Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special bonus episode to go over some recently released Virginia campaign finance reports.
00:12.89
Sam Shirazi
So I'm going to go over three basic things. One, I'm going to look at the big picture governor numbers for the Democrats and the Republicans. Then I'm going to look at the upcoming Democratic primary and some of the fundraising numbers that were released and what it might mean.
00:26.90
Sam Shirazi
And then finally, I'll take a look at the House of Delegates. So the reason there was this fundraising report deadline that happened recently was because the primary is coming up on June 17th. And as part of that, this is kind of the last campaign finance reports that are required to be filed before the primary. So people have a sense of where the money is coming from.
00:47.04
Sam Shirazi
And given that the primary is coming up and it's pretty interesting on the Democratic side for lieutenant governor and attorney general, I thought it'd be a good time to touch base about what's going on with the campaign finance stuff.
00:58.02
Sam Shirazi
But before we turn to the primaries that are happening on June 17th, I did want to talk about the top of the ticket, the governor's race. Now, for both the Democrats and the Republicans, there is no primary for the governor's race, the Democratic nominee will be former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger. The Republican nominee is current Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle Sears.
01:18.67
Sam Shirazi
And in terms of fundraising, congresso former Congresswoman Spanberger certainly has a big leg up on fundraising during the filing period. And the period that this report covered was April 1st through June 5th.
01:30.17
Sam Shirazi
So of a little over two months. ah former Congresswoman Spanberger raised over six and a half million dollars and she has 14.3 million dollars cash on hand.
01:42.37
Sam Shirazi
So obviously she's posting some big numbers and you know going back to the days of her congressional races, Congresswoman Spanberger has always been good at raising money. And so I think you're seeing that here where she's got a big amount of money raised and she has a ah ah very healthy cash on hand number.
02:00.74
Sam Shirazi
Now, for Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle Sears, she is lagging behind in the fundraising category. So she's raised during this time period about three and a half million dollars, and she has less than three million cash on hand.
02:13.78
Sam Shirazi
So that means that the Democrats at the top of the ticket with Spanberger have over ten million dollars more cash on hand in the bank. And what that means is Congresswoman Spanberger is she's building her war chest so so to speak. So she's not spending a lot of money right now because most people aren't tuned in.
02:31.94
Sam Shirazi
And so she's just able to raise money, put it in the bank, and then obviously save most of that for the November election.
02:39.97
Sam Shirazi
Winston Earle Sears, she's trying her best to kind of catch up and raise money and, you know,.Not to say three and a half million dollars is nothing, but certainly at least is not keeping pace. And obviously, the longer this race goes on the there's a risk that the further and further she falls behind.
02:55.59
Sam Shirazi
And at the end of the podcast, I'll talk a little bit more about why that might be and why the Republicans are struggling a little bit this year with the fundraising. But I think. It's just one metric among many to think about how is this year leading so far. And I think most people who get the sense that Democrats in Virginia have a little bit of an advantage.
03:13.23
Sam Shirazi
And I think you're seeing that on the money side of things. Now, I should say money is not everything. And obviously, there's been campaigns where people have more money and they end up losing. And we don't know what the next report is going to look like. We don't know if there's going to be any sort of big donations from some of the big Republican donors. So I don't want to dwell on it too much right now because a lot of things can still change.
03:33.63
Sam Shirazi
But I think just purely looking at the numbers right now for the governor's race, you you'd say on the fundraising side, Spanberger definitely has an advantage. And we'll it'll just have to wait and see how that evolves in the summer as the next report will come out and we can take a look at the numbers then.
03:50.30
Sam Shirazi
All right. I did want to move on to the primaries that are coming up on June 17th. There are some House of Delegates primaries. I don't want to spend too much time on that because I don't think the numbers really made too much of a difference in those primaries. I did want to spend most of the time in Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General primary.
04:06.88
Sam Shirazi
for the Democrats, because i think that's gotten a lot of the attention. I think that's where most people are focused right now in terms of the primary on June 17th. And I'll start with the lieutenant governor's race. So there's six people running on the Democratic side for lieutenant governor. I think it's a competitive race. It's still not clear who has the advantage.
04:23.62
Sam Shirazi
And I'll probably talk about Before the primary, one more podcast about what I think is going on. But if you look purely at the lieutenant governor numbers, I think all the major candidates raised a decent amount.
04:35.26
Sam Shirazi
They all raised, you know, in the in the neighborhood about $750,000. And they're all spending a lot of money. They're all on air. So, you know, it's one of those things where I think they're all doing pretty well in terms of fundraising, but no one is you know blowing it out of the park.
04:52.78
Sam Shirazi
and raising millions and millions of dollars more than the other candidates. So I think all the major candidates are doing what they need to do to compete and to run ads, but none of them has a great fundraising advantage where it's going to make the difference. And so I don't think this is the type of race where the money is going to make the difference. I think there's a lot of other factors you' have to look at, and I'll talk about it in a separate podcast about where I think maybe the lieutenant governor's race is going to end up.
05:16.00
Sam Shirazi
None of the candidates raise like a crazy amount of money where you look at it and you say, OK, well, they're going to be able to drown the airwaves that adds. I just don't think that's what's going to be happening in the lieutenant governor's race. And so I don't think we got much more clarity about who who the front runner might be based just on the fundraising numbers.
05:33.47
Sam Shirazi
Okay, but I did want to spend a little bit more time on the attorney general race because I think there's been a lot of interesting last minute things that are going on with the campaign finance. I think it's important to spend a little bit of time just focusing on that because I think it may change the dynamics in that race a little bit.
05:50.44
Sam Shirazi
So in the last campaign finance numbers, the former delegate Jay Jones had a decent fundraising advantage over Henrico Commonwealth's attorney, Shannon Taylor. And I think in terms of cash on hand, he had almost, I believe, twice as much cash on hand as Shannon Taylor in the old campaign finance report.
06:09.74
Sam Shirazi
However, since that time, Shannon Taylor got a big injection of cash from Dominion Energy. And if you follow Virginia politics, you know that Dominion Energy is one of the big donors. They often donate a lot of money to members of the General Assembly.
06:25.57
Sam Shirazi
And on the other side, you have an organization called Clean Virginia. And Clean Virginia is a nonprofit, and oftentimes they will go and support candidates who pledge not to take Dominion money. So in this race, Jay Jones is backed by Clean Virginia, and Shannon Taylor has been backed by Dominion.
06:44.39
Sam Shirazi
And that's not an uncommon thing you'll see in many races, more so in the General Assembly, where clean Virginia will back one candidate and then Dominion might back the other candidate, particularly in Democratic primaries. That sometimes happens.
06:56.85
Sam Shirazi
So it's not totally unusual. And that's kind of a normal dynamic you see in Virginia elections, at least recently. I will say the thing that's a little bit unusual here is the amount of money that Dominion is giving to Shannon Taylor because,
07:09.65
Sam Shirazi
you know, in most races, Dominion will give maybe like 50,000 or a hundred thousand. I mean, that's kind of the ballpark of a lot of their donations. Uh, and at the very end of this campaign, Dominion energy has given Shannon Taylor, you know, I think I've lost track of the exact amount, but I think it's over $600,000, which I think is the most they've given in one cycle to one candidate in one primary. So definitely Dominion is spending a lot of money in this race and they're spending a lot of money on Shannon Taylor.
07:38.84
Sam Shirazi
And on the clean Virginia side, they've tried to highlight how this might create a conflict of interest and how it it doesn't really make sense for a ah the attorney general candidate to be getting this much money from one donor where they may have to step in and try to regulate Dominion.
07:57.33
Sam Shirazi
And the other thing to keep in mind, Dominion has also backed Jason Miyares, the Republican incumbent.
08:01.76
Sam Shirazi
And then Clean Virginia is giving money to Jay Jones. And so this has all created kind of a lot of last minute spending in the attorney general race. And so what it's done is in the last campaign finance numbers, Shannon Taylor was able to catch up to Jay Jones in terms of the money that she was able to raise.
08:16.76
Sam Shirazi
And that's allowed her to spend more on ads than she has been in the past. I will say because Jay Jones had a bit of a larger war chest to begin with, I think he's still been been spending more on ads. It's just that Shannon Taylor been able to catch up.
08:30.53
Sam Shirazi
And I think the real difference is Shannon Taylor has been able to spend more money in Northern Virginia, because if you think about it, the other media markets in Virginia, while they are you know not cheap, The DC media market is like a different level of spending that you need to be able to put an ad in the DC media market.
08:49.53
Sam Shirazi
And for most of the race, Shannon Taylor hasn't been able to spend a lot in DC, but with this new money that she's gotten from Dominion, she's been able to go on air in the Northern Virginia DC media market.
09:01.05
Sam Shirazi
And Jay Jones has also been on that market. So all that's to say is like, there's been a lot of spending last minute in this race. And I think it creates a little bit of uncertainty about what's going on, because, know, if you take out the Dominion money, you know, Jay Jones would have had a big money advantage and you would assume, OK, with some of the other advantages he had in terms of the endorsements and in terms of Hampton Roads, that should if it make him the pretty clear favorite. I think with this last minute spending that's been coming in for Shannon Taylor, I think she's hoping that it will get kind of boost her name ID in Northern Virginia.
09:34.57
Sam Shirazi
And if she can get a big enough margin in Northern Virginia, then she might be able to win, even though Jay Jones has more of the endorsements and he has, I would say, a larger base in Hampton Roads.
09:45.38
Sam Shirazi
However, as I point out, while I think it's made Shannon this race more competitive, it's not like Dominion gave the amount of money that it's like a total game changer. I think it's it's allowed Shannon Taylor to go up in Northern Virginia and compete with Jay Jones in terms of the spending in Northern Virginia. But I just don't, it's not the amount of money unless they put in even more because frankly, they can put in more at the very last minute.
10:07.84
Sam Shirazi
But I think, you know, the fundamentals of the race are in some ways the same. And I will do a different podcast probably right before the primary where I kind of go over the races and who I think might be up, who I may
10:19.60
Sam Shirazi
who I think might be down. But at the end of the day, like it definitely is adding a lot more uncertainty into the attorney general race. would still say, just given all the fundamentals, you know Jay Jones has the advantage that he has a bigger base in Hampton Roads.
10:33.92
Sam Shirazi
And so that that should help him. And the question mark is Northern Virginia. And just like the lieutenant governor's race, the question mark is Northern Virginia. And I think that question mark is still fundamentally the same. And so while I think it's added a little bit of intrigue to the attorney general race at the end, know I'll let you know but my final predictions, but I don't know if it's like fundamentally changed the entire race.
10:56.52
Sam Shirazi
All right. And the last thing I want to talk about before I wrap up, this podcast is about the House of Delegates. And again, I don't want to go through every single House of Delegates race. I'm looking more for the general election in terms of the candidates who have been raising money. And I will say overall, I think the Democrats are doing a better job raising for the House of Delegates. And, you know, there's a few reasons for that. I think the fact, the reality is they're already in the majority.
11:24.12
Sam Shirazi
And most of the donors know that more likely than not, that Democrats are going to maintain their majority. you you you know, it's just easier to raise money when you're in the majority and people think you're going to keep your majority.
11:35.67
Sam Shirazi
So if you look at all the Republicans and all the Democrats, so the Democrats raised, you know, roughly four point six million all of the Democrats in the House of Delegates, whereas the Republicans only raised about two point one million.
11:48.25
Sam Shirazi
I'll just highlight ah one district, the 82nd district in Petersburg and that part of Virginia.
11:55.29
Sam Shirazi
You have incumbent Republican Kim Taylor, and then you have the Democratic challenger, Kimberly Pope Adams. This was a seat that Harris won by four points, and it was the closest seat in 2023. So the Republican incumbent, she raised a little over 64000, which, you know, is a decent amount of money. And she has over 34000 cash on hand,
12:16.23
Sam Shirazi
you've got to compare that to the Democrats. So the Democrat, Kimberly Pope Adams, she raised a whopping $262,000 in this reporting cycle. And she has over $289,000 cash on hand.
12:27.33
Sam Shirazi
So she has over $250,000 more cash on hand than the Republican incumbent. and I think it's just like pretty rare to see a Democratic challenger or any challenger have that much more money than an incumbent.
12:39.40
Sam Shirazi
particularly in a state election. But I think it just shows you some of the challenges the Republicans are having this year with the fundraising in the House of Delegates. As you saw at the top of the ticket, they're having some challenges with fundraising. And now you're seeing at the House of Delegate level some fundraising challenges. And why is that?
12:54.58
Sam Shirazi
I mean, i want to say that I think the last four years, Glenn Youngkin has been able to kind of prop up and keep afloat the Virginia GOP with some of his personal money and also the money he's been able to raise because, you know, realistically, he's got a decent network of donors that he's been able to count on to chip in large amounts of money to his PAC.
13:16.15
Sam Shirazi
And then Glenn Youngkin would give some of that money out to all the various candidates running in the General Assembly. He gives them to the Republican Party of Virginia, who would then give it to the candidates. So there were a lot there was a lot of money coming from Glenn Youngkin through his donations and through the money he was able to raise.
13:33.63
Sam Shirazi
And I think that's papered over a lot of the problems the Virginia Republicans have had in the past with fundraising. And he was able to kind of, again, prop up the Virginia Republicans. And this year, the Democrats, they have a lot of grassroots enthusiasm and the big institutional donors want to spend a lot of money in Virginia.
13:49.68
Sam Shirazi
And so they're going to have a lot of money. And the question is, where the Republicans going to get their money? So one possibility is Glenn Youngkin goes out and raises a bunch of money and then he gives it to the Republicans and they're OK.
14:00.86
Sam Shirazi
You know, to be honest, that hasn't really been showing up in the campaign finance reports so far. I mean, it's possible he's kind of saving his money, waiting to see which are the most important races, which are the races where the money is really needed.
14:13.73
Sam Shirazi
It's also possible he's saying, like, you know, I've done my time as you know governor of Virginia and I don't need to do this anymore in terms of going out and raising all this money and giving it to all these Republican candidates. It's kind of.
14:24.54
Sam Shirazi
Winston Merrill Sears turned to do that. i've done I've done my time and he might be thinking about his next steps. And so it's possible, you know, he'll give some donations, but not to the level that he's been giving in the last few years.
14:36.64
Sam Shirazi
You know, I think we've talked about Elon Musk. That doesn't seem like that's going to happen in terms of money for the Virginia Republicans. mean, obviously, there's a lot of other wealthy donors the Republicans have nationally. It's always possible one of those wealthy donors comes in and, you know, throws a lot of money at the Virginia Republicans.
14:52.68
Sam Shirazi
As I mentioned, Virginia doesn't have any campaign finance limits. So if someone wants to donate $10 million dollars and you know that'll make a big chunk and and take take a little pressure off the Republicans if if they get a big donation like that.
15:06.07
Sam Shirazi
I think the challenge for the Virginia Republicans is that they kind of get into this cycle where they're not doing too well. There's not a lot of fundraising. And so the donors don't want to fund even more because they think it's just throwing money away. And The money's not there and it just doesn't show up. you know i I think it's a little bit early to make that final call, but it is something that Virginia Republicans have to think about.
15:27.65
Sam Shirazi
And they have to, when you go to donors, you have to give them a credible path to victory and not just kind of tell them, you know can I please have some money? Because donors, they're looking into the midterms. There's other candidates calling them all the time.
15:40.49
Sam Shirazi
And you have to kind of give them a convincing reason why they should give the money to you. And I think that was one of the things Glenn Youngkin was good at. And in 2021, he showed that he was able to win in Virginia and that enabled him to get donations, particularly in 2023. He got a lot of donations because I think he he proved he proved that he was able to win in Virginia.
15:58.79
Sam Shirazi
And the challenge is if he looks like he's not fully engaged and there isn't a whole lot going on in terms of the top of the ticket or the and and, you know, I should mention the entire Republican ticket is not totally unified. And John Reid's running his own campaign. And there's a lot of things going on right now with the Virginia GOP. And if if that's just kind of how it keeps going, could be in some trouble come November. And, you know, November is not that far away. Early voting is starting in a little over three months in late September and Election Day is less than five months away. And so
16:33.89
Sam Shirazi
If you think about the hole the Republicans are in both at the top of the ticket and in these House of Delegates races, I mean, there isn't a whole lot of time to start raising money. And the Democrats are just they're continuously raising money. So it's not like the Republicans can just you know catch up very quickly. So I think these are all things to think about.
16:53.06
Sam Shirazi
I'm not saying in and of itself the money is determinative, but I do think it's one of those things we have to just keep an eye on as we're moving towards November 2021. There'll be other campaign finance numbers. I'm sure there'll be changes. I'll talk about them. I don't want to assume just because this cycle, this this report, these things look one way.
17:11.58
Sam Shirazi
That's how it's going to be in November. But I do think, you know, the closer we are getting to November, the less time there is to raise money and to kind of compete in these races. So all that's to say is I think.
17:22.66
Sam Shirazi
There's a lot of interesting things going on in this campaign finance report. I'll try my best to cover the future campaign finance report. The next week is going to be very busy as we run up to the June 17th primary. That'll be the primary focus of the podcast, no pun intended.
17:36.73
Sam Shirazi
And then after the June 17th primary, we'll shift the general election and we can talk all about that. So A lot of stuff going on. Very busy in Virginia. Hope you follow along with me. Hope you find this interesting. Feel free to send it to other people if they're interested in the Virginia elections. But this has been Federal Fallout, and I'll join you next time.
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