Democrats’ Redistricting Power Grab Backfires, Republicans Could Gain Congressional Seats

Politics can turn on a dime, and no one is more painfully aware of that than Democrats. After a euphoric April that saw the party pull off a stunning congressional map heist in Virginia, the party of Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) has come crashing back to earth — hard. In a matter of 10 days, not only has the state supreme court struck down that referendum Democrats spent $64 million on, but the U.S. Supreme Court tossed a favorite tool of the Left — racial gerrymandering — triggering a massive race to redraw the entire red South. Suddenly, the plans for a November victory parade seem surprisingly premature.

On Friday, in a decision that several legal experts expected, the Commonwealth’s justices ruled that “the legislative process employed” to advance the referendum was unconstitutional and “incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.” It was an outcome that former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli predicted, noting that there were at least four violations of the state constitution in the process that led to the Democrats’ narrow win at the ballot box. And to many, that win, a squeaker at 51-49%, proved why the purple state should have never been redrawn in the first place.

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For Republicans, who were furious at the power grab in Governor Abigail Spanberger’s (D) state, the ruling gives voice to millions of disenfranchised voters who stood to lose four seats in the U.S. House. “This is the correct decision, and it was always going to end up this way,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) agreed. “Democrats broke laws that they helped write in the first place, blew through deadlines, wrote a biased and misleading ballot question, and lied to the voters in all of their advertising to support the referendum. The voters of Virginia banned gerrymandering six years ago, and that ban remains in effect today,” he reiterated. “This is a great day for fair elections and the rule of law, and it’s a great day for the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who already has an uphill climb for the midterms, cheered the result as “a victory for democracy.” “[It] ensures Virginians have fair representation in Congress,” he said.

On the Left, Jeffries and company decried the decision as “shocking,” while Virginia House Speaker Don Scott (D) issued a statement saying, “We respect the decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia. … We respect the court. But we will keep fighting for a democracy where voters — not politicians — have the final say. Because in Virginia, power still belongs to the people,” he argued.

And while Democrats complain about the “unfairness” of the decision, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said it didn’t take a legal genius to see that this was a possibility. “They didn’t pay attention to the fact that they had to follow the Virginia Constitution. And they rushed it through. And they made a number of mistakes [by not following the letter of the law].” But “they’re still complaining that, ‘Well, it went to the voters in the referendum, and those people’s votes didn’t count.’ Well,” Griffith said on Friday’s “Washington Watch,” “they should have anticipated that and gotten all of the i’s dotted, and the t’s crossed. When you do something in an unconstitutional manner under the Virginia Constitution, you’ve got to expect that the court will take action against it. Whether a million people voted in the referendum or 1,000,006 voted in the referendum is not the issue. The issue is, did you follow the rules?”

Frankly, he suspects, “In their heart of hearts, deep down, when they’re not playing politics, I think even the Democrats know that they were pushing the envelope and trying to get by with one quickly. They thought the referendum would basically cow the court into doing it. … And I give the court credit for having the fortitude to recognize that they’re going to irritate the legislature, which appoints them.” Yet, at the end of the day, “The court did its job. It was tough for them to do it. Some of them are likely not to be reappointed by the legislature because of it. But they did the right thing anyway. And I just have great respect for the Virginia Supreme Court for doing the right thing.”

Meanwhile, the setback on the Democratic map is a huge blow heading into November, Axios admits. While a lot of pundits have been crowing that the GOP is on the verge of a midterm bloodbath, the reality is that this is “a huge boost to Republicans’ chances of keeping the House,” the outlet notes. “Even some Democrats now concede that they basically need to run the table in November.”

It also drives home just how much work the Left has to do in agenda-setting. They can’t rely on anti-Trump sentiment carrying the day, as one anonymous House Democrat conceded. “[We] cannot take a midterm victory for granted,” the member told reporters. “Relying too much on the administration’s unpopularity and not enough of their own positive agenda could put an otherwise sure victory at risk.”

With the 10-1 edge in Virginia off the table, Democrats will struggle to make up a lot of ground in the redistricting arms race that has launched in earnest in the South after the U.S. Supreme Court’s rollback of racial gerrymandering. As Punchbowl News warns the Left, “As many as 10 seats could now swing toward Republicans in a worst-case scenario for Democrats,” while adding, “this all remains very fluid.”

Already, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi have rocketed out of the gates to redraw their maps after the justices’ ruling in Louisiana v. Callais — some states even postponing their primary elections to make sure they get their new districts approved first.

The governors of one of those states, Louisiana’s Jeff Landry (R), agreed it was about time that the stranglehold of the Voting Rights Act was loosened. “I think that the Supreme Court has finally helped untangle Louisiana and many states, especially across the South, [from] a nasty wave of litigation that’s been going on since the 90s. … Louisiana has been engaged in 27 federal lawsuits since the 1990s, which has basically taken away the legislature’s power to draw congressional districts.” No longer, he continued, can Democrats “blame the Civil Rights Act for losing elections. That’s the bottom line.”

Finally, Landry told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, “The Supreme Court has instilled fairness and cemented the rule of law in our election process and the way we draw districts in the United States for the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Fellow Louisianan Mike Johnson echoed that sentiment, pointing to a GOP pick-up of at least eight to 10 seats. “It depends on how many states get in on this,” he stressed to Perkins. “And this trend was long overdue. I mean, for years, we argued … that the common sense reading of the Constitution says you cannot use race as a determining factor [to draw districts]. You can’t discriminate against voters of any skin color. And that’s what the previous regime, the previous kind of rules, had done. So the Supreme Court has finally set that right. And you see a number of states jumping in to correct that.”

In Tennessee, mayhem broke out on the floor of the state House when the general assembly passed a map that turned all nine of the congressional districts red. Governor Bill Lee (R) called lawmakers back into a special session after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Callais to right what many see as a long-time wrong. The state’s House speaker, Cameron Sexton, defended the move on “Washington Watch,” calling out the “aggressive, vile protestors” and Democratic caucus for creating chaos in the Capitol. “We’ve gone through that before,” he shrugged. “We powered through it. We passed it out, and now it’s law.” If the other side sues, Sexton isn’t worried. “We’re prepared. … I feel comfortable that we’re going to win it in the long term, and then the maps will be upheld at some point.”

Ultimately, the entire landscape is changing, David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, underscored to “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice. “Keep in mind that by 2029, we could see states across the Deep South sending zero Democrats or black representatives to Congress from states that have some of the highest black populations in the country. … This is going to have the effect of eradicating Democrats from red states, and blue states eradicating Republicans from their delegations.” Places like Illinois could pass a map, he warned, with 17 Democrats and zero Republicans by drawing downstate of Chicago. “Same thing in California. Democrats could draw [a] 52-to-0 map. And so, this is further polarizing Congress.”

At the end of the day, he explained, “What it means is that the battle for control of the House is going to come down to a small group of states with neutral maps that were installed by courts or commissions. And that’s why the bulk of the toss-ups in our chart right now are in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, [and] Iowa — states where neither party dominates this process.”

And that’s just fine with most Americans, whose biggest concern is a fair and level playing field. “We [need] maps that accurately reflect the population of [our] states,” Johnson insisted to Perkins. “And this is the genius of the Founders, how they set up the three branches of the federal government for checks and balances. And you can’t allow political issues to be the main driving factor in making sure that people are fairly represented in their states,” he argued. “The court has to look at this objectively. They have to evaluate these ideas on the basis of the Constitution. I think they did the right thing here, and it was a long time coming.”

LifeNews Note: Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand, where this originally appeared.