RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Smarting from a governor’s veto of their redistricting bills, the Virginia House and Senate return Monday from a two-week spring recess to determine whether the General Assembly or courts should decide how to carve up Virginia’s legislative districts.
The next few days could determine if Virginia legislators or a federal court will draw new boundaries for state legislative districts in time for the Nov. 8 elections.
In rejecting the legislative reapportionment plan lawmakers sent him earlier this month, Gov. Bob McDonnell criticized the state Senate redistricting plan devised by Democrats. The Republican governor said the plan’s rambling, serpentine configurations sliced up too many communities of interest and, in some cases, even local voting precincts.
He was much gentler on the Republican-drawn House of Delegates plan.
“While the House plan keeps the number of split localities relatively static, the Senate plan significantly increases the number of times localities are split as compared to either other proposed plans or the current redistricting law,” McDonnell wrote in an April 15 veto message.
Initially defiant, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw said the Senate would not “change one period or one comma.” One week later, Saslaw had spoken to McDonnell and relented somewhat. He would not discuss specifics.
“There are some things the governor recommended that we can do and there are some things that we can’t,” Saslaw said in a Friday telephone interview.
Jasen Eige, legal counsel and senior policy adviser to McDonnell, called Saslaw’s softening “a good first step” toward averting a legislative meltdown that puts the judiciary branch in charge of the process.
“What the governor has been asking of the Senate Democratic leadership is to come to the table and work out a better plan with us. Sen. Saslaw has indicated he’s willing to do that,” Eige said.
Saslaw said that whatever he and senior Senate Democrats devised through the weekend would go before the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee early next week. As of last week’s end, however, no committee meeting had been scheduled.
The full House convenes at 3 p.m. Monday, followed by the Senate two hours later.
The House Privileges and Elections Committee met early last week to do enough of the trimming and tightening that McDonnell had suggested to pass gubernatorial muster. The panel endorsed it on a unanimous, bipartisan 16-0 vote.
At stake is the geopolitical foundation on which both Democrats and Republicans hope to buttress their respective Senate and House majorities. Uncertainty over what a court might do should be enough to forge a compromise, said Larry J. Sabato of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“That would be an enormous gamble for both parties. They are literally ceding their fate to an unknown judge or judges,” Sabato said. “Both sides have gone to the brink and they realize it’s equally dangerous for them.”
Neither partisan legislative majority – the Democrats who control 22 of the 40 Senate seats or the Republicans who control 61 of the House’s 100 seats – is thrilled with McDonnell’s veto and the possibility that courts could settle the issue, said Robert D. Holsworth, a former political science professor whom McDonnell appointed to head a bipartisan advisory panel on redistricting.
“Many Senate Democrats would much rather change a comma or a period than have a federal judge draw the lines,” Holsworth said. “The House Republicans can’t be very happy at all because while it’s likely they’d retain the majority, it’s very unlikely that they’d get a document as favorable to them as the one they drew.
“My sense is there is impetus for them to back away from the train wreck,” he said.
McDonnell has plenty of cover in staring down the Senate Democrats.
One reason is that the House plan has bipartisan support. It passed the House on April 11 by a vote of 85-9, with 27 of the House’s Democrats on board.
Another is that the independent panel Holsworth headed spoke forcefully against the sort of gerrymandered, disjointed districts McDonnell says the Senate produced. While the commission – the first of its kind in Virginia – didn’t generate massive statewide outcries, major political donors and former elected officials from both parties, respected opinion leaders from the business and nonprofit realms, major Virginia universities and open government advocacy groups were passionately involved.
“I think what you’re beginning to see in this process for the first time is the public saying to us, ‘make our politics more understandable than it is,'” Holsworth said.