A federal court is sending the General Assembly back to the drawing board next year to correct what it has decided is the unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in Virginia’s 3rd congressional district. Those who have the inclination can read the majority opinion and the dissent here.
Legal considerations aside, and remembering always that redistricting is a bipartisan exercise in protecting incumbents more than anything else, the politics this decision will generate heading into the 2015 elections are interesting.
Some Democrats are hoping this decision leads to more legal action that would force a redrawing of the General Assembly’s district lines. The long-term hope is that this will result in more “purple” House and Senate seats, scrambling, if not toppling, GOP control. We shall see. But it has already become a talking point.
So, too, has the possibility that a new congressional map might involve some serious deal making on issues utterly unrelated to representation. Some Democrats are pondering if Gov. McAuliffe may try to get something on Medicaid expansion in return for his assent to new congressional district lines. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. McAuliffe needs to give General Assembly Democrats something they can take to voters. Why not this?
McAuliffe could simply veto anything that comes out of the General Assembly and hope the task of redrawing the lines falls to a federal court. That is not a desirable outcome, but it isn’t impossible, either.
Republicans, of course, will not have any such talk and that goes double in an election year. But the lines have to change. So their challenge is how to do that without overly endangering one or more of their congressional cousins while addressing the court’s concerns.
That may be difficult. The 3rd district is a wretched-looking thing held together by the James River. To make it more rational, it’s possible chunks of the 1st, 2nd and 4th districts may have to be redrawn. Or it’s possible even portions of the 7th district could be brought in…which would set off a daisy chain of new lines further west and north.
Another option is to create a second minority-majority district elsewhere in the state…say in Northern Virginia. You get the idea — change the lines in one district and the ripple extend far indeed. And that means the most interested parties in any new map aren’t the plaintiffs in the 3rd district case, but the incumbent congressmen whose lines will be redrawn. The same as it’s always been.
The 2015 General Assembly session was looking to be a rather dull affair, with little or no big legislation for the worthies to debate. Not any more. The GOP has told us they wanted the opportunity to show they could govern. Now they have it.
