Republicans are pointing fingers after their narrow loss in Virginia’s high-stakes congressional redistricting referendum, which could give Democrats a significant boost in the battle for the House of Representatives majority in this year’s midterm elections.
Even though they were outraised and outspent by Democrats by a nearly three-to-one margin, Republicans came close to sinking the ballot initiative, which gives the Democrat-controlled Virginia legislature — rather than the state’s current nonpartisan commission — temporary redistricting power through the 2030 election.
Tuesday’s passage of the referendum could result in a 10-1 advantage for Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation, up from their current 6-5 edge. The referendum, which follows President Donald Trump‘s push for rare but not unheard-of mid-decade redistricting in Republican-led states over the past year, still faces a challenge in the state Supreme Court. But if it survives the legal hurdles, Democrats could gain four additional left-leaning U.S. House seats ahead of the midterms as they try to win back control of the chamber from the GOP, which currently holds a razor-thin majority.
Acknowledging the spending disparity, former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who was one of the leaders of the GOP effort to sink the ballot initiative, told Fox News Digital at a rally on the eve of the vote that “they have outspent us three to one. They’ve raised over $70 million. And yet this is a close vote.”
DEMOCRATS NARROWLY WIN CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING SHOWDOWN IN VIRGINIA
Some Republicans are frustrated there wasn’t more help offered.
“We didn’t get the help we needed to sink the referendum,” a Virginia-based Republican strategist who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely told Fox News Digital. “National Republicans could have and should have done more.”
Another Virginia-based Republican consultant, who was also granted anonymity, said, “It is bit shocking that there wasn’t a little bit more money spent earlier because once you peel back the top layer of the ballot language and stop Trump, the ‘yes’ campaign had nothing.”
“If we had a bit more money to educate, I think we could have won more of the persuasion bucket. And then, for sure, if we could have had a very well-funded ballot chase program to go turnout low proposition voters in southwest Virginia, a combination of aggressive field, text, and mail, we might have won.”
And Virginia House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore told reporters on Wednesday, “I think they should have put more in it. This would have, you know, for ten million or twenty million more dollars, we could have been in play.”
While Trump headlined a tele-rally on the eve of the referendum election, some fingers were also pointed towards the president and his political team.
“Victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. So there’s going to be plenty of finger pointing and plenty of blame being assigned why this didn’t work out,” another GOP strategist who also asked for anonymity to speak candidly.
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The strategist emphasized that “ultimately, if you’re the White House, you started this redistricting fight last year and you better be sure that you’re giving all the people out there on your side the resources they need to finish the battle if this is going to be such a centerpiece of your historically narrow House majority.”
But a strategist with ties to the Republican team in Virginia that fought to sink the referendum disagreed, telling Fox News Digital “we got a lot of help from the Republican ecosystem… we received help from all corners.”
And the strategist shot down the idea that if Republicans had spent more money, it could have sunk the referendum. Referring to the team that pushed the referendum to victory, the strategist said “they’re just going to find more money. Democrats always do.”
And pointing to Trump, the strategist said “if the president had engaged right away, that would have made the entire debate about the president in a state that he lost in 2024….Our goal was to make this as much about Virginia as possible. Democrats tried to make it as much about the president as possible.”
Asked if the GOP did enough to help, National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina told reporters on Wednesday, “Our team collectively made significant investments and we won half the vote.”
Hudson pointed to the margin, which was an overperformance compared to Trump’s nearly six-point defeat in Virginia in the 2024 presidential election.
The Republican National Committee(RNC) gave assistance to the Virginia GOP as well as to Republican groups fighting the referendum. And the RNC placed operatives in the field in Virginia.
RNC National Press Secretary Kiersten Pels told Fox News Digital that “this map is an unconstitutional partisan power grab designed to disenfranchise millions of voters and tilt the playing field.”
“The RNC will continue this fight in court to protect Virginia voters and ensure fair representation across the Commonwealth,” Pels added.
Virginia was the battlefield in the high-stakes fight between Trump and the GOP versus Democrats over congressional redistricting.
Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House, when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, Trump a year ago first floated the idea of rare, but not unheard-of, mid-decade congressional redistricting.
Texas and California were the first major showdowns over redistricting, with Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Indiana, and Utah also getting into the scrum.
HEAD HERE FOR LIVE UPDATES ON THE CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING BATTLE
Now the spotlight turns to Florida.
Matt Gorman, a veteran Republican strategist based in Virginia, told Fox News Digital that pointing fingers is absolutely useless. “The fact of the matter is we have to fight the next battle, and that’s in Florida.”
Two-term Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and state lawmakers in the GOP-dominated legislature are hoping to pick up an additional three to five right-leaning seats through a redistricting push during a special legislative session that kicks off next week.
And with the Democrats’ victory in Virginia, pressure is growing on DeSantis to deliver.
