Virginia’s newly minted Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger on Friday signed legislation that sets up an April referendum that, if passed, would allow the state to suspend its independent redistricting commission and redraw the maps in a way that could net Democrats as many as four new House seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
Republicans are, to put it mildly, pissed.
GOP lawmakers in Virginia and elsewhere are slamming the effort as illegal and undemocratic—even though Virginia Democrats took this step only because President Donald Trump started the gerrymandering wars in Texas, with GOP-controlled legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina following suit. (Florida may also join the mix soon.)
But if Republicans thought partisan gerrymandering were so bad, they could have easily backed multiple bills to ban the practice. Democrats introduced bills on the matter in both 2019 and 2021, but Republicans voted against them both times.
In reality, Republicans are just mad that Democrats are responding with their own redistricting efforts in Virginia and California, rather than simply surrendering to Trump’s attempt to rig the midterms.
Let’s take a look at Republicans’ bad-faith whining.
“Voters should choose their representatives—not the other way around,” Rep. Rob Wittman, a Virginia Republican whose district would become heavily Democratic if the ballot measure passes, wrote in a post on X. “A 10-1 congressional map isn’t democracy, it’s political engineering. Virginians voted for fairness and independent redistricting in 2020 and they deserve competitive elections, not rigged outcomes.”
Unsurprisingly, Wittman twice voted against recent Democratic efforts to ban partisan gerrymandering.
A senior adviser to GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans, whose Virginia seat would become marginally more Democratic, called the new map proposal “illegal” and “extreme,” claiming it “silences millions of Virginians.” Oddly, her office didn’t issue similar statements when Republican-led states redrew their maps.
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who endorsed his own state’s gerrymandering last year, said in a new post on X that Virginia’s ballot measure is “[a] brazen abuse of power & an insult to democracy.”
“47% of VA voted Trump. They will now get just 9% of the seats. 52% of VA voters voted Harris. Now they get 91% of the seats,” Cruz added. “(By comparison, in TX, 56% voted Trump; GOP gets 79% of the seats.)”
Funny how the mental gymnastics work there. His state’s redraw is similarly lopsided, but apparently, that is okay to Cruz while Virginia’s map is not.
This is not the first time Republicans have whined when Democrats gave the GOP a taste of their own medicine.
Last month, Republicans were irate when California Gov. Gavin Newsom set a special election for a vacant GOP-held House seat in August—the latest possible time he could set the election under state law. As with the gerrymandering war, Newsom was merely giving Republicans a taste of their own medicine: GOP governors have regularly held vacant Democratic seats open for months in order to rob the opposition party of votes.
Democrats have not taken well to the GOP’s bad-faith whining.
“You all started it and we fucking finished it,” Louise Lucas, president pro tempore of Virginia’s state Senate, wrote in response to Cruz’s complaints with her map.
Of course, to go into effect, Virginia’s map will need to survive the courts and pass when it’s on the ballot in April.
However, if it makes it to the ballot, it’s got a good shot of passage. Virginia has turned hard against Trump since he reentered office, with Democratic candidates there posting massive margins of victory in elections.
And if Virginia ends up with 10 Democratic seats after November, Republicans will have only themselves to blame.
