Virginia Dems’ Mid-Decade ‘Fair Elections’ Redistricting Campaign Has Ties to Elias Law Group

In 2020, Virginia voters passed a constitutional amendment stripping redistricting power from the General Assembly and vesting it in a bipartisan, 16-member redistricting commission instead. The ballot initiative passed with 66 percent of the vote. It’s no wonder, then, that Virginia Democrats are pitching their California-style redistricting effort as a temporary measure to combat the mid-decade, Trump-backed congressional redistricting gambit kickstarted by Texas Republicans last year.

If approved by both chambers and signed by newly elected Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger, the ballot initiative will read: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

That proposed language is already making its way into Democrats’ 2026 redistricting-campaign efforts. The newly launched “Virginians for Fair Elections” ActBlue fundraising page characterizes the party’s effort as a “temporary, emergency step to level the playing field and ensure Virginia voters have the final say.”

Let’s look at who is behind this Virginians for Fair Elections redistricting campaign. The group’s articles of incorporation were signed by Emma Olson Sharkey, a partner at Elias Law Group and an experienced ballot-measure attorney, according to an incorporation document signed on December 10. The firm was founded by Democrats’ premier election attorney, Marc Elias, who has ties to a spate of dark money groups, controversial campaign groups, and gerrymandering efforts (see Washington Free Beacon reporting on Elias’s firm here, here, here, and here).

According to the group’s incorporation document, Virginians for Fair Elections’ initial director is Democratic operative Rachel Rothman, who most recently served as campaign manager for Virginia Democrats’ newly elected and scandal-plagued Attorney General Jay Jones.

Democrats are hoping to get this ballot measure in front of voters in April, and Republicans are bracing for a tough campaign ahead. Some Virginia political operatives privately estimate that Democrats’ mid-decade redistricting ballot-initiative campaign will raise tens of millions of dollars. A well-funded Republican effort to combat this gerrymandering effort has yet to emerge.

Meantime, expect many Republicans in the commonwealth to refer to a 2019 post from Spanberger railing against gerrymandering. “Gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy and it weakens the individual voices that form our electorates,” she wrote in June 2019 in response to a Supreme Court decision on the matter. “Opposing gerrymandering should be a bipartisan priority.”