Counting Chickens in Virginia

The attached graphic is the proposed new Virginia congressional districts shared with me by the GOP. It appears daunting to think that Virginia’s Democrat House leadership has figured a way to stretch Old Dominion’s very blue (Democrat majority) areas so far that they encompass all the very red (GOP majority) ones.

Tracy Thorne-Begland, the judge in the case brought by the clerks of Henrico, Spotsylvania and Lunenburg counties against the proposed map, ruled that the clerks had no standing because they had not been forced to violate the law yet because the redistricting amendment had not yet passed. Also, courts under a 1912 Virginia Supreme Court decision are forbidden from ruling on an ongoing legislative process. Basically, the counties were told to “come back later.”

The Republican voters of Virginia are understandably dispirited by the visual of the Old Dominion drawn to look more like Illinois or Massachusetts, but a thought occurred to me: To take the four overwhelmingly Democrat majority districts; the 3^rd represented by Bobby Scott (where Democrats usually have a +18 advantage); the 4^th, Jennifer McLellan (D+17); the 8^th, Don Beyer (D+26); the 11^th, James Walkinshaw (D+18), plus the two closer ones, the 10^th of Suhas Subramanyam (D+6) and the 7^th, Yevgeny Vindman (D+2), and stretch them far enough into the crimson middle and west of Virginia, these districts are all more likely to be D+2 or 3%. That means that each one is more susceptible to a strong GOP candidate with a powerful “get out the vote” campaign to being “red” as much as it is to being “blue.”

Sure, that’s the glass-half-full view, but unless the courts can stop the return of partisan gerrymandering, it will have to be what the midterms in Virginia are focused on. It’s not unthinkable to see a strong Incumbent like Ben Cline winning the new 11^th (from the West Virginia border all the way to Alexandria), or Morgan Griffith winning the new 2^nd (from Bath County to Richmond), or Rob Wittman winning the new 6^th or 7^th, and John McGuire winning the new 3rd. That leaves the winnable 4^th and 5^th and the one GOP majority district, the 1^st, and that’s six of the 11 seats to the GOP.

Why? Because the new map trades a few safe districts for many that are in “the margin of error.”

Virginia GOP Chair Mark Peake told The Daily Signal the GOP is “focused on 2026” and is still planning a “vigorous campaign against the [redistricting] referendum in April.”

So, this scenario isn’t in play yet, but it’s a thought.

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