IN THE NEWS:

1. Earlier this year, Democrat Abigail Spanberger seemed to have cleared the field of opposition among Democrats, though Congressman Bobby Scott may still throw his hat into the ring. Last week, Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears was able to clear the field of Republican opposition, and now she stands alone as the Republican who will be running for governor. 

2. The race for attorney general is taking shape, and it’s gonna be a doozy. Incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares is unlikely to face opposition in the Republican primary, but the Democrats will have a VERY interesting primary. One of the candidates will be a founding member of the Progressive Prosecutors for Justice, Shannon Taylor, who will face former Delegate Jay Jones.

3. Virginia is named for a Queen of England, the virgin Queen Elizabeth I. Now the Queen of Virginia is suing the attorney general and the Henrico prosecutor. That’s because the skill game company that goes by that name, Queen of Virginia, is trying to stop the Republican attorney general from conducting an investigation and prevent the Henrico commonwealth’s attorney from enforcing a ban on skill games.

Former State Senator John Bell joins Michael to break down his decision to sponsor the 2021 resolution to censure then-Senator Amanda Chase after she repeated baseless election fraud claims and spoke in support of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

IN THE NEWS:

1. Freshman House Delegate Kannan Srinivasan will be the Democrat on the ballot in the January 7 special election to fill the seat vacated by Congressman-elect Suhas Subramanyam. Loudoun Democrats chose him as the party’s nominee over the weekend in an election that will determine which party controls the Senate. Republicans also selected their candidate for this seat over the weekend, Tumay Harding. She is a former teacher who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Ashburn District of the Loudoun Board of Supervisors.

2. Democrats have introduced three new amendments to Virginia's Constitution: one to protect abortion rights, another to undo the amendment prohibiting gay marriage, and the third to ditch Virginia's practice of requiring the governor to restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies. All three of those amendments would have to go through many steps before being added to the state Constitution, including being approved by voters in November 2026.

3. Former Governor Terry McAuliffe says the numbers tell a story, and it's one that's not good for Democrats. In 2020, Democrats won young people in Virginia by a margin of 23 points. This year it was only 8 points. In the last election Democrats won women by 15 points. This year it was only 9. He also says Democrats looking for a ray of hope can expect a good performance in 2025, when Virginia voters will elect a governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general -- plus all 100 seats of the House of Delegates.

Pod Virginia all-star Sam Shirazi joins Michael to break down the special elections happening in the next few weeks (filling the House seats vacated by Suhas Subramanyam and John McGuire), as well as the Virginia statewide elections in 2025.

IN THE NEWS:

1. Senator Tim Kaine's margin of victory was almost double the margin of victory for Kamala Harris in Virginia, which seems to indicate some cross-party voting. 

2. The election is not over yet. Two sitting members of the state Senate were elected to Congress last week, which means at least two special elections. One of the special elections for state Senate will be in Northern Virginia, where Delegate Kannan Srinivasan is expected to face Buta Biberaj, a former Progressive Prosecutor for Justice. The other Senate special election will be in the suburbs and exurbs between Richmond and Charlottesville.

3. There's no place in Northern Virginia where the influence of the Asian community is reflected more than state Senate District 32. That’s the seat in Loudoun County that will soon be vacated by Congressman-elect Suhas Subramanyam. The district has a population that is more than 30 percent Asian.

Tyler Englander, Cameron Thompson, and Brad Kutner join Michael and Lauren to react to the 2024 election results--Kamala Harris' razor-thin victory in the state, Tim Kaine's victory, and the possibilities for Republican leaders to be shuffled into the upcoming Trump administration as we already look toward the 2025 gubernatorial election.

IN THE NEWS:

1. Donald Trump closed out his campaign for president in the most unlikeliest of places over the weekend, Salem Virginia in deep red Southwest Virginia. The rally featured Governor Glenn Youngkin and the entire Republican establishment, including Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earl Sears finally endorsing the former Republican president.

2. 2006 was Governor Tim Kaine's first General Assembly session in the Executive Mansion, and at the time lawmakers were focused on a budget battle and a transportation package. But there was one bill that required the DMV to produce a list of people who should be stricken from the list of eligible voters--which some say was a reaction to the Motor Voter Law. 
   Campaigns tend to have political ads that celebrate their candidates or maybe attack an opponent. But those are nothing like a PAC attack, which often go for the jugular -- attacking a candidate for having a fake family or failing to show up for meetings. 

Pod Virginia all-star Sam Shirazi returns to break down next week's election: where does Virginia fall in the race for the presidency? What about all of the competitive downballot races? And just how many millions are getting spent on political ads that blanket the airwaves?

1. During a dramatic hearing in federal court last week, a lawyer representing the governor said he believes some of the people whose voter registration was canceled are noncitizens. Judge Patricia Giles wasn’t having it. She stopped him and said  she wasn't dealing with beliefs, she was dealing with evidence.

2. In the 1890s, election after election was contested with allegations of voter fraud and stuffing the ballot box. That led to a Jim Crow Constitution that disenfranchised Black voters as well as some poor whites; some experts say the voter purge that happened 120 years ago offers lessons for today.

3. If Democrats are going to take control of the House of Representatives, they’re going to need seats like the Second Congressional District in Virginia Beach. And a new poll from the Wason Center shows the lead that Republican incumbent Jen Kiggans used to have over challenger Missy Cotter Smasal has evaporated. 

This week, The Washington Post's Laura Vozzella and Greg Schneider join Michael to explain the purges of Virginia's voter rolls. They start with Governor Youngkin's Executive Order 35, which called for registrars to report voter roll changes on a daily basis, rather than the monthly basis required by law.

They also discuss the lack of evidence for widespread voter fraud in Virginia, as well as the design of the DMV form that makes it easy for Virginia citizens to accidentally mark themselves as non-citizens and set off a process that might see them kicked off the rolls.

IN THE NEWS:

1. The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Virginia over its purging of the voter rolls. The lawsuit alleges the Commonwealth is violating a federal law -- the National Voter Registration Act -- by systematically removing potential non-citizens from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election -- something banned by what's called the "Quiet Period Provision".

2. Two Republican members of the Waynesboro Board of Elections have filed a suit challenging how Virginia's votes are counted and are threatening that they won't certify the results of the November 5th election.

3. The Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program (VMSDEP) story is reaching its next chapter. JLARC put out its findings earlier this month with its recommendations for funding the troubled program, but they reminder lawmakers that they're only options--the final decisions rest with legislators themselves.

This week, Michael is joined by the University of Richmond's Associate Professor of Leadership Studies, Dr. Julian Hayter, to discuss the historic 1989 election of Virginia's first Black governor, Doug Wilder--including context, aftermath, and lasting legacy. Hayter wrote the chapter on Wilder's election for the The New Dominion: The Twentieth-Century Elections That Shaped Modern Virginia.

IN THE NEWS:

1. A coalition led by the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy is advocating for peace during a tense election cycle. They're also participating in "Souls to the Polls" Sunday voting across the state.

2. Campaign finance documents compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project show political ad spending in favor of incumbent United States Senator Tim Kaine is outpacing ads in favor of Republican challenger Hung Cao by more than 16 to one. That’s more than $3 million in favor of the Democrat compared to $200,000 in favor of the Republican.

3. According to a recent report, Northern Virginia is seeing stagnant wages, flat salaries and rising unemployment. Virginia is often mentioned as a great place to do business, but experts say that masks the reality that Northern Virginia is falling behind other major metro areas across the country.

This week, author Kenneth C. Davis (of the Don't Know Much About history books) joins Michael to break down 52 great works of short nonfiction that span from the beginning of history to the modern era--and what they say about history, culture, and humanity.

The World in Books on Amazon

IN THE NEWS:

1. On question after question in a televised debate last week, Republican Senate candidate Hung Cao responded by mentioning undocumented immigrants. He also tried to claim that Kaine is a feckless senator based on the number of bills he sponsored that became law--a rate that beats most other sitting senators, including VP candidate JD Vance.

2. Queen of Virginia is the name of a game that looks similar to a slot machine that can be found at convenience stores across Virginia. Some of them were recently modified so they no longer accept cash, although even those machines are illegal according to a memo from Attorney General Jason Miyares. Governor Glenn Youngkin says reaching a deal to legalize them has become a tall mountain to climb.

3. According to the latest quarterly report from the FBI, crime rates for the second quarter of this year are down in every category. Violent crime is down 10 percent; robbery is down 14 percent. And murder is down 23 percent. Remember those numbers when political candidates are trying to sell the narrative of a crime wave.

At the Watercooler:

• Is Virginia in play after all for the Presidential election

• One of the Progressive Prosecutors for Justice is trash-talking an Alexandria judge for failing to impose a harsher sentence. What's going on?

This week, Michael is joined by Ben Tribbett, Founder of Pocket Aces Consulting, and former state Delegate David Ramadan to break down the political ads for Virginia races in the upcoming election. What are the messages that candidates are putting out, and how effective will they be?

IN THE NEWS:

1. Broadcast TV ads once held such a significant place in American politics that candidates would raise millions of dollars to flood the airwaves in an effort to get elected. Now a significant chunk of that is moving online.

2. Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin is taking credit for record job growth in Virginia. That's despite what he calls "inflationary headwinds from Washington." 

3. Ask Susanna Gibson about consent. She's got a lot of thoughts because last year a Republican operative shared nonconsensual images of her that upended her campaign for the House of Delegates. Now she's working with a bipartisan coalition to do something about it, and she says draft legislation now circulating among lawmakers would have given her some protection.

With a whole bunch of competitive races in Virginia this way, we narrow things down to the very exciting race for Richmond's mayor. The winning candidate will need to win 5 of the city's 9 districts to avoid a runoff. So who's on the ticket? Michael sits down with The Richmonder's Graham Moomaw to break it all down.

IN THE NEWS:

1. Today is election day in Virginia--and so are the next 45 days. And despite Republican efforts to shorten or eliminate early voting and ballot dropboxes, these new programs were voted on before the pandemic ever began.

2. Skill games continue to be hotly-debated in Virginia, and now everal of these machines are back up and running in Henrico County. These machines operate in a gray area of state law, since a cashier or bartender acts as a middleman for the money, and a company is making full use of the legal muddiness.

3. Governor Glenn Youngkin recently got into the politics over banning books in school districts--a practice which he seemed to distance from himself, despite his parents'r-rights rhetoric and public questions about books like Beloved.

Early voting in Virginia begins tomorrow! And this week, Pod Virginia favorite Sam Shirazi brings us an update on the national, statewide, and local elections happening around Virginia from now through November.