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Top Virginia redistricting proponent and former Attorney General Eric Holder defended Democrats’ proposed changes to the Old Dominion’s congressional map, accusing Republicans of “stealing seats” in Missouri and Texas.
Voters go to the polls Tuesday to decide whether to “restore fairness” — in the words of the Democrat-crafted referendum itself — by essentially approving a new congressional map that would redraw Virginia’s districts to favor Democrats over Republicans 10-1.
In a CBS News interview, anchor Margaret Brennan pressed Holder on the need for a new map, noting that a president’s party — in this case the GOP — already historically underperforms in midterm elections.
Holder denied the move is an acknowledgment that the Democratic Party can’t win “on its own” and said that they can definitely win if it is a fair fight.
“What were we supposed to do, nothing?” Holder asked, citing Texas’ decision to redraw its districts at the behest of President Donald Trump and similar Republican-led redistricting efforts in Missouri and North Carolina.
Holder did not mention that Indiana legislative Republicans balked at calls to similarly redraw their map to favor the GOP, and Maryland Democrats also rejected a push to redraw their districts, ultimately preserving House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris’ Eastern Shore seat.
Holder said Democrats couldn’t allow Republicans to “stack the deck” nationally and “try to steal seats.”
“All we are trying to do is meet them and try to make the system as fair as it possibly can be, and that’s all this is about,” he said.
Holder’s comments sparked online criticism, as Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and others pushed back on the former Obama “wingman’s” logic.
“It’s only partisan gerrymandering and ‘stealing seats’ when Republicans do it,” Lee said on X.
“When it’s Democrats, it’s about ‘making the system as fair as it can be’ — Democrat logic is exhausting.”
Fox News contributor and media critic Joe Concha noted that Brennan also did not bring up several recent case of Democrats doing exactly what Holder criticized Republicans for.
“Margaret didn’t bother to push back and bring up the fact that several blue states have done this for years,” Concha said.
Critics have often pointed to the fact that the entirety of New England lacks a Republican member of congress, despite the true D-to-R population proportion.
Like the proposed Virginia map, which includes several districts painstakingly drawn into Fairfax County and another intentionally drawn to connect interior cities like Charlottesville, Lynchburg and Roanoke, Democratic states like Illinois have created similar awkwardly-drawn maps.
Reps. Eric Sorensen and Nikki Budzinski’s districts notably form thin, arcing lines connecting various Illinois cities that are otherwise nowhere near each other and not in a straight line or contour.
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Attorney General Eric Holder delivers remarks at the 103rd NAACP National Convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center on July 10, 2012, in Houston. (Michael Paulsen/Houston Chronicle)
Sorensen’s covers Rockford, Moline, Peoria and Bloomington, while Budzinski’s snakes from East St. Louis to Decatur and Urbana while incidentally collecting a thin line of rural areas that happen to be in between.
In Maryland, until recently, the third district was in several distinct pieces connected only by waterways and tributaries — to the extent a federal judge derisively called it a “broken-winged pterodactyl” flying over Balt-Wash suburbs.
