Redistricting, Retirements, and the 2023 Election

When the Virginia General Assembly meets next January, it will be a much different body than the one that adjourned last month. In addition to the retirement of giants like Senator Dick Saslaw and Delegate Ken Plum, dozens of other members are not seeking reelection, are running for a different office, or are paired with another incumbent in a seat that only one of them can represent next year.

It’s mathematically certain that at least 30 or close to a full third of the 100 member House of Delegates will be brand new members when they take the oath in January of 2024.

Why such a major shift? Some of it is just timing. Saslaw and Plum are both in their 80s, plus Senate Finance Chair Janet Howell had always planned for this to be her final term. A much larger portion of the turnover is a result of the redistricting fiasco brought on by the ill-considered Constitutional Amendment which left the task to a bi-partisan, bi-cameral hybrid legislative/citizen commission.

Despite my every effort to offer a palatable compromise to the GOP members, the Commission deadlocked, meaning the Supreme Court of Virginia and their two special masters took over. The Special Masters looked at the General Assembly’s legal criteria establishing guidelines for drafting their new map and did not find any authority to consider incumbent addresses or to avoid incumbent pairs when creating new districts.

As a result, nearly half the House and Senate members initially found themselves paired with another incumbent. Some of those pairings resolved themselves when one incumbent moved to an adjacent district. Others involved members of the House running for Senate, either to avoid an incumbent pairing or because the newly created Senate Districts appear more favorable than their new House Districts. In some cases, a paired incumbent elected not to run at all.

Some people may not be bothered by the massive loss of experience and institutional knowledge this round of redistricting has wrought. I can understand those who might argue that turnover and fresh faces are a feature rather than a bug of redistricting reform.

However, we’re often told that the real goal of redistricting reform is to reduce the political polarization plaguing state houses caused by gerrymandering — the practice of drawing odd shaped and seemingly illogical districts crossing various city and county lines, dividing communities of interest in order to gain political advantage for the party in charge. If you banned the practice, we were promised, the districts would naturally be less partisan and politicians running in them would once again be incentivized to tailor a message to appeal to centrist voters.

Only that’s not what happened.

Even if you think the large amount of turnover is a good thing, the new faces will almost all be coming from even more politically polarized districts than the ones these experienced legislators are vacating.

By packing us all into nice, geometrically pretty districts, we’ve created 46 or 47 safely Democratic districts where you can win without a single Republican or independent vote, and about 42 or 43 on the Republican side. This leaves maybe 10 -12 competitive seats up for grabs in November.

Senator Howell said in an interview with the Richmond Times Dispatch that she “does not look back on her 32-year legislative career with many regrets, but one of them was her vote on the 2021 redistricting.” She goes on to say she “didn’t see the long-term implications” and that she “never bought the idea that incumbency doesn’t mean anything.”

One thing is clear. Those of us that return will have a much heavier load than usual to carry. In addition to having to work with the political neophyte who currently occupies the Governor’s mansion, we’ll have 30+ brand new Delegates with differing levels of experience and knowledge of the legislative process.

We will need our delegates and senators to not be afraid to be a bit partisan, to fight for our shared progressive values that got us the majority in 2019 and hopefully again later this year. That’s what won those elections and enabled us to pass legislation that made the Commonwealth more inclusive, our communities safer, voting more accessible, and criminal justice more attainable. We best represent our districts when we speak out against injustices and lift up policies that truly make a difference in our constituents’ lives.

Hate has no place here

The Simon family is on our annual beach vacation this week.

Before I left for vacation, I had my Falls Church News-Press column all ready to go: a back to school column on education issues, student debt and Fairfax County’s school board special election on August 29 (absentee voting is underway, and don’t forget to vote Tuesday after next!).

Every year since I started my own business, we’ve rented a house in Rehoboth or Lewes Delaware, because it’s the beach closest to home. Midweek or middle of the night I can usually make the trip in about two hours forty minutes. As a small business owner, I needed to be able to buzz back to Falls Church on short notice to deal with an emergency, or to handle a case for a really important client.

The business has grown since then, to the point that I can take a week off without interruption. I have very capable partners and associates who can handle just about anything, and the phone in my pocket is more powerful than the laptop I used to tote around back then. Legislative work is rarely an emergency this time of year, so I don’t worry about it too much.

Then Saturday came. On the drive east I couldn’t tear myself away from my Twitter feed. It was full of news and images from Charlottesville. (I had Rachel drive.)

The first clue that this would be no ordinary demonstration came Friday night, when a group of tiki torch-bearing marchers paraded through the university town chanting white supremacist slogans.

On Saturday, a coalition of neo-Nazi white supremacists and neo-confederates gathered in Charlottesville under the guise of a “Unite the Right” rally, ostensibly organized to protest the potential removal of a confederate monument. Counter demonstrations were also planned.

By now you’ve probably all read the news accounts of the violent clashes that seemed to continue to escalate all morning, until a white supremacist from Ohio drove his car through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. Virginia State Police Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates also died when their helicopter crashed while they were attempting to monitor the rallies from the air.

I was glad to see Virginia Republican leaders, unlike the President, have condemned the overt displays of racism and white supremacy on display in Charlottesville last weekend. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. These demonstrators obviously got the idea somewhere that such displays are now acceptable. They feel comfortable enough to chant “Jews will not replace us” unmasked in front of video cameras.

It is time that the same leaders who denounced the waving of Nazi swastika flags recognize the racism inherent in many of the policies and proposals we’ve seen during the first months of the Trump administration. Policies we’ve seen advocated for in Virginia for years before that.

The president’s Muslim travel ban. Proposals to monitor and track immigrants who settle in Virginia. Virginia’s voter suppression laws (passed under the guise of voter fraud prevention) that disproportionately disenfranchise communities of color. Redistricting bills that courts have found were drawn to deliberately limit African Americans’ voice in Congress and the state legislature.

In the past few days, I have received over 1,000 emails from every corner of Virginia, unequivocally condemning these hateful acts and calling for legislation to track hate crimes and a state task force designed to promote policies welcoming everyone regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital status or citizenship. I know my Republican colleagues are getting the same emails. I hope they are listening.

Since my very first session, I’ve introduced or sponsored legislation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, to promote fair housing, uphold marriage equality, and prohibit discrimination based on religious beliefs. To make voting easier for everyone. To reform Virginia’s criminal justice system to end practices that resulted in the labeling of one in four African American men in Virginia felons depriving them of their civil rights.

These are the issues I am passionate about because it is the right thing to do and because I believe these are the issues that you, my constituents, want me to be passionate about. As your Delegate I’ll continue to work for what’s right, to work for you, to work for all of us.