RICHMOND — Virginia's new redistricting commission, approved by voters to create political maps with bipartisan consensus, is under so much partisan strain that some members worry it won't be able to carry out its mandate.
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“I think this is not what citizens voted for when we started this process through the referendum,” commission co-chair Greta J. Harris of Richmond said during a meeting Tuesday.
The panel, which consists of eight state legislators and eight private citizens, could not agree Tuesday on hiring a single firm to draw the state’s new political boundaries, which are due in about 45 days. So they opted to seek two separate firms — one Democratic, one Republican.
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Whether the map-drawers will work together on a single plan or produce separate boundaries that will have to be reconciled was left unresolved — along with how quickly such a process could play out.
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“It’s disappointing,” said commission member Sean S. Kumar of Alexandria. “Having two sets of map-drawers is going to be a big mistake.”
Virginians approve turning redistricting over to bipartisan commission
Virginians overwhelmingly supported a constitutional amendment last fall to create the commission instead of continuing to let the General Assembly draw the state’s political districts. The task takes place every 10 years, based on demographic data from the U.S. census.
Results of the 2020 Census were delayed this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, preventing the commission from drawing new maps in time for this fall’s elections for all 100 seats in the House of Delegates as well as governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.
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Preliminary data show that Virginia’s population has grown about 7.9 percent since the last census in 2010, with growth concentrated in Northern Virginia and around Richmond and driven by people of color.
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The redistricting commission has 45 days to submit new maps to the General Assembly for an up-or-down vote. If the commission fails to agree on a plan, or if the legislature rejects it, the Supreme Court of Virginia would draw the new maps.
Voters approved the commission as a way to take partisanship out of the map-drawing process. In recent years, federal courts threw out several of the General Assembly’s political maps for being racially gerrymandered.
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But while some lawmakers had advocated for a nonpartisan redistricting commission, the plan that was ultimately approved by voters is strictly bipartisan. The panel consists of four state senators and four delegates, evenly divided between the two major parties, and eight citizens selected based on partisan recommendations.
Citizen members chosen for Virginia’s new redistricting commission
Before being submitted to the General Assembly, any proposed map for the House of Delegates must be approved by three of the four House members of the commission, with a similar requirement for the Senate map. That means that any two members of either party could block the proposal.
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“The system is set up to create gridlock, and then the theory being that we all have the same incentives to unlock the gridlock in a way that’s fair to both parties,” said Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax), who serves on the commission. Tuesday’s developments mean reaching consensus is “going to be a challenge,” he said.
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Fellow commission member Sen. Ryan McDougle (R-Hanover) said the concerns are overblown. “I am optimistic about the Commission completing its work on time. No decision made by the Commission would prevent it from doing so,” McDougle said via email.
Partisan overtones were set earlier this summer when the commission opted to hire two sets of legal counsel — one Republican, one Democrat. Those two lawyers failed to agree on an outside candidate to draw the maps, leading to Tuesday’s impasse.
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Democrats had endorsed the idea of hiring the Spatial Analysis Lab at the University of Richmond, but Republicans objected — initially suggesting that the group was not impartial because of its work related to redlining and other civil rights issues, then citing the group’s lack of experience in political map-drawing.
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Some members of the commission argued that picking a mapmaker endorsed by only one side would be unfair. “It would be an abrogation of the process that we set in motion,” said Richard O. Harrell III of South Boston, Va.
Fellow commission member Sen. Stephen D. Newman (R-Bedford) conceded that hiring two groups to draw the maps was “not the process we had hoped for” but said he was optimistic that the approach would produce a good outcome. “The dual lawyers have worked unbelievably well,” Newman added.
Redistricting battles kick off early as Democrats scramble to try to cut into GOP advantages
The panel wrestled with several other procedural issues Tuesday. One was how much political information to consider before designing the new districts, with some arguing that the public expects the commission to start from a blank slate.
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Other members said that with the tight schedule, the commission doesn’t have time to create maps that might need major adjustments if they fail to meet criteria for race and partisan blend. In the end, the panel voted to allow itself to consider past voting patterns — which show where Democrats and Republicans might be concentrated — as well as the home address of incumbent lawmakers when devising the boundaries.
The members also tussled over whether to appoint subcommittees to get the work done faster — one for House districts and another for Senate, with congressional districts yet to be determined.
Harris and the other citizen co-chair, Mackenzie J. Babichenko of Mechanicsville, suggested a plan to put a mix of House and Senate, Republican and Democrat on each subcommittee. But a bipartisan pair of senators — Newman and Sen. George L. Barker (D-Fairfax) — argued that senators and delegates should only work on their own chamber’s districts.
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Commission member James Abrenio of Fairfax argued that such a configuration would make the public suspicious that “maps [are] being drawn by essentially elected [officials] choosing their voters rather than the other way around.”
Unable to reach a consensus, the panel scrapped the subcommittee plan and opted to have the entire panel work on each map — which Harris pointed out was going to be a huge commitment for everyone.
“I hope everyone likes being in Richmond because we will be spending a lot of time together,” she said.
With the panel set to meet again next week to take up the issue of which part of the map to draw first, some observers were pessimistic about their prospects.
“You’ve turned it into a political circus,” Phillip Thompson, head of the National Black Nonpartisan Redistricting Organization told the commission during a public comment period. “You need to kind of hurry up so the Supreme Court can get on with hiring whoever they’re going to hire to draw these maps.”