Ill-fated Republican plot foreshadowed Democrats’ plans for 2026 maps redo

In joining a national redistricting arms race sparked by President Donald Trump, Virginia Democrats say they may impose a maximalist gerrymander that would disadvantage four of the state’s five Republican congressional representatives.

Republicans are crying foul.

But 12 years ago, Republicans in the Virginia Senate broke tradition by trying to force through a mid-decade redistricting of their own in an effort to win an outright majority in the chamber, which at the time was locked in a 20-20 partisan tie.

Back then, Democrats were the ones howling with indignation.

The Senate Republicans’ 2013 redistricting bid caused such an uproar that major legislative issues that year grounded to a halt for two weeks. A semblance of order was restored only after House Speaker Bill Howell — resisting tremendous pressure from fellow Republicans — ruled the Senate action out of order.

The 2013 incident is a reminder of the length politicians of either party can go when given the opportunity to perpetuate their political power.

“A pox on Republicans for starting it,” said former Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling in a recent interview, “and a pox on the Democrats for now wanting to be part of it.”

The redrawing of Virginia’s legislative districts has happened only once every decade, soon after Census population totals are updated. The only exceptions have been when courts ordered the General Assembly to correct violations of the federal Voting Rights Act.

But in 2013, Senate Republicans didn’t want to wait the better part of a decade (and two election cycles) to reverse maps that Democrats had forced on them two years earlier.

The Senate GOP came up with a mid-decade surprise. They drew more favorable maps that, if adopted, would have put the GOP in a much stronger position in the next general election, which was scheduled for November 2015.

They waited for the House of Delegates to send over a routine bill that contained small, technical adjustments to existing House districts. The plan was to amend the bill to include wholesale changes to all 40 districts.

With Bolling’s tie-breaking vote, Republicans could push the GOP-friendly measure through the Senate. Then, all they would need was the House of Delegates (controlled by a GOP super-majority) to go along and for Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell to sign it into law.

Jeff Ryer, the political staffer for the caucus, said he worried for months that the word would get out. “It had to be one of the best-kept secrets I’ve ever seen in the General Assembly,” he said.

But the plan hit a snag.

Bolling, who in December 2012 bowed out of a bitter gubernatorial nomination contest with conservative Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, told GOP senators that they could not count on his tie-breaking vote.

“It was not something I was comfortable with,” Bolling recently said of the mid-decade changes. “ I was exploring the possibility of an independent campaign for governor. I kind of carved out a different path. I think a lot of guys (in the caucus) understood it.”

Senate Republicans had to put their surprise plan on hold for a day when at least one Democrat was absent.

The opportunity came on Monday, Jan. 21, when the late Sen. Henry Marsh, D-Richmond skipped the daily floor session to attend President Barack Obama’s second-term inauguration in Washington.

Marsh’s empty seat on the Senate floor gave the Republicans a temporary majority of 20-19.

To present the plan, the caucus turned to a moderate with a good-guy image. Sen. John Watkins, R-Midlothian, was the most unlikely legislator to pull what the Charlottesville Daily Progress editorial page would call “one of the most politically cynical and morally flawed maneuvers” in years.

“It wasn’t something I dreamed up,” Watkins said in an interview earlier this month. “The leadership told me, ‘You’re probably the only person who can stand up on the floor and get this through.’”’

Stunned, Democrats exploded with fury. They called the move unconstitutional. They vowed to sue. They threatened to throw sand in the legislative gears. “The collateral damage from this will be immeasurable,” thundered Democratic Senate Minority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax.

Undaunted, Republicans rammed through the new maps on a party-line.

The bill moved back to the House, where its fate rested with Howell. The Speaker was charged with determining if House rules would allow the amendment to proceed.

In a recent interview, Howell said that almost from the start he believed the Senate amendment was not “germane” because it went far beyond the narrow scope of the House bill. But he faced pushback from within his own caucus.

House Republicans excluded Howell from some closed-door caucus meetings, an extraordinary challenge to his power. “There was a group within the caucus who said, ‘Why in the world would you not do it’?” said Howell, who served as Speaker from 2003 until 2018.

“There was one guy who said, Why don’t we rush the podium and take him out?’” Howell deadpanned. “Luckily that didn’t happen.”

As pressure built on Howell and the legislative uncertainty entered a second week, Senate Republicans sought to justify their mid-decade surprise.

In a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed, Sen. Ryan T. McDougle said the GOP’s action was justified in undoing Democratic maps that he said broke up communities of interest, manipulated population deviations and ignored opportunities to create a sixth minority-majority district.

“Those opposed to (the new maps) may call it a gerrymander, but they’re wrong, both historically and technically – the current districting scheme is a gerrymander,” McDougle wrote.

Some Senate Republicans were more candid about the political motivations of their plan.

Then-Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment chided Senate Democrats, who had similar partisan incentives when they held power in 2011, of wrapping themselves “in a shroud of political virtue.”

In a recent interview, Norment said his biggest objection to the 2011 maps was that they broke up Yorktown, Jamestown and Williamsburg, known as the Historic Triangle.

“My interest was more geographic than partisan,” he said.

In the GOP redo, Williamsburg was removed from the district of Sen. John Miller, a Newport News Democrat, and restored to Norment’s domain.

But the tinkering with Miller’s district didn’t end there. Republicans stripped 16 precincts from Miller’s home base of Newport News and pushed a portion of his district across the James River, where it cut a narrow, 40-mile path from Smithfield to the outskirts of Petersburg, breaking up communities of interest along the way.

If the Senate plan had become law, Miller’s district would have gone from +15-D to +5-R – a rightward swing of 20 points.

As the standoff dragged on into February, Watkins came to regret his decision to go along with the January surprise. His nice-guy image was compromised and Democrats’ support of his two big initiatives — transportation funding and uranium mining — evaporated.

“With a single, premeditated act of political survival, the 31-year lawmaker and chairman of the Senate committee that oversees big business managed to get on nearly everyone’s #%!@ list,” observed Jeff Schapiro in the second of two columns in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that excoriated Watkins.

Meanwhile, then-Sen. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico, took the floor to lay bare the pretense of Senate Republicans’ claim that their maps had been motivated by “being good to Black folks.” He noted that the plan would pack Black people into districts, diluting their power in the suburbs.

“That is plantation politics,” McEachin said.

On February 6, the crisis ended when Howell issued his ruling that the Senate amendment strayed too far from the narrow, technical intent of the House bill.

Looking back, Howell said that most people who pressed him to rule otherwise understood his belief that the legislature’s institutional integrity depends on consistent application of the rules.

“They did not try to make the case it was germane,” Howell recalled. “They were just saying, ‘Bill, this would really help if you saw it this way.’”

Those who know Howell well say he was placed under an incredible amount of pressure to look the other way.

“Bill Howell paid dearly for that decision,” recalled Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Spotsylvania, one his lieutenants.

When asked if the ruling was the most significant decision in his 15 years as speaker, Howell said, “It was up there pretty high.”

Howell added that he wasn’t looking to open old wounds or make himself appear holier than thou. “It was an easy thing to do what I did because it was right,” he said.

Looking back, Watkins regrets his decision to go along with the plan. He agrees that Howell made the right call.

“You go through life and sometimes you screw up. This was one of them,” said Watkins, who announced in 2015 that he would not seek re-election, ending a legislative career that began in 1982.