Last week, after the Democrats’ proposed congressional map came out, I received a text from a journalistic colleague. He had read my column “10 things to know about the Democrats’ proposed redistricting map” and told me good-naturedly he was surprised I didn’t have 76 things to say.
Dude, I’m trying! I may have been the second-fastest student in my high school typing class (back when there was such a thing) but I’ve already typed so much I have one key missing from my keyboard.
I’ve now had more time to crunch the numbers, and so have others, especially the folks at the Virginia Public Access Project and State Navigate, both of whom I recommend. Armed with more numbers, but still missing one key, here are 10 more observations about the new map (which is still subject to a ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court and an April 21 referendum, if the court says all this can go forward).
1. This is an opportunity for rural Democrats. Not a likely one, but better than they had before.
Rural Democrats have become an endangered species but if there are any ambitious ones still out there, this map represents an opportunity. Maybe not much of an opportunity, but more than exists with the current congressional map.
Here’s how I see this: Right now there is very little opportunity for a rural Democrat to win a congressional seat in Virginia. The last truly rural Democrat in the Virginia delegation was Rick Boucher of Abingdon who departed after the 2010 election; his former 9th District seat in Southwest Virginia is now a bright shade of red. Democratic candidates think they can win the current 1st in eastern Virginia, the current 5th in Charlottesville/Southside and the current 6th in the Shenandoah Valley/Roanoke Valley, but the reality is they haven’t and their hopes this year rest largely on the toxic disapproval ratings of Donald Trump. Even with that, none of those districts are guaranteed.
The whole point of the gerrymandered map is to guarantee Democratic victories in as many districts as possible; Democrats hope for 10. They’ve done this by drawing five congressional districts that start in deep blue Northern Virginia, then snake out into the rural parts of the Shenandoah Valley and the Piedmont. This “buries” the Republican voters in those rural areas into districts dominated by Northern Virginia (at the risk of drawing down some Democratic majorities).
All five of those districts — the new 1st, 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th — are designed to be reliably Democratic districts. They also contain more rural voters than the Northern Virginia incumbents who hold four of those seats (one is an open seat) are accustomed to. That won’t trouble them in a general election, but what about a primary?
The scenario I’m about to lay out is highly unlikely but is theoretically possible. The danger for Democratic incumbents under these maps is that they would acquire a lot of new constituents, most of them rural. I’ve attempted to compute the “rural” percentage in those districts. These are rough numbers, but it appears about 24.7% of the voters in the new 7th District would be rural, about 33.7% in the new 8th District are. That alone isn’t enough to win a nomination contest but what if there were a multicandidate primary, and one of those candidates was a rural candidate who could sweep the rural areas and win a decent fraction of the vote in Northern Virginia? I realize such a candidate would be a unicorn; when I look at these maps no obvious names come to mind because Democrats don’t have much of a bench of rural officeholders. Still, should this magical figure arise when the moon is in a certain phase, the math might be there for an upset.
This map is designed to produce five Democratic House members from Northern Virginia, but in theory it could produce none.
2. Two Democratic incumbents would lose most of their constituents
We shouldn’t be surprised that the map shears away constituents from Republican incumbents; the whole purpose of this map is to do as much political damage to them as possible. What’s surprising is that two Democratic incumbents would see most of their current constituents taken away — and replaced by new voters. That’s a potentially dangerous development for those two Democrats — Don Beyer of Alexandria (the new 8th) and James Walkinshaw of Fairfax County (the new 11th) — who might now face primary challenges from fellow Democrats who see an opportunity.
According to calculations by the Virginia Public Access Project, 56% of the voters in the new 8th would be new to Beyer, 53% of the voters in the new 11th would be new to Walkinshaw.
As noted above, the new 8th, which would now stretch from Arlington County to York County, also is one-third rural. Fortunately for Beyer, he previously served as lieutenant governor so has experience running in those areas. Unfortunately for him, that was in the ’80s and ’90s.
3. The Democrat most hurt by this new map is 6th District challenger Beth Macy
In the current 6th District, she’d have been the favorite to win the Democratic nomination. The best-selling Roanoke author (four of her five books have been best-sellers) is by far the best known of the four candidates and easily the best-funded. In less than two months of campaigning, she raised more money for a campaign in a bright red district than any Republican candidate across the state had, incumbent or otherwise. I remain skeptical that any Democrat would be able to win a general election in the 6th against Ben Cline, but she’d have made a fight of it.
While the mapmakers seemed careful to draw lines to benefit certain General Assembly members, they acted as if either a) Macy didn’t exist or b) they want her out of the race.
The new map takes away most of the voters she was trying to reach — 61.3% of the voters in the reconfigured 6th would be new to that district. The map also pairs her with another well-funded Democratic challenger, former Rep. Tom Perriello of Albemarle County, and gives him a bigger base than Macy (Albemarle/Charlottesville has more than twice as many Democratic voters as the Roanoke Valley, and not all of the Roanoke Valley is in the new 6th). Another handicap: Perriello won every locality in the new 6th in the 2017 Democratic primary for governor. This is a map that seems tailor-made for Perriello.
I’m not saying Macy can’t win this primary — it’s more likely than my scenario about a rural Democrat sneaking in to represent a Northern Virginia district — but she’s in a much more difficult spot now. Macy had originally endorsed redistricting. I think that was a mistake. I realize Democratic activists are frothing at the mouth for this gerrymandering, but any Roanoke Democrats who support this map may be condemning their hometown candidate to an early exit. Macy may at least get a new book out of this, about how political insiders conspired to handicap an outsider, even if she was only an afterthought in their deliberations.
4. There’s an opportunity for a Black Democrat in the new 5th District
Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor would appear to have made out pretty well in the new map — but I see a danger for her.
Let’s review: Taylor had been the top Democratic fundraiser in the current 1st District, but she wasn’t the only Democratic candidate — and would have been an underdog to Wittman, even in a targeted district. She’s now in a 5th District that stretches west (to Campbell County!) rather than east. She may still face some of the same Democratic contenders but winds up in a more favorable district for the general election. She also has a head start on her primary challengers in this new district since she ran last year for the party’s nomination for attorney general.
However, here’s the challenge: She lost all but one of these “new” counties in last year’s primary to Jay Jones. The data released as part of the proposed map says that 21.4% of the voters in this new 5th District are Black; that’s up from 13% in the current 1st where Taylor has been running.
If there’s an ambitious Black Democrat in this district, this map creates an opportunity. The scenario would be similar to the one I laid out for rural Democrats early: sweep these rural counties as Jones did and then take a big enough share in the Richmond suburbs to win.
5. Of the four Republican incumbents targeted, McGuire got the worst deal
Jen Kiggans of Virginia Beach didn’t see her 2nd District changed much at all; I discussed the reasons why in my previous column. That’s probably the best she could hope for. The other targeted Republican incumbents saw their districts rearranged in ways they’d find unfavorable, but none wound up with such a “bad” district as McGuire.
He currently represents the 5th District in Southside. Most of that district is carved away and distributed among four other districts. Under the new map, the Goochland County Republican would be in the 7th District, which stretches all the way to Arlington County (and, is, of course, is designed for a Democrat).
This is the district that was reputedly designed for Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, the chief fundraiser for Democrats in last year’s House of Delegates elections.
Only 12.1% of the voters in this district were ones McGuire previously represented. (Yes, the new map puts Cline in the 9th and Griffith in the 6th, but I don’t think that matters much. House members don’t have to live in their district; Griffith lives just outside the 9th now after the last redistricting changed the lines.) Griffith can keep running in the 9th and Cline has at least a fighting chance in the new 6th.
6. The locality most silenced by this map is Appomattox County
I went looking for the strongest Republican counties that got shifted from Republican congressional districts into Democratic ones. I can’t say these localities are disenfranchised, because people there still get to vote — their votes just don’t matter much anymore. The locality that gets the worst deal — from a Republican point of view — would be Appomattox County.
Here’s how I figure this: It’s the strongest Republican-voting county that now gets assigned to a Democratic district. In last year’s gubernatorial election, Appomattox cast 75.9% of its votes for the Republican candidate for governor. Under this map, it would stay in the 5th District but that district gets a makeover from a Republican one to a Democratic one.
There are some other localities that come close: Page County, a 74.4% Republican county, moves from a Republican 6th District anchored in the Shenandoah Valley into a Democratic 11th District anchored in Northern Virginia. Most of Bedford County, a 74.3% Republican county, gets put in a reconfigured 6th District that has a slight Democratic lean. Augusta County, a 72% Republican county, gets split between three districts — one Republican (the 9th), one with a slight Democratic lean (the 6th) and one with an almost-guaranteed Democratic outcome (the 7th that goes all the way to Arlington). The voters in Stuarts Draft can still elect the Republican candidate of their choice (maybe) but the voters in Churchville and Craigsville would find themselves casting useless ballots.
7. The locality whose voice now gets amplified the most is Charlottesville
This is an 88% Democratic locality that’s been “stuck” (from the Democratic point of view) in a Republican 5th District. Now it would be in a 6th District that would trend Democratic most years. Harrisonburg, a 72.1% Democratic city, also finds itself moved from a Republican 6th into a generally Democratic 6th.
8. One of the state’s least-populated counties gets split three ways
The two localities split the most are Fairfax County and Prince William County; both get carved up between five different congressional districts. That was necessary to draw these elongated districts out of Northern Virginia to reach out and grab Republican areas.
Augusta County, as we’ve seen, gets split three ways. Augusta, though, is a populous county so there were voters there that mapmakers needed or wanted — or, perhaps more accurately, they needed to take some to get to the Democratic voters they wanted in Staunton and Waynesboro. As a result, some parts of Augusta would now be in a district that stretches to coal counties; other parts would be in a district that stretches to Northern Virginia. Perhaps no other county has such a contrast.
But then there’s Buckingham County, population just 16,736. It’s also split three ways. Most of it stays in the 5th, but pieces get sliced off for the 6th and 7th. Voters in Buckingham’s New Canton district wind up in a district that would go all the way to Arlington, a heretofore unrecognized community of interest.
9. This was an incomplete gerrymander
Democratic mapmakers could have gerrymandered more than they did.
They could have stretched the 4th District a little farther west to pick up Martinsville, a 63.5% Democratic city, but did not — probably because the tradeoff would have been to put part of Republican-voting Pittsylvania County into the new 5th District, and that would have brought down the Democratic margin.
Likewise, mapmakers who were trying to connect Democratic-voting college towns into an elongated 6th District could have drawn a line across the mountains to pick up Lexington, a 68.1% Democratic city. They did not. It’s possible that had they done so, it might have been a net loss because they’d have to take in some Republican voters in Rockbridge County to get there. Still, we saw some unofficial maps floating around that would have drawn Lexington into that district.
10. This map could be open to a new constitutional challenge
The mapmakers were careful, at least on the surface, not to run afoul of the Voting Rights Act as it relates to the 3rd District; that’s why so few changes were made in the Richmond-Hampton Roads corridor, where so much of the state’s Black population lives. The U.S. Supreme Court (which may yet significantly alter its interpretation of the Voting Rights Act) has been loath to get into ruling on purely political gerrymanders as long as there’s not a racial dimension. This map would seem to be impregnable to a Voting Rights Act challenge.
However, there’s still the matter of the state constitution. A Tazewell judge has already ruled against this redistricting; that case now jumps straight to the Virginia Supreme Court. However, this proposed map could add another wrinkle to that case. Even if the Virginia Supreme Court overrules the Tazewell judge’s order, there’s still the matter of other language in the state’s contitution: “Every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory …”
Are these districts compact? Some clearly are not, particularly when compared to the ones they’d replace. There’s a whole body of law out there on what “compact” means and what it doesn’t mean, so don’t be surprised if some Republican lawyer doesn’t show up at a courthouse with a lawsuit that contains that constitutional language as Exhibit A and the new map as Exhibit B. I assume the mapmakers believe all this is legally defensible and maybe it will be, but it’s also open to challenges from anyone with a decent lawyer and a court filing fee. The proposed 7th District, which has been variously described as looking like a frog, a lobster or a scorpion, seems to defy the notion of compactness by stretching from western Augusta County in the Shenandoah Valley to Arlington County in Northern Virginia and then down through the Piedmont to pick up some counties in Southside.
There, 10 more observations about the proposed map. Anyone want to bet whether I can find 10 more? Or, perhaps even 56 more?
I can’t promise 56 more observations on the map but I can promise that we’ll have more political news and insights in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons. Who knows what all will have happened by then?