Virginia’s redistricting fight ramps up as opponents wield Barack Obama’s past comments

By David Wright, Fredreka Schouten, CNN

(CNN) — Members of the Virginia NAACP gathered Wednesday morning to denounce mailers they said were misleading voters about the upcoming redistricting referendum in their state.

“Today, we confront a legacy that echoes the Jim Crow era – disinformation designed to sow confusion and suppress the voices of Black voters. We are here to affirm that we will not be deterred, we will fight back,” said Rev. Cozy Bailey, president of the NAACP Virginia State Conference. “I urge you all to remain vigilant, to educate yourselves about the purpose of this referendum, and to advocate fiercely for the rights of Black voters in Virginia.”

The mailers feature images of former President Barack Obama and quotes in which he criticizes gerrymandering, including one statement from six years ago, when he wrote on X: “For too long, gerrymandering has contributed to stalled progress and warped our representative government.” Large block letters on the mailers urge Virginians to “Vote No.”

But that obscures that Obama is among those supporting Democrats’ push to redraw congressional lines in Virginia, part of a cascading fight over partisan redistricting begun by Texas Republicans last summer at President Donald Trump’s behest.

The argument over Obama reflects the conundrum that is worrying some Democratic allies ahead of an April 21 referendum. Having promoted nonpartisan redistricting in the past, Obama, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and other top Democrats now have to motivate voters to turn out for a special election to impose a gerrymander that could leave Republicans with just one out of 11 US House seats in the state.

Any Democratic gains in Virginia could be crucial for the midterms, with Republicans pursuing new redistricting plans in red states and a pivotal Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act that could come this summer and further upend the 2026 landscape.

Already, Republicans in Texas and Democrats in California have enacted redistricting plans aimed at adding five seats to their respective columns – virtually offsetting each other.

Last week as the Obama mailers began to circulate, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee issued a statement condemning the “dishonest mailer that features an unauthorized photo of President Barack Obama and lies about his position on the Virginia referendum.”

Reached for comment, former state delegate A.C. Cordoza, the chairman of Democracy and Justice PAC, defended the mailers. “No one can refute the accuracy of the quotes we’re presenting. Barack Obama, Abigail Spanberger, and others have already spoken against this kind of gerrymandering – I’m simply reminding voters where they stood,” Cordoza said.

Democrats still have financial and political advantages

Texas’ GOP-controlled state legislature passed a measure at Trump’s urging. California’s response was put to the state’s predominantly liberal electorate last November.

Virginia went against Trump in each of the last three presidential elections but has a more moderate bent.

“Virginia’s not California,” Rep. Jennifer McClellan, a Virginia Democrat, told Punchbowl News. “It’s apples to oranges.”

Democrats are pouring resources into the effort to pass the referendum and are still hopeful for several reasons.

In the early vote so far, the ratio of Democratic to Republican primary participants is running roughly on par with the ratio at this point in last year’s election, which saw Democrats sweep the top three statewide offices and expand their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. While voters in Virginia do not register with a political party, the primary participation history of voters can indicate which party they generally align with.

National Democrats, through their nonprofit House Majority Forward, have contributed roughly half of the nearly $40 million in funding for the largest group on the “Yes” side, Virginians for Fair Elections. Another leading liberal advocacy organization, The Fairness Project, contributed an additional $10 million.

That’s helped Democrats outspend Republicans on advertising for the vote by about $32.5 million to $2.5 million, according to data from the ad tracking firm AdImpact.

Obama, as he did for California’s referendum, appears in a TV ad for redistricting proponents that has received more than $2 million in airtime. “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,” Obama says in the spot.

With three weeks to go, funds are rushing in on the Republican side to help close the messaging gap. House Speaker Mike Johnson is set to attend a fundraiser in Virginia this month for the opposition effort. And the leading group opposing redistricting, Virginians For Fair Maps, received $5 million on the last day of March from an affiliated, anonymous nonprofit, which more than doubled its fundraising total to about $8 million.

Jason Miyares, former Virginia attorney general and one of the leaders of Virginians For Fair Maps, described the spending mismatch as “a little bit of David versus Goliath,” and argued redistricting proponents were “flooded with outside money from Illinois and California and New York.”

“But, as I remind people, David won,” Miyares added.

The new Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger has not personalized her state’s redistricting fight as Gov. Gavin Newsom did in California, though she appeared in a recent ad for the referendum.

“Do I wish that we didn’t have to even consider this? Sure,” she told the Washington Post. “But in the world that we are living in … I do think that Virginia, because we have the ability to be responsive, I think that it’s important that we give that option to voters.”

Groups supporting the new map also say they are counting on a surge of Democratic voters in the days ahead as counties open additional in-person voting locations. Starting Saturday in northern Virginia’s populous and heavily Democratic Fairfax County, for instance, early voting sites will grow from three sites to 16.

“Virginia is not California, right? But it’s still a Democratic state, though. And I also think Democrats probably just generically have kind of … an enthusiasm advantage,” said Kyle Kondik, an elections analyst at the University of Virginia.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Edward Wu contributed to this report.