The stakes couldn’t be higher for national Republicans in next Tuesday’s Virginia redistricting referendum, but the conservative parts of the commonwealth may have even more riding on the outcome than House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
A battle for control of Virginia has been brewing between the Washington, D.C., suburbs up north and the state’s conservative redoubts, both literally and culturally more southern, for decades.
It’s played out in music, with the song “Rich Men North of Richmond” becoming an unlikely local hit. This tug-of-war was a core feature in the last two off-year statewide elections, with Republicans running the table in 2021 and Democrats doing the same in resounding fashion last year.
George Allen, the last Republican elected to the Senate from Virginia, is remembered for using a term regarded as an ethnic slur to describe a Democratic tracker following him around during his unsuccessful 2006 reelection campaign. But Allen also captured this dynamic when he welcomed his Democratic tormentor to the “real world of Virginia,” outside the Beltway.
So-called real Virginia has slowly been losing to the DMV. Heavily Democratic northern Virginia has increasingly outvoted the rest of the state. The commonwealth hasn’t voted Republican at the presidential level since George W. Bush won a second term in 2004.
Virginia Democrats no longer feel much need to distance themselves from the party’s national brand or demonstrate ties to other more culturally conservative regions of the state, a tactic that helped Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) win the governor’s race back in 2001 and was critical to former Sen. Jim Webb’s narrow victory over Allen. Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) presented herself as a centrist, but not on social issues. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe had been a chairman of the Democratic National Committee, though he failed to win a second, nonconsecutive term.
Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones managed to get elected last November after the publication of text messages showing him indulging in violent fantasies about Republicans. His triumph came just weeks after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
But Virginia’s redistricting measure would erase all but one reliably Republican congressional district in the commonwealth, giving conservative voters just a single representative out of 11. All of Virginia’s statewide elected officials were Republicans as recently as January, and President Donald Trump won more than 46% of the vote to 51.83% for former Vice President Kamala Harris.
It is plausible to believe Trump might have carried Virginia, however narrowly, if former President Joe Biden had remained in place as the Democratic nominee.
Proponents of the 10-1 Democratic map say it is necessary to resist Trump, who has promoted similar redistricting efforts in redder states. But this would be one of the most lopsided gerrymanders in the least blue or red state where mid-decade redistricting has been attempted ahead of November’s midterm elections.
That’s why rural Virginia has stepped up its resistance to the redistricting referendum in recent weeks. Ads urging Virginians to vote no feature plenty of Southern accents. Farmhouses emblazoned with “Don’t Fairfax me” signs have gone viral. There have been signs that the race is tightening.
Buyer’s remorse about Spanberger, who has backed redistricting and is now seen as a captive of northern Virginia liberals rather than a centrist, has shown up in polls since she took office earlier this year.
There are also signs of how much Virginia has changed. Both sides of the campaign cite former President Barack Obama, who started Virginia’s trend of voting for Democratic presidential candidates in 2008. Opponents of redistricting also note the new map will erase minority-majority districts.
Prior to that, Virginia hadn’t voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide. Richard Nixon carried Virginia twice, with segregationist George Wallace taking 23% of the vote in 1968. Virginia was the only Southern state to vote against Jimmy Carter in 1976.
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Northern Virginia was originally a stronghold for centrist Republicans as the state started turning red. Republican Tom Davis represented a congressional district in the region as late as 2008, chairing the House GOP’s campaign arm from 1998 to 2004.
A win for the 10-1 congressional map would seemingly be the death knell for Virginia Republicans in this decadeslong contest. It could also represent the kind of overreach that could threaten the Democrats’ monopoly on power in what is, in fact, still a purple state.