Bonus Episode: October Surprise in Attorney General Race

Hi Everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is a special bonus episode where we will go over an October surprise that happened in the attorney general race and just think about how that might impact the final outcome in about a month when the results start coming in for the Virginia election So to set things up, there was a story on Friday that was revealed about the Democratic nominee, Jay Jones, for attorney general.

00:26.74

Sam Shirazi

To be honest, when I released my podcast yesterday, i was not completely up to date on everything. I was trying to process it. I was trying to think through how it might impact the elections, uh, this year.

00:37.20

Sam Shirazi

Now that I’ve had some time, I saw more context. I saw kind of, you know, how it might play out and thought about how it might play out. I thought I’d give you my, uh, reaction now.

00:47.45

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, just to kind of describe what happened, uh, there was an article and reporting about a, uh, text conversation and phone conversation that, uh, Jay Jones had with, uh,

00:59.05

Sam Shirazi

a Republican delegate, Carrie Coyner. Now she is currently in a very competitive House race in the 75th House District. And the conversation was about the former Speaker of the House of Delegates, Todd Gilbert. And I’m not going to go over the actual conversation.

01:14.60

Sam Shirazi

You can look it up. It’s inappropriate and shouldn’t have happened. And Jay Jones himself would say that he has personally apologized. He has reached out to the former Speaker and apologized to him and his family and took responsibility for his actions and is trying to, you know,

01:33.99

Sam Shirazi

make this right and as much as he can, because obviously he can’t take back what he did. So long story short, the story came out. Republicans were obviously upset at what they saw, and they were trying to you know make this an issue in the campaign. And I think it’s one of those things where we quite don’t know how it’s going to play out, because something like exactly like this has not happened before in Virginia Attorney General’s race.

01:59.16

Sam Shirazi

And so we have to kind of think through, OK, what is going to happen? And I do think the Virginia Republicans now think that they have an opportunity to potentially win the attorney general’s race, even if they are realistic about the governor’s race, given the lead that Spanberger has had in some of these recent polls. I think they’re realistic about what’s going on with the governor’s race. But they think, OK, at least maybe the attorney general race can be salvaged and Jason Miyares might be able to win reelection.

02:26.57

Sam Shirazi

And I wanted to kind of objectively think that through looking back at the last 20 years of Virginia elections. And the reason I wanted to do that is because, you know, without polling, and we’re probably not going to get polling on this race for a couple weeks because it takes a while for this story to reach the voters, and then we have to gauge how the voters are reacting to it. So we’re not going to have any sort of sense for a couple weeks.

02:49.07

Sam Shirazi

But I wanted to kind of look back at the past 20 years of Virginia elections. And I’ve talked about this before. The 2005 Virginia election, I would say, was the first basically nationalized Virginia election because President Bush came to campaign.

03:01.70

Sam Shirazi

That didn’t really work out for the Republicans. The Democrats were trying to make this referendum in 2005 on President Bush. So I kind of start the modern Virginia elections in 2005. And so that year, Tim Kaine won the governor’s race by about six points.

03:18.37

Sam Shirazi

But for attorney general, Bob McDonnell was able to win the attorney joe general race in a really, really close squeaker that went to a recount, but he was barely able to pull it off. where he was able to beat Creigh Deeds.

03:30.17

Sam Shirazi

So that was an example where the attorney general candidate was able to overperform the top of the ticket and win that race. But every election since then, the party that’s won the governor’s race has also won the attorney general’s race.

03:44.82

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I think what’s interesting is every single election, the party that loses the governor’s race, they actually do better in the attorney general’s race. So they overperform in the attorney general general’s race. It’s just not by that much.

03:55.79

Sam Shirazi

And typically since 2009, the overperformance has only been about 2% by the party that loses. So you do see ticket splitting between the governor and attorney general race, but it’s only 2%.

04:07.32

Sam Shirazi

Now, I think the Republicans are going to say, well, this year is going to be different because of what happened in this story. I think there are a few examples that we can think about in terms of why might it be different and and why might it not be different. And so the the best example I think I can use is 2009. So 2009, Bob McDonnell ran for governor and he got a big landslide when he won by about 17 points.

04:30.63

Sam Shirazi

points He ran a smart campaign. He was more pragmatic in that race and really ran race focused on the economy. And I think that really paid off and he got a big landslide.

04:41.46

Sam Shirazi

The attorney general race in 2009, Ken Cucullinelli was the Republican nominee. I mean, frankly, he was not as strong a candidate as Bob McDonnell. He was more ideological. And, you know, in theory, he was he’s not a he was a weaker candidate, but he only underperformed McDonald by about 2%, and he won by about 15%.

05:02.40

Sam Shirazi

So, again, we saw that there wasn’t much ticket splitting. People weren’t really thinking about the individual candidates in 2009. They were just voting straight ticket.

05:12.52

Sam Shirazi

We can also think So just like now, there’s an incumbent attorney general trying to run for re-election. 2021, Mark Herring was trying to run for re-election against the current incumbent, Jason Miyares. Jason Miyares won that race.

05:25.24

Sam Shirazi

And Youngkin at the top of the ticket won by about 2%, and Meares won by about 1%. So there was just 1% of ticket splitting in the 2021 attorney general race, even though Youngkin was able to win.

05:37.59

Sam Shirazi

And even though Herring was an incumbent. And so that’s two attorney general races where they’re kind of similar to what’s going on right now, but there’s only 2% or 1% 2% ticket splitting.

05:50.47

Sam Shirazi

And then you could say, well, this is different. There’s a different level of a story here that is a different caliber of a race than those races. So maybe we can look to 2013. So 2013 for the attorney general, there was some ticket splitting, but not that much. I think it was about two and a half percent.

06:10.18

Sam Shirazi

But for Lieutenant Governor, there was a lot of ticket splitting. And what happened was for the governor’s race, Terry McAuliffe was able to win by about 3%. But for the lieutenant governor’s race, Ralph Northam got a big win, almost an 11% win.

06:25.02

Sam Shirazi

So Northam basically overperformed the top of the ticket by 8%. And the reason for that, E.W. Jackson was the Republican nominee. He had said a lot of things that were pretty controversial in the past, and the Democrats were able to use that against him. And so you saw this huge overperformance by Northam.

06:41.45

Sam Shirazi

But even then, I mean, that was 8%. That’s been like the most overperformance that anyone’s gotten since 2005, and it was 8%.

06:49.64

Sam Shirazi

One thing that caught my mind was in in the summer during one of these panic pieces, the Republican House leader, Terry Kilgore, he talked about how this year in Virginia could be like 2001. And the reason he said it could be like 2001, it’s because...

07:03.20

Sam Shirazi

it’s because In 2001, his brother Jerry Kilgore was able to win the Virginia Attorney general worked attorney General’s race, even though Mark Warner won at the top of the ticket. And the reason he was able to do that is he just got a lot of ticket splitting. It was like a crazy amount of ticket splitting. So Jerry Kilgore got 60% of the vote compared to 40% for Donald MacHean, who was later a congressman.

07:27.63

Sam Shirazi

And so... That was a 25% overperformance. And I think maybe Terry Kilgore thinks this year there’s going to double digit overperformance. I think the problem there, 2001 specifically, was right after 9-11.

07:40.69

Sam Shirazi

So there was just a lot of different vibes in politics at that time. And there was just less partisanship. So I think you could imagine a 25% overperformance in 2001.

07:51.50

Sam Shirazi

It is very hard to imagine that in 2025. And realistically, i don’t think the Republicans are going to think they’re going to get 25% overperformance. But I think the Republican argument is like, look, even if Spanberger gets like a really good night and she wins by 10%, that’s still within the range where we could potentially win the attorney general’s

08:08.59

Sam Shirazi

And the reason they think that is, you know, they’re trying to talk about the story a lot. And, you know, I get it. The facts aren’t great. And obviously it’s something that the Republicans can use against Jay Jones.

08:19.68

Sam Shirazi

But I’m also trying to think critically, one, how many voters are actually going to hear this story? And even if it reaches a good amount of voters, like how many of them are actually going to switch their votes?

08:30.50

Sam Shirazi

Because, as I mentioned, the Virginia elections have just become referendums on the president. And when you are doing a referendum, you’re trying to send a message. So you’re either sending a message, I like the incumbent president, or you’re sending a message, I don’t like the incumbent president.

08:44.79

Sam Shirazi

And when you’re doing that, you’re just doing that straight down the ticket. You’re not thinking, you’re just saying, I don’t like the president or I like the president. I’m going with his party straight down the ticket. And so I do think the Virginia Republicans are hoping that a certain amount of voters will say, okay, I will send a message by voting for Spanberger, but maybe down the ticket for attorney general, I’ll vote for Miyares.

09:06.67

Sam Shirazi

And you know we’ll just have to wait and see. There’s really no way of knowing if that’s going to happen or not. I would just say that voters, i don’t I just don’t know if that’s kind of the trend in Virginia elections.

09:17.59

Sam Shirazi

And even if you look back at 2013, voters, they just... you know voters they just gave Northam a big overperformance, that was 8%. And that was, 2013 was a different environment, less partisanship. I would say during the Trump era, the partisanship has really ramped up. So, you know, 2021, we were, we almost had no ticket splitting. It was basically 1% ticket splitting in 2021, just because the Trump era, people are so partisan.

09:44.36

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I get that this story will probably be more than 1%, but, you You know, is it 5%? I mean, I’m having a hard time thinking it’s going to come up to 10%.

09:55.54

Sam Shirazi

You know, that’s just my personal opinion, but I don’t want to go with my personal opinion. I want to wait for polling. And I want to see, you know, is there any sort of movement at the attorney general spot of of the ticket?

10:06.31

Sam Shirazi

And again, the the issue is it’s going to probably take before, you know, the the story gets out, it gets processed and we get new polling. It’s going to be like two weeks. So it’s just got a huge lag before we actually find out what’s going on.

10:19.07

Sam Shirazi

And I just wanted to flag a couple other things before we end this podcast. you know, one of them is the fact that 10% of voters have already voted. There’s over 350,000 votes cast in early voting already.

10:32.29

Sam Shirazi

And I think we’ll probably get around 3.5 million total turnout. And typically the people who voted at the beginning are the hardcore partisans. So it’s a little bit of an open question whether that many votes would have been switched anyways. But regardless, you got 10% of the people off the board. So you have 90% of the people who are left.

10:48.56

Sam Shirazi

And then of those 90%, I mean, how many are they going to hear this story? Is it going to be... 50%? Is it going to be 75%? it going to be 25%? I mean, we really don’t know. And even if they hear the story, how many people are going to say, okay, I’m going to switch my vote from governor and attorney general because of the story.

11:05.55

Sam Shirazi

You know, it’s really unknown. And, you know, the one thing i will say, you know, I understand the Republicans want to to going talk about this story and I get it. I mean, that’s what a party would do in this situation.

11:20.49

Sam Shirazi

But I’m also mindful of what happened in late August with the sign in Arlington. I mean, obviously that sign was also inappropriate and it was a story for a few days. But at the end of the day, I mean, voters, they don’t necessarily want to spend an entire campaign talking about, you know, one issue or one story.

11:37.63

Sam Shirazi

They’re concerned about their lives. They’re concerned about, you know, their jobs, putting food on the table, their health care. I mean, those ultimately are the things that voters fundamentally care about. I mean, that’s the point of the elections is more about those issues. And so...

11:53.64

Sam Shirazi

To the extent the Republicans want to talk about this, I get it. And, you know, it makes sense. I just I wonder how long this can be sustained, because I think at some point voters are going to say, like, all right, we understand what happened with this story. But I’m also have questions about health care or I have questions about taxes or I have questions about these other things.

12:15.40

Sam Shirazi

And if the entire election becomes about this, at least the Republicans try to make the entire election about this, I don’t know if the voters are going to go there. And last podcast yesterday, I talked about the trans issue.

12:27.88

Sam Shirazi

You know, the Republicans were trying to basically make this a referendum on the trans issue. And I think they’ve basically come to the conclusion that’s not going to happen because the voters don’t want to have that conversation. It’s just not the top issue on their minds. The top issue is primarily the economy.

12:42.87

Sam Shirazi

And so while the story with Jay Jones, I understand it’s a serious story and it’s it’s worth covering. I also understand that voters are not going to want to spend the and next month of the campaign talking about it, especially when there’s a shutdown going on in D.C.

12:58.29

Sam Shirazi

It’s probably affecting some of their jobs. They’re probably worried about some of these Medicaid cuts that are coming out of D.C. potential cuts to Obamacare subsidies.

13:08.56

Sam Shirazi

I mean, these are things they’re hearing about. And frankly, i mean, it’s probably more on voters’ minds than some of these other issues that, you know, for individual candidates, while they matter, ultimately voters decide on the party and the brand and,

13:26.12

Sam Shirazi

You’re either on team red or team blue. And I think partisanship is become very powerful. and And I think it’s an important reminder not to underestimate partisanship. I am trying to keep an open mind.

13:37.07

Sam Shirazi

I don’t want to assume things one way or another. i think there’s a lot of jumping to conclusions when a story like this happens.

13:44.96

Sam Shirazi

I do think there’s a tendency among the political class to focus on certain issues because, You know, it’s just what everyone’s talking about. But in the real world, there are other things going on that perhaps for the average voter is more important because they are not living and breathing politics. They are not following the nuances of all these stories. They’re mainly just trying to get their kids to school. They’re trying to go to work.

14:08.79

Sam Shirazi

They’re trying to put food on the table. i mean those are so typically things that the voters are thinking about more. And so all that’s to say is, like, I don’t want to discount the story. I don’t I understand.

14:20.95

Sam Shirazi

It’s important. We’re going to have a debate on Thursday. I think that’s going to be really interesting. I’m sure this will come up during the debate for the governor candidates.

14:27.27

Sam Shirazi

They’re going to be asked about it. But I also don’t think it’s going to be the entire debate. So we just have to kind of wait and see how this plays out. I’m trying to keep an open mind. I’m really curious to see what polling is going to say in a couple of weeks. I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to go one way or another. I’m just kind of thinking this through and trying to give an objective assessment of where the story might head.

14:48.33

Sam Shirazi

And yeah, so, I mean, we’ll see. I’ll obviously update it. There’s a lot going on, both nationally and in Virginia, other than the story. But for the past couple days, it’s been dominating the news. So I did want to do this podcast about it. And yeah, I mean, I appreciate, I mean, the thing with this Virginia election, there’s a lot, lot of surprises, especially here at the end. And I haven’t even covered some of the other surprises that have have happened because there’s not even been enough time. So,

15:16.08

Sam Shirazi

I’ll keep everyone updated as best I can. i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fall Out. 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