The Daily Signal - Inside Virginia’s 2025 Race: John Reid on Lessons, Losses, and What Comes Next

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Losses, and What Comes Next So, we’ve spoken to party leaders on both sides of the issue of the election results in Virginia last month. Today we speak to one of the candidates who lived it. We sit down with former Ronald Reagan and George Allen aide John Reid as he looks to the future but also shares his insights into what the 2025 statewide race was like. Keep Up With The Daily Signal   Sign up for our email newsletters:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.dailysignal.com/email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠     Subscribe to our other shows:    The Tony Kinnett Cast: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2284199939⁠ The Signal Sitdown: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2026390376⁠   Problematic Women:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL7765680741⁠   Victor Davis Hanson: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9809784327⁠     Follow The Daily Signal:    X:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=DailySignal⁠ Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Truth Social:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of The Daily Signal podcast. I'm your host, Joe Thomas, Virginia correspondent for The Daily Signal. Before we dive into today's interview, I want to thank you for tuning in today. If you're a first-time listener, The Daily Signal, brings you fact-based reporting and conservative commentary on politics, policy, and culture. and I hope you join our band of regular listeners to our podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and also take a moment to rate and review us wherever you get your podcast. You can find additional content at DailySignal.com. Now, let's get started with today's conversation right after this.

John Reed, who last we spoke was heading into the polling places on Election Day in his quest to become lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. and I know that most people are just seeing the headlines that it was a sweep by the other party, but what you don't see is with about a buck 380 in his campaign conference, John Reed outperformed all the other people on the ticket, proving that if you work your butt off, you know, good things and people, you will move the rock there a little bit, and he's back on the newsmakers with us because now it's time for Act 2 or 4 or 16. I'm not sure how many acts he's had before his run for lieutenant governor.

But John, welcome back. How are you doing, my friend? I'm hanging in there. I'll tell you, get ready for this podcast, which will start in January, and hoping that that will be successful. You know, during the campaign, I went and did every media appearance that I could possibly do, including some of these national podcasters. And I walked into one guy's studio, which was nicer that anything I could.

was ever in when I was in broadcast media with these big multinational companies. And I then looked up on the internet, the guy pulled in $20 million last year. And I thought, I'm doing something wrong. I would love to be preparing for an inauguration as lieutenant governor. But if I could figure out how to make the podcast thing work, and I don't need $20 million, if I can come up with the fraction of that, I might be placated a little bit. Well, you know, it is an interesting world because there are several wildly successful podcasts. And I want to talk about messaging with you because you've been in that world, not just in your radio broadcasting career, but before that with Ronald Reagan and George Allen as well.

But the podcast world so fascinates me because there are two or three just wildly successful, lucrative opportunities, and then my inbox gets filled with press people or friends of friends who are like, hey, could you talk to this guy? He really needs to help promote his podcast. And yet I'll still be told that radio is yesterday's way of mass communications. I'm like, I don't get it because if everyone was tuning to podcasts, then I should be calling them for interviews to help promote my little insignificant radio show. And it just doesn't seem to be that way. But God bless you, knock on wood.

What's it going to be called, John? Yeah, I've chosen the name the Reed Revolution, and that's very deliberate. You know, most revolutions when they occur bring about death, destruction, and misery for an extended period of time. I've lived in some places that were in the middle of revolutions, and I've watched people really, really suffer and live through an era of, of, of, great drama. I don't want to see us find ourselves with that in the United States. So this is actually a philosophical revolution that takes us back to solid principles and ideas that hopefully will present a society that's stable and prosperous for everybody instead of one that we're at each other's throats and possibly killing each other, which is what I'm really worried we're

headed towards. Well, you certainly listen to it in some of the rhetoric. of the people, even you were running against, you know, this was a battle, your lives depend on it, and really, unhinged, you listen to some of these folks. And when I was a kid, these would be the folks who would get a nice padded room somewhere to work out their problems in. And it's dangerous. You're right. I agree with you. It is dangerous there. Since the elections, and I'm sure my friends in New Jersey are going through the same thing. I've been asked by several folks to help with groups that are trying to come up with solutions to the problem. And I'm not going to say I know for sure, but I think I get one of the places. And I was actually moderating a panel

with a state senator and a delegate yesterday. And the concept of messaging came up. They brought it up. I had been asked about it several other times prior to that, that the left and this affordability message, which is a con job, the president's right, because what they're talking about is either supply side or purchase side subsidy. It's not going to actually make things affordable. It's just going to make you not notice how inaffordable it is if you qualify. was a better message than some of the conceptual deep things, defensive life, you know, small business reform, you know, lower taxes, kind of things that the right was running on. Did you sense that as your campaign was going on? Because you were really the king of the grassroots.

You were at the opening of every envelope. I've never lived in a time where people weren't worried about prices. I'm 55 years old in January. I don't, everyone has always been worried about costs. I do think that the Democrats seized on that. It's ironic that it would be coming out of four years of Joe Biden and Democrats driving prices up the bad policies they implemented on energy,

which are about to cause us to have skyrocketing energy prices. If you're unhappy about your energy bill, now, your electric bill now, just get ready for what it's going to look like when Abigail and the Democrats forces to rejoin all of these crazy arrangements, which will make Virginia less independent. So I do think that they seized on something that they knew they could touch on a raw nerve for everybody that constantly exists. And, you know, we do not have a media that is going to play objective analyst on these issues, they're going to find and amplify every price that has increased inflation was real under Joe Biden. It's certainly tamped down

under Donald Trump. So I think, you know, they seized on something that people would engage with and that the media voluntarily amplifies their message. And our top of the ticket you know winsome was very thoughtful about the trans issue and parents rights and parents matters

which worked for glen unken largely and then the media shut that down and that was mocked and ridiculed and it probably needed to be a combination of economic issues

because as the Democrats taught us. It's the economy stupid. And whenever you take your eye off of that, you do find yourself in a difficult situation. So I think the messaging was important. I do think that the anti-trans message is a legitimate one. And a lot of people blow it off until somebody shows up in their school or their kid's classroom or it impacts them and their family. And they find out that the kids, is going to be taken to the children's hospital and have their, you know, breasts removed or their testicles cut off, and suddenly it becomes a real issue. And there were a lot of people who were critical of me for using that language, which I just used. But that is reality, and we need to

start facing reality. Well, like you said, John Reed is on with us. The Reed Revolution is his new podcast getting ready to launch. Aid to Camp to Ronald Reagan and George Allen and I said this in pre-selling your visit, if Tom Perriello can have a political comeback, John Reed certainly could. What is the thought of that? Would you ever do it again? Or was it just something you can put in the memoir?

I tried this and it didn't work out because there's a lot of folks who saw how you conducted your campaign without money, without support, with headwinds from within your own political, ideology and yet you still outperformed, you know, anyone's expectation and even some of the other people on the ticket, is there a political comeback? Like I said, if Tom Perriello can come back, so can John Reed, I think. But what are you thinking? Well, we'll see. I enjoy the actual campaigning and meeting people and listening to people and hearing about the issues that

concern them on a personal level. And as an individual, it's one of the things that's always drawn me to politics and government is how can we figure out how to solve problems. Maybe the best plan is to get out of the way and let people solve their own problems. Hello. I would consider doing it again if it was the right situation. I mean, it was exhausting. It was miserable.

The backstabbing was unbelievable, much worse than I ever expected. I am, you know, thankful for all the wonderful Republicans who did come out and vote for me. I hope even the people who didn't like me, for whatever reason, they didn't know me, or they, you know, I try to be very candid that I'm a gay man, but I'm a conservative, and I don't know that any, let me tell you something. There's nobody in the Commonwealth of Virginia who can beat me when it comes to conservative bonafides. If you decided to stay home, seriously, I've had a lady the other day who came up and told me that I shouldn't run. And I, you know, I'm a polite man. I try to always be polite to people even when they're rude to me. And I said, well, tell me why.

And she said, because we don't need a homosexual in any elected office. And I said, well, ma'am, you have a wonderful opportunity now. You helped make sure that there wouldn't be a gay guy who supported Ronald Reagan and George Allen and George Bush. Donald Trump, you made sure that person wouldn't be an office. So now you'll be ruled by radical Islamic pro-Hamas, anti-American woman like Ghazalah Hashmi. I hope you enjoy that. You made that choice now. And boy, she was furious, but I'm telling her the truth to her face.

That's probably made her furious. So let me ask you about that because as I paraphrased President Kennedy in a column I wrote for the Daily Signal, you know, victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan, but defeat has an awful lot of cousins who will tell you what went wrong, it appears. And so there's everybody's got a, there's an expression about everybody has an opinion just like some other part of their body. But there has been the argument that this is dysfunction within the Republican Party, that the consultants, run the committee that runs the party. Scott Pio from Loudoun County has brought that up. I've had some prickly conversations between both him and Mark Peek. Mark Peake has stepped down as chair, which is what Pio wanted, but there's debate as to what comes next. And I think nationally, this is also a discussion, what happens when California redistricts or Illinois redistricts? What happens in Texas when they redistrict. I made the mistake of being Pollyannish about Virginia's redistricting. I said,

you know, they're taking reliably 20% Democrat positive districts and stretching them so far out that they're only two or maybe three percent majorities. We can win those. And people like, oh, that'll never happen. We're never going to see another Republican again. And they love the defeatism of it. But to me, what needs to change does Scott Pio have a point about the state central committee and its power? What in your view, after going through this crucible, needs to change? Well, I think there are some structural issues here. You know, the example that I've used that I think people will get is that the modern Democrats in Virginia, with all the money that they have in the state and all the money that they have been

successful at bringing into Virginia from interested parties out of. state, they've created an Amazon prime voter situation. And I don't want to be too ugly about it, but it does appear to me that we're still with the Wells Fargo wagon. You know, we're not firing on all cylinders. We don't have a full-time staff that is aggressive and experienced that in both messaging and get out the vote. And I would ask everybody, you know, if you send a $100 check every month to a political organization, whether it's pro-gun or whether it's a pro-family or ask them what they actually did in the last six months to secure votes for Republicans. And here's the other thing. We all have to be politically mature. I have voted for a lot of people over the years

that I didn't love, you know, who weren't perfect candidates that matched up my personality or were different from me on one or two issues. And conservatives in Virginia and elsewhere really do need to recognize what Ronald Reagan said in the 80s. If somebody is your 70% friend, they are not your enemy. You have got to figure out a way to recognize that Jesus is not on the ballot. The perfect person, the perfect candidate is not on the ballot. Do you want to save Virginia from the leftist movement? It may be too late now.

I'm not, I mean, I hope not, but it may be too late. If you get, you've got the, you've got, you're going to have Abigail Spamberger, a Democrat, House of Delegates, and a Democrat Senate. No Republican lieutenant governor slow things down or stop the worst ideas with a tiebreaker. We're going to get rolled here in the next 90 days, and it's going to be bad. And hopefully that will sober everybody up to say, this is a battle of ideas, and I better get with people who are leaving remotely connected to the things I believe if I want to save Virginia. And I'm hoping that people will engage there and that we will find the money to put together the infrastructure across the Commonwealth to make sure that we get to get out. the vote plans going, that we could do the digital advertising, the text messaging, the things that you have to do if you want to beat these Democrats who have really turned it into a science.

Oh, yeah. It's no longer the volunteer era. But one of the things, and I look at this and I see opportunities rather than challenges, and one of them, and we were talking about this in this seminar, I was moderating yesterday, is, you know, Virginia Senate is still very close. you know 2119 where are the old chap petersons and and i was told by a member of the senate now they don't exist anymore everyone has to march in line with the party where then then should we not be reaching out to a pro business pro free market pro free speech uh democrat and saying

let's look at let's look for those 70% issues where we all agree on things like a chap peterson who could probably still win his district in northern Virginia? You could try, but I will tell you from what I have heard, the ex-con drug dealer who runs the House of Delegates now, Don Scott, and everybody should always remember that. You are not dealing with someone that we just disagree with. We're dealing with an ex-drug dealer who is now the Speaker of the House of Delegates of Virginia. The Democrats have deliberately chosen thugs to run the state of Virginia, and they're going to run it like street thugs, like the mob, and that's what they're doing.

Well, no, I'm not talking about, you know, and you misunderstand, and I think, you know, I apologies for misunderstanding, you know, you misunderstood what I was saying, John, is I wasn't talking about, you know, winning over members of the Democrat party, but people who are out there who would nominally say, oh, I vote Democrat because they remember the days of. you know, Tim Cain, the governor, not Tim Cain, the ideologue senator, and bring them, you know, bring that's what I tried to do. And that's, that's what I tried to do. I mean, I was very measured in my rhetoric and language, you know, I tried to be open, you remember I went and spoke and shook hands with Abigail Spanberger on three different occasions. Oh, yeah. So tell us. I tried to show the old fashion, I'll stand in front of the voting place and shake hands with people. The other candidates who were running statewide didn't do that. They didn't stand for hours and hours and hours, shaking hands and talking to people at the polls.

That's not what other people did. I decided I would do that work. And I was told in no uncertain terms to F off to my face by 50-year-old women who said they would never vote for a Republican. I mean, we got a big problem with the polarization in our society. And, of course, you know, some of these people are very. ill-behaved and angry and I try to hold my temper and not respond in kind. But it, it, the society is really polarized and it's a problem going forward. Well, I think it's the fruit of one political party saying that if the other party wins, you're going to lose all your stuff,

because that's what you're seeing is the people behaving like they're in defense mode, uh, over, you know, something or another. Um, you know, and I think I, and I hear something in what you were saying there, John, and I'm curious about it because what you're saying makes a lot of sense and in fact that it's not the issue per se. It's how you say it. Even inflation, I was talking to a friend and he said, yeah, inflation is important, but things costing too much is much more of an understandable concept and that we were unfortunately too highbrow about it. We were talking about inflation while they were talking about in affordability. And though they meant the same thing, it allowed them to steal the playing field away from the fact that the cause of all those

inaffordabilities was Joe Biden. Does that make any sense to you, John? Yeah, I think we do have to make the argument accessible and, you know, keep it from being a Wall Street Journal editorial board commentary situation and do make it very accessible to the average, to the average voter. I think that's a legitimate criticism. And, you know, once again, you go back to how are most people going to receive the message? The vast majority of people are going to catch a headline in a printed newspaper when they run into 7-Eleven for a coffee or for a lunch. They're going to hear a quick story on the evening news, and we have largely lost those venues that, you know, the messages that we're trying to share are not going to be shared there. And that's a real problem.

And when you look at the numbers from November, you know, a lot of our folks stayed home. Right. That was going to say, yeah, the turnout becomes really frustrating. Yeah, it becomes the amplifier to that, where if one or two percent buys what they see in the headlines, and one or two percent of conservatives stay home, well, that's your recipe right there. So tell us what the podcast is going to be all about. Is it going to be the news of the day or is it going to be, you know, arts and entertainment? What does John Reed want the podcast to be about?

It'll be one hour a day and I've got it divided up into three segments. You know, one of the things that was most successful for me when I was on the big flame thrower radio station in Richmond was a commentary. So there'll be three segments, a 20-minute commentary segment about whatever's going on that day. I think people gravitated to me when I was on broadcast television and radio, so that'll be included, a 20-minute interview. And then I would like to include a segment that talks through some of the hot topics and headlines, whether they're cultural or political, because I think that will be interesting. Go back to my days as a television reporter. And as a producer, I actually produced a lot of local TV when I was

starting my career. And you have to go through all 100, 200 things that are happening in a community or a state and pick out what you think people will be interested in. And this is one of the things I'm doing now is, you know, remember Rush Limbaugh used to have his big stack of stuff. And the stack of stuff is important. And it is where the liberals do run the media. They look at the 100 things that you could cover on any given day, and they pick the issues that they know will emotionally move voters into their column. And I do think some of that is a very nefarious planned effort, and then some of it is just instinctive on their part.

They're not going to be worried about highbrow economic and business issues because they hate business, and they hate CEOs, and they hate. corporations, even as they use those products that are delivered to them on a regular basis, but they will be emotionally moved and motivated to cover something that is about abortion or about, you know, gay rights or women's rights that they will exploit and exaggerate those issues to try to move voters. It's a really interesting dynamic. So I'm going to try to have my two cents worth in what the issue.

issues of the day are that we're discussing. Well, Holder, you were talking about $20 million a little while ago. That's a big difference between two cents. I don't know. I might be able to sponsor you for two cents. I'm kidding. John Reed is on with this, the Reed Revolution. And is there a subtext to that title, which is, you know, the conservative world needs to

kind of, the Reagan Revolution was like this, too. A lot of people said, oh, you'll never elect Ronald Reagan president because he's been divorced. Well, Reagan changed that, you know, and is that sort of subtextually what you're thinking of is that somewhere this stereotype of conservative slash Republican, if you must, voter is got to open the tent flaps up and the big tent we're in? Well, let's be honest. If you're going to be in election politics, you've got to win and you have to bring in new voters. And I knew the last two or three weeks of the campaign when I was going from place to place at events that my campaign didn't organize. And it was wonderful. The people who were, they were enthusiastic, I appreciated seeing them, but there weren't new faces.

You know, you've got to look in the crowd and see, I've never met this person. There's a family that's never come to a Republican event before. There's a business person who is Asian who has never come. come. So where do people find the podcast, John? Well, we'll be live streaming daily on X, Facebook, Twitter, I mean, Rumble, truth social, and everywhere you download a podcast, it'll be up starting on January 5th. So look for the Reed Revolution. You know, you asked about the nomenclature. I had originally wanted to use the word Renaissance because that is what I would like to see in Virginia, is an economic.

and cultural renaissance, where we live with peace and prosperity and happiness for all of our citizens. But I don't think people are interested in that right now. I think they are in a revolutionary mindset. And my hope is that if I get out in front of that movement, that I can help manage it so that we don't wind up with the destruction of the society. We wind up with a successful society for many people. That'll do it for today's show. don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new episodes from The Daily Signal. Every weekday you can catch top news in 10 to keep up with the day's top headlines in just 10 minutes.

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