LOUISA, Virginia — Roadsides in this part of the Old Dominion are festooned with signs: “VOTE NO APRIL 21.” From here to Winchester, a distance of more than 100 miles, scarcely any signs could be seen expressing support for the Democrat-backed referendum that would redistrict Virginia’s congressional delegation and effectively silence the voices of those who dwell in the rural parts of the Commonwealth. But those voices were heard loudly Sunday afternoon on the lawn of the county courthouse here.
“What are you going to do?” Republican Rep. John McGuire asked the crowd.
“Vote no!” the hundred or so attendees shouted.
“I think you can do better than that,” the fifth district’s congressman said. “What are you going to do?”
“Vote no!” they yelled in reply.
Early voting has been going on for weeks, and when those at the courthouse rally were asked for a show of hands of who had already voted, nearly every hand was raised. With barely more than a week to go before April 21, however, the question is whether their votes — and those of Republican voters elsewhere in Virginia — will be enough to prevent passage of the partisan gerrymander that newly-installed Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democrat-controlled legislature would impose.
The facts are simple enough: In the 2024 presidential election, Democrats carried Virginia by less than a four-point margin, with 51.4 percent for Kamala Harris and 47.6 percent for Donald Trump. The current congressional delegation almost exactly matches this divide, with six Democrats and five Republicans. But if the referendum passes on April 21, the map would be redrawn so that it would likely yield 10 seats for Democrats and just one for Republicans. With slightly more than half the votes, Spanberger’s party would get 91 percent of the House seats.
And yet, in an insult remarked by several of the speakers at Sunday’s rally here, the Democrats wrote the ballot language to tell voters that a vote in favor of this crude gerrymander would “restore fairness” in Virginia’s elections!
“It’s unfair, it’s unconstitutional and it’s illegal,” Second District Rep. Jen Kiggans said of the referendum, expressing an opinion shared by many Republicans who have noted what might mildly be termed procedural irregularities in the way the redistricting measure made its way onto the ballot. (See David Catron’s February column, “Redistricting Betrayal in Virginia,” for more about that.) In her speech to the courthouse rally here, Kiggans mentioned the uphill battle she fought in 2022 to win her seat in a competitive coastal district that includes Virginia Beach. Kiggans would almost certainly have no chance to be reelected in this fall’s midterms if the redistricting referendum passes, and the same is true of McGuire, despite the fact that he carried the fifth district by a 15-point margin in 2024.
The map Democrats would inflict on Virginia is a Frankenstein monster, and what it would do to Louisa County is a nightmare horror story. Currently, the fifth district is geographically coherent, covering a wide area west of Richmond down to the North Carolina border. Under the proposed new map, Louisa County would be shoved into the Seventh District, the shape of which resembles a lobster, its head and two claws pointing southwest (Louisa County being the elbow of one claw), and its tail reaching all the way up to touch the Potomac River in Arlington County. From its southernmost point in Powhatan County to Arlington, this mutant district would span more than 130 miles and, with its westward lobster claw, also reaches over into the Shenandoah Valley to slice off parts of Rockingham and Augusta counties. It’s about 100 miles from one claw to the other, but in driving that distance along I-64, a motorist would travel roughly half of it through the proposed new sixth district.
The intent and purpose of this egregious map is to maximize the influence of the Democratic Party’s stronghold in the urbanized areas of northern Virginia near
Washington, D.C. Four of the proposed new districts (the first, seventh, eighth and elevenths) sprawl out from the D.C. suburbs, slicing through heavily Democratic counties — Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William, Stafford — then reaching into GOP-leaning rural areas whose votes would be neutralized in the resulting assemblage. As local state Sen. Luther Cifers told the rally crowd at the Louisa County courthouse Sunday, “The values of northern Virginia are being shoved down the neck of rural Virginia.… It’s not about fairness, it’s about a power grab.”
Republican Rep. John McGuire (D-VA) addressed the crowd at the anti-referendum rally in Louisa, VA (Robert Stacy McCain for The American Spectator)
That power grab is being pushed by more than $50 million dollars from big Democratic donors, who have outspent Republicans more than three-to-one in the referendum campaign. And among rural Virginians, the person most to blame is the Commonwealth’s new Democratic governor — “the Wicked Witch of the East,” as one rally attendee called Spanberger, pointing out that she’s a New Jersey native who scarcely bothers to conceal her contempt for rural natives of the Commonwealth.
There is very much a natives-versus-newcomers factor in this redistricting battle, and most of those who showed up for Sunday’s “Vote No” rally here are descendants of many generations of born-and-bred Virginians. A plaque in front of the courthouse notes that Patrick Henry’s political career began as a representative to the colonial House of Burgesses from Louisa County, and the patriotic spirit of the Old Dominion was on display at the rally, with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, as well as a prayer that closed “in Jesus’ name,” and got a hearty “amen” from the crowd.
In his speech to the rally, McGuire invoked the values of “faith, family and freedom” that he hopes will prevail in the fight over the districting referendum.
“Everything about it is a lie,” McGuire said in urging opposition to Spanberger’s atrocity, encouraging the rally crowd to get their friends and neighbors out to the polls to vote against it.
Radio talk-show host John Fredericks, who acted as emcee for Sunday’s event, cited the disadvantages that opponents of the referendum are facing. “We are going to make national news on April 21 if we can win this thing.”
Eight days remain, and the early turnout is encouraging for those who hope to save rural Virginia from the lobster-district monster that Spanberger would inflict on the Commonwealth. Patrick Henry could not be reached for comment.
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