Early voting is underway for a statewide referendum over proposed congressional district maps in Virginia. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi spoke with eight candidates for the House of Representatives about the redistricting effort. This report is the third in a four-part series.
If Virginia voters approve the new district maps – and the courts allow them to be implemented – we're likely to see 10 Democratic representatives and one Republican elected to the House this November. While these maps favor Democrats, they do impact how blue candidates conduct their campaigns. WMRA spoke with two Democratic candidates from Central Virginia – Salaam Bhatti and Tom Perriello.
Salaam Bhatti is a public interest lawyer from Short Pump who's worked for a veterans' clinic, the Virginia Poverty Law Center and the Food Research and Action Center. His experiences growing up a child of immigrants and benefitting from free school meals and the federal Women, Infants, Children, or WIC, program, have helped shape his platform.
SALAAM BHATTI: Poverty is not natural – it's man-made, which means we can solve it. And so our three policy priority focus points of Medicare for all, taxing the billionaires, and getting big money out of politics aren't there to cure a symptom … it actually goes right to the root of the cause.
Bhatti is running in the current 1st District, which wraps around Richmond and spreads east to the Chesapeake Bay. If the districts are redrawn, he'll be in the new 5th District – which cuts westward from the city to a diamond shape in Central Virginia.
The current 1st District is represented by 10-term Republican incumbent Rob Wittman. The proposed 5th doesn't appear to have any incumbents living within its borders – but Representative John McGuire, who represents the current 5th, could legally still run there. McGuire did not respond to our interview requests.
Bhatti believes Democrats can flip the 1st District as it's currently drawn – and has strong words for the GOP under the Trump administration.
BHATTI: We announced our run knowing that we could flip this district. And this was before, of course, the November election, where the district actually flipped D+2. So it shows us that people are ready for someone who will stand up with conviction for actual change. … What we're seeing today is really something parallel to England after World War II. England was, you know, decimated by the Nazis, and when the new leaders were elected, they came to a decision that, we haven't been elected to do patchwork legislation. We have been elected at a revolutionary time to do revolutionary things, and the parallel to America today is that we've also been destroyed by Nazis, and when we go to vote in the primaries – not just the midterms, but the primaries – this is going to be a revolutionary time for revolutionary change.
I asked for his thoughts on the criticism of redistricting from some rural voters who don't want someone from Richmond or Northern Virginia representing them from many miles away.
BHATTI: You know, I agree with them. … The bigger issue here is that we have capped how many members can be in the House of Representatives. … We have about 800,000 people in the district, when in years past, it was 30,000 people. So it's time to uncap the House.
A jaunt down Interstate 64, in Charlottesville, former Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello is running to reclaim his old seat in the 5th District. Perriello was in the House from 2009 - 2011 then served in the Obama and Biden administrations' Departments of State in Africa, and co-founded aid groups for Sudan and Ukraine.
TOM PERRIELLO: I think the referendum will probably pass, but the nice thing is that it's up to the voters. This is not like Texas, where they did a backroom deal.
Texas' state legislature approved new maps, expected to give Republicans up to five more seats in Congress, without a referendum.
If Virginia's districts are redrawn, Perriello would be running in the new 6th. He's been making the rounds there, too, including the Harrisonburg coffee shop where I spoke with him.
PERRIELLO: I can tell you that the district lines may shift a little bit but the priorities don't, because unfortunately we see families across the region struggling to be able to make ends meet, paycheck to paycheck, and a big part of that is because healthcare costs have been going through the roof, and I was proud to vote for the Affordable Care Act, but also to keep fighting after I was in Congress to get the Medicaid expansion. … When you look at an area like this that's had three rural health clinics close, that's not just a disaster for the families who can't access those clinics. It means more people going to the emergency room, which then sends premiums up for the middle class. And then you have Cline and McGuire come around and remove the tax credits for the middle class. … Neither of them was willing to vote to bring down healthcare costs for the middle class. Neither Cline nor McGuire even had the guts to vote for the Epstein discharge petition.
Besides whichever Republican incumbent Perriello might be up against, redistricting would change the primary race, too – pitting him against Beth Macy, for one. As of the most recent campaign finance reports, Perriello has raised about $1.4 million this election cycle – Macy, $1.1 million.
PERRIELLO: I've spent my entire career fighting for communities like this. Fighting to increase wages, fighting to bring down the cost of healthcare, the cost of childcare, and trying to bring back manufacturing jobs, particularly by pushing for green industrial policy.
In the fourth and final installment of this series, we'll talk to two candidates from Northern Virginia: Republican Tony Sabio and Democratic Representative Eugene Vindman.
