In This Story
More than 70 students, faculty, staff, and community members assembled in George Mason University’s Fuse at Mason Square on Monday, November 17, for a Pizza and Perspectives discussion addressing the results of the November 4 Virginia state and local elections.
Schar School of Policy and Government Distinguished Visiting Professor and former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) and Professor of Practice David Ramadan, twice elected to the Virginia statehouse as a Republican delegate, took the Fuse at Mason Square stage in a conversation moderated by Assistant Professor Shea Holman Kilian, director of the Schar School’s Jurisprudence Learning Community.
Below are highlights from the 90-minute discussion and question-and-answer session with the audience.
On The Biggest Election Headline
Kilian: “What do you see as the biggest headline coming out of the 2025 Virginia elections? And why does it matter beyond the Virginia elections as well?”
McAuliffe: “Clearly it was the unpopularity of Donald Trump. He was, going into the election, the most unpopular president in American history.”
Comparing the Abigail Spanberger (D) and Winsome Earle-Sears (R) Gubernatorial Campaigns
McAuliffe: “It was the perfect storm. You had a great candidate, Abigail Spanberger—pro-jobs, moderate, in the middle, former CIA non-official cover officer, plenty of money. And the Republican? You know, and I’m going to be diplomatic, she wasn’t a great candidate. Yeah, I’ll be nice. And they had no money.”
Ramadan: “The Democrats talked to people on what people wanted to hear and listened to them. It was kitchen-table issues. It was pragmatic issues. It was the cost of goods. It was education. It was a vision for the future and a real campaign. On the other side, I called it a dumpster fire, and I am being nice when I call it a dumpster fire.
“Before the entire campaign section of October, when they [focused on Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones’s texting scandal], the Republicans talked about nothing but boys in girls’ bathrooms and transgender issues. Well, in our Washington Post-Schar School poll, you had the governor up 12 points, and she came out 15. That issue [transgender policy] barely registered 3 percent for people [as a priority]. And that was their entire campaign: transgender issues and boys in girls’ bathrooms. And that dog didn’t hunt.”
On Delegate and Text Leaker Carrie Coyner Losing Her Seat
Kilian: “Was there anything that genuinely surprised you about this election?”
McAuliffe: “In the House of Delegates, nobody would have predicted a pickup of 13 seats. They wiped out people in rural communities, which really surprised me and shows the breadth. In fact, a woman, the legislator who leaked the Jay Jones text messages, she lost to her opponent. So that did her a lot of good there.”
Ramadan: “The delegate you mentioned, she has the most moderate record among Republicans in the House. And she lost by a huge margin. So, this was an extreme rebuke.”
On Popular Sentiment in the Electorate
McAuliffe: “People are angry today. They don’t like what’s going on with ICE and the immigration officials tracking people down on the streets—chasing lettuce farmers across fields with rifles. They don’t like that. And they clearly didn’t like SNAP benefits running out, and USAID funding being eliminated.
“In rural parts of our state, they’re angry because we have not sold a soybean [due to the recently imposed tariffs on China]. China is our biggest purchaser of soybeans in Virginia. As governor, I went to China. I sold soybeans; it’s a huge market. Since Trump and the tariffs have come in, not one soybean has been sold to China and our soybean farmers in Virginia are going bankrupt. So, it wasn’t just Northern Virginia and the federal shutdown, DOGE, and all that. He was impacting whole parts of our state.”
On the 2026 Midterm Elections
McAuliffe: “I think [Democrats] will win the House relatively easy next year. I think the Senate, it’s a dark map; anything’s possible, it depends on where the economy will be. I think we’re going to hit a tough patch on our economy next year. I think the tariffs that have come into place haven’t really affected the economy yet because most companies are eating them. They’re scared of Trump. If any big company goes out and says ‘Oh, I gotta pass it on to my consumers,’ he goes after them. They can only sustain that so long. I think next year, you’re going to see prices go up, and I think the economy’s really going to take a hit on that. So that will not go well for Trump.”
Ramadan: “Minority communities are going to be factor of the midterms quite a bit because of not only immigration issues. Trump is back to blaming them; they are now the lynchpin of everything. You know why the price of beef is high according to the Treasury Secretary [Scott Bessent] yesterday? The price of beef is high because the illegal immigrants are ‘bringing with them their diseased cows across the border.’ He said it on CNN and Trump reiterated that they are bringing their diseased cows across the border and that has contaminated our earth.”
On the Senate Bill to Reopen the Government
McAuliffe: “You know, the Democrats, and I wish they didn’t cave, but they caved. But you know, [health care premiums] is what the government shutdown was all about. ACA premiums are skyrocketing. So, tens of millions of people today, as we sit here today, have gotten notices about their premiums going up as high as 117 percent. At the same time, groceries are high.”
On The Government Shutdown’s Impact on Voter Behavior
Kilian: “How have you seen the government shutdown shaping political sentiment and voter priorities at the state and local levels as well?”
Ramadan: “I’ll give you the example of my family. You have 15 Ramadan votes. A third of my family are Democrats, a third Republicans, and a third Independents. We have three federal employees in the family and three or four that are affected because they’re contractors. So that’s just a perfect example of the average Northern Virginian affected by that [the government shutdown]. All 15 members voted Democratic this year.”
On Gubernatorial Titles
McAuliffe: “You know, the Governor of Virginia is one of the only governors in the nation who holds the title His Excellency. I’m a kid from Syracuse, New York, who grew up with nothing. I’m not the King of England. It was the funniest damn thing being called that.”
Ramadan: “I still enjoy calling you His Excellency. I always will.”
Kilian: “And now we have Her Excellency.”
Audience: *applauds loudly*