After their victory in Virginia on Tuesday night, the House majority is there for Democrats to take.
Democrats eliminated four GOP-held House seats in Virginia by convincing voters there to undo a redistricting commission put in place just six years ago. The Old Dominion’s House delegation next year will likely be 10 Democrats to just one Republican, a stunning turnabout for a state that was dominated by the GOP not that long ago.
The victory cost Democrats $65 million, and the final result was still a squeaker. Republicans are already pointing fingers at each other over whether they missed an opportunity to halt Democrats’ growing momentum and pull off an upset.
GOP troubles. We get it. It’s still early. There’s more than six months to go until Election Day. That’s forever in modern politics.
But there’s no sign at this point that President Donald Trump or House GOP leaders have the focus or messaging discipline to defend their razor-thin majority. Boosted by Trump’s presidential victory in 2024, Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans kept their majority intact — barely. Repeating that this year looks more difficult.
A couple of points to make:
— The implications of a Democratic House majority are enormous. It could mean a third impeachment for Trump, although Democrats claim that’s not on their agenda.
But it definitely would mean investigations and subpoenas for the White House and Cabinet officials, with all that entails legally and politically. There could also be even longer government shutdowns than the record-long “lapse in appropriations” that we’ve seen this Congress.
— It’s fair to say that, at this point, Republicans have lost the redistricting wars that they started last year in Texas at Trump’s urging. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is the winner.
“I told Mike Johnson in July of last year that, ‘If you go down this road, it’s not going to work out for you,’” Jeffries said in an interview Tuesday night.
More Jeffries on his warning to Johnson: “And at the end of the day, his best-case scenario was that he would net zero seats, but force at least 10 Republicans, who are incumbent members of his conference, into premature retirement. And that is exactly what has happened.”
The minority leader deserves lots of credit for Tuesday night’s win. Virginia Democrats had to pass an amendment twice through the state legislature, withstand a slew of legal challenges and then put it to the voters. A Jeffries-aligned nonprofit spent $38 million to make sure the measure passed.
Jeffries oversaw this effort from start to finish, setting up the referendum campaign, hiring staff and coordinating action on the ground. There was a lot of reluctance among Virginia Democrats over this gamble. That forced Jeffries to convince the delegation and the feuding chambers in the state legislature to get on board.
With his trademark caution, Jeffries declined to say whether Democrats won the majority last night or if a blue wave is looming. But he firmly declared Democrats won the redistricting fight.
“When you line up the congressional map in Texas and compare it with the response in California, they’re going to lose seats and would be fortunate if in Texas, they win two or three of the five seats that they claimed they were going to steal from Democrats,” Jeffries said.
The biggest wild cards left for both sides are Florida and the future of the Voting Rights Act, which is up to the Supreme Court.
Tuesday’s outcome puts a ton of pressure on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to push an aggressive congressional map next week that nets Republicans between three and five House seats.
Yet DeSantis faces skepticism from the Republican delegation and the GOP-controlled state legislature, which don’t believe they can go that big. Many Florida pols are warning that Latino voters aren’t reliably Republican and won’t turn out for the GOP like they did in 2024, so DeSantis should be cautious.
Knives out. There was a massive partisan spending gap in Virginia. On ads alone, Democrats spent $56.4 million. The GOP spent just $24.6 million.
The final result: Republicans lost by less than 90,000 votes out of more than 3 million cast.
Republicans will tell you they were trying to avoid nationalizing the race and igniting an angry Democratic base. More GOP spending would have only triggered more Democratic spending. Plus, the “No” campaign outperformed Trump’s 2024 results in Virginia.
Former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who led the anti-redistricting campaign, vowed to continue challenging the new map in courts.
But House Republicans were already sending us hair-on-fire messages Tuesday night. These Republicans say they were told that no amount of money could help the GOP in Virginia — but the close result suggests otherwise.
The American Action Network, a nonprofit aligned with Johnson, sent money to the nonprofit funding the “No” campaign, according to a person familiar with the transfer. But that dark money isn’t traceable and we don’t know how much they gave.
The Virginia GOP delegation will likely be decimated. GOP Rep. Rob Wittman (Va.) was drawn into Democratic Rep. Don Beyer’s new safe blue seat. GOP Reps. John McGuire and Jen Kiggans are now in light blue seats and in extreme danger.
There’s only one red seat left and it’s in the southwest. We hear Republican Reps. Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith could end up in a member-on-member race.
There are also a lot of questions about the NRCC, CLF and AAN’s decision-making. And you should expect that will continue — and even sharpen — in the coming days.
The new red seats nationally. Republicans drew five red seats in Texas. But let’s not forget that two of these seats were already red. Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez held Trump-won districts before the redraw. Both could still win despite the new map.
The other three new Texas seats are very likely to elect Republicans. Democrats are only planning to seriously contest one. Republicans are poised to pick up Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s (D-Mo.) Kansas City-based seat. There are still some pending legal challenges, but things have been going well for the GOP there.
