It wasn’t long ago that Democrats were hailing Virginia’s move to use a bipartisan commission to draw its congressional boundaries as a win for fair elections.
Now they’re moving fast to scrap it — at least temporarily — as they seek to maximize their partisan advantage in a tug-of-war for control of the U.S. House in next year’s elections.
The commonwealth’s Legislature kicked off a special session Monday in Richmond to begin the process of sidelining the current map, which offers a 6-5 Democratic advantage. They intend to replace it with one that would give them at least nine House seats.
To do so, Democratic lawmakers would have to pass legislation to put a replacement map on the ballot. They would have to re-pass that legislation in their regular session early next year, then rush the measure to voters in a special election to approve the new map for use in November 2026.
Those who fought hard for bipartisan commissions to take the politics out of redistricting have been disheartened by how quickly the commitment crumbled when the politics got rough.
“This is an arms race to the bottom,” said Brian Cannon, who helped lead Virginia’s effort to establish a commission. “President Trump got it going with Texas, and [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom followed, and now we are seeing the ripple effects across the country.”
Virginia Democrats would be overriding a map imposed by the Virginia Supreme Court, which acted after the state’s bipartisan commission failed to agree on a map after the 2020 census.
One after the other
The commonwealth is following California, whose Legislature is also controlled by Democrats and where voters are being asked to approve a similar referendum to scrap their commission-drawn lines in favor of a map that could nearly wipe Republicans out of the state’s 52-seat delegation.
California said it is responding to Texas, whose GOP-controlled Legislature redrew its lines to secure up to five new House seats for Republicans.
Republican-led Missouri has also redrawn its lines, and Republicans in Indiana will attempt to draw a new map next month.
Usually, maps are drawn only once after each census. But mid-decade redistricting is not unheard of. Ohio redrew its lines seven times from 1876 to 1892, changing as control of the Legislature flipped back and forth.
What makes this year different is the move to overturn the bipartisan commissions that were all the rage over the last two decades, particularly in blue states.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, a Republican who previously served in Virginia’s House of Delegates, noted that nearly two-thirds of voters in his state approved the commission system in 2020.
“To come in now in the middle of an election and say, ’we want to change the rules because non-partisanship does not suit your current partisan needs’ — that’s wrong,” Mr. Griffin said. “It’s just, it’s just brazen partisan politics in a process that the voters of Virginia overwhelmingly approved.”
Virginia state Delegate Lee Ware, a Republican, criticized the partisan push, arguing Monday on the floor of the House of Delegates that it runs counter to the commonwealth’s political traditions.
“Candor requires admitting that this bad idea of mid-decade redistricting did get its 2025 launch by the president,” Mr. Ware said. “However, just because a bad idea was proposed and even taken up by a few of our sister states, such as North Carolina or California, is not a reason for Virginia to follow suit.”
He concluded with a sharp rebuke: “In short, it is to belatedly attach Virginia to the tail of a bandwagon that is unworthy of her history and unworthy of this body’s long heritage.”
A week before statewide elections, Virginia’s redistricting has spilled over into the governor’s race.
Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger, a former member of Congress and polling frontrunner, has appeared to shift her stance from initially declaring she had “no plans to redistrict Virginia” to now expressing openness to the initiative advanced by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.
Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee who has consistently backed the independent redistricting commission, chastised the special session and the Democrats’ motivations.
Meanwhile, the special session has disrupted the plans of state delegates seeking re-election, forcing them to return to Richmond during what would have been their final full week of campaigning before Election Day.
’A break-glass moment’
Mr. Trump looms large over Democrats’ reversal on redistricting, said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington.
“Remember, Democrats are looking at the fact that Donald Trump, even now, refuses to accept that he lost the 2020 election,” Mr. Farnsworth said. “The world is very different when you think about the way that both parties accepted whether they won or lost elections before 2020.”
He also said Democrats now feel the commissions amount to “unilateral disarmament” in the face of GOP gains in Texas.
Mr. Cooper, who pushed the commission idea in Virginia, said even some of those he worked with are now embracing the overturn effort because having Mr. Trump in office with a GOP-led Congress is too much.
“For them, this is a break-glass moment for all sorts of reasons,” he said.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who as governor of California led the push for that state’s commission, was dismayed by his state’s reversal.
“You know, Texas started it. They did something terribly wrong, and then all of a sudden, California says, ’Well, then we have to do something terribly wrong,’” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend.
Mr. Schwarzenegger dismissed the notion that the changes would be short-lived, arguing advocates would “find an excuse” to make revised maps permanent.
Polls show the California measure is poised to pass.
But the jury is out on Democrats’ effort in Virginia, where they hold a narrow 21-19 majority in the state Senate and a 51-48 majority in the state House.
The change could also face legal hurdles. The state’s constitution requires that ballot referendums be approved by the Legislature in two separate sessions, with an intervening election.
Republicans argue that the current election cycle is already underway, with early voting beginning on Sept. 19, so the measure couldn’t be put to voters until after next November.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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