Beth Macy, the best-selling author of books like \u201cDopesick,\u201d about the struggles of Appalachia, had planned to test her contention that Democratic candidates could win back the House by talking and listening to rural voters.<\/p>\n
But after Tuesday, if Virginia voters approve a wholesale redrawing of the commonwealth\u2019s House districts, Ms. Macy will instead have to campaign mostly in college towns, talking and listening to well-off, well-educated people who are more likely to be readers of her books than their subjects. Her more immediate challenge will be fighting another Democrat in the primary for a newly drawn seat.<\/p>\n
Ms. Macy is not the only candidate whose political fate swings on Tuesday\u2019s vote. Several Democrats have declared that if voters approve the new map, then they will run in a district that does not yet exist. Such if-then candidates include a Mike-Pence-adviser-turned-Trump-scourge, a former Virginia first lady, an architect of the Democrats\u2019 redistricting push and a former top deputy to the special prosecutor who twice indicted Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n
Virginia voters are the latest to weigh in on a mid-decade redistricting war that President Trump started when he asked Texas Republicans last summer to redraw their state\u2019s map to help his party stave off a Democratic takeover of the House. Since then, California voters approved a new map that could offset whatever gains Republicans made in Texas. Missouri legislators redrew their state to erase one Democratic seat, while North Carolina legislators redrew their already-gerrymandered map to try to grab a swing district now held by a Democrat.<\/p>\n
The Democrats who control Virginia are asking voters to approve a map that could shift<\/a> the Commonwealth\u2019s delegation from a 6-to-5 Democratic advantage to a 10-to-1 rout. But the vote is expected to be close, as Republicans try to appeal to a sense of fairness in the electorate.<\/p>\n Waiting in the wings are candidates whose campaigns could be radically altered by the outcome.<\/p>\n Tom Perriello is a Democrat running for election to the U.S. House to represent Virginia\u2019s 5th Congressional DistrictCredit…Eze Amos for The New York Times<\/p>\n If the new map prevails, Tom Perriello, a one-term Democratic congressman who lost his seat in the Tea Party wave of 2010, would have his comeback bid complicated by a competitive primary against Ms. Macy. (Both have been endorsed by Gov. Abigail Spanberger \u2014 in their existing districts.)<\/p>\n Then there are the Republicans: Ben Cline, the representative for the current Sixth District, lives in what would be the Ninth District in the new map. Morgan Griffith, the incumbent in the current Ninth, would find his house in the new Sixth. A neat swap isn\u2019t possible; the proposed Ninth District, where Mr. Trump would have won 74 percent of the vote in 2024, is the only one the mapmakers in a legislature controlled by Democrats created as a sink for Republican voters<\/a>.<\/p>\n Republican Ben Cline could find himself in a new district if Virginia congressional maps are redrawn.Credit…Al Drago\/Reuters<\/p>\n Because members of Congress do not need to reside in their districts, Republicans expect Mr. Griffith and Mr. Cline to compete in a primary.<\/p>\n This all assumes the state Supreme Court does not overturn the new map, which it could, in a pending case it has said it will decide after the vote.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m on pins and needles, I really am,\u201d Ms. Macy said in an interview last week. She rattled off the rural stops she had been making in the Shenandoah Valley in the early part of her campaign. \u201cThis new map comes out,\u201d she said, \u201cand it\u2019s \u2026\u201d She ended her sentence with the sound of screeching brakes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does complicate things,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Ms. Macy put a sign on her lawn encouraging a \u201cyes\u201d vote on the referendum to approve the new map. That map would take a district that favored Mr. Trump by 12 percentage points in the last election and shape it into one that favored Kamala Harris by three.<\/p>\n Still, Ms. Macy can\u2019t help but feel that the Democratic mapmakers stiffed her by pitting her against Mr. Perriello in what\u2019s been nicknamed the \u201ccollege district.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like, \u2018Guys\u2019 \u2014 and it\u2019s mostly guys \u2014 \u2018you said you wanted more women candidates, you said you wanted more non-politicians,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m raising money like hell, I\u2019m doing everything that the Democrats said they wanted, and then they do this. I\u2019m being a good party girl, but I\u2019m not happy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Macy and Mr. Perriello have both been campaigning in their existing districts as well as the possible one: He lives in the current Fifth and would live in the new Sixth; she lives in the Sixth either way.<\/p>\n But Mr. Perriello is already talking as if he\u2019s running in the new district. In an interview, he spent more time criticizing the Republican incumbent he would run against, Mr. Cline, than he spent on the one he is currently running against, John McGuire.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether it\u2019s Cline or McGuire, the fury from voters in this part of the state is the same,\u201d Mr. Perriello said.<\/p>\n To his eye, mapmakers drew the new Sixth District the way it should have been all along \u2014 what he described as \u201ca beautiful set of communities across the Blue Ridge Mountains,\u201d one of the youngest districts in the country with 18 institutions of higher education \u201cand even more microbrews.\u201d<\/p>\n In his current district, the Fifth, voters went for Mr. Trump over Ms. Harris by 12 points.<\/p>\n The prospect of a primary did not seem to preoccupy Mr. Perriello. \u201cWe\u2019re focused on November,\u201d he said. \u201cThe priority right now is to turn the Blue Ridge blue and be part of restoring the House into the hands of the people, and restore the system of checks and balances on Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n Virginia\u2019s new map would draw eight seats considered safe for the Democrats, two competitive districts that lean to the Democrats, and one safe Republican district.<\/p>\n If approved, it would also create at least two competitive primaries for the Democrats \u2014 Perriello versus Macy and an even bigger brawl in the newly created Seventh, nicknamed the \u201clobster district.\u201d Its tail would be near the nation\u2019s capital, and its claws would reach to the West Virginia border on one side and past Richmond on the other.<\/p>\n That primary is so crowded that Democrats have joked that Republicans could have a chance because all the Democratic voters in the district have declared themselves candidates. There are at least seven so far. Dorothy McAuliffe, the wife of a former governor, Terry McAuliffe, began her campaign last month with a four-day tour of the proposed district, a host of endorsements and a video message<\/a> in which she appeared wearing a campaign-branded vest.<\/p>\n Dan Helmer, a member of the state\u2019s House of Delegates who ran the Democrats\u2019 successful campaigns to take control of the chamber in 2023 and to flip 13 more Republican-held seats last November, declared in February.<\/a> Mr. Helmer helped devise the strategy for the redistricting campaign he now hopes to capitalize on \u2014 but later recused himself.<\/p>\n Two outsiders, both antagonists of the president, are also trying to make a splash.<\/p>\n J.P. Cooney, the former top deputy to Jack Smith, the special counsel who led two prosecutions of President Trump, kicked off his campaign with a video message<\/a> recounting how he had also prosecuted the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, among other Trump allies \u2014 and been fired by the president a week after Mr. Trump took office.<\/p>\n