Virginia politics are about to get more interesting, although for Republicans this may be in the nature of the old Chinese curse that says “May you live in interesting times.” (Also interesting: That curse may not be Chinese in origin, after all, but rather English, but I digress).
The immediate question is the state’s impending mid-decade congressional redistricting — gerrymandering, if you will.
Two things have happened in the past week to elevate this question.
We’ve known since October that Virginia Democrats intend to push to amend the state’s constitution to set aside the bipartisan commission that voters approved in 2020 to allow the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to draw lines more favorable to their party in time for the November 2026 congressional midterms — this in response to Texas Republicans setting off a nationwide tit-for-tat gerrymandering spree as each party tries to squeeze out some advantage. (In last Friday’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, I wrote about how this could wind up all being a wash. If you’re not signed up, you can do so here. If you want last week’s edition, email me and I’ll forward it to you. I notice that political commentator Nate Silver has reached the same conclusion in a subsequent edition of his Silver Bulletin.)
Virginia’s congressional delegation is currently six Democrats, five Republicans, which generally matches the state’s overall politics in most statewide elections. The original chatter was that Democrats were looking at new maps that could produce a 9-2 split, although some maps showed that 10-1 was possible. (There are no “official” maps yet, but the internet is flooded with unofficial variations.) From the beginning, though, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats — state Sen. Louise Lucas of Portsmouth — pushed for a 10-1 map. When former Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia Beach announced in November that she’d like to return to Congress, Lucas endorsed her and signed off her post on X with this: “Stay tuned next year for some new district lines as well which may be helpful. 10-1.”
That maximalist approach seemed to be in the minority until last week when House Speaker Don Scott told an audience at the University of Virginia: “10-1 is not out of realm to be able to draw the maps in a succinct, community-based way, but we’re going to take a look at it.” Scott is not one to speak lightly, so this seems a clear sign that 10-1 is very much a live possibility.
The next day, Lucas posted on X: “I will give a follow back to every person who I see tweet 10-1 tonight.” She appears to have gotten so many responses, and followed so many people in such a short period of time, that she hit whatever cap X imposes to try to prevent spam accounts.
Then on Sunday came the next logical step: A potential congressional candidate emerged, with newly drawn districts specifically in mind.
That potential candidate is Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, who says his decision will hinge on what new districts look like. His prospects — or any Democrat’s prospects — in the current 6th District would be daunting at best, slim to none at worst. The 6th District (now represented by Ben Cline) is the state’s second most Republican congressional district; the 9th District (now represented by Morgan Griffith) is the most. In the past 33 years, no Republican congressional candidate has won less than 60% of the vote in the 6th District — and the last redistricting in 2021 only made the district more Republican as it expanded northward through the Republican heartland of the Shenandoah Valley. In this year’s gubernatorial election, which featured an exceptionally strong Democrat (Abigail Spanberger) and a historically weak Republican (Winsome Earle-Sears), that weak Republican still took 58% of the vote in the 6th District, according to calculations by the Virginia Public Access Project.
Newly shaped congressional districts could change all that. The main difference between the 9-2 maps and the 10-1 maps is where the city of Roanoke (and, by implication, surrounding parts of the Roanoke Valley) wind up. Here are some of the options that have been bandied about, often of unknown provenance but all showing what’s cartographically possible:
In the 9-2 maps, the Roanoke Valley winds up either in the Republican-dominated 6th District or the even more Republican-dominated 9th District. The 10-1 maps draw Roanoke into a district with Charlottesville, usually in the form of a district that unites Radford, Blacksburg, Roanoke, Charlottesville and sometimes Harrisonburg into what amounts to a “college town district” that would lean Democratic. Roanoke, for those not familiar with the Star City, is the classic “blue island in a red sea” that regularly votes 60% or more Democratic — 60.82% for Kamala Harris in 2024, 66.91% for Spanberger in 2025. Roanoke’s Democratic votes aren’t enough to sway the 6th as currently drawn, or the 9th if it were to wind up there, but would help make an elongated “college town district” favorable to Democrats.
It’s that kind of district that Rasoul is eyeing — and what makes his potential candidacy even more noteworthy is that, as a member of the General Assembly, he’d be in a position to help draw lines that he’d consider favorable. As with anything, there are complications. The first is that there’s already a Democratic congressional candidate from Roanoke, and a celebrity candidate at that — author Beth Macy of “Dopesick” fame. Her announcement event drew a crowd that spilled outside of Roanoke’s Fire Station No. 1 and raised $350,000 in its first 24 hours; that’s almost as much money as Cline had in the bank at the time of the last campaign finance report in September.
There also are three Democrats in the Charlottesville area who have already announced for Congress, with the idea that they’d be running in the 5th District against Republican incumbent John McGuire — Albemarle supervisor Mike Pruitt, retired Army veteran Paul Riley and lawyer Adele Stichel. There are two more candidates seeking the Democratic nomination in the 5th District, Suzanne Krzyzanowski and Kate Zabriskie, both of Lynchburg, but some of these unofficial maps appear to put the Hill City in a different district from Roanoke and Charlottesville, some don’t. There’s a sixth Democratic candidate in the district, Robert Tracinski of Louisa County, but he appears to be too far east to factor into most of these Roanoke-related maps (although the first variation above does appear to include Louisa).
A Roanoke-Charlottesville district (with whatever other communities are involved) would create some interesting political dynamics. Roanoke is accustomed to thinking of itself as the political center of the 6th District, although that’s an outdated notion. Frederick County today has more voters than Roanoke; the population center of the district is in northern Augusta County and moving further north every day. Roanoke wouldn’t be the political center of this new district, either — particularly not in a Democratic primary, which would be what would matter first.
In this year’s Democratic primaries, Albemarle County produced more voters than Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem combined. Albemarle and Charlottesville together saw 16,120 Democratic voters; the Roanoke Valley 8,747. Roanoke’s Democrats who now feel “trapped” in a Republican congressional district may find a new district more philosophically to their liking, but they wouldn’t be the most influential part of it.
Albemarle and Charlottesville Democrats, now likewise trapped in the Republican 5th, would find themselves the leaders. That may not give an advantage to their hometown candidates, though. I’m not inclined to handicap a potential Macy vs. Pruitt vs. Rasoul vs. Riley vs. Stitchel vs. maybe Krzyzanowski and Zabriskie primary except to point out this political history: Roanoke Valley voters have never been inclined to vote for non-valley candidates if there is a philosophically acceptable candidate available at home, no matter how weak that candidate is elsewhere. In the 2018 Democratic primary for the 6th District nomination, Jennifer Lewis of Waynesboro won every locality except for three: Botetourt County, Roanoke and Roanoke County all went for local candidates. Accordingly, I’d be surprised if those Albemarle-Charlottesville candidates found much traction in the Roanoke Valley if Macy and Rasoul were options. The question would be how they would fare in Albemarle-Charlottesville — and other parts of the district.
The 10-1 maps raise other intriguing political questions as well. Most show the Republican farming country of the Shenandoah Valley drawn into districts emanating out of Northern Virginia. Pete Barlow of Augusta County, one of the three Democrats filed to run in the current 6th District, has said that’s a bad idea because it reduces rural influence; he thinks Democrats can win there without redistricting. I’m not so sure about that, but the loss of rural influence in these maps is undeniable. Indeed, since rural areas are generally synonymous with big Republican majorities, reducing their influence is precisely the point of a Democratic gerrymander.
Another question: Would Democrats try to draw a district specifically for Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor? She was the runner-up in this year’s Democratic primary for attorney general. She’s now running in the 1st District and has been endorsed by Spanberger. Taylor’s home is not far from that of Rep. Jennifer McClellan of Richmond, so the danger of redistricting is Taylor winds up there. However, if Democrats think Taylor is a strong contender — and the governor-elect certainly does — they might be inclined to shape a district specifically for her if they can without endangering others elsewhere.
Yet another question is what become of the Republican House members who get disadvantaged by new maps. Griffith is safe in the 9th — there’s no way to draw a Democratic district there. Technically, all the 10-1 maps I shared above put Griffith’s home in Salem in another district, but Griffith already lives outside the 9th so that probably doesn’t matter. (House members don’t have to live in their district, just the state.) The first two maps put Cline’s home in Botetourt County in Democratic districts; the third appears to put it in the 9th and draw a Democratic district up Interstate 81.
Nonetheless, the point is that in a 10-1 map, four current Republican House members would be out of luck. What would they do when faced with these odds? History offers one guide: In the early 1990s, Democrats delighted in chopping up the House district held by Republican George Allen. That delight did not last long. Republicans, who have gone 0-for-3 in the last statewide election, were in need of a gubernatorial candidate for 1993. Allen became that candidate and led his party to victory. Republicans just went 0-for-3 again and Democrats now are poised to chop up Republican congressional districts again — with only a voter referendum in the spring and the courts to stop them. They might be able to evict some members of Congress, but they might create some statewide candidates in the process.
In Tuesday’s column, I’ll look at what it would take Democrats to win the 5th, 6th and 9th districts as they’re currently drawn.