Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is federal fallout to 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special bonus episode where we will go over the 11th district special election that is happening for the congressional seat in Fairfax County.
00:15.92
Sam Shirazi
Now, just for some background, the former congressman for that district, Jerry Connolly passed away and that was a huge loss for Virginia. And I know he was really well loved in Fairfax.
00:28.60
Sam Shirazi
And it's just a shame that he passed away. And, you know, obviously, we're all still thinking about him and sending his family our best wishes. But because he passed away, there was a special election called the actual special election is not till September. So that's the general election when the Republicans and Democrats will face off.
00:47.04
Sam Shirazi
However, the reality is this is a very Democratic seat. And so whoever becomes a Democratic nominee is almost certain to win the special election in September. And so We have the situation where both the Democrats and the Republicans this Saturday, when this episode is going to be released, will have what's called,
01:08.20
Sam Shirazi
It's a primary run by the parties. And the reason for that is Virginia just has this thing where when there's a special election, the state doesn't have a primary. It's the local political parties that select the candidates and local political parties can can select those candidates based on their own rules.
01:24.69
Sam Shirazi
Typically, what we've seen, especially for congressional races, is that there will be what's called sometimes you call it a firehouse primary. Sometimes it's called like a caucus. But basically, all it is is.
01:37.23
Sam Shirazi
People go in and they vote. They pick for the person that they want to be the nominee. and It's like a normal election, except the state is not running it. The local party is running it. And so both the Republicans and Democrats are doing this process.
01:51.36
Sam Shirazi
Obviously, the Democratic process is going to be more intense. Partly that's because there's more on the line. The winner of the Democratic primary will almost certainly win the special election.
02:01.59
Sam Shirazi
Also, there's just a lot more Democrats in in this district. So there's going to be a lot more turning people turning out. But it's important to note that both the Democrats and Republicans are going to pick their candidates. And the Democrats set the rules for doing that. And there was a little bit of controversy because various aspects of that selection process. But I would say the biggest issue is that there's no ranked choice voting.
02:24.26
Sam Shirazi
So whoever gets the most votes, it doesn't matter if it's 30%, if it's 40%, will win the nomination without having to get a majority through ranked choice voting.
02:34.95
Sam Shirazi
And obviously we just saw the Lieutenant Governor primary here in Virginia where the nominee was able to get less than 28% of the votes. So Virginia doesn't have ranked choice voting, at least for the statewide elections or the congressional elections. And so just like that, you will see a regular primary where whoever gets the most votes wins.
02:53.45
Sam Shirazi
In theory, because this is a party run process, they could have used ranked choice voting and there have been past times when ranked choice voting was used But for whatever reason, the Democrats in Fairfax in the 11th district decided not to use ranked choice voting.
03:08.02
Sam Shirazi
So that kind of shaped some of the dynamics in the race. And the way it basically works is there is a few days of early voting at one location for the Democrats. And then on the primary day itself, there will be a bunch of locations throughout Fairfax County. People can go there.
03:24.64
Sam Shirazi
they can go vote, fill out the ballot, who who they want to be the nominee, submit that, and then all that is counted. And then whoever has the most votes wins. The Republican process is similar. I would say the main difference is it's just a lot fewer people involved, lot fewer people going to vote. I think they only have one location because realistically, there's just not that many Republicans in this district.
03:45.30
Sam Shirazi
But it's important to keep in mind that they are also picking their nominee as well. All right. So because this is such a ah blue seat and Obviously, whoever wins this primary is almost certainly certainly going to be the next member of Congress from Virginia.
03:59.39
Sam Shirazi
There's been a lot of Democrats that have run for this seat, and I will go through all of them, although I will be honest, I will talk about the ones that have the most realistic chance of winning. There's also a lot of Republicans running.
04:11.39
Sam Shirazi
ah You know, to be honest, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the Republican side. i mean, we'll find out who the nominee is. And, you know, I'm sure that they'll run their campaign, but it's just it's very unlikely. in this environment with this seat that the Republicans are going to be able to flip a seat in Fairfax County, which has a lot of government employees, a lot of people upset at what's going on in DC. It just does not seem like the time right now where the 11th district is going to flip to the Republicans.
04:37.28
Sam Shirazi
So for that reason, and not going to spend a lot of time in the Republican primary. We'll find out who the nominee is. I did want to talk more about the dynamics in this Democratic firehouse primary. All right, so I will mention each candidate. Again, I don't know how realistic of a chance each one has, but I will mention them, and then I'll talk about the ones that or have more of a chance to win this Firehouse primary. So I'll go through the list of candidates.
05:01.44
Sam Shirazi
There is Candace Bennett, Ross William Branstetter, Dan Lee, Leo Martinez, Amy Papinew, Stella Pekarski, Priya Panuz,
05:15.84
Sam Shirazi
Amy Roma, Irene Shin, and James Walkinshaw. So as you can see, a lot of different candidates running and they all have different backgrounds, bring different perspectives. So I don't mean to minimize any of these candidates, but I did want to focus maybe on some of the more, the candidates that have more of a connection in terms of the political background and having a political network that they might be able to tap into to maybe win this primary. So I'll start with a Fairfax supervisor. His name is James Walkinshaw.
05:49.36
Sam Shirazi
And the important thing is he used to be Jerry Connolly's chief of staff. he has He has Jerry Connolly's endorsement. Before he passed away, Jerry Connolly endorsed him. And so I think right off the bat, that's going to give him a pretty big advantage because he just has that backing.
06:07.61
Sam Shirazi
And obviously that's important in a district where he represented it for a while and and he he passed away. And so people are going to consider that he wanted Walkinshaw to be the person who followed him into this congressional seat.
06:21.59
Sam Shirazi
However, he's not the only person running, as we can see. And are other elected officials. So there is State Senator Stella Prakarski. She represents parts of Western Fairfax. And so she was previously on the school board as well. So she has a fair amount of elected experience in Fairfax County.
06:39.64
Sam Shirazi
And then you have Delegate Irene Shin. She represents part of Herndon and Reston in Fairfax. And so she has an elected background. It's also important to note, so she is Korean American and the district itself has a fairly substantial Asian population.
06:57.90
Sam Shirazi
It's about 23% Asian. So that's pretty healthy number that she can use to to build a base on. And also, she's one of the younger candidates. And I think she's trying to run as a as a young candidate, trying to bring that perspective. Obviously, there's been a talk lot of talk in the Democratic Party about needing to run younger candidates.
07:15.52
Sam Shirazi
And then there is another candidate I wanted to talk about. And that's Leo Martinez. So he used to be a member of the Democratic National Committee. And then it's kind of interesting fact when he was in Venezuela, he was a member of the Venezuelan.
07:27.65
Sam Shirazi
parliament And so he moved to the America and became a U.S. citizen. But it's interesting he has that perspective. And the district's about 15% Hispanic. So that's another area, another group of voters he might be able to to look to to build upon.
07:41.24
Sam Shirazi
So I would say given their connections and their backgrounds, I mean, those are the ones in my mind that probably have the best shot at winning. Not to say that, and I don't want to discount the other candidates or kind of neglect the fact that they're running.
07:53.54
Sam Shirazi
It's just the reality. This was very quick. Obviously, Congressman Connolly passed away, the governor called a special election, and this primary was going to happen in a matter of weeks. And so it's not a lot of time to build up a political organization, not a lot of time to raise money, run ads, do all the things need to in a campaign because this special election has to happen and and the primary has to happen before that to select the nominees.
08:17.51
Sam Shirazi
So I think the general sense is those are the candidates that have more of a realistic shot Now, in terms of who might be able to win this thing, i think the advantage James Walkinshaw has is is one of them is, as I mentioned, he has the endorsement of Congressman Connolly before he passed away.
08:35.83
Sam Shirazi
He also is a supervisor in Fairfax and That's where Congressman Connolly originally came from. He was a supervisor in in Fairfax before he became ah ah congressman. So there's kind of that path to becoming the member of Congress.
08:50.03
Sam Shirazi
And also just the reality is when there's not ranked choice voting, whoever is able to get maybe 40 percent of the vote or is is the person who's able to kind of coalesce, coalesce kind of biggest amount chunks of votes is going to be the favorite.
09:02.82
Sam Shirazi
And so I think right now that's the advantage James Walkinshaw has. You have The other candidates running, and I don't want to say that they can't win, but I think there's some challenges in terms of being able to put together this coalition to maybe be the other candidate. and Because if you think about it, so for example, both Stella Pekarski and Irene Shin, in theory, they could be maybe the candidate that does well with women voters
09:26.96
Sam Shirazi
here when you have two prominent women elected officials running, i mean, there's a possibility that that vote might get split. And so I think that's kind of the challenge that they're going to have as they're trying to put together this coalition to win.
09:40.58
Sam Shirazi
And you know The other thing I should mention is the the turnout in this is going to be very interesting to watch because there's no mail voting. So everyone has to show up. They have to go to their polling place.
09:52.52
Sam Shirazi
It's not the regular polling place. It's the the designated areas that the Fairfax Democrats said that people can go and vote. And so you have to be kind of a committed person to do that. And you have to understand what's going on You have to understand the party rules.
10:05.73
Sam Shirazi
It's different than a regular primary. And so that's kind of a very unique set of people that come out to vote for that. And those people tend to be more traditional party loyalist type people, not all of them, but a good chunk of them are going to be.
10:17.10
Sam Shirazi
And maybe that's another scenario where someone like Connolly's former Congressman Connolly's endorsement is going to be important. So all that's to say is like, I think it's going to be difficult for anyone who's not James Walkinshaw to maybe win this thing. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible.
10:30.47
Sam Shirazi
And the thing with these firehouse primaries is they're really unpredictable because you're not seeing the regular primary turnout. It's going to be people who are really committed. And and if someone's able to bring out their base of voters, they might be able to pull off an upset.
10:43.23
Sam Shirazi
And I think that's happened in the past, certainly in in House races where there's been these firehouse primaries and and in state House races and state Senate races. So I think there there can be a surprise at the end of the day. And I don't want to say that this is is all decided already.
10:58.27
Sam Shirazi
And I think the other thing to keep in mind is overall turnout. I mean, we don't know. It could be 10,000 voters, could be 20,000. Obviously, there's a lot of Democrats in Fairfax. If they all feel and feel like showing up on Saturday, there's a decent amount of voting locations.
11:11.47
Sam Shirazi
We could get 30,000. I mean, it's just impossible to know how many people are going to turn out. And when you have those types of dynamics in a firehouse primary, I'm not going to make a prediction because I think it's almost impossible to know with any sort of certainty who's going to win.
11:23.21
Sam Shirazi
There have been some internal polls that been floating around, but those polls are... you know It's not a normal primary where you can kind of pull the electorate. It's just such a unique circumstance.
11:33.63
Sam Shirazi
So for that reason, I think it's just going to be very difficult to know who's going to win. you know if If I had to guess, I think front runner right now is James Walkinshaw. And the question really is, can anyone catch him?
11:45.91
Sam Shirazi
And the reason I can't give you a certain answer about who's going win is just it's not a normal primary. We don't know who's going to show up. We don't know what the turnout is going to be. So all all that says, like, I think it's going to be interesting. It might take a few days or I don't know how quickly they're going the ballots. It really depends how many people show up.
12:01.73
Sam Shirazi
yeah Hopefully by Sunday we might be able to know, if it in it but it might take longer and longer. We'll just have to wait and see who ends up winning the nomination. I did want to talk about it because this is an election this year that's happening in Virginia.
12:13.89
Sam Shirazi
i tend to focus on the state elections, but obviously I'm keeping an eye on what's going on in these federal elections. And this is an important race because the person who wins could possibly be in office for a long time because it's a very safe blue seat.
12:29.80
Sam Shirazi
And it's very unlikely that they were they would lose a general election. Obviously there there could be future primaries, but you know it's difficult to primary incumbents. And so at the end of the day, this is the type of race where whoever wins this could be in office for a while. And so I do think there's a lot on the line in this race. And You know, I would say that the state primaries have gotten a lot more of the attention. They certainly got more of my attention just because I was so busy focusing on that.
12:57.20
Sam Shirazi
And a lot of people are focused on the state elections and the governor. and And this is kind of happening in the background and all the candidates are running the races. But it's just hard. It's hard to reach voters. It's hard to kind of get the word out.
13:09.51
Sam Shirazi
People have to know it's it's not a regular primary. You can't go to your normal polling place. You have to go to these places that the Fairfax Democrats said that there's going to be a primary. And so it's just a lot of things to process as a voter.
13:21.03
Sam Shirazi
I do think we're going to have pretty good turnout. I do think there's going to be good engagement because this is a more politically active area. And obviously Fairfax County, a lot of people work in politics, work in government. So I think it will be interesting firehouse primary. I'm curious to see what the results are. I think pretty much once we know the Democratic nominee, I think we'll be pretty certain that person is going to be the next member of Congress from Virginia in the September special election. So certainly something to keep an eye on. You'll obviously find out the results when they are posted. I did want to just talk about this.
13:52.42
Sam Shirazi
Probably
13:52.46
Sam Shirazi
So we'll just have to wait and see what happens with this special election. But I appreciate everyone listening. I i know there was a lot going on in the primary. Now we're heading into the the main thing, the main general election.
14:03.71
Sam Shirazi
It'll be really interesting. So I appreciate everyone listening and giving me good feedback. But for now, this is Farrell Fallout and I'll join you next time.
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