On April 21, Virginians will vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would suspend the state’s independent bipartisan redistricting commission and allow the Democratic Party-controlled General Assembly to quickly gerrymander new Congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Virginia’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives currently consists of six Democrats and five Republicans, but the gerrymandered map proposed by state Democrats could yield a delegation of ten Democrats and just one Republican. Under this map, Fairfax County in Northern Virginia (a Democratic stronghold with approximately 13 percent of the state’s population) would be sliced into five different districts extending as far west as the West Virginia border and/or as far south as metro Richmond and beyond.
Such a brazenly partisan power grab might naturally strike ordinary Virginians—who overwhelmingly backed the redistricting commission in 2020—as patently unfair. Likely recognizing that persuading those voters otherwise would be a tall order, supporters of the redistricting scheme have deployed tens of millions of dollars from left-wing out-of-state political funders in their effort to push the amendment over the finish line.
The referendum committee supporting the gerrymandering amendment is the ironically named Virginians for Fair Elections. State filings as of April 8, 2026, reveal that it has received a remarkable $49.7 million just since February. As of April 8, the largest donors to Virginians for Fair Elections include:
Together, these five funders accounted for over 97 percent of all cash contributions to Virginians for Fair Elections reported as of April 8, and 96 percent of all contributions overall. It is worth emphasizing that these groups are national funders—just over 2 percent of all reported contributions to Virginians for Fair Elections actually came from donors with a Virginia address, and most of this was in the form of in-kind contributions from the state Democratic Party.
It is also worth highlighting these funders’ state-specific hypocrisy. This can be aptly illustrated through the People Not Politicians campaign in Missouri, which is opposing Republican gerrymandering in that state. It asserts that gerrymanders are “nothing more than an unconstitutional power grab” which “take away voters’ power,” and argues that “politicians shouldn’t be slicing and dicing communities to pick their voters.” Yet People Not Politicians has received major contributions from very same funders that are backing Virginians for Fair Elections—including the Fairness Project (which boasts of its simultaneous support for both groups on its website), the Global Impact Social Welfare Fund, and American Opportunity Action. It has also received at least $450,000 from the Open Society Action Fund, which is itself exclusively funded by the Fund for Policy Reform.
Virginians for Fair Elections claims that it is a “grassroots organization working to level the playing field” and “restore balance and ensure fair competition.” The truth is that it is a partisan ploy to secure lopsided Congressional representation for Democrats in the state—one that is being almost entirely underwritten by left-wing political dollars from New York City and Washington, DC.
