Virginia redistricting commission's map exposed for stark similarities to Republican gerrymander

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday October 19, 2021 · 2:43 PM PDT

2021/10/19 · 14:43

Comparison of congressional redistricting plans put forth by Virginia's new bipartisan redistricting commission and former Republican Rep. Tom Davis.

The heavily criticized congressional map Virginia's new bipartisan redistricting commission advanced last week came under even hotter fire on Monday after one commissioner, Democratic Del. Marcus Simon, divulged that the GOP's official redistricting arm had drawn a similar map proposed to the panel.

That submission, which was put forth under the name of former Republican Rep. Tom Davis, a former chair of the NRCC, was in fact the work of conservative attorney Jason Torchinsky, the general counsel for the National Republican Redistricting Trust. Torchinsky's map bore striking similarities to the map recently adopted by the commission and, in some cases, featured virtually identical districts. You can see both for comparison in the composite at the top of this post.

Analyst Sam Shirazi, who first flagged the resemblance, brought the matter to Simon's attention. Simon, in turn, asked the commission's staff to investigate the origins of the "Davis" map and learned its true provenance—facts Davis himself failed to disclose when submitting his plan.

As for how the commission's map wound up looking so much like Torchinsky's, the board's Republican attorney acknowledged his staff had reviewed it but insisted they hadn't colluded with the NRRT. But whether true or not, their end product was so closely related that Simon correctly called it a "Republican dream map" that would amount to a GOP gerrymander.

That still leaves the baffling question of why Democrats on the commission sided with Republicans to advance the proposal, which would create six districts that Donald Trump would have carried in 2016 versus just five for Hillary Clinton, despite the solid leftward trend still underway in Virginia. At the very least, though, Shirazi's sleuthing and Simon's revelations ought to help steer Democrats in a different direction as the commission works toward a final map.

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