More Maine Mayhem & No Drama NC

More Maine Mayhem & No Drama NC

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out the 2026 Midterms. This episode, we will go over some developments that have that have happened in the Maine Senate race. And then I also wanted to go over the state of North Carolina because I said that I would do a state a week during the run-up to the midterm so people have a sense of what’s going on. 00:19.00 Sam Shirazi So I also wanted to cover that state. However, I did have to start with a lot of interesting developments that have happened in the Maine Senate race because obviously it’s been in the news and there’s a lot going on that I wanted to go over. 00:30.26 Sam Shirazi My first episode of the relaunched podcast series was about Maine, and I talked all about the race. And then as soon as that was released, a couple days later, the whole Senate race was upended. And my first episode was called Maine Midterm Mayhem. And I think the term mayhem is certainly applicable right now in Maine because there’s something going on that’s you know pretty unique in terms of elections. And haven’t really seen anything like this in a while in terms of a lot of last minute changes right before the Democrats have an opportunity to flip a Senate seat in Maine. So let’s just set things up. As I discussed last podcast, the Democratic nominee Graham Platter was controversial and he was trying to defeat longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins. That seemed to be the dynamic in the Senate race. 01:21.18 Sam Shirazi And Republicans were certainly happy about that because they felt that Platner was not a strong candidate. So they had they felt that even though Maine lean blue, Susan Collins will be able to win again in Maine, and that would really boost Republican chances of retaining the Senate. 01:35.13 Sam Shirazi However, since my podcast last week, a lot has happened this this past week, and so I want to kind of summarize what happened. Basically, on Monday, a story came out where a woman that Platner used to, on an off date, that woman said that Platner had raped her and... 01:52.42 Sam Shirazi Platner came out and denied the allegation. However, obviously, when you have something like that that is thrown into a Senate race and you know it was reported by a reputable news source, obviously, it was going to be a serious story for Platner and was was going to have to deal with it. 02:09.32 Sam Shirazi I think the thing that happened, this was basically the the the straw that broke the camel’s back. I think there were a lot of controversies with Platner, and this was by far the most serious one because obviously it’s a very serious thing that was alleged to have happened. And so Platner, I think, really had no other choice but to withdraw from the race because essentially the National Democrats came out and said that Platner had to go. And even some of his most ardent backers on the progressive wing of the party, like Bernie Sanders, also said that Platner had to to withdraw from the race. So on Wednesday, he came out and said that he was suspending his campaign 02:48.90 Sam Shirazi And essentially saying he was going to withdraw, although it was a long video where he talked about a lot of other things and, you know, explained how he felt that the establishment was somewhat working against his campaign. 03:03.08 Sam Shirazi And if he’s withdrawn from the ballot, then it under main law, the Democratic Party would be able to pick a new nominee. 03:09.09 Sam Shirazi And so that’s it’s a whole separate process where the Democrats have to figure out who their nominee was going to be. And there are a lot of different proposals. It seems like what’s going to happen is that there’s going to be a convention based on delegates coming from the various counties in Maine and the delegates are going to pick the nominee that is going to go up against Susan Collins if everything goes to plan and Platner pulls out of the race. I think I wanted to talk about first the whole Platner dynamic and then we can talk about who may replace him on the ballot if that ultimately happens. you know I think Graham Platner in many ways was the most unconventional candidate, and I think that was by design. I think he was recruited by a certain wing of the Democratic Party that had gotten tired of the establishment, tired of what they saw as kind of bland candidates who were uninspiring. And they basically found someone who they felt was both you know charismatic, but also had a message that was different. And, you know, yes, was a contrast to Susan Collins, but but also was a contrast to much of the Democratic Party. And I think that was you know what people were selling him as, as a different type of candidate that can can win back voters for Democrats. I think the the downside in that, and I think the flaw in their plan was someone like Platner by nature comes with a lot of baggage. He has not been vetted. 04:22.100 Sam Shirazi He’s never run for anything before. And he was basically virtually unknown about a year ago. And so this idea that you can just kind of pick a random guy and make him run for Senate, I think in the current environment, when people’s pack background are going to be really explored, and obviously Platner had been open about some of the issues he had in the past. And so all that was being aired out for a while. There were a lot of different controversies. 04:49.65 Sam Shirazi from a tattoo that he had to Reddit posts to his relationship with women. And you know there was a lot of stuff that had come out already and that had you know hurt him to a certain extent. And I think Republicans were excited to run against him because they felt that Susan Collins was going to be able to potentially beat him, even in a tough environment for her. 05:06.64 Sam Shirazi And then, as I mentioned, when this story came out, it was kind of the last straw. Essentially everyone from in the Democratic Party, from the establishment wing to the progressive wing, kind of realized that Platner was not going to be able to run a campaign and the deadline was coming up for him to withdraw. So that’s kind of what’s going on with Platner. I think there is this inherent tension where The establishment of the Democratic Party, when they pick candidates, they feel like they do a good job and they’re not always the most inspiring candidates in the world, but they’re usually pretty safe choices. I think the problem the the establishment Democrats had in Maine is they essentially picked someone to run against Platner in the primary. The person they picked picked was... 05:48.12 Sam Shirazi Janet Mills, who is the current governor of Maine, and she is pretty old. She’s in her late 70s and just was not an inspiring candidate. And so sometimes the establishment comes in and picks a candidate that makes a lot of sense and is actually a very strong candidate. And we’re going to talk about that in North Carolina. However, sometimes the establishment comes in and picks perhaps the wrong candidate. 06:08.88 Sam Shirazi And I think the the the problem here was that the person who was able to kind of fill the void was Graham Platner, even though he was not vetted even though he had a lot of issues and it just has not been going well for the Democrats in Maine so far. And before I turn to the but potential candidates who the Democrats could run in the Senate race, I wanted to talk about Susan Collins and the Republicans. I think for a long time, Susan Collins felt that she you know she was in a good spot because she was running against Grant Platner. 06:38.91 Sam Shirazi you know obviously, all the chaos that’s happening on the Democratic ticket in some ways also helps Susan Collins because every moment the race is not about Susan Collins or it’s not about Donald Trump is to her benefit if it’s about Graham Platner and the problems the Democrats have in Maine and the Democrats fighting each other like the progressive wing versus the establishment wing. That is all good news generally for Susan Collins. However, I think the danger for her and the reason why some Republicans are actually a little bit nervous is, you know, let’s say the Democrats pick a broadly acceptable candidate. 07:08.82 Sam Shirazi You know, pretty soon the conversation is going to be shifting from Graham Platner to Susan Collins versus this other Democrat. And you know there’s kind of this old adage that the election doesn’t really start until after Labor Day. So yes, some of the hyper political people are paying attention. And this story is obviously going to get a lot of attention. 07:28.01 Sam Shirazi But a lot of people aren’t necessarily paying attention either. And they may tune in after Labor Day. And there might be a lot going on between now and then that makes us forget about this specific moment in time. And everyone’s going kind of move on. That’s one possibility. And I think that would be a difficult situation for Susan Collins, because I think she’s going to have to run more of a race based on her record and her being the incumbent. And I mentioned this last time, anytime you can make the election about your opponent and the the flaws they have, that’s better for you. The more it’s about you and your record as an incumbent, that could create problems for you. 08:17.56 Sam Shirazi Ok now let’s talk about who may end up winning the Democratic nomination after the Democrats pick their nominee for the U.S. Senate seat. So I think essentially what we’re going to see is a rerun of the Democratic primary for governor. I think there are three candidates who all would have a shot in any sort of contest. And so to kind of unpack what happened in the governor’s race, essentially almost all the big names in main democratic politics ended up running in the governor’s race and no one ran for the Senate. And again, that that was probably a mistake in hindsight. But Hannah Pingree ended up winning the governor’s nomination. So she’s obviously the Democratic nominee for governor. She’s not to run for Senate. 08:51.86 Sam Shirazi So she’s off the board. Number two was Nirav Shah. He was the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention from 2019 to 2023. 09:04.60 Sam Shirazi Obviously, that was an interesting time to be in that profession and that job because of what happened with COVID. And so he got a lot of attention in Maine because he was in charge of a lot of the various COVID protocols that were going on in Maine. So his name got in the news and he ran for governor and ended up second after ranked choice voting. I would say he’s more from the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, kind of more towards the middle of the candidates that are thinking about running for the Senate seat. 09:34.31 Sam Shirazi And then we have the the third place finisher, in the governor’s primary this year, and that is Troy Jackson. He is used to be in the Maine State Senate, and he comes from Northern Maine and is known to be more of a progressive Democrat, closer, I would say, ideologically to Graham Platner. 09:58.26 Sam Shirazi And so a lot of progressives are trying to get behind Troy Jackson. Some of the arguments they’re making is essentially that Yeah, I mean, Platner had his personal issues, but essentially people wanted a progressive as the nominee. And so if you’re going to take out Platner, it makes sense to nominate someone like Troy Jackson, who is from the progressive wing and generally... 10:20.79 Sam Shirazi is broadly acceptable to more of the middle of the party or the establishment of the party. So you have someone who can bridge that divide and make both progressives and establishment, uh, Democrats happy. And he’s been in Maine politics for a long time. He’s a known quantity. So that’s Troy Jackson as a potential candidate. 10:39.12 Sam Shirazi And then there’s finally, there is Maine secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, ended up fourth in the primary and she is is is mo known to be more of a liberal. She used to be the executive director of the main ACLU. 10:57.05 Sam Shirazi So certainly I would say comes from perhaps closer to the liberal wing of the party. And so you have you see how that you have these candidates who all have a little bit of a different dynamic, different background. 11:08.41 Sam Shirazi And I think ultimately it’s going to be decided at that convention who’s going to be the nominee. And you know, that’s going to be a pretty unpredictable process. And it’s hard to really speculate who that’s going to be. And and once the the nominee is selected, perhaps I’ll update everyone in a podcast. That’s not going to be for a while, because I think basically the Maine Democrats have almost to the end of August to pick someone. So it’s not like there’s a huge rush. And I think the Maine Democrats are going to want to take their time, make sure they pick someone who one is, you know, going to be able to run against Susan Collins, but also is able to kind of unite the different wings of the party. Because I think there’s been a lot of, 11:45.31 Sam Shirazi conflict and tension between establishment Democrats and progressive Democrats, both in Maine and across the country. And I think this race is kind of tearing open a lot of those wounds. And I think while there’ it seems to be the sense that Platner was not the right candidate, you know, I think there is a sense that the establishment is trying to come in and deny the progressive wing of the party a chance to take out Susan Collins. And so I think it’s going to be interesting to see do the main Democrats go with Troy Jackson for that reason, because I think he has credibility with that wing of the party and a lot of kind of internal democratic politics going on here. So I think super interesting. You know, I’ll provide probably one more update when the Democratic nominee is selected. But truly, it is mayhem in Maine right now in the Senate race, more so on the Democratic side. And we’ll just have to wait and see what that means for Susan Collins as she is in a tough reelection and is trying to survive once more and defy political gravity. 12:48.70 Sam Shirazi Okay, now I wanted to shift to a totally different state, North Carolina. And the reason I picked North Carolina to go with this mayhem in Maine is is North Carolina for the Democrats, at least for the Senate race, has kind of been no drama and has been basically opposite of the the main Senate race. So to set things up. 13:05.74 Sam Shirazi In North Carolina, the incumbent Republican Senator Thom Tillis is retiring. He had a clashed with President Trump on several occasions, and it was pretty clear he was not going to be able to win a Republican primary. So he decided to retire, which means there was an open seat in North Carolina. 13:22.47 Sam Shirazi And the senator, along with Maine was probably one of the best pickup opportunities for the Democrats, because even though President Trump has won North Carolina three times in a row, it is always considered basically a swing state. And the races have always been close in North Carolina. And it’s just one of those states that leans towards the Republicans generally. But on a good night, the Democrats certainly have a chance of winning. And I think this is basically the number one pickup opportunity for the Democrats in the Senate because 13:53.84 Sam Shirazi this is where Chuck Schumer, the Democrats in the state in the the Senate, the so-called establishment did a really good job finding a candidate to run. 14:04.46 Sam Shirazi And the person that they picked was the former governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, who has generally been popular. He won election twice as governor in North Carolina. Previous to that, he was elected as the attorney general of North Carolina, a long history in North Carolina. 14:18.64 Sam Shirazi And i think... This was the type of candidate that is just, you know, the the right person at the right time kind of thing where the Democrats just found someone who’s very solid in North Carolina to run. And I think the reason I call it no drama is you don’t really hear a lot about this race because Roy Cooper is a known quantity. He’s not the most flashy guy in the world, but he definitely has appeal across the world. 14:45.51 Sam Shirazi spectrum from Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans. So I think Democrats feel like they got a very strong candidate in Roy Cooper. The Republicans have nominated former RNC chair Michael Whatley. And, you know, I think he’s going to have to do the best he can in this race to keep up with Cooper, who obviously has a long history in North Carolina. And, you know, it’s kind of funny to think about this. I mean, 15:09.67 Sam Shirazi President Trump did win North Carolina three times in a row. And so you would think the Republicans would have a fighting shot at keeping this seat. I think, you know, the Democratic feeling is that essentially they almost, you know they don’t I don’t think they want to get complacent, but the Democrats at least feel like this is essentially an automatic flip, that they’re going to gain this one seat in the Senate no matter what. And so I think they’re feeling pretty good, the Democrats, about North Carolina. 15:35.84 Sam Shirazi The Republicans, I mean, I think they’re they don’t wanna give up on it because I think you don’t wanna ever concede a a seat, especially a seat that your party won at the presidential level. At the same time, I think they have to be realistic that this is going to be a tough race for them. And that the fact that Cooper is probably the most popular Democrat in North Carolina. So it’s just they they got a tough break that that the Republicans did with that they’re running against him in this environment. I think it’s going to be be tough for the the Republicans, not to say it’s impossible. I think if for whatever reason, the the Republicans don’t have as good of a night as that as. They have a better night than people were expecting. I think it’s possible they hold this, but I think both parties, if if they’re being honest, will probably think you know this is more likely than not going to flip. Now, if you’re the Republicans, it’s not necessarily the end of the world because the Senate right now is 53-47. So worst case scenario, if you if if North Carolina flips, but you’re able to hold every other seat, it’s 52-48 in the Senate for the Republicans. And even if you lose another one or even if you lose another two, you’re still going to have 16:39.62 Sam Shirazi a majority because the vice president breaks the tie. And so I think the Republicans view North Carolina as a tough Senate race, but not a must win. Certainly for the Democrats, it’s a must win, but they’re almost viewing it as kind of a given at this point, which, you know, you never want to get complacent, but I think given the polls and other, you know dynamics, I think there’s a fair chance that that Roy Cooper is going to win that race. So that’s kind of North Carolina at the Senate level, as you can see, kind of the opposite of Maine, where The Democrats are having a lot of problems. 17:09.03 Sam Shirazi North Carolina seems to be smooth sailing for the Democrats at the Senate level. There’s no governor’s race in North Carolina because North Carolina has its governor’s elections during the same time as presidential elections. In 2024, the Democrats were able to win the North Carolina governor’s race pretty handily because they were running against a very flawed Republican nominee. so before I move on to the house stuff in North Carolina, I did want to talk about North Carolina generally and how this election could be a little bit of a tipping point in that. 17:55.02 Sam Shirazi And then, you know, it’s kind of sandwiched between these two states that have become more and more blue. So you have Virginia, which used to be a red state, now is a pretty consistently blue state, even if it’s a light blue state. And then we’re going to talk about Georgia at some point. 18:10.50 Sam Shirazi Georgia has increasingly become a more and more blue. It’s not quite a blue state yet, but it’s certainly a purple state. And you have kind of North Carolina in the middle that each cycle seems to be getting a little bit bluer. 18:21.75 Sam Shirazi But the Democrats have never really been able to unlock the key of making North Carolina really a blue state. The one time the Democrats won it at the federal level in recent history was in 2008 when Obama won at the presidential level and the Democrats won the Senate seat in 2008. But ever since then, the Democrats have lost North Carolina every single presidential election and every single Senate election. I think this year is a decent shot that that streak is going to end. 18:48.09 Sam Shirazi So the question becomes, you know, is North Carolina perhaps not the next Virginia, but is North Carolina like the next Georgia, where it’s essentially very solidly a purple state. Every election is going to be competitive, not so much a light red state anymore, which it had been for a good amount of time. I think there’s a good chance that that’s the trajectory North Carolina goes on. The reason for that is North Carolina is similar to these other southern states like Virginia and Georgia, where you have you know a large black population that is pretty consistently voting for the Democrats. So that gives the Democrats a high ceiling in North Carolina in terms of a base of voters that they’re going to be doing well with. Actually, it’s a high floor. 19:31.40 Sam Shirazi And then you have increasingly more and more college educated white voters in North Carolina moving from the Republicans to the Democrats. We’ve seen similar dynamics in Virginia and and and Georgia. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is, you know, Georgia does have a good amount of white working class voters. And that’s really the base of the Republican Party and and the Republicans certainly do well with those voters. 20:37.70 Sam Shirazi The one thing I should mention that I haven’t mentioned yet is the House, the House map in North Carolina, because while the Democrats generally are going to have a good year, I think, in North Carolina, the challenge they’re going to face is that they’re the the the House map in North Carolina has been gerrymandered to favor the Republicans. And not just at the beginning of the decade, North Carolina was one of the states to do mid mid-decade redistricting. And so just to give someone give everyone a a little bit of context, At the beginning of the decade, North Carolina was gerrymandered by the Republicans to give them an advantage in the House map. And that advantage has continued because they have won most of the House seats in North Carolina ever since they took control of the North Carolina Supreme Court. And the previous map that was... 21:25.99 Sam Shirazi ordered to be drawn by the court was no longer upheld by the Supreme Court, basically because Republicans were able to get a majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court. So the Republicans in North Carolina were able to draw the map the way they wanted to. And obviously, they’re going to draw a map that’s going to favor them. 21:42.52 Sam Shirazi And even with with the map already favoring them, what the North Carolina Republicans did They joined some of the other states that were that was doing mid-decade redistricting, and they redrew a couple of the districts. Didn’t do a completely new map because the map was already basically favoring them, but they did change the first congressional district because that is currently represented by Congressman Don Davis, and they made it even more Republican. it was a seat that... 22:10.38 Sam Shirazi already voted for President Trump in 2024, but now it’s become even more of a red district. And so I think the North Carolina Republicans feel like they have a good shot of flipping the seat. Having said that, I mean, I think both in the environment and and with Don Davis, I think in 2024, he was able to overperform the top of the ticket a little bit in terms of the numbers he was able to pull. And I think given that you’re going Roy Cooper at the top of the ticket, he’s going to be doing well, given that it’s generally a blue environment, you would have to think at least at least tilting blue, you know there’s a good chance that 22:46.34 Sam Shirazi while it’s going to be a competitive race. I think at a minimum, you know, Don Davis is going to make it a competitive race. You know, most people think right now that the Republicans, all things being equal, should be able to flip the seat just purely based on the numbers. However, I think if for whatever reason, Don Davis is able to overperform or Roy Cooper just really does really well, or the national environment is just that tough for the Republicans, I do think there’s a chance Don Davis might be able to hold on. And if he holds on, you know that’s always gonna help the Democrats on their path to get a majority in the House. I think the House Democrats don’t feel like this is a must-win seat. I think they feel like they have enough other seats on the board that even if they lose this one, it’s not the end of the world. 23:29.82 Sam Shirazi Obviously, they’d like to keep it both because it’s an important – every seat is important but also because you have an incumbent so you always want to protect your incumbents. I mean currently the delegation from North Carolina has 10 Republicans and four Democrats and you see the Republicans are trying to squeeze it so that they get you know one more He’s a member of Congress, so they’ll have 11 Republicans and 3 Democrats if Don Davis is defeated. you know well Again, we’ll see if that happens. I think there is a chance he’s going to be able to hold on, which would be pretty remarkable. But you know incumbents generally tend to do better. They tend tend to overperform. 24:05.52 Sam Shirazi That’s why... Susan Collins still has a chance in Maine, even though it’s a state that voted for Harris and it’s, you know, all things look like it’s going to be a blue environment. I think Susan Collins certainly has a chance in Maine. And I think similar to kind of dynamic with Don Davis, even though, you know, the district was redrawn, given that he’s incumbent, you know, you would think he has at least a shot in this race. So that’s kind of North Carolina. Not a whole lot going on because the Senate race is is, you know, important in that the Democrats need to flip it. But it seems like it’s kind of the no drama race for the Democrats. The House side, there’s only really going to be one competitive House race. But I did want to talk about North Carolina because it’s it’s going to be important. And also just given all the stuff happening in Maine, I did want to compare and contrast. 25:56.63 Sam Shirazi I guess the last thing I just wanted to leave everyone with is I appreciate the feedback that I’ve gotten about the relaunch of the podcast. 26:11.77 Sam Shirazi I will try to do my best to do these every week, release them on Saturday. If you’re interested, certainly subscribe, let your friends know, rate the podcast. I think that’s all very helpful. I’m trying to put out nonpartisan, interesting analysis that I think is giving people information that you don’t always get and analysis you don’t always get in the the other other news sources. So I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I will keep doing this. And this has been Federal Fallout. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com [https://samshirazi.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Podcast Relaunch: Maine Midterm Mayhem

Hi Everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2026 Midterms. This is the first episode in the relaunched Federal Fallout podcast and I wanted to restart this because after I did the podcast last year about Virginia, I thought it was super interesting to try to see if we might do something a little bit different and look at the midterms this year. And I didn’t really want to focus on Virginia. That’s not to say I might not talk about Virginia, but you know to be perfectly honest, 00:28.79 Sam Shirazi there’s going to be two very competitive house races that are very important for the House of Representatives, but it’s not enough to do a weekly podcast about necessarily just two house races. 00:39.72 Sam Shirazi So I thought what might make sense is I would go out nationally, think about the national midterms environment. And there are a lot of ways of doing that. We can kind of do general discussion about the state of the country, presidential approval, congressional ballot, a generic ballot, like all those things. We could just do that nationally. 00:59.33 Sam Shirazi I find that it’s kind of an abstract way of talking about the midterms. What I like to do is go race by race. And so what I think I’m going to be doing for this podcast is go state by state and go through the critical races that are going to be happening in the midterms. And obviously I’m going to be focusing on the more important states. Some states, there really won’t be any super important races going on. I’m mainly going to be focusing on the federal races, although I might touch upon... 01:25.42 Sam Shirazi the governor’s races. It’s not really going to be deep dives into like the state legislative stuff in all the states like I did in Virginia, just because I’m not as much of an expert in all the states like I am in Virginia in terms of going you know deep into you know legislative races. But I feel pretty confident that I can talk about the federal races across the country. And I’m not necessarily going to do like a prediction or you know say who’s going to win, particularly this far out. I think what I’m going to be focusing on is more the important races that are going on in these states, give people kind of a sense of what’s going on, the lay of the land, and then talk about perhaps who’s more favored in in these states or why a certain race is really important. 02:06.44 Sam Shirazi And, you know, I’d like to just focus on the general election in terms of who’s going to be able to win in November? Obviously, a lot of states have had primaries already. Some states will continue to have primaries. I’m not necessarily going to do a weekly you know primary update. I’m really going to be focusing on the lay of the land in each state, more so looking towards the general election. 02:27.78 Sam Shirazi And you know, in terms of overall control of Congress, obviously right now the Republicans have majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the Senate, the Democrats need to flip four seats in order to get a majority because the Republicans currently have a 53-47 majority in the Senate. And the House of Representatives is much closer. Republicans have a narrow majority. And so the Democrats only have to flip a few seats in order to win back the majority in the House of Representatives, that is going to be a little bit more challenging than it then it should be otherwise because of some of the changes that has happened as result of redistricting. And we can talk about that in some of the states. 03:09.75 Sam Shirazi But overall, I think most people think the Democrats have a better chance of flipping the House and probably right now they’re favored to flip the House. Whereas in the Senate, you know, it’s going to be closer. Republicans probably are going to lose some seats, but have a decent shot of holding the Senate potentially, although the Democrats, I think, have an outside shot of flipping the Senate as well. And increasingly, people think that they might actually have a shot of flipping the Senate, just given some of the races that have come on the board. So that’s kind of overall the lay of land, you know. 03:40.76 Sam Shirazi Republicans are in control right now. Democrats are trying to win back both chambers, probably have a better shot in the House than the Senate. And so, you know, there’s going to be all these Senate races and then every single House race, House of Representatives seat is up for election. So it really goes state by state, race by race. That’s how you’re going to determine. 03:58.77 Sam Shirazi who’s gonna win control of Congress during these midterms. And so, you know I wanted to start with a state that I think I know pretty well. I’m not necessarily an expert in the state like I am in Virginia, but I know it pretty well just because my wife grew up in Maine and we spent some time just going back there, visiting families, seeing the beautiful sites that are in Maine, particularly in the summer, it’s a great place to go and visit. So if you’ve never been to Maine, I definitely recommend going and visiting in the summer. And this time it is a really super interesting state politically because there is going to be a very, very important Senate race, which we’ll talk about in Maine. 05:13.32 Sam Shirazi There is going to be an important House race, an important Governor race, so we’ll talk about all that. But I thought given that I have a little more expertise in Maine than I have in other states, I wanted to start with Maine, and also because it is going to be so critical to the Senate. And potentially whoever wins the Senate seat in Maine could be the party that controls the Senate after the November elections. So I’m just going to talk a little bit about Maine this episode, that’s the state I will be focusing on and each episode I will be focusing on a different state. I probably will also be focusing on Virginia at some point, but not necessarily a Virginia focused podcast this time. And the other thing I should add is, you know, there’s a lot of things I could talk about nationally. And as I mentioned, should presidential approval and generic ballot and all that stuff. And, and you know, we can talk about all that stuff. 05:24.29 Sam Shirazi It’s just to me, it’s less interesting than some of the more case state by state and race by race analysis. But I should start off by just saying. 05:34.43 Sam Shirazi Traditionally, the party out of the White House tends to do well in the midterms, just like we saw in the Virginia elections in 2025, the party out of the White House does well. Traditionally, during the midterms, the party that is out of the White House also does well. That’s just you know part of the nature of politics. People tend to vote for the party that’s out of power to try to get a change. you know we saw that in 2024 when the Republicans got a big win. I think 2022 was a bit of a surprise because I think the Democrats did better than expected and kind of didn’t necessarily lose too many seats because there was perhaps a backlash to the Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. So it’s not 100% set that the party out of the White House isn’t going to do well in the elections midterm elections. There’s been other examples in history. you know one was in 2002 when right after a year, about a year after 9-11, the Republicans did well in the midterms, even though they were in the White House. So certainly not 100 percent of the time. But traditionally, if you think about some of these years where there’s been big waves, 2006, 2010. 06:38.36 Sam Shirazi 2014, 2018, these have traditionally been when the party that is not in the White House is able to kind of tap into the anger that the opposition has and they’re able to win the midterms. And one of the questions we’ll have to see this year is, does that happen again? 06:54.52 Sam Shirazi Certainly, I think the Democrats feel like they’re doing well and that momentum’s on their side. However, I think there is the possibility, particularly in the Senate, where the Republicans feel like perhaps they can make this more referendum on the Democrats, particularly some of the more... 07:09.97 Sam Shirazi left leaning members of the Democratic Party. And we’ll talk about that in Maine, which is going to be an important part of the Senate race. So I think a lot of the dynamics in the midterms are going to come down to is this going to be kind of a traditional midterms where the party out of the White House doesn’t do too well, the party out of the White House does well? 07:24.13 Sam Shirazi Or can the Republicans successfully make the midterms perhaps a referendum on the Democrats instead of making it a referendum on the Republicans? Because traditionally midterms, if it’s a referendum on the party in the White House, typically the party in the White House doesn’t do too well. 07:39.14 Sam Shirazi if the Republicans can make this a referendum on the Democrats, then they might be doing well these midterms. If the Democrats can make this a referendum on the Republicans, then they’re probably going to be doing well. That’s kind of traditionally some of the dynamics you see in the midterms, and we’ll just have to see which one plays out in November. And obviously I’ll talk about kind of the state by state dynamics in that regard. 07:57.70 Sam Shirazi So turning to Maine. So Maine is a very interesting state. In many ways, a mixture of different types of communities. You have you know well-off people, college-educated people, typically by the coast in the Portland area, and then you have you know, very you know white working class voters in the more rural areas. And so you really do see a kind of purple state. I think traditionally Maine has tilted blue, but you do see that it is a it kind of traditionally a competitive state and Republicans certainly have the ability to win in Maine. And and Maine is also a little bit iconoclastic because I think there’s ticket splitting and people may vote one way in one race, but we’ll vote another way in another race. And we’ll talk a little bit about that. 08:42.00 Sam Shirazi So I think, I think Maine is just one of the reasons I like it is just a really fascinating state. And this year in 2026, I think it’s going to be one of the most important states during these midterms. And really, it comes down to the Senate race. I mean, we’ll talk a little bit about the House race in Maine and the governor’s race, but really the important dynamic, I think, in Maine is the Senate race. I think everyone’s going to be looking at it, not just because it’s super important for control of the Senate, but because you have such interesting candidates running on both sides. So on the Republican side, 09:11.31 Sam Shirazi You have incumbent Senator Susan Collins. She’s been in the Senate for a long time and she has survived some very difficult political environments for her, most notably in 2020. I think 2020 Democrats thought this was the year we’re gonna defeat Susan Collins. 09:27.14 Sam Shirazi She’s going to go down. Joe Biden won Maine pretty comfortably in 2020. However, in a shocking result, Susan Collins was able to get a lot of ticket splitting. People who voted for Joe Biden, she was able to get enough of them to vote for her, where she was able to win comfortably re-election in 2020. And I think the Republicans are pinning a lot of their hopes on the fact that that would happen again. They’re essentially hoping once more, Susan Collins is going to be able to defy political gravity and win in Maine. And I think that’s, you know, the a lot of the hopes for the Republicans maintaining control of the Senate comes down to Susan Collins. And I think part of the reason they feel confident that she might be able to do that is because in their minds, the Democrats nominated someone who is too progressive and has too many, you know, skeletons in his closet for a swing state like Maine. And the person the Democrats nominated was Graham Platner. He is very much a progressive Democrat, very much an anti-establishment Democrat, explicitly running against the establishment of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. 10:29.50 Sam Shirazi And, you know, I think the interesting dynamic in this race is that Susan Collins really is kind of one of the last few establishment Republicans who, you know, is prominent within the current Republican Party. 10:41.49 Sam Shirazi And I think she is... by definition, the establishment Republican. And I don’t think she’s necessarily trying to run away from that because she thinks in her mind, she wants to be viewed as a different type of Republican than perhaps a 100 percent mega Republican who supports President Trump. She has in the past notably broken with President Trump on several key votes. However, she has also voted for President Trump’s priorities several times as well. So I think you have this dynamic where Susan Collins, she’s just going to run on her brand. Part of it is being kind of an establishment old school Republican. 11:14.50 Sam Shirazi But part of her brand is also just old school Maine. People know her. Maine’s not a huge state. a lot of people have probably either indirectly or directly gotten to know Susan Collins. That’s part of the reason she won in 2020. So I think Susan Collins’ brand is just, you know, I’m classic Mainer. 11:30.86 Sam Shirazi You know who I am. That’s going to be her campaign. I don’t think she’s going to be doing anything too flashy in her campaign. She’s going to run the campaign she basically ran in 2020 and hope that works again. And I think the big question mark is more on the Democratic side, because in 2020, the Democrats ran kind of Generic Democrat with establishment backing. Her name is Sarah Gideon, kind of so safe choice. 11:54.32 Sam Shirazi Just kind of someone with a D next to her name wasn’t too controversial. And the Democrats thought, well, that’s going to be good enough. Joe Biden is going to win Maine. And then people are not going to split their ticket. And then Sarah Gideon is going to win 2020. 12:05.64 Sam Shirazi That obviously didn’t happen. And I think part of the reason Graham Platner got in the race is he feels that the Democratic establishment doesn’t know how to win some of these races, doesn’t know how to reach voters who are perhaps skeptical of the both parties, don’t like politics. They are the Democrats aren’t going to be able to win with those you know traditional establishment type candidates. so Graham Platner explicitly running as a different type of Democrat, someone who is trying to perhaps appeal to more white working class voters, Trumpier voters that have gone over to the Republicans. And his pitch is basically, I’m going to be able to win them back. 12:42.19 Sam Shirazi Now, part of that is he has a lot of you know baggage that he comes with that a perhaps safer choice wouldn’t come with. And certainly the Republicans are going to be using that against him. But frankly, the Democrats tried to use that against him, or at least the establishment Democrats tried to use that against him when the current incumbent governor, Janet Mills, was trying to win the nomination. She really didn’t get any traction. 13:02.80 Sam Shirazi mean, part of that is just her age. She was an older candidate and you know wasn’t super exciting. And so Graham Platner was able to win the nomination pretty easily for the Democrats in Maine. And, you know, I think he’s just going to be running as kind of an experiment to show Democrats, look, if you nominate people who are, yes, progressive, but really have more of an anti-establishment vibe to them, they are going to be doing well in states like Maine with white working class voters who the Democrats have lost and they haven’t quite figured out. 13:30.87 Sam Shirazi how to win them back. And Graham Platner’s pitch is like, I’m the type of guy who’s going to win them back. Like, yes, I am not going to make people in DC super comfortable, but that’s the point. Like I am a different type of candidate and you’re not going to win people in, you know, rural Maine if you just run kind of a generic bland Democrat, you need someone different in order to win back those voters. You know, it’s kind of an open question mark if he’s going to be able to do that, but that’s his pitch. And I think Susan Collins kind of recognizing her, you Brand, I think she’s going to try to win some of those college educated voters in the Portland area that are very turned off currently from the Republican Party. She’s going to say like, look, you may not like President Trump or you may not support him, but you can support me. I’m going to do what’s right for Maine. I’m more independent. And look at this Graham Platner guy. He’s way to the left. I mean, I think that’s essentially going to be Susan Collins’ pitch. And, you know, we’ll see. It’s almost like both of the candidates are trying to win over parts of the other’s base. You know, Platner is very explicitly trying to win white working class Trump voters. And Susan Collins is also very explicitly trying to win college educated Harris voters. And so, you know, which one of them is going to be more successful? And there’s a lot of different ways this could go. I mean, one way it could go down is it’s basically a repeat of 2020 when Susan Collins very clearly was able to win a lot of Biden voters and she defies political gravity again. And that’s certainly the Republican hope. The Republican hope is she’s done it before and she’ll do it again. 15:26.84 Sam Shirazi I think Graham Platner’s pitch is one I’ll win back the white working class trump voters and you know I think frankly the establishment DC democrats even if they are skeptical that he’s going to be able to do that i think some of them are pinning their hopes on people in Maine are just going to be so upset at the republicans that it doesn’t really matter people are done with Susan Collins they’re done with her brand they’re just going to make this referendum on President Trump, and they’re just not going to vote for Susan Collins this time around, even if they don’t, mean they may not love Graham Platner, he may not be the candidate for them, but, you know, they’re going to vote for him because they they want to send a message. 15:39.48 Sam Shirazi And so, yeah I mean, we’re just going to have to wait and see which one of those ends up happening. I think one thing to think about is there was a lot of this similar discussion that happened in 2025 in Virginia at the attorney general’s race where, You could see someone like Jason Miyares kind of doing a similar type of pitch as Susan Collins. I mean, certainly he’s probably more you know conservative than Susan Collins, but he was basically trying to pitch himself to the middle of the road voter as the more reasonable choice between him and Jay Jones. And it just didn’t work because I think voters ultimately just wanted to send a message and they wanted to you know vote against the Republicans. And so Jason Miyares wasn’t able to win in 2025. And i think Democrats are hoping a similar thing might happen, even if a lot of people don’t love Graham Platner. 16:23.92 Sam Shirazi You know, if they’re more moderate Democrats, they’re at the end of the day going to vote for him because they they want to send a message. And, you know, I think there’s certainly a possibility that this just becomes the 2025 Virginia Attorney General race. 16:36.27 Sam Shirazi However, I think Maine people do have a tendency to be willing to split their tickets a lot more. And I think that’s where it’s going to be more of a wild card. Does Maine’s kind of traditional bucking of expectations, you know, they don’t always do what the pundits expect them to do. Is that going to continue in the Senate race or is it really going to be kind of a different type of race this time. And either Platner wins back the Trump white working class voters, or even if he doesn’t do that, he just does well enough with the Harris voters that he’s able to win in Maine. And so I think it’s going to be a super fascinating race, really hard to predict what’s going to happen. I think the fundamentals, you’d have to say, favor Platner because, you know, it’s a state that voted for Harris. 17:19.88 Sam Shirazi You know, there’s there’s more people who support Democrats generally than Republicans in Maine. A lot of independents, but a lot of those independents lean towards the Democrats, at least at the federal level. And so, you know, theoretically, all things being equal, Graham Platner should win. I think that was also true in 2020 with Sarah Gideon. Everyone thought Sarah Gideon was going to win just based off the fundamentals, and she didn’t. 17:43.43 Sam Shirazi And so that’s when some of these... you know, intangibles in Maine come into play. Like, you know, do they split their ticket or do they just like Susan Collins? And Maine’s a very interesting place. If you’ve ever been there, you know, you go into to Portland area and that’s very much, you know, liberal place, you know, feels like you’re kind of in a very left-leaning type environment. And then you could drive you know, 20, 25 miles out and you feel like you’re in a very rural MAGA supporting area very quickly. And, you know, that’s, it’s just a very diverse state politically. On the coast tends to be more liberal inland tends to be more republican, you know not 100 true, but generally that’s what what it’s like in Maine these days. 18:31.19 Sam Shirazi You know, it’s going to be a super, super fascinating race. I would say, you know, it’s probably the most interesting or one of the most interesting races this year in the country, just given the the types of candidates that you have. And I guess the last thing I’ll say about the Senate race is it’s kind of funny because the candidates are almost the opposite of what the parties have become in some ways, you know. If you think about someone like Susan Collins like she is very much the non-maga republican left in the republican party. And that’s really one of her selling points that she often pouts to moderate voters is she tells them that you know she’s not um gonna do it whatever the White House wants her to do or the MAGA wing of the party wants her to do. And then you have someone like Graham Platner who is kind of saying the same thing, but the opposite way saying, you know I’m not going to do what the establishment wants me to do. I’m not going to do what Chuck Schumer wants me to do. I am going to do what I think makes sense, but kind of in an anti-establishment way. So Susan Collins is almost approaching things from an establishment point of view. Graham Platner is approaching things from an anti-establishment point of view, but they’re both kind of arguing they’re bucking their parties. I think the race could be decided by those factors or it could just become a generic d versus r and it’s just kind of another race and you know it’s going to come out how it’s going to come out. Really no way of telling uh just flagging kind of the dynamics in this race if you haven’t been following it too close I did want to talk about a few other things in Maine because i just don’t want to focus just on the senate race. 20:00.91 Sam Shirazi There is also going to be a governor’s race, and that is going to be between Democrat Hannah Pingree versus Republican Bobby Charles. This is an open seat because the incumbent Democratic governor, Janet Mills, cannot run for re-election. And the interesting thing about this race is Hannah Pingree is the daughter of the current representative from the 1st District, Shelley Pingree. So she is more, I would say, establishment-type Democrat, certainly not, you know, 20:30.17 Sam Shirazi conservative or or moderate necessarily, but, you know, obviously has been around democratic politics a long time in Maine. And so she’s kind of an interesting run ticket made to Graham Platner, who’s very much not that. And so you have this kind of interesting dynamic on the ticket between the Democrats on that side of things. 20:49.26 Sam Shirazi I think most people think just given the environment, It seems like it’s kind of a generic Dem versus R race because it’s an open seat. I think most people think the Democrats probably have the advantage in the governor’s race, given that Maine tends to tilt a little bit blue. 21:05.24 Sam Shirazi Also, the national environment, the party of the White House, tends to to be doing well. So I think governor’s race, I don’t think, is on most people’s radar as a super interesting race because I think most people think Democrats have the advantage in the governor’s race in Maine. Not to say that Republicans can’t win in Maine. They certainly have as recently as you know the 2010s, there was Republican victories in the governor’s races in Maine. And we’ll talk about the the last Republican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, in in a second when we talk about the House races. So you know you’ve had eight years of Democratic rule in the governor’s mansion in Maine. So potentially, you know if the Republicans are able to kind of use that against the Democrats, they might be able to to pull up pull out the upset in the governor’s race. However, you know like I said, I think most people expect that the Democrats should be able to win the governor’s race in Maine. 22:35.49 Sam Shirazi I’ll kind of finish things off by talking about the house of representative races in Maine. So Maine has two congressional districts not a huge state the first congressional district is basically based in southern Maine on the coast mainly around the Portland area and south of that very democratic seat. This is where most of the democrats in Maine are a very blue seat so you know we mentioned that the current representative Shelly Pingree her daughter is running for governor and Shelly Pingree almost certainly is going to be elected as uh in the seat in the first district like she has been for quite a while so not super interesting in the first district. However, the second district is going to be very, very interesting. I think most people expect the Republicans to have an advantage in this district. So the current Democratic incumbent, Jared Golden, is going to retire. He is certainly coming from a different wing of the Democratic Party. He is somewhat anti-establishment, I would say, but he’s on his policy positions or tries to portray himself as a very moderate Democrat, even though on certain issues he tries to Buck his party. And so he’s more of a, I would say, moderate Democrat, although I think he he may not, he may have some progressive views on different policy issues. But long story short, he’s retiring, partly because he’s just tired of Congress, I think. He’s the type of person who, you know, if you’re more in the middle, I think Congress is going to be very frustrating for you. And so he decided to retire. And so you have this open seat that voted for Trump in 2024. So I think the Republicans feel very good about flipping the seat. 23:32.14 Sam Shirazi The Republicans nominated the former Republican governor of Maine, Paul LePage. He is an interesting character, definitely a colorful character. He tried to come back in 2022 and but win back the governor’s mansion. That didn’t work. 23:47.02 Sam Shirazi He is running for Congress now. And most people think that he has the advantage just given... You know, he’s been governor of the state. He would, you know, I would say has perhaps appeal to the second district, more of a Trumpy type appeal to a district that is very white working class. So I think in that sense, Republicans think he’s a pretty good candidate, although he is he’s kind of older, which is interesting. You know, he’s been around for a while. So even though he tends to have kind of an anti-establishment vibe, he’s certainly been around main politics for a while. 24:20.01 Sam Shirazi And the Democratic nominee is Matthew Dunlap. He has been the main state auditor, and he is known to be a little bit more of a progressive Democrat. I think, you know frankly, both both sides view him as perhaps not the strongest candidates for the Democrats, certainly not as strong as a candidate as Jared Golden. So taking that all into account, you know you have a pretty strong Republican candidate. 24:44.58 Sam Shirazi running in in terms of having an electoral history in Maine. You have a district that voted for Trump. It’s a pretty white working class district. I think most people think, you know, all things being equal, probably the Republicans have an advantage. I don’t think it’s impossible for the Democrats to win this seat. And it really just depends on, you know, who’s turning out in this type of an election in Maine. 25:07.03 Sam Shirazi You know, it’s a rural white working class district, but it does have certain parts of it that are more, you know, well off. college-educated. So perhaps if there’s really a surge in the college-educated voters and perhaps some of these white working-class voters don’t show up, it’s not impossible for the Democrats to win this seat because it’s not overwhelmingly a red district. I also think there’s going interesting dynamics where Graham Platner certainly hopes that he’s going to be able to outrun both the governor’s candidate for the Democrats and the House candidate for the Democrats. So his pitch is like, I’m going to be doing the best out of the Democrats in the second district. I’m the type of candidate that can win the second district. And if that’s true, and if he’s doing really well in the second district, better than people are expecting, perhaps his coattails might be able to carry the Democrat and the House race over the line if, you know for whatever reason, 25:55.55 Sam Shirazi people in the second district like what Graham Platner is selling them. He’s going to be the top of the ticket. He may be able to just you know bring the rest of the ticket with him. However, i could also see a scenario where there’s a lot of ticket splitting. Someone might vote for Graham Platner at the top of the ticket, but then vote for Paul LePage because you know the personalities are very interesting. I’d say in terms of just their like pure personality, Graham Plattner’s kind of similar to Paula LePage. They’re both very combative. They both you know don’t really like the establishment, don’t like the establishment media. So it’s kind of interesting you have these candidates running who you know have similar personalities in some ways. And it just goes to show you Maine’s a very, very interesting place. I think you have a a lot of different groups of voters out there. It’s hard to build a coalition. 26:40.58 Sam Shirazi Susan Collins has been very good at building that coalition where she’s been able to win the the white working class voters, but then she’s been able to win enough of the college-educated voters around Portland that she’s been able to win. Is this the year where her coalition collapses because the white working class voters go to Graham Platner and then the college-educated voters go to the Democrats because they’re upset at what’s going on in D.C.? Is that kind of the environment or do we just get the typical eight day you know election in Maine that is hard to predict? Yeah. 27:10.54 Sam Shirazi you know I’m not going to say necessarily who’s going win. going to have to see how the race is going to go. Certainly, certainly a very unpredictable race in Maine in the Senate. I think that’s the real race to watch. you know Governor’s race, second district race is going to be also interesting. you know Stakes are not as quite as high because... 27:28.48 Sam Shirazi Certainly for the second district, I think the Democrats are just assuming they may not win that and they don’t, you know, they feel like they have enough other seats on the board where they can lose the second district. Governor’s race, obviously Democrats don’t want to lose that. I think they feel pretty confident given the dynamics in Maine that they’ll be able to win the governor’s race. So it really does come down to the Senate race. I think it’s going to be very, very difficult for the Democrats to take back the Senate. Not impossible, but pretty difficult. 27:54.88 Sam Shirazi if they don’t win the second district excuse me if they don’t win the Senate race, if they win the Senate race doesn’t necessarily mean 100% Democrats are going to take back the the Senate, but it’s going to make their lives that much easier. And it’s really, I would say a must win in that they have to win it. It doesn’t guarantee they’re going to win the Senate, but if they do win it, it gives them a good shot at winning the Senate. So so that’s Maine, really one of my favorite states. I’m sure I’ll talk about it another time. If you get the chance to ever go up to Maine, really beautiful place. I would really recommend it, you know, especially in the summer. Summer is a beautiful, beautiful spot. 28:28.86 Sam Shirazi And, you we’ll see We’ll see how the race shapes out. So anyways, that is the first episode on Maine. As I said, other episodes will focus on other states. I hope people find this educational. i’m really trying to give people background on these races, why each state matters, why each race matters. Obviously, I’m not going to go over 50 states. A lot of them don’t have super interesting races. I’m going to be focusing on the states with the super interesting races. 28:51.46 Sam Shirazi you know I’ll be planning on releasing these typically Saturday morning. We’ll plan to do one a week with... the state races I probably won’t be doing interviews or anything like that, just because it’s hard for me to to do that with my schedule. But I do want to cover at least one state a week to keep people updated. And then obviously as the midterms come closer, we’ll we’ll go over that. And yeah, so this has been Federal Fallout, the 2026 midterms. I’m excited to you know cover the midterms with everyone and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. 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Grand Finale: Referendum Struck Down

Hi everyone, I’m Sam and this is Federal the Virginia Elections. This episode is the grand finale where we will go over the Virginia Supreme Court ruling that finally came down on the redistricting referendum. And then at the end, I’ll talk a little bit about what what might be next for me. So to begin, I wanted to talk about this Virginia Supreme Court opinion we were all waiting for it. Oral arguments had happened. And really, everyone was on pins and needles waiting for the Virginia Supreme Court to rule. And luckily, they finally gave their order on Friday. 00:34.01 Sam Shirazi And it was I would say a surprise I think a lot of people even some republicans at the end of the day thought the Virginia supreme court was not going to strike down the redistricting referendum because obviously it had passed and so a lot of people on the democratic side especially but even some republicans had said “As much as we may believe in legal theory, it’s just hard to imagine the Virginia Supreme Court overturning a referendum.” But that’s what the Virginia Supreme Court. In a 4-3 opinion, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the redistricting referendum was not lawful because the process which the Democrats put it the ballot did not comply with the Virginia Constitution. 01:01.14 Sam Shirazi And so I’m going to kind of break down the opinion. I don’t want to dwell on the opinion because at the end of the day, you know it is what it is. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled. And, you know we’ll have to see what happens, 01:25.91 Sam Shirazi You know now that the new redistricting map is not going to happen we’re going to be using the same map in 2026. And actually, it was the Virginia Supreme Court that drew these maps through their special masters that they appointed. So kind of things coming full circle from the beginning of the the decade when the Virginia Supreme Court drew the maps. 01:47.80 Sam Shirazi but also something also came full circle in terms of the 2025 election so this podcast was started in 2025 for the Virginia elections that that year and this is really the last kind hurrah the 2025 Virginia elections. Why is that? Because the issue in this case was, what is the meaning election? And what it mean the 2025 elections to happen? 02:02.86 Sam Shiraz 02:07.48 Sam Shirazi And what I mean by that is in order to pass a constitutional referendum in Virginia which the Democrats needed to do in order to redistrict there are a few procedural things that have to happen. The General Assembly, both the Virginia State Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates, has to pass the constitutional amendment once and then the Virginia constitution says it has to be passed again after the next general election. 02:40.65 Sam Shirazi and so the entire case essentially came down to what does the term after the next general election mean. So the Democrats, what they did about a week before the election last November, they passed the constitutional amendment. The election happened. The Democrats the election. In January, they passed the constitutional amendment again. And then it went to the voters and the voters passed it. 02:57.18 Sam Shirazi So the Virginia Supreme Court say the maps can’t into effect? Why did hey say essentially the referendum was invalid? What the Virginia supreme court the majority the four four justices who ruled for the republicans in this case what they said was after the next general election means so, again, the entire case is what does election mean? 03:21.71 Sam Shirazi And what the majority said was, once voting starts, once early voting happened, the election is underway and so you cannot pass this thing when early voting is happening you cannot pass constitutional amendment voting is happening. you have to wait till after the next general election, which in the general election started. 03:48.67 Sam Shirazi so that was the majority opinion essentially what they were saying is this this two- time requirement thing yeah know there’s a reason it’s a in in the Virginia Constitution. You don’t want to rush these things. you want to give voters an opportunity to vote on it. 04:01.73 Sam Shirazi And you know that’s what the majority opinion said. The dissent was you know pretty clear that in their minds. Election day means election day, and that’s when you have an election. If you ask someone, when is the next general election, they’re going to say you know November 4 or whatever the date of the election is. 04:18.98 Sam Shirazi Election has not been thought of as a forty five today early voting period and so I think at the end of the day both of the majority opinion and the dissenting opinion were basically saying, we’re trying to figure out what election means. And the majority opinion says election is the entire voting season when early voting is going on. The dissent was saying election day is literally election day. That’s when there’s an election as opposed to the entire early voting cycle. 04:38.80 Sam Shirazi And I was surprised it was a 4-3 opinion, to be perfectly honest with I thought they either try to make this unanimous or maybe it’d be 5-2. But I think the fact that it was 4-3 shows that the court was really torn about this issue and it was not an easy issue. 04:51.32 Sam Shirazi I could tell honestly when right before the referendum the supreme court issued the Virginia supreme court issued an opinion allowing the referendum to go forward you could tell in that opinion that they were not happy with this result. And reading between the lines, you could tell that some of the justices really didn’t want the referendum to happen. I think they felt like they had to let the referendum happen. 05:24.90 Sam Shirazi and so we’re in this odd situation where Virginians voted for this thing and you had millions of people voting and it passed, and the Virginia Supreme Court at the last second saying it is invalid and it shouldn’t have happened. 05:40.60 Sam Shirazi But I had flagged in previous podcast, the Virginia Supreme Court very explicitly said they might that. They left that open that possibility. And the Virginia Supreme Court sometimes, I think, feels that it is not necessarily to to the either the voters they left that over that possibility and the Virginia supreme court sometimes I think feels that it is not necessarily going to you know bend to the will of either the voters or The General Assembly if they feel that the law is not being followed and they take the law seriously. And, you know i’m sure a lot of people have different opinions about what the Virginia Supreme Court did. But at at the end of the day, you know they are the highest highest court in Virginia. 06:10.50 Sam Shirazi and it’s important to respect the legal process and and you know that’s what they said essentially and and you know we we can kind of go on. 06:17.24 Sam Shirazi Not surprisingly, Republicans were very happy. They felt felt vindicated. They felt that this is what they had been saying all along, that the Virginia Democrats were not following the law, and that once the Virginia Supreme Court finally made the ruling they were going to rule for them, and they were right. It was a 4-3 opinion, so just barely the Republicans were were correct, but obviously republicans were happy about this opinion on the other end this spectrum democrats were not happy about the opinion, some of them were blaming the court. Some them were more to accept the results. But at the end the day, it is what it is. We live in a system where have to abide the rulings that the judges make. And it was a 4-3 decision. And I think that the Democrats were 06:50.52 Sam Shirazi were frustrated by this. However, I kind of urge both sides not to dwell on the opinion. And I’ll talk a little bit about what’s happen after this. But I really kind of encourage people on both sides. you know the Republicans are going to be wanting to celebrate and say, you know this is the greatest thing ever. The reality is the Virginia Republicans are in pretty difficult political situation 07:21.79 Sam Shirazi The Democrats have a trifecta. In all likelihood, the Democrats are to keep their trifecta another two years after the elections next year for the State Senate and House Delegates. So they’re not in a great place. And talk about the House Representatives races this year in Virginia. And we’ll talk about the house of house of representative of races this year in Virginia. Republicans don’t have an easy time with those either. So as much as they got that kind of a temporary reprieve from all the bad news that Virginia Republicans have had, you know last year, this isn’t necessarily going to help their 07:53.42 Sam Shirazi prospects other than you know I’m sure they’re grateful they don’t have to deal with this gerrymandered map in 2026 but it’s not like things are are going great for them otherwise. Virginia democrats you know it’s easy to kind of get bitter and blame the courts and you know there’s a lot of things they that when something like this happens, there’s a lot finger pointing, there’s a lot being upset. And that’s, it makes sense. I mean, that’s a human reaction to something like this if the Democratic side. However, it’s also important not to this because the reality is it happened and got to and got to figure out, what’s plan B, because this was plan A and it didn’t out. And so to have to figure out what are to after this? And so I want to talk about what this means for Virginia and the midterms. 08:20.72 Sam Shirazi Before I do, I did want to note, I mean, we’ll see what the Virginia Democrats end up doing but it’s not impossible that this comes back again. And how can it come back again? 08:50.29 Sam Shirazi so what the Virginia democrats can do if they win next year in the general assembly for the state senate and the house delegates which at this point it looks like they’re going to do they can pass this again in January of 2028 and then in 2027 they can pass this thing you know much more before the election so that this whole issue doesn’t come up again. So in other words, we could have another referendum in April 2028, I wouldn’t necessarily put that past the Democrats given what happened so 09:22.36 Sam Shirazi we may be back here again in 2028 doing this all over again and you know we already know what the democratic map would look like perhaps they would change it but long way of saying: This may not be the end of the map. It’s the end of the map in 2026, but I don’t know if it’s going to be the end of the map forever, and we’re just have to find out if the Virginia Democrats decide to do that again. 09:41.66 Sam Shirazi Having said all that it sounds like you know the map is set 2026. We are to use the map. This is the map that was used in the elections this decade in Virginia. The Virginia Supreme Court, through its special masters, drew this map in 2021. So I really want to just spend some time thinking about, okay, what is going to happen now that the old map is be used. And I think the first thing to note just straight up from the beginning is Democrats still have an opportunity to flip seats in Virginia and particularly they have a good opportunity to flip at least two seats. So 10:14.88 Sam Shirazi as much as this was a blow to Virginia democrats I think they also need to not dwell on it forever and think about okay: We still have elections coming this November. Things are still us generally in the national environment looking good for us so don’t want to dwell on this opinion. Similarly for the Virginia Republicans, they will not want to dwell on this forever and say, oh you know everything’s great because they may still lose seats in Virginia this year and they’re gonna have to think about that so I guess what I’ll do quickly is just give you a rundown of each of the current seats based on the current map in Virginia. and just see where we are. Okay, so I will start off with the first congressional district. This is currently represented by Republican Rob Wittman, and all indications now are that he is going to run for re-election. 10:59.35 Sam Shirazi In 2024 this was a Trump seat it voted for Trump by about five points however Abigail Spanberger in 2025 did win this district. And this is going to be one of the top two races in Virginia this year. For the Democrats, it’s one of the more seats. So we’ll talk about the second district. That’s be the top priority. But I think after the second district for the Democrats, 11:21.86 Sam Shirazi the first district is going top be number two in terms of the seats they’re going to try to flip. And I’ll talk a little bit about both the general and the primary. In terms of the primary, I think realistically, there are a few people running, but I think the Democrats and and the national Democrats are supporting Henrico prosecutor Shannon Taylor. 11:39.35 Sam Shirazi She ran for a attorney general in 2025 and came up short in the primary and the Democrats recruited her to run in the first district. And I think she’s a strong candidate for the Democrats because she comes from Henrico, which is the most populous part of this district. 11:53.69 Sam Shirazi And she’s also a prosecutor which you know gives her some credentials in terms of trying to win over swing voters. However Rob Wittman he is a longtime incumbent and is known to perhaps have some crossover appeal. Like in 2024, he did better than President Trump. So Wittman but won by about points in a district that Trump only won by about five points. So you can see how Wittman has overperformed Trump in the past. 12:21.40 Sam Shirazi and I think it’s going to be a really interesting race and given some of the other redistricting developments that have happened across the country, this seat is going to become even more important because I think if the Democrats are trying to get a majority, they will need to win seats like Virginia’s first district. 12:37.44 Sam Shirazi And to me, it’s it’s a little bit like the 7th District in 2018. So 2018, Abigail Spanberger flipped the 7th District. I think at the beginning of the cycle, it didn’t seem very likely that Democrats would be able to flip that seat. 12:49.02 Sam Shirazi However by the end they were able to do it and I think similar type seat Henrico suburbs that are kind of matched up with some you know so rural areas. I think Shannon Taylor she’s go to be doing well in the Henrico suburbs which is her base and she’ll be doing well in the Chesterfield suburbs. Wittman, he’s going to do well in the northern neck part Virginia, the rural parts Virginia along the Chesapeake. That’s his base. Perhaps the battleground region be closer to Hampton Roads where the district kind ends in areas like Williamsburg. And so see if that’s here the race is ultimately decided. 13:13.21 Sam Shirazi And yeah, I mean, this is going to be a big big matchup. I think as much as the district has not really been super competitive in the past, this is the election that the Democrats are going to throw a lot at it. And I think, you know at the end of the day, 13:39.94 Sam Shirazi this will be the race along with the second district to watch in Virginia in 2026 to see if the democrats can win a majority because if the democrats are able to win the first district I think there’s a very good chance they’re going to get a majority in the house of representatives. If they can’t win the first district doesn’t mean it’s impossible for them to get a majority, but it does make their life that much more difficult. So in some ways as much as I get the Democrats wanted this referendum to happen and the new maps to happen, Virginia is to be even more important in the general election now at least these two battlegrounds. Because if the gerrymander had gone through, there be that much attention paid to Virginia in the general election because at the end the day, the point the gerrymander was to elect Democrats. 14:09.56 Sam Shirazi Now these seats are going to be very competitive. And so we’re to see a lot attention focused on Virginia like there was in 2018. So 2018, Democrats, similar situation. got Trump in the White House. Democrats were trying to flip the House. And they needed to win seats in Virginia. And they flipped three seats in Virginia. So Virginia in 2018 was one the top battleground states in terms the House. I think the same thing is to happen this time. Virginia is to be one the top battlegrounds. 14:33.35 Sam Shirazi And the first district is really a ripe pickup opportunity for the Democrats. It’s, I think, still a traditionally Republican seat. 14:52.31 Sam Shirazi I would you know say the republicans right now have an advantage But if the Democrats are able to really focus on this district, the national environment keeps getting worse for the Republicans. I think it’s definitely the type of seat that can flip So first district one to watch here in Virginia. 15:42.46 Sam Shirazi All right, now let’s go down to the Second district. This in the Hampton Roads area, primarily in Virginia Beach, going into Chesapeake and Suffolk, and then going into the Eastern Shore. The current representative is Republican Jen Kiggans. She is being challenged by someone she defeated in 2022, and that is former Congresswoman Elaine Luria. And so I think there might be a primary for Luria, I think realistically we are looking at a Jen Kiggans, Elaine Luria matchup. in 2024, President Trump very narrowly won district by you know less than a point. However, I do think this is the type of seat that sees a lot of swings and Spanberger won it by a healthy margin in 2025. And the second district is just the perennial battleground district. Every single competitive election nationally for the house the second district is going be a target. And I think you know the first, I think, is a little bit of a reach district for the for the Democrats. The second is a must win for them. I think if the Democrats can’t win the second district in they’re not going to a House majority. 16:14.47 Sam Shirazi It’s just as simple as that. So I think if the democrats want a majority in the house of representatives they have to win the second district there’s really no way around it. And the thing is, I think the Democrats currently have an advantage in the second district for a couple reasons. One, it’s just such a swingy district. Every time it swings against the party in the White House, we saw it happen in 2022 we saw it happen in 2018. We saw it happen in 2010. It just swings against the party in the White House. 16:40.50 Sam Shirazi So i think there’s a good chance just based off that the democrats have have a chance of winning the seat. And then if you think about some of the federal impacts do just cuts the federal government I think Hampton Roads has felt that. So again, one of those districts that is going to be feeling the federal fallout. So I think those two things, most people think Luria has an advantage right now not saying it’s impossible for Republicans to win it, 17:02.22 Sam Shirazi and they’re probably going to throw a lot more at it now that it’s not going to be the gerrymandered version of the second. But also have to kind of be realistic about how much this this district swings. And Luria has previously represented the district. So I think she’s a good candidate for the democrats and again the first and the second are going to be the top two battles this year in Virginia All right, so we knocked out the big battleground districts at the beginning. The next few districts over more quickly. Third district that is in Hampton Roads, current incumbent is Democrat Bobby Scott. I don’t think he’s have an issue in the primary or general election, so 17:38.26 Sam Shirazi expect a pretty easy race for Bobby Scott this year. We’ll talk about the fourth district this is in the Richmond area going down to southside current incumbent is Jennifer Mcclellan. Again, I don’t see she’s Democrat. I don’t think she is going to have a problem in the general election or the primary. 17:57.93 Sam Shirazi Okay, now let’s talk about the fifth district. This one’s a little bit more interesting. The current incumbent is Republican John McGuire. And there are a few people running here, but I think the person who may end being the democratic nominee it sounds like he’s going to stay in the race and i think he’s going to run in the fifth is former congressman Tom Perriello who used to represent the fifth. Now on paper President Trump won this district by about twelve points in 2024. Which is you know not out of the realm of possibility. I think the challenge for the Democrats here is that even Spanberber in was not able to win the fifth. 18:31.49 Sam Shirazi I think part of the the challenge here is this is a very polarized district. So The Democrats in this district tend to be concentrated in the Charlottesville area, so Charlottesville City and Albemarle County. 18:45.25 Sam Shirazi That’s where a lot of the democratic bases and the the district also has a decent African American population so the democratic base is kind of the people in Charlottesville and the suburbs and then the African-American voters. And the Republican base here is really, rural working class white voters. And there’s a amount evangelical voters in this district because it is where Lynchburg is located and Liberty University. So i think there is a lot of things going on in this district in terms things that in theory make it competitive the Democrats, but also make it difficult. And I think this is just a district that is difficult to move for the Democrats. And it’s pretty inelastic. And what I mean that is it’s pretty easy the Democrats to get 40% in this district. And I think on a good night, it’s to be pretty easy Tom Perriello to get to 45% in this district. I think the question becomes can Perriello get up to 50%. 19:23.70 Sam Shirazi It’s just one of those districts at some point you’re going hit a ceiling and Perriello in 2008, he was able to win during the blue tsunami, partly because he did okay with some of the rural white white voters. 2008, economy was doing a really badly. War in Iraq wasn’t going great. So I think was able to make some inroads with white working class voters. Can he do that again? I think much more difficult in this environment 20:06.39 Sam Shirazi with with you know polarization that’s caught up to the democrats. It’s a long way of saying, I don’t think it’s impossible to win this district, but it it would really require a good night, 20:17.32 Sam Shirazi possibly getting a type of swing that like we saw in 2008 where there was a blue tsunami, not just a blue wave. I think a blue wave democrats could probably flip the first and the second district. It would really require a blue tsunami for the Democrats to flip the fifth. And so I don’t want to say it’s outside the realm of possibility but i would not also be counting on the democrats flipping this district. However it does appear that Tom Perriello is gonna keep keep and keep trying to win this seat. 20:43.13 Sam Shirazi Okay now let’s move over to the sixth congressional district that is represented by republican ben Cline. This is a pretty deep red district. I think Ben Cline was in a lot of danger with the with the gerrymander the new 6th District. However, the old 6th District is very red and i don’t think then Cline’s going have any issues in the primary or general election. Okay, let’s over to the 7th Congressional District. The current incumbent is Democrat Eugene Vindman, and this district was a three-point Harris district in 2024. However, Spanberger did do better than that in 2025. 21:20.26 Sam Shirazi In terms of the Republican primary, I think Vindman is going to be facing most likely State Senator Tara Durant. You know I think on paper this could be competitive I think the challenge over republicans are going to have again goes back to the federal fallout this is the type of district that you know It’s not really built for the Republicans to win in a Trump midterm. If you saw both in November 2025 and during the redistricting referendum, Democrats were able to do well in Northern Virginia, do well in Prince William County. So I just think it’s be hard to beat Vindman. The Republicans might try to give it a shot. I don’t anticipate them spending a lot of money here because realistically they have a lot of incumbents they want to protect so I don’t think they’re gonna really try to go after a Vindman. But of the currently democratically held seats in Virginia, this one’s probably be the closest. So just something to keep in mind. oOkay now let’s move over to the eighth congressional district And that is represented currently Democrat Don Beyer. This is the bluest district in Virginia. And so I think any action here be in the primary. Beyer already has a couple primary challengers. The question is, do some the people are planning in the new seventh, remember the new seventh was supposed to be the lobster district. 22:26.00 Sam Shirazi I think some the in that district are just to out drop out. They’re not to anything else. But I see some those people in the eighth. For example, does JP Cooney end up running? or anyone who’s in the seventh, they end in the eighth? I think it’s to be hard to beat Bayer in a primary, if being honest, just because he’s been preparing the primary a while. I think he knew he’d probably have a more competitive primary this year. 22:52.39 Sam Shirazi So if I had to guess, I think Don Beyer is probably to be able to come back to Congress, even if he faces a serious primary challenger. 23:02.13 Sam Shirazi All right, now we’re gonna to Southwest Virginia in the ninth congressional district. The current incumbent is Republican Morgan Griffith. This is the reddest district in Virginia. 23:20.82 Sam Shirazi and this was going to going to be the only red district left in Virginia. However, that’s probably not going to happen anymore because of the redistricting. The thing is, I think Morgan Griffith is happy because there was a risk he could face a primary challenger from one of the other Republican congressmen in Virginia if the new map went into effect. That’s not going to happen. So i think he’s going to be safe both in the primary and general election. Okay now let’s go up to Northern Virginia to the 10th congressional district. This is currently represented by Suhas Subramanyam. Now in 2024, this was actually kind of a close seat. 23:57.05 Sam Shirazi And Harris only won the district by about seven and a half points. Subramanyam who’s a democrat you know he faced even a closer race he only won by less than five points. So in theory this could be a competitive seat i think again the problem the republicans are going to have Federal fallout, Northern Virginia, you know they’re just not this is not the type of environment that the Republicans are be able to flip a seat like this district. So I think both for the primary in general, the Republicans should be pretty 24:28.33 Sam Shirazi unlikely i think republicans are unlikely to give this a serious effort and so i think Subramanyam both in the primary in general should be pretty safe All right. One last district in Virginia, and that is the 11th congressional district that is currently represented by Democrat James Walkinshaw. Again, a very blue seat, I think Walkinshaw will get a serious challenger in the primary or the general either. So I think that’s kind the lay the land in Virginia. 24:44.54 Sam Shirazi Most the incumbents are to be safe. I think the incumbents that are in most danger are 24:52.44 Sam Shirazi Number one is Jen Kiggans in the second because it’s just a perennial battleground district and it tends to swing against the party in the White House. And then the Number two most endangered incumbent is Wittman. If the Democrats get a night, if there’s a blue wave, they might be able to knock him even though he’s a longtime incumbent. 25:14.90 Sam Shirazi And he’s had over-performances in the past. I do think in these wave elections, things can catch to And so I think that’s one thing Wittman has to be the especially because I think politics can swing back and forth. So we talked about the redistricting referendum. Republicans got upset. They were fired They got their voters out. They weren’t able to win the referendum, but it was much closer than I think a lot us expected. 25:36.46 Sam Shirazi Now that the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled for the Republicans, I think a lot of Democrats are very upset and they are trying to channel their anger. And you know logically, if you’re in Virginia and you’re a Democrat, what you’re going to want to do is try to flip the seats you have a chance of flipping And so I think while, yes Kiggans is going to face a serious challenge i do think after Kiggans a lot of democrats are going to look to rob Wittman. 26:09.78 Sam Shirazi as a potential incumbent that could be knocked off. And so I think in some ways, obviously, he’s happy that he doesn’t have to run in the gerrymandered district, or he doesn’t have to retire, but he’s not out of the woods. And I think And, it’s interesting the thing with elections is they can back and forth. I think in November 2025, Democrats were feeling pretty good and they got a big victory. And then we are in May 2026 and the Republicans feel pretty They won at the Supreme Court, Virginia Supreme Court. But. 26:29.61 Sam Shirazi It’s less than six months away until November, and we’ll see how they both the Democrats and Republicans feel in November after we get the results and the voters make their final say for the midterms. okay so now i’m going talk about the future of the podcast you know i had been debating this for a long time 27:02.41 Sam Shirazi And I think right now with the Virginia Supreme Court ruling it’s time for me to end the podcast. As sad as that is, I think the reality is this was really about the 2025 Virginia elections. I wanted to stick through to see the referendum. And now we have the Supreme Court decision that really is about the 2025 Virginia elections. This is kind of the book end of those elections. And This year in Virginia, the rest the year is to be interesting. Realistically, I don’t think the primaries are to be that much. There’s not going to be a lot. We basically the nominees are to be the major districts the primary. So I don’t think there’s a lot to talk there. 27:37.06 Sam Shirazi Certainly the general election is going to be interesting. I just don’t know if there’s enough material for basically two congressional seats to do an entire podcast every week about you know those races. i’m sure they’ll be interesting to follow but I don’t really know if it justifies continuing the podcast. And you know I think for me personally, like podcasting, posting on social media you know it takes a lot of time and I want to be mindful of you know my priorities and and wanting to focus on things that you know matter to me, like my family. And so as much as I love doing this and I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope people have found it very useful, there’s also a time for everything and a time to move on And so I think as much as I want to, 28:18.34 Sam Shirazi I think it’s time for me to hang it up with the Federal All Out podcast. It’s been an incredible I’ve appreciated everyone who’s come as a guest and who’s listened. And, I hope to perhaps it one day again. But I think the 2026 Virginia elections are to be as interesting as the 2025 Virginia elections. However, 28:38.34 Sam Shirazi I hope that I was able to share some of my interest and passion in Virginia elections matter what, and show everyone how interesting they can be and how there’s always so much going on in Virginia. I really love Virigina. And you know no matter Where you fall in the political spectrum, you’re Republican, or Democrat, you’re independent. I hope you were able to listen to this podcast and get something out of it. And I hope we can all kind of come together after a very long referendum process to maybe, you know focus more important things in Virginia and and try to move on after the Virginia supreme court ruling so 29:14.22 Sam Shirazi I think that’s going to be it for me with federal fallout. I’ve enjoyed it and I appreciate everyone who’s been listening and this has been federal fallout. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com [https://samshirazi.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Next Stop: Virginia Supreme Court

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out of Virginia Elections. This episode, we will look at what’s next with Virginia redistricting, specifically what’s going to be going on at the Virginia Supreme Court now that the redistricting referendum has passed. 00:13.62 Sam Shirazi So last episode, we kind of broke down the results of the redistricting referendum. I may talk about that some more down the line. However, I did want to talk about basically the next step in the redistricting referendum. 00:25.34 Sam Shirazi saga that has gone on in Virginia. And that is the Virginia Supreme court, because while the Republicans put up a good fight, they weren’t able to defeat the referendum at the ballot box. And so before the referendum, they had brought a lot of legal challenges and now they are renewing those legal challenges specifically because the Virginia Supreme court has kicked the can down the road. The Virginia Supreme court said that they were not going to rule before the redistricting referendum, perhaps in their mind, they were, 00:52.00 Sam Shirazi wondering if this thing won’t pass. And if it didn’t pass, that would bail them out essentially, and they wouldn’t have to rule on the redistricting referendum. However, it did pass. And now the Virginia Supreme Court is in the position where they said that they would rule if it passed and it passed. So now they have to rule. 01:09.15 Sam Shirazi And I’ll kind of walk you through what happened in the last few days in terms of the legal process and what’s going to be happening going forward. So after the redistricting referendum passed, the Virginia Republicans went back to the judge that had previously ruled for them in Tazewell County. This is a deep red county in Southwest Virginia. 01:29.58 Sam Shirazi Before the referendum, that had caused a lot of legal questions, which the Virginia Supreme Court eventually just said, we’re going to have the referendum and then we’re gonna figure everything out after the referendum. So long story short, Virginia Republicans go back to the judge in Tazewell County. The judge in Tazewell County, not surprisingly, 01:47.57 Sam Shirazi ruled completely for the Republicans and basically said the redistricting referendum was not valid and interestingly prevented has placed the injunction telling the Virginia Department of Elections that they essentially cannot certify you a district referendum because it is not a valid referendum. 02:07.11 Sam Shirazi And obviously, this is going to be appealed. Both the Democrats and Attorney General Jay Jones have said that they are going to fight this and take it to the Virginia Supreme Court. And we all know that the Virginia Supreme Court is ultimately going to make the final call. So none of that was really surprising. You saw some reporting saying, well, 02:24.18 Sam Shirazi The redistricting referendum has been held to be invalid. We basically knew that judge was going to rule that way. He ruled that way before the referendum. It’s not a huge surprise. And we all knew that essentially the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be the one that is going to make the call because they are the highest court in Virginia. This is a complex issue of Virginia state constitutional law. 02:44.83 Sam Shirazi And and The next few days are going to be important because on Monday, there will actually be oral arguments on this case. Now, it’s not exactly on the judge’s order that he issued right after redistricting referendum. it’s It’s basically a preexisting case. But I can’t imagine the Virginia Supreme Court is not going to be talking about the merits of the case. 03:03.04 Sam Shirazi And ultimately, I expect them to just issue a ruling one way or another deciding this case. So there’s a lot of procedural stuff I don’t want to get bogged down in because ultimately, what’s going to happen is the Virginia Supreme court is just going to rule and they’re going say either. Yes. The referendum was valid or no, it wasn’t valid. And they can’t kick the can down in the road anymore. The reason they can’t kick kick the can down anymore is because, 03:25.22 Sam Shirazi The filing deadline in Virginia for the congressional seats is May 26th. So if you’re a congressional candidate, you have to know which district am I running in because the districts look pretty different. That was the point of redistricting. 03:37.22 Sam Shirazi So maybe under the old maps, you might run in district A, but under the new maps, you might run in district B. So, you know realistically, the Virginia Supreme Court does not have a whole lot of time. They have to rule by May 26th. And I anticipate that they will rule before that. 03:51.24 Sam Shirazi And the thing is, I don’t think they were just sitting around while the redistricting campaign was going on. I think they needed more time to really understand this issue and to be able to come up with a decision that makes sense. However, they didn’t have that right before the redistricting referendum. They felt like they were being kind of rushed into it. So I think now they took this time during the redistricting referendum to try to figure out, okay, what are we going to do with this case? So I don’t think they were just sitting around doing nothing. And I do think this oral argument is going to be important because it kind of shows you know what are they... It could potentially show what they’re thinking, and and they’re going to be asking specific questions to the lawyers. 04:45.04 Sam Shirazi So we’re going to have the oral arguments in the redistricting case on Monday in the Virginia virginia Supreme Court. I’m sure we’ll get you know some insights into what’s going to happen. And then i expect in May at some point they’re going to issue their final ruling and make a decision one way or another. – so I have had previous episodes where I kind of went really into the weeds about the legal issues. I don’t want to do that this episode because I think there’s a lot and you know I previously talked about it. What I wanted to talk about in this episode was something a little bit different and it’s really the framing of legal issues because I think that’s really important and it’s something that is not often talked about you know even among lawyers. I think it’s really important but lawyers don’t even think about this stuff sometimes. 05:28.52 Sam Shirazi And what I mean by it is, how do you present an issue? Do you present it big picture or do you present it really into the weeds details? And I think lawyers are known for being sometimes very technical, very in the weeds, you know, quibbling over very minor things. And I think there is obviously that’s important in the law and you want to get the details right. 05:49.60 Sam Shirazi However, I think some of the best lawyers, the real ability is to make very complicated things actually rather simple and not to overcomplicate things. So what I wanna do with this podcast is to actually make things relatively simple and kind of explain in more layman’s terms, 06:04.98 Sam Shirazi what are the Democrats’ strongest arguments and what are the Republicans’ strongest arguments and kind of why they might win on either side. And I do think a lot of this comes down to framing and how does the Virginia Supreme Court look at this? Do they look at this more big picture, which is what the Democrats, I think, want them to do, is to look big picture? 06:23.06 Sam Shirazi Or do they want it, or do the Virginia Supreme Court look at these things more in the weeds, details, which I think is more what the Republicans want to do? And I think this question of framing is really important because when it comes to a legal issue, it’s not just about, the way you approach the facts and the law. It’s really about how you’re thinking about the issue. And, you know, I had mentioned this before. So, uh, I am an attorney and sometimes when I’m grappling with legal issues, 06:49.60 Sam Shirazi you get kind of bogged down in something, but then you kind of reframe it and you think about the big picture and it kind of changes the way you’re looking at the legal issue. And so I will kind of do that with the redistricting refer referendum. And I’ll start kind of with the democratic case or what the Democrats are essentially trying to tell the Virginia Supreme Court. 07:07.62 Sam Shirazi And I think it’s really just big picture. Majorities of both the General Assembly and of the Virginia voters passed this thing. So if you think about what happened right before the election, the General Assembly, the Virginia House Delegates, the State Senate, majorities of those bodies passed this redistricting referendum. There was an election. 07:26.98 Sam Shirazi The Democrats won that election. And then in January, the Democrats once again passed this thing with majorities in the Virginia House of Delegates in the Virginia State Senate. So twice in two different sessions of the Virginia General Assembly, this thing was passed with majorities. And then it was put on the ballot and a majority of Virginians, over 1.5 million Virginians, passed this thing and and voted for this thing. So essentially what the Democrats are arguing is the constitutional requirements have all been met big picture. If you look at the big picture, was passed in one session of the General Assembly. it was passed in another session of the General Assembly. A majority of the voters in Virginia passed this thing. So Virginia Supreme Court, do you really want to come in? 08:05.94 Sam Shirazi And, you know, from the, from the Virginia Democrats perspective on some, you know, supposed that technicalities throw out this entire process because of, you know, these in the weeds things that the Republicans are raising, is that really what you want to do? And do you think that’s really the best use of the the court’s resources? And do you think that’s makes sense in terms of separations of power? Because in the Virginia constitution, the primary power to pass, uh, 08:32.32 Sam Shirazi These referendums to change the Virginia Constitution lie with the General Assembly and lie with the people of Virginia. The executive essentially has very little, if basically no power, other than trying to put the referendum on the ballot through so to funding the ballot initiative. 08:48.20 Sam Shirazi And the judiciary does have a role in reviewing the referendum, but there is no... David Pérez, Explicit role for the judiciary in the redistricting referendum process in Virginia. So essentially it’s kind of an argument about this thing was passed you as the court should not come in and overturn the will of the people, the will of the General Assembly. the Virginia Constitution gives these powers to the General Assembly, to the people of Virginia. 09:13.77 Sam Shirazi these these The body of the Virginia General Assembly passed this thing, the people in Virginia passed this thing. So you as a court, it would essentially be anti-democratic or you’d be an activist court if you came in and essentially on some legal technicalities overturned this thing. 09:28.96 Sam Shirazi That would be kind of the democratic argument. And again, they’re kind of framing this big picture. If you look at the whole process, It worked. You know, you could quibble here and there. The Democrats should have done this. the Democrats should have done that. 09:51.73 Sam Shirazi and you will quibble with everything the Democrats did. And if you look at the lower court’s opinion, they kind of have a list of like 10 things the Democrats did wrong. It’s like, you should have done this, you should have done that, you should have done this, you should have done that. So that’s kind of what the lower court is saying. The lower court is saying you messed up a bunch of things in the process. And so, yes, in theory, General Assembly passed this, the voters approved it, but it doesn’t really matter because you didn’t do all the procedural steps you needed to do in order to get this thing passed. And again, I won’t go into the nitty gritty details because there’s a lot of them, but I’ll flag kind of the two big picture issues that I think are the most serious for the Democrats in terms of this redistricting referendum. One of them is that they were passed the the first time the redistricting referendum was passed through the General Assembly. It was right before the election. 10:38.88 Sam Shirazi I think traditionally in Virginia, these referendums are passed months before the election. And, you know, I’ve talked about in my previous podcast. There is a question about, do you have to post these notices for 90 days before the election? 10:52.38 Sam Shirazi And I think that’s one of the, essentially the argument that Republicans are making is that this was the first time this was passed, it was too close to the election and there wasn’t an an intervening election in between, or there wasn’t enough notice given give given in in terms of the election happening. And there was already a lot of early voting going on and all these things. So that’s essentially the Republican argument on that point. And I think the other thing that potentially the Republicans could make a point on is the ballot language. There was a lot of you know noise made by the Republicans about the ballot language being unfair. And specifically, it talked about restoring fairness. And I think from the Republicans’ perspective, this is the opposite of restoring fairness. It’s it’s making the maps unfair. From the Democratic perspective, obviously they’re saying it’s not fair that Virginia has to have nonpartisan redistricting while all the Republican states get to have partisan redistricting. So anyways, so essentially what the Virginia Republicans are trying to argue is the process was flawed. The voters weren’t given enough notice before the. 11:52.49 Sam Shirazi David Baird, Jr.: 2025 Virginia elections and even in the referendum itself, the voters were not given the fair language. And so while yes, this thing was passed with majorities. Baird, It was not done in a clean way. It wasn’t done in a way that was legally sound. And so you should look at the specific things that happened along the way and focus on that. And if you focus on that, you’ll see that the process and the law wasn’t followed. 12:15.52 Sam Shirazi And so don’t look at the big picture, look at the kind of nitty gritty details. And you know that’s kind of where I think this case is going to go. i expect the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be focusing on the details because they’re a pretty technical court. I think they’re pretty, you know they’re not going to just ignore some of these issues that Republicans are raising. 12:33.63 Sam Shirazi Having said that, the fact that they’re exploring them or looking at them or thinking about them doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to strike down the referendum. And I do think, you know, we just have to wait and see what, how they’re going to approach this. And I could really see them going either way. a lot of people have said, you know, there’s no way the Virginia Supreme Court is going to overturn the will of the people, they’re not going to overturn a referendum where one point over 1.5 million people voted yes. I think that’s certainly possible. And as I mentioned before, these judges are human beings. so they are thinking about how is this going to look? They’re also thinking about, do I really as a judge want to overturn the will of the people? 13:16.28 Sam Shirazi So I think there is a that is a legitimate argument that just from a practical standpoint, it is going to be very difficult for the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn this thing However, i do think the Virginia Supreme Court is the type of court where if they truly thought that there was a problem with the process and there’s legal issues with what happened, I don’t think that they would just let it go. i think they are you know a court that takes the law seriously, takes the Virginia Constitution seriously. And if they genuinely think there was a problem in the process, they are going to perhaps at at a minimum note that and 13:50.46 Sam Shirazi you know they They might find a procedural way to get out of it, but I do think they are not the type of court that’s just going to ignore something or roll over and play dead because it’s politically convenient. I do think they’re willing to make difficult decisions. They’ve done it in the past. 14:04.44 Sam Shirazi One example was in when Governor McAuliffe was governor, he started restoring voting rights to people who were convicted of felonies, and he wanted to kind of do that through a mass process where everyone would get their voting rights back at once. And the Virginia Supreme Court said, you can’t do that. It has to be an and individualized process. And I think that was an indication from the court that they’re not just gonna roll over and let the other branches of government do whatever they want. I mean, they are an, 14:33.18 Sam Shirazi Jonathan Haidt, independent branch the Virginia government and their job is to put checks and balances on the General Assembly and the executive branch. And so I think Jonathan Haidt, if they’ve truly feel that the process was violated, think they would be willing to strike down the redistricting referendum. 14:49.66 Sam Shirazi And you know there’s really no way for me to tell you what’s going to happen. I think we just have to wait and see. Unlike elections where I can look at data and I look in my you know try to look in my crystal ball, you know courts are much more unpredictable. And I think it’s really, really hard for me to give you any sort of sense of what’s going to happen. I think we’re just going to have to wait and see. And it’s kind of funny. I think the Democrats are just kind of moving ahead, saying we won, the redistricting referendum is happening, the new maps are happening. And the Virginia Republicans are kind of the opposite. They’re like, no, there’s major legal issues. We think we’re going to win the legal case. we won at the lower court. And they’re kind of operating the assumption that the old maps are going to be in going to be in operation. And, you know, it’s funny, I think they’re asking the members of Congress, what are you going to do? And members of Congress for the Republican side are still saying, essentially, they’re running in their old districts. So one way or another, someone is going to be wrong, either the Democrats 15:44.26 Sam Shirazi overestimated how strong their legal position is. And that would be a pretty dramatic result if the Virginia Supreme Court strikes down the referendum and says, actually, this whole thing is not going to happen. The other alternative is that the Virginia Supreme Court upholds the new maps, and then the Republicans are in a very difficult spot because They didn’t win at the ballot box. They didn’t win in the courts. 16:04.04 Sam Shirazi And they’re going to have to deal with these new maps. And I think it’s going to be interesting to see what the incumbent Republican members of Congress do in that situation. So I think we’re just going to have to see what ends up happening. There’s a lot to unpack, no matter what the Virginia Supreme Court ends up ruling. I think the next thing after the Virginia Supreme Court will be the actual primary on August 4th. 16:25.27 Sam Shirazi And you know we’ll have to see, is it going to be the old maps, it going to be the new maps? I think there’s some interesting dynamics in those primaries if they end up going forward under the new maps. And we’ll talk about that once we get a little bit more clarity, but there’s a lot to kind of still unpack with the redistricting referendum. We got done with the vote, but in some ways that was the most straightforward part because we knew it was either going to pass or it’s not going to pass. Now we’re in this phase where we have to wait on the Virginia Supreme Court and then we’re going to see how did the primary shape up and 16:55.80 Sam Shirazi Yeah, so lot to still cover in Virginia, even though the redistricting referendum is over and it was super interesting. And I appreciate everyone who’s been giving me some good feedback on some of the comments I made. And and I tried my best with the redistricting referendum to keep people educated. 17:11.95 Sam Shirazi That’s really my goal. I’m going to try to keep people educated as this process goes through the courts. And then as we go through the primary, still a lot to cover in Virginia. I’ll be there with you as we go through the wild ride that is the Virginia election. So i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been Federal Fallout, and i’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com [https://samshirazi.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Referendum Passes and Federal Fallout Continues

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Will Fall Out of Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the results of the redistricting referendum after the results came in on Tuesday night and it looks like yes is going to win by probably around 4% when all the votes are in. 00:15.61 Sam Shirazi And yeah, really interesting results. Honestly, kind of what we expected based off the vibes, based off the polls. So what I wanted to do is kind of break down the results, talk about them a little bit. I will do further analysis in other episodes. 00:29.63 Sam Shirazi But I think the the thing that I wanted to note at the beginning is this podcast is called Federal Fallout. And people who have asked me, you going to change the name? And I thought about it. But, you know, 00:39.74 Sam Shirazi There is still a lot of federal fallout going on in Virginia. i think this redistricting referendum is another federal fallout, not simply because President Trump started kind of asking Republican states to redistrict, which led to a response in Democratic states such as Virginia. 00:55.88 Sam Shirazi But really, if you look at the results, the reason why YES won this campaign was in Northern Virginia. In all of Northern Virginia, YES did much better than the Harris margin 2024. 01:07.67 Sam Shirazi And given that this was a relatively close result, I think the reason you can say it passed was the federal fallout in Northern Virginia. Other parts of Virginia, like Southwest Virginia, no did better than even President Trump did in 2024. So there were parts of Virginia that were really upset at this redistricting referendum where the Republicans did well. 01:27.58 Sam Shirazi But in Northern Virginia, a lot of votes, they just didn’t do that well. And I think the logical explanation is it’s federal fallout. People are still upset at what happened in D.C. last year and continuing into this year. Specifically, people are upset at Doge. 01:42.68 Sam Shirazi I think you know it was really toxic for the Republicans. That’s why they lost in 2025. And I think this redistricting referendum, while it was closer, certainly the Republicans ran a better campaign. I think they made they they did their best to try to make this a referendum really on the maps and gerrymandering. But at the end of the day, in Northern Virginia, a lot of those voters are just single issue voters and they’re gonna vote against the Republicans because they’re just upset at what’s going on. So I’ll kind of break all that down. I wanted is to talk about a few things before doing more of a deep dive into the federal fallout. 02:17.20 Sam Shirazi you know Long story short, I think the early vote, the vibes and the polls were all on the money you know in terms of the early vote There was an indication that the more rural parts of Virginia were upset and they were turning out a higher number. I think the results here show that. 03:05.07 Sam Shirazi with this result. And then finally, wanted to talk about the vibes. I think the vibes were very clear that yes had an advantage, but it was not overwhelming. We all had a sense that this was going to be closer than 25. had said in my last podcast that I thought the most likely outcome was a single digit yes win, and we ended up getting a single digit yes win. So not a lot surprising other than I would say the regional dynamics in Virginia in this election. And what I mean by that is really the blue parts of Virginia in Northern Virginia got bluer as compared to 2024. Most of the rest of Virginia got a little bit redder compared to 2024. And some parts of Virginia, like Southwest Virginia, got much redder. And I think, you know, there’s clearly an indication there was people upset in Southwest Virginia at the at this map. 03:54.40 Sam Shirazi And, you know, I think while The Democrats got a win and I don’t want to take anything away from them. A win’s a win. I do think it has hurt their brand in parts of Virginia. 04:04.26 Sam Shirazi And, you know, this kind of increasing polarization we’ve seen between rural and suburban areas has continued and this referendum has made it even worse. So I do think... you know not to rain on the Democrats parade, but they do get a temporary victory for this decade with these new maps. But I think going forward, it’ll be even harder to sell the Democratic brand in Southwest Virginia, other parts of rural Virginia, because I think a lot of those voters were clearly upset. And you could see that in the results and the turnout. So I don’t want to pretend like this is 100% great news for the Democrats. They didn’t get an overwhelming victory. And it looks like it’s going to be less of a victory than the attorney general race 04:41.73 Sam Shirazi in 2025, which was kind of my benchmark. I had said that if the Democrats got a bigger victory than the attorney general race, that’s a good night for them. I’d say, yeah i don’t want to say it’s a good night for the Virginia Republicans because they still lost, but I do think they did better than expected. I think at the beginning of this referendum campaign when really, you know, it looked like they had basically no shot and they made it competitive and they had a shot But look, in politics, coming up short is not good enough. Being close is not good enough. You have to win. And the Virginia Democrats won. And, you know, I don’t want to take anything away from them either. 05:16.14 Sam Shirazi And, you know, kind of going back to the the beginning of what I was talking about at the beginning of the podcast, you know, people that talk to me are going to change the name of the podcast. You’re continuing it. But, you know, it’s obviously things are different in 2025. 05:29.01 Sam Shirazi And I thought about it. One of the things I wanted to I was thinking about changing my podcast name to is one election after another, because i will talk about it probably in my next episode. But we will have a primary on August 4th in Virginia. So there’s going to be another election coming up. 05:44.38 Sam Shirazi But I think the federal fallout concept is still valid in Virginia. And I do think, you know, we’ve gotten to this point where. The Virginia Republicans, you know, they are going to be very upset at Northern Virginia and they’re going to blame everything on Northern Virginia. And I get that. And I get that a lot of rural voters are upset at Northern Virginia. But I do think there should also be a little bit of self-reflection about why some of these counties voted so heavily against the Republicans again. And this is you know the second election and in a row where they very clearly sent a message that they were upset with the Republican Party. 06:18.68 Sam Shirazi you know As I was looking, as the results were coming in, i had flagged Loudoun as really important. you know they get They report really quickly. And I was looking at the results in Loudoun and the final result seems to be about 61-39. 06:32.68 Sam Shirazi And as soon as I saw that Loudoun was going to be 61-39, I basically knew it was over because there’s no way the Virginia Republicans can win in Virginia if they lose Loudoun by 20 points. like Loudoun being 60-40 Democratic is not sustainable for the Virginia virginia Republicans. like They need to get that margin into the... you know they need to be in the 40s to be competitive in in Virginia. and And they just weren’t able to do it tonight. Even though in some parts of rural Virginia, they made up a lot of votes. They did better than I think people were expecting in parts of Virginia, but there just aren’t a lot of votes in these rural counties. 07:08.76 Sam Shirazi And so you can improve by 5%, 10% in some of these rural counties. But if if you’re not doing well enough in Northern Virginia, it’s not going to matter. Other parts of Northern Virginia, Fairfax County, biggest county, most populated in in Virginia, 07:55.21 Sam Shirazi In 2021, Glenn Youngkin was able to keep these margins closer. For example, Loudon was about 55-45 in 2021. He did not write off Northern Virginia. That’s one of the reasons he won. He kept the margins close enough. He got the rural turnout. 08:09.32 Sam Shirazi I think the problem the Virginia Republicans have right now is they basically just written off Northern Virginia and they don’t even try to compete there anymore. and you’re just not gonna win in Virginia anymore if you do that. And you you know they could say, well, that’s not fair or whatever. I mean, at the end of the day, you know politics is about winning. 08:25.85 Sam Shirazi And you know unless the Virginia Republicans are willing to just completely write off Virginia, they have to figure out a way to compete in Northern Virginia. And you know things can change. I’m not saying it’s going to be like this for the rest of time, but I think during the Trump 2.0 era for the rest of his administration, 08:44.76 Sam Shirazi I think the Virginia Republicans are just in a really bad spot. And there was a lot of noise about Spanberger disapproval and Spanberger’s unpopular and all this stuff. And, you know, I think there that is true in certain parts of Virginia. Certainly in Southwest Virginia, there was anger in Shenandoah Valley. People are upset. There’s no doubt that There are parts of Virginia that are upset with the Democrats and they’re upset with Governor Spanberger. 09:09.81 Sam Shirazi But I think the thing the Virginia Republicans don’t quite get is that there are other parts of Virginia, certainly very populated parts of Virginia, that are very upset at what’s going on in D.C. and President Trump. And they’re essentially single issue voters. Like they they will not listen to any arguments the Virginia Republicans make, similar to how maybe in southwest Virginia, the Virginia that the voters down there might not listen to the Virginia Democrats. We’ve just gotten very polarized. 09:35.24 Sam Shirazi And, you know you know, I don’t think it’s great for our country. I don’t think it’s great for the democracy and for Virginia, but that’s where we are. And and that’s what the results show. And I think one thing both sides really need to reflect on is how do they win in the other side’s territory? Because I think Spanberger did make some inroads in more in some rural areas, certainly in exurban areas. She made some inroads. 09:56.72 Sam Shirazi But I think some of those areas are upset right now. And I think the Democratic brand has has taken a hit. So certainly the Democrats have gotten something out of this in terms of a win. 10:08.21 Sam Shirazi from their perspective, hopefully they’ll get a 10-1 map. We’ll talk about the Virginia Supreme Court at another time, but hopefully they’ll get a 10-1 map for at least three three election cycles, 2026, 2028, and 2030. However, it it it comes with a cost. and in In politics, everything comes with a cost. And, you you know, I think at the end of the day, 10:28.04 Sam Shirazi They have hurt their brand in rural Virginia. And so they’re going to also have to reflect on that. But again, Virginia Republicans, not in a good spot right now. i think they they put up a good fight. It was closer than I expected. i think they they certainly you know did a good job getting out their voters and spreading the message they wanted to spread. But as as I mentioned, I think a good chunk of voters, especially in Northern Virginia, are just unwilling to basically listen to anything the Virginia Republicans say because they’re so upset at what’s going on in D.C. And so that’s never a good sign if if a if a chunk of voters are are not open to your message. 11:05.77 Sam Shirazi Anyway, so a lot to unpack there. And I wanted to kind of give you my thoughts and and why I thought yes had passed. You know, it’s funny because people were asking me, you know, it’s looking like no’s ahead. are you sure that yes is going to pass? And I told them, like, look, you just got to wait for Northern Virginia. You got to wait for Fairfax. 11:24.04 Sam Shirazi You know, once I saw Loudoun early in the night, you know, I knew it was over. And, you know, yes, it was closer than I expected. But I think... 11:33.20 Sam Shirazi it’s just one of those things like the numbers are the numbers and the votes are the votes. And if the Democrats in Northern Virginia are getting, you know, 70, 30 margins, and then in outer Northern Virginia are getting 60, 40 margins, combining that with the Richmond area and Hampton Roads, it’s just, there’s really no way for the Virginia Republicans to win. And, and you know, we saw that again in this election. And I had mentioned this in my podcast a a few nights ago. You know, I talked about how, 12:02.53 Sam Shirazi Virginia Republicans have the ceiling around 45, 46 percent. I think they they got higher than their ceiling. They may hit 48 percent this time. So in some ways, that’s an accomplishment. But, you know, they’re just the geography and politics of Virginia is such that it is so hard for the Virginia Republicans to get to 50 percent. 12:20.18 Sam Shirazi I think it’s going to continue to be hard for them. And it’s pretty amazing if you go back. really all the way to 2009. So, you know, over 15 years, the Virginia Republicans have only been able to win one stateide statewide election since 2010. 12:47.16 Sam Shirazi Interesting election for sure. I don’t want to kind of talk about next steps or what happens next in this podcast because, you know, I wanted to kind of just mainly talk about the election results. There’s a lot to unpack. 13:00.89 Sam Shirazi A major, major caveat to this election result is the Virginia Supreme Court. Perhaps after the Republicans, some of the most unhappy people in Virginia are on the Virginia Supreme Court because they are gonna be forced to rule on this issue. 13:14.95 Sam Shirazi They clearly wanted it, not from a political standpoint, but but they were hoping, I think, from a legal standpoint that they wouldn’t have to reach the merits because if if no had won, they would just dismiss the case and say, there’s nothing for us to rule on. Now there will be something for them to rule on. They do have to reach the merits. 13:33.19 Sam Shirazi You know, we’ll see how that plays out. I think there’s going to be oral arguments. We’ll have to see what the Virginia Supreme Court does. I think they’re truly nonpartisan, so I don’t think they’re going to be putting on their partisan hat, but they’re also human beings. And I think it is going to be a tough sell to the Virginia Supreme Court to tell right now there’s over one and a half million people who voted yes in this referendum to tell the you know Virginia Supreme Court to ignore those one and a half million people. 14:00.89 Sam Shirazi on on very kind of technical legal grounds. i mean I do think there are some valid technical legal arguments that Republicans can make, but conceptually in 2025, the Virginia General Assembly, both the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia State Senate passed this thing with majorities. 14:17.94 Sam Shirazi The Democrats won in 2025. The Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia State Senate again passed this thing with with majorities. It got put on the ballot, a majority of Virginians voted for it. I mean, is the Virginia Supreme Court really going to say, actually, you know, we brushed off the Virginia constitution and this, you know, something in in there actually prevents this from going into effect? Maybe. 14:40.50 Sam Shirazi i don’t i don’t want to discount that possibility, but I do think these people are human beings and we just have to see what they’re they’re willing to do. And I think the oral argument is going to be really interesting. I’ll follow the legal stuff because I find it super interesting and I’ll keep you updated, but not a whole lot I can say now other than we’re just kind have to wait and see how that shakes out. August 4th will be a primary in Virginia. 15:41.94 Sam Shirazi really just a polarized election where, you know, the hardcore ne D’s voted yes, the hardcore no’s, hardcore Republicans voted no. You know, the independents probably slightly voted no, if I had to guess, but not overwhelmingly. And that’s why yes was able to get the win. You know, I’ll continue to unpack all this stuff up in my next episode and i will continue the podcast focusing on Virginia. As I mentioned, it’s going to be one election after another in Virginia. 16:09.19 Sam Shirazi I think, frankly, the primaries, if the new maps go into effect, I think the primary is going to be more interesting than general election. So that’ll be something to keep an eye on. But anyways, always fun times in Virginia elections. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I get good feedback on the podcast, get good feedback on my social media posts. I really appreciate everyone. 16:30.71 Sam Shirazi You know, my goal is to try to inform people. I try to be as objective as possible. Sometimes I give you my hot takes, but, you know, I’m not... My main goal really is education and to give people a sense of what’s going on without too much spin. And I hope people you know feel that’s what I’m doing because I don’t really want to you know increase the partisanship because there’s so much partisanship as as there already is in in this country and and in Virginia. My goal is everyone can listen and get get something out of these podcasts. 16:56.98 Sam Shirazi So again, thanks everyone who’s been listening. i will continue doing it. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com [https://samshirazi.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]