JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Virginia voters delivered a major win to Democrats on Tuesday. A narrow majority voted to allow lawmakers to bypass the state's bipartisan redistricting commission. That means the Democratic-led legislature will create a map that's more favorable to them in the midterms. The new map could allow Democrats to win 10 out of the state's 11 congressional seats. That is up from the six the party currently controls. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger is a Democrat. She supported this measure and joins me now. Welcome.
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER: Thank you so much for having me.
SUMMERS: Governor, you had a big victory last year defeating your Republican opponent in the governor's race by 15 percentage points. Yesterday's referendum, though, passed by a narrower margin - about three points. Were you surprised at all that the margin of victory here wasn't larger?
SPANBERGER: No, it's exactly right about the margin of victory that I anticipated. I felt very strongly that the referendum was going to pass. But Virginia is a purple state. Certainly, when I won in 2025, I won having flipped it from a Republican governor. And, you know, importantly, when I won in November of '25, it was after campaigning for more than a year on a variety of issues all across our commonwealth. This referendum, it was one issue, one question - yes or no - and it required, quite frankly, a lot of voter education and engagement on what the referendum was and why there was an election in April. But we did that work, and we ended with a successful yes campaign. But it's - it really - the results are exactly what I anticipated, and we're proud of that.
SUMMERS: What does the result tell you about the appeal of partisan gerrymandering by some portion of the electorate that supported you in your race?
SPANBERGER: So I think that Virginia is a place where we very proudly put a bipartisan redistricting commission in place back in 2020. And in response to what we've seen in other states - certainly what happened in Texas, where the president said he was entitled to additional congressional seats and members of their legislature just obliged by redistricting - yeah, Virginians, we understood that we have a different option and a potential path to be responsive on a temporary basis.
And so the General Assembly moved forward with pursuing legislation that would allow us to redistrict in advance of our 2030 redistricting. And I think that what it shows is that voters want to take a stand against so much of the chaos that they see in Washington that's impacting their lives and the sort of gamesmanship that the president has pursued. They don't want that going uncontested. And we had the opportunity with the votes of the people, with a referendum, to take a stand and push back against that.
SUMMERS: Governor, I want to ask you about what President Trump has had to say about this. He posted on his Truth Social platform earlier. He called the election rigged, and he wrote - and I'm just going to read part of it here - the Democrats eked out another crooked victory. Six to five goes 10 to one, and yet the presidential election in November was very close to a 50/50 split. He went on to say, "let's see if the courts will fix this travesty of justice," end quote. And I'll note that he did not provide any evidence for those claims. Your response to him?
SPANBERGER: Yeah. I think that this is a man who traffics in lies consistently, both about the results of the 2020 election and every election since then. This is a man who has endeavored to do great damage to our entire system of governance, with absolutely no respect for the oath that he swore or any respect for the promises he made to people who voted for him. So him continuing to lie is unsurprising to me, and notably, the no campaign employed these types of lies as well. They spent tens of millions of dollars in TV ads and mailers depicting me and President - former President Obama, saying that we supported a no on this vote. So they've endeavored to try and lie and trick people. But this is consistent with what the president does.
SUMMERS: Right. Let me ask you about this. Your Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, has also been speaking out about this. He posted on the social media platform X last night, and he made the case that this will disenfranchise the voters of your state. What do you say to that?
SPANBERGER: Well, I say when I was first elected to Congress back in 2018, I won in a district that was a strong Republican district. I was the first Democrat elected in 50 years. I won by - a district my predecessor had won by 15 points, and I swung it 17. I represented many, many people who weren't used to having a Democrat represent them, and I represented suburban communities and very rural and agricultural communities. And the requirement on me was for me to get out and work hard to keep those voters, to win them over in the first place and then to keep them. And so with these competitive districts where the - by the 2024 numbers, you know, 5 of the 11 were won by single digits, the reality is that voters have the opportunity and, I think, the requirement to demand more of candidates and, frankly, their legislators.
SUMMERS: To your point, though, I mean, your state, as you point out, was not the first state to do this. It certainly does not seem like it will be the last. Do you worry at all that this country is going to be stuck in a tit for tat over redistricting for the foreseeable future?
SPANBERGER: You know, I mean, certainly, as long as legislators can draw their own districts, there are going to be games being played. But this is really what it comes down to is that there are difficult and, I think, you know, negative incentives when legislators get to draw their own districts, which is why we adopted this redistricting amendment - the first one, the constitutional amendment - back in 2020. And so I think, as a country, we have to have a much stronger conversation about ensuring that we have commissions or standards and processes and procedures so that, in fact, whether it's to serve themselves or to serve a president they're trying to appease, legislators can't just summarily change the maps, whether they're at the state level or the federal level, as has been the case this time.
SUMMERS: In an interview earlier today on "Morning Joe," you said that when Democrats take the House of Representatives in the fall, there need to be those serious conversations about gerrymandering reform. Give us one reform that you'd suggest.
SPANBERGER: So certainly, there have been prior bills that have been put forward related to kind of establishing standards for redistricting commissions across the country and much more formally outlawing any type of partisan gerrymandering. And having this be, like, a clear, central part of the conversation is extraordinarily important because voters want to know that there is a sense of fairness, which I - I mean, whether your listeners may view that as ironic or not. Which is exactly why Virginians, you know, voted yes, because they see the lack of fairness and our ability to take this temporary and responsive step to push back against that lack of fairness that we've seen in places like Texas and North Carolina. But it will be on all of us to really ensure that we are moving forward on the types of reforms that will move us past this tumultuous time.
SUMMERS: Democratic Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, thanks for your time.
SPANBERGER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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