Today’s Virginia Democrats have taken a page out of the playbook their forbearers used to disenfranchise a huge swath of Virginia’s population. Having foisted a despicable Gerrymandered congressional map on the Commonwealth, Democrats are now set to achieve a 10-to-1 advantage in the overall 11-seat delegation in the House of Representatives.
Unlike Texas, where a mid-term redistricting occurred based on census data not available when its legislature redrew lines last year, Virginia Democrats have created an exception for the current constitutional provision that requires non-partisan redistricting following the decennial census. Now by fiat, they will be able to supplant that provision whenever they think it necessary. Democrats are smug in their insistence that it is exactly what Texas did in advantaging Republicans in that state. So, they are justified in favoring Democrats here. It shows the extent to which they dissemble.
In years past, when Virginia Democrats actively disenfranchised black voters to retain their iron grip on the General Assembly, legislative maps were drawn to ensure that their preferred voters—almost exclusively white and Protestant—predominated in every district. To be sure, Republicans would win a few, but Democrats retained their hold on both the General Assembly and the congressional district through partisan Gerrymandering. They were surgical, cutting district lines to conform to desirable voters like a snugly fitted garment while assigning undesirable voters in small, unthreatening pockets. In doing so, Democrat legislators—mostly white—were able to keep themselves employed while isolating Republicans to remote districts and blacks tucked away where they were unable to gain representation. Simply put, it was a predatory political policy that sought to isolate the opposition and effectively disenfranchise them.
They were masters at the art of Gerrymandering. But in time, their schemes would fall prey to Republican efforts to grow their numbers in the General Assembly and Congress. By 1999, the GOP had made significant gains in its numbers, mostly the result of savvy campaigning, message discipline, and hard work going door-to-door to appeal to voters. When Republicans achieved a majority in 2000 in both the House and the Senate of Virginia, they set about drawing a new legislative map that favored them. And in doing so, they did something Democrats refused to do when the pen was in their hand. Republicans drew districts favorable to black Democrats, long consigned to urban and rural enclaves, unable to effectively challenge white Democrat legislators.
To be sure, many of the GOP districts were drawn to exclude large minority pockets. So, there was no great virtue in what transpired. But more importantly, the redistricting process was conducted fairly, with all members getting input, even when they might not have gotten their way. Ten years later, the GOP replicated the process. And while they continued to benefit from drawing favorable lines, they were nonetheless fairly drawn. Indeed, I was present on the floor of the House when one black representative in 2011 boldly credited the GOP with being more fair to blacks than the Democrats ever were. It was one of those moments when you could have heard a pin drop. Yet it was also very true.
Nevertheless, in subsequent years, it became increasingly evident that citizens did not like Gerrymandering, even when there was an effort to do so fairly. As a result, Virginians adopted a constitutional amendment calling for non-partisan redistricting by a commission composed of both legislators and citizens. It became law in 2020, and in the following year, Virginia had the most balanced legislative maps in the country. However, now that Democrats are in power, their preference is to return to the days of old, where they skillfully disenfranchised voters not of their liking to achieve power over the entire state without the slightest regard for fairness.
Now, Congressional legislative districts are twisted, elongated, and contorted to resemble lobsters or serpents, all to assure that Democrats—as in times of old—are in power. No longer are districts compact, continuous, and mindful of communities of interest that include social, cultural, racial, ethnic, and economic interests common to the population of an area. To illustrate the absurdity of the current Gerrymandering, 5 of Virginia’s 11 Congressional representatives will all reside within Fairfax County in districts that extend like tenacles in a chokehold of disenfranchisement affecting millions of rural Virginians.
It now falls on the Supreme Court of Virginia to decide whether this gross injustice will stand. Indeed, it shouldn’t and must be rejected as patently unconstitutional.
There is yet another thing that must occur. As attributed to Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” The day will come when those who have perpetrated this evil on Virginia will be held to account. And that will require many good men and women to do something.
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