Democrats push redistricting amendment as special session jolts Virginia ahead of election

With just one week before Election Day, Virginia lawmakers returned to the state Capitol Monday for a surprise special session that swiftly turned into a partisan clash over the future of the state’s congressional map — and, potentially, its balance of political power for years to come.

House Democrats, using procedural maneuvers that caught Republicans off guard, pushed through a procedural resolution crafted by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, that would allow the General Assembly to consider a proposed constitutional amendment granting lawmakers authority to redraw Virginia’s congressional districts mid-decade. The Senate is expected to take up the measure in the coming days. 

Under the resolution, adopted on a party-line vote in both chambers, lawmakers may now consider budget and revenue bills, judicial appointments and constitutional amendments related to redistricting and reapportionment. The measure effectively removes the usual constraints that limit special sessions to subjects designated by the governor or legislative leaders.

“This was an important vote for us to take this week in order for us to have that option,” said Del. Cia Price, D-Newport News, chair of the House Privileges and Elections Committee. “If we were not to take this action right now, then we would be pulling an option from the voters.”

Republicans decried the legislative action as an ambush carried out largely behind closed doors. Democrats argued the procedural expansion is needed to respond to what they view as a growing national campaign by Republicans — encouraged by President Donald Trump — to reengineer congressional maps mid-decade. 

As first reported by The New York Times last week, Democratic strategists, including former Attorney General Eric Holder, have urged Virginia to act preemptively in case federal courts uphold new Republican-drawn maps in states such as Texas, North Carolina and Missouri that could tilt the balance of the U.S. House.

“The actions that Texas and Missouri and North Carolina have taken have triggered this,” Price said. “The trigger has already been pulled when it comes to attacks on our democracy. So that’s why Virginia is here. We are going to do our job to protect democracy in Virginia.”

Republicans cry foul

Republicans blasted the maneuver as a constitutional overreach designed to change election rules days before voters decide three statewide races. 

House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, said Democrats had sidelined the minority and the public in an opaque process that left many guessing what was actually being planned.

“There’s a lot of issues that we need to talk about to the voters of Virginia, but obviously the ruling party had other plans,” Kilgore told reporters on the House floor. “Just let it be known that we do think that this was a plan to take us out of having any motions of personal privilege. … I just want to know from our side, because we’re not privy to all this, are we going to have a redistricting constitutional amendment coming to the floor?”

Del. Israel O’Quinn, R-Washington, accused Democrats of hiding the ball: “You know a bill is a bad idea when a member mumbles through their description of it and refuses to take questions and sits back down,” O’Quinn said. “They don’t want morning hour speeches, so you’re getting to see a really bad idea play out in real time.”

Republicans also questioned whether Democrats had already missed the legal window to advance a constitutional amendment this year. 

Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Spotsylvania, cited Virginia Code § 30-13, which requires proposed constitutional amendments to be posted publicly at least three months before the next House of Delegates election.

“That deadline has already passed,” Orrock said on the House floor, arguing that any amendment passed this week could not legally appear before voters in November.

Del. Lee Ware, R-Powhatan, warned that Democrats were defying centuries of precedent. 

“Here we are, eight days before Election Day, near the conclusion of our 46-day election season, in Richmond,” Ware said. “The purpose of this unprecedented special session during an election is to hitch Virginia, belatedly, to the pell-mell bandwagon, to redistrict, or to speak more honestly, to gerrymander, the commonwealth’s electoral districts.”

Democrats: Amendment only creates an “option”

Price and other Democrats maintained that the move does not dismantle Virginia’s independent redistricting commission, approved by voters in 2020, but merely creates an additional safeguard should courts or federal actions reshape national political boundaries.

Del. Rodney Willett, D-Henrico, who will carry the proposed constitutional amendment, said the plan “is going to give us options.”

“Maybe the most important point to make here is what the resolution is not going to do, which is to abolish the commission that was created through the earlier constitutional amendment,” Willett said. 

“This is to create, again, not a mandate, but an option, in the interim, in between those decennial redistrictings to do something when there’s an extraordinary circumstance.”

He added that the move was necessary because “our hand’s been forced here. This is not our choice to be here, but with this kind of attack, we’ve got to respond.”

Democratic House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, who last week called lawmakers back to Richmond, declined to outline his full plan publicly. But some Democratic leaders told Virginia Scope last week that the goal is to prevent Virginia’s representation in Congress from being weakened if neighboring states redraw their maps to favor Republicans.

Earle-Sears, GOP candidates seize on the optics

Before the session opened, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears — who presided over the state Senate Monday and is also the Republican nominee for governor — staged a campaign-style news conference on the Capitol steps, accusing Democrats of abusing their majority for partisan gain.

“Today, Democrats in our General Assembly are calling this special session, not to serve the people, but to serve ourselves,” Earle-Sears said. “They want to dismantle the very independent redistricting commission that Virginia was voting for in a bipartisan majority.”

Earle-Sears called the commission “born out of a prayer, a rare moment of unity, when Democrats and Republicans alike agreed that voters … should choose their own representatives, and not the other way around.”

She linked the move directly to her Democratic opponent, Abigail Spanberger, saying, “This pressure is coming from Washington insiders and Abigail Spanberger. What we are seeing today is the worst kind of political backtracking, an attempt to grab power by erasing the voter’s voice.”

Her remarks came as national attention turned to a $150,000 donation each from Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee to Spanberger’s campaign and to Virginia House Democrats. 

Gov. Glenn Youngkin seized on that timing Monday, accusing Spanberger of hypocrisy.

“This was Abigail Spanberger’s position just a few short years ago,” Youngkin wrote on X, citing her 2019 praise of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down racially gerrymandered districts. “All it took was $150,000 from the ‘Democrat Redistricting Committee’ to change her position completely,” Youngkin wrote.

Spanberger has not commented publicly on the current effort. In an August interview with WJLA, she said she opposed mid-decade redistricting and warned against “politicians trying to tilt the playing field in their favor,” aligning herself with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s call for fair-maps legislation.

Republican lieutenant governor nominee John Reid on Monday echoed Earle-Sears’ criticism, saying Democrats were “not respecting the will of the people.”

“They made it very clear, just five years ago, they don’t want petty partisanship,” Reid said. “They don’t want politicians drawing their own lines … this is not respectful to the people in Virginia.”

GOP congressional delegation joins chorus

Earlier in the day, Virginia’s five Republican members of Congress — U.S. Reps. Morgan Griffith, Jen Kiggans, Rob Wittman, Ben Cline and John McGuire — held a joint news conference at the Capitol condemning the Democratic move.

Griffith, a former House majority leader in the state legislature, said he had firsthand experience with partisan line-drawing. 

“I was a part of partisan redistricting, but the voters of Virginia spoke in 2020 that they didn’t like that happening,” he said. Griffith argued that a special session after early voting had already begun “deprives those who have voted early” of the chance to weigh the issue.

Kiggans, who represents a competitive swing district in Hampton Roads, called the proposal a cynical replay of Washington dysfunction. “It’s a competitive district, and always will be,” she said, likening the Democratic plan to “partisan games in Washington” that have “now trickled down here to Richmond.”

Legal doubts and political fallout

Republican Party of Virginia Chair Mark Peake, a state senator from Lynchburg, told The Mercury in an interview Monday that the Democratic proposal was “unconstitutional.”

“There is no intervening election,” Peake said. “Nine-hundred thousand people have already voted. They’re supposed to post it in courthouses for three months before the election. They don’t have a bill, they don’t have a constitutional amendment. It’s not going through. As I said, it’s a ruse.”

Peake predicted “this will 100 percent end up in court.” 

He dismissed comparisons to Trump’s mid-decade redistricting push in Texas. 

“Where we are different is, we have a constitutional amendment in place that says how we do redistricting. Not mid-decade, it’s every decade. And it’s bipartisan.”

Broader stakes: A national redistricting arms race

The New York Times reported last week that Virginia Democrats’ rush to act stems from a fear that Republican-controlled states could redraw congressional boundaries before 2026, potentially costing Democrats several seats. 

Trump’s public calls for GOP legislatures to redistrict mid-decade have prompted a flurry of legal and legislative action in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina. The U.S. Supreme Court is also currently weighing a major redistricting case from Louisiana.

In that context, Democrats in Virginia — one of only a few southern states with divided political control in recent years — see a constitutional amendment as both a defensive measure and a statement of principle.

But even some Democrats privately concede that the optics of returning to Richmond just days before an election could prove risky, particularly as Republicans work to cast the move as proof of overreach.

Next steps and uncertain path ahead

Price, whose committee oversees election law, said the Privileges and Elections Committee would meet Wednesday morning to review the amendment text, followed by a potential vote in the full House later this week. 

She emphasized that the amendment would require approval again in the next legislative session and voter ratification in a statewide referendum before taking effect.

“I’ve been here for 10 years,” Price said. “We’ve had several proposed constitutional amendments, and when the Republicans were in charge, they weren’t worried about what they were bringing up. We are fully within our right to be here.”

Still, the legal and political obstacles are formidable. 

Virginia law requires constitutional amendments to be approved by two separately elected General Assemblies, meaning even if Democrats pass it this week, it would need to survive another vote after the new legislature convenes in January — and then win approval at the ballot box in 2026.

Republicans appear determined to challenge the process in court before it gets that far. “They’re wasting our time,” Peake, the RPV chair, said flatly. “It’s going to be overturned as soon as it gets to court.”

As night fell on the Capitol, lawmakers filtered out of the chamber with few clear answers and even fewer signs of bipartisan consensus. 

Price, standing outside the chamber doors, said Democrats would proceed carefully but deliberately.

“It’s important that we have all of our options on the table,” she said again. “This is about protecting democracy in Virginia.”

Reporters Nathaniel Cline and Charlotte Rene Woods contributed to this story. 

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.