OPINION:
Ironically, conservatives may owe Virginia Democrats — suddenly America’s most extreme state political party — a debt of gratitude.
Not for their mid-decade plan to gerrymander themselves four more congressional seats, or for their woke elitism. Certainly not for their aiding and abetting of criminals preying on Virginia communities.
No, the thanks owed to Virginia Democrats is for the unusual partisan clarity they are offering the public in a pivotal election year.
The gerrymandering scheme has rightly dominated news headlines in the run-up to the Virginia redistricting referendum today. While many on the left have decried the commonsense efforts of Texas, Florida and other red states to engage in mid-decade redistricting, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and legislative leaders in Richmond are breaking every norm of the state’s political culture for pure partisan advantage.
The current map, which yields six Democratic U.S. representatives and five Republicans, mirrors the light-blue state’s 55/45 partisan split.
After a nonpartisan commission deadlocked on the maps in 2020, the Virginia Supreme Court oversaw the drawing of a new map — the direct result of a voter-approved state constitutional amendment.
The commission was charged with drawing districts fairly and compactly so that Virginians would have legislators who represented their communities geographically and politically.
Democrats’ new map chucks this principle. It would anchor five districts in deep-blue Northern Virginia, home to some of the richest ZIP codes in the world.
One proposed district snakes almost 200 miles, from Arlington to Tidewater. This would transfer immense political power from Old Dominion working families to the elite left’s base in the Washington suburbs.
Virginians and the rest of the country have already seen what happens when Northern Virginia Democrats wield power. There was the disgraceful incident in 2021 when a transgender-identifying boy sexually assaulted a female student in the girls’ bathroom of a Loudoun County public school. County officials infamously covered up the assault and even had the victim’s father arrested when he called them out at a school board meeting.
The same county later targeted with formal investigations a handful of boys who had the audacity to express discomfort about biological girls being permitted to use their school’s boys’ bathroom.
Arlington County is embroiled in a fight with local parents and the U.S. Department of Education over similar policies.
In Fairfax County, schools have a standing policy of hiding students’ gender “transitioning” from their parents. The district’s most recent controversy surrounds the serial sexual assaults of 12 girls at Fairfax schools by 19-year-old illegal immigrant Israel Ortiz, who, the girls’ parents were told, would be permitted back to school after he got out of jail.
Why would a serial child-molesting adult illegal alien be permitted to attend Fairfax County public schools? That’s a question for the county’s notorious chief prosecutor, Steve Descano. He is the one who agreed to Mr. Ortiz’s request to be let out on bail, a request thankfully denied by the judge.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Descano is a George Soros-funded, left-wing ideologue on a one-man mission to legalize crime in Fairfax.
The county’s police blotter is riddled with felonies, up to and including murders, committed by career offenders whom local police arrested but Mr. Descano released.
These are the people and the radical politics that the Democrats’ new Northern Virginia-skewed map would empower. Like Mr. Descano’s stated position — “The real threat” to public safety “may stem from those who write the law” — Virginia’s gerrymander scheme is a direct attack on democracy itself.
This is par for the course for Virginia Democrats under Ms. Spanberger. Packaged as a moderate by her campaign and a fawning media, Ms. Spanberger has governed as a pure elitist ideologue.
In just a few weeks on the job, in addition to the gerrymander gambit, the governor has ordered Virginia law enforcement to stop cooperating in deporting criminal aliens. Democrats in the legislature just passed new gun restrictions to exempt themselves.
Heading into the midterm elections this fall, Virginia Democrats are showing the whole country exactly what the left stands for today: illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens, violent predators over their victims, transgender fanaticism over parental rights and elite privilege over the rule of law.
This nightmare doesn’t have to become our new reality. Instead, it should serve as a jarring wake-up call, mobilizing Virginia conservatives for today’s referendum and all conservatives across the country for the midterms.
It’s time for conservatives to wake up, and, as crazy as it sounds, Virginia Democrats might actually help.
• Kevin Roberts is president of The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America.
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