Best-selling Roanoke author Beth Macy formally announced her bid for Congress on Tuesday.
It was a spectacle of a campaign launch: The crowd filled the bottom floor of Roanoke’s old downtown fire station and spilled out into Century Plaza across the street. Macy delivered a stem-winder of a speech that played up her working-class roots in Ohio — “I’ve eaten government cheese” — and she decried what she called a “crisis of opportunity” that is making it harder for people to get ahead while billionaires think they “never have enough.”
She repeatedly blistered Rep. Ben Cline, the Republican incumbent in the 6th District, as someone “who serves Trump” and “votes in lockstep with Trump” and vowed that “I will be a voice for the people he won’t lift a finger for.” She faulted Cline’s voting record — the One Big Beautiful Bill was mentioned a lot — as bad for working-class voters in the district and then went further. She spoke of “bought-off politicians like Ben Cline” and “useful idiots like Ben Cline” and said her husband urged her to run for Congress by telling her, “You do it, girl. Let’s take that m-effer down.” (That’s how she said it but suggested her husband was more, umm, direct.) The crowd roared. This was a more energetic campaign entry speech than any I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot. It was also possibly the most direct assault on an incumbent I’ve heard in a long time — if maybe ever. (Cline did not reply to an invitation to comment.)
Now, here’s the thing: Macy has no idea which district she’s running in. Neither do Pete Barlow or Ken Mitchell, the other two Democratic candidates now paired with her in the 6th Congressional District. Neither do Adam Murphy or Joy Powers, the two Democratic candidates in the 9th District. Neither do Mike Pruitt, Paul Riley, Adele Stichel or Kate Zabriskie, the four Democratic candidates in the 5th District. Neither do any of the 30-plus other challengers who have already filed to run for congressional seats in Virginia next year — or any of the 11 incumbents, for that matter.
The reason for the uncertainty is the prospect of a mid-decade redistricting for the express purpose of gerrymandering Virginia’s congressional districts to produce more Democratic members. The Republican-led legislature in Texas started this when it passed new maps aimed at electing more Republicans — a kind of insurance policy against the typical anti-administration backlash we historically have seen in many midterm elections. Democratic California just set in motion its own redistricting attempt to counter Texas, but now other Republican-dominated states have joined in — North Carolina, most recently — and so the Democratic General Assembly in Virginia feels compelled to respond in kind.
In Virginia, that means undoing the constitutional amendment voters passed in 2020 to thwart such partisan gerrymanders by taking the power away from the legislature and giving it to a bipartisan commission (or, if that deadlocks, the state Supreme Court). A week before the recent elections, the General Assembly held a snap special session to set this process in motion by passing a constitutional amendment that would allow Virginia to set aside that commission if other states start mid-cycle gerrymanders, which they already have. Under Virginia rules, the General Assembly will need to pass that amendment again in the new year (it will) and then we’ll have a referendum sometime in the spring — the first time we’ve ever amended the constitution outside of a November election. The goal is to have new congressional lines in place in time for next fall’s election.
Two things — but only two things — could stop this: the courts or voter disapproval in that rare spring referendum.
Until this is resolved — which might not be until spring — nobody knows what Virginia’s congressional districts will look like, yet more than 40 candidates are running (and raising money) anyway. In Macy’s case, maybe she’s running in a district now represented by Republican Ben Cline of Botetourt County in the 6th District. Maybe she’s running in a redrawn 9th District now represented by Republican Morgan Griffith of Salem. Less likely, but still possible, she could be running in a redrawn 5th District now represented by Republican John McGuire of Goochland County. Or she could wind up in a new district with no Republican incumbent — and a solid Democratic lean.
Virginia currently has six Democrats and five Republicans in the House. If Democrats have their way, it’s relatively easy for them to gerrymander their way to a 9-2 margin or even a 10-1 margin. There are no “official” maps of what Democrats intend, but the internet is now awash with maps that show what’s possible. Here are some of them:
You’ll see one question is where Roanoke — where Macy lives — winds up. Does it get subsumed into an overwhelmingly Republican 9th District? Or does it get drawn into some long sliver of a district that unites Democratic-voting college towns in Radford and Blacksburg with Charlottesville (and possibly Harrisonburg and Farmville)?
The political difference is enormous: The former is essentially unwinnable for any Democrat, absent some realignment of seismic proportions. The latter would be designed to be winnable for a Democrat — that’s the point of gerrymandering — but might also draw additional candidates who see an easy seat for the taking. It might be especially amenable for a Democrat out of Albemarle County and Charlottesville, because Albemarle alone this year produced almost twice as many total votes as Roanoke.
There are more politics swirling around here than are visible on the surface: Without a strong candidate from Roanoke, General Assembly Democrats might have no motivation to draw a strangely shaped district to accommodate the Star City’s Democratic voters, if they can find sufficient numbers elsewhere to reach their target for seats. With Macy in the field, General Assembly Democrats might feel more inclined to draw a district that puts Roanoke in a bluer district (although that could also inspire other Democratic candidates). We need to remember that some of the legislators drawing those lines might have ambitions of their own.
How are candidates handling this uncertainty? How do they know where to campaign? Does this have any impact on fundraising? The ones I talked to say they have no choice but to forge ahead in the districts as currently drawn.
“I don’t see mechanically how you change these lines,” says Zabriskie, one of the four Democrats in the current 5th District. By that, she means, how do you make the state’s election schedules work with the timing of a potential referendum that would change the rules?
Under a “normal” election schedule, for candidates seeking a party nomination in next year’s congressional elections, Jan. 1 would be the starting gun to begin circulating petitions to qualify for the ballot in a June primary.
Under this year’s schedule (the dates for 2026 might be a day or so different but the general schedule would be the same), those petitions were due between March 17 and April 3. Political parties had until April 8 to verify petitions and inform the Department of Elections who their primary candidates were. Under that same schedule, all of that would be before we have a referendum on a constitutional amendment. If that were to pass, there would need to be some time to certify the results (this year’s primary results were certified about two weeks later). If it passed, the legislature would then need to reconvene and pass new maps (which will surely get challenged in court). State law requires primaries “on the third Tuesday in June” and also requires 45 days of early voting, which this year started on May 2.
None of these congressional candidates may know until April which districts they’re in. “What are you going to do when somebody turns in signatures and they don’t all match” because they were collected under different lines, Zabriskie wonders. Is it possible to hold an April referendum, then draw new lines and squeeze in a primary before June — with early voting still starting in early May? Or will the state need to pass a law to schedule later primaries? Or would the state simply allow parties to forgo primaries — something the General Assembly recently required — to get everything done in time? One scenario I’ve heard is that parties would be allowed to hold party-run “firehouse primaries,” which change the rules entirely from an “outside game” of appealing to a wider electorate to an “inside game” of party activists. That could change the odds on which candidates might be favored to win; those with the best “ground game” to get voters to an unusual polling place on an unusual day of the week (typically a Saturday) would have an edge over those who don’t. There are lots of scenarios here, some more plausible than others — all fun for people like me who follow politics as sport but nerve-wracking for those actually involved.
“The possibility of new district lines definitely adds an unusual layer to this election cycle,” says Riley, one of the four Democratic candidates in the 5th District. “Right now, we continue to campaign based on the current district boundaries. We are going with the ‘known known’ and it is impossible to predict how new lines might look or when they might be finalized.”
Macy alluded to the uncertainty in her speech by referring to “those of us in the 6th District or whatever it becomes.” Her campaign literature pointedly doesn’t mention which district she’s running in.
For the Democratic candidates now in the 5th, 6th and 9th districts, new lines might mean the difference between running in a red district or a blue one. For some candidates elsewhere, new lines might make the difference between running or not running. At present there are nine Democrats seeking the 1st District nomination for the right to run against Republican Rob Wittman and eight seeking the party’s nomination in the 2nd District to run against Republican Jen Kiggans. How many of those would still run if they find themselves drawn into a district with Democratic incumbents Bobby Scott in the 3rd or Jennifer McClellan in the 4th?
The recent election raises the question of how much gerrymandering is necessary for Democrats to pick up extra congressional seats in Virginia. The Virginia Public Access Project has done the math to compute how each congressional district voted in the gubernatorial election. Two of Virginia’s districts now held by Republicans went Democratic: Wittman’s 1st District voted 51.0% for Abigail Spanberger; Kiggans’ 2nd District voted 53.6% for Spanberger.
This was an unusual year that may be hard to duplicate: Spanberger took the highest vote share for any Democratic candidate for governor since 1961; Republican Winsome Earle-Sears took the lowest vote share for any Republican candidate for governor since 1965. Potential Democratic challengers in 2026 might well run as well as Spanberger did but it seems unlikely that any of these Republicans would run as poor a campaign as Earle-Sears did — the mistakes of which have been amply documented in previous columns. That point is, though, the recent results show it’s possible for Democrats to win two seats the old-fashioned way.
That means the proposed gerrymandering is about making it easier for Democrats to win those two districts (the 1st and the 2nd) and then inventing one or two more Democratic seats with creative cartography. If it’s possible to draw a 10-1 map, I don’t know why Democrats would stop at 9-2. (Actually here’s one reason: The more Democratic districts you draw, the lower the Democratic percentage in each one. A 10-1 map might stretch the Democratic vote too thin; a year with a “red wave” could take down more Democrats than the party is willing to risk.)
There’s simply no way to draw a Democratic district in Southwest Virginia — once you go west of Radford, there aren’t any localities that voted less than 64% Republican this year and most voted 70% or 80% Republican — so the only question there is how far north or east the district goes.
That leaves the 5th and 6th in play for being carved up. VPAP shows what a challenge they are for Democrats in their present configuration. This year, Earle-Sears, despite a terrible campaign, took 58.6% of the vote in the 6th and 53.7% in the 5th. That’s a tempting figure for Democrats in the 5th, but it’s one they’ve seen before and never been able to overcome. The 6th is even more challenging for Democrats, Macy’s celebrity status notwithstanding.
At the risk of being a killjoy for all the Macy supporters who crowded into the Roanoke’s Fire Station No. 1 to witness her announcement, here’s some inconvenient math. Roanoke is not the 6th District. It’s not even the heart of the 6th District anymore — that’s up in the Shenandoah Valley and is moving further away from Roanoke every day. This year, which saw a strong Democratic turnout and a weak Republican one, bright blue Roanoke produced 30,853 votes. However, bright red Augusta County produced 34,134 and Rockingham County turned out 36,120. The locality in the 6th District with the most voters is now Frederick County, which this year had 38,938 voters. All of those localities produced more votes for a weak Republican candidate for governor than Roanoke did for a strong Democratic one.
Redistricting might change all that — those Republican valley districts could get “buried” in a Northern Virginia-based district or two or three, while Roanoke might get gerrymandered into a district that actually has more voters in Albemarle County. We may not know, though, until next spring.
