Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), usually known for his mild-mannered demeanor, broke with decorum and accused current Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger of lying in her support for a “yes” vote in the current election to redraw Congressional lines.
On March 25, Spanberger appeared in this commercial, calling on Virginians to vote “yes” in the election currently underway. By 10:00 p.m. on March 26, her post on Twitter/X had only about 2,500 likes but the same number of comments, virtually all of which were critical of her position.
Also on March 25, Youngkin unleashed his irate response to Spanberger.
“This is a lie. A blatant lie. Not to mention a complete reversal of your campaign promises.
“This unconstitutional power grab will permanently rig Virginia’s Congressional maps and disenfranchise millions of Virginians.
“Virginia, VOTE NO.”
Also by 10:00 pm on March 26, Youngkin’s post had about 29,000 likes, more than ten times that of Spanberger’s likes, and of Youngkin’s 1,700 comments, most were supportive.
There are at least five facts that justify Youngkin’s vehement accusation of Spanberger being dishonest.
One, while running for governor in fall 2025 and portraying herself and the Democrat Party as moderates, she promised she would not support gerrymandering.
In this August 25, 2025, article, The Hill quoted then-candidate Spanberger’s response to a question about whether Virginia would pursue mid-decade redistricting of Congressional seats. “Short answer is no. Virginia, by constitutional amendment, has a new redistricting effort that was put in place and first utilized in the 2021 redistricting. I’ve been watching with interest what other states are doing, but I have no plans to redistrict Virginia.”
Two, Spanberger’s stated opposition to gerrymandering was not new in 2025…she also opposed it back in 2020.
At the time a member of Congress, Spanberger claimed, “Gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy and weakens the individual voices that form our electorates. Opposing gerrymandering should be a bipartisan priority.”
Three, Spanberger’s commercial starts with a false pretext.
Spanberger tried to justify her gerrymandering “yes” vote by claiming: “it’s directly in response to what other states decide to do.” As Spanberger is speaking, huge text on the screen declares “Trump’s Redistricting WAR” while the camera pans to Texas, then Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, all colored in red. The clear intention is the oft-repeated claim, “Texas started it.”
(Two Roanoke County residents, when speaking recently with a volunteer for the “no” side, stated the “Texas started it” bromide, showing how widely believed that message is.)
However, that charge itself is false on two counts. First, gerrymandering is so old that the word itself was coined in 1812. Second, even in our current times, many states have long had maps gerrymandered to favor Democrats, with California and Illinois perhaps the most extreme examples.
So in that sense, Texas didn’t “start” it, but rather was responding to entrenched Democrat gerrymandering elsewhere.
Moreover, Spanberger and the “yes” supporters fail to mention that, unlike the other states, Virginia has a Constitutional amendment banning partisan gerrymandering.
Four, Spanberger claims the proposed gerrymander is “temporary.”
Skeptics will argue, when is any government change that gives more power to one group over anotherever “temporary”?
Five, Spanberger gives lip service to Virginia’s “fair redistricting process,” but by her actions, she is killing it.
In 2020, over 65% of Virginia voters, exactly 2,770,489, approved a state Constitutional amendment to ban partisan gerrymandering.
But now, by endorsing the “yes” position, Spanberger is pushing for a new amendment…one that is actually illegal because it failed to meet the required 90-day waiting period…that would overturn that 2020 amendment and replace Virginia’s current 6 Democrat vs. 5 Republican seats with an imbalanced 10 Democrat vs. 1 Republican seat.
The 2020 amendment was so popular that it won the popular vote in every locality of the Old Dominion, with the sole exception of the Democrat stronghold of Arlington County, where it won 45% of the vote.
It is that 2020 amendment, and the 2,770,489 voters who supported it, that Spanberger and the “yes” position now seek to nullify.
It is this 2020 amendment, and Spanberger’s and the Democrats’ eagerness to undo it, that fueled many of the critical comments to Spanberger’s March 25 post.
For example, Twitter user @rleeinva wrote:
“Excuse me? But, you don’t work for the POTUS. You work for the People of Virginia.
“We have spoken. YOU DO NOT LISTEN. It proves just how selfish you really are.”
And then added this visual showing the popularity of the 2020 amendment to ban gerrymandering:
For the current election that ends April 21, if the “yes” vote passes, two of the three Congressional seats that now represent the western half of the state would probably flip from red to blue.
For example, the current Sixth District that runs from Roanoke through the Shenandoah Valley would be seriously gerrymandered. The new district would include the left-wing areas around Radford University, Virginia Tech, Roanoke City, UVA, and JMU, all while intentionally cutting out their nearby, conservative communities. The likely result would be to create a left-leaning district to defeat the current Congressman from District 6, pro-life Ben Cline (R), and replace him with a pro-abortion Democrat. In sum, Salem and Roanoke City voters would be in the same district as UVA and JMU, which are two hours away by interstate driving, but in a different district from most of the suburban and rural areas just a fifteen-minute drive away.
Thus, on the flip side, many if not all the people in the Counties of Roanoke, Franklin, Botetourt, Craig and Montgomery would be in the same Congressional District (9) as remote Cumberland Gap in Lee County, four hours’ drive away, but in a different district from Roanoke City, the economic, cultural and medical hub of Southwest Virginia. As a result, countless people who live in those surrounding counties would reside in the Ninth District but work in the Sixth.
The Fifth District, which now covers most of Central Virginia from the North Carolina line up to around Charlottesville, would be shifted far to the east to pick up Richmond’s western suburbs. By putting that populous, Democrat-leaning area into the Fifth, it would allow part of suburban Richmond to essentially out-vote the rural middle swath of the state, again replacing a pro-life Republican (John McGuire) with a pro-abortion Democrat.
The Ninth District would continue to cover the far southwestern corner of the state and probably re-elect pro-life Morgan Griffith (R). However, one Twitter/X user described the proposed gerrymandering as “strip mining GOP voters and throwing them all in a slag head at the bottom corner of the state.”
In sum, drawing extreme lines to put most Republicans in the Ninth District would allow a critical mass of Democrats to flip Districts 6 and 5 in our area, and do the same in Districts 1 and 2 in Eastern Virginia.
Early voting is underway across the Commonwealth. The last day to vote is April 21.
This article was revised and updated March 28, 2025. This situation is ongoing, so check back for more information.
– Scott Dreyer
