Virginia Democrats’ Proposed Gerrymander is a ‘Span-amander’

Only an April 21 state referendum now stands between Virginia and America’s most egregious gerrymander. Following Abigail Spanberger’s 2025 gubernatorial victory, Virginia Democrats completely control the legislative process and want to use it to replace the state’s current bipartisan congressional district map with their own. The result is intended to enlarge Democrats’ current 6-5 majority to 10-1.

The original Gerrymander and its sequels

Call their intended creation a “Span-amander.”

The term “gerrymander” comes from Founding Father Elbridge Gerry. America’s fifth vice president, Gerry was also governor of Massachusetts in 1812 when he signed a bill with congressional districts partisanly-shaped with what Gerry’s opponents called “carvings and manglings.”

At a dinner party, a critic drew out the most egregiously shaped offensive district, which circled around the state, and then added claws and a snake’s head. A guest said that it looked like a salamander, to which another quipped it was a “Gerry-mander.” The drawing, complete with its sinister, added features, was published in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812, beneath the headline “The Gerry-Mander.”

Two centuries later, Virginia, another of America’s original 13 states, wanting no slithering gerrymanders of its own, passed a law establishing a 16-member bipartisan redistricting commission, which passed the state legislature overwhelmingly in 2019. It also allowed Virginia’s Supreme Court to oversee a process for appointing two special masters (one from each party) to create a plan and submit it to the Virginia Supreme Court, should the bipartisan commission be unable to reach agreement or Virginia’s General Assembly to pass it. Virginia voters approved the plan by a 2-1 margin in November 2020.

How we got the present maps

When the bipartisan commission was unable to reach agreement on a new map, the process described played out with Virginia’s Supreme Court appointing a bipartisan two-person commission in November 2021, which duly produced a bipartisan map in December that went into effect. This map yielded today’s 6-5 Democrat/Republican split in Virginia’s House delegation.

As the Boston Gazette presciently wrote over 200 years ago, today’s Democrats are seeking to birth anew their own beast born of “many fiery ebullitions of party spirit, many explosions of democratic wrath and fulminations of gubernatorial vengeance.”

Virginia’s new map would circumvent the state’s bipartisan districting law to produce a 10-1 Democrat/Republican split in Virginia’s House delegation. Proponents of the partisan redraw have dubbed themselves “Virginians for Fair Elections” and spent or reserved air time for $17.2 million in ads to promote their plan.

Not only is Virginia Democrats’ new proposed map extremely partisan; it would be America’s most partisanly leveraged congressional district map.

Democrats won 19 states in 2024’s presidential election: three with over 60% of the popular vote, eight with less than 55%, and four with less than 52%. With 51.8%, Virginia fell in the last group. Now Virginia’s Democrats want to take that mere 1.8 percentage-point margin over 50% and convert it into a nine-seat advantage in the state’s House delegation.

Virginia is much closer than, say, California

There are certainly blue states with bigger Democratic majorities in their House delegations – California’s 36, New York’s 12, and Illinois’s 11 – and Massachusetts also has nine. However, all these blue states had much larger 2024 margins over the 50% threshold: California’s 8.5 percentage points, New York’s 5.9 percentage points, Illinois’ 4.4 percentage points, and Massachusetts’ 11.2 percentage points.

Despite being far less (just 1.8 percentage points), Virginia’s Democrats want to leverage far more. Light blue Virginia wants to run with the “big blues.” Dividing Virginia Democrats’ proposed nine-seat House majority by the state’s 1.8 percentage-point 2024 margin (over the 50% threshold) and the result is a leveraging quotient of 5. Do the same division of other and deeper blue states and you get 4.2 for California, 2.5 for Illinois, 2 for New York.

Even on the new Texas map, which is purported to give Republicans a 30-8 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation – and is cited by Democrats as justification for their new partisan map – the leveraging quotient is just 3.6.

All these states are pikers in comparison to Virginia Democrats when it comes to partisan leveraging.

The Virginia gerrymander is their worst offense

Abigail Spanberger ran as a moderate in 2025. She was tapped by national Democrats for their rebuttal to President Trump’s SOTU speech this year – not a “Squad” member or any of many far-left frontrunners for Democrats’ 2028 presidential nomination – because she projects the image of moderation that Democrats seek but cannot readily find.  

Of course in their extremely short one-party tenure, Spanberger and state Democrats are governing with the same extremism as other national Democrats by proposing over 50 new state tax hikes. However, nowhere is their extreme partisanship on display more than their attempt to shred Virginia’s bipartisan congressional districts and replace them with their partisan pail of gerrymanders. It is indeed beyond the pale: Call it a Span-amander.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.