00:00.78
Sam Shirazi
Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the chaos at the Lieutenant Governor level for the Virginia GOP.
00:12.89
Sam Shirazi
so earlier this week, I did a bonus episode on the dropping out of Pat Herrity from the Virginia GOP primary. That meant that by default, John Reid would be the GOP nominee.
00:23.55
Sam Shirazi
And as I said, almost certainly there that wouldn't be the last surprise this year in Virginia. But I didn't think the next surprise would be the same week. So it was revealed on Friday that Governor Youngkin called John Reed and asked him to withdraw from the race.
00:39.67
Sam Shirazi
This was due to allegations. There was a Tumblr which posted explicit images. John Reed denied that it was his Tumblr and said he did nothing wrong. He said he would not be withdrawing.
00:50.90
Sam Shirazi
As of the recording of this podcast, he's the Republican nominee. So what does this all mean? Obviously, it is not great news for the Virginia GOP. They were already going to have a hard year, and this is just going to make things that much harder.
01:07.49
Sam Shirazi
And obviously, you know, there's been a lot going on this week with the lieutenant governor's spot on the ticket for the governor. The Republicans have nominated Winston Sears.
01:20.13
Sam Shirazi
for attorney general is the incumbent Jason Meares and the middle part of the ticket, the Lieutenant governor, they had been expecting a primary, but Pat Haraday had to drop out due to health reasons.
01:31.76
Sam Shirazi
And so John Reed became the nominee. It seemed like for most of the week, the Republican party in Virginia was getting behind him. And obviously he was the nominee. So they were going to support him. That included all the figures within the Republican party in Virginia.
01:46.57
Sam Shirazi
And then this kind of bombshell dropped on Friday with Governor Yunkin making the phone call to ask John Reed to withdraw. And then later Friday afternoon, John Reed put out a video that made clear that he was not going to withdraw. He said he didn't do anything wrong.
02:03.48
Sam Shirazi
And there's a lot of things going on behind the scenes, and we can talk a little bit about that. But it's just another thing that's making life difficult for the Virginia GOP right now.
02:15.19
Sam Shirazi
And obviously, they were already going to have a tough year, given that they weren't that that given that the party in the White House typically does poorly in Virginia elections. And then on top of that, we had the federal fallout from all the firing of federal employees.
02:29.99
Sam Shirazi
And so it was just going to be a really tough year for the Virginia GOP. and And this is not going to be doing them any favors, given that there's all this chaos with the lieutenant governor spot on the ticket.
02:41.40
Sam Shirazi
So, I mean, I wanted to give a little bit of background about what's going on behind the scenes. So one of the factors is that John Reed,
02:52.97
Sam Shirazi
is openly a gay man. And the Virginia GOP earlier in the week seemed to kind of celebrate that the fact that they had a very diverse ticket, obviously, at the top of the ticket, you had an African American woman for the attorney general, you had a Hispanic man, and then for the lieutenant governor candidate, you had a a gay man being the nominee.
03:13.72
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, it seemed like that was part of what they wanted to run on this year and maybe try to distinguish themselves and and maybe fight some of the headwinds highlighting the diversity of their ticket.
03:26.62
Sam Shirazi
I think there's been a lot of allegations behind the scenes that a lot of what is driving this is the fact that that John Reed is gay. Now, look, I don't know what's driving it. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes.
03:38.38
Sam Shirazi
But that's kind of been the perception, at least from John Reed's perspective. And, you know, i think the reality is that most Virginians probably don't care one way or another about candidates' sexuality. I think there are certain parts of the Virginia GOP, the more evangelical conservative Christian part of the coalition that might have been a little bit uncomfortable with some of those aspects of John Reed being on the ticket. And I don't know if that's what's driving it.
04:08.96
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, whatever drove Governor Youngkin to make the decision to make the phone call and and kind of ask that John Reed withdraw, like the phone call happened. And,
04:19.27
Sam Shirazi
I'm guessing that Governor Youngkin thought that maybe the fact that there was a risk that some of this stuff would come out and it would hurt the ticket. And again, John Reed has denied that it was him or his Tumblr or he's not. And I don't I don't know what's going on. I'm not pretending to know the the facts one way another. I'm just kind of explaining what's going on, why why there was this.
04:45.75
Sam Shirazi
upheaval within the Virginia GOP. And I think it's, it's shown a lot of divisions because, and they're not necessarily clean divisions because I would say that John Reed comes from where the MAGA part of the party But you have this other part of the party that's maybe not so much closer closer to the MAGA wing, but maybe a more evangelical, conservative, Christian part of the party that is having some issues with John Reed being on the ticket. And so there's kind of a lot of inter-party stuff on the Republican side. And, you know, I don't know how it's eventually all going to shake out. I mean,
05:21.30
Sam Shirazi
John Reed's going to be on the ticket if he stays in the race. He's the Republican nominee. No one else filed. The other person who filed withdrew. So by law, he's the nominee. He's the only person who didn't withdraw and who made the ballot. And so the question becomes, like, what does he do?
05:40.06
Sam Shirazi
going forward because there's been pressure for him to drop out. He doesn't seem like he's going to drop out. And I'm not sure what is going to happen if he stays on the ticket, does Winston Sears campaign with him?
05:52.62
Sam Shirazi
Is she asked about, you know, does she feel comfortable running with him? I mean, it's going to be a lot of awkward moments. And I thought what was interesting during the video that John Reed put out on Friday afternoon, kind of saying he's staying in the race and he didn't do anything wrong,
06:07.86
Sam Shirazi
I don't think it was an accident. There was a picture of Governor Youngkin and a picture of Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears in the background kind of looking down as he made those statements. And I think he wanted to make clear that he he wasn't going to back down despite of what Governor Youngkin asked him to do. so There's a lot going on, a lot going on for the Virginia GOP.
06:27.57
Sam Shirazi
Their race is kind of in flux on the lieutenant governor's side. And i don't I don't really know how it's going to play out. And it's it's certainly creating a headache for the Virginia GOP as they already are facing a lot of hand headwinds.
06:41.72
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, I talked about this in my podcast earlier in the week. There was a situation in 2013 where the were Republicans nominated E.W. Jackson, who had said some things that the Democrats were able to to find, and he was perceived as being much more extreme than the rest of the ticket.
06:59.20
Sam Shirazi
And he lost by double digits in a year where the governor's race was relatively close within a few points. And then the attorney general's race was only within a few hundred votes, very close race that went to a recount.
07:13.10
Sam Shirazi
And I think there's a chance that the problem that John Reed has is the more kind of conservative Christian evangelical voters, they might get turned off and they might not vote for him for Lieutenant Governor.
07:25.20
Sam Shirazi
And then, you know, realistically, he's closer to the bag of wing of the party and he's been a radio host for a while. he said some things that I'm sure the Democrats are going to try to find and put out there. And so more moderate voters might also be turned off by him.
07:39.42
Sam Shirazi
And so you could see a scenario where John Reed performs relatively poorly compared to the rest of the ticket, maybe not as bad as E.W. Jackson did, but, you know, maybe a few points worse than the rest of the ticket just by the fact that there's some discomfort with him from parts of the base and there may be discomfort by moderate voters based on his background being on radio and having said various things. So, you know, the conventional wisdom is this is not great news for the Virginia GOP right now because they probably just wanted someone in the lieutenant governor's spot who wouldn't make a lot of waves and wouldn't be that important one way or another.
08:17.50
Sam Shirazi
and I think that was the hope with Pat Harity. He was the establishment figure that the Republicans were hoping to put in LG. And, you know, he's had a long history in Fairfax County, I'm sure he was probably going to be pretty generic Republican for lieutenant governor. He may not have excited the base that much, but he probably wasn't going to rock the vote rock the boat, and he might have appealed to some more moderate voters. Now you don't have that. Unfortunately, he had those health issues. And again, I hope Pat Harrety makes a speedy recovery, but the reality is he did withdraw.
08:49.38
Sam Shirazi
And so you have John Reed now as a Republican nominee, and he's creating a lot of issues for the Virginia GOP right now. And I think the Virginia Republicans for the past four years or so had been in a relatively good spot, because if you think about 2021, Governor Youngkin came in He brought a lot of discipline, a lot of money, a lot of organization.
09:11.11
Sam Shirazi
He was able to win in 2021 and he was able to flip the House of Delegates and and kind of bring the Virginia GOP back.
09:19.78
Sam Shirazi
But And even though he wasn't able to win the House of Delegates or State Senate 2023, they were still relatively competitive. The Virginia GOP flipped a the second district in 2022. 2024, Virginia GOP did better than i think they they were hoping for in in terms of keeping the race within six points.
09:41.30
Sam Shirazi
And so... The last four years have been pretty good for the Virginia GOP in the grand scheme of things. And if you look at what happened when during the first Trump administration in 2017, it was a really rough time for the Virginia GOP. And they kind of imploded during the four years of Trump's first presidency. That started in 2017 when Ralph Northam had a big win in the governor's race.
10:05.35
Sam Shirazi
The GOP lost a bunch of House of Delegates seats. And then 2018, they They lost three House seats where that that the Democrats were able to flip in Virginia.
10:17.93
Sam Shirazi
And then 2019, they lost the state Senate and they lost more seats in the House of Delegates. And the Democrats got the first tried pe trifecta in Virginia in 30 years. And the the Republicans went from having like 67 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates or 66 seats down to 45 seats by the time Trump left office. So they lost like 20 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates.
10:43.18
Sam Shirazi
And there was a real implosion within the first Trump term. And as I mentioned, Governor Youngkin kind of brought them back from the brink. And obviously part of that was just the reality. There was a Democrat in the White House and and there tends to be swings in Virginia whenever there's a change in the White House.
10:58.69
Sam Shirazi
But the the first Trump years were pretty bad for the Virginia GOP. And I think the way things were going, even before what happened with John Reed, it was looking pretty dicey. And it looked like things might revert back to that time period for the Virginia GOP.
11:15.23
Sam Shirazi
And now with all these issues with John Reed, there's the possibility that like that gets turbocharged because, you know, their their ticket is not in a great place right now. And I also wanted to talk about a little bit of a different topic, although related, and that is President Trump reaching almost the 100 day mark of his presidency and typically around the 100 day mark.
11:37.24
Sam Shirazi
There is a lot of commentary. There are polls. People try to see where the president is. What's the pulse? Is he popular? Is he not popular? And so we've seen a lot of polls coming out about the Trump approval rating. Frankly, I wish we would get some more Virginia polls because i think in some ways those are more interesting.
11:54.86
Sam Shirazi
But we've been getting one after another. I would say this week there's been at least 10 Trump approval rating polls, and they all roughly show the same thing. So Trump approval is somewhere in the ballpark of between 40 and 45 percent, whereas his disapproval is roughly in the ballpark of 55 to 60 percent.
12:15.77
Sam Shirazi
And that's largely been driven by the fact that the economy's not doing great because of some of the issues with the tariffs. And one of President Trump's core competencies had been the economy.
12:29.04
Sam Shirazi
At least that was the perception among the public. And he's really lost that. And his economic handling has gone negative. And once your economic handling goes negative, that's not great news because it's hard to regain economic competency.
12:41.88
Sam Shirazi
And then even immigration, which has been one of his core strengths, that has his approval and that has gone down. And so that's overall dragging his approval rating down.
12:53.03
Sam Shirazi
And while presidential approval rating isn't everything, and it doesn't automatically mean the Democrats are going to gain all those voters who are starting to disapprove of President Trump, it certainly doesn't help when you're running in Virginia as a Republican and then President Trump is in negative approval.
13:08.27
Sam Shirazi
And again, I hope we get a Virginia poll because that would show, okay, well, Trump's approval rating is going down. Is that actually being translated into votes for Republicans? the Democratic candidates in Virginia?
13:19.44
Sam Shirazi
Does Abigail Spanberger get a bump compared to the previous polls because Trump has become more unpopular? I'm sure at some point we will get a Virginia poll, and I think it will be interesting to see does the overall national disapprovals of President Trump going up, is that reflected in the state-specific Spanberger versus Sears polls in Virginia?
13:41.13
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, I think the other thing the John Reed issues create right now in Virginia is a sense of chaos and also a sense of perhaps more demoralization among the Virginia GOP, because, you know, it's just not a good headline, not something you want to be dealing with as you're trying to head into the election cycle. And does it mean that some more donors sit on the sideline? Does it mean that the base isn't as fired up because for you know they're seeing that there's issues with the ticket and and the governor is asking the lieutenant governor candidate to drop out and Winston Sears is kind of quiet right now and it's unclear what's what's her position on this.
14:22.84
Sam Shirazi
And so the whole thing is creating more and more issues for the Virginia GOP at a time when they really need to be unified. They really need to get their act together because they're heading into a tough election this November, regardless of what was going to happen with their ticket.
14:37.59
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, I think one of the things I've been struggling with is to see, you know, what is building up into November. i mean, you want to keep an open mind as a political analyst. You don't want to assume, okay This is 100% going to be a massive blue wave because it could not be. I want to keep in mind in 2024, a lot of people thought the Democrats would do well after Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee. Obviously, she didn't win the election. And i want to keep an open mind. I don't want to assume that, you know, whatever's going on is automatically going to be translated into votes for Democrats.
15:13.46
Sam Shirazi
But, I mean, the reality is there's a lot going against the Republicans and there's a lot going for the Democrats. And I think one of the challenges is going to be looking at the House of Delegates races, you know which ones are starting to slip away from the Republicans, which ones are starting to come on the board. And you know as the build as a wave might be building on the Democratic side, are we talking about a different playing field than in the beginning? Because if you asked me in January, you know I could tell you here are probably the five districts that are going to be most competitive in the current environment.
15:48.71
Sam Shirazi
I think if you ask me in October, what are the five districts that are going to be competitive, it's almost certainly going to be different, possibly depending on what happens during the year. And at this point, we're seeing seats move around and it's not the same seats even in you know late in April than it was in January, because the reality is,
16:08.26
Sam Shirazi
The ground's moving. The Virginia GOP is having these problems. And we're also seeing the issues that President Trump's having with his approval rating. We're seeing Elon Musk has even lower approval rating than President Trump in terms of his work with Doge.
16:25.14
Sam Shirazi
And obviously, the federal government impact to Virginia has been pretty big, and the cuts that have been going on. So there's just like a lot of things going on that have generally not been great for the Virginia GOP.
16:37.61
Sam Shirazi
And I think the role of Governor Youngkin is interesting because he's obviously on his way out. He's got a few more months left as governor. And, you know, as any governor would would like, they they would want a candidate from their own party to win. he wants to leave Virginia.
16:55.11
Sam Shirazi
but on high note and and have his party win the governor's race and do well in the other races. But that's not really the way it's looking right now. And I did think it was interesting that he was the one who called John Reed. And i assume Winston Sears didn't want to get involved with it. And he wanted Governor, yeah she wanted Governor Youngkin to do it.
17:12.98
Sam Shirazi
But the reality is, you know, Governor Youngkin is not going to be on the ballot. And he's the most prominent Virginia Republican right now, but he's not the one that's going to be on the ticket running with John Reed.
17:24.13
Sam Shirazi
And so at some point, Winston Sears has got to say something. And I'm guessing she's probably hoping that John Reed will withdraw before she has to say something. But if John Reed is determined to stay on the ticket, there's not a lot that Winston Sears can do other than run with him. And, and you know, we've You know, it might be part of the strategy that this stuff comes out now in April. It kind of plays out. And frankly, you know, by the next month, given everything that's going on in D.C., like no one's really going to remember this. And he'll just kind of John Reed would be on the ticket and everything will move on. I mean that's one scenario.
18:01.28
Sam Shirazi
The other scenario is now reporters, they're going to be doing digging. They're going to look at it into John Reed's past. You know, if there's any sort of skeletons, I'm sure they'll find it. And so you might get this drip, drip, drip when things start coming out and it's just going to create more and more headaches for Virginia GOP.
18:17.20
Sam Shirazi
The other option is, and i again, I don't know what John Reed's going to do. In theory, he could withdraw. And then the process would be that the Virginia GOP under Virginia law, as long as he he withdraws early enough, they would get to pick a nominee through an internal party party process.
18:33.23
Sam Shirazi
The primary ship has already sailed the Virginia GOP. Department of Elections has announced there's not going to be a primary for the Virginia LG spot because Pat Harity was true. So there's no way the primary can happen because John Reed was the only candidate who qualified and no one else was able to make the ballot except Pat Herity and he's withdrawn. So any process would be a kind of internal Virginia GOP process.
18:58.84
Sam Shirazi
And that would obviously take time and it'll be messy. and And, you know, regardless of what John Reed decides to do, there's already been some hard feelings. And I think it's just the reality when there's any sort of upheaval like this in the party, there's going to be issues between the different factions within the party.
19:19.77
Sam Shirazi
Now, that's not to say the Democrats are you know completely drama free. Obviously, they have a race for both lieutenant governor and attorney general. There'll be primaries in both those races. I will say for the most part, both those races have been relatively clean, at least publicly. There hasn't been a whole lot of bad blood aired.
19:40.20
Sam Shirazi
I'm sure as voting gets closer and closer, we may see some more jabs between the candidates. But realistically, you you know, in this environment with these candidates, you know, my sense is whoever ends up being the nominee for LG and AG, the party will quickly unify behind them unless something crazy happens. And I think the the Democratic ticket is going to be relatively stable.
20:02.51
Sam Shirazi
and There isn't going to be a lot of bad feelings after the primary, at least publicly. And so i think... the Democratic ticket entering the summer and fall campaign will be in pretty good shape, particularly if the Republicans are in a little bit of chaos. And, you know, I'm just not sure what the Republican plan is for this November, because it seems like things are just getting worse and worse. And there isn't really any sort of master plan to get the ship back in shape and you know and i don't realistically I don't know what could be done at this stage.
20:39.52
Sam Shirazi
You know, if if I had to guess, there have been some rumblings this week that maybe President Trump will be pulling back from some of the tariffs on China, although obviously that changes day to day. You know, in theory, if the tariffs get pulled back a little bit, economy is more stabilized.
20:54.67
Sam Shirazi
Maybe Doge starts wrapping up its work because there have been more reports, and Elon Musk, I think, said this, that he would be kind of taking a step back at the end of May. So again, maybe the economy stabilizes.
21:05.43
Sam Shirazi
Maybe Elon Musk takes the backseat. Maybe Doge wraps up its work. and And the Virginia GOP can kind of regroup and think about how it wants to run the campaign. The problem is, I mean, particularly on the economic, it's very hard to change perceptions of the economy. Once voters think the economy is not going well, you know it's not like a flip of a switch that says, oh, everything's fine now.
21:26.24
Sam Shirazi
And the Democrats found this out the hard way. I mean, once inflation hit in 2022 timeframe, that inflation... you know that inflation hit, continued until 2024, even though the actual rate of inflation came down, but prices were still high. And there was really no way to change perceptions or you know make things better for the Democrats in terms of the economic message, because it's just really hard in politics to convince someone that the economy going great when maybe they're having a hard time buying groceries or or whatever. And and definitely the Democrats felt that in
22:03.96
Sam Shirazi
2024 and president Trump benefited it. And now the Republicans are getting the reverse of that. Now that they're in power, people are expecting the economy to get better and prices to go down or at least stabilize, but the tariffs have kind of totally shooken things up.
22:20.67
Sam Shirazi
And the other part of it, the things with doge and the firing of federal workers, mean, even if that stuff is a little bit, Less in the fall and the summer.
22:31.63
Sam Shirazi
mean, the reality is people have lost their jobs and they're not going to forget about that. And it's not like, you know, that's something that is going to go away anytime soon. And even the federal workers who are still there.
22:44.40
Sam Shirazi
I mean, the reality is a lot of them have lived with the possibility they could be losing their jobs. So even if they don't end up losing their jobs, they still went through that whole ordeal. And so I think the do the Doge thing is it's tricky because I don't think that, again, if if Elon Musk and Doge kind of wrap up their work, I don't think that's the end of the story for the Virginia GOP. So...
23:05.45
Sam Shirazi
I didn't mean to spend the entire podcast just talking about this, but I do think it is one of those things that the Virginia GOP is it's in a tough spot. And, you know, I'll try to keep an open mind. I'm not going assume Democrats are guaranteed victory. I'm not going to assume they're going to get this massive blowout. I think a lot of things can still change.
23:25.70
Sam Shirazi
politics, you know, one thing happened one day, another thing happens another day. There's a lot of different things that could happen. i don't, I will try to keep my best to to do, do my best to keep an open mind.
23:37.55
Sam Shirazi
But I do think the Virginia GOP is getting to a point where they really have to do some hard thinking and they have to think about getting their act together, frankly, because otherwise, you know, the,
23:49.98
Sam Shirazi
the narrative is there that the Virginia GOP is in trouble. And unless they figure out a way to change that narrative, it's going to be tricky. and And, you know, people can usually tell, okay, when a campaign has momentum, when it doesn't have momentum, and and not to kind of go too off track, but if you think about what happened in 2024, you know, President Biden had that first debate performance, and it was pretty bad. And I think everyone can agree on that. And the narrative was just, you know, he, there was no way he was going to win.
24:22.39
Sam Shirazi
And I think, you know, he tried to stay in that race for a while and obviously that didn't work out. And so the Democrats felt like they had to do some sort of game changer. And obviously the game changer was president Biden dropping out and vice president Harris getting in the race. And I think,
24:37.62
Sam Shirazi
She probably did better than what President Biden was going to do, but it was still very late in the game and it it just wasn't enough and the Democrats weren't able to win in 2024. So I think the danger for the Virginia GOP this year is even if they're able to kind of get their act together, or they're able to figure out some other formula.
24:55.10
Sam Shirazi
That might not be enough because once these things are kind of baked in, it you know, Elections sometimes are these massive ships and you know they're going one direction and it takes a long time to change course.
25:07.70
Sam Shirazi
And you know it it might just be one of those things that it might be too late to completely change things. But you know there is still a decent amount of time, not a whole lot of time, but there is enough time where in theory,
25:20.92
Sam Shirazi
we could get a different outcome in November if the Virginia GOP starts to get its act together and, you know, they figure out the LG race, they get their ticket in order, and then they kind of move on and figure out what they want to do for the general election in November. So, anyways, a lot going on.
25:38.33
Sam Shirazi
I'm sure by the time the next podcast comes out, there'll be a lot of other things to talk about. But for now, that was Federal Fallout, and I hope you'll join me next week. Thanks.
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