Virginia Is Holding an August Primary It Never Planned, on a Map Democrats Tried and Failed to Redraw
Voters approved a mid-decade redistricting amendment in April. The Virginia Supreme Court voided it in May, saying the legislature started the process too late. Candidates who had already launched campaigns on the new lines are now running on the old ones.
Virginia's congressional primaries were supposed to happen in June. They are happening Tuesday instead, on district lines the state's Democrats spent months trying to erase and a court restored in a single ruling.
The sequence started with an amendment allowing the General Assembly's Democratic majority to redraw the state's congressional map mid-decade — Virginia's answer to the redistricting arms race Republicans opened in other states. Voters approved it in an April 21 referendum. On May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia struck it down, holding that the legislature had begun the constitutional amendment process too late to be lawful. "This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void," the court wrote. It ordered the state to run the 2026 elections on the same map used in 2022 and 2024.
The map Democrats had drawn would have put as many as 10 of Virginia's 11 House seats within reach. The map they are stuck with does not. Virginia asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let it reinstate the new lines; the justices declined. By then, candidates had already filed, hired staff and started raising money on districts that no longer existed. Some dropped out. Some switched races. Some stayed in seats that had just gotten considerably harder, which is part of why the primary slid to August in the first place.
The most competitive fight is in the 2nd District, on the Hampton Roads coast. Elaine Luria, the retired Navy commander who held the seat before losing it and who served on the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, is one of four Democrats seeking the nomination, and she dwarfed the rest of the field in fundraising and cash on hand as of mid-July. The winner faces Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, a former Navy officer who is unopposed in her own primary and who beat Luria in 2022.
Next door in the 1st District, seven Democrats are competing for the right to challenge Republican Rep. Rob Wittman. The field includes Henrico County Commonwealth's Attorney Shannon Taylor, retired Navy commander and former corporate government affairs executive Jason Knapp, and attorneys Salaam Bhatti and Mel Tull. In the 7th District, which stretches from Northern into Central Virginia, freshman Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman is unopposed as he seeks a second term. Gov. Abigail Spanberger has endorsed Luria, Taylor and Tom Perriello in their primaries.
At the top of the ballot, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner is unopposed as he seeks a fourth term. Three Republicans — Kim Farington, Bert Mizusawa and David Williams — are competing for the chance to face him in November.
Virginia is one of five states voting Tuesday, alongside Michigan, Kansas, Missouri and Washington. But it is the only one where the ballot itself is the residue of a failed constitutional maneuver, and where the districts being contested are the ones the party in power in Richmond went to considerable lengths to get rid of.
Originally reported by Associated Press.