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 it was very nonpartisan.
09:17.13
Sam Shirazi
And so this is really going to be one of the first really hot button events Jr.: referendums we’ve had in a while in Virginia that is very clear, you know, Dem versus Republican type referendum. So that’s going to be a really interesting fight this year in Virginia. Don’t want to forget the other constitutional amendments. The Democrats have been working on these for a while. One of them is to enshrine reproductive rights in the Virginia constitution.
09:40.46
Sam Shirazi
The other one is to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage and protect same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution. And the final one is to end the automatic disenfranchisement of people convicted of felonies for the rest of their lives.
09:54.60
Sam Shirazi
This would re-enfranchise people once they serve their their prison sentence. you All those, I think, are going to relatively likely going to pass. I’m I haven’t really heard, are those going to be on November or are they going to be in April? I think that might be a question mark. I’m sure at some point the Democrats will make a decision about whether they want those referendums to be on the April ballot or the November ballot. I think it’s probably cleaner to do it in November because the April referendum will just be on one topic and it’s not going to get mixed up with all these other things. So i I’m guessing they’re going to do redistricting in the spring.
10:30.18
Sam Shirazi
So those are the constitutional amendments, and that’s already a lot. And none of that could have happened unless the Democrats won the House of Delegates in 2025. And not only did the Democrats win the House of Delegates, they got a landslide in the House of Delegates. So all that’s to say is we’re already seeing these constitutional amendments, they’re happening because the Democrats won the House of Delegates in 2025.
11:32.14
Sam Shirazi
The question becomes, you know, how far do the Democrats go? My gut is telling me this first General Assembly session, they are not going to be pushing too much. They’re not going to be going too too fast, going too progressive just yet. I think a lot of it will be more pragmatic things, things focused on cost of living, more... things to maybe speed up housing and do some sort of just kind of kitchen table type bills that are not necessarily super controversial. You know, there there will be a lot of political minefields with things like an assault weapons ban, right to work. you know There’s a whole conversation about that. I think that is all going to get worked out. I’m not sure if this first General Assembly session, every single bill is going to be worked out. Remember, Spanberger is going be in office for four years. And in all likelihood, I mean, given the way 2025 happened, 2027 is also going to be a a good a good year for the Democrats. So it’s it’s almost certain that
12:31.25
Sam Shirazi
Spammerger is going to have a democratic trifecta for four years. So there’s a lot of time to pass the legislation. I suspect all the Democrats know that. I don’t think they have this feeling they have to get everything done this year. so and And typically what you see in the General Assembly is there’s an attitude of, oh, let’s do a study. Let’s you know sit on it for a year. So I do think some of the more hot button topics, there may be some delay. There may be kind of initial...
12:57.20
Sam Shirazi
you know, kicking around ideas and then they eventually will become law, but maybe not this first go around. So long story short, a lot of legislation that’s potentially going to come down the pipeline. And I think that’s where, again, the the fallout from 2025 is going to be felt in 2026.
13:15.02
Sam Shirazi
The other thing I should mention is the attorney general’s office is going to be changed. And, you know, the new attorney general, Jay Jones, you know All indication is he is going to start joining these lawsuits against the Trump administration.
13:26.26
Sam Shirazi
There are going to be a lot of different things that he’s going to have a very different position on than the current attorney general, outgoing attorney general Jason Meares. So again, another fallout from 2025 where we’re going to have a totally different attorney general’s office in Virginia.
14:09.28
Sam Shirazi
And then the house the the House of Representatives races in Virginia are all going to be defined by redistricting if it passes. And there’s a possibility, you know, as much as I like competitive elections, there’s a possibility, you know, the reason why you redistrict, the reason why you gerrymander is so you don’t have competitive elections. And no matter the final number, 9-2-10-1,
14:31.26
Sam Shirazi
the Democrats are pretty much going to draw these seats, at least for 2026, to be pretty safe. So as much as we love, you know, these elections that could be toss-ups, I don’t really see that happening if the maps change in Virginia, because there’s really no reason to draw a toss up toss-up districts if you’re the Democrats. You know, potentially some of the primaries might be interesting, in theory, in some of these districts, although,
14:55.76
Sam Shirazi
In the second district, it looks like Elaine Luria is in the driver’s seat for the nomination. In the first district, it looks like Shannon Taylor is in the driver’s seat. In the fifth district, it looks like Tom Perriello is in the driver’s seat. So, you know, even the primaries might not be super interesting next year this year, excuse me, in Virginia. so you know, all that’s to say is that is all because of what happened in 2025.
15:16.80
Sam Shirazi
you you know A lot of people were surprised by the redistricting announcement that was made at the end. And I do think that the Democrats wouldn’t have done that if unless they were confident and that and they were they were confident that they were going win big. And it didn’t really matter if they went ahead with redistricting. And you know I spent a lot of time on this podcast kind of talking about you know who’s up, who’s down.
15:38.76
Sam Shirazi
you know I suspect the Democrats were getting some of their internals back and and they knew that it was going to be a... pretty big wave. And so they said, you know, why not? Let’s let’s just go forward with redistricting.
15:50.32
Sam Shirazi
And it was the right call from their perspective because they won the election big and now they’re in the position to do redistricting. So all that’s to say is, you know, as I will cover a lot of what’s going on this year in Virginia, but a lot of it was already decided in 2025. Like if, especially if redistricting passes, I mean, if redistricting passes, like the 2026 midterms are not going to be super interesting in Virginia, unless for some reason the Democrats decided to draw a toss up district because,
16:19.74
Sam Shirazi
O’ already been kind of decided what Virginia will look like in 2026 and you know these maps if they pass. David they’re going to be our maps in 2028 and 2030 because the redistricting doesn’t happen until 2031 when Virginia gets its new census data so in some ways, the 2025 elections might be with us all the way.
16:41.87
Sam Shirazi
through 2030, even past the next governor’s election in 2029. So they really were significant elections. I spent so much time last year on the Virginia elections because i you know I knew they were important and I knew that potentially they would have a long-term impact on Virginia. And we talked about the three other constitutional amendments besides redistricting. Those will go into the Virginia constitution And it’s very hard to change the Virginia Constitution. So I think there’s a good chance those will pass. They will have long-term implications on the Virginia Constitution.
18:05.59
Sam Shirazi
you know they are gonna want this to be 2025 for the rest of time. To be honest, I think for the rest of trump the Trump administration, I think the Virginia Democrats are probably in a pretty good spot in terms of their ability to win elections.
18:21.02
Sam Shirazi
I think 2027, as I mentioned, they’re gonna in all likelihood hold hold the House of Delegates and probably gain seats in the state Senate. And so the question really becomes,
18:32.47
Sam Shirazi
for the Democrats, you know what do they do long term? And I know Don Scott, the Speaker of the House, has kind of thought about this idea. And so has Dan Helmer, Delegate Dan Helmer, who was the campaign chair for the Democrats. How do they have long term power in Virginia? Because what we saw last time Trump was in office, the Democrats Matt Bolian, M.D. made lot of gains like they in 2025 but then in 2021 they kind of lost a lot of those gains and they had to go back to rebuilding because they didn’t really structure it in a way that was long term, and I think. Matt Bolian, There’s a possibility now that the democrats are going to try to.
19:10.22
Sam Shirazi
create a more long-term blue Virginia, so to speak. I do think it’s a challenge because Virginia does tend to swing so much. And 2029 is going to be really interesting.
19:22.06
Sam Shirazi
And I think in the back of the minds of Speaker Scott and Spanberger and State Senate Majority Leader Scott Servo is kind of this idea about how far do we push things you know If we go too far, then perhaps there will be a backlash in 2029.
19:38.19
Sam Shirazi
Now, realistically, most of that will probably be down to the presidential election. Do the Democrats win the presidential election in 2028? I think if the Republicans win the presidential election in 2028, almost certainly Democrats are going to continue winning the local state elections in Virginia in 2029.
20:28.14
Sam Shirazi
They are not gonna mount a serious challenge to Mark Warner. And so it’s possible that they could lose you know two to three more members of Congress or even more than that if redistricting happens. So they’re not in a good place. I don’t really know what the rebuilding is gonna look like on their end.
20:48.38
Sam Shirazi
I really think the only thing that will really start bringing them back is if the Democrats win the presidential election in 2028. and they can kind of do what Youngkin did in 2021 and try to rebuild. you know That’s not a great message or for Republicans in Virginia, and you’re trying to get your people back organized. But at the end of the day, you know it is what it is. i think politics is very cyclical, and especially in Virginia, things are really tied to national politics. Now, hypothetically, if the term but Trump becomes a lot more popular. His administration is doing a lot of things that boost his approval rating. you know
21:23.80
Sam Shirazi
Could the Virginia Republicans make a comeback? Sure. But I think right now it’s just unlikely. And you know the reality is we’ve kind of entered a a phase where it’s very hard to be an incumbent government in any part of the world. you know Joe Biden find and count Kamala Harris found that out. I think you know we’ll see how the midterms shape up. But I think Donald Trump and J.D. Vance might find that out because people are you know struggling economically and it’s hard to make you know immediate big changes to people’s lives. And I think it’s’s it’s hard to be in power. And that’s a long way of saying Abigail Spamberger may also find that out because you know she’s made affordability a big part of her campaign.
22:01.91
Sam Shirazi
She will try to do her best, but there’s only so much you can do at the state level versus the federal level versus, you know, some of these are just big intractable problems. And we’ll see how she ends up doing as governor. I do think Virginia governors tend to be popular for whatever reason. They’re usually have net positive approval ratings. We saw this with Governor Youngkin for most of his term. He had a positive approval rating. We saw that with Governor Northam, Governor McAuliffe, Governor McDonnell. Most Virginia governors tend to have positive approvals. Even if the president of their own party is struggling, they tend to have positive approval. So all that’s to say is you know I think it’ll be interesting to see how Spanberger does as governor.
22:42.76
Sam Shirazi
what her priorities will be, how she works with the General Assembly. Does she try to moderate the General Assembly? is she going to be you know Are the progressives going to be maybe a thorn at her side? Is she going to be able to to manage that relationship? So a lot going on in Virginia, a lot of interesting dynamics.
22:59.46
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, going back to the theme of the podcast, at least this episode, a lot of those dynamics are shaped by 2025 and the scale of the Democratic victory. The fact that they, you know, not that they just won, but they just got such a big victory that it’s kind of indisputable that they’re going to come in and make big changes.
23:16.12
Sam Shirazi
We’re going to see how that plays out. I think it’s going to be really interesting year. As I mentioned, I’m not going to do as many podcasts. I think There’ll be some interesting things that will happen along the way that i I will definitely highlight. I will definitely do the redistricting referendum if it happens. I will do the congressional primaries. I’ll do the congressional general elections. But again, because it was such a big Democratic landslide in 2025, I don’t know how many competitive races there will be in 2026 in Virginia. So a lot of interesting stuff. Virginia politics is always you know fun and we’re always going to have an election and I’ll do my best to cover it and
23:52.58
Sam Shirazi
you know I appreciate everyone who listened in 2025. I appreciate everyone who will be listening in 2026. I will try to do my best. And I will, you know again, not do as many podcasts as I did last year, but I’ll try to keep up with it. And yeah. So anyways, I appreciate everyone who’s listened to me. This has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time.
