Va. Senate OKs congressional district plan; some in Madison would move to 5th

Residents of northern Madison County will change congressional districts under a Republican-backed redistricting plan approved on a party-line vote in the Virginia Senate on Friday.

The vote came despite Democratic objections that it’s unconstitutional and illegally weakens black voting strength.

The Senate passed the measure sponsored by Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, 20-19 with Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, absent. The Senate is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, with Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling casting tie-breaker votes. Edwards’ absence eliminated the need for Bolling to vote, however.

The new districts were already approved by Republican-controlled House of Delegates, and Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell has said he will sign it. The bill requires U.S. Justice Department approval under the Voting Rights Act.

“The map is an incumbent-protection map to the fullest,” said Geoffrey Skelley, political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “It shores up the partisan backing of every sitting member in the House from Virginia, except for Morgan Griffith’s 9th District in Southwest Virginia, which stayed the same — that is, very Republican. Every Republican’s seat became more Republican, and every Democrat’s seat became more Democratic.”

The plan has little impact on Central Virginia, keeping most local jurisdictions in the same districts they were in the last congressional election. The plan does take the northern portion of the 7th District, currently represented by House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor, a Republican, and adds it to the 5th District, currently represented by Republican Rep. Robert Hurt. That moved some residents of Madison County out of Cantor’s district and into Hurt’s.

Small changes in the borders of both the 5th and 7th districts are made to balance out the population in both districts, according to the bill.

“Hurt’s district hardly changed in the sense that it only lost a little bit of its original territory. It lost some additional portions of Henry County, as well the entire city of Martinsville, to the 9th,” Skelley said. “Otherwise, the 5th added in new areas; all of Madison and Rappahannock counties and about two-thirds of Fauquier County, as well as a little part of Brunswick County on the North Carolina border that had been in the 4th. Now that entire county is in the 5th”

Skelley said Cantor’s district also swings more Republican under the new plan.

“The district sees a 6-point net swing towards Republicans. This seems only fitting as Cantor is the House majority leader so I’m sure his Republican friends in Richmond had no interest in leaving him with even a slightly competitive district,” Skelley said. “So, overall, both incumbents can breathe a little easier, particularly Cantor.”

At the same time that the 5th and 7th grew more GOP, Democrats complained that by increasing the proportion of black residents in Virginia’s minority-dominant 3rd District, the bill illegally waters down minority influence in adjoining districts. The bill increased the proportion of black voters in the 3rd District from 56 percent to about 60 percent.

State Sen. Donald A. McEachin, D-Henrico, said the Voting Rights Act, passed during the civil rights struggle to combat Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised black voters in the South, clearly prohibits “packing” one district with minorities to dilute minority voting strength elsewhere.

“Sixty percent African-American voting age population is not necessary in the 3rd Congressional District to afford minorities the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice,” McEachin said.

Sen. Mamie E. Locke of Hampton, author of a Democrat-backed redistricting plan rejected by the Republican-controlled House last year, denounced Bell’s bill as essentially disenfranchising minority voters in the 1st, 2nd and 4th districts.

Democrats also argued that the bill, which they defeated last year when they controlled the Senate, is invalid because the General Assembly missed its constitutional deadline for passing a redistricting bill in 2011.

Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, said the Virginia Supreme Court has upheld other redistricting plans that were passed later than one year after the once-per-decade census. He also said the bill complies with the Voting Rights Act because it does not reduce minority voting strength in the 3rd, where Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott is in his 10th term.

McEachin attempted to question Obenshain on the Senate floor about why he believes the bill passes muster under the 1965 federal law, but the Republican said he did not want to debate the details. McEachin said it was unfortunate that the chairman of the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee and a candidate for higher office would not answer his questions. That drew a rebuke from Bolling, who said the reference to Obenshain’s political plans was “inappropriate.” Obenshain is exploring a bid for attorney general. (Bell has already announced his candidacy for attorney general.)

McEachin apologized, but he resumed his criticism after the floor session, saying in a news release that the position Obenshain holds and the one to which he aspires both “require and demand expertise and knowledge of the law. This makes his refusal to even discuss the issue even more egregious.”