Abigail Spanberger Takes Ball And Goes Home After Her Gerrymander Gambit Epically Failed

Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger is telling her fellow party members it is time to move on from redistricting after her state’s highest court ruled her endorsed gerrymander was unconstitutional.

Spanberger told the New York Times in an interview published Friday that it is “outrageously premature” for her fellow Democrats to be focused on redistricting, calling the midterms ahead the “most consequential midterms” of her lifetime. This comes just a week after the United States Supreme Court declined to take up Virginia Democrats’ appeal following the state’s Supreme Court May 8 ruling that lawmakers violated the state’s constitutional procedural requirements by advancing the pro-gerrymander amendment after early voting had already begun.

“It is outrageously premature of us to be talking about any sort of redistricting or map-changing effort when we have to win the most consequential midterms of my lifetime this November,” Spanberger told the Times.

The referendum would have likely resulted in Democrats gaining four more House seats from Virginia, as the lopsided map it approved would have favored Democrats by a 10-1 margin. Virginia voters approved the proposed gerrymander by a narrow margin of four percentage points on April 21 — after the “yes” campaign received a flood of money, including from groups linked to left-wing billionaire George Soros.