Federal Fallout: The 2025 Virginia Elections

Sam Shirazi
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  • POLITICS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

A podcast exploring the 2025 elections in Virginia and how the changes to the Federal government will influence them. Views expressed are those of the host personally. Contact: federalfalloutpod@gmail.com samshirazi.substack.com

  1. 2D AGO

    Redistricting Deja Vu: Court Ruling and New Map

    Hi Everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout. This episode we will go over the fun that is Virginia redistricting as it continues to unfold and how there a lot of twists and turns, and different things happening. So I want to cover everything that happened this week wtih redistricting. And it’s a little bit of deja vu all over again because a couple things happened that were big. First, the court in Tazewell County entered a temporary order to block the referendum from going forward, and we’ll cover that. And then there was some changes made to the map that we’ll talk about specifically in the second district. So this week is like all over again. We are just talking about the same thing, legal challenges to the redistricting. We’re talking about the maps slightly changing. So A lot of stuff still in flux, even though in theory, if everything goes to plan for the Democrats, early voting is supposed to start on March 6th, which is not too far away. 01:00.71 Sam Shirazi And so obviously there’s a lot going on. And it just kind of goes to show you that I guess nothing’s really finalized until it’s finalized. And we just have to wait and take it one day at a time with the redistricting stuff. So the first thing I’ll talk about is the court order that came out of Tazewell County. So if you remember, there was originally a court order from Tazewell County that seemed to suggest that there were some legal challenges the Democrats had with the referendum. 01:26.03 Sam Shirazi That lawsuit made all made its way all the way up to the Virginia Supreme Court. The Virginia Supreme Court essentially said, the thing the court ordered was not that specific, so we’re just going to you know punt this to after the referendum. 01:38.82 Sam Shirazi Obviously, the parties were paying attention to that because very quickly, the Republicans filed another lawsuit in the same county with the same judge. 01:49.77 Sam Shirazi And this time, they asked for a lot more and they named a lot of defendants other than the local county clerk. They named people like the head of the Department of Elections. 01:59.94 Sam Shirazi And the goal, really, from the Republican standpoint was this judge already ruled with us. He agrees with us on the law. If you remember my podcast on the Supreme Court ruling, really the issue in the original court order that that got its way up to the Supreme Court was that the order was very narrow. All it ordered was that the Tazewell County clerk with posts, the referendum notices. It didn’t say the referendum can’t go forward. 02:24.33 Sam Shirazi And the Supreme Court kind of seized on that and says, look, we don’t have to make a decision because this order is so narrow. Well, I think the judge and the parties learned their lesson. And this time the judge made very specific instructions and he made very specific instructions to specific people. 02:39.35 Sam Shirazi So essentially the Virginia Supreme Court can’t find a procedural way to get out of this. It seems like they will have to rule on it. But before I talk about the Virginia Supreme Court, I wanted to talk about the order the judge issued itself. And I won’t honestly go that much into the legal details because, frankly, it’s pretty much the same arguments that we’ve been talking about. Really what changed in this decision, the most important thing was the actual thing the lower court ordered. And that was the main problem for the Republicans in the last time they went to Supreme Court is the order was too narrow. And so this time the ne the order is a lot more broad and covers a lot more things, but it’s still a temporary order. And we’ll talk about why that’s important. 03:20.82 Sam Shirazi Okay, so here is what the lower court in Tadswell County ordered. He said, quote, all defendants temporarily restrained in their official capacities from administering, preparing for taking any action to further the procedure of the referendum or other otherwise moving forward with causing an election to be held on the proposed constitutional amendment. 03:43.73 Sam Shirazi So very broad. And this applied to a bunch of people, including on the Department of Elections. And so essentially what the court is saying is you guys can’t do anything to move the referendum forward. 03:55.79 Sam Shirazi And I thought it was interesting that. The court went even so far as to say that they can’t prepare for the referendum, which I think is really important because obviously early voting is supposed to spark on March 6th. 04:07.51 Sam Shirazi So the fact that they can’t even prepare for the the referendum certainly is putting a lot of limits on these people. And I think, again, I think the judge learned his lesson is that you have to be very specific in what you are ordering someone to do. 04:21.27 Sam Shirazi when you issue this type of order. And you know the other thing I wanted to really flag about this order from the Taswell court was that it’s it’s what’s called a temporary restraining order. So you might commonly hear that as a TRO. 04:35.56 Sam Shirazi So there are different types of things that courts will issue called equitable relief. So equitable relief is that basically any sort of non-monetary relief. And you can get a TRO, a preliminary injunction, a permanent injunction. So but the TRO, temporary restraining order, as its name implies, is temporary. 04:54.61 Sam Shirazi And it really is kind of an emergency kind of thing, like something, time is of the essence. The court can’t sit around on this for months. It has to rule quickly. Obviously, from a Republican standpoint, they made the argument, this is very urgent. Early voting is going to start. We need to stop this, nip it in the bud, because it’s illegal. That was a Republican position. 05:13.13 Sam Shirazi And the the lower court agreed here. But importantly, TROs, I mean, they’re supposed to be temporary. I mean, they’re called temporary restraining orders. This isn’t going to last forever. 05:23.05 Sam Shirazi And the lower court itself put an end date to this specific TRO, which was March 18th. So this specific order is essentially going to expire on March 18th. Obviously, before then, probably the court will issue what’s called a preliminary injunction or permanent injunction. 05:39.18 Sam Shirazi But this isn’t supposed to be forever. However, early voting starts March 6th, so obviously it will accomplish much of its goal of maybe stopping a referendum if the the early voting doesn’t start on March 6th. And ultimately what the judge will issue is either a preliminary injunction or a permanent injunction. 05:57.60 Sam Shirazi So a preliminary injunction is kind of like a TRO, but it’s a little bit more serious, and it usually doesn’t have an expiration date. That’s kind of at the beginning of a case you issue a preliminary injunction. Then at the very end of the case, you can issue a permanent injunction. 06:10.37 Sam Shirazi often i mean, it’s it’s pretty rare to get a preliminary injunction and not get a permanent injunction eventually. So the real distinction is between a TRO and a preliminary injunction. And this was a TRO. 06:21.62 Sam Shirazi And I think the legal significance of that in this context is that typically the appellate courts, they tend to review TROs, temporary restraining orders, much more quickly because in theory, 06:34.05 Sam Shirazi It was usually granted without much argument. There isn’t much time for the lower court to think about this because something is happening that requires immediate attention. And so that will that means it’s going to get appealed really quickly. Attorney General Jay Jones has said he’s going to appeal this. 06:52.84 Sam Shirazi Some people had even speculated that on Friday we would get some sort of order either from the Intermediary Court of Appeals or even from the Virginia Supreme Court. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. This weekend, but perhaps on Monday, we will get an immediate order. 07:07.64 Sam Shirazi But long story short, I mean, clearly, this is for the time being pause the Democrats plans. But I think this is the type of thing that would certainly be fast tracked by the intermediate court of appeals and potentially just go straight to the Virginia Supreme Court to make the final call. 07:24.74 Sam Shirazi And I think the Republican strategy here is to just force the Virginia Supreme Court to make a final ruling. I mean, clearly last time the Virginia Supreme Court essentially found a procedural way to avoid ruling before the redistricting referendum and kind of punt the final ruling till after the redistricting referendum. 07:42.05 Sam Shirazi The Virginia Republicans... are trying to force the issue. They’re basically telling the Supreme Court, we’re not going to let you wait wait it out. You have to decide before the the referendum whether this is legal or not. Now, you could argue that’s going to backfire. You may not want to put the court in that position, but the Virginia Republicans felt like they had no choice. 08:01.28 Sam Shirazi And the thing is that after this goes up for the appeal, there’s a lot of different ways the Virginia Supreme Court can handle this. They could essentially rule 100% for the Republicans and say, yeah, the lower court’s right, we’re going to keep this temporary restraining order in place. And that might be pretty much be the end of the redistricting referendum if that happens. However, that, you know, it’s it’s risky because I think there’s another alternative where the Supreme Court doesn’t do that and and makes kind of a quick decision to basically stay the lower court order and just say, you know, we’re not taking this right now and just issue a very short order. 08:39.81 Sam Shirazi There’s something called the shadow docket. So the shadow docket is typically talked about

    23 min

  2. FEB 14

    It’s Happening: Redistricting Referendum Confirmed

    Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court about redistricting and the fact that they allowed Virginia redistricting to go forward. 00:16.02 Sam Shirazi However, they also left open the possibility that after the redistricting referendum, they might make a final ruling. This was basically an interim ruling or interim order. 00:26.74 Sam Shirazi And so I kind of want to unpack all that. And then I want to talk about the redistricting referendum. But long story short, the short version is the Virginia Supreme Court allowed the redistricting referendum to go forward on April 21st. 00:41.72 Sam Shirazi Early voting will start on March 6th. So really right around the corner. And so I think overall, you have to say this is a good outcome for the Democrats, at least in the short term, because in theory, the Virginia Supreme Court could have said the redistricting referendum couldn’t go forward or could have made a very complicated legal decision where really left open the doubt about whether the redistricting referendum is going to happen. 01:04.82 Sam Shirazi I think the Virginia Supreme Court was very clear that the redistricting referendum is moving forward. I think after that, they’re a little bit less clear about what’s going to happen. But I think for now, the Democrats will just take that. They’re going to run the redistricting referendum, and then we’ll see what happens there. 01:20.70 Sam Shirazi And ultimately, there’s still some legal questions hanging around. So it’s not like 100% certain the Democrats have won the legal case. But in the grand scheme of things, they certainly got the better end of it. 01:33.02 Sam Shirazi And I think after this order came from the Virginia Supreme Court, I think Democrats were feeling pretty good. Republicans were a bit demoralized. And so I want to kind of unpack first all the legal issues, like what the Supreme Court actually said, why it said it, what it might do. 01:50.26 Sam Shirazi And then after that, I’ll talk about the redistricting referendum itself, because that’s 100% going to move forward. So just to give you a little bit of background, the reason this has gotten to the Virginia Supreme Court is because a lower court in Tazewell County entered a ruling which on the merits mainly ruled for the Republicans, but significantly had a very narrow relief for the parties. And I’ll go through all what all that means, all that legalese stuff. 02:20.41 Sam Shirazi But I guess my point is, that there there was a lower court ruling and made it to the Virginia Supreme Court. And I guess when I did my podcast on that ruling, I kind of neglected to spend time on the actual thing the court ordered. And I want to spend more time analyzing that now because I think it’s really important to understand why the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the way it did. 02:41.44 Sam Shirazi And I think part of what I’ve been thinking about, the more I thought about the lower court decision, over the past couple of weeks, the more I kind of had a feeling this Virginia Supreme Court might go down the route they did. And i’ll kind of explain why that’s the case and i’ll kind of unpack that. 02:57.76 Sam Shirazi So what the lower court found in the actual ruling, like on the merits of the case, you know, was the redistricting referendum process correct or not. So very clear the lower court found the Democrats didn’t follow the right process. However, I think the really strange part of that opinion is the order act the order the thing that it ordered or the actual relief that Republicans got was very, very narrow. And so you had this kind of big opinion that basically said the Democrats did everything wrong. 03:29.88 Sam Shirazi But then the actual relief that the lower court ordered was very narrow. So I’m going to read what the lower court So, ordered in terms of the actual relief. So it said the court hereby grants a temporary and permanent injunction requiring the clerk of the circuit court of Tazewell county to pose to post the proposed constitutional amendment at least ninety days before the next ensuing election of the members of the house of delegates election so Basically, the the only thing the lower court said was the local clerk in Tazewell County has to post the redistricting referendum notices. 04:08.12 Sam Shirazi That’s all the court said. The court didn’t say Tazewell County can’t hold a redistricting referendum, didn’t say the state state of Virginia can’t hold a redistricting referendum. Nothing applied to the Virginia Department of Elections. like it literally just told the local clerk, you have to post the notices. 04:24.60 Sam Shirazi And I think the Virginia Supreme Court really latched on to the fact that this was a very narrow order in terms of what was actually the relief the Republicans got. Because the Virginia Supreme Court said, given the limited scope of the injunctive relief issued at the circuit court’s order, and then it it reads the circuit court order, it says, the denial of motions to say has no effect on the referendum scheduled on April 21, 2026. 04:54.17 Sam Shirazi So what that basically means in a lot of legal language is the April 21st redistricting referendum is allowed to move forward because the lower court didn’t say anything about the redistricting referendum itself. 05:06.90 Sam Shirazi And you know it’s kind of odd that that the lower court issued such a very narrow relief in terms of what the Republicans were trying to get. So I wanted to just kind of break that down for the non-lawyers out there. So i mentioned this before, I’m an attorney, and so I like to think about legal issues. 05:26.49 Sam Shirazi And one of my favorite classes in law school was called Remedies. And Remedies is basically what do you get after you win a lawsuit because you can win something on the merits. So you might be right legally, like, yes, your position is correct. You win on the law. 05:42.16 Sam Shirazi But then the rubber hits the road in what you get. And so in some things like a car accident, it’s pretty straightforward. You’re going to get money. If you get in a car accident, you get hurt and you win your lawsuit, you’re going money. And that’s not super complicated. 05:57.26 Sam Shirazi I think where it gets complicated is in non-monetary cases and what are called equitable cases where the Virginia Republicans are going to the court and are asking for something. And I think as a lawyer, it’s very important, one, to make sure you ask for the right thing, and two, to always keep in mind what did the court give you. Because what happened in the Tazewell County Court is that the judge basically, in the opinion, said all these things. Yeah, the Republicans are right. 06:26.67 Sam Shirazi Democrats did everything wrong. But at the end of the day, he didn’t give the Republicans that much. He literally just told the local clerk, post the notice. And what the Virginia Supreme Court is saying This is being appealed. We’re taking the appeal and we’re going to create a scheduling order for when we’re going to get briefs and all that. 06:45.25 Sam Shirazi But there’s nothing about the redistricting referendum itself that we need to rule on right now because the lower court didn’t make any sort of finding about the redistricting referendum. So whatever we’re ruling on today in this order, it does not stop the redistricting referendum. And you can make an argument. 07:03.03 Sam Shirazi That’s because the Virginia Supreme Court is basically saying, like we don’t have the power to stop the redistricting referendum because that’s not what’s before us. But what before what’s before us is the lower court order. Lower court order is ordering the Tazewell County clerk to post the notices. 07:16.76 Sam Shirazi We’ll review that, but we’re not reviewing the actual referendum itself. And so we have no power to say yes or no to the referendum at this stage. However, I think the other odd thing about the Virginia Supreme Court opinion was at the very end, they put the last sentence of this ruling. It said, nothing in this order shall prevent the parties from raising the underlying arguments and issues as this matter goes forward. And so that kind of vague statement is telling me Virginia Supreme Court’s leaving the door open. 07:46.20 Sam Shirazi to kind of a final ruling after the redistricting referendum. And if you look at the the briefing schedule that the Virginia Supreme Court has laid out, basically the briefing will be done a couple days after the redistricting referendum. 08:00.91 Sam Shirazi So basically, the Virginia Supreme Court is saying we’re not going to be rushed into this. We’re going to let the redistricting referendum happen. And then we’ll get some briefs. And if we want oral arguments, we’ll ask for oral arguments. But basically, expect a ruling from us sometime, probably in May. 08:16.91 Sam Shirazi And we’ll let you know later. And we’re not going to stop the redistricting referendum. So again, overall, I would say good news for the Democrats, but they’re not 100% out of the woods yet because the Virginia Supreme Court has left open the possibility about a final ruling. 08:31.37 Sam Shirazi And I think there are essentially three possibilities about how the Virginia Supreme Court. One possibility is the redistricting referendum is not approved by the voters. And that’s kind of the easy case for the Virginia Supreme Court, because if the voters don’t approve it, they can just say the case is moot. 08:47.50 Sam Shirazi You know, there’s no point for us to rule because this isn’t going happen and there’s nothing for us to rule on. I think where it gets more complicated is if the voters say, yes, we approve this referendum. 08:59.21 Sam Sh

    27 min

  3. FEB 6

    10-1: Virginia Dems Release Their Proposed Map

    Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal of Fallout, the 2020 by Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over the new map that has been proposed by the Virginia Democrats after they have undergone the process of potentially doing redistricting this year in Virginia. Now, caveat all that with first, they have to make sure that they... 00:19.57 Sam Shirazi overcome any legal challenges the Republicans are bringing, then there will have to be a referendum on April 21st, and the voters will have to approve redistricting this year in Virginia. But if all of that happens, then potentially this map that the Virginia Democrats have just released will be the maps that will be used in 2026. And there’s some really major changes in some districts. Other districts, there aren’t that many changes. So what I thought I’d do is I’d go district by district and kind of explain the changes, explain who won, who lost, why the districts look a certain way, and what were some surprises that we saw in this new map. 00:54.62 Sam Shirazi And so anyways, I’ll go district by district. I wanted to say big picture. what this district What this map does is essentially give Democrats a 10 to 1 delegation for it likely in 2026. So what that means is the Democrats will be able to elect... 01:12.08 Sam Shirazi 10 Democrats in Virginia versus just one Republican. Currently, there’s a 6-5 map. That means there are six Democrats, five Republicans. Not every single district is deep blue. And potentially in a competitive election cycle, the the Republicans could win some seats that under this map. 01:29.64 Sam Shirazi However, the goal, I think, for the Virginia Democrats is really to get in 2026 and probably in 2028. 01:38.41 Sam Shirazi 2030, lot of things could be different. We could have a Democratic president by 2030. And so it’s it’s possible the Republicans will win some seats under this map in 2030. But I don’t think the Virginia Democrats are too worried about 2030 because that’s the last election these maps will be used. They’ll be redistricting again because of the new census data. So this map is really for 2026 and 2028. And I think it does what it needs to do, it it seems like. And then I’ll go district by district. 02:05.40 Sam Shirazi And really the way the Virginia Democrats redrew the map, the main change was that they basically cracked Northern Virginia. There’s two ways of gerrymandering. You either crack or you pack. And cracking is often thought of as you crack... 02:20.25 Sam Shirazi in an area to disadvantage the other side, but you can also crack an area to advantage yourself. And obviously Northern Virginia is very blue. And so you could have a few very blue districts in Northern Virginia, or you could crack Northern Virginia and get a bunch of blue districts. And that’s basically what the Democrats have done. They’ve also packed in a couple of districts. So in the ninth district, they basically packed all the Republicans in this in the Western part of the state in the ninth district. 02:49.75 Sam Shirazi The sixth is technically a kind of a pack, although it’s a pack of Democrats. So the Democrats have basically found a bunch of different areas in Virginia where there are Democrats and they kind of pack them together. So long story short, I will go district by district because I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. 03:07.10 Sam Shirazi And so I will start off with the first district. So the first district is currently represented by Rob Whitman. It’s basically a Richmond area seat and then it kind of scoops down and goes into Hampton Roads. 03:17.82 Sam Shirazi Under the old map, Trump won the district by about five points in 2024. The new map, Harris won it by about seven and a half points in 2024. So obviously we’re going from kind of a light red seat to a light blue seat. And I think in 2026 environment, it’s going to be pretty likely the Democrats are going to be able to win this seat. The current incumbent, Rob Whitman, he is going to be one of the losers of Virginia redistricting because his district has gotten a lot... bluer And he doesn’t even really live in this new first district and we’ll talk about it. And so I don’t even know if he’ll run in the first district if it ends up happening. 03:55.78 Sam Shirazi So the new first district is is kind of an interesting looking seat. It kind of goes from all the way from Fairfax And then it kind of goes down I-95 all the way down to the Richmond suburbs. So it’s basically kind of like an I-95 district from Northern Virginia down to Richmond. 04:17.20 Sam Shirazi And honestly, I think this is the district that Eugene Vindman, who currently represents the 7th district, I think Vindman is going to run in the 1st district. because his home of Prince William County, like the Woodbridge area, most of that is in the first district. And so I think Vintman’s probably going to run in that district if I had to guess. And, you know, both for the primary In the general election, I think Vindman would be the favorite. Now, obviously, they could, someone could run against him in the primary, depending on, you know, what happens. But I do think Vindman overall is is a winner of redistricting. 05:19.05 Sam Shirazi Okay, let’s go to the second district. And honestly, the second district was one of the biggest surprises of the night. Why? Because it didn’t change that much. And you know you would think this is one of the seats the Democrats are trying to win in Virginia, flip. 05:32.52 Sam Shirazi So you think they want to change it a lot, but they actually didn’t change it that much. So it went from kind of a very marginal Trump plus 0.3 district in 2024 to now it’s about a plus 1.3 Harris district. So about, you know, one point or so bluer. 05:49.96 Sam Shirazi And obviously that helps Elaine Luria, but the Democrats could have done even more. And the district really didn’t change that much. I was expecting the district to include parts of Norfolk. 06:01.17 Sam Shirazi And, you know, have a kind of a Norfolk, Virginia Beach district. I don’t think it includes any of Norfolk and it actually includes part of Chesapeake. So it’s kind of swapped some parts of Chesapeake. 06:12.98 Sam Shirazi Didn’t really expect that. I thought the second was going to change a lot more than it did. And, you know, there’s a lot of speculation about why that is. It’s potentially because the third district, Bobby Scott, he’s the dean of the Virginia delegation. It’s possible that he has some influence and he didn’t want his change his district changed that much. 06:29.73 Sam Shirazi I don’t really know. But regardless, I think the second district, Luria, still comes out ahead because it’s a bluer district. I think she’s not going to face any serious primary challenger. 06:40.51 Sam Shirazi So I think Luria is in the driver’s seat for the second district. You know, Kiggins, at the end of the day, the current incumbent, Jen Kiggins, like she could have gotten a much worse gerrymander against her. And so I guess in some ways, you know, things aren’t that bad for her. But I still think in 2026, she’s going to be the underdog. 06:56.88 Sam Shirazi There’s been a lot of federal fallout. Hampton Roads has felt a lot of that. So I do think In the second, Luria is favored, although it was a bit of a surprise that the district didn’t change that much. And it basically kind of looks like the same district with a little bit of changes here and there. 07:11.04 Sam Shirazi So I would say, you know, second district, Elaine Luria is, you know, the favorite, but not necessarily a slam dunk for the Democrats. 07:21.64 Sam Shirazi So I talked a little bit already about the third district. So the third district, the incumbent is Bobby Scott. The district goes from about a 34.5 Harris district in to about 31.5 Harris district. so honestly, not a lot of change. 07:37.93 Sam Shirazi Bobby Scott’s probably one of the biggest winners of the redistricting because his district is basically the same and it’s as blue as it was before or just slightly less blue. So he’s, you know, in a pretty safe position. And so anyways, not a whole lot to say about the third district in that sense. 07:56.06 Sam Shirazi All right, now let’s move on to the fourth district. So the fourth district is currently represented by Jennifer McClellan. It was about a 32.5 Harris district in 2024. And the new district is going to be about a 16 point plus Harris district. So still pretty safe blue seat in Virginia. 08:17.06 Sam Shirazi I think the changes in this district were kind of on the margins. You basically got – she gave up some of the some parts of Richmond and Henrico and got a little bit more of Southside. So that’s why her district got less blue. But at the end of the day, like Jennifer McClellan still came out on top because she’s got most of Richmond, which is her base. 08:40.43 Sam Shirazi And then the district is still you know pretty blue. And so I don’t really anticipate her her having many much problems in the the primary or the general. So fourth district, not a whole lot to talk about. 08:53.24 Sam Shirazi I will move on to the fifth district because this district district changed a lot. So the current incumbent is John McGuire. And the district is about 12-point Trump district from 2024. 09:05.81 Sam Shirazi Under the new lines, it’s almost a nine-point Harris district. So big swing. Democrats are going to be pretty safe in that seat. And the way it’s changed is the the fifth district currently is kind of a Charlottesville Southside district. 09:19.21 Sam Shirazi And actually, it doesn’t include any of Charlottesville. And it’s been shifted over to the Richmond suburbs. So it’s basically like the Richmond suburbs and then parts of Southside. And, you know, John McGuire is in a pretty tough spot

    25 min
  4. GOP Redistricting Legal Win: But Will It Last?

    JAN 28

    GOP Redistricting Legal Win: But Will It Last?

    Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out of the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over a big decision that came out in Virginia at the lower court level where a judge ruled in favor of the Republicans and basically said that the... 00:16.15 Sam Shirazi process the Democrats used to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot for a referendum was not valid. So obviously a big ruling. However, keep in mind that the Virginia Supreme Court will have the ultimate say in this case, and it’s going to be appealed obviously. So as important as the decision as this individual judge made, it is not necessarily the end all be all. 00:38.46 Sam Shirazi And we’re going to have to wait to see how the Virginia Supreme Court ends up ruling on it. But I’ll kind of give you the background and then I’ll talk a little bit about this specific opinion by this judge. 00:48.65 Sam Shirazi I did do my last podcast on this exact topic and really went into the weeds. So if you’re interested, listen to that podcast. And then this podcast, I’ll do a little bit more on the decision and then I’ll talk a little bit about the implications. I should note that. Basically, this is the whole issue in this case it revolves around the 2025 Virginia elections. And so this podcast, even though we’re in 2026, the long shadow of the 2025 Virginia elections is still with us. 01:17.16 Sam Shirazi And basically, the issue is whether the Democrats correctly passed this proposed referendum right before the election, if that’s valid, or if they had to do it earlier in the year, last year. And that’s essentially the main issue in this case. So it all goes to show you 2025 was a really important year in the Virginia political world, obviously, and it’s still with us. And these questions about did everything go correctly with this referendum process are still with us. So I’ll kind of go over the opinion, then talk about the Virginia Supreme Court. 01:54.12 Sam Shirazi And so at the end of the day, the Republicans clearly had a strategy. They filed this lawsuit in Tazewell County, which is deep red Virginia. I think they clearly thought that this judge and this court would be sympathetic to to their arguments. And during the oral argument, it was very clear that the judge was skeptical about the Democratic position. And this opinion basically ruled almost entirely for the Republicans and against the Democrats and basically said, you know, the process the Democrats used to push forward with this constitutional amendment to have a referendum was not valid. 02:38.25 Sam Shirazi So the first thing the judge found was the legislature didn’t really follow its own internal procedures. And I won’t go into the ins and outs of it, but essentially the Democrats had to do this in a special session. 02:50.44 Sam Shirazi And there’s kind of some questions about whether they follow their own internal procedures. So it’s essentially, did the legislature do everything it needed to do from a process, stand legislative process standpoint? And so that was the first thing the judge found. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I have a hard time believing this will be upheld on appeal. I think this is the least likely grounds for the decision to be upheld, if it is upheld, because typically courts are very skeptical to get into the legislative procedure. They kind of leave that to the legislature. I think there’s a big separation of powers issue. 03:27.92 Sam Shirazi if the judiciary starts telling the legislature, you know, you have to do this and you have to do that. And you said you were going to do this, but you didn’t do that. Typically, the judiciary just gets involved once the law is passed. You know, if the legislature passes something, then the judiciary will review it. But to kind of review the process by which a bill became law, I think would be pretty unusual. 03:50.44 Sam Shirazi for each a court to do that. And, you know, at the end of the day, both these, both the state Senate and the House of Delegates passed this twice with majority votes. And so for a court to come in and be like, oh, actually, you shouldn’t have done that, or or you didn’t do the the correct, but you didn’t pass it in the majority vote in the correct way. I think is a little bit odd and, you know, might be viewed as both a separation of powers issue and a kind of anti-democratic principle in the fact that, you know, you’re not even getting to the substance of the issue. You’re really looking at the process behind getting majority votes. 04:23.28 Sam Shirazi And again, I think the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be pretty hesitant to go there and pretty hesitant to decide the case on those grounds. So, We’ll see. But that was kind of the first reason the judge ruled for Republicans. And again, I think that’s probably the most shaky ground of this opinion. 04:41.82 Sam Shirazi The second reason why the judge ruled for the Republicans, he basically looked at the Virginia state constitution and looked at the phrase after the next election And he essentially said the election was underway when the Democrats passed the proposed constitutional amendments. Early voting had been going on for a long time. And you know this is a criticism the Republicans had of the whole process. And the judge basically agreed with that. 05:08.64 Sam Shirazi Again, I’m a little bit skeptical if the Virginia Supreme Court is going to uphold that. The reason is did it may be a valid policy point that it’s not fair to the voters for early voting to have started and then the Democrats sprung this redistricting referendum. 05:25.66 Sam Shirazi However, I don’t know if that’s necessarily against the what the Virginia Constitution says, because the Virginia Constitution says it has to be passed after the next general election. It doesn’t say, you know, three months before the general the Virginia general election, it has to be passed. It doesn’t say you can’t you can’t pass it after early voting started. 05:45.18 Sam Shirazi so a lot of that is being read into the Virginia constitution when it’s not there. All the Virginia constitution says is it has to pass once before the election. And then after the next general election, it has to get passed again. And so I think there is a lot of reading being done into the Virginia constitution by making the decision that way. 06:07.81 Sam Shirazi So anyways, I have a feeling maybe the Virginia Supreme court’s not going to go there either for the second reason. The court, I think kind of understands that because they, they basically said for the third reason, they’re like, even if the first two reasons aren’t, you know, are okay. And the Democrats followed the proper procedure, they, the main issue they have, or or perhaps the biggest issue they have, 06:27.46 Sam Shirazi is this third question that the court court ruled on. And I do think you know this is probably the one where the Virginia Supreme Court will have to decide, and it’s perhaps the closest call. 06:40.14 Sam Shirazi And the question was essentially about the state statutory provision. So it’s not part of the state constitution, it’s part of the state law. It says that after this General Assembly session, the clerk of the House of Delegates will send a notice to each of the courts in Virginia basically saying that there have been proposed constitutional amendments. The clerks of each of those courts, the law says, shall post these notices three months before the election. 07:09.02 Sam Shirazi So obviously that didn’t happen here because the election was basically less than a week away when the Democrats passed this. So I think from a just pure text of the statute issue, this is probably the strongest issue that Republicans have. And I think if the Virginia Supreme Court ends up ruling for the Republicans, I suspect it will be on these grounds because there’s specific language in the Virginia law that the court can point to. As I mentioned, the other two things I think are more... 07:41.38 Sam Shirazi are kind of shakier and and have a lot of assumptions built into them. This one, you can just kind of look at the law and say, hey, the notices weren’t posted for three months before the election, so this is not valid. 07:53.03 Sam Shirazi I explained this in my last podcast that the Democrats argued this is essentially a quirk in the law. The Constitution was changed. This three-month requirement was removed from the Constitution, but it was never removed from the state law. 08:07.30 Sam Shirazi you know i think you know that might be the case i could also see the virginia supreme court saying like you know, it is what it is. Like, it’s still part of the law and we can’t just ignore the statute. And so what do you do with this statute? I think clearly the judge that ruled for the Republicans, he basically said, you know, it’s pretty clear. You have to post this three months before the election. It was not posted three months the before the election. 08:46.89 Sam Shirazi And I could see it going going both ways. However, it is important to note that the statute itself does not impose any requirements on the General Assembly. So the statute is basically about the duties of these clerks. And so You could argue that this is just kind of, even if you put aside the fact that it should have been removed from the the code and it’s basically a dead letter, if you assume it’s still a valid part of the law, you know the argument is, okay, this imposes some requirements on the clerks for the circuit courts. 09:18.24 Sam Shirazi But it doesn’t impose any sort of requirement on the General Assembly. If there was some sort of broad requirement on the General Assembly that these had to be posted for three months before the election, that has to be written down somewhere. it has to be written down in the state const

    23 min
  5. Redistricting Lawsuit: GOP's Only Plan?

    JAN 24

    Redistricting Lawsuit: GOP's Only Plan?

    00:00.47 Sam Shirazi Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will dive into a lot of legal issues, specifically with redistricting and just to see what is going on with some of the legal challenges the Republicans are bringing to redistricting. 00:15.48 Sam Shirazi So to set the stage, the Democrats in the General Assembly are full steam ahead in terms of trying to have a referendum this year in Virginia on redistricting. 00:25.85 Sam Shirazi They have proposed a bill that would set the date of the referendum as April 21st. And they have also... given their proposed language for what should go on the ballot in terms of the question for the referendum. And the question is, quote, should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census. So clearly they are, you know, the Democrats have phrased the question in a way that they think is more likely to get people to vote for it. I think the Republicans think the phrasing of the question is unfair and obviously skewed from their perspective. 01:15.06 Sam Shirazi against the Republican position. And you know I’m not sure if there’ll be any legal challenges to that, but that is the bill that the Democrats are proposing. So have a referendum on April 21st, have that as the question. 01:27.95 Sam Shirazi And you know if that gets passed, then the next step would be to actually enact a new map in Virginia, including moving the primary deadlines so that the elections could happen this year under the new maps. The one thing that we are still waiting on from the Virginia Democrats is what their proposed map is going to look like. 01:48.69 Sam Shirazi And it seems like that map will be coming out next week. 01:52.86 Sam Shirazi And obviously, when that happens, I will do a podcast because that’s going to be a big deal. But before we get to that, I wanted to talk about the Republican strategy and really they’re the Republican legal strategy. 02:03.93 Sam Shirazi And we’ll go into kind of the ins and outs on of that. But before I get into like the specific legal stuff, I wanted to just talk about kind of where the Republicans are at. Because I think in terms of running a redistricting referendum campaign in basically three months, the Republicans are not in a good place. I think they know that. I don’t think they really or have a plan if they have to run a referendum campaign. 02:28.26 Sam Shirazi And it reminds me of a quote from the classic movie Rocky III, So a reporter is asking Clubber Lang, who was about to fight Rocky, a question about what’s his strategy. 02:40.33 Sam Shirazi And Clubber Lang’s response is don’t need any. And I think in some ways, maybe that’s the Virginia Republicans position in that they don’t think they really need a strategy for the referendum campaign because they seem pretty confident in their legal position in this lawsuit that they brought. And you know honestly, it could be wishful thinking. 03:00.14 Sam Shirazi My sense is it could also just be they have nothing else. They really are just hoping that the lawsuit works out. They don’t have to run a referendum campaign because I think if the referendum is happening, I don’t really see a way where they’re going to be able to mount a a strong campaign. It’s going to be in April. You’re going to have Democrats really fired up. 03:19.21 Sam Shirazi So I think it’s going to be a really uphill climb for the Virginia Republicans if they have to have a referendum. They seem to kind of understand that. And that’s why they’re basically going in all in on this legal case that they brought. And I kind of want to set up the Republican argument, the Democratic argument, I can kind of give you my personal opinion. 03:37.57 Sam Shirazi I don’t often go into these like super detailed legal analysis. From my training, I am an attorney, I attended the University of Virginia. I don’t always talk about it on here because most people are pretty bored about legal stuff. But I thought it was kind of interesting To give people, if you’re an attorney, you might find this interesting. If you’re not an attorney, you’ll kind of get a sense of how attorneys analyze legal questions. 03:59.57 Sam Shirazi And so I’ll kind of do quick rundown about what’s going on and what the courts might interpret in this case. I did want to say, you know, this is kind of standard preference that lawyers like to give, you know, I’m not giving legal advice. I’m not telling people what arguments they should make. I’m just laying out kind of what I’m seeing in the legal landscape just for people’s analysis. And, you know, they can come up with their own conclusions in terms of with what they think is going to happen. This is kind of my personal opinion about this legal issue, but obviously it’s complicated. And, you know, just because I’m 04:37.74 Sam Shirazi Yeah, I’m not saying the case is going to go one way or another. I think it is an interesting legal question. It really boils down mainly to Virginia state constitutional law. There might be a small federal angle to this, but generally this is more of a state issue. 04:51.99 Sam Shirazi I think the highest court that will hear it is the Virginia Supreme Court, and it’s unlikely to really be decided by the federal courts. So I’ll talk about some of the legal issues going on. 05:02.58 Sam Shirazi The Republicans have brought a lawsuit in Tazewell County in Southwest Virginia. That’s a deep red county. I think clearly they did what’s called forum shopping. They wanted to pick where they thought they’d have the strongest chance of winning. 05:15.38 Sam Shirazi at the lower court level. You know regardless of what happens at the lower court, the reality is this case is almost certainly going to go to the Virginia Supreme Court to be ultimately decided because it’s such a significant legal issue. It’s such a thorny constitutional state constitutional issue. So I think you know one way or another, the Virginia Supreme Court is going to have to sort this out. And you know essentially the question is based on the state constitution and then a specific provision of the state law under the state constitution. So I’ll kind of go through the different provisions and kind of, you know, go through that analysis. So I think, you know, the Democrats initial position is that the state constitution is pretty clear. And I’m going to read the, 05:59.27 Sam Shirazi language from the state constitution. This is Article 12 of the Virginia Constitution, Future Changes, and it’s section one about amendments. So it basically says, you know any amendment has to first pass the House of Delegates and the state Senate in one session. 06:14.21 Sam Shirazi And then it says that amendment will be referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates. 06:26.76 Sam Shirazi And those that that phrase, after the next general election, is really the crux of this legal issue. Because what the Democrats are arguing is that language is very clear. 06:38.66 Sam Shirazi You pass it one in one session, and then you have’t after the next general election, you pass it again in the next session. And so the logical reading of next general election is literally election day. So you have an election and then the next session after that election, you can vote on it again. And that’s basically what happened. You know, the Democrats, they passed this bill essentially the week before election day. 07:02.23 Sam Shirazi Election day happened, they won. And then in January, they passed it again. And so the logical reading of this without any sort of overthinking about it is. You pass it before the election, and then you pass it after the election. And that’s kind of the plain reading of the state constitution. It’s pretty clear about that. 07:17.63 Sam Shirazi I think that’s a decent constitutional argument just from the text. But the Republicans make a bunch of arguments that basically... 07:24.52 Sam Shirazi you know, the election was essentially already underway. Early voting had been going on. The purpose of this provision is to give voters a chance to vote if they want to reelect the House of Delegates and and to allow this sort of amendment to go forward. And so you’re kind of really undermining the purpose of the requirement that it be passed in two different sessions with an election in between. 08:14.74 Sam Shirazi 00:00.47 Sam Shirazi Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will dive into a lot of legal issues, specifically with redistricting and just to see what is going on with some of the legal challenges the Republicans are bringing to redistricting. 00:15.48 Sam Shirazi So to set the stage, the Democrats in the General Assembly are full steam ahead in terms of trying to have a referendum this year in Virginia on redistricting. 00:25.85 Sam Shirazi They have proposed a bill that would set the date of the referendum as April 21st. And they have also... given their proposed language for what should go on the ballot in terms of the question for the referendum. And the question is, quote, should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarilyily temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census. So clearly they are, you know, the Democrats have phrased the question in a way that they think is more li

    27 min
  6. Inauguration Weekend: Transition of Power and Redistricting Updates

    JAN 17

    Inauguration Weekend: Transition of Power and Redistricting Updates

    Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the transition of power that will happen today in Virginia as the inauguration of the new governor and lieutenant governor and attorney general happened today in Virginia. 00:17.36 Sam Shirazi And then we will go over some news in terms of what’s been going on with the redistricting referendum, which aside from the transition of power, the big news in Richmond is a lot of speculation about how things are going to be going with the redistricting referendum. And we got a little bit more clarity this week, so I’ll go over that. But first, I did want to talk about the inauguration, obviously historic inauguration for governor as we will the Virginia will have its first woman governor. 00:46.26 Sam Shirazi for Lieutenant Governor, another historic inauguration for her because Ghazal Hashmi will become the first Muslim person and the first South Asian person elected statewide in Virginia. 00:57.15 Sam Shirazi And Jay Jones will become the first Black Attorney General in Virginia history. Now, every time there’s an inauguration like this, either at the presidential level or at the state level, I often think about the beginning of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration speech, in my opinion, one of the best inauguration speech speeches in American history. and There’s kind of the a quote that i always remember. 01:22.24 Sam Shirazi It doesn’t matter if the Republican or Democrats being inaugurated. I remember this quote from John F. Kennedy. He said, quote, we observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing in an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. And I think that captures... 01:40.82 Sam Shirazi You know, the fact that, you know, these inaugurations, while obviously they’re celebrating one person winning the election, it really is a celebration of the fact that there is democracy in this country, for elections, freedom. And I think that’s ultimately what we’re celebrating because a lot of parts of the world don’t have don’t get the opportunity to do that. Obviously, there’s been. a lot of unrest going on in Iran, for example, and you see that people there are really struggling for their freedom. 02:09.82 Sam Shirazi And it’s nice to see here in Virginia that we will see a transition of power from a Republican to a Democrat. And, you know, there had been some tension between outgoing Governor Glanionkin and an incoming Governor Spanberger over the search for the UVA president. And there were some letters that went back and forth. But at the end of the day, 02:31.22 Sam Shirazi This week in Richmond, they have seemed to patch things up and we’re all friendly with each other. And that’s nice to see in the sense of, you know, it’s important that there’ll be orderly transition of power. 02:44.07 Sam Shirazi And anyways, so... We will see the inauguration today, and then obviously Governor Spanberger and the other elected officials will be hi the hitting the ground running with their new administration trying to implement the agenda that people elected them to do, primarily focusing on the cost of living issue. I think Governor Spanberger, that will be her first priority because she knows that was what a lot of people voted for her to do is to try to make things more affordable. And so I’m sure that will be one of her top focuses as governor. 03:17.97 Sam Shirazi And I think, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see how things go in terms of the General Assembly, what kind of bills they send her. And yeah, anyways, I mean, in some ways, the inauguration is kind of the culmination of the election that happened last year in Virginia. It’s kind of the final Final moment that officially marks the transition of power as we saw the blue wave that came into Virginia last year come into office as the Democrats will have a trifecta for the first time since Governor Northam left office. 03:49.42 Sam Shirazi And it’s the first time, I think I mentioned this fact before, it’s the first time an incoming governor will have a trifecta in Virginia since Doug Wilder all the way way back after the 1989 election. So definitely historic election here in Virginia, historic inauguration. And, you know, I’m sure it’ll be interesting to see what Governor Spanberger says in her inauguration speech. So i don’t want to dwell on it too much. i think we’ll just have to wait and see how everything plays out. I did want to shift focus to a slightly different topic. 04:19.06 Sam Shirazi which is the redistricting referendum. Because as much as there is a lot of focus on affordability and things that, you know, more bread and butter issues, I think in terms of the pure politics of it, the redistricting referendum in the short term is going to take up a lot of oxygen for the General Assembly as they work to pass that through. 04:39.62 Sam Shirazi And then the other big thing that will have to happen is the campaign for the redistricting referendum will happen in the winter and spring. And that’s already starting to take shape. And just this week, we got more clarity about what the redistricting referendum is going to look like. 04:56.62 Sam Shirazi So just for some context, the General Assembly actually so met on Wednesday before the inauguration of the new governor and lieutenant governor. and Attorney General. And so you had this you know three-day period where the executive branch was still controlled by the Republicans, yet the legislative branch was controlled by the Democrats. It was interesting to see Lieutenant Governor Earl Sears, she, in her final days in office, still presided over the Virginia Senate because she is still the Lieutenant Governor. 05:24.10 Sam Shirazi And I think you know she did that job. I’m sure it’s not easy after a tough campaign and and having a loss like that, but she came in and did her job and you know, at the end of the day, the Democrats are were in control of the state Senate and the House Delegates. And so typically what happens is they are trying to get the redistricting referendum going as soon as possible because they know that the clock is ticking in terms of trying to get that done this year. So really, the first thing the Virginia Democrats have done is try to move forward these constitutional amendments with redistricting getting the most attention. However, it’s important to remember redistricting is not the only referendum. There are three other referendums that the Democrats are trying to pass this year in Virginia. 06:06.86 Sam Shirazi Those are on reproductive rights. trying to enshrine that in the Virginia Constitution, trying to rep repeal the ban on same-sex marriage and enshrine the right to same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution, and then also restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies once they leave prison. So those are all also happening, but obviously the big national attention is on the redistricting referendum. 06:29.33 Sam Shirazi that is going to happen in the spring. And I wanted to update kind of a couple of things on the legal side of things and then on the political side. So on the legal side, there is a court case that is working its way through the system. 06:41.08 Sam Shirazi The Republicans challenging the redistricting referendum, basically on kind of procedural grounds that they Virginia Democrats didn’t properly follow the Virginia constitution. The lower court didn’t stop the Democrats this week from moving forward with the redistricting referendum. And that’s not super surprising. Typically courts don’t want to get involved in the middle of a legislative process. Once everything is finalized, then the court might come in. And that’s basically what the lower court said. They basically said it was too early for us to get involved and we’re not going to tell the legislature what to do. Once they pass whatever they want to pass, then we can take a look at it. So the case is not settled. 07:21.10 Sam Shirazi I think once the final votes are in and and the referendum is going to be placed on the ballot, I think the Republicans will then go to the courts and try to block it. We’ll see what the lower court says. We’ll see if it eventually gets to the Virginia Supreme Court. So just keep in mind, there is that legal process in the background going on. 07:38.86 Sam Shirazi you know As I mentioned, I think courts are often hesitant to get too involved in these political questions, particularly in Virginia, where you have a less political court system. So we’ll see if the you know legal challenges will go anywhere. But you know for now, let’s assume that redistricting will move forward. I think we got some clarity from the Virginia Democrats this week about what the redistricting referendum is going to look like. 08:02.12 Sam Shirazi So the big question that we’re still waiting on is whether the map that will finally be passed if the redistricting referendum is successful, will there be a 10-1 map or a nine two map? Will there be a map with 10 Democrats and one Republican, or will it be nine Democrats and two Republicans? We still don’t know the answer to that, but we got a little bit of a clue about when we might get an answer because the Virginia Democrats basically said they will release the maps before the redistricting referendum and they said they would do it by January 30th. And so we’ll see what happens. I mean, i assume it’s going to be one map and they’re going to say, you know, vote for the referendum and you’ll get this map. It’s possible they release a few maps and say, well, one of these will be the maps. 08:49.01 Sam Shirazi We’ll just have to wait and see. And I think that’ll answer the big question 10192. 08:54.81 Sam Shirazi I think there’s a lot of speculation about which one it’s

    20 min
  7. 2026 Preview: The Long Shadow of the 2025 Elections

    JAN 10

    2026 Preview: The Long Shadow of the 2025 Elections

    Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode we will look at the shadow of 2025 in 2026 and just what all the election fallout will be after we saw the Democratic blue wave in Virginia that happened in 2025. 00:19.89 Sam Shirazi So to begin, I hope everyone had a good holiday, New Year. Obviously, I took a little bit of a break and there was still things going on, but there wasn’t as much to cover over the holidays. I did want to get back and just kind of give a preview of what this year would look like and also just talk about how 2025 fits into 2026. 00:40.97 Sam Shirazi Obviously, the name of this podcast, it really was focused on the 2025 Virginia elections. But I do think that there is a justification to continue it into 2026, because really Virginia in 2026 is going to be defined by 2025. I think 2025, the story in Virginia was the federal fallout, everything going on in DC. That defined both what was going on in Virginia and also the election ultimately. And I think 2026, a lot of the story in Virginia will be the shadow of 2025, the fallout from 2025. 01:13.23 Sam Shirazi I think while there’s obviously a lot going on in D.C., it’s unlikely Republicans are going to be able to pass any sort of major bill like they did in 2025. I think while there’s still major changes going on to the federal government, I think the initial kind of shock and awe of both Doge and the changes that Trump administration have made have kind of settled in, for lack of a better word, and things have stabilized to a certain extent in the federal government. And I think the people who left, for the most part, had kind of departed. I’m sure there will be more departures, but most of the departures happened last year from the federal government. 01:47.59 Sam Shirazi So I think in that sense, things have somewhat stabilized. Obviously, the hit to the Virginia economy is still going to be a major story in 2026. But I do think a lot of the story of this year in Virginia is going to be the Democratic trifecta, the amount of power that they have now, given the scale of the wind that they got in 2025, and really, you know from their perspective, the mandate that they got in 2025. So I kind of wanted to talk about a few things that are going to be happening this year in Virginia. 02:13.83 Sam Shirazi with the caveat that a lot of it is shaped by what’s going on in 2025. And, you know, 2026, it’s a midterm. Those elections are kind of independent of the state elections. Those are federal elections. But I do think, particularly because of redistricting, they’re going to be shaped a lot by what happened in 2025. 02:29.40 Sam Shirazi So we can go ahead and get started with that. I guess at the beginning, I don’t want to go into all the ins and outs of it because there’s a lot of special elections coming up. You know, just an immediate fallout of what happened 2025. There are a lot of special elections at the beginning of 2026. A lot of people are leaving to join the Spanberger administration. 02:47.66 Sam Shirazi Just this week, there was an announcement that State Senator Adam Ebbin, he will be resigning in February to join the Spanberger administration. so there’s going to be a special election for his state Senate seat in Arlington and Alexandria. 03:01.13 Sam Shirazi And then current delegate Elizabeth Bennett Parker has announced that she’s running for Eben’s state Senate seat. I think there’s a decent chance she will end up winning that. And so she will do resign in her House of Delegates seat. So there’s probably going to be another special election in the House of Delegates. And that doesn’t even count the other three House of Delegates special elections that are coming up. 03:20.62 Sam Shirazi There were two special elections on January 6th that the Democrats easily won in Richmond, in the Richmond area for the state Senate and House of Delegates. So long story short, there are going to be a lot of special elections in Virginia. 03:33.09 Sam Shirazi None of them are super interesting just because they are very deep blue seats. There’s not really any risk the Democrats are going to lose any of these seats. Some of the Democratic nomination fights for those seats might be interesting, but there’s You know, they’ve most of them have passed and there’s only going to be two more nominees going to be determined for those Northern Virginia seats that I just mentioned. So long story short, lot of special elections. I’m not going to go with the ins and outs of them just because they’re not super interesting from the standpoint of being competitive, but just shows you that a lot of what’s going on in Virginia in 2026, like these special elections are because Spanberger won in 2025. They’re kind of the fallout from that. And we’re going to continue to see that throughout the year in Virginia. 04:16.00 Sam Shirazi And I wanted to start with perhaps the biggest unknown in Virginia this year, and that’s redistricting. So next week, the Democrats will come back and the Republicans will come back to Richmond, but the Democrats will have a big majority in the House of Delegates. They will have 64 seats. 04:30.81 Sam Shirazi out of 100. In the state Senate, they still have a relatively narrow majority of 19 to 21, sorry, 21 to 19 majority in the state Senate. However, they now control the lieutenant governor’s gavel. And so that means they have extra power because the lieutenant governor presides over the state Senate. So both in the House of Delegates and the state Senate, the Democrats are going to have more power and they’re going to be starting to flex their muscles next week in Richmond. 05:16.16 Sam Shirazi So, So what happens now? So the first step is in the House of Delegates and the state Senate, the Democrats need to vote on the redistricting amendment again. Presumably that will pass. 05:25.99 Sam Shirazi And then there will be a there the’ll need to be a process to set up a referendum. That will face a legal challenge. And so in theory, the Republicans will try to block it in the courts and we’ll see if that goes anywhere. These are mainly state legal challenges based on kind of procedural things and just kind of specific language of the state constitution, did the Democrats you know follow all the procedures that are required to get a referendum on the ballot? you know We’ll see how it plays out. My gut is telling me that the courts don’t want to get super involved in this and that they would prefer the voters to make the decision. So they’ll let the voters do the referendum and whatever that happens, happens. 06:21.24 Sam Shirazi If the referendum passes, then the Democrats will then have to do some legislation to potentially change the date of the primary because you know realistically the June primary date is coming up. The filing deadlines are coming up. and if you’re going to have completely new maps, you’re going to need to give people time to run. you’re goingnna have to change some of those timelines. So There’s a lot of legislation that will still have to happen even once the redistricting amendment passes in terms of getting the the lines going in Virginia. 06:53.42 Sam Shirazi you know i think if the redistricting referendum happens in the April timeframe, that will dominate you know the first half of the year in Virginia because there will be there’ll be a referendum campaign. There’s going to be a yes side, a no side. i assume the National Party is going to come in, fund both of those efforts. 07:11.54 Sam Shirazi There’s going to be money and ads. And so going to have this whole election basically in the spring revolving around the referendum. I think, you know, Democrats feel pretty good about it. They want to... 07:24.51 Sam Shirazi They want to make this essentially a referendum on Trump. If you like Trump, then you’re going to vote no. If you want to send a message and vote against Trump, you will vote yes on the redistricting referendum. That’s kind of the clean way to just, you like Trump, no. You you you don’t like Trump, yes. you know The reality, it’s going to be a little bit nuant more nuanced than that. But these things tend to just become referendums on the incumbent president. We saw that in California. 07:50.22 Sam Shirazi And so that’s kind of the redistricting fight and the referendum that’s going to happen. Assuming the redistricting passes, which you know is not 100 percent. And I will you know i will do a another podcast at some point on the redistricting referendum itself. But assuming it passes, then you know you’re going to have brand new lines. The question becomes, do the Democrats go maximum and try to get 10 Democratic seats out of 11 in Virginia or they go nine two They try to get nine Democratic seats out of Virginia. 08:18.71 Sam Shirazi A lot of unknowns. We’ve heard kind of some mixed messaging about that from Governor Spanberger versus the House of Delegates and the State Senate. So a lot of unknowns. you know we’ll We’ll just have to wait and see what ends up happening with redistricting. But I think it’s going to be a really important discussion. 08:34.91 Sam Shirazi conversation that’s going take up a lot of the political space in Virginia in the first half of the year. And I do think it’s it’s going to be interesting to have that referendum because typically in Virginia, every once in a while we’ll have kind of a partisan contested referendum, but Virginia is not like California where like every year there’s 20 referendums. Referendums are relatively rare. 08:57.56 Sam Shirazi There are nonpartisan or bipartisan referendums that happened. The last referendum, I believe, was 2024, was basically was basically on the a tax credit or tax deduction for veterans who were, or widows of veterans who who died in action. And so i

    24 min
  8. Episode 42: Final Thoughts on 2025

    12/20/2025

    Episode 42: Final Thoughts on 2025

    00:00.44 Sam Shirazi Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode we will first go over just some updates about special elections that will happen early next year in Virginia. And then I wanted to kind of wrap up the year with some of my final thoughts on 2025 and give you a little bit of a sense of what I might be doing in the new year with the podcast. Sam Shirazi So before we get to that, the first thing I wanted to go over was the special elections. In the beginning of the new year in Virginia, I wanted to just give you an update about the nominations for the three House of Delegates special elections. The first special election will be on January 6th. That will be House District 77. The current incumbent, Mike Jones. He is resigning to run for the state Senate in the seat that Ghazala Hashmi has resigned. So in that House of Delegates district, there was actually kind of a surprise in the firehouse primary where the expected front runner Michelle Mosby was not able to win. Instead, former ACLU attorney Charlie Schmidt won the nomination. And I think that was a pretty big surprise because Michelle Mosby had a lot of endorsements, including from Mike Jones, the delegate who was about to resign. And I think it just goes to show you, you never really know what’s going happen in these firehouse primaries. These tend to be very low turnout elections because they’re party run primaries and it’s just less well known than the regular primaries and regular elections. And this one, you know, I think it just goes to show you if so if a candidate runs a good campaign and is able to get out their supporters, 01:36.60 Sam Shirazi they’re going be able to pull out the upset. So that’s what happened in this House of Delegates district. The other two House Delegates districts, they were not surprises. I think the front runners, the people we expected to win, did end up winning. So in House District 23, this is where current incumbent Candi King is resigning to take a place in the Spanberger administration. Margaret Angela Franklin won the nomination as expected. And then in House District 11, 02:15.28 Sam Shirazi So a lot of just kind of quick updates on the special elections next year. The House District 77 special election will be on January 6th. The two other House Delegates special elections will be on January 13th. I haven’t yet heard of any more special elections, although in Virginia there will always be elections coming up. Obviously, New Year, I talked about redistricting, there’ll be midterms, so a lot to cover in the New Year. 02:41.29 Sam Shirazi Before I kind of shift to what 2026 might look like, I did want to just kind of have some reflections on 2025 and look back on the year and some of the lessons. 02:51.52 Sam Shirazi And they aren’t necessarily like as the exact thoughts that I’ve expressed the entire podcast. I kind of wanted to do a little bit bigger picture stuff and a little bit more, you know, looking forward to what 2025 in Virginia teaches us about elections and politics. 03:06.96 Sam Shirazi One thing I wanted to note, so the name of the podcast, Federal Fallout, I think at the beginning when I started this, I had a feeling that there was going to be a big impact on to what was going on in D.C. and Virginia, and that ended up happening. 03:18.88 Sam Shirazi I want to give a shout out to Blue Virginia Lowell Feld, who runs that site, put together a list of what he considered to be the top political stories in Virginia in 2025. 03:30.29 Sam Shirazi And he listed number one, not the election itself, but he listed federal fallout as the number one Virginia political story. Now, I wish I could say that the number one political story was the podcast, Federal Fallout. He didn’t necessarily mean the podcast, although he did mention it. He really meant the concept of Federal Fallout, the idea that what happened in D.C. with the federal cuts and everything else going on DC was going to impact the Virginia elections. I think that really was the big picture story of the year in Virginia. The elections were kind of a consequence of that. I mean, obviously there was kind of candidate specific dynamics that we saw in the governor’s race and the attorney general race, but kind of the overarching theme of the election was really what was going on in DC. You could also argue, I think in hindsight, the issue of affordability and economic issues and cost of living 04:22.94 Sam Shirazi I think that was also important. You know, obviously they’re kind of intertwined to what’s going on in D.C. And and so I think that’s all kind of what happened this year in Virginia. And kind of in hindsight, I mean, none of it was really super surprising that that’s what was going to happen given what was going on in D.C. And I think specifically with DOGE, 04:41.74 Sam Shirazi I mean, I think when DOGE happened, it was pretty clear what was going to happen this year in Virginia because of just the scale of it and the impact that it had in Virginia. And so that’s kind of what gave me the idea for Federal Fallout. That’s why i did the podcast. 04:56.90 Sam Shirazi As you can tell, It was a bit of a labor of love for me. I just did this because I thought it was interesting. I thought it’d be interesting to talk about the Virginia election, have some guests on. 05:07.33 Sam Shirazi I didn’t make any money off of the podcast as much as I you know, enjoy doing it. It wasn’t something that was I was doing for money. No one was telling me what to do on the podcast. No one was, you know, feeding me lines or anything like that. I really did it because I felt partly it was kind of a something I thought I could give back to people and and give them context to what’s going on in Virginia. I know I’ve gotten good feedback from a lot of people and I appreciate that. 05:33.38 Sam Shirazi Part of it was also just my personal interest in the election. It allowed me to really dive deep, allowed me to really think about the election, think about what was going on. And I think one of the challenges when you are a political analyst, when you’re doing these podcasts, especially when you’re trying to be objective, is to try to figure out what is going on. 05:52.84 Sam Shirazi And I think particularly in this election, I think it was important to really just kind of not overthink things and just look at the reality of what was going on in Virginia with the Federal Fallout, with the economic situation, with a lot of what was going on in D.C. And it kind of reminded me of a quote from George Orwell. It’s kind of a famous quote, but it says, he said that to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. And I think that’s kind of a good summary of and of what the challenge in politics is to kind of figure out what is right in front of it your face. And I think so sometimes it’s so easy to get tied up into what’s going on in social media or tied up on, you know, the latest story that you kind of lose sight of the bigger picture. 06:38.56 Sam Shirazi and you know, in this election, i think it was... kind of clear when you had so many stories about the impacts on Virginia that that was going to be a big part of the election this year. And I think part of the challenge when you are the political analyst trying to figure out what’s going on is to really focus on the present. And I think the present is really hard to get your mind around. And you know I think the past is pretty easy. You can kind of go back and figure out what happened in past elections. 07:07.26 Sam Shirazi The future is kind of hard to know. It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. you know. The present is really the challenge. it’s you know It’s knowable, but it’s also difficult to know. And you know the reason I say all this is I think the Republicans, and and this is this happens every party that wins a presidential election, they’re stuck in the presidential year. They are stuck in 2024. 07:27.24 Sam Shirazi They want it to be 2024 forever. But obviously things change. And I think the Democrats have to be careful not to fall into a similar trap about 2025. Like, you know, the Virginia Democrats, they’re going to want it to be 2025 forever. You know, this was a great year. 07:42.08 Sam Shirazi They did really well at the top of the ticket. They flipped so many House of Delegates seats. They want to make it 2025 for the rest of time. We saw this with the Virginia Republicans after 2021. I think this was one of the problems Glenn Youngkin fundamentally had during his time as governor. He just kind of always felt like it was 2021. He never really shifted from 2021. And I think... 08:01.42 Sam Shirazi and you know I think Spanberger, it’ll be interesting to see what she does. My sense is she’s pretty good at gauging public opinion. And I don’t think she’s the type of politician that’ll be stuck in one moment for the rest of her time in office. 08:15.56 Sam Shirazi And so all that’s to say is just because 2025 ended up one way, just because 2024 ended up one way, it doesn’t mean future elections are going up like that. 2026 is going to be different than 2025. 08:27.69 Sam Shirazi And that’s why I’m saying like being... connected to the present in politics is very difficult to get the kind of current pulse on the electorate, on what’s going on, the issues that are important. 08:39.12 Sam Shirazi It’s just, it’s a challenge. And I think what this election kind of showed is that, you know, the issues that were hot in 2024, some of them are still hot, some of them are not hot. And the issues that are going to be hot in 2025, some of them going to relevant in 2026, some of them are not going to relevant. 08:55.32 Sam Shirazi And so I think it’s just really important for all politicians and all of us to kind of not get sucked in

    19 min
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About

A podcast exploring the 2025 elections in Virginia and how the changes to the Federal government will influence them. Views expressed are those of the host personally. Contact: federalfalloutpod@gmail.com samshirazi.substack.com

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