Well, howdy there internet people, Lidsboo again.

So today we are going to talk about the Virginia General Assembly

and what's happening up there?

Because, well, it seems like a whole lot of politicians a whole lot of

incumbents they're just getting lazy they don't want to run and we're going to

talk about why that's happening, how this situation came to be, and what

it means for the next election.

As this session closes, you've got a whole bunch of people announcing their retirement

way more than normal. They've just decided they're not up to running. They don't

feel like it and they're going to pursue a different path.

This next election coming up, all 140 seats in the General Assembly will be up for grabs.

There is an expectation of a up to 20% turnover in the

assembly because things have changed. So what happened was back in 2021 there was a

bipartisan committee or commission that was in charge of redistricting. They were going to redraw all of the maps.

Well, despite it being bipartisan, they really couldn't get to the bipartisan part. They couldn't agree on anything.

So special masters got appointed. They drew up the maps and they didn't do things that politicians normally do, like

protect incumbents. The districts were just drawn. They didn't care about that.

And it led to a lot of situations where people of the same party were in the same new district now because there you have to run in the district where you live.

And they weren't as guaranteed. The incumbents weren't protected. Another way to say this is

that they weren't gerrymandered quite as much. So because of the more contested elections, a lot of people are just deciding it's not worth it.

So what does this mean for the next election? just deciding it's not worth it.

So what does this mean for the next election?

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