Virginia Rep. Don Beyer (D) just handed Republicans the best campaign ad of the 2026 cycle, and he didn’t even charge them for it. Beyer admitted that his party’s plan to redraw Virginia’s congressional map is “unfair” but told voters to “hold their nose on gerrymandering” because stopping Donald Trump matters more than, you know, democracy.
Somebody write that one down. We’re going to need it on a billboard.
Here’s what Democrats are trying to pull. Virginia currently splits its eleven congressional seats 6-5 in favor of the Democrats. That matches the vote — Democrats got about 51% in 2024 and hold about 55% of the seats. Reasonable enough. But Democrats don’t want reasonable. They want 10-1. That’s 91% of the seats in a state where they barely crack 50% of the vote. And they’ve scheduled a sneaky little April 21 referendum to make it happen.
Governor Abigail Spanberger — who in 2019 told everyone that “opposing gerrymandering should be a bipartisan priority” — signed the legislation to blow up the bipartisan redistricting commission that two-thirds of Virginians voted to create in 2020. She’s now telling people with a straight face that “what has changed is what we’re seeing in other states.”
(What’s changed, Abigail, is that you’re the governor now and the commission doesn’t let you cheat.)
The money tells the whole story. The pro-gerrymandering side — “Virginians for Fair Elections,” which is like naming your arson squad “Firefighters for Safety” — has raised $27 million. More than $21 million of that came from Washington, D.C. Another $5 million from New York. The opposition? About $5 million. Hakeem Jeffries personally promised to spend “tens of millions” to push it through. Obama endorsed it. Even the Washington Post editorial board called it “brass-knuckled hypocrisy,” and that paper hasn’t said anything nice about a Republican since Lincoln.
Democrats also erected billboards across Virginia with Trump’s face on them, trying to trick voters into thinking the President supports the referendum. The ballot language is so deliberately misleading that a former elections committee chairman said he’d never seen anything like it in decades of Virginia politics.
Don Beyer told the truth for exactly one sentence: “We have to effectively make the case that even though this seems unfair in Virginia, it’s totally fair for America.” Terry Kilgore nailed the response: “Don said the quiet part out loud.”
But here’s where Democrats should start sweating — and where this story gets really interesting.
Remember Tom DeLay? In 2003, Texas Republicans pulled a mid-decade redistricting that Democrats called the most outrageous power grab in modern political history. They screamed about it for years. Lawsuits. Walkouts. Texas Democrats literally fled the state to prevent a quorum. And what are Virginia Democrats doing twenty-three years later? The exact same thing. Except they spent $27 million on it and put Trump’s face on fake billboards.
The early voting numbers are brutal for the pro-amendment crowd. GOP-leaning counties across central and western Virginia are turning out at 10-15% of registered voters. Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William — the big blue Northern Virginia suburbs that Democrats absolutely need — are sitting under 5%. Mathews County, a deep-red locality, is posting the highest early voting rate in the entire state. The $27 million ad blitz is apparently not working where it matters most.
A Roanoke College poll found that 62% of Virginians support the CURRENT redistricting method. Only 44% support the amendment. You read that right — Democrats are outspending Republicans roughly five-to-one, and they’re still losing in the polls.
And here’s the part nobody’s talking about yet. Even if this thing passes on April 21, the Virginia Supreme Court has already called the legal challenges “weighty assertions of invalidity” and expressed “grave concern.” The court punted the constitutional question until AFTER the vote. So Democrats could spend $27 million, win the referendum, pop the champagne — and then watch the whole thing get thrown out by the court. Picture that donor call: “Hey, thanks for the $27 million. Bad news…”
Mark my words: this referendum either fails at the ballot box on April 21 because Republican turnout is swamping the Democrats, or it passes and gets struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court. Either way, Democrats end up with nothing except a massive bill and a pile of quotes — starting with Beyer’s — that Republican candidates will run in attack ads from now until November.
Twenty-seven million dollars. Fake billboards. Obama endorsements. Deceptive ballot language. And all they had to do was NOT let Don Beyer near a microphone.
Virginians vote April 21. The only thing you should hold your nose for is the stench of this whole operation.