Democratic leadership in the General Assembly said Thursday morning that a map with 10 “competitive” congressional district seats and one Republican-leaning seat is ready.
The map is expected to be released by Friday morning at the latest. House Speaker Don Scott said that Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger has seen the map, and that he believes the governor is “on board.” She is expected to sign an enabling bill on Friday morning that will set the date of a redistricting referendum for April 21.
Democratic lawmakers are moving ahead with redistricting despite a ruling in Tazewell County Circuit Court that said the effort was unconstitutional. Democrats have appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court of Virginia.
“These are not ordinary times and Virginia will not sit on the sidelines,” Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas of Portsmouth said during an impromptu press conference. “This was all about us trying to defend democracy.”
Virginia Democrats have called the redistricting effort necessary, after Republican President Donald Trump called on conservative-led states to change their congressional maps in favor of GOP candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“Republicans are gerrymandering maps to override the will of the voters. We just saw it in Texas, North Carolina and Missouri. At Donald Trump’s direction, they’re manipulating maps because they know they can’t win on their agenda in 2026,” Scott said.
Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover County, called the effort political gerrymandering and lambasted his Democratic colleagues for pushing the effort forward.
“I don’t think anybody in this room lives in Texas or in another state. We live in Virginia. Virginians went to the polls, they voted on a redistricting process that is nonpartisan,” McDougle said, referring to the bipartisan redistricting commission that was approved through a voter referendum in 2020. “It’s losing sight of what Virginians need. The governor should be taking leadership.”
Libby Wiet, a spokesperson for Spanberger, said that state elections administrators have told the governor’s office that the General Assembly’s map can be implemented before voting begins for the April 21 referendum.
“The governor’s priority has been upholding the integrity of Virginia’s elections and her team has been working throughout this process to make sure any proposed map could be adequately implemented on the quick timeline before elections administrators,” Wiet said.
Scott and Lucas said that the maps will reflect 10 competitive seats and one likely Republican seat — a reversal from a plan to draw a map with 10 Democratic-leaning seats, which had been suggested by General Assembly leadership on social media repeatedly over the past few months.
“If you get out and work you can win the seats but we’re not going to coronate you,” Lucas said.
Scott said Democrats feel confident that they can win all 10 of those newly drawn seats following their decisive electoral sweep in 2025, and in light of policies and actions handed down by the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans. The midterm elections are often seen as a referendum on the current presidential administration.
The maps will be made available to the public in an “interactive” format, Scott said.
To redraw congressional maps outside of the normal 10-year cycle, Democrats proposed and passed a constitutional amendment that would suspend Virginia’s bipartisan redistricting commission. The General Assembly would go back to the redistricting commission after the 2030 Census to again redraw the commonwealth’s congressional map. The constitutional amendment must go before the voters in a referendum before it is enacted.
If voters approve the effort in a referendum, the new maps will exist for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 midterm elections.
General Assembly Republicans filed a complaint — and a request for an emergency injunction while they waited for a hearing — in Tazewell County Circuit Court in October, seeking a judgment on the constitutionality of the attempt to redraw the state’s congressional maps. Chief Judge Jack Hurley Jr. sided with the Republican lawmakers in a January ruling, in what Scott called an “overreach.” That ruling has been appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court.
Sen. Bill Stanley, a plaintiff in that case, said in an interview that the swift elevation of the appeal to the state Supreme Court isn’t typical, and called the redistricting effort a “political game.”
“When you go 10-1 and you say that’s ‘fairness’ in Virginia, I think it’s the farthest from ‘fairness’ that you can get, because we’re not a 90-10 state in terms of Democrat leanings of our citizens and Republican leanings,” Stanley, of Franklin County, said. “This is not a progressive agenda, it’s the deconstruction of the commonwealth.”