EXCLUSIVE: Democrat Gerrymanding Gambit Will Give Huge Middle Finger To Rural Americans, Group Argues

Virginia Democrats’ proposed overhaul of the state’s House map would effectively strip the state’s rural communities of their federal representation, a conservative group argues in a new study.

The lopsided gerrymander backed by Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger and former President Barack Obama would most likely change the makeup of the Virginia House of Representatives from six Democrats and five Republicans to 10 Democrats and just one Republican — if a majority of the state’s voters supported it on April 21. This shift will consolidate residents of rural Virginia into districts dominated by the suburbs of Washington, DC.

“Five congressional districts would originate in Fairfax County, Northern Virginia, and extend their tentacles hundreds of miles south and west, across the Shenandoah Valley, the Blue Ridge and deep into communities that have nothing in common with the suburbs of Washington, D.C. except the misfortune of being pinned there on a map,” says the brief, titled “Drawn Out.” (RELATED: ‘America First’ Democrat Mark Moran Slams His Own Party Over Gerrymandering and Gun Control)

“Communities that share an economy, a culture, and a crisis, the collapse of rural health care, broadband gaps, the decline of agriculture, would be dispersed in districts whose majority constituency is made up of members of Congress and tech industry commuters,” the DFA analysis continues.

The brief explains that the map divides deep blue Fairfax County “into five distinct congressional districts that then extend south into rural Virginia.” The county gave 66% of its votes to 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. One of these proposed districts, numbered the seventh, has been widely compared in shape to a lobster.

The sun sets over a field near Warrenton, Virginia, about 77 kilometers from Washington, DC, on January 16, 2020. (Photo by EVA HAMBACH/AFP via Getty Images)

“The result: Rural voters in places like the Shenandoah Valley, Piedmont, and Tidewater could find themselves represented by Democrats who reside in suburban Washington and whose voting base has few ties to rural agriculture, rural health care, or coal-affected communities,” the brief adds.

The DFA study asserts that dismantling Virginia’s rural districts under gerrymandering will be detrimental to area residents who receive vital health care.

“When the Shenandoah Valley functioned as a single, cohesive district in Congress, its representatives had every reason to fight for the preservation of rural hospitals, funding for maternity care, and investment in the rural health care workforce. The proposed map would divide that same valley into four or five districts, each anchored in a suburban or urban population center where these issues are not constituent priorities,” the brief document notes.

“No representative whose political survival depends on Northern Virginia commuters will show up to fight for a birthing center in Harrisonburg. The map doesn’t just divide counties. It divides the political will to keep rural hospitals open,” he adds. (RELATED: Schumer’s plot to defund rural health care catches fire)

Currently, most of the Shenandoah Valley is in Virginia’s Sixth District and is represented by Republican Rep. Ben Cline, vice chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee and member of the House Freedom Caucus. President Donald Trump won Cline’s current seat, which the new map eliminates, by 24 points in the 2024 presidential election.

“This map is not about fairness, it’s about power. Backed by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and her radical left allies, their redistricting plan dismantles representation across the Commonwealth – dividing counties, stretching districts hundreds of miles, and subordinating local communities to distant suburban power centers,” DFA Action President Jenn Pellegrino told DCNF in a press release.

Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) holds up a copy of the U.S. Constitution that he carries with him as he speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill June 26, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

“Defend Forgotten America Action is fighting to ensure that rural Virginians, from the Southwest to the South to the Valley, are not silenced, sidelined or treated as afterthoughts in their own state,” Pellegrino added.

The DFA also states in its brief that the Democratic-backed gerrymander would undermine a 2020 constitutional amendment establishing a bipartisan redistricting commission that passed with 66% of the vote.

“The map was produced in a matter of weeks, in secret, by the legislative majority, without any public input or community testimony,” the study said. “This amendment, rushed through a legal gray area and presented to voters likely to vote on an overturned measure, undermines not only the map but also the credibility of Virginia’s democratic institutions.”

The DFA’s mission is to “empower state and local leaders – the true engine of self-governance – and ensure that Washington elites can no longer ignore the voices from America’s heartland,” according to the group’s website.

If Virginia voters give the green light, the gerrymander would likely result in 10 of 11 congressional districts being represented by Democrats in a state that Harris won with less than 52 percent of the vote. For comparison, the Trump-backed mid-decade redrawing of Texas’ congressional map — which prompted blue states to gerrymander in retaliation — will put at most 79% of the Lone Star state’s House of Representatives seats under GOP control in a state where Trump won more than 56% of the vote in 2024.

Virginia Democratic Senate candidate Mark Moran told DCNF in an interview Monday that “when you look at the cherry-picked map, it’s morally offensive to anyone.” He pointed to the “totally absurd” fact that the plan draws rural areas that favor the Republican Party 80 percent to 20 percent into the same district as “one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest, neighborhoods in Arlington.”

“If we say it’s just because we have to fight Donald Trump. OK, well, a wrong plus a wrong doesn’t make a right,” pointed out Moran, who is challenging Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner – a gerrymander supporter – in the party’s open primary on August 4.

If Virginia voters approve the gerrymander, it would not be the first time this election cycle that a Democratic-backed proposal to sharply divide rural Republican House seats has gone to the ballot. California’s new House map, which passed via the state’s Proposition 50 in November 2025, carves out several deep red areas of the state that have had federal GOP representation for decades and places them in heavily Democratic districts.

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