Audrey Fahlberg here, political reporter for National Review, filling in for Jim Geraghty this week alongside Noah Rothman.
On the menu today: If you live in Virginia, your mailbox is probably overflowing with mailers urging you to vote yes on Democrats’ redistricting initiative. The Democrat-backed constitutional amendment would replace the current map — which gives Democrats a six-to-five congressional seat advantage — with one favoring Democrats ten-to-one.
Republicans are outraged. They argue the constitutional amendment language is misleading and the mid-decade gerrymander is hypocritical, given that Democrats championed the 2020 constitutional amendment vesting redistricting power in an independent commission, which passed with 66 percent of the vote. Democrats, meanwhile, are pitching the effort as a temporary gerrymander to counteract Trump-backed redistricting elsewhere. Election Day is April 21; early voting is underway.
All Eyes on Spanberger
Some Democrats tell National Review they’re puzzled Spanberger’s team isn’t playing a more aggressive behind-the-scenes organizing role in this year’s constitutional amendment fights.
Last Tuesday in Richmond, some of the Democratic operatives who are spearheading this year’s November constitutional amendment fights — on gay marriage, abortion access, and voting rights for felons — held a strategy session that included representatives from pro-choice and LGBT groups. No Spanberger officials were present, which one attendee described as another sign she’s taking a more backseat approach than many Democrats had hoped.
Privately, many Virginia Democrats view Spanberger as cautious, long-term-focused, and insular — and more skeptical of her party’s aggressive redistricting gambit than state legislative leaders. “Gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy and it weakens the individual voices that form our electorates,” she wrote in a 2019 social media post. “Opposing gerrymandering should be a bipartisan priority.”
Even more damning, Spanberger told an ABC affiliate last August: “Virginia by constitutional amendment has a new redistricting effort that was put in place and first utilized in the 2021 redistricting…I’ve been watching with interest what other states are doing, but I have no plans to redistrict Virginia.”
While the gay marriage, voting rights, and abortion access constitutional amendments aren’t on the ballot until November, the sprint is on for the April redistricting campaign. And behind the scenes, many Democrats are questioning whether Spanberger is all in on the fight.
Here’s how Spanberger described her position on the redistricting gambit in a recent interview with the Washington Post: “Do I wish that we didn’t have to even consider this? Sure. But in the world that we are living in … I do think that Virginia, because we have the ability to be responsive, I think that it’s important that we give that option to voters.”
The Democratic state legislative infighting earlier this year centered on House Speaker Don Scott and Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas jockeying for weeks over which ten-to-one map to advance. Spanberger’s team spent that time privately cautioning state legislative Democrats about the operational nightmare of advancing a ten-to-one map over a nine-to-two map, National Review reported in early February. Those warnings followed her expressed hesitation about the ten-to-one map during a meeting with the congressional delegation late last year, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Republicans joke that she was taken hostage when she recorded the video championing the initiative.
Still Finding Her Footing
Ultra-partisan, Gavin Newsom-style brawling has never been Spanberger’s style. At the start of her term, her silence amid a GOP pile-on over far-left bills introduced in the General Assembly — many unlikely to clear committee, as I wrote at the time — puzzled some Democratic fundraisers and bundlers. Her office pushed back: “Online conservative activists caricaturing the Governor because they’re threatened by her 15-point victory does not change the fact that she’s focused on providing Virginians with stability and delivering for their families — because that’s what Virginians overwhelmingly voted for in November, and it’s what Virginians deserve,” spokeswoman Libby Wiet told NR.
The redistricting fight was never part of Spanberger’s platform. The former representative and intelligence officer defeated former Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears by 15 points on a disciplined campaign focused on the cost of living and Washington chaos — not maps. The fight has since empowered Republicans to paint Spanberger as more focused on partisan politics than cost-of-living concerns.
Some of these dynamics are simply part of the natural transition from Congress to a powerful executive role, and she’s seen as still getting her sea legs on the party leadership front. After all, running the show in Richmond is a completely different animal than serving in Congress, Democrats say.
“We get things done in Richmond; they don’t get anything done in D.C.,” State Senator Creigh Deeds said in an interview with NR. “She’s learning the ropes of Richmond. She’s doing a good job of that.”
Former GOP Delegate Chris Saxman, executive director of Virginia FREE, thinks her cautious political persona could pay dividends down the road. “There are so many constituencies within the Democratic Party who demand to be validated, meanwhile they’re missing the big picture in the long term,” he said. “She’s not a performative politician like people expect these days.” As Saxman sees it, “Virginia really likes boring governors who just get the job done.”
Her office offered this: “Anyone who has worked with Governor Spanberger — as an intelligence officer, as the most bipartisan Member of Congress from Virginia, and now as Governor — knows she is a thoughtful, thorough leader. Since taking office, the Governor has been focused on bringing people together to lower costs for Virginia families, grow Virginia’s economy, and bring stability to Virginia in the face of continued chaos out of Washington.”
As Jim wrote in a recent National Review magazine piece, Spanberger campaigned as a moderate before signing all four constitutional amendments, rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and rescinding a Youngkin executive order requiring Virginia law enforcement officials to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
Keep in mind that the General Assembly sent more than 1,200 bills to Spanberger’s desk, so time will soon tell whether she’s willing to brawl with the far-left flank of her party.
Meantime, Republicans will spend the next few months dinging Democrats for their hypocrisy on the redistricting fight. “I have spoken to Democrats who are upset with how tricky their party has been,” Representative John McGuire (R., Va.) told NR in a recent interview. The Democrats fought “so hard in 2020” for that year’s independent redistricting commission constitutional amendment. “Now that they have power, they’re like, ‘We don’t care about our constitution.”
ADDENDUM: “The United Arab Emirates is preparing to help the U.S. and other allies open the Strait of Hormuz by force, Arab officials said, a move that would make it the first Persian Gulf country to become a combatant, after being hit by Iranian attacks,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “The U.A.E. is lobbying for a United Nations Security Council resolution that would authorize such action, the officials said.”