U.S. Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt County, has launched the latest redistricting salvo, saying his campaign will “spend what it takes” to defeat the proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to redraw the state’s congressional lines before this fall’s midterms.
Cline, who represents the current 6th District, announced Wednesday that he’s formed a group called Stop the Gerrymander that intends to rally a get-out-the-vote-campaign against that amendment and has seeded it with an undisclosed amount of his own campaign funds.
There are already two other groups in the field urging a “no” vote, but they both seem focused on advertising campaigns. Cline said his group would be different because “ours is exclusively focused on ground game GOTV.” In campaign parlance, that stands for get out the vote — the operational details of identifying likely supporters and then getting them to the polls.
“As we all work together in different ways to defeat this referendum, creating this ground-game operation is one of the ways I’m best able to help,” Cline said in a text message to Cardinal News.
Early voting in the April 21 special election is set to begin Friday. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that voting can go forward and that it would not decide multiple legal challenges to the legality of the referendum until after votes are cast. The court said that was in a 1912 Virginia Supreme Court decision that held courts shouldn’t interfere in elections but could decide their legality or constitutionality afterwards. If voters approve the amendment, the new map that would go into effect is aimed at knocking out four of the state’s five Republican U.S. House members — with Cline being one of them.
“This is an issue that affects my own district, of course, but it’s also unfair to all Virginians, which is why this must be a statewide effort,” Cline said in a statement about the new group. “And I am confident that our fair-minded citizens will reject this unconstitutional redrawing of district lines to benefit one political party over the other.”
Stop the Gerrymander is set up as a 501(c)(4), which means it does not have to disclose campaign donations. Cline said he had donated some of his own campaign funds to the group but did not say how much, or how much the group expected to spend. “We will spend what it takes to get the job done,” he said in his text message.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said that Democrats will spend “tens of millions” to persuade Virginians to approve the amendment. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, the pro-districting group Virginians for Fair Elections has already received more than $21 million, while the anti-redistricting group Virginians for Fair Maps had received only $295,000. Another anti-redistricting group, No Gerrymandering Virginia, hasn’t reported any donations yet.
That early financial imbalance has raised concerns that Republicans will be outspent in the April 21 referendum. It’s in that context that Cline’s group enters the picture. The vote comes at an odd time of year and the proposed amendment is the only thing on the ballot, so there’s no historical precedent to figure out what the voter turnout will be. Although both parties have things at stake in the special election — for Democrats the chance to pick up four seats, for Republicans the risk of losing four — this isn’t like a November general election where both parties are engaged on behalf of an entire slate of candidates and voters are expecting an election.
“When you have a special election, you need special attention on informing voters about it,” Cline said in a text message. “Door knocks, phone calls and voter reach become even more important.”
Turnout is always important to both sides, but especially for Republicans, whose vote in Virginia is concentrated in rural areas where turnout is traditionally lower than in Democratic areas. In last November’s state elections, 54.9% of Virginia voters statewide went to the polls. However, in much of Republican-voting rural Virginia, turnout was less than 50%, with some parts of Southwest Virginia at less than 45%. In Norton, only 39.9% of voters went to the polls. In Bristol, 39.5%. In Buchanan County, just 37.8%. That was one reason the overall results were so lopsided in Democrats’ favor: Many voters in Republican areas simply didn’t cast ballots. That’s part of what a get-out-the-vote campaign will need to address.
To run the campaign, Stop the Gerrymander has hired John Pudner, a Wisconsin-based political operative who was active with surrogate groups for the Donald Trump campaign in that state in 2024 (Wisconsin voted for Trump that year).
Advising the group is Tim Murtaugh, a longtime Virginia-based political operative who in the past has served as communications director for the Trump campaign.
You can find information about redistricting referedum on our Voter Guide.
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