Authored by Ben Cline via RealClearPolitics,
Once you burn your credibility, it’s hard to get back.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger deceived voters and concealed her true leftist agenda to win the Governor’s Mansion last year. Now she and her fellow Democrats are lying to Virginians about a new gerrymandered congressional district map they placed on the ballot as a constitutional amendment on April 21.
It’s a naked attempt to make it impossible for Republicans to win election to Congress in most places in Virginia, and it’s why she was rewarded with the plum assignment of responding to President Trump’s State of the Union address this week.
The Virginia Supreme Court has already had one chance to stop the gerrymandering by upholding a judge’s ruling that Democrats cut legal corners to get the measure on the ballot. The justices, however, inexplicably chose to wait until the vote happens.
I filed another lawsuit to bring new challenges, along with my colleague, Rep. Morgan Griffith (VA-9), and the RNC and NRCC. We won in circuit court, blocking the referendum again, so our Supreme Court will have another chance to do the right thing.
As we wait for a ruling, it’s important that people have the facts.
Spanberger masqueraded as a moderate in her campaign and won ceaseless praise from the media for her focus on “affordability.” But she dropped that as soon as she was sworn in and went right back to what she truly believes.
She returned Virginia to the multi-state, radical environmental scheme that artificially raises electricity rates by $500 million every year. She’s currently considering a variety of tax increases proposed by Democrats in the Virginia legislature, including bumps in the sales and income tax, as well as taxes on everyday services like dog walking and gym memberships. She has yet to rule out raising taxes on anything.
All of this is the opposite of what she ran on.
Now Gov. Spanberger and her Democrats have turned to stealing congressional seats.
And naturally, they’re lying about that as well.
It’s nothing complicated. They’re taking Virginia’s current congressional district map, which produced six Democrats and five Republican members, and redrawing the lines to twist it into a 10-to-1 map in favor of Democrats.
Kamala Harris won here in the 2024 presidential race with less than 52% of the vote, but this map would award her party 91% of our congressional seats.
They’re assigning new federal representation to Virginians who didn’t ask for it, and there’s every likelihood that some of the lines were drawn to benefit specific Democrat politicians. One thing that’s certain is that no one was thinking of the well-being of voters when they hatched this plot.
As an example, take Fairfax County, vote-rich and dominated by Democrats in Northern Virginia outside Washington, D.C.
The new map carves Fairfax into five pieces and attaches them to districts that reach deep into Virginia’s rural regions. Picture the county as an octopus that has tentacles running throughout the state, and you’ll have an idea.
The configuration ensures that most rural voters will be represented by people who live in Fairfax and were elected by voters in the D.C. suburbs. It’s difficult to imagine what these groups might have in common geographically, culturally, or economically.
To top it off, just a few days ago, Democrats in the General Assembly decided that they hadn’t cheated enough and twisted the screws even more to guarantee total victory in 10 of the 11 districts.
States usually redistrict following a census, but Democrats claim they must act now to balance Republican activities in other states. This excuse falls apart because most observers agree that Virginia’s new map is a particularly egregious example of partisan gerrymandering.
And Democrats lie when they talk about it.
The party that told us that Joe Biden was mentally sharp now wants us to think a 10-to-1 congressional map promotes “fair elections,” as their advertising claims.
They were even dishonest in the ballot question they wrote, which says it will temporarily “restore fairness” – without explanation or context – to elections in Virginia until the regular redistricting occurs in 2030.
We shouldn’t let politicians select their own voters, and Virginians were wise enough to see this coming.
Just six years ago, a whopping 66% of voters approved a constitutional amendment creating an independent redistricting commission to remove map-drawing from partisans. Unable to resist the lure of unchecked power, Virginia Democrats are trying to trick voters into undoing that so they can burgle those congressional seats.
National Democrats are paying attention.
House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has already sent $5 million to the campaign to support the new map and pledged to spend “whatever it takes” on top of that.
Democrats hilariously claim to be restoring fairness.
But a party powerful enough to ram this down everyone’s throat isn’t the victim of unfairness. It’s the cause of it.
Rep. Ben Cline, a Republican, represents Virginia’s 6th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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