More Than You Wanted to Know about Politics in Virginia in 2022
One of the first things you learn as you begin to get involved in politics in Virginia is that we vote every year in our state. There are historical reasons for our off-year state elections that I’m not going to go into in this essay. Let’s just acknowledge that this requires a lot of campaigning and fund raising.
This is usually challenging enough. But this year, there may be a new wrinkle; a court case is working its way through the federal court system to decide whether Virginia needs to hold special elections this year for the House of Delegates.
Here’s why this is happening.
Two things delayed the 2020 census count. The first was COVID, which impacted census-takers from making their normal house-to-house visits to collect census data.
The second was a series of actions by the Trump administration that caused temporary halts to the process, an April 2019 effort to include a “citizenship” question on the census and a July 2020 lawsuit to ban undocumented immigrants from being counted in the census. This was of course just an effort to delay the count in order to flummox redistricting efforts in states with elections in 2021 – primarily, Virginia. Our statewide elections always occur in the year following a presidential election year, and the Trump Administration wanted to put its thumb on the scales to make redistricting (that reflects population changes favoring the “blue” parts of Virginia) more difficult.
Whatever the cause (and I think it was a combination of these), census data-collection stopped two months later than usual, with the result that Virginia had to hold its statewide elections under the “old” districts. Virginia had passed a constitutional amendment that created a bipartisan commission to draw the districts (rather than the General Assembly), and this commission was unable to come up with new maps until December of 2021, long after the November elections.
The primary reason for the late approval of these maps was the Census Bureau delay. In previous census years, Virginia received its census data in February, because of its 2021 elections, and other states received their data later in the year. In 2021, the Census Bureau decided to release the data all at once, in September – clearly too late for Virginia to redraw its districts in time for the 2021 elections. Because of an early voting law that passed the General Assembly in 2020, the 45-day early voting period began in mid-September 2021.
The 2021 elections in Virginia produced a Republican sweep. The three state-wide offices – Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General, and the House of Delegates flipped from Democratic to Republican control.
Here’s what changed in Virginia as a result of the 2021 House of Delegates elections.
The district maps produced by the redistricting commission in December are generally favorable to Democrats in the state. The greatest population increases since the 2010 census occurred in the very “blue” suburbs of Northern Virginia, and the greatest population decreases occurred in the very “red” rural areas in the southwest part of the state. The new districts reflect this, shifting more political power to the parts of the state that are more likely to vote for Democrats.
Okay.
Redistricting occurs after every census to satisfy the “one-man-one-vote” – officially, the “equal protection” clause -- of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Because of the significant population shifts in the state – and because the previous district maps reflected the gerrymandering done under the GOP-controlled legislature in 2011 – a lawsuit is making its way through the federal courts in Virginia to require Virginia to hold new House of Delegates elections this year.
Paul Goldman, former state Democratic party chair, argues in his lawsuit that new elections must be held because the districts that have been redrawn because of these population shifts. Several activist groups in the state – including the League of Women Voters, chapters of the NAACP, and several local Democratic Party Committees – have joined in Goldman’s lawsuit.
People who support holding an out-of-cycle election this year point to the inadequacy of the old districts because of population shifts. They are also like to be Democrats, because they want a chance to regain majority control in the House of Delegates for the legislative session that begins in January of 2023. Some Democrats, however, oppose holding this special election – because their delegates who are members of the Democrat party face a more challenging election prospect because of the redistricting, and they want their delegates to be able to serve their full term. Republicans generally oppose holding elections this year, because they don’t want to risk losing their majority in the House of Delegates.
This is not the first time Virginia has faced the prospect of holding new House of Delegates elections – a similar lawsuit in 1981 forced Virginia to hold House of Delegates elections in three successive years – 1981, 1982, and 1983. We are still waiting for this lawsuit to be decided, and the clock is ticking. Virginia election officials are also holding their collective breath pending this decision, because it will be difficult for them to administer “surprise” House of Delegates elections this year — the primaries would take place in August, and that’s not much time. They’ll do it well if they have to, but I imagine they’re hoping they won’t have to.
As you can imagine, this has muddied election planning in Virginia. While we are waiting to find out if we have to scramble to assist candidates for a new House of Delegates race, we are already busy helping House of Representatives candidates for the 2022 midterms. This is having an immediate impact on WIG, my local Indivisible group. One of our good friends, Herb Jones, has run a couple of times (unsuccessfully) for a state Senate seat – in 2017 and then in 2019. Under the new redistricting plan, our current GOP member of the House of Delegates, Amanda Batten, is now vulnerable, so Herb had planned to run against her in the upcoming HOD election – whether it occurred this year or next year.
But the redistricting plan also left our incumbent Congressman, Rob Wittman, without an obvious opponent for the 2022 midterms. So Herb decided to shift his focus and is now on the ballot as a candidate for the House seat. This is a much more expensive race, and we are all in with Herb to help him win this election. Wittman has to go – he voted against Trump in both impeachment votes, voted not to recognize the electors from Pennsylvania and Arizona on January 6, 2021, voted against the Infrastructure Bill, and voted against confirming Judge Jackson for the Supreme Court. He voted for all three less qualified Trump appointees – Gorsuch, Kavenaugh, and Barrett. We deserve a representative who supports democracy.
But if the court case comes down in favor of Paul Goldman, we are going to have to scramble to find a candidate to run against Amanda Batten, because Herb is otherwise occupied. One of our most likely candidates has been redistricted out of Amanda’s district, so she can’t run. Another likely candidate is running for a seat on the Williamsburg City Council, so she won’t run. The problem is, we need to find someone with almost automatic name recognition and a source of funding, because the campaign will have to get off to a fast start and ramp up quickly if the candidate is to have a chance.
That’s all for now. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.