"The Future is in Our Hands"

Election night 2025 was a significant milestone for the Democratic Party. In this episode, we look at Abigail Spanberger's winning strategy in Virginia, Miki Sherrill's hard-fought win in New Jersey, and Zohran Mamdani's captivating campaign, which has changed the trajectory of New York City politics. 

Be sure to follow us on Instagram @thefridaybrief and sign up for The Friday Brief newsletter on thefridaybrief.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome
• 0:15 Abigail Spanberger's victory
• 3:22 The ad that doomed Winsome Earl-Sears' campaign
• 4:04 Mikie Sherrill's victory
• 6:05 Zohran Mamdani's victory
• 8:05 How progressives can succeed
• 10:36 Until next time!

Transcript

Welcome to The Friday Brief, a news podcast by Girl Friday. I’m Phoenix Ricks, the CEO of Girl Friday and your host. This is your brief for November 5, 2025. 

I had every intention of covering Nigeria yesterday, but it was election night in the United States, and I was on the edge of my seat. This was a major night for Democrats. Hopefully, the party can learn key lessons from each individual win. The three races that grabbed my attention were the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, and the mayoral race in New York City. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger toppled the Republican hold on the purple state. She will be the first woman to lead the state of Virginia. Because I’m in Washington, DC, which borders Northern Virginia, I got to see political advertisements for this gubernatorial race. You could not miss them. They were Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. 

There were notable differences in the two parties’ strategies. Spanberger shared her vision for Virginia, while Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate and current Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, released attack ads. Attack-first is an ineffective strategy when people in your state are suffering because of your party’s national policies. Virginia is home to a sizable number of federal workers and military personnel. We’re now in the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, and government employees are having to visit food banks to feed their children. Clinging to Donald Trump’s policies was, in my opinion, Earle-Sears’ key mistake. Spanberger saw federal workers hurting, and she was out front addressing that issue. 

Earle-Sears’ second grave error was publicly losing the support of law enforcement. Spanberger is proud of her service in the police and with the CIA. She’s walked a political tightrope, supporting law enforcement while also taking community concerns about aggressive policing seriously. Winning police and community support together is difficult for U.S. politicians right now, but Spanberger has done this successfully in all of her political races. The police don’t take kindly to former officers being belittled, so it was unsurprising to me that officials from different Virginia law enforcement operations were in an ad together supporting Spanberger during the height of Republican attacks on her career and character. Earle-Sears' campaign seemed to live in the past, where Republicans relied heavily on the illusion that they are the party of law and order, and that they always stand with the police. 

2025 might be the start of a new political era for them, because that law and order perception was shattered when Donald Trump pardoned the January 6th insurrectionists. Remember, those individuals didn’t simply riot at the Capitol; they violently and intentionally attacked police officers. Some of those officers were critically wounded, and they have been sharing their horrifying stories of trauma and recovery for years now. 

Spanberger’s ads were primarily positive, but her campaign team couldn’t ignore the opposition’s attacks. When Spanberger’s team struck back, they landed the blows. An ad was released with a video of Winsome Earle-Sears seeming to theatrically mock Kamala Harris’s well-known “I’m speaking” comment. It went viral in this area. The now infamous dramatization probably took place at a closed event, but she forgot that nothing is private in an election race. Donald Trump is in the White House, sure, we know this, but Earle-Sears’ campaign seemed to forget just how narrow that win was for him. Mocking Kamala Harris was never going to help her win over Democrats, and I’m not sure it helped her with moderate Republican voters either. She just probably didn’t expect everyone to see that performance. Her explanation for that viral speaking engagement was as weak as the ads trying to explain her vague platform. The rest is history. 

Spanberger’s friend, New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill, will be joining her in the history books. She won the race to become New Jersey’s next governor. Sherrill will be the first woman from the Democratic Party to hold that seat. From those two purple-state races, I hope Democrats see how Spanberger and Sherrill listened to their Democratic constituents, adapted party strategies to local conditions, and presented a clear roadmap for their states’ future without belaboring past losses. I find that moderate Democrats often try to distance themselves quickly from Democrats who only narrowly lost recent races. Those sharp turns create dysfunctional messages. Neither woman did that, and I think it restored a sense of normalcy and elevated the party’s long-term strategy in politically moderate places. 

Looking further to the left within the party, there was a significant win in New York City last night. NPR said, “No one has captured more attention during this election cycle than Mamdani,” and I absolutely agree. Outside of New York City, this race became a geopolitical firestorm. Of course, we know New York City is a respected global hub, but people with a stake in the city's everyday functions are the ones who can decide its political fate by voting. Ultimately, it didn’t matter how many political analysts and powerful voices tried to reduce this election to religious controversies or conflicts abroad. New Yorkers voted based on the candidates’ histories and their campaign messaging about the city's cost of living. 

Zohran Mamdani, at 34 years old, will become the youngest New York City mayor in more than a century. He’ll also be the first Muslim to serve in that role. That simple point about his identity stirred up so much Islamophobia in the U.S. that at times it felt like the awful post 9/11 era. Even Democrats, perhaps most notably Senator Gillibrand, parrotted Islamophobic lies about Mamdani’s campaign and had to apologize. In the end, he did not just win the hearts of New Yorkers across all demographics; he also galvanized support from progressives and young voters across the country. They were drawn to his joyful campaign and his precise messaging on how to reduce costs. If progressives are to succeed across the U.S., they will have to vote in every election and support their progressive political agenda after elections to continue driving change. 

That support comes in so many forms. It looks like showing up to town halls and city council meetings to hold politicians and other officials accountable in between election cycles. It also looks like being consistently informed about local policies and regulations. Remaining informed offers a healthy dose of reality, so you can see what politicians have to navigate to get legislation across the finish line. At this level, it would be a Vatican-approved miracle for an elected politician like Mamdani to immediately fulfill the hopes and dreams of their campaign platform. And that seems to be a sticking point for the progressive side of the Democratic Party. For instance, I remember some people being furious that President Barack Obama didn’t immediately dismantle all of Guantanamo Bay the nanosecond he assumed office. I never thought his campaign goal for that detention facility could be fulfilled on day one because it required Congress, time, and the willingness of other nations to take back the formerly detained individuals. 

My gentle suggestion to Mamdani’s supporters would be to give him 90 days to settle into the role and begin to reassess how to deliver on his campaign objectives. The goal post might remain steady, but the playbook may have to shift. It's at that critical juncture that I often see Democrats become despondent, when it's actually that exact point when they need to rally, get creative, and push for solutions. After all, in his victory speech, Mamdani said, "The future is in our hands.” 

Thank you for listening to The Friday Brief. Make sure you and your friends don’t miss an episode! Check out thefridaybrief.com, and follow The Friday Brief on Instagram. Until next time, I’m Phoenix Ricks, signing off from Washington, DC. Let’s work together for a world of good.