Richmond, Va. — It was his first stop of the morning, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries was leaning into his Baptist roots as he took the pulpit.
The House Democratic Leader, standing before the First Baptist Church of South Richmond, offered a stinging indictment of President Donald Trump on Sunday, mocking the time Trump referred to Second Corinthians as ‘Two Corinthians.’
“Mr. President, if you’re gonna sell the Bible, you should know the Bible,” Jeffries told the congregation, alluding to the so-called ‘Trump Bible’ rolled out in 2024.
The Brooklynite then turned to the reason for his visit to Virginia’s capital: redistricting in the commonwealth.
Next Tuesday, voters in Virginia will decide whether state lawmakers can temporarily redraw the congressional maps, a move Democrats hope will net them four seats, modifying the map from a 6-5 advantage for Democrats to potentially 10-1.
“Voting yes on that referendum,” Jeffries said, “will help us stop the MAGA power grab so we can end this national nightmare.”
Depending on how tight the margins are in the House following this November’s midterm elections, what happens later this month in Virginia could be pivotal in determining whether Democrats win control of the chamber and Jeffries gets promoted to speaker next year.
Virginia is poised to be the ultimate — or perhaps, penultimate — battleground in the now year-long fight between the two parties to redraw congressional maps.
The nationwide dash to modify the district lines was sparked by Republicans in Texas at the behest of Trump. But depending on how things go in Virginia, Democrats could end up fighting Republicans to a draw in the national aggregate — or even come out slightly ahead.
In an interview Sunday afternoon in Richmond with MS NOW, Jeffries didn’t shy away from the potential irony.
“Republicans may have started this gerrymandering battle,” he said. “We’ve made clear from the very beginning that on behalf of the American people, Democrats would finish it.”
Finishing that fight, however, has meant Democrats adopting many of the same gerrymandering tactics they called out for years.
Pressed on whether Democrats were ceding the moral high ground on partisan redistricting, Jeffries argued there were some key differences.
“One, our measures are temporary,” Jeffries said. “They are responsive to what Republicans have done in places like Texas, Missouri and North Carolina.”
He added that Republicans were trying to “enact gerrymandered maps in the middle of the night by these state legislative bodies and then impose them on the folks in that state.”
By contrast, he argued, “Democrats have done our responsive work in a transparent way to create more competitive maps and to give the voters the ultimate decision — through a proposition in California or referendum here in Virginia — to be the ones who ultimately choose what the congressional map will look like.”
Jeffries also argued that Democrats support a national law to prohibit this sort of partisan gerrymandering outside of the normal redistricting process that’s only supposed to happen every decade.
“House Democrats have actually passed a bill that would prohibit mid-decade partisan gerrymandering, not once, but twice, and Republicans in the Senate would not allow it to move forward,” he said. “We’re going to revisit that effort on the other side of this midterm election to ensure that no one like Donald Trump in the future can ever plunge the country into this type of redistricting battle in the middle of the decade ever again.”
The result of the Virginia battle will be close.
A recent poll by The Washington Post and Schar School found 52% of likely voters said they would back the redistricting measure. Forty-seven percent said they would vote against it.
When asked about the tight margins, Jeffries told MS NOW he’s aware that Virginia is a swing state.
“We always knew that this referendum vote would be incredibly close,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck.”
Jeffries’ visit to the commonwealth — which also included a second church stop, a kickoff event for volunteers, and a lunch with college students — came during a high-stakes weekend in Virginia politics.
With early voting underway, a spokesperson for the group Virginians for Fair Elections — which is advocating for the referendum — said they had 500 volunteers out in the field this weekend, knocking on approximately 60,000 doors.
On the opposite side of the ledger, the day before Jeffries made his stops in Richmond, Republicans — including Speaker Mike Johnson — rallied in Bridgewater, Va. against the redistricting measure.
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“This is not a 10-1 state,” Johnson said. “This is not a deep blue state.”
Opponents of the referendum argue it would in effect undo the bipartisan redistricting commission voters opted to establish through a constitutional amendment back in 2020. The whole aim of that amendment was to prevent gerrymandering.
“You have the power to say no to this totally scandalous, unlawful, unconstitutional, Democrat gerrymandering scheme,” Johnson said Saturday.
But supporters of the referendum note it is only temporarily, and they argue Trump and Republicans nationally have given them no choice.
Stephen Rast, who was heading out on Sunday to knock on doors in Henrico County, Va., told MS NOW, “Normally we would say, like, ‘Gerrymandering is wrong.’ But unfortunately, we’ve been pushed into this position where two wrongs will make a right.”
“As Democrats, we simply can’t come to a boxing match when the other person brings a knife,” Rast added.
In the national redistricting standoff, Texas came first. Republicans there opted to redesign the map in an effort to pick up five seats — in effect, creating a buffer against potential Democratic wins in competitive congressional districts across the country this fall.
But the fight in Texas didn’t stay in Texas.
California state lawmakers soon responded, redrawing their map to net Democrats up to five seats. (Voters overwhelmingly backed the change in a statewide election last November.)
Other states soon followed suit, including North Carolina and Missouri. Others — like Ohio and Utah — were compelled by state law or the courts to modify their lines.
All told, so far this cycle, six states have redesigned their maps. A half dozen more have taken steps to do so or are awaiting potential court action.
One notable Democrat-led effort to modify the map in Maryland to net an additional seat stalled in the state’s Democrat-controlled Senate, despite pressure from party leaders, including Jeffries.
And there are also still outstanding questions about what Florida state lawmakers might do. Jeffries — and even some Republicans — have warned that if GOP lawmakers rework the state’s congressional map, it could end up backfiring.
Notably, in Texas, some analysts argue Republicans may not end up picking up five new districts as they intended — even with the new map. The reason? The rightward political swing among Latino voters seen in 2024 may not hold into 2026.
The question looming over this redistricting battle is whether this is the new normal. Can this race to redesign maps mid-decade for one’s party’s advantage be reversed?
Democrats note the Virginia proposal circumventing the bipartisan panel is temporary — only until the next census. The same is true in California.
Jeffries said it would ultimately be up to voters in Virginia, California and elsewhere to decide “what’s the most appropriate path forward.”
That decision, he added, would come “once we get through the national nightmare that we’re in right now that Donald Trump and Republican sycophants are visiting upon the American people.”
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.
Peggy Helman is a desk associate at MS NOW.