, sometimes he'll announce a tariff and then a little bit later he'll say something that seems to reverse the tariffs. The market's not exactly sure what's going on.

01:34.95

Sam Shirazi

Canada or Mexico or China will do retaliatory tariffs. And it's just kind of an endless cycle where we're not sure exactly what's going on with some of these tariff policies.

01:45.93

Sam Shirazi

So that's causing the markets to be a little bit in chaos right now. Then there's also the possibility that tariffs could raise prices. Obviously, in the last election, inflation was a big issue and Democrats were...

02:03.41

Sam Shirazi

largely blamed for the inflation and the cost of living issues that have happened in the past few years. And President Trump was able to win and take advantage of that. And one of the the things people expect is that he was going to, if not lower prices, at least keep prices where they are. But obviously, with these tariffs, there's a risk that prices can go up.

02:25.58

Sam Shirazi

And so all of this is creating an uncertain economic environment. Who knows what it's going to end up doing in the long run, but at least in the short term, there's definitely a lot of people of upheaval in the financial markets.

02:40.00

Sam Shirazi

And so I want to talk a little bit about how this is impacting the election now with the issue of tariffs, I think that is making its way onto the campaign trail.

02:50.03

Sam Shirazi

And we saw Virginia Democrats, including the likely Democratic nominee, former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, start talking about tariffs.

03:00.89

Sam Shirazi

She posted on social media, quote, Donald Trump's tariffs are a tax on Virginians. It's Virginia's families, small business owners and farmers who will feel the sting.

03:12.10

Sam Shirazi

So clearly trying to tie the tariff issue to Virginia and making it also tied to the cost of living issue in terms of costs going up for everyday Virginians.

03:26.80

Sam Shirazi

Now, Virginia Republicans have been more muted, I would say, on the tariff issue. They do comment on it from time to time, but it's definitely not the top issue that they want to be talking about.

03:36.67

Sam Shirazi

However, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin did go on in CNBC, and he was asked to talk about the tariffs, and he was generally supportive of what President Trump has been doing. And let's listen to an audio of that.

03:51.48

Sam Shirazi

And let me just start with tariffs. If anybody is surprised that President Trump has placed tariffs on countries like Mexico and and Canada and China, and by the way, the reciprocal tariffs that he has already pre-announced that will will be imposed in April, then they didn't listen to him during the campaign.

04:13.34

Sam Shirazi

So that was a little bit of audio of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. And i think it was a little bit surprising because Youngkin comes from the more pro-business wing of the Republican Party. He was known for being the CEO of Carlisle.

04:29.12

Sam Shirazi

And I think it was a little bit interesting to see him take definitely, I would call, a more populist tone when he was talking about these tariffs and and backing President Trump with the tariff issue.

04:41.71

Sam Shirazi

And I think that's just kind of the political reality that President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party and Republicans are going to be backing him, even if traditionally they might not have been big supporters of tariffs, they feel like they need to support the president.

04:55.26

Sam Shirazi

there are some parts of Virginia that might be receptive to the tariffs, more so in southwest Virginia and maybe southside Virginia, where they they have seen deindustrialization and the idea that the tariffs might be able to bring back manufacturing and jobs would be attractive in those types of places in Virginia. However, I would say that many other parts of Virginia, northern Virginia, Richmond area, Hampton Roads,

05:21.68

Sam Shirazi

They have benefited generally from greater free trade, greater availability of goods. You think of Hampton Roads, big port, big shipping, a lot of products from overseas coming in there.

05:34.78

Sam Shirazi

Tariffs may reduce the amount of foreign products that are coming in. And also American products that are going out if other countries are putting tariffs on the United States.

05:45.54

Sam Shirazi

So I think it's it's a bit of a risky proposition to be going in on the tariffs in Virginia because my guess would be that the majority of Virginians would not be supporting tariffs, at least on Canada and Mexico. I think the tariffs on China are more popular generally.

06:02.79

Sam Shirazi

But we've seen that the tariffs on Canada have largely been moving forward and there's been a lot of back and forth. And traditionally, Canada has been, if not the closest ally, one of the closest ally of the United States. So I'm not sure how that tariffs on Canada are going to be playing in a in Virginia during this election.

06:25.01

Sam Shirazi

So now let's talk about what might happen if the tariffs really start taking a toll on the economy. And we've already seen that they've had an impact on the stock market.

06:40.44

Sam Shirazi

And I think there is a risk based on what we've been seeing that there could be a larger economic downturn. I don't know if there's gonna be a recession. I think there's a lot of different factors that would lead to that, but certainly there is a risk that there could be an economic downturn.

06:55.38

Sam Shirazi

And I think there's a risk for Virginia Republicans and Republicans across the country that that could become really toxic because there were a lot of different things going on in 2024. You could talk about the immigration issue. You could talk about some of the wars that were going on in Ukraine and Gaza. Obviously, those things played a factor. But I think a lot of Americans, the economy was top of mind.

07:18.21

Sam Shirazi

2024.

07:20.94

Sam Shirazi

Democrats were blamed for the rise in prices that occurred in recent years, even though there were probably a lot of factors behind that. Ultimately, they were in the White House and and they bore a lot of that blame. And so President Trump was able to win because he talked about the economy. And I think there's a real risk for Republicans if the economy starts to go south.

07:41.43

Sam Shirazi

There isn't a whole lot else that is really holding things together for them at this point in terms of their coalition. something that all their voters support is is a strong economy. And so if you you see the economy falling apart, either because of tariffs or other issues, that's going to be a real danger zone for Republicans.

08:01.89

Sam Shirazi

And there is a similar situation that happened in Virginia in 2009. So if you think about what happened in Virginia in 2008, there was a financial crisis at the end of that campaign that really helped the Democrats and Barack Obama win a big victory in 2008, including Barack Obama winning Virginia, being the first Democrat to win in 44 years.

08:24.48

Sam Shirazi

And I think there was a sense of, well, maybe Virginia is going to become this blue state. And then the next year 2009, Governor Bob McDonnell was able to get a big victory. he won by 18% in a state that former President Obama was able to carry by almost five. So you saw a huge swing between 2008 and 2009. And that was largely driven by the economy, even though former President Obama was not in office when the Great Recession started.

08:53.06

Sam Shirazi

He took a lot of blame because people were still not going back to work and the economy was not great. And Bob McDonald ran a really smart campaign. He had a clever slogan, which was Bob for Jobs. And he talked about bringing more jobs back to Virginia. And that was a message that resonated in 2009.

09:11.44

Sam Shirazi

So Virginia Republicans got a really big win that year. i think realistically, given how much more polarization there is these days, I don't think it's possible for the Democrats to get a win that big.

09:21.74

Sam Shirazi

But I do think if things really start falling apart at the economic level, I do think there's a risk that... for Republicans that Democrats are going to have a bigger win that they did in 2017. So 2017 economy was pretty strong, but obviously that was the initial blowback and at first to the first Trump administration.

09:42.47

Sam Shirazi

And Democrats were able to win almost by nine points in the governor's race. And so I think it's not out of the question that Democrats hit perhaps a 10 point win this year in Virginia.

09:53.85

Sam Shirazi

If, and it's a big if, if the economy really goes south combined with the firing of federal workers, I think that's going to create this perfect storm where Democrats could have a really good night in November in Virginia if all those things happen. Now, I will say that I've made a lot of assumptions.

10:12.23

Sam Shirazi

based on some recent market turmoil. I do think there's a possibility that either President Trump pulls back from the tariffs or maybe the tariffs are just kind of built into the market. The market kind of stabilizes.

10:25.42

Sam Shirazi

They accept some of these tariffs. There's a little bit back and forth. They don't cause too much damage to the economy. And things just kind of chug along like normal. And maybe the economy by November is looking pretty good.

10:38.84

Sam Shirazi

If that's the case, I think the election could be a lot closer. Obviously, the firing of federal workers is still going to be an issue. But if you think about the firing of federal workers, no doubt in Virginia is a huge issue.

10:50.61

Sam Shirazi

And it affects hundreds of thousands of people. If you talk about people's kids and spouses and family members and friends, you know a lot of people are affected by what's going on.

11:01.32

Sam Shirazi

So I'm not trying to downplay that issue at all. But I do think the risk for the Republicans with the tariffs and with the overall economy going downhill is that basically affects everyone because...

11:13.26

Sam Shirazi

if costs go up, that affects everyone. If people are losing jobs in the private sector, that affects a lot of more people than just the federal government. And I think if you look back at 2024, part of the reason it was so difficult for Democrats is the inflation issue hit everyone. I mean, basically, didn't matter if you were working class, middle class.

11:33.08

Sam Shirazi

upper class, you still felt some of those price pressures no matter what when you went to the supermarket. And I think there's a risk for Republicans that if they don't fix that, because that's what a lot of people voted for President Trump to do, they wanted him him to fix the the economy and the price issues.

11:49.23

Sam Shirazi

If that doesn't get better, and in fact, if he gets that gets worse, there's a real risk that people will start abandoning the Republican Party and going back towards the Democrats.

12:00.34

Sam Shirazi

And I think Former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, if she ends up being the but for Democratic nominee, which seems fairly likely at this point, she can really start exploiting that issue, not just in terms of the federal workers, but talking more broadly about the economy.

12:15.03

Sam Shirazi

And that's going to be a message that resonates. And it's a little bit unclear. how the Republicans and if Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears is the nominee, how is she going to respond? What is her message going to be?

12:27.49

Sam Shirazi

Because if the economy is going south, there's not a real great message you can have. And we saw that in 2009 when Creigh Deeds was the Democratic nominee and he didn't have a lot to say in terms of the economy struggling other than trying to blame the previous Republican administration. And you you will probably see Republicans maybe trying to blame a lot of things on former President Biden. And I understand that from a political standpoint, but I do think the reality is a lot of voters...

12:59.60

Sam Shirazi

expect the party in power to take responsibility and try to fix things. And I think blaming a president that's no longer in power usually doesn't end up working. And so I think that's going to be a real challenge for Republicans this year if the economy starts to have issues.

13:16.22

Sam Shirazi

And again, I think that's a big assumption. I don't want to, you know, dwell on it too much because I i don't know what's going to happen and it's possible that the economy stabilizes. So I wanted to talk about it right now because I do think it's in the news a lot and we are seeing some issues in the stock market and there there are a lot of there's a lot of news about the tariffs. So people are seeing it in the news.

13:40.22

Sam Shirazi

and it's starting to make its way to the campaign. So I don't think we can kind of ignore it at this point. But I do think it's a little bit too early to make a final call and to see how big of an impact it's going to have on the Virginia elections.

13:53.81

Sam Shirazi

So that's a lot on tariffs and the economy. I did want to kind of switch gears to a totally different topic that I think a lot of people are interested in. I think one of the big questions that people like me who are political and interested in politics hear from people who are less political is how do I get involved? What do I do? What's going on?

14:17.20

Sam Shirazi

And there's a million ways to get involved. There's a million different things to do. I kind of wanted to walk people through what makes sense in terms of the Virginia elections this year and and the different ways you can get involved.

14:30.09

Sam Shirazi

There's a lot of different causes and campaigns. It's totally up to you what you want to do. My goal is to kind of give people a little bit of a starting point so no matter where they want to go, they can make the first step because often the first step is the hardest and it's hard to figure out where to go, who to talk to.

14:47.46

Sam Shirazi

And my goal is not to tell you who to vote for or necessarily which side you should go to, but more how you can get involved if you want to get involved. So in terms of how to get involved or what organizations to get involved in, I think it's important to keep in mind some of the local structures in any sort of community to try to get involved politically. So I often tell people who want to get involved in politics, one of the good places to start is your local political party. So in Virginia, typically, every city or county will have a local Democratic or Republican committee.

15:23.69

Sam Shirazi

Some areas will also have third parties. And these are kind of the local organization that's always around in the good times and the bad times. They have a certain structure. They have certain rules.

15:36.83

Sam Shirazi

There's people that typically have been involved in those organizations for years. They're usually open to new people. They want people to get involved. So I think that's a good starting place if you're interested in politics to to maybe go to some of those meetings or some of the events that those organizations are having.

15:53.58

Sam Shirazi

I will say, I think sometimes the disadvantage of those organizations, they have decent amount of resources and and organization, which is good. But it's also a little bit structured and they have to follow a certain hierarchy in the party and they have to take orders from people sometimes in the party structure.

16:13.14

Sam Shirazi

And I think sometimes people get a little bit disenchanted with that. Just something to keep in mind, if that's not exactly what you're looking for, I think at the local level, there are often good grassroots organizations, either on the left or right, liberal, conservative, who are not necessarily tied to the local Republican or Democratic parties.

16:35.44

Sam Shirazi

And these organizations often have more flexibility. They often are able to be a little bit more creative in some of the approaches that they take. Now, having said that, they often have less resources and are less structured, but they offer an alternative. And so, for example, there's been a lot of organization with indivisible groups. And they have been working with some of the protests that have been taking place in recent days, both in Virginia and Washington, D.C. So those are some of the groups if you wanted to get involved.

17:08.31

Sam Shirazi

Less in a formal party structure, but at a local level with some grassroots organizations. I think those are always interesting organizations to get involved with, either if you are more on the left or on the right.

17:21.93

Sam Shirazi

Now, The other thing I should add is those organizations are typically around long term. And then there are the campaigns for this year in Virginia, which are much shorter term affairs.

17:35.62

Sam Shirazi

And typically I've heard it but be described that campaigns are almost like startups. They start. they do their thing and then they end up closing shop either if they're successful or not.

17:47.75

Sam Shirazi

And I think that creates a lot of opportunities to get involved at the ground level and to get more involved. And one thing to keep in mind is The lower down on the ballot a campaign is, the more opportunities to get involved. So if you wanted to get involved in a local school board race, there's a lot of opportunities and there's a lot of opportunity to get a lot of responsibility because honestly, probably your local school board candidate doesn't have a huge staff, doesn't have a lot of people helping them.

18:17.79

Sam Shirazi

The higher up you go on the ticket, the more organization there is, the the more hierarchy. Obviously, if you want to get involved in the governor's campaign, those are going to have a lot of resources, but you may not be able to necessarily get get a super high up position.

18:33.88

Sam Shirazi

And some people, that's not what they're looking for. They're looking to just volunteer and knock on doors. That's great to get involved in the governor's campaign. But if you want to get really much more involved in a campaign, I would recommend going a little bit lower on the ballot.

18:47.41

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, there's a lot of House of Delegates races this year. There are county board races. There are school board races. So a lot of different ways to get involved in a campaign. And I think it's really meaningful because that is not necessarily a long term commitment.

19:03.31

Sam Shirazi

It'll one way or another, it'll be over in November. And so that's a good way to get involved in the short term if you're interested in that.

19:10.58

Sam Shirazi

Now, I should also talk about how you can get involved. I think some feedback I got about the 2024 election was individuals would go to the campaign and they were told to either knock on doors or make phone calls, kind of old school ways of campaigning.

19:27.56

Sam Shirazi

And honestly, they didn't always feel like that worked with the current environment. Obviously, with phone calls, it's difficult for people to talk to someone. Oftentimes people don't pick up the phone. There are a lot of spam calls, so it's difficult to make phone calls. Even door knocking, I think people are hesitant to go to the door.

19:46.64

Sam Shirazi

They often don't want to be interrupted. i will say, i think in a 2024 presidential election, it was often a lot more polarizing. And I think most people had made up their minds. So it's kind of hard to knock on a door And talk about the presidential election because most people probably knew who they were going to vote for and it was hard to persuade someone.

20:07.08

Sam Shirazi

I do think in a state election like this, door knocking can be a little bit more effective because a lot of people don't know there's a state election. They might not have made up their mind. You may be able to persuade them. So I do want to do that plug that even if you didn't love door knocking in 2024, it's possible that in 2025, you're going to have a better experience just because the voters are not as tuned into this election and you have more of an opportunity on the doorstep to talk to them.

20:35.25

Sam Shirazi

But having said all that, I do think it's a valid point that campaigns are changing. The old methods are not working as well as they used to. And so much more of campaigning is done on social media.

20:48.25

Sam Shirazi

Frankly, a lot of is done on podcasts. Part of the reason I wanted to start this podcast is I know a lot of people are starting to get political news through podcasts. There's a lot of social media, as I mentioned, and not just

21:02.40

Sam Shirazi

the old social media, but new new things like Blue Sky and TikTok and a lot of different ways people are getting their information. And I think it's a challenge for campaigns to to figure out how to break through.

21:14.40

Sam Shirazi

I think you as an individual, obviously, posting on social media, if you want to do that, is one way to kind of spread the word. I do think within a a state election like this in 2025, there's an opportunity to almost do really, really old school campaigning person to person work.

21:32.88

Sam Shirazi

So if you have friends that are not super political or you might have seen them recently get interested in politics but have not previously talked to them about politics, I think it's a good idea to maybe just have a conversation with people, tell them, hey, there's some state elections this year.

21:49.60

Sam Shirazi

do you know what's on the ballot? Here are some people running. I think those conversations an election like this can be a lot more meaningful than in a presidential election. As I mentioned, in presidential elections, people already know who they're voting for.

22:02.42

Sam Shirazi

It's hard to persuade people. People have really set views on things. State elections, it's not as strong. And I do think we're at a moment partially in Virginia because of the firing of federal workers, where people are starting to get more politically engaged. They might not have thought politics really affected their lives that much. Now they're seeing that politics is affecting their lives in a more dramatic way than they thought.

22:26.09

Sam Shirazi

There are a lot of ways to get involved, whether you want to do it formally through a campaign, whether you want to just do it on your own through social media and talking to friends, whether you want to join the local political party, whether you want to join a local grassroots organization.

22:41.22

Sam Shirazi

There is a lot of ways to get involved. Again, my message to everyone is I hope you do get involved this year because I do think there's a lot on the line. and I'm going to try to keep everyone informed. And hopefully if you listen to this podcast, you can know what to talk about with people when you're on their doorsteps or you're having those conversations.

23:01.74

Sam Shirazi

And I guess I should end with, if you do enjoy the podcast, I would appreciate it if you would tell people. I know a lot of people listen to podcasts. They're looking for podcast recommendations. They're looking for news, politics, podcasts.

23:15.42

Sam Shirazi

If you know someone who might be interested in the podcast, feel free to send them a link to this episode or any of the other episodes. Typically, I will try to do at least one podcast a week. My goal is to get them out on Saturday morning.

23:28.54

Sam Shirazi

I hope you will stay engaged in the Virginia elections this year. I know that I will. And I appreciate everyone listening. And I will join you next time on Federal Fallout.

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

Transcript

00:01.15

Sam Shirazi

Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi, a Virginia political analyst. This is the second episode of Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections.

00:11.72

Sam Shirazi

This episode will be a deep dive in the governor's race, who's running, their backgrounds, their potential strengths and weaknesses, and then what the general election might look like.

00:23.20

Sam Shirazi

Then I will briefly talk about why Democrats can't take for granted that they will win this year in Virginia, and then also look at if the New Jersey governor's race will actually be closer.

00:34.53

Sam Shirazi

Then i will finish up by talking about why you should care about the Virginia governor's race, whether you're in Virginia or not, both from a political and practical standpoint.

00:44.99

Sam Shirazi

Now, let's begin by looking at the candidates on each side, the main candidates, I will talk about the other candidates if there ends up being a primary in another episode. Right now, I'm going to assume that on the Democratic side, the nominee will be a former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger. On the Republican side, current lieutenant governor, Winsome Sears. If either of those two faces a primary, we will do an updated episode.

01:11.65

Sam Shirazi

The filing deadline April 3rd. And then after April 3rd, we can see if there will be a primary if any other candidates made the primary ballot. So let's begin with former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger.

01:25.23

Sam Shirazi

She was first elected to Congress in 2018, and she served three terms in Congress representing Virginia's 7th District. Prior to that, was was known for being a CIA officer and on the campaign trail, she often talks about that experience and also having served in the national security space, which obviously a lot of people in Virginia have a background either in national security or in the military.

01:51.92

Sam Shirazi

So that connects with voters in Virginia. Now, when she first ran in 2018, she was a political newcomer, didn't have much experience in the political space.

02:02.91

Sam Shirazi

And she decided to run against the incumbent Dave Bratt in what had been a traditionally Republican district at that time before redistricting was primarily based in the Richmond suburbs and then went out into rural Virginia in central Virginia.

02:18.51

Sam Shirazi

And i think when she first ran there, that district seemed like it would be a real reach for Democrats. But obviously 2018, particularly in Virginia, Democrats did well, and she was able to flip that seat.

02:33.79

Sam Shirazi

I wouldn't say it was a surprise because I think by the end it was becoming clear that, former Congressman Bratt was in trouble, but certainly I think, there was a lot of question marks about whether she might be able to flip that seat. And then she eventually was able to win.

02:49.14

Sam Shirazi

and I think that a name for her right off the bat because, that seat had been in Republican hands for a long time. And so after she flipped that seat, she came into Congress. She was known more for being moderate member of Congress, bipartisan.

03:08.76

Sam Shirazi

She often talks about that on the campaign trail. She ran for reelection in 2020, was a pretty close election again, but she ended up winning that time. And afterwards, she came back to Congress and I think it was known for being in the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party within the House of Representatives and sometimes would talk about how the Democrats needed to be able to reach voters who are in the middle and not necessarily be so ideological on certain issues, particularly when the Democrats had to trifecta during the first two years of President Biden's

03:51.96

Sam Shirazi

term. She did, however, work with Democrats to pass the major pieces of legislation, such as the bipartisan infrastructure bill, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act.

04:07.96

Sam Shirazi

so In the run up to 2022, there was redistricting in Virginia and her district changed a lot. So previously her district was based in the Richmond suburbs. The new seventh district kind of moved up I-95 and became more of a Northern Virginia seat based along the I-94 corridor from Prince William down to Fredericksburg.

04:29.66

Sam Shirazi

And then it also included some rural parts of Virginia. And I think there was a question mark about whether she would end up running in that district. She ended up running. She didn't face a primary. She faced a very competitive general election and again was able to win in 2022.

04:44.63

Sam Shirazi

And that was another close election in a battleground district that she was able to win. And then, she was reelected pretty quickly, there was talk that she might end up running for governor. And obviously she did end up running for governor and

05:01.70

Sam Shirazi

Democrats were able to win her seat in 2024 with Eugene Vindman becoming the new congressman.

05:10.25

Sam Shirazi

So shifting over to Lieutenant Governor Sears, and I just wanted to mention something. Sometimes you'll see her referred to as Winsome Earl Sears. Sometimes you'll see her referred to win some as Winsome Sears, and I actually looked this up.

05:24.18

Sam Shirazi

So on her official campaign website, she goes by Winsome Sears. And then on her, uh, government, Lieutenant governor website, she goes by Winsome Earl Sears. I'll typically refer to her as Winsome Sears. Cause I think that's what most people refer to as, but, But if you, if you hear Winsome Earl Sears or Winsome Sears, just keep in mind, she sometimes goes by both.

05:46.80

Sam Shirazi

she was born in Jamaica and came to this country when she was young. She ended up joining the military. And then in 2001, she ran for the House of Delegates in Virginia in the Hampton Roads area in what was considered a pretty Democratic seat, had a large African-American population and Winsome Sears was able to win that seat in what was pretty much an upset. Most people didn't expect a Republican to win that type of seat.

06:19.38

Sam Shirazi

But then she decided to run for Congress in 2004 against Congressman Bobby Scott, who was well known in the area. And that didn't go too well. She didn't win that race.

06:31.62

Sam Shirazi

And after that, she was somewhat involved in politics. She served on some boards, but was pretty much out of elected office for 20 years.

06:42.42

Sam Shirazi

there's a pretty big gap between when she was elected in 2001 and then she was elected lieutenant governor in 2021. So as I mentioned, in 2021, she made basically a comeback. She ran for lieutenant governor.

06:55.51

Sam Shirazi

The thing that's interesting in 2021, the Republicans had a convention to pick their nominee. So it was not a primary And at some point, maybe we can talk about this, but long story short, the Republicans, they don't have conventions as much anymore, partly because of changes in the law in Virginia. So this year, all the races are going to have primaries.

07:17.16

Sam Shirazi

It's kind of an interesting hypothetical to think what would have happened if the Republicans had a primary versus a convention, would she have been able to win? But regardless, she was able to become the lieutenant governor nominee in 2021. And know I would say a bit of an upset.

07:31.00

Sam Shirazi

I don't think most people... predicted that. And then she went on to win the general election, mainly because, Governor Youngkin won at the top of the ticket, and then she was able to essentially ride his coattails.

07:44.25

Sam Shirazi

And it was a sweep for the Republicans, and she became Lieutenant Governor. And as Lieutenant Governor, she has been serving as the presiding officer of the Virginia Senate. So that's a little bit of her political background.

08:00.66

Sam Shirazi

want to talk a little bit about the potential strengths and weaknesses of each candidate. And I think often in in politics, strengths can also be weaknesses in the sense of you might be able to appeal to one group of voters, but that causes you to potentially lose support among other voters.

08:16.54

Sam Shirazi

So just keep that in mind as we talk about some of these strengths and weaknesses. It's not necessarily... that it's these things are 100% good or 100% bad. It's just the reality that some things will help you in politics, some things might hurt you, and and that might be the same thing.

08:31.30

Sam Shirazi

with congress a former Congresswoman Spanberger, as I mentioned, i think she has a reputation for being more of a moderate, being in the, moderate wing of the Democratic Party, at times has been more critical of some of the more left-leaning members of the Democratic Party.

08:50.57

Sam Shirazi

And I think that's both a strength and weakness. So from the strength standpoint, you may be able to talk about it on the campaign trail. You may be able to reach more moderate voters who that appeals to middle-of-the-road voters.

09:06.30

Sam Shirazi

That's obviously something that she she likes to talk about, being bipartisan and being able to work with Republicans to pass bills. At the same time, that's kind of a two-way street. And there might be times when people who are more progressive, that doesn't necessarily create an image that they want. And there may not be enthusiasm from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

09:32.64

Sam Shirazi

Having said that, I think in this environment where the

09:39.79

Sam Shirazi

Democrats are fired up. They're upset by what's going on in D.C. I think that hesitancy among some progressives could be overcome because, frankly, they just want to send a message. They want to elect a Democrat. And if she's the nominee, they're just going to vote for her. might be some people who have a protest vote. But typically in elections like this, when the main motivator among the base is anger at the administration, i think that helps politicians who are maybe more moderate because the base of the party who's more progressive will still support them because they're able to, they want to send a message to the people who are in charge in DC that Democrats and progressives are upset at what's going on.

10:24.57

Sam Shirazi

So that's one strength and weakness. And on the flip side, Spangruger's more moderate potentials has helped her in rural parts of Virginia. So her district had rural areas. And while she never really won most of the rural areas, she did better than most Democrats would do in those areas.

10:46.72

Sam Shirazi

And in a lot of ways, there's a lot of talk about why Democrats are struggling in rural areas, what they can do to do better in rural areas. And at the end of the day, sometimes They don't necessarily have to win those areas outright, but just doing a little bit better can go a long way.

11:02.90

Sam Shirazi

And I think this year there's question about how much better Spanberger can do compared to Harris in 2024 in Virginia. And what I mean by that is if she's able to maybe do five, 10 points better in some of these counties, that starts to add up.

11:21.99

Sam Shirazi

So, even if she doesn't win rural Virginia, which I think is unlikely that she'll win much of rural Virginia this year, she does a little bit better than Harris was able to do, and she keeps the same margins in the more suburban urban parts of Virginia, then that starts to add up and she'll have a bigger win than Harris did because she's doing better in the rural areas.

11:44.88

Sam Shirazi

So we'll see how she does in more rural parts of Virginia, and if she's able to to cut the margins down, because parts of rural Virginia, Democrats are struggling in Southwest Virginia. they're Some of these counties, they're struggling to get 15%. difference between 15% and 20% might not sound like a whole lot, but if you can get up to 20%, 25%, that can add up if you're talking about a large area of rural Virginia.

12:11.26

Sam Shirazi

But I also wanted to talk a little bit of the flip side of that, and that is parts of urban Virginia and particularly parts where there are more of an African-American community,

12:23.08

Sam Shirazi

Spanberger going to do in that part of Virginia? And part of the reason I raised that is one, you had Congressman Bobby Scott, who has been talking about potentially running for governor. he As I mentioned in the last episode, he hasn't really taken any formal steps, but Congressman Scott was the first African-American congressman elected from Virginia since Reconstruction.

12:46.49

Sam Shirazi

And he obviously has support among many members of the African-American community in Virginia. And so I think the Republicans sense a little bit of an opportunity because Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears background, she may be trying to win some of those voters over and trying to go after traditionally Democratic voters.

13:11.10

Sam Shirazi

And we saw that last year in the presidential election. Part of President Trump's strategy to win was to go after voters from a diverse background that Republicans typically hadn't done well with and hadn't competed for.

13:25.94

Sam Shirazi

And so we'll see if Lieutenant Governor Sears might be able to replicate that this year. And I think one thing I should mention is that while President Trump did well with non-white white voters. He did the best, I would say, with Hispanic voters, also did well with parts of the Asian community.

13:48.57

Sam Shirazi

There wasn't a huge shift in the African-American vote. I think that was part of the voting bloc that stayed pretty consistent with the Democratic Party. There was a little bit of a swing, but it wasn't as dramatic as some of these other groups.

14:04.14

Sam Shirazi

And if you if you look in Virginia and some of the precinct data, former Vice President Harris still won the overwhelming majority of the African-American vote. And so I think that's going to be an interesting question this year.

14:16.41

Sam Shirazi

Both how is Spanberg going to be doing with that community? is Lieutenant Governor Sears going to be doing with that community? And I guess the last thing I should mention on this point is that in 2022,

14:27.99

Sam Shirazi

when Congresswoman Spanberger was running in the 7th District after the redistricting cycle, her new district had a fairly sizable African-American community, primarily based in Prince William County.

14:40.37

Sam Shirazi

And she did a lot of work to engage with that community and turn out that community. And they ended up backing her. And that was part of the reason that she was able to win in a relatively close election in 2022.

14:54.06

Sam Shirazi

Okay, now let's turn over to Lieutenant Governor Sears. And I already talked about one potential strength is her potential ability to reach out to African American voters.

15:09.15

Sam Shirazi

as I mentioned earlier, she had done that in 2001 when she won that House of Delegates seat. Now, I will say she was running against an incumbent that was having some legal issues and basically was not the strongest incumbent. And so that race was a little bit maybe of a anomaly just because of who she was running against.

15:30.88

Sam Shirazi

But she did win it in in a pretty surprising fashion in a district that was traditionally Democratic. But then, as I mentioned, we saw in 2004, she didn't end up winning the congressional seat against Congressman Bobby Scott.

15:45.62

Sam Shirazi

she ran for lieutenant governor, while Republicans, I would say, did a little bit better than they traditionally did with the African American community, it wasn't necessarily like she did amazing either.

15:58.59

Sam Shirazi

And so we'll have to see if how much she attempts to win over African American voters and then whether that will actually be successful this year. In terms of other strengths and potential weaknesses for Lieutenant Governor Sears,

16:14.49

Sam Shirazi

you know I've followed her since she was elected lieutenant governor people tend to us underestimate her. We saw that in 2001 when she was able to flip that seat and in 2021 when she was able to win the lieutenant governor's race, both the nomination and then the general election. I think both those times people didn't necessarily think she could win and that she did end up winning.

16:37.53

Sam Shirazi

So I think it's important for Democrats and us observing to not necessarily underestimate her. And I think part of her appeal is there are times when she can come off not as your typical politician.

16:50.85

Sam Shirazi

i think there are times when she is able to connect with voters in in a different way. i will say that's a little bit complicated. And the reason I say it's complicated is a couple of reasons. One, I think she has,

17:08.25

Sam Shirazi

clearly been trying to think about how she can win the general election. She hasn't been too focused on the primary. And there are times, particularly when she's on TV, where I think she's maybe thinking about the general election, comes off as more politician-y than I think she actually is.

17:26.41

Sam Shirazi

So it's going to be an interesting question to see how much they let her go out there and be herself versus maybe try to stick to more talking points and not to say anything that might get her in trouble for the general election.

17:40.50

Sam Shirazi

And that's often an issue with politicians is how much do you want to you know be contained and not go outside of your talking points because you don't want to create any sort of gaffes and how much do you want to be authentic and just kind of be yourself and not worry about that stuff.

17:54.73

Sam Shirazi

So we'll see. And I think She has a strategy of trying to, in some ways, emulate emulate how Governor Youngkin was able to win in 2021.

18:07.10

Sam Shirazi

We'll see how that ends up happening. I think this is a very different election than 2021. Obviously, in 2021, we had a Democratic president.

18:17.86

Sam Shirazi

It was it was the tail end of COVID, but and there was a lot of COVID fatigue at that point. But that was obviously a major issue and and we've kind of moved past that at this point.

18:27.33

Sam Shirazi

And this year, there are a lot of different issues. So we'll see if she can emulate that 2021 Youngkin campaign in a very different environment. So I guess I should move on to what the general election could look like. I think with Congresswoman Spanberger, former Congresswoman Spanberger, she's gonna focus a lot on what is going on in DC with the firing of federal workers and the downsizing of the federal government. She's talked about her experience in the federal government, how public service is a positive.

19:00.59

Sam Shirazi

She thinks that it's going to resonate in Virginia. Obviously, a lot of people have either served in the military or have worked for the government and what's going on may be affecting them. So that's kind of where she's going to want to focus the election in terms of November.

19:15.34

Sam Shirazi

With Lieutenant Governor Sears, I think she's got to Think about how she's running because you have Donald Trump as a leader of the party. Sears has never been super close with the MAGA wing of the party.

19:28.97

Sam Shirazi

i think, as I mentioned, she will try to emulate more of a Yunkin brand. She's, I would say, closer to Governor Yunkin than she is to President Trump. There's an open question about how much President Trump will get involved, how much he will endorse her will he campaign with her.

19:46.09

Sam Shirazi

All these things are kind of open questions. And I think the Republicans need to ask themselves, like what are they running on this year? Because the Democrats, it's pretty clear they're just going to be running on opposing what President Trump, the Trump administration is doing to the federal government, standing up for federal workers. That's a clear message.

20:04.98

Sam Shirazi

see if the voters respond to that or not. But either way, you kind of know what the Democrats are going to be doing. it's It's a little bit unclear with the Republicans, what's their big issue? There are few things, obviously, that Republicans have focused on. So in 2021, Governor Youngkin focused a lot on education and schools, partly because of the the shutting down of the schools for a while because of COVID.

20:29.83

Sam Shirazi

He talked about CRT, critical race theory, a lot. That has kind of morphed into anti-DEI stuff. And is that going to be the focus of the campaign? Uh, COVID's probably not going to come up a whole lot, because, you know, that's the 2021 campaign.

20:46.71

Sam Shirazi

are they going to talk about the trans issue again, that obviously riles up the base, but how much is that going to appeal to moderate voters? So I think the Republicans really need to ask themselves, like, what is their issue?

20:57.80

Sam Shirazi

in 2021, You could tell that Youngkin, he was running on COVID and he was running on the school education issue. What is the issue that Lieutenant Governor Sears is going to run on?

21:08.62

Sam Shirazi

And it's a little bit of a cold question. I mean, there's so there's crime, there's immigration. there's all these things you could list that, those are kind of what you see on Fox News as the Republican big issues.

21:19.37

Sam Shirazi

But you can't run on 10 different issues all at once because it's too much for the voters. So you need to pick one or two of those issues. and it's a little unclear right now what that issue will be.

21:30.71

Sam Shirazi

And obviously we have a long time till November. There could be things that we don't see right now. There could be a lot that that happens until November. But right now, I think that's the question the Republicans have to ask themselves.

21:44.25

Sam Shirazi

And not just about winning the base, because in Virginia, for a Republican, realistically to win, i think they need their base to come out, but they also need to be able to appeal to voters more in the middle in the suburbs.

22:00.67

Sam Shirazi

what is the issue that you're going to be able to convince those voters to come out and vote for you? and so anyways, I think we'll just have to wait and see what that looks like in November.

22:10.85

Sam Shirazi

So hopefully that was helpful. I'm sure I missed things about both candidates. they're both interesting, you have different backgrounds. And I think,

22:19.95

Sam Shirazi

will be a really interesting election if it ends up being a Spanberg or Sears general election. Again, if there's a primary, we'll talk about it in a future podcast. But I wanted to just kind of give that big picture overview of the two candidates and potentially what their campaigns might look like.

22:35.36

Sam Shirazi

Now, I wanted to talk a little bit about what this year in Virginia, who might end up winning and if New Jersey might actually be a closer election. And the reason I say that is I think among people who aren't in Virginia, there is often an assumption, well, Donald Trump's in the white house

22:57.13

Sam Shirazi

So Democrats should win really easily.

22:59.54

Sam Shirazi

I tend to agree that all things being equal, Democrats go in at least slightly favored. for those reasons. But I don't think you can just assume the Democrats are going to have this massive land side win.

23:12.24

Sam Shirazi

A few reasons for that. One, i think for state elections, Virginia tends to be less blue than federal elections. So in federal elections, Democrats have won every election going back till 2006. So Senate and president statewide elections, they've won every single one going back to 2006. So yes, at a federal level, I would describe Virginia is a pretty blue state.

23:37.46

Sam Shirazi

I think at the state level, it's been a little bit more of a mixed picture. Republicans were able to win the governor's race in 2009 and

23:46.18

Sam Shirazi

But typically, voters in Virginia at the federal level more willing to vote for Democrats at the state level might be a little bit more willing to vote for Republicans. So that's one reason why I think Republicans tend to do better in the state elections in Virginia.

24:00.27

Sam Shirazi

The other thing to keep in mind is that Virginia is a very diverse state, has a lot of different parts, and it's just hard for the Democrats to get this massive blowout victory in Virginia. Part of that, if you you know if you think about the demographics of Virginia, there's a lot of rural rural areas, lot of areas with White working class voters, Democrats have struggled with those voters.

24:23.35

Sam Shirazi

it's just hard for them to get some sort of massive victory in Virginia. It's just a state that's not really built for that. You know, the good news for the Democrats is their coalition of Suburban voters, college educated voters, African-American voters, it's pretty easy for them to get close to 50% and win an election in Virginia.

24:45.99

Sam Shirazi

It's just hard for them to get up to like 60%. It's just the state the the way that Virginia is made up, it's just not really built like that. And so all that's to say is i don't think you can just assume they're going to get this massive blowout victory.

25:01.04

Sam Shirazi

So there's that. And then the last thing I should mention, and this is a little bit of a wild card, is how Trump and Elon are going to and fit into everything.

25:11.33

Sam Shirazi

And the reason I mention Elon Musk is he obviously has a lot of money. He has can write a lot of big checks. Virginia doesn't have any campaign finance limits for its state campaigns. So you know at the federal level, there's only so much you can donate directly to a campaign campaign.

25:26.10

Sam Shirazi

The rest of it, you have to start running ads on your own independent from the campaign. In Virginia, there is no campaign finance limit. You could write a huge check to a campaign.

25:36.99

Sam Shirazi

And i think I think there's a possibility that might happen. I don't know. We'll have to wait and see. But this traditional money advantage the Democrats sometimes have, and congresswomans former Congresswoman Spanberger has been able to raise a lot of money already. She's been known for her fundraising prowess.

25:53.31

Sam Shirazi

But I don't think you can assume that's going to necessarily last, given that there are some big GOP donors who have at least recently shown that they're willing to sign big checks and Virginia doesn't have campaign finance limits.

26:05.98

Sam Shirazi

So I just want to lay all that out there because I don't think we can just assume Democrats are going to get this massive win in Virginia this year, which sometimes you hear people talk about.

26:17.66

Sam Shirazi

And so I will say there, it's certainly possible that Democrats get a big win in Virginia. In 2017, Democrats got a pretty big win with Ralph Northam winning by around eight points.

26:32.06

Sam Shirazi

And it could be possible that there's a big win in Virginia, but I don't think Democrats should assume it.

26:38.53

Sam Shirazi

And I don't think they should take anything for granted. So that's Virginia. I briefly wanted to talk about New Jersey and I am not a New Jersey expert. Both Virginia and New Jersey have their elections on these odd years.

26:52.42

Sam Shirazi

And for a long time, Virginia tended to get most of the attention because, it was just more of a competitive state. Traditionally, Virginia was considered a purplish state, whereas New Jersey was a pretty...

27:11.26

Sam Shirazi

blue state, I would say. And Republicans had won New Jersey governor's races, most famously in 2009 and 2013 when Chris Christie was able to win. So it's not like Virginia was the only show in town There were competitive New Jersey governor's races.

27:28.57

Sam Shirazi

The reason I think there's maybe more focus this year on New Jersey is couple reasons. one In 2024, New Jersey was a lot closer than people thought.

27:37.85

Sam Shirazi

people just conceptually are starting to think of New Jersey as less of a deep blue state and maybe coming becoming more of a battleground type state. I will say, I think maybe that's more at the federal level. I think at the state level, New Jersey is still pretty democratic, but we'll see how much of a shift there is.

27:54.87

Sam Shirazi

you know the The states are moving in somewhat different directions. So Virginia, if you look back over the last 20 years, has become more democratic. New Jersey, maybe over the last 20 years, has become more Republican, although I think that's a more of a recent trend.

28:09.49

Sam Shirazi

And we'll see if it was more of a unique thing to 2024, maybe because of the high cost of living in New Jersey. Inflation was just a really important issue in 2024. Maybe this Hispanic gains that President Trump was able to make was unique to 2024, and it won't be able to be carried over, but maybe it will. And the other thing I should mention about New Jersey is they have had a Democratic governor for eight years.

28:35.92

Sam Shirazi

And typically, like at the federal level, at the state level, voters sometimes want to change. and might They've seen they've had a Democratic governor for eight years. They might want to try Republican governor.

28:48.16

Sam Shirazi

I think in Virginia, you have the opposite thing where we've had a Republican governor for almost four years and voters might want a Democratic governor. that's another reason why New Jersey might be competitive this year.

28:58.50

Sam Shirazi

and I think the other thing I should mention is that in Virginia, you have almost pretty likely former Congressman Spanberger as the Democratic nominee.

29:13.17

Sam Shirazi

And in New Jersey, there's a much more competitive a Democratic primary. There are a lot of people running. I would say the front runner at this point is

29:21.68

Sam Shirazi

Congresswoman, Mikey Sherrill. And I think she has a unique profile in having served in the military and then come in. she She came into Congress in 2018.

29:32.91

Sam Shirazi

Very similar in some ways to Congresswoman Spanberger. So it'll be interesting to see how those two are able to run their campaigns. They are...

29:43.35

Sam Shirazi

pretty close. They came in together. They had similar backgrounds. i think politically they have similar similar background. And so it's kind of interesting. We'll see if the Democrats nominate those two similar candidates for both races.

29:55.56

Sam Shirazi

Personally, obviously I am more of a Virginia person. I will be focusing on Virginia I think everyone should pay attention to Virginia because it is always important, but I don't want to pretend like it's the only election and the only game in town.

30:08.52

Sam Shirazi

I have heard some things where people are saying that New Jersey is going to be closer than Virginia. i don't know about that. i think I think they're both going to be democratic leaning years in both states, but we'll have to wait and see. And and it's hard to tell right now.

30:24.60

Sam Shirazi

And I can't guess... if New Jersey or Virginia is gonna be closer. But that'll be an interesting data point when we get all the results and we'll see how much of a blue state New Jersey has is still and how much of a blue state Virginia is and and has there been shifts in either state because of what President Trump has been doing.

30:45.94

Sam Shirazi

All right, so that's a lot. I did wanna just leave you with one other thing and that is why you should care about the Virginia governor's race.

30:56.01

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, if you live in Virginia, your governor is important. That person can sign laws, they can veto laws, they can send they can change the language of the laws and send them back to the legislature to vote on.

31:09.27

Sam Shirazi

They appoint a lot of people to different boards. Obviously, when you think of state government, they are the leader of state government. So when there's an emergency or something like that, you often look to the governor for leadership. So it's an important position in that sense.

31:22.70

Sam Shirazi

And I don't want to kind of emphasize the state government role of the governor of Virginia. But I think most people in this year in Virginia, they look to the governor's race as a little bit of a test to the political mood of the country and how popular both the the party in power is and the president is.

31:46.44

Sam Shirazi

And we often see that if a party is able to win the Virginia governor's race, it's a little bit of a political barometer of how things are going. So during the first Trump administration in 2017, Democrat Ralph Northam was able to win and he had a relatively larger victory than I think most people were expecting.

32:07.85

Sam Shirazi

And I think that was the first time when people were saying, hmm, maybe then President Trump was not as popular as people thought, or he wasn't necessarily unbeatable. Democrats showed in Virginia a way to beat him, or at least the Republican Party.

32:25.42

Sam Shirazi

That led to victories in 2018, particularly in Virginia. There was a blue wave in 2018 in Virginia, where Democrats were able to flip three House seats. And then in 2019, the Democrats took complete control of the General Assembly. And then obviously in 2020, Democrats were able to win the White House and get a trifecta in Washington, D.C.

32:46.14

Sam Shirazi

In some ways, you could say that all started in Virginia in 2017. Also in New Jersey, the Democrats were able to flip the governor's mansion in 2017. I think you have the flip side of that in 2021, where, President Biden gets this 10 point win in Virginia. the next year, Republicans were able to come in and get a, relatively smaller victory. It was a two point victory, but a win's a win. And obviously,

33:11.49

Sam Shirazi

with Virginia becoming more democratic, it was impressive that that there was like a 12 point swing in just one year. And it also created kind of a national profile for Glenn Youngkin. And he's been able to you know stay in the news and create that profile for himself by having won in 2021.

33:29.49

Sam Shirazi

And then in 2022, Republicans were able to flip the second district in Virginia. 2023 wasn't as great of a year for them because they they ended up losing the General Assembly majorities.

33:43.70

Sam Shirazi

But in 2024, Virginia was closer. There was a six-point win for former Vice President Harris. Obviously, Republicans did well nationally.

33:54.44

Sam Shirazi

And you could say it kind of started in 2021 in Virginia and then in 2021 in New Jersey. Republicans didn't win, but they did better than expected in New Jersey. So all that's to say is I think a lot of people around the country and even around the world will be looking at Virginia in November, what's going on.

34:12.02

Sam Shirazi

there a big blowback to what the Trump administration is doing with the federal government? Is there a lot of people who are frustrated and organizing and and there's a big win in Virginia and potentially a win in New Jersey for Democrats?

34:25.04

Sam Shirazi

Does that mean anything for 2026? I think those are all interesting questions, and it's a reason why Virginia in some, there's always been a debate, should Virginia switch its election to even years as opposed to odd years? But a lot of people like it keeping them in the odd years because it gives Virginia a voice, people pay attention.

34:46.19

Sam Shirazi

And if it was in the even years, it'd just be another race. But this year is really kind of an opportunity for the political world to focus on Virginia. I'm going to try my best to cover it because I i do think it's important. I do think people around the country look at Virginia and New Jersey to see what the political temperature is like.

35:05.90

Sam Shirazi

Hopefully this deep dive into the governor's race was informative. I'm going to try to cover a lot of the other races. Obviously I'll talk about the governor's race more, but part of my focus in the podcast will also be to talk about these other races that people aren't as familiar with.

35:20.67

Sam Shirazi

So keep an eye out for that. And, you know, I hope you'll continue listening to the podcast because I think it's really important that people know as much as they can about the Virginia elections this year. I obviously think they're super important.

35:32.23

Sam Shirazi

So I hope you'll continue listening and thank you for joining me and we'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

Transcript:

Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi, a Virginia political analyst. This is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections, a new podcast series that will provide updates this year as the elections play out in Virginia.

00:15.54

Sam Shirazi

This first episode will give a big picture overview of what's on the ballot this year. Future episodes will delve into all the key races. Today, we'll also talk about a potential GOP governor primary,

00:28.44

Sam Shirazi

And finally, we'll talk about the role of Doge in the election and the fallout from the changes in the federal government. So to begin with, I’ll want to give a brief overview of what's on the ballot and also what's going on in terms of the state of play.

00:45.73

Sam Shirazi

So the conventional wisdom is that the party out of power, that means the party not in the White House, tends to win the Virginia governor's election. And that's been true in every election going back till 1977, except in 2013 Democrat when democrat Terry McAuliffe was able to win even though Obama was in the White House.

01:07.21

Sam Shirazi

And the last time a Republican has won the governor's race with a Republican in the White House was all the way back in 1973 when Richard Nixon was president. So a long, long time ago.

01:20.87

Sam Shirazi

So all that's to say is the conventional wisdom is that Democrats start off with an advantage this year just purely because of the fact that they are not in the White House. And then you could add on top of that the fact that there currently is a Republican governor in the governor's mansion with Governor Glenn Youngkin.

01:40.76

Sam Shirazi

Voters tend to like to see changes between the parties in in the governor's mansion. Not always, but you do see that swing where if there's a Republican in the governor's mansion, Democrats might want to switch over to a Democrat and vice versa. So that's kind of how things start off, I think, right?

01:59.81

Sam Shirazi

Most people would say the Democrats have a slight edge right now. So I've talked about the governor's race. I think most people, when they think about the 2025 Virginia elections, they think about a governor's race.

02:11.11

Sam Shirazi

And obviously that's the top of the ticket. That's the most important race. It's important. That's the one national media pays attention to, but that's not the only race on the ticket. And I'm going to talk about some of the other ah races as well, but let's start with the governor's race. So the governor's race, currently there are,

02:27.72

Sam Shirazi

Two front runners for each party. There is on the Democratic side, former Congressman Abigail Spanberger. And on the Republican side, there is current Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears.

02:39.72

Sam Shirazi

We'll talk a little bit about potential GOP primary in a little bit, but but those are the two main candidates right now. And obviously, whoever wins that election is important, but I think the margin will also matter. And what I mean by that is, obviously, if the Republicans win, even if it's a close win, that's going to be a good night, especially with a Republican in the White House.

03:00.47

Sam Shirazi

I think, as I mentioned, most people expect the Democrats to win. So if Spanberger wins by, let's say, a narrow margin, i think – It'll be good, but I think some people will be surprised that she might not have won by more. And I think that's really the big question is how much is the margin going to be if the Democrats are able to win?

03:23.53

Sam Shirazi

Is it going to be a one-point win, a two-point win, or could it we see something similar to what happened in 2017 when Trump was last in the White House where Ralph um Northam was able to win by almost eight points?

03:36.05

Sam Shirazi

So that's the governor's race. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it right now because I think we'll talk about it in future episodes and even later in this episode. I want to just quickly touch on the other races that are on the ballot. So There is also a Lieutenant Governor's race and both sides are going to have a primary in that race. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it right now because I'll probably do an episode on that in the future.

03:57.63

Sam Shirazi

Lieutenant Governor doesn't get as much attention as a Governor, but is the presiding officer of the Virginia Senate and also is able to to break ties in the Virginia Senate. And currently ah there's a narrow 21-19 Democratic majority.

04:12.15

Sam Shirazi

So there are times when there might be a 2020 tie in the state Senate. And so it's important for the parties to be able to break the tie. So it is important in that sense. And then obviously if something happens the governor, the Lieutenant governor would step in. So that also plays an important role with the governor, with the Lieutenant governor's office.

04:31.99

Sam Shirazi

The final statewide office on the ballot is the attorney general's race. I think the attorney general's race doesn't always get as much attention as it should. So currently, Virginia has a Republican attorney general in Jason Miyares. He is running for a re-election. He is the only statewide official we're running for re-election this year.

04:52.38

Sam Shirazi

And there will be a Democratic primary. There are two Democrats running, former delegate Jay Jones and Henrico Commonwealth's attorney Shannon Taylor. And the reason I say the the attorney general's race is important is because this office is one that can affect at least a little bit of what happens in D.C. in the sense that the attorney general is able to sue the current administration if they just choose to. And we saw under the Biden administration, Attorney General Jason Meares joined several lawsuits against the Biden administration.

05:27.33

Sam Shirazi

However, since President Trump has taken office, he has not joined, Jason Miyares has not joined any of the lawsuits against President Trump. And obviously, if we get a Democratic attorney general, much more likely and almost certain that they will join whoever the Democratic attorney general in Virginia would be.

05:47.07

Sam Shirazi

would be able to join some of these lawsuits that have been brought against the Trump administration. And so, I spent a little bit of time in the Attorney General's race because I think it doesn't get the same amount of attention as the governor's race. But obviously, with everything going on and all the lawsuits, it does play an important role in what's going on in DC. And and later in the episode, I'll talk more about how what's going on in DC will affect the Virginia governor's race.

06:13.89

Sam Shirazi

So that's already three races on the ballot, but that's not it. There will also be 100 House of Delegates seats up for re-election. That's every seat in the House of Delegates.

06:25.44

Sam Shirazi

The state Senate is not up for election. So it is just the House of Delegates, but it's every seat. And currently the Democrats hold a narrow 51-49 majority. I think, again, the conventional wisdom is the Democrats start off with a little bit of of an advantage to retain their majority, just given the fact that the party that's not in the White House tends to do well in Virginia elections, state elections.

06:50.14

Sam Shirazi

So the one thing I did want to highlight with the House of Delegates races, and we'll talk more about the races probably in future podcasts, is that – There are three constitutional amendments that the Democrats have proposed. One of them is to protect reproductive rights.

07:08.67

Sam Shirazi

One of them is to remove language from the Virginia Constitution, banning same-sex marriage, and instead put language in protecting marriage equality. And the final amendment is to protect voting rights for people who have been convicted of felonies and who who have served their term.

07:25.34

Sam Shirazi

Currently, Virginia is the only is one of the only states where if you've convicted been convicted of a felony, you lose your right to vote for the rest of your life unless the governor restores that right.

07:36.45

Sam Shirazi

What this amendment would do is that once you serve your sentence, if you've been convicted of a felony, then you would have the right to vote restored automatically. So those three have all passed the General Assembly this year because the Democrats control the House of Delegates and the State Senate.

07:52.80

Sam Shirazi

However, in Virginia... It has to pass in two sessions of the General Assembly with an election in between. The election in between will be this November. And if Democrats can win the majority again in the Virginia House of Delegates, they will be able to put those constitutional amendments on the ballot in 2026. So in the 2026 midterm elections, there potentially could be those three constitutional ballots on the amendment in Virginia.

08:19.68

Sam Shirazi

But Democrats would have to win the House of Delegates majority again this November. So that's why House of Delegates, besides just being able to pass normal laws, also has the ability to pass those constitutional amendments. So those elections are also going to be really important.

08:34.12

Sam Shirazi

There are also a bunch of local offices, county boards, school boards. Probably won't get into too much of that on this podcast. But just stay tuned for future episodes because we will cover a lot of those. The races that I've mentioned and and going into a lot of more detail about those.

08:55.81

Sam Shirazi

The second thing I wanted to talk about in this podcast is the potential for a GOP primary in the governor's race. So to set things up, on the Democratic side, Congressman Bobby Scott had toyed with the idea of running for governor.

09:10.91

Sam Shirazi

but doesn't really have seemed to have taken many steps towards doing that. He hasn't made made a formal announcement. Obviously he hasn't set up any sort of committee or filed any paperwork.

09:21.72

Sam Shirazi

So he still has time. The filing deadline is not till April 3rd, but it seems less and less likely that he will run at this point, which means that it's more likely than not former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger will be unopposed for the Democratic nomination for governor. So we never know until the filing deadline passes, but I would say more likely than not, there's unlikely to be a Democratic primary for governor in Virginia.

09:53.01

Sam Shirazi

And for a while, it seemed like that might have also been the case for the Republicans. So right after the November election, Governor Youngkin endorsed Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears for the Republican nomination.

10:10.32

Sam Shirazi

That was after Attorney General Jason Miyares decided to run for re-election and not challenge Lieutenant Governor Sears. And realistically, Miyaress was probably the biggest competition that Sears could have faced in the primary, and she didn't end up having to face Miyares. And I think there was a lot of um you know discussions behind the scenes to try to avoid a primary because it would have taken a lot of time and money.

10:36.75

Sam Shirazi

But despite all those efforts, there is still a possibility there could be a GOP primary because two former legislatures let legislators in Virginia have announced that they are gathering signatures and attempting to make the ballot um for the GOP primary.

10:54.13

Sam Shirazi

One of them is a former delegate Dave LaRock, and the other one is former state senator Amanda Chase. Now, both LaRock and Chase um had served in the legislature. They tried to either run for higher office with LaRock running for state senate, and then Chase had run for governor and subsequently lost her state senate primary.

11:21.25

Sam Shirazi

So neither of them are currently in office, but they have been in office in the past. And I would describe them as being more on the... pro MAGA wing of the party, very supportive of president Trump.

11:37.14

Sam Shirazi

And part of the reason that they are attempting to make the ballot is the idea that Lieutenant governor Sears is not sufficiently loyal enough to president Trump. Now she has backed Lieutenant governor Sears has backed president Trump's recent actions, but before he won the Republican nomination in 2024,

11:56.49

Sam Shirazi

She had said some things that were somewhat critical of Trump. And I think there is a sense among some Republicans that she isn't necessarily a true Trump diehard believer. And that is creating an opening for some of these other candidates to try to jump in.

12:11.60

Sam Shirazi

I don't know if they will make the ballot, and I should mention that Virginia has some pretty strict requirements to make statewide office. So a candidate seeking statewide office will have to get 10,000 signatures from registered voters.

12:28.88

Sam Shirazi

And these all have to be valid signatures of people registered to vote in Virginia. On top of that, 400 signatures have to come from each congressional district. So it can't just be 10,000 total. It has 10,000 total with 400 coming from each congressional district and Virginia has 11 congressional districts.

12:46.28

Sam Shirazi

So that's a pretty tall order. And these efforts were just started very recently. So there's not a lot of time. The filing deadline is April 3. Both LaRock and Chase are working hard trying to get signatures to try to make that April 3rd deadline, but it's there's no guarantee they're going to make it. And so I think we just have to wait and see if they ended up end up making the primary ballot.

13:09.32

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, if they do, we can talk about it in future podcasts, but it's a little bit of a wait and see right now. And even if they make the ballot, it's unclear how much of a chance they have against Lieutenant Governor Winston Earl Sears. And I think a lot will come down to whether President Trump decides to wade into the GOP primary, which at this point is hard to tell. And Long story short, we'll just have to wait and see. I think it's a little bit early to go too into detail about a potential GOP primary just because, again, they might not make the ballot with the signature requirements. So just wanted to preview that, but we will discuss that likely in future podcast episodes.

13:50.90

Sam Shirazi

All right. So the last thing I wanted to talk about, and it's also the the name of this podcast episode, is the doge election and the question really is how much will what's going on in DC with the changes in the federal government with doge coming in to both lay off certain federal employees and also downsize a lot of the federal government, how much will that impact the Virginia state elections? And the conventional wisdom is it's going to have a pretty big impact because Virginia obviously is right next to Washington, D.C. There are a lot of federal employees. There are a lot of federal contractors.

14:32.18

Sam Shirazi

There are a lot of military bases. There are a lot of companies that rely on doing business with the federal government. So this is not a minor thing, the shakeup that is happening in D.C.

14:44.38

Sam Shirazi

And there are kind of two theories about what's going to happen and the Democratic theory and the Republican theory. So the Democrats... pretty logically are trying to pounce on this issue and say, hey, we are standing up for federal workers. We're against what's happening in DC.

15:03.55

Sam Shirazi

The Virginia Republicans are not standing up for the federal workers. And it's a pretty clear message that they are against what Doge is doing. They're against the firing of the federal workers.

15:17.34

Sam Shirazi

One would think that that's a pretty strong message, at least in Northern Virginia, if not the rest of Virginia, including Hampton roads, which has a large military presence as well as other government facilities.

15:29.99

Sam Shirazi

That's kind of the democratic side of things. Like they want to make this election, a referendum on doge and what's going on in DC. I think the Republicans have a little bit of a different strategy.

15:44.51

Sam Shirazi

Part of what they're thinking is maybe that they have to support President Trump because he's the leader of their party and they they can't really be against the firing of federal workers. And you see people like Governor Youngkin and Lieutenant Governor Sears saying they support the efforts to increase efficiency in the federal government, but they understand that it's difficult for federal workers who are losing their jobs.

16:07.51

Sam Shirazi

Now, this is where people who might be more pro-MAGA like Dave LaRock or Amanda Chase would want the Virginia GOP to be even more supportive of what President Trump is doing and Doge is doing and really go full throat behind it as opposed to trying to ah understand that some of the workers are dealing with difficult issues right now. Either way,

16:35.25

Sam Shirazi

I think part of the calculation the Republicans have is that a lot of federal workers already vote Democratic. So, you know, even if some of the people who lose their jobs are upset, they were probably going to vote for Democrats anyways. Some Republicans even feel like maybe this will lead to people moving out of Virginia and most of the people moving out will be Democrats. So Virginia will become less democratic.

16:59.90

Sam Shirazi

Realistically, I don't know how much of those changes are going to happen by the time November rolls around. It seems like that's something that would happen long term, maybe over the course of a few years as opposed to a few months because the election is coming up.

17:15.40

Sam Shirazi

But that's kind of how the Republicans are approaching it. And, you know, I'll just be honest. Virginia state elections tend to be grabbed by national issues and they tend to become referendums on national issues. So,

17:31.04

Sam Shirazi

In 2021, even though President Biden had won Virginia by 10 points the the year before, Republicans were able to vote win in Virginia by using the issue of COVID and the COVID lockdowns and really making the election referendum on COVID lockdowns and wanting to basically end those things. And they had a very clear message on that, whereas the Democrats, they were still... trying to make sure that there were precautions taken for COVID and and didn't clearly have as much of a message that resonated in 2021.

18:08.07

Sam Shirazi

But then the flip side happened in 2023 when this was the year after Roe v. Wade was overturned um and there was a potential that Virginia Republicans could get complete control of the Virginia General Assembly and pass abortion restrictions.

18:26.94

Sam Shirazi

And Governor Youngkin explicitly said that he would sign a bill that would place restrictions on abortion abortions after 15 weeks with some exceptions. However, Democrats really seized on the issue and made that election referendum on abortion.

18:41.45

Sam Shirazi

They were much more clear on their message. They basically said, we will support reproductive rights, and the Republicans were trying to create this 15-week timeframe, which didn't really work for them, and the Democrats were able to win complete control of the General Assembly in 2023.

18:59.94

Sam Shirazi

So the message is, one, the Virginia state elections tend to become dominated by these issues that aren't necessarily purely Virginia issues. And two, the party that has the clearer message often does better because it's just easier to connect to voters when you have a clear message.

19:16.89

Sam Shirazi

So if that's the case, 2025, is this going to be an election, ah referendum on Doge? And will the Democrats do well because they have a clear message of just opposing what's going on in D.C.?

19:30.55

Sam Shirazi

It's a little too early to tell. Obviously, it's a big issue in the news right now. The question becomes how much of an issue is it in November? Probably it's still going to be a big issue in November, but we don't know that that right now.

19:45.05

Sam Shirazi

The other thing too is this is an issue that almost every night will lead in the local news in DC and Hampton roads. And millions of Virginians are going to be seeing this on the news every single night. So even if you aren't a federal employee or directly impacted by it it's still something that you'll see every night.

20:05.75

Sam Shirazi

And obviously Virginia's economy as a whole really depends on the federal government. And so the question becomes, even if it's ah not directly affecting you how much will it impact your vote and the decision you make to vote in November.

20:24.58

Sam Shirazi

And the last thing I should say is A lot of people aren't necessarily super tuned in to Virginia elections and Virginia politics. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably are.

20:35.98

Sam Shirazi

But I bet there's a fair amount of people who might not even realize there's an election in Virginia this year. But the more this issue kind of dominates the news and the more people feel like maybe they're upset by what's happening, it might motivate them to – obviously vote, but also get their friends involved, get their families involved, and just kind of increasing the turnout among the base. And a lot of times the state elections are basically um turnout games about who can turn out more of their base,

21:08.08

Sam Shirazi

In 2021, Glenn Youngkin was able to win because he got out a lot of the Republican base in rural parts of Virginia. Democrats also got out parts of their base, but the Republicans just did a really good job in 2021. 2023 was not as big of a Republican turnout. I would say both sides got their bases out.

21:30.27

Sam Shirazi

They were overall probably more Democratic-leaning voters in Virginia, and you saw that the Democrats were able to win in 2023. So if this is an issue that really motivates the Democratic base, then we can see a lot of voters coming out because they're upset about what's going on, and this is an issue that's really motivating them.

21:50.64

Sam Shirazi

And kind of going back to the issue of the primary, i think both Dave LaRock and Amanda Chase, part of their argument is like, we need to give our voters a reason to come out. And we need someone who's going to go out there and be 100% behind President Trump, and then they're going to come out and vote for us in November.

22:07.66

Sam Shirazi

I think the concern they have with Lieutenant Governor Sears is that she's going to try to have this middle ground where she's not trying to offend Trump voters, but she's trying to win over some independent, maybe more moderate voters, and she ends up basically satisfying no one, so the base doesn't come out.

22:27.65

Sam Shirazi

Independent moderate voters aren't really swayed by her arguments. And so the GOP does really badly in November because of that. And they're they're saying we'd have a better shot just trying to get out our base. You know it's hard to tell right now which one makes more sense. I think the one thing I will say...

22:50.18

Sam Shirazi

Virginia statewide, the Republicans have not won a whole lot. The last time they won was in 2021. And then before that was in 2009. And both those times, while you had very conservative Republicans running, they weren't necessarily running super, super far right campaigns.

23:08.06

Sam Shirazi

And so I think there the conventional wisdom is that the Republicans need someone who's not necessarily super pro-Trump, MAGA, hardcore in order to win in Virginia. And that's why I think there's going to be a fair amount of pushback.

23:24.81

Sam Shirazi

Among the quote unquote establishment to a GOP primary if it happens because the voters feel like that the GOP insiders feel like someone like Lieutenant Governor Sears would have the best shot of winning.

23:38.53

Sam Shirazi

um But realistically, you know Sometimes these things are just very hard to control and um the midterm sorry thus the Virginia state elections might take on a life of their own.

23:52.60

Sam Shirazi

We saw that in 2017 when everyone thought it was going to be a close election, but then Democrats ended up winning by a lot and had a blue wave in Virginia in 2017, which kind of foreshadowed their wins in 2018.

24:08.50

Sam Shirazi

There's a lot. There's a lot to do this year in Virginia. There's a lot going on. I'm going to try my best to keep everyone updated. I'm not and entirely sure how often the podcast will come out. Kind of depends on my schedule, but I'm hoping to do one at at least once a week.

24:23.10

Sam Shirazi

And I'll try to cover all the different types of races, keep people updated as things develop. Hopefully, you'll be able to listen along and understand what's going on in Virginia this year. That's really my end goal is to try to educate people and give people the information they need to know what's going on to make a decision.

24:42.93

Sam Shirazi

My only message is I won't tell you who to vote for, but I really do hope if you're in Virginia, that you'll go out and vote and you'll get involved in whatever campaign might interest you because I think it's a really important election.

24:56.30

Sam Shirazi

And so I hope everyone gets involved this year in Virginia and everyone gives the podcast a listen. So thank you and we'll see you next time.

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