Editorial
The Democratic majority in the General Assembly released a map last week showing how the state’s 11 congressional districts could look if a state constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade redistricting in Virginia passes this spring.
The proposal is in direct response to Texas Republicans passing a redistricting measure in that state that could result in five more Republican representatives in Congress in the 2026 mid-term elections. California reacted by passing a redistricting measure that would favor Democrats. North Carolina, Missouri and New York have also passed blatantly partisan redistricting laws, and other states are considering them. Only the Republican-dominated legislature in Indiana declined to jump on the bandwagon, rejecting a redistricting bill.
This mess was precipitated by Republican fears that they would lose the narrow control of the House of Representatives this coming fall. The party in power almost always loses seats in the midterm elections as voters realize that all the promises aren’t coming true; or maybe what’s being done isn’t actually what people want. President Trump actually asked states with strong GOP legislatures to draw even more gerrymandered districts in an effort to offset those expected losses, and Texas dutifully complied.
Now, Virginia Democrats want to participate in this cynical arms race, upending all the progress made five years ago to create a non-partisan redistricting commission. Admittedly, that commission is flawed and ended up deadlocked, resulting in a judicially- drawn redistricting map, but the result was 11 districts that are contiguous and have some common interests and characteristics. The fact that we have six Democrats and five Republicans representing a state that most political pundits regard as purple, and pretty evenly divided, is a good indication that the 2020 redistricting was fair.
Elbridge Gerry, the Massachusetts politician for whom the term gerrymandering is named, would be proud of the Democrats’ map. While none of the proposed districts actually resembles a salamander, per Gerry’s map, the proposed eighth district, which would run all the way down the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula almost to Newport News and Hampton, would have a long tail running up the west bank of the Potomac to include parts of Alexandria. On the map, that district looks like a kneeling bull. Another that resembles a twopronged pitchfork runs from DC’s western suburbs all the way into Augusta County. Four of the districts have similar ‘tails’ reaching deep into northern Virginia, in an effort to offset more rural, and GOP-leaning areas. Rockbridge County would be put in the ninth district, currently represented by Republican Morgan Griffith.
Proponents of this plan say that this is necessary to offset the cynical politics of Republicans. The Democratic base has been critical of the party for not playing more hardball with Trump and the GOP congressional majority. But hardball is one thing, resorting to the same blatantly partisan machinations is another.
This may not actually work out like the state’s Democrats expect. Bill Scher, politics editor at the Washington Monthly, recently wrote that gerrymandering backfired for the Texas GOP. He pointed to a special state Senate election in Texas last week where a Democrat handily beat a Republican in a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024. Just because a precinct or county voted a certain way in the last election is no guarantee of those results in future elections.
Critics of legislative gerrymandering say it allows politicians to pick their voters, not the reverse. These mid-decade, politicallymotivated redistricting moves are allowing the political parties outsized influence in who your Congressperson will be. Will mid-decade redistricting become common, now that that the century- old norm of once-a-decade has been blown up? Will we see this every time control of the legislature in a state changes from one party to the other?
This move by Virginia Democrats will just deepen the divide between the parties and voters. If voters perceive that they are just voting blocs to be traded like professional athletes, you can look for even greater disengagement from voting and participation in civic life by many.
Virginia has a system for drawing districts – not perfect but an improvement over what went before – and a tradition of decennial redistricting that is predictable and about as fair as our system will allow. Regardless of how much Virginia Democrats feel the current Republican control of the federal government is damaging our country, just because they’re in control in Virginia doesn’t make it right to engage in the same kind of blatant power politics.
