Between now and April 21, when voters throughout Virginia turn on their television, streaming service, or other digital media, they are very likely to see former President Barack Obama urging them to “vote yes” on a legally dubious constitutional amendment to hand Democrats four more U.S. House seats by creating the most extreme gerrymander in the country.
The mainstream press – who have for years claimed to be the almighty protectors of “democratic norms” – have largely shrugged at this highly unusual foray by a former president into the politics of a state in which he does not even live. But even more egregious is the shamelessness with which Obama has parroted Democrats’ lies about their gerrymandering efforts in the Old Dominion.
In his blatant dishonesty, Obama is following the lead of new Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger – a self-described “moderate” who has governed as anything but so far. During her campaign last year, Spanberger told a local ABC News affiliate, “I have no plans to redistrict Virginia.”
Back in 2020, two-thirds of Virginia’s voters passed a referendum that amended the commonwealth’s constitution by creating the Virginia Redistricting Commission (VRC). The VRC took redistricting out of the hands of politicians to prevent the very sort of unfair map that Democrats are now trying to impose by abolishing the VRC. At the time, Spanberger was one of the leading proponents of the VRC amendment, calling gerrymandering “detrimental to our democracy.”
Yet now Spanberger has offered her full-throated endorsement of what would be the most partisan maps anywhere in America. Even when she deflected questions about redistricting last year, she was fully aware that her Democrat accomplices in the General Assembly were already working on a redistricting scheme that effectively would disenfranchise at least 40 percent of the commonwealth’s voters.
Thus, it was no surprise that, less than two weeks after her inauguration, Spanberger signed a bill setting up the referendum vote on April 21. As AMAC Newsline has previously reported, Democrats engaged in several maneuvers to ram through the amendment that seemed to be blatantly illegal. But the state supreme court has declined to stop the referendum from proceeding, and early voting is already underway.
So, where does President Obama fit into this equation? Well, it turns out that Virginia voters are pretty tepid about changing the redistricting rules again just a few years after the last amendment. Democrats are worried about the outcome following close early polling despite the “yes” camp holding a significant money advantage over the “no” camp.
Democrats have thus decided they need a widely recognized messenger to sell Virginians on the controversial claim that Democrats controlling 91 percent of the congressional seats (10 of 11) in a state that typically votes 45-50 percent Republican somehow increases “fairness.” Consequently, on March 11, “the YES Campaign” released a new ad in which Obama looks into the camera and tells you:
“Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them by voting, YES, by April 21. Help put our elections back on a level playing field. And let voters decide, not politicians. This is the responsible thing to do. Help us chart a better path forward, Virginia. Vote, YES, by April 21.”
The fact that Democrats feel the need to turn to Obama at all shows how panicked they are. While Obama has hardly been invisible since leaving the White House in January 2017, rarely has he so actively and publicly gotten behind a political initiative – much less one in just a single state. This suggests that plenty of national Democrat power brokers are worried.
It’s also worth noting that Obama is breaking with precedent here. Throughout history, former presidents have been expected to stay out of politics and have largely done so. (You didn’t see George W. Bush putting his thumb on the scale for redistricting efforts in his home state of Texas, for instance.) Obama’s interference now is just one more example of his toxic influence on our political culture.
But despite his best efforts, it isn’t clear yet that the Old Dominion’s voters are dumb enough to fall for Obama’s lies. The Virginia Mercury reports, “With four weeks to go before Virginia voters decide whether to redraw the state’s congressional map, early voting data is painting a familiar but uneasy picture for Democrats: they hold a commanding financial edge, but reliably Republican districts are showing up strong at the polls.” Virginia doesn’t register voters by party, but the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) publishes early vote totals by congressional district.
Five of Virginia’s 11 U.S. House districts are currently held by Republicans and six are held by Democrats. Since early voting commenced on March 6, VPAP shows that about 500,000 early votes have been cast throughout the commonwealth. As of March 26, about 55 percent of these votes were cast in the five Republican-held districts and about 45 percent were cast in the six Democrat-held districts. It is also significant that overall turnout thus far in the special election is higher than early turnout (481,206) at this point in the 2025 general election.
These numbers suggest that Republicans are more motivated to get out and vote than Democrats.
There may also be another issue driving turnout that Obama does not discuss in his pitch to the voters. According to a report in the anti-gun publication, The Trace, Virginia’s General Assembly passed no fewer than 25 new gun control laws during the session that just ended and sent them to Governor Spanberger for signature. The last time something this outrageous was attempted was in 2019, when feckless Democrat Ralph Northam was governor.
As the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, most of Virginia’s counties promptly declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries: “Eighty-six of Virginia’s 95 counties have passed such sanctuary measures opposing restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. They suggest that the counties might not enforce new state laws limiting gun rights.” Eventually, Northam and the Democrat-controlled General Assembly were forced to back down on several gun laws, including a ban on “assault rifles” similar to the one that Democrats just passed again.
Republican and Independent voters likely are also none too happy about the slate of other liberal policies that the Democrat-controlled general assembly has sent to Spanberger, including a bevy of new taxes on businesses and workers. This referendum isn’t directly related to any of those bills, but it is the first opportunity voters will have to show how upset they are with what Democrats are doing in Richmond – and that may be enough to sink liberal dreams of a 10-1 map.
Obama sold the country on a great scam once with Obamacare – one of the most disastrous and destructive laws in American history. Who could forget the infamous lie about Obamacare that, “if you like your insurance, you can keep it”? It may well be that voters in Virginia aren’t too keen to believe his deceptions this time around.
David Catron is a Senior Editor at the American Spectator. His writing has also appeared in PJ Media, the American Thinker, the Providence Journal, the Catholic Exchange and a variety of other publications.
