Virginia Lawmakers Want Voters to Take a 180-Degree Turn on Redistricting; Some Reform Advocates Are Wary

Six years ago, as Virginia headed down the path to bipartisan redistricting, reform advocates came up with a clever way to remind voters how politicians hold onto power by manipulating legislative boundaries.

Voters were shown the shape of a few particularly contorted districts and were asked to describe what they saw.

“It kind of looks like the Loch Ness Monster,” a woman said.

“A snake that looks like it was run over by a car,” one man offered.

“Like a dragon on its back, floating in a pool or something,” another woman ventured.

Last week, Democrats – on party-line votes in both chambers of the General Assembly – paved the way for a statewide referendum in April in which voters will be asked whether or not Virginia should make a limited return to its gerrymandering past.

If Democrats succeed in re-introducing partisan gerrymandering this year, Virginia voters may be even more flummoxed by an inkblot test of the state’s 11 congressional districts.

Virginia’s redistricting amendment: What is it and what happens if voters pass it?

Democratic legislative leaders approved a proposed constitutional amendment that could result in a gerrymander so extreme that a new congressional map would leave Virginia’s far southwestern tip as the only safe haven for Republican candidates. General Assembly Republicans railed against the plan, but were powerless to stop it.

Democrats say their plan is a one-time and necessary response to President Donald Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting arms race. The Republican president has demanded that red states like Texas and Florida rejigger their congressional maps in order to flip a few more Democratic districts this November in midterm elections.

“When other states manipulate their maps to gain unfair advantage … they also harm Virginia’s ability to have its fair representation in Congress,” Democratic Majority Leader Scott Surovell said during Friday’s floor debate. “We’re simply seeking to level the playing field in Congress.”

The Democrats’ reason is that a short-term return to gerrymandering in Virginia is better than sitting by and allowing Trump to manipulate the midterms and escape any check on his seemingly boundless notion of presidential power.

By the end of this month, Democrats are expected to unveil a map of how far they would press their political advantage. The state’s current congressional district split of 6-D, 5-R roughly reflects the state’s two-party competition.

Democratic legislative leaders want to flip four of the five Republican seats, leaving conservative voters in Tidewater, Southside Virginia, and the Shenandoah Valley with little expectation for the rest of this decade of being able to pick a congressional candidate of their choice.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a former three-term congresswoman who made a name for herself by winning in Republican-leaning districts, has said she believes Democrats can pick up two seats this November without touching the maps.

In a December interview with Politico, Spanberger noted that she had carried the 1st and 2nd Districts, which stretch from Henrico County to Virginia Beach.

“I want to flip seats in the House of Representatives, and I know that we can because we just — I just won those districts,” she said.

Legislative leaders say they also want to flip the 5th District,which extends from Charlottesville to the North Carolina line, and the 6th District, which runs the length of the Shenandoah Valley from Roanoke to Winchester.

In her first address to the General Assembly on Monday, Spanberger gave her strongest endorsement so far of the April ballot measure, calling it a justifiable response to actions by other states to undermine democratic norms.

“Make no mistake,” she said, her tone firmer, “Virginia will be responsive, targeted, and only with the will of the people. And I trust the voters to get this one right.”

What would Democrats’ 10-1 map look like?

The reaction of the voters could depend on how extreme a gerrymander Democrats put forward later this month.

There is a debate among Democrats about how far to push their advantage. Democratic leaders, including Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, have advocated for a 10-D,-1-R map.

Hobbyist mapmakers have posted various options for a 10-1 configuration, including one that shows deep-blue Fairfax County broken into five narrow channels of voters that fan out into the rest of the state.

This unofficial rendering could be what Virginia Democrats’10-d, 1-R congressional district map will look like, according to hobbyist mapmakers. Democrats have said they will release their proposed map before it goes to the public for a vote in April. (Photo courtesy DavesRedistricting.org)

In this version, people as far as Rockingham County in the Shenandoah Valley, Powhatan in the western exurbs of Richmond, and Mathews County on the lower Chesapeake Bay could find themselves represented by someone from Fairfax County.

It’s hard to know if people will be bothered by the disruption caused by so many voters being shifted to districts. Will voters care that a 10-1 map could result in nearly half of the state’s congressional districts residing in Fairfax County?

Spanberger has cautioned against a maximalist map, which could put at risk some of the six districts currently represented by Democrats.

Lucas did not respond publicly to Spanberger, but on social media told the state’s Democratic congressmen to put on their big-boy pants.

“Anyone in the congressional delegation who wants a seat needs to campaign for it and not expect a safe seat,” she said.

Analysts split on whether Virginia’s mid-decade changes will make a difference

Dave Daley, a national redistricting expert, said that Democrats in Virginia and elsewhere are placing too much emphasis on the short-term promise of gerrymandering.

Daley said the only sure path forward for a Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives is for the party to learn how to replicate Spanberger’s success in reaching voters in rural districts.

The long-term math simply won’t work for Democrats after congressional seats are reapportioned based on the next Census in 2030, Daley said.

California and northeast states stand to lose 12-14 seats to fast-growing red states like Texas, Arizona, and Florida. And if the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates the last vestiges of the Voting Rights Act later this year, another 12-19 Democratic seats in the deep South would be at risk.

“Democrats can’t gerrymander their way out of this,” he said, “They have to find a way to persuade voters that they are on their side. I’m not against fighting back against unfairness, I’m simply saying if you are going to charge up a hill, have a plan that works.”

Some analysts predict that Trump — with his foreign policy interference, ICE raids in Democratic cities, and voters’ mounting worry about rising health insurance costs  — will lose so many House seats this November that one or two extra seats from Virginia would hardly be worth the effort.

Veteran Democratic analyst James Carville recently forecast that Democrats will gain a minimumof  25 seats, maybe as high as 45.

“Frankly, it’s going to be a wipeout,” Carville said.

What do Virginia’s 2020 redistricting reform advocates say now?

In November 2020, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to rein in politicians’ ability to draw district lines. The measure passed in every Virginia locality except Arlington County.

OneVirginia 2021, the bipartisan group that was the moral voice behind the state’s 2020 redistricting effort, mobilized roughly 500 volunteers who used to show up at the polls statewide with signs reading “Fair elections start with fair districts” or “It’s not about right vs. left. It’s about right vs. wrong.”

While the success or failure of Virginia’s mid-decade redistricting effort has yet to be determined, one thing seems certain: OneVirginia 2021 — now rebranded as UpVote Virginia — will not be calling out oddly-shaped districts or questioning the whip-lash reversion to politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking the politicians.

UpVote Virginia has shifted its focus to improving the democratic process through ranked-choice voting. The group’s executive director, Liz White, said that UpVote will stick to its new mission and has no plans to get involved in this year’s redistricting fight.

“I feel like everyone is disappointed to be having this conversation again, and feels that Virginia will not be part of this ugly national fight,” White said. “It’s disheartening.”

Similarly, last fall in California,  when Democrats sought to counter a mid-decade redistricting in Texas, reform groups did not oppose a ballot initiative that bypassed the bipartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission.

“People who previously had worked on redistricting reform were basically told to stay on the sidelines,” said Carah Ong Whaley, who, as the executive director of a California democracy reform group, was one of the few reform advocates who spoke out. “Many of the in-state groups were frustrated.”

Ong Whaley, who also is a program manager at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, took the position that “fighting fire with fire leads to a scorched earth democracy.”

“I don’t see why we’d want to go back, when what is best for our country, period, is free and fair elections that are competitive,” she said.

When Trump launched the mid-decade redistricting battle, other reform advocates in Virginia thought the state would be immune because the process of amending the state constitution usually takes several years.

“We were patting ourselves on the back and thinking, ‘Oh, this can’t happen in Virginia,’” said Kathy Utgoff, a retired economist who served as a commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2002 to 2006. Utgoff also volunteered with OneVirginia 2021 in the Falls Church area and found meaning in grassroots work to bring fair elections to Virginia. She now chairs the UpVote Virginia board of directors.

When Democrats devised a way to speed up the process by putting the question to voters in a special statewide election in April, Utgoff was frustrated.

“Ending (gerrymandering) took the better part of a decade. Now the plan is to undo the commission in a matter of months,” she said.

Still, other reform advocates support a limited, one-time carve-out.

Bob Gibson, who served on the advisory board for OneVirginia 2021 and once led the bipartisan-nurturing Sorensen Institute, called the upcoming amendment a “necessary response if we are going to preserve democracy” in this country.

“I think this is an unfortunate thing that has to be done,” added Gibson, who lives in Charlottesville.

Democrats emphasize that their proposal is a temporary exception that would leave Virginia’s bipartisan Redistricting Commission in charge when lines are scheduled to be redrawn in 2031.

They emphasize that voters will get a chance to see the proposed map and must give their permission to any changes in the state’s congressional maps.

“The main thing is it’ll go to a referendum,” Lucas said. “But I think (voters) are going to love the maps and they’re going to love the 10-1.”

Pro-redistricting campaign takes shape

With reform advocates on the sidelines, a Democrat-funded organization called Virginians for Fair Elections has appropriated the reform group’s rhetoric and moral certainty.

“We can restore fairness with an amendment that gives Virginians the power to level the playing field,” says a video released by Virginians for Fair Elections. “And it’s temporary, reaffirming Virginia’s commitment to bipartisan redistricting.”

Virginians for Fair Elections had yet to  file paperwork with the state Department of Elections, but has already lined up social media influencers to talk up the April ballot measure, including TikTok star Suzanne Lambert, also known as the “Regina George liberal.”

Lambert encouraged her Instagram audience to vote yes to Virginia’s redistricting amendment in April and reminded them that it would be a temporary measure.

“Democracy is not doing so hot right now,” Lambert said in a rat-a-tat cadence. “No one wants to see this long term. Think of this as like a ‘situationship’ and not the one you bring home to mom.”

by David M. Poole, Virginia Mercury

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.