BeBe in VA

.@RTDNEWS: Virginia voters already chose fair maps In 2020, Virginians did something rare in politics. We changed the rules on ourselves. By a two-to-one margin, more than 2.8M Virginians amended our Constitution to end partisan gerrymandering and create a bipartisan redistricting commission, which became a national model. The maps the commission drew, and the courts approved, included the preservation of historic minority-majority districts and served as a source of pride. Republicans and Democrats alike said the same thing: voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around. It was a unifying moment for our commonwealth. Now, just a few years later, the political class is asking for a do-over — because they don’t like the outcome. The April 21 referendum would scrap the spirit of that 2020 reform and pave the way for a congressional map designed to produce 10 Democratic-leaning seats and just one Republican-leaning seat. That’s not “fair maps.” That’s a mid-decade power grab dressed up in the language of reform. And it is being fueled by an avalanche of out-of-state money. According to public filings, Virginians for Fair Elections — the main group pushing the “yes” side of the referendum — has hauled in almost $50 million from fewer than a dozen left-wing organizations in just a few months. A George Soros-backed group alone cut a $5 million check. The arm of House Democrats’ super PAC has poured in tens of millions more, joined by a constellation of national progressive outfits whose mission is to tilt the U.S. House map before the next election. That is not a Virginia grassroots movement. That is Washington trying to buy our rules. The same politicians and activists who once decried “dark money” and gerrymandering now shrug as both are deployed on their behalf. In 2020, Democrats in Richmond and Washington campaigned against partisan map-rigging. Today, many of those same voices are cheering on a plan whose explicit goal is a 10–1 map. The principle didn’t change. The partisan math did. Gov. Abigail Spanberger herself once said, “Gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy, and it weakens the individual voices that form our electorates.” She was right. Yet the referendum she now supports would do exactly what she warned against — dilute voices in places like the Shenandoah Valley and Hampton Roads so that partisan strategists in Northern Virginia can lock in safe seats. That is not keeping your word. That is redefining “fairness” to mean “whatever helps my side this cycle.” When we took our respective oaths of office as attorney general and congressman, we swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Virginia — not when it was convenient, not when our party was ahead, but always. That oath is a promise to the people that the rules will not be rewritten every time one faction gains a temporary advantage. Virginians deserve to know: has the governor treated her word, and her oath, with the same seriousness? Because this referendum is not just about lines on a map. It is about whether the will of the people expressed in 2020 still matters. Sixty-six percent of Virginians voted for a bipartisan commission, transparency and an end to back-room map drawing. They did not vote for a six-year partisan detour that hands the pen back to politicians and their national funders. If the roles were reversed — if Republicans were trying to erase a voter-approved reform and engineer a 10–1 Republican map, Democrats would call it what it is: being marginalized. They would say voters were being ignored, their choices nullified by insiders who think they know better. They would be right. You can be passionately liberal or passionately conservative and still believe your neighbor’s voice matters just as much as your own. But once we start deciding whose voice matters and whose does not, we lose something far bigger than any election. Vote NO tomorrow, April 21.