Gerrymandering and the Tyranny of Big Cities | The American Spectator

I’ve written an analysis of the April 21st redistricting vote here in Virginia. At that time, I made the urgent and emphatic point that this is an egregious power grab on the part of Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger and the Democrat majority in our legislature. Not content with their good fortune in the most recent electoral cycle, they now insist that this should be made permanent by rigging our congressional districts in their favor — and permanent it will be, despite the dishonest framing of the measure as temporary. We’ve seen how this works too many times in the years since the left has taken control of the culture. (RELATED: Californicating Virginia: Democrats’ Misleading Appeal to ‘Fairness’)

I’m pleased that I’m not the only one here at The American Spectator who has called out this monstrosity and urged Virginia voters to respond with a resounding “no” vote. I’m also pleased at the statewide rallies against this abomination and at the proliferation of “no” signs in our battleground district on the outer edge of the D.C. suburbs. This matters, since the wealthy and predominantly leftist D.C. suburbs are wildly out of touch with most of Virginia, and particularly rural and small-town Virginia. (RELATED: Can Virginia Stop Spanberger’s Gerrymander?)

Northern Virginia was always more attuned culturally to Maryland and even Pennsylvania, more eastern than southern or even mid-Atlantic, and for years, its culture has become more and more urban, more New York than New Market. These days, heavily populated by government employees who’ve migrated in from out of state, the gulf between this urban megalopolis and the rest of the state is even greater. The governor herself, originally from New Jersey, exemplifies what this means in terms of values.

I hope and pray that this measure is soundly defeated, and I’m guardedly optimistic based on the current momentum. But given the structural advantages enjoyed by NoVa Democrats — the structural advantages they hope to cement through the current referendum — I remain concerned that the “no’ campaign will fall short. Moreover, it needs to be a resounding “no” majority, not a squeaker. Sadly, recent experience suggests that razor-thin conservative majorities tend to mysteriously disappear during the final vote count. (RELATED: Early Vote Bodes Ill For Virginia Redistricting Scam)

Regardless of how this election turns out, the redistricting battle in Virginia highlights a much larger national issue, namely the extent to which the largest urban complexes have come to dominate state and national politics, imposing their predominantly leftist values throughout their respective states. Worse, urban leftists now seem to believe that they have every right to do this across the full range of domestic issues, from abortion to gun control, to what is taught in our schools.

We’ve seen this for a long time out west, where Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Denver run roughshod over the values — and the voting preferences — of their respective rural and small town hinterlands. We’ve also seen it in Illinois and New York and across New England, where “downstate,” or “upstate,” or “the countryside” are routinely told to shut up and obey when the big cities want something.

But it’s not just true in these long-established strongholds, but also in such places as Atlanta, where the city and suburbs exert an ugly and growing dominance over the life of the state. One also sees it in such unlikely locales as Texas, where Dallas and other large cities lean increasingly to the left. Look back at recent national elections. It’s a commonplace of state and national electoral maps that a breakdown of voting by counties shows huge swaths of red across every state, while the blobs of blue concentrate around the major cities (and their satellites, the hard leftist university towns).

When tone takes this to suggest that the country — or any given state — might be regarded as “conservative,” the left quickly counters to say, “it’s not the land, it’s the people, the numbers, and the numbers are all concentrated in these islands of Blue.” Here in Virginia, the left offers two arguments in favor of their proposed amendment. The first, seen on their road signs and broadcast advertising, is a simple and mindless “stop Trump,” as if Trump were somehow central to every issue facing Virginians. For the “no kings” airheads who vote purely on emotions, this appears to be sufficient. Appallingly stupid, but sufficient. (RELATED: No Kings, Just Pawns)

The second argument, however, is much more significant and deserves a more considered response. In its simplest form, it asserts that, in the era of “one man, one vote,” numbers should prevail. If the numbers exist in the cities and their suburbs, then the cities deserve to rule the states and, by extension (since the current case is about congressional representation) the country as a whole.

This is utter nonsense with regard to the Democrats’ redistricting plan for Virginia. The current congressional district map, drawn by a bipartisan commission, almost directly reflects the turnout in recent statewide elections — six Democrat districts, five Republican. The Democrat plan would likely translate into 10 Democrat seats to only one Republican. But even if the “no” vote prevails, the problem will remain. How do we protect the values of all sections of a state against the dominance of one? Or, writ large, the values of a whole nation, not simply its urban centers.

We’ve come to this by way of several generations of mindless political sloganeering couple with the utter disappearance of anything resembling honest and historically accurate civics education. A better educated voting public would know, as the Founding Fathers made very clear, that our Constitution establishes a democratic “republic,” and that the republic enshrined in the Constitution exists very specifically to constrain a government captured by untrammeled democracy — and also to protect all parts of the national life from the tyranny of any one element.

In my lifetime, this has changed, and not at all for the better. City life was always different from small-town or rural life, but not so radically, nothing like the cultural chasm that has emerged in recent years. It’s hard now to identify when this all changed, but change it all has, and brutally in terms of traditional values. One can see this most clearly across the cultural signifiers, abortion, gun control, immigration, and what is taught in schools, but it exists across many other practical issues.

To take just one obvious example, the Democrats’ climate change fanaticism, which stacked the deck in favor of electric vehicles, might have made some sense — not a lot — for city dwellers who relied on public transportation or suburbanites with short commutes. But it was ridiculous for those who lived in smaller towns and the countryside, where range and carrying capacity meant everything in terms of practical utility. “Clinging” to pick up Obama’s contemptuous term for the “deplorables” was actually common sense when it came to pickup trucks.

The same might be said of gun control, which long ago became more of a cultural signifier than a meaningful crime control policy. Those who live in the countryside, far from timely police response, or those who still cherish hunting and other aspects of responsible gun ownership, were simply dismissed — “clinging” once again. One might note in passing that the true “clingers” are those who abjure logic and evidence in favor of progressive pieties.

What has long been missing from the political discussion is the manner in which power is being exercised, and how genuine fairness for all Americans can be achieved. In the case of Virginia, no one in Galax or Clifton Forge wants to tell the progressives of Loudon or Fairfax County how to live their lives, just so long as Loudon or Fairfax, in turn, leave them alone. All they ask — all thousands of other Virginians ask — is that they be allowed their due and proportional representation, so that when Richmond or Washington, D.C. makes a decision, it at least takes account of their interests and concerns.

Thus, a “no” vote on the current redistricting amendment is not just about who gets elected to Congress. It is instead a powerful and necessary signifier of the need to respect the interests of all Virginians, and, further, a challenge to the tyranny of urban progressive values in the life of our political culture. Perhaps one day, the country can return to the shared cultural values that minimized the differences between the urban agglomerations and the hinterland, the “flyover country” that exists across the country and within every state.

Until then, we have to stand up for ourselves, and a resounding “no” vote would be a very good way to start.

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James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a nuclear security and counter-terrorism professional. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His most recent novel, The Zebras from Minsk, was featured among National Review’s favorite books in 2025.  You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and its predecessor, Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.