The Long Road Ahead for Virginia | The American Spectator

April 22, 2026

When Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Hakeem Jefferies, and Kamala Harris come together to express their elation, then we can rest assured that something very bad for the country has happened. I speak of yesterday’s redistricting vote in Virginia, a blatant and arguably unconstitutional attempt to gerrymander Virginia’s congressional representation, converting a 6–5 split between Democrats and Republicans, built upon a bipartisan redistricting process approved in 2020, into a 10–1 Democrat advantage.

I’ve already written about this measure, shortly after early voting started and again in the closing days of the election. I have nothing to add to my earlier analysis of how profoundly wrong it was for Virginia, and profoundly wrong-headed its appeal to a certain class of Virginia voters, those who want to run the state from the suburbs of D.C.

Nor do I wish to dive into the legal path ahead, except to note that a constitutional challenge is already underway, and that before actual redistricting can take place, the measure will have its day in court. As for the fairness of the vote itself, perhaps one observation will suffice, namely that the Democrats outspent the Republicans by approximately four to one, much of it, apparently, being money coming from outside Virginia.

Add this to the massive free support from much of the media and hugely influential D.C. suburban TV stations, and one doesn’t even have to reach for other ways in which the vote might have been manipulated. The deck was always stacked and, as conservatives across the state belatedly woke up to the threat — rallying in town after town, fighting hard to drum up every small town and rural vote — the Democrats piled on even more aggressively.

Proponents dishonestly pitched the election as being about fairness, even including that wording in the ballot measure itself. This was always a deception. The “fairness” in question was always about countering the actions in other states, notably Texas, without reference to the fact that those actions were themselves a response to how the Democrats have for years stacked the decks in places like California, Illinois, New York, and the Northeast.

A simple glance at the by-county results of yesterday’s vote tells a different story of fairness, fairness for all parts of Virginia. Virginia has 95 counties and 38 independent cities, a total of 133 counties or county equivalents. Only a handful of these jurisdictions voted in favor of the measure, the elephants in the Virginia political room, most notably Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Loudoun County. If one looks at the electoral map as a whole, most of Virginia voted “no.”

The Democrats insist that it’s only the numbers that count, and that the high population areas deserve the weight they seem determined to throw around. Here again, yesterday’s results tell a different story. “Yes” garnered 51.5 percent of the vote, while “no” earned 48.5. If you translate this balance into congressional representation, it comes a lot closer to the current 6–5 split than it does to the 10–1 advantage the Democrats now hope to impose.

Ironically, if yesterday’s result in Virginia stands, the likely outcome will be a nationwide redistricting war, and one that could well end to the Democrats’ disadvantage. The Democrats, by and large, have already squeezed every conceivable electoral advantage out of the blue states, but the red states have a lot of juice left in their redistricting apples. If it comes to that, the Democrats will only have themselves to blame, near-term gain for long-term pain. There’s only so much satisfaction, long-term, to be found in the political equivalent of an adolescent temper tantrum.

I hate the very thought of such a battle, one that takes the viciousness that has captured so much of our public discourse and embeds it in the fundamental structures of our political life. That said, for conservatives to unilaterally disarm by “taking the high road” almost guarantees what I’ve already decried: not simply the “Californication” of Virginia, but the same for the entire country.

But the battle, if battle there must be, has to be joined on two levels. The political, to be sure, which means that Republicans need to get their act together and start fighting like the future of the country depends on it — which it undoubtedly does. Pass the SAVE Act, fight back against the National Popular Vote madness, stop squabbling, and start turning executive orders into laws that can’t be easily overturned if — horror upon horror — we find ourselves in the future with a Newsom/Spanberger administration in Washington. If that vision doesn’t promote a sober reassessment, then nothing will.

The second level, however, is even more important. Perhaps the most famous one-line observation about building a successful business is “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I saw this across a lifetime working first in academia, then in business, and finally in the government. The evidence is there for all to see, from our popular entertainment to our political values. The rot is everywhere, even in our churches, where mindless liberal pieties now compete with eternal truths.

We change this by what we choose to support, what we decide to engage with in our everyday lives, the movies we choose, the books we read, the school boards we elect, the churches we attend. We shape it in the workplace, and in our social interactions. Even in defeat, yesterday’s “no” vote revealed a passion within our communities that refused to be quelled by the drumbeat of Obama’s “We’re counting on you, Virginia” ads plastered all over our television screens.

Finally, we can’t simply give up on the Democrat strongholds. This morning, in the aftermath of disappointment, a friend wrote to me that she was sick to her stomach at the result, and that “my neighbors in Fairfax County are reckless sheep who think they are enlightened.” But even in overwhelmingly blue Fairfax County, the heartland of those government employees embittered by DOGE and shaped by decades of Washington Post liberalism, roughly a third of the voters cast “no” votes. Therein lies something to build upon.

This day after, then, cannot be a time to turn inward in our disappointment. Instead, it’s time to gird ourselves once more for the long battle ahead.

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.