By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) -Virginia is shaping up as the latest battleground in a rare and widening mid-decade redistricting war instigated by President Donald Trump, as Democrats in Richmond weigh joining California with efforts to redraw congressional maps to their advantage.
Democratic leaders have summoned Virginia legislators into a special session starting on Monday where they are expected to consider a plan to counter Republicans’ intended gains in the U.S. House of Representatives from recent redistricting by legislators in several red states.
Republicans, including Trump, openly acknowledge that redrawn maps enacted in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina are aimed at preserving their party’s slim U.S. House majority in the 2026 midterm elections.
Democrats have decried those redistricting moves as attempts by Trump to rig the outcome of next year’s hotly contested races, in which Democrats need to flip just three Republican-held seats overall to win back a U.S. House majority.
Abruptly entering the redistricting fray in the midst of its own gubernatorial race is Virginia, a somewhat purple state with a Republican governor and Democratic-controlled legislature. Democrats currently hold six of Virginia’s 11 seats in the U.S. House.
“Virginia’s decision to convene and preserve the right to consider a new map in 2026 is critical to the fight to ensure voters have fair representation,” Courtney Rice, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement last week welcoming Virginia Democratic leaders in calling lawmakers back to the Richmond statehouse.
In a radio interview on Friday, Governor Glenn Youngkin, a term-limited Republican whose successor will be determined by voters on November 4, called Democrats’ steps toward redistricting “a desperate power grab.”
FIGHTS OVER HANDFUL OF SEATS
No political map alterations have been specifically proposed in Virginia. But news media reports, including a New York Times article citing state Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, have said Democrats would stand to gain at least two additional U.S. House seats.
California’s redistricting plan, which voters must still accept or reject in a special ballot on November 4, is designed to flip five Republican seats to the Democrats’ column.
The redrawn Texas map could yield as many as five more Republican seats, with the party seeking to gain one additional seat each in Missouri and North Carolina. Other Republican states, including Ohio, Kansas and Indiana, are either planning or considering similar moves.
The U.S. Senate is considered more of a long shot for Democrats, who will be defending several seats seen as politically vulnerable while trying to win in solidly Republican states to capture a majority.
Democrats’ redistricting ambitions in Virginia face several hurdles that must be surmounted in short order.
Virginia law requires a majority of both houses of the General Assembly to vote in two consecutive sessions – this year and next – to alter the state constitution, then submit the plan to voters for approval in a referendum early next year.
While Democrats control both the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates, Virginia is eight days away from statewide elections on November 4 for governor and all 100 legislators in the lower house, leaving little time for those lawmakers to act on redistricting in this session.
Redistricting, the periodic reshaping of political boundaries dividing legislative seats, traditionally is conducted just once a decade following the U.S. Census to account for population shifts.
The widening coast-to-coast redistricting scramble, set off by Trump pushing for Texas to redraw its maps this year, is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics.
Lawmakers in some states have increasingly redrawn congressional maps to favor one party over another in recent decades, a practice known as gerrymandering. Redistricting in other states, including Virginia and California, however, has been turned over to independent, non-partisan commissions by constitutional amendment.
Hence, the need for Virginia and California legislators to approve a constitutional amendment allowing their states to revert to legislature-drawn maps.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Sam Holmes)
