A lesser threat: Redistricting referendum’s passage is nothing to celebrate

Many of us voted for the redistricting referendum in Tuesday’s out-of-season statewide general election holding our noses as we did. That we felt we had to is an indictment on the applied politics of this age.

Let’s be clear: The most divisive and toxic president of the United States in my lifetime (yes, I was around for Nixon) had his name all over this. Without Donald Trump’s frightening and chaotic second term, this statewide referendum would be unimaginable.

With this narrow victory for “yes,” we in urban/suburban Virginia imposed our will on fellow Virginians outside our corridor of relative privilege by sheer force of numbers. We’ve got to own that.

Shaun Kenney is a former Republican Party of Virginia top official and committed conservative who lives in rural Virginia and often differs with Trump. On Wednesday, he posted on Facebook: “51-49 for Virginia to have 91-9 representation.”

Seven words that say it all.

There is a serious argument for supporting the referendum. It’s about electing a House of Representatives that will act as a check against — not a rubber stamp for — the alarming authoritarian acts of an erratic president who lacks impulse control or regard for the rule of law.

It’s why I and at least 1,574,793 other Virginians voted “yes.”

Six years ago, I was proud of my vote for the amendment to the Virginia Constitution that took the hyperpartisan job of reapportioning the state’s 11 U.S. House districts, its 40 state Senate districts and its 100 House of Delegates districts away from whichever party controlled the General Assembly and entrusted it to a bipartisan independent commission.

I was even prouder of Virginia for approving it by a convincing 2:1 ratio on the same ballot where Democrat Joe Biden bested Trump by 10 percentage points.

In the warrens of Richmond’s old General Assembly Building, I saw hacks treat the state’s political districts as their private fiefdoms to be bartered and traded for partisan hegemony, to safeguard the seats of allies, and to punish enemies. It was exactly as critics of the system asserted in the successful 2020 referendum: elected officials were picking their voters instead of the voters picking them.

I am not proud of my vote for passage of the 2026 amendment that temporarily undoes what good-government advocates achieved after decades spent persuading state legislators to relinquish one of their most cherished prerogatives. I voted as I did because I see it as the lesser threat to the republic.

Rural Virginia put up one hell of a fight, though, and the numbers prove it.

Complete but unofficial returns Wednesday morning showed 1,574,509 votes (or 51.44%) for passage of the ballot issue and 1,485,581 votes (48.56%) against it.

A finish that close is amazing considering that at least $83 million was spent as of April 10 by opaque “dark money” Super PACs (nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors), according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Of that, $62 million was spent in support of passage and $21 million was spent to defeat it. The total is at least eight times greater than the second-most expensive ballot issue in the past 10 years.

So resolute was the “no” movement in red-voting areas of Virginia that it won in 99 localities, 10 more than Trump carried in 2024, and by greater margins than Trump.

“Yes” won in just 34 localities. It prevailed by the skin of its teeth because those localities encompass about 54% of Virginia’s roughly 6.4 million registered voters.

The Big Kahuna was Fairfax County — home to one of every eight Virginia voters — which cast 261,132 votes (69%) for “Yes,” yielding a surplus of 146,570 votes for passage. That’s significant, since the statewide victory margin was just over 88,000 votes.

Kenney’s social media take on the referendum is the most succinct and lucid out there. It voices the resentment, the hurt and the frustration of a region struggling with elevated unemployment, with inadequate public school funding, with finding ways to provide hope and opportunities to keep children raised there from decamping for brighter prospects.

Now, the cities and suburbs threaten to dominate their elected representation in Congress, mocking the definition of the “commonwealth” we claim to be.

“This certainly has a coarsening effect,” Kenney said in an interview Wednesday. “One half of Virginia just disenfranchised the other half.”

I more than understand that; I lived it.

I grew up in an area of Tennessee as poor and rural as any in Virginia. As kids, we seethed at condescension from folks in larger, more advantaged enclaves. It drove us to succeed individually, yet it didn’t save factories and mills that closed when expanded global trade gutted small towns decades ago.

Necessary though green-lighting mid-decade redistricting may seem, this was a provocation rural Virginia won’t soon forget or forgive. It has already widened the gulf between the two Virginias. If you think working across the aisle in supposedly collaborative bodies such as the General Assembly and Congress has been lacking, just wait. After Democrats inevitably play out the winning hand Trump has gifted them for now, payback will be certain.

The referendum also exposed the majority’s geographic limitations. Support outside cities and their immediate suburbs was scarce. The largest city, Virginia Beach, flat-out balked. Ten of the new districts are demographically anchored in those core urban/suburban strongholds because it’s the only hope Democrats have of realizing their 10-1 objective this fall. And even then, Kenney notes, it’s no sure thing.

“Think of it this way: the new 6th District voted against it by 11 points, so (prospective Democratic candidate Tom) Perriello has to swim upstream,” he said. “The 2nd voted against it. The 9th certainly voted against it,” he said, noting the southwestern Virginia district held by GOP U.S. Rep. H. Morgan Griffith that would remain the lone GOP possession as envisioned under the new alignment.

It’s questionable whether the redrawn districts will survive to November. The Virginia Supreme Court allowed the referendum to proceed while it reviews Republican lawsuits challenging the referendum’s legality. If the justices uphold trial court rulings for the plaintiffs, the referendum (and the unprecedented tens of millions spent on it) is moot.

It’s one thing to appreciate Tuesday’s victory as a hedge against presidential predations in the final semester of Trump’s second term. I don’t apologize for it, but it’s not something I will celebrate.

And how sad a commentary on the state of our union is that?