Virginia voters approved mid-decade redistricting that aims to help Democrats win 10 of the state’s 11 seats in Congress. Republicans are challenging the map, but Democrats are calling it a victory.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Democrats have just pulled ahead in the redistricting race that President Trump kicked off in Republican-led states last year. It’s a narrow lead across the country. Democrats have drawn 10 congressional seats in their favor. Republicans have drawn nine. Virginia voters handed Democrats their latest victory last night when they approved the plan to draw four more seats that lean heavily for their party. Elsewhere in the program, we hear from Virginia’s Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger, but now we’re joined by Jahd Khalil, the state politics reporter at member station VPM in Richmond. Hi.
JAHD KHALIL, BYLINE: Hi. Thanks.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. So start by telling us more about the vote there yesterday.
KHALIL: Yeah. So like you said, voters decided to allow mid-decade redistricting to move ahead here. Right now, Virginia Democrats hold 6 of the 11 U.S. House seats in the state, and this new map makes it easier for Democrats to win 10 of the 11 seats, so this is a significant redraw. But the vote was close here last night. The vote to redistrict was three percentage points more than the vote to not redistrict, and so that means that there wasn’t an overwhelming majority of people here who wanted to do this.
SUMMERS: What are you hearing from Democrats? Are they concerned that it was a narrow win?
KHALIL: Generally, no. They said that they had to counter confusing messaging that the no campaign put out. Some of that was targeted at Blacks, which is a key part of the Democrats’ base in Virginia. But when you compare this to when Governor Abigail Spanberger won by 15 points last November, it does look like it was a very close election. This morning, Democrats took a victory lap, and this is what the speaker of the House, Don Scott, had to say about the vote.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DON SCOTT: This is not about gerrymandering. We have a guy sending our men and women into war. We have a person that is stealing trillions of dollars from the American economy each day because of these gas prices and these grocery prices.
KHALIL: So what Scott is doing here is what Democrats did throughout the campaign, which is to make the vote about Trump and the upcoming midterms. And part of that is pointing to the nationwide gerrymandering that’s going on, not to the 10-1 gerrymander here in Virginia.
SUMMERS: And how are Republicans in Virginia responding?
KHALIL: So Republicans are actually pointing back to the results too. They’re saying that the close vote shows that the state isn’t a blue state. It’s a purple state, and that’s how it should be represented in Congress. Here’s the House minority leader, Terry Kilgore, talking to the press about that this morning.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TERRY KILGORE: Virginia is not a 10-1 state. We’re still a 6-5 state. And that’s what yesterday’s results showed.
KHALIL: So they also say that the close result will help them in the courts because Republicans actually challenged the whole redistricting process. And there’s a case in front of the Supreme – the Virginia Supreme Court about that. Republicans have also said that Virginia now could be the most gerrymandered state in the country. It’s kind of hard to measure that, but there’s kind of a few ways you can do it. But one way to think about it is that Republicans are likely to have 11% of the congressional delegation, when about, you know, 45- to 50% of the votes in statewide elections go to Republicans.
SUMMERS: OK, let’s go back, if we can, to the national picture. Remind us of what has happened in the redistricting fight up until this point.
KHALIL: Yeah. So back in July – so, like, a full nine months ago – President Trump asked leaders in Texas to redraw that state’s House map and find five more seats for Republicans. Then California responded with five seats for Democrats. From there, North Carolina, Missouri and Ohio drew a combined four seats for Republicans. Utah draw one – excuse me, Utah drew one seat for Democrats in a court order. And now there’s Virginia. And as you noted earlier, that sums up to 10 seats for Democrats and nine for Republicans. So it’s really close.
SUMMERS: It is very close, but I have to ask, is that the end of the story?
KHALIL: So probably not. There’s a few things that are hanging in the balance. There’s that Supreme Court case that I was mentioning here in Virginia. Oral arguments are scheduled for Monday. And also next week, Republicans in Florida could redraw that state’s map to favor republicans. And there’s the elephant in the room, which is a case before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the Voting Rights Act. If the court weakens that law, it might prompt some Republican states to redistrict, but they’re also running out of time to do that.
SUMMERS: That’s Jahd Khalil, state politics reporter at member station VPM. Thanks so much.
KHALIL: Yeah, thanks for having me.
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