General Assembly leadership released Thursday night a map for their mid-decade redistricting effort, with 10 districts that Democratic lawmakers said they feel confident their party can win in November.
Charlottesville and Roanoke are drawn into the 6th District along with Lynchburg, Radford and Blacksburg. The newly drawn 6th District would likely pit former journalist and bestselling author Beth Macy of Roanoke against former Congressman Tom Perriello of Charlottesville in a primary election to determine who will take on Republican incumbent Rep. Ben Cline, of Botetourt County, in November.
Under this map, the 9th District, represented by Rep. Morgan Griffith of Salem, would likely be the last remaining Republican stronghold. As it is drawn in the prototype, the 9th District runs from Lee County north to Highland County and parts of Augusta County, and east to Henry County, in a sideways “V” shape.
Virginia’s 5th District, represented by Rep. John McGuire of Goochland County, includes Campbell County at its westernmost point and curves northward to include some of the suburbs surrounding the city of Richmond.
“This is an illegal, hyper-partisan gerrymander drawn in backrooms hidden from the public,” said Mike Young, president of Virginians for Fair Maps, in a statement Thursday evening. “This map completely disregards common sense and silences millions of Virginians. This is not just extreme. This is an embarrassment to the Commonwealth, and it is exactly what voters rejected in 2020.”
Virginians for Fair Maps is a Republican-led group against the redistricting effort.
The National Democratic Redistricting Committee applauded the proposed map.
“The mid-decade gerrymandering crisis, which Donald Trump and Republicans launched in Texas and continued in North Carolina and Missouri, is now being proposed in Florida —and Virginia is standing up for the American people and responding decisively against this attempt to rig the 2026 midterms,” NRDC President John Bisognano said in a statement.
House Speaker Don Scott said Thursday morning 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 Friday morning that will set the date of a redistricting referendum for April 21.
Democratic lawmakers are moving ahead with their redistricting effort 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 Thursday morning. “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 Thursday morning, ahead of the map’s release, 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 early voting begins in this year’s primary elections.
“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 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 map is available on the General Assembly’s Legislative Information Service website under HB 29.
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 Thursday morning 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.”
