Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will do a summer check-in to see what's going on and get a little bit of a heat check on the state of the race right now.
00:13.52
Sam Shirazi
Obviously, we're in the middle of July. That is typically a slower time on the campaign trail. Partly that's just because people are on vacation and enjoying the summer and it's not necessarily the time where most voters are super engaged in an election.
00:27.86
Sam Shirazi
And obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, you are probably more engaged in the election. So I wanted to kind of touch base on where we are at the governor's level, lieutenant governor's level, attorney general level, and then the House of Delegates.
00:38.54
Sam Shirazi
Big picture, i will start off with the governor's race because I think that's the race that most people are paying the closest attention to. And obviously, it's going to be the most important race this year because the margin in the governor's race is really going to determine a lot of the other races.
00:53.65
Sam Shirazi
And I think part of the challenge when you're a political analyst is to try to figure out what's going on and try to be as objective as possible because you don't want to give people a false sense of what's going on. We all have our own political beliefs, but I'm going to try to figure out, okay, where what is the state of the campaign?
01:10.32
Sam Shirazi
And I think this... This new era of politics, it's going to become even more challenging because we aren't getting a lot of polls. And there's a lot of reasons for that. Part of it is traditional media like newspapers are just there aren't as many and their budget aren't isn't as big. And so traditionally, we would get a lot of polls from newspapers. We haven't been getting a lot of those types of polls.
01:33.60
Sam Shirazi
I think there's a lot of the pollsters are a little bit nervous to do polling these days because it's just hard to know who's going to show up for these types of elections. Also, it's just hard to poll overall in the summer, given that people are away. And I think we will see a lot more Virginia polls in the fall, which will be good because we'll have a sense of where things are. But that obviously makes it difficult right now when we aren't getting polls to know what's going on in Virginia.
01:57.61
Sam Shirazi
But most independent observers, I would say, think the Democrats have an advantage right now. Partly that's because the party out of the White House almost always does well in Virginia elections.
02:08.12
Sam Shirazi
Part of it is just a fundraising. Democrats have a lot more money. And I think just organizationally and with enthusiasm, The sense is the Democrats have an advantage there. Certainly the Democratic ticket is more unified, even though the Republicans have gotten their act together a little bit, they still don't have a super unified ticket as compared to the the Democrats, which I think makes things difficult in terms of running coordinated campaign.
02:32.71
Sam Shirazi
So I think if if I had to say, I would agree that the Democrats right now have a little bit of an advantage. But I think part of the challenge is to know how big that advantage is. Is this the type of advantage that's basically very difficult for the Republicans to overcome?
02:45.55
Sam Shirazi
Or is it kind of a slight advantage that the Republicans are going to be able to maybe come back and win the election in November? You
02:53.48
Sam Shirazi
And so one thing you can look at is presidential approval. I think there hasn't been as many of those as there were in the spring. As I mentioned, I did a podcast about the 100-day mark of the Trump presidency. We got a but bunch of approval polls then.
03:08.88
Sam Shirazi
I would say in the spring, the Trump approval was getting low because there was the issues with the tariffs and Liberation Day, and that caused the stock market to go down. I think the stock markets recovered a little bit.
03:23.10
Sam Shirazi
There's still chaos with the tariffs. It seems like President Trump has issued a new round of tariffs. stock market has kind of shrugged it off this time. My sense is because they're just kind of expecting bunch of chaos with the tariffs and they've just kind of built that in that the tariffs are going to go up and down, up and down.
03:41.13
Sam Shirazi
So all that's to say is like, I think there's been a little bit less economic turmoil in this new round of tariffs as compared to the first round of tariffs, but still, I think it is going to potentially impact the economy.
03:52.96
Sam Shirazi
The other thing I should note is the federal fallout has been relatively less as compared to the beginning of the year. So some of the layoffs have not been as big as initially envisioned, although obviously there has been a lot of impact to what's going on in DC. So for example, recently there's been news that the Veterans Administration will be scaling back some of their reductions because there was just enough people have left voluntarily.
04:20.08
Sam Shirazi
Obviously that means the Veterans Administration is not gonna have as many people still, but they aren't necessarily gonna go through with as many firings. And I think part of that was also congressional pushback. So, you know I'm not trying to minimize what's been going on in DC and I'm not trying to minimize some of the federal fallout, but the reality is You know, when this podcast started, it seemed like that was going to be really massive. And I think the scale of it has come down a little bit, although obviously it's still has had a big impact on the Virginia economy.
04:49.49
Sam Shirazi
You know, we have this new reconciliation bill that's been passed. I think in some ways it helps the Republicans because they can say they passed something. It helps the Democrats because they can talk about how people are going to lose their health care.
05:01.10
Sam Shirazi
realistically, you know most of its impacts are not going to be felt this year. So I don't know how much of an impact overall it's going to have on the Virginia election. Certainly Democrats want to be talking about it and they will be talking about it. But the reality is the impact of the bill is not going to be felt directly in the same way as, for example, some of the cuts to the federal government that happened at the beginning of the year.
05:22.87
Sam Shirazi
Anyways, so I think. What I'll leave it at for the governor's race is just that the Democrats right now have an advantage.
05:31.78
Sam Shirazi
I would say it's not necessarily in the realm of it can't be overcome. Certainly things could happen. There could be external circumstances. In theory, I think there is a scenario where the Virginia Republicans could win the governor's race.
05:47.28
Sam Shirazi
At the same time, though, i think it would be difficult. And, you know, they're they're facing a candidate and and former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who has run tough campaigns before.
05:58.39
Sam Shirazi
She's won these close races. She's raised a decent amount of money already, and she's probably going to keep raising more money. And so I think that's all things that have to be taken into account. I'm not saying it's impossible for Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earl Sears to win this year in Virginia.
06:14.75
Sam Shirazi
But I would say right now, definitely the advantage is with Spanberger. And we'll just have to see how the campaign plays out the rest of the year. Now, in terms of the other statewide races, so there's lieutenant governor and attorney general, you know, my personal theory, again, is there not that much split ticket voting in Virginia.
06:33.50
Sam Shirazi
Frankly, you know, I think something that we super engaged political people have to keep in mind is most voters are not living and breathing this stuff. They are not, you know, looking at all the nuances of the candidates and looking at all their policy positions.
06:47.14
Sam Shirazi
They are kind of generally following politics, if they are even following politics at all. Many of them don't even know there's a virginia election this year they may get more tuned in in the fall and then maybe realize there is the virginia election and they'll show up and vote and a lot of times people will just vote based on you know what they're feeling in the moment and the party that they tend to support and so that means there's just a lot of straight ticket voting they might not even know who the candidates are below the governor's race So, you know, my personal opinion is I think there'll be a lot of straight ticket voting if the Democrats win the governor's race, which right now it seems like they have the advantage. I think that'll help them for the lieutenant governor and attorney general spots.
07:29.14
Sam Shirazi
I will say I'll talk more about the attorney general race because I think that's where the Republicans are investing more money. And I think they they envision a scenario where perhaps at the top of the ticket, they end up losing that race. maybe we speak And I think they will understand that a lot of what's going on at the top of the ticket is the Democrats.
07:49.89
Sam Shirazi
you know They may not want to admit this, but I think most Republicans, when you talk to them private privately, they understand that Spanberger is a strong candidate for the Democrats and is just someone who is not easy to defeat.
08:02.25
Sam Shirazi
And so I think they understand the challenge that they face with Spanberger. We did see recently that in the attorney general's race, Jason Meares, the current incumbent Republican, has started attacking his Democratic opponent, Jay Jones, and talked about um um some of the issues that Republicans like to talk about, more so on the crime side, trying to paint Jay Jones as being soft on crime.
08:24.97
Sam Shirazi
Now, again, I don't know how much that that's going to stick because, frankly, I don't know how many people know who the Republican and Democratic candidates are for attorney general. You know, the Democrats went through a primary.
08:35.38
Sam Shirazi
you know I think the hardcore democrat Democratic voters who showed up for that primary probably know who Jay Jones is. The hardcore Republican voters know who Jason Meares is. I don't know if you know the majority of Virginians, frankly, know who these candidates are.
08:48.30
Sam Shirazi
And so when those when people go into the voting booth, It's not like they're going line by line and making some sort of individual decision about each office. I think a lot of those voters, they're going to vote for their governor candidate and they're just going to vote for that party, the rest of the ticket.
09:02.14
Sam Shirazi
But obviously, Jason Meares is an incumbent. I think relatively he has a decent amount of money. And I think he's going to try to distinguish himself and maybe try to win that
09:14.29
Sam Shirazi
part of the race without necessarily being tied to the top of the ticket and maybe try to run a little bit more of an independent campaign, try to maybe portray himself as kind of typical Republican law and order candidate.
09:27.28
Sam Shirazi
Obviously, Jay Jones is going to run his campaign and he's going to try to raise the issues that he wants to talk about. My sense is he's going to be attacking Jason Meares for not doing enough to push back on the Trump administration.
09:40.18
Sam Shirazi
That's kind of what you would expect for a Democrat running for attorney general. So I think it's going to be an interesting race. You have these two different candidates, two different they want to focus on. But again, realistically, I don't know how much it's going to come down to that individual race as opposed to people just voting straight ticket.
09:56.69
Sam Shirazi
If it's a really close race at the top of the ticket where Spanberger is you know barely winning the race, you know you could see a scenario where Miara is able to hang on. I think the challenge is if the the race is starting to slip away for the Republicans at the top of the ticket.
10:11.57
Sam Shirazi
So, for example, if Spanberger is getting into maybe five point win territory or above, I think that's you're getting to the point where it's just it's hard to imagine a scenario where.
10:22.57
Sam Shirazi
Jason Millares is going to be able to win that race if Smeanberger is getting that margin at the top of the ticket. And we'll just have to wait and see what happens with the top of the ticket for both lieutenant governor and attorney general.
10:35.71
Sam Shirazi
But that's just kind of how I see the statewide races this year in Virginia. All right. So now I want to talk about the House of Delegates. And you know Most voters are not paying super close attention to the House of Delegates, but in some ways, in my mind, that's the most fascinating race that's going on this year because you have all these hundred seats up for election and it's unclear how many of them are going to be super competitive. The Democrats are targeting a lot of different districts.
11:03.03
Sam Shirazi
The Republicans, I would say, are mostly on the defense, although they are trying to go after a few seats. And so you have this really interesting dynamic where you have all these seats that Vice President Harris was able to carry in 2024, but that the Democrats are trying to win this time. You have strong incumbents on the Republican side. But then again, you have credible challengers in many of these races, challengers that have raised a lot of money and in in some cases have significantly outraised the Republican incumbent.
11:30.89
Sam Shirazi
And I think the thing that's a little bit unclear One is just the top of the ticket, as we've talked about, like, what is the margin going to be? I think in most of these districts, if Spanberger wins the district, that doesn't automatically mean that their incumbent Republican is going to lose.
11:46.82
Sam Shirazi
But again, the larger the Spanberger win in these districts, that means the more likely the incumbent is going to lose. So I think, for example, if Spanberger wins a district by one point, there's a decent chance a Republican incumbent in that district might be able to hang on because,
12:03.52
Sam Shirazi
They're just there's enough ticket splitting that they would be able to win. The challenge Republicans have, again, to me, five is like five percent is like this magical number. I think if Spanberger is carrying a district by about five percent, that's just you're getting to the point where it's going to be very difficult for any Republican incumbent to survive that because, you know, it's just hard to imagine more than five percent of the voters splitting their ticket.
12:27.23
Sam Shirazi
And so that makes it very difficult to kind of know what's going to happen in these districts because we don't know what the margin is going to be at the top of the ticket and we don't know what Spanberger's margin in these individual districts is going to be.
12:39.13
Sam Shirazi
And then the other thing is is how much support are these candidates gonna get from the party? So the Republicans already are a little bit cash-strapped in Virginia. We talked about it. We talked about how the Democrats have a lot more money this year in Virginia.
12:51.27
Sam Shirazi
don't know how much donations the Republicans are gonna end up getting. There is no campaign finance limit in Virginia, so in theory, The Republicans could find the donor that will come in and save them, but it seems unlikely that they're going to get a huge amount of money that's going to be more than what the Democrats have.
13:07.62
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, in theory, you could see a scenario where the Republicans start triaging candidates. And basically triaging means you you say, you know, that seat's gone. We're not going to win it. There's no point in us throwing money at that seat because,
13:20.97
Sam Shirazi
you know, it's we're just we're just going to lose that seat anyways. I think that's a challenge that the Republicans are going to have because you have all these incumbents and the incumbents have paid their dues literally over the years. So the way that these things work is if you are a member of,
13:35.62
Sam Shirazi
any legislative body, you're expected to contribute money to that campaign fund for your party. And so these some of these candidates have been contributing for years and have given a lot of money to the Republican caucus, and they're going to expect that to get returned when they're in trouble and they're in a tough race because you know what's the point of contributing all these years if you don't get some of it when you need it?
13:59.36
Sam Shirazi
And so oftentimes you see, like this happened in the 2018 cycle when the Republicans were forced to spend a lot of money on some of these House candidates who didn't really have a shot, but they just had to because they were incumbents.
14:10.33
Sam Shirazi
And you could see a scenario like that again, where the incumbents are expecting to get money from the party. But you could also see a scenario where things are triaged and the Republicans just tell some of these candidates, you know we we don't have enough to to give you and your race isn't looking too good.
14:27.22
Sam Shirazi
Again, I don't know if that's going to happen. a lot of it depends on how big of a, it looks like how big of a win the Democrats are going to get. if If the Democrats end up winning, a lot of it depends on how much money they have.
14:39.36
Sam Shirazi
But those are some of the dynamics to look for in the House of Delegates. So I just want to talk a little bit about what the next few weeks are going to look like. So I think for the less rest rest of July and August,
14:50.02
Sam Shirazi
unless there's some big thing that comes either nationally or in Virginia, I think it's going to be relatively quiet. You'll see the candidates doing events. They'll be doing their thing, but it's just not going to get the same level of coverage, i think, as the fall, obviously. and And that's just the reality in any election. The summer is kind of the sleepy season. I think we've already got a lot of stuff that happened this year in Virginia. So we had The Democrats had to pick their candidates. There was a Democratic primary.
15:18.85
Sam Shirazi
On the Republican side, you had a lot of drama earlier in the year with the Lieutenant governor seat with Winsome, sorry, with John Reed.
15:28.19
Sam Shirazi
And so now the ticket had this unity event. They're a little bit, got their act together, although they're not super unified, but they're better than they were earlier in the year. And so that's already been taken care of. So It's a little bit of a a sleepier time right now on the campaign trail.
15:44.64
Sam Shirazi
But there's this old adage that Labor Day when things change. People go away for vacation on Labor Day. And then in Virginia, when everyone gets back, schools are open. But then also in late September will be the start of early voting. And so I think very quickly after Labor Day, the campaign will really pick up.
16:04.81
Sam Shirazi
I think we'll see a lot of push for early voting. The Democrats have always emphasized early voting. I think the Republicans probably this year are gonna push in-person early voting because they realized that was something that helped them in 2021.
16:20.96
Sam Shirazi
And I think most of Republicans now are comfortable voting in-person early. And so Virginia has in-person early voting for 45 days. So I think you'll have that come up where you'll have a push for early voting And then October is really the meat of the campaign. lot of stuff going on.
16:42.29
Sam Shirazi
There'll be a lot of outside groups getting involved, a lot of politicians coming in. We'll see who ends up coming in for the Democrats. I'm sure some of the candidates thinking about running in 2028 may want to stop by Virginia, do their...
16:56.49
Sam Shirazi
appearance kind of show that they're working for the candidates in Virginia this year. same thing with the Republicans. We'll see who who ends up coming. I think the big question mark for the Republicans is, does President Trump come to Virginia?
17:09.31
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, I talked a little bit about this with my guest, Joe Szymanski. His sense was the Virginia Republicans probably want to run their own race. And so I don't know if President Trump is going to come in and do a big rally like he likes to do. And my my sense is that President Trump is mainly going to be staying out of the Virginia governor's race. And it will be curious to see if the Democrats try to egg him on and try to get him more involved in the Virginia governor's race.
17:36.69
Sam Shirazi
But so far, he's been pretty quiet about it. And there hasn't been a lot of posting on social media about the Virginia governor's race. Obviously, President Trump is probably pretty busy busy these days.
17:47.39
Sam Shirazi
The Virginia governor's race is not his top priority, I imagine. But as the election gets closer, he'll probably think about it more because it's gonna be in the news more. So October is gonna be really interesting. And then obviously the last few days of November are gonna be really crazy when the final days of the campaign.
18:02.42
Sam Shirazi
I think the fall is always a really interesting time for these elections. You're gonna get a lot of polls, you're gonna have a lot of events. There'll be candidates. The candidates will be perhaps doing debates, although I don't think there's been any scheduled yet.
18:15.40
Sam Shirazi
You're going have people coming in from outside and it's just going to be a lot of busy stuff going on. I think compared to right now, it's going to be a lot busier. and And that's why I did this episode to kind of do heat check in the middle the summer, because things are just a little less crazy right now.
18:31.56
Sam Shirazi
And I guess the last thing I should talk about is the New Jersey governor's race. So We've heard a lot about you know perhaps New Jersey being more competitive this year and Virginia, again, I don't know if that's gonna happen.
18:43.82
Sam Shirazi
year in New Jersey, Republicans made big gains. it was a lot closer than people expected. So we'll see if they're able to build on that. I will say that Virginia has probably been more impacted by what's going on in D.C., although obviously that's also felt in New Jersey.
18:57.50
Sam Shirazi
So maybe that'll also mean that New Jersey will be more competitive because they aren't seeing as much federal fallout as Virginia seeing. But ah ah then again, Virginia, sorry.
19:08.15
Sam Shirazi
Then again, New Jersey traditionally has been a more democratic state. So maybe that means for these state elections, they'll go back to their roots and be a little bit more democratic. So long story short, I don't want to keep lose track of New Jersey. I think this year it could get more attention relative to Virginia than it has in the past just because it could be more competitive.
19:28.14
Sam Shirazi
So ah That's another thing to keep an eye on, what's going on in New Jersey, lot going on in Virginia, obviously. And I do think know this election will be important because we had the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in the spring.
19:41.43
Sam Shirazi
That obviously was important because it led to the falling out eventually between President Trump and Elon Musk. I think now Elon Musk is talking about starting his own political party. We'll see if that goes anywhere. I don't think that's really going to affect the 2025 Virginia elections.
19:56.54
Sam Shirazi
But that was a big election in the spring. And we really haven't had any big elections since then. There's the New York City mayor race, which is a little bit of an exception because that was a Democratic primary. But
20:07.70
Sam Shirazi
In terms of a Democratic versus Republican race, there hasn't been one that's gotten a lot of attention. And so I think what's going to happen this November is going to be really important for both in New Jersey and Virginia. And I think what ends up happening will make a big difference for the 2026 midterms.
20:26.44
Sam Shirazi
People will gauge how things are going. If the Democrats get a big win in Virginia, i think that'll energize people, that'll get people. fired up for 2026 for the midterms. Obviously, if the Republicans win, i think it'll be a big deal and it'll you know certainly be demoralizing the Democrats.
20:44.25
Sam Shirazi
But even if Republicans are able to keep it kind of competitive, I think that'll also be kind of... victory in the sense that people are expecting Democrats to do well this year in Virginia. So all that stuff to look out for.
20:59.04
Sam Shirazi
I'm sure I will be covering it all. I did want to spend some time now that things are a little bit slower on the campaign trail. Just give a sense of where things are. Touch base. There will be a lot going on. I'm sure I will cover it all this year in Virginia. But for now, that this has been Federal Fallout and I'll join you next time.
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