General Assembly Required: Redistricting, Yes or No?

Rich Meagher:

Hey, RVA, Rich here. This season on RVA’s Got Issues, we’re doing a special series of episodes on state government. It’s called General Assembly Required. Today’s episode is part of that series. We focus on this year’s controversial redistricting amendment, starting right now. It’s election time in Virginia. It’s always election time in Virginia. This time, it’s a referendum on redistricting. What do voters in RVA think about this?

Vox-pop #1:

I know that there’s a vote that’s happening by the end of April.

Vox-pop #2:

I know that there’s a bill to redistrict, and I know that it’s very controversial.

Rich Meagher:

It’s controversial because it’s gerrymandering. That’s a political term for drawing district lines to favor one party or another. Politicians have been doing this for at least 200 years, but we don’t have to do it. Ideally, we draw fair lines, ideally.

Vox-pop #2:

If you have to cheat by kind of drawing lines where you think you’ve got a better shot, you know, I just don’t think that’s a great idea. I think you should be able to go based off of, like, what your policies are and what you’re trying to do for your constituents.

Rich Meagher:

Virginia was supposed to be out of the gerrymandering business. We set up a commission process that ended up with district maps widely praised for fairness. But then, last year, Republicans in Texas, with President Trump’s encouragement, suddenly redrew their maps, essentially, to take over five seats held by Democrats. Ohio passed a new map that should give Republicans two more House seats. Florida is trying something similar. So, Democrats said, “We can’t stay out of this. ” In California, they redrew their maps to try to win back five seats. Now, Virginia Democrats want to join them.

Vox-pop #1:

This idea of, like, well, the political traditions of a place aren’t to gerrymander. This isn’t right in, like, a moral way. Well, like, morals are, like, morals are gone right now.

Rich Meagher:

So, if you’re listening and you’re registered to vote in Virginia, you get to decide. Is this a good idea or not? This is RVA’s Got Issues from VPM. I’m Rich Meagher. On today’s episode: redistricting. Yes? Or no? If there’s one person who knows about redistricting in Virginia, it’s Brian Cannon. As executive director of the nonpartisan reform group, OneVirginia2021, Brian led the successful effort to create a bipartisan redistricting commission. This process led to what the Washington Post called some of the fairest maps in the country. Since then, Brian joined a national redistricting group called Fair Vote. But this latest effort at changing maps has brought his focus back to Virginia. He’s launched a bipartisan effort to oppose changing Virginia’s maps, and he’s here to talk about it. Brian, welcome.

Brian Cannon:

Hey, Rich. Thanks for having me.

Rich Meagher:

So, Brian, let’s lay out the current process for our listeners. You know, you helped pass this amendment to the Virginia Constitution. It set up a new process for drawing district lines after the 2020 census. That was a bipartisan commission backstopped by the Virginia Supreme Court. So, what was the goal of that process?

Brian Cannon:

So, the, the goal of any redistricting reform is to have fair maps that represent the communities. Those communities get together and they elect somebody to go to Congress for, on their behalf, or Richmond and, and, and the state legislative case on their behalf. And the goal is to keep communities together as much as you can and make sure the districts are balanced down to the person, basically. The equal population, one person, one vote. That’s the goal.

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Brian Cannon:

But, the reality is, is when you let politicians do it-

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

… is they rig the game for themselves, right?

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

And that’s a story as old as time. The difference of the moment we’re in now is that the technology has continued to get so much better, is that you can take those communities and you can carve them up, not just, you know, the way they were able to do it, you know, 200 years ago, but with an exacto knife, with, with algorithmic precision to gerrymander our community.

Rich Meagher:

You see, cut, like, street by street, house by house almost.

Brian Cannon:

House by house, yeah.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And so, what are some of the principles that you’re supposed to use, right? I’ve heard this about keeping communities together, but there’s, like, language that you, you nerds in the redistricting, uh, world talk about, right? It’s like compact and, and words like that. What, what’s the language you guys use?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah, usually it’s, you’re looking for a district that’s compact. Uh, you’re looking for one that’s contiguous, so you don’t want a little blobs of it all over. You want it to be connected. In Virginia, we’ve, you know, we’ve got some rivers, so you’ve got to navigate that literally and figuratively. And then you want equal population. And specifically, you want to protect, uh, minority voting rights. Obviously, we have a history in our country of using gerrymandering to disenfranchise minority voters. And you want, generally speaking, partisan balance, right? Like, if, if overall, like we just had in November, Abigail Spanberger wins with 50, what, 8% of the vote?

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

You know, you want the, the House of Delegates, which has 100 members in it to approximately reflect that. And it did, right? We’ve got, I think, 64 Democrats in the House.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

So it’s a little bit of an overperformance in that way, but that happens in wave years.

Rich Meagher:

But it’s not, like, a ridiculous amount. It’s not like 80 to 20 or-

Brian Cannon:

Exactly.

Rich Meagher:

… or 10 to 90 or something like that.

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And so, what’s going on now, right, is that the, the maps for Congress are, are being redrawn. Just to be clear about this, right? Your process, this, this constitutional process that was created draws the maps for Congress, right? So, representatives to the House of Representatives, uh, and then also the state legislature districts, right? That’s what gets drawn in that process.

Brian Cannon:

Correct.

Rich Meagher:

Now, the process that happened last time, I wasn’t a big fan of it.

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Right? I was skeptical that this bipartisan commission wouldn’t work, and I was right. Like, it, it fell apart.

Brian Cannon:

You were right, Rich. <laugh>

Rich Meagher:

Right, sure, sure. But mostly because of the Republicans and the commission weren’t really playing ball.

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

And then it went to the courts and their experts, and there I was totally wrong, right? We got pretty fair maps. Uh, and, and you said in the past, like, that’s kind of a, a feature, not a bug, right? That was part of the process. I shouldn’t look at it that the process failed. It, it worked. It just, it went to stage two of the process, right?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah, exactly. You know, look, if I, if I would have had in my way, we would have had zero politicians on this commission, right? But to pass an amendment in Virginia, you don’t just get to write it and put it to, to the vote for the people.

Rich Meagher:

Right.

Brian Cannon:

You’ve got to go through the legislature. And guess what the legislature wanted?

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

They wanted it in on the game.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So they wanted bipartisan, not nonpartisan commission, right?

Brian Cannon:

Exactly. So we got half citizens, half, uh, legislators, evenly divided by party. You had to get a, a majority of that. So the politicians couldn’t just collude together to pass a map. You had to get at least two citizens and two legislators of each party to support it. So it was all the right kind of things, but it’s, it’s a high bar to get compromise on maps.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

And, uh, I thought the Republicans, particularly the Senate Republicans, played it pretty dumb, and they sunk the commission, right? But the alternative is, somebody’s got to draw these maps, right? So if the commission doesn’t work, guess where the legislators wanted it to go? Some of the Democratic legislators who were opposing the amendment in 2020, they wanted it to go back to the legislature.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

Right? And that can’t happen. We know what’s gonna happen there. So our amendment sent it to the state Supreme Court. They had to hire special masters. They had to follow standards and criteria for congressional and state legislative districts. Like they had a whole long list of things they had to do that are all good government criteria, and it worked.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So if we left that in place, this system, you think it would work again?

Brian Cannon:

I think the Republicans, at least in the Senate, or if they have any memory whatsoever, anybody learns anything, would know that, look, the, the Supreme Court drew incredibly fair lines. That’s the baseline of what we’re talking about. You know, if you’re on the commission, you have a little bit of control over it, but you have, you can’t abuse that power-

Rich Meagher:

Right.

Brian Cannon:

… because you gotta get the other side to do it. So I think they’re, they’d be more likely to have a commission that worked next time, but I would still love to see us just get rid of the rest of the politicians on this thing and improve it. If we’re doing a constitutional amendment, we shouldn’t be going backwards, we should be going forwards.

Rich Meagher:

Now, the Democrats this year, of course, don’t want to wait and see what happens in a couple of years. They’ve proposed this new amendment to the Virginia Constitution that redraws the maps just for the congressional districts, right?

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

They’re leaving the state legislature alone. The Democrats are arguing they can’t stay out of a fight that’s already been started elsewhere, right? The Trump and the Republicans and other states are doing this stuff. So why should Virginia back down from this fight?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah, yeah. Uh, I hear a lot of, we should fight fire with fire.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

Uh, I think you fight fire with water.

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Brian Cannon:

Uh, if we’re worried about the weakening and erosion of our democracy and our democratic norms, uh, we should work to strengthen that, not to further tear them down. So there’s a moral argument here, but let me be practical for a second, right?

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

‘Cause there’s a practical argument for this. The average pickup for the party out of power in midterms for Congress is 25 seats. That’s the average since World War II, that’s the UVA Center for Politics number. The last time Trump was in office and we had a midterm elections, Democrats picked up 40 seats. Right now, the D Trip just said they’ve got 42 Republican held seats that are on their target list to flip.

Rich Meagher:

The D trip, the …

Brian Cannon:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Rich Meagher:

Right, right.

Brian Cannon:

So the big money that’s gonna, the-

Rich Meagher:

D triple C, right?

Brian Cannon:

The D triple C, yeah. Uh, so-

Rich Meagher:

That’s insider info for our listeners, right?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah, so-

Rich Meagher:

They get the real fancy lingo.

Brian Cannon:

So if they knock out 40 Republican seats, they’re gonna have an 80 seat majority.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

Right? Like, I don’t think they’re gonna do that. I think we’re looking probably somewhere ab- it’s gonna be a big blue wave, somewhere between 25 and 40 seats. At the end of the day, the two extra districts that Democrats are trying to gerrymander out of our state to cheat to win aren’t gonna matter. Yeah. They’re just not gonna make a difference in the numbers at the end of the game, aside from the moral argument of we should respect voting rights.

Rich Meagher:

Right. So it, it’s like they’re, they’re doing something that doesn’t need to be done and, and you think it’s really damaging to subvert democracy in this way?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah. Uh, Nietzsche had a warning for us that when you fight monsters, you risk becoming one yourself. And I think that applies here. We can and should oppose Donald Trump. I’m very worried about him stealing the 2026 elections. Anybody who has concerns about what Donald Trump is doing in Texas, I have those same concerns. ICE, all the, all the things. I share those concerns, but we can oppose Donald Trump strongly without adopting his style or tactics. And the self-dealing we’re seeing on, on legislators drawing districts for themselves like Dan Helmer and, and that lobster like district of the new proposed seventh, whether it’s Louise Lucas telling Tim Kaine to go sit in a cuck chair because he had the audacity to say, “Maybe we shouldn’t gerrymander to the extreme, but maybe just a little bit.”

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

Uh, you know, are we becoming Donald Trump in all of this? Like there’s that defamation lawsuit between Ben Tribbett and the governor’s chief of staff over which maps they picked. I mean, this is some toxic, dirty, horrible politics that we’re seeing on full display, and that’s just what’s public.

Rich Meagher:

So I hear what you’re saying, right? And it is this kind of nastiness, um, that comes with this kind of politics. But when you look at the longer history of the Democratic Party nationally, right, that their politics is often characterized, uh, it’s like a politics of timidity, of caution, of, well, we have this major problem that we have to solve, so let’s try to solve it by incrementally adjusting the dials a little bit. You know, like Democratic voters have wanted a fight, right? They, they want to be energized, particularly against Trump. Like they wanna fight back. And, and I think there is this longstanding idea that it’s the Democrats that have to stand on principle while there’s a fight going on, right? And so they’re just supposed to, you know, stay out of it or stand above it. I mean, do you get that frustration at least from Democratic voters in, in Virginia?

Brian Cannon:

Oh, I totally do.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

And, and I, and I would encourage them to be strategic and logical about how we fight back because if you burn everything down, we won’t have anything left when Donald Trump is gone, right? And yet, I run into plenty of voters and I, and I get it, I’m angry too, and I respect that. And if you just can’t hear that kind of logical math that I just laid out that we’re gonna have a double digit majority for Speaker Jeffries next January and this won’t matter, if you can’t hear that, I get it. Vote yes, right? Just go ahead and fight back because I wanna fight back too. I just wanna do it smart and strategically.

Rich Meagher:

So you seem sure that the Democrats are gonna win this fall’s elections, right? And, and I, I would agree, like the, the trends are certainly going that way, but when you consider the broader, uh, you know, sort of the threat of Trump that some Democrats are really worried about, like this is a guy who hasn’t exactly full-throatedly endorsed Democratic principles or the transfer power, those sorts of things-

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

… his claims about election fraud, like aren’t the stakes too high to just count on the national mood and that that will be enough to combat the actual changing of maps that we’re seeing in some of these other, other states?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah, so I don’t think numerically that’s gonna bear out, but, but I, I do hear you, Rich. And, and if we’re worried about Trump stealing the 2026 midterms, and I am worried about that, right? Another, he just raided Fulton County’s, you know, election offices. Like this is, this is some authoritarian stuff that he’s trying to do. Now, good news is most of the people he’s hired are like the Keystone cops of doing this.

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Brian Cannon:

They’re not good lawyers, they’re not good at this, but we should still be worried. So we should do things like make sure ICE can’t be anywhere near a polling location in Virginia. We should make sure that the nice older folks that run our elections, like on the ground here in Virginia are fully supported and staffed. We should make sure ballot chain of custody is airtight and they’ve got all the logistical support they need to do to have it be beyond reproach and beyond question.

We should make sure that the procedural challenges to ballot defects or things like that are fully up to speed and up to stuff. Like that’s how you fight Trump, right? Like it’s, and it’s not as sexy as just voting to gerrymander, but that’s how you fight Trump.

Rich Meagher:

So there’s other context going on here, right? There is a federal Supreme Court case pending, um, Louisiana v. Callais, the Callais case, right? Uh, basically challenges the Voting Rights Act. It, it might make it easier to gerrymander, right?

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

But this would also make it easier to dilute the Black vote. Um, and I know that redistricting folks are paying attention-

Brian Cannon:

mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

… to this case, but it does seem like if the Supreme Court did strike down the Voting Rights Act rules here, that this would benefit Republicans, right? That it would make it easier for them to draw districts where the Black vote isn’t concentrated, right? They could sort of spread Black voters out. And we know Black voters in a, in general, in America, vote for Democrats.

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

I don’t know, when you have this kind of like court case stuff going on, we have the dark threats from Trump. Like I hear what you’re saying about, well, we could protect elections in Virginia, but doesn’t this make it more important to just really like hammer in the rules to make sure that numbers match what the Republicans are doing?

Brian Cannon:

Uh, you know, it, I, I agree with you and I, and I’m, I’m very worried about the Callais case and where that’s gonna come down, Rich. If Democrats in Virginia were worried about that, they wouldn’t have drawn four new Democratic districts for white folks, Right?

Zero for any minority at all. Dan Helmer got a district, Elaine Luria got a district, Shannon Taylor got a district, Tom Perriello got a district. All these are white Democrats, right? And I would agree with them on a bunch of these issues, but if you’re really worried about minority representation, you know, I don’t take you as seriously if you draw a bunch of districts for white people. So that’s one angle. Issue One did an analysis of the impact of a negative, uh, ruling on Callais on the Voting Rights Act, and they basically said it’s a timing issue, right? Because states have this, they’re up against a clock to hold their primaries and all their filings and things like that. Virginia’s pushed theirs back. Other states could push theirs back. Issue one said if the decision came down in February or March, that it’s probably a five to eight seat pickup for Republicans, right?

And I think that’s probably about right. Uh, they do count, like, say South Carolina in that, and you’ve had the Speaker of the House in South Carolina when asked if Callais comes down, will you then get rid of the Black districts in, in South Carolina? And he said no.

Rich Meagher:

Mm.

Brian Cannon:

But this isn’t some virtuous stance from the speaker. He’s just like, “I don’t, in a blue wave year, I don’t wanna make my, my members vulnerable,” right? So he’s not, you know, standing up for voting rights here per se.

Rich Meagher:

To say, “I don’t wanna go near this right now.” Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

Yeah, yeah. They don’t wanna, they don’t wanna touch it right now, but it is a concern in the long run.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. But so at least you’re, it, it sort of goes back to that numbers argument you’re making here is that if the, the blue wave carries over, then maybe don’t do this other stuff that subverts democracy because it’s not gonna be necessary to do that kind of damage. Is that the idea?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah. And Trump’s gone in two years and this, this damage we would be doing in Virginia i- is gonna last until January of 2033. So this is gonna well outlast Trump and his administration.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. Let me ask about that, right? ‘Cause this is this sort of weird thing. California did this and Virginia’s done it too. Like the argument is this is temporary. We’re not doing this forever. We are literally writing into the Constitutional Amendment that this is a change that only happens for the next two congressional midterm elections. When we get to the next census, everything will go back to normal. So what’s the big deal then? Why are you motivated to stop it this year if it’s just a temporary change?

Brian Cannon:

The chair of the Senate Privileges Elections Committee here is a, is a state senator named Aaron Rouse, and he’s from Virginia Beach, former football player, and I, I, I can’t quote his whole line that he said when they were passing this through the state Senate, but I do know the important part. It was, “I believe in free and fair elections, but … “

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Brian Cannon:

Right? I don’t remember exactly what he said, but after the but-

Rich Meagher:

Yeah, the but was all you needed to hear.

Brian Cannon:

Like, I, I don’t … Yeah, if you believe in free of fair elections, that should be a period. Right? That is just what we need to do is support this, and especially even when it’s hard, when it’s under attack and it would be easy to take the cheap way and rigging election away, that’s when you have to stand for this because Donald Trump’s gonna be gone and our Republic and our, our, our communities are still gonna be here.

Rich Meagher:

I know you’ve worked in this space for years. You’ve got some credibility here. It’s one of the reasons that we reached out to you, but I imagine that not a lot of other folks are paying all that much attention to the, the faces behind redistricting. I’m just wondering, you know, you, you’ve organized some bipartisan folks, right? Some of the folks who joined you in your battle to get the commission passed, folks like former Governor George Allen, uh, former State Senator Chap Petersen, some others. Are you all getting some flack from people? Like is the sense that you’re carrying water for Republicans that there’s only two sides in this fight and you’ve gotta be on the one that’s aligned with Donald Trump? Like, are you hearing that out in the world?

Brian Cannon:

I mean, if, if social media is the world, Rich, then yes, I am hearing plenty of that fly.

Rich Meagher:

The real world, uh, you know, like social media.

Brian Cannon:

Like Twitter.

Rich Meagher:

Twitter and Instagram.

Brian Cannon:

Uh, yeah, I’m hearing it. The thing I hear the most back is, is somebody just saying, “Well, where were you on Texas?” And I’m like, “Against it. “

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. <laugh>

Brian Cannon:

Like, just I’m pretty consistent on this, right?

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Brian Cannon:

For years. Uh, so I’m happy to answer those questions. I do think the Democrat voters are being lied to because they’re being told that the only way to fight back against Trump is to do this gerrymandering in Virginia. And that’s unfortunate because it’s not true. I listed other, a bunch of other things we should be doing to protect our elections, but also we had a 40 seat wave in 2018, and guess what we did? We ran good candidates as Democrats, we ran good campaigns, uh, they organized the bejesus out of this state in a way we hadn’t seen from Democrats probably ever. Like, do that.

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Brian Cannon:

You don’t have to rig the system. You don’t have to cheat to win.

Rich Meagher:

So this is all kind of ugly, right? Like you were saying earlier, the sort of toxicity of this, you worry that it’s actually even infecting the, the politicians. I mean, even the Democrats who support this, there are, I think, a few people who are, are gleefully joining in a fight, but I think a lot of people feel like, yeah, we have to get down in the mud and that’s where we are.

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

I mean, that’s really got to turn people off from politics, right? It’s part of this, uh, you know, I, I, I teach politics. I want people to be civically engaged, not because they, they, they’re dragged to it but because they love it, right? They enjoy it, they’re empowered by it. I don’t know, what do you say to people who just feel disgusted by this, like, you know, this cheating, this fighting fire with fire event?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah. The one way to put some water on this fire is to vote no, right? I mean, this is a, a very … These, these are the worst impulses of, of Democratic state legislators. I understand why. I’m not ignorant to the, the world we live in, but this is the worst impulses we’re seeing manifested in these maps that are 10 to one, that are gonna effectively disenfranchise 40% of our state. And if you believe in voting rights, then you have to believe in voting rights for people that vote differently than you do, right? It’s not a, it’s not a conditional thing of only if you’re on my team, do I support your right to vote.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that number too, you know, the idea that we are disenfranchising large swaths of, you know, a lot of it rural, um, Virginia, a lot of conservative voters. So they’re mad, right? Republicans are mad. The folks who feel like they’re gonna get left out of this are mad and, and this idea of disenfranchising a pretty sizable chunk of the state. It’s, it’s one thing if it’s like six to four goes to seven to three Democrats and … But we’re talking … The Democrats want 10 to one.

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

You’re talking about one Republican representative for the 45% of the state that are Republican. What does that mean? What could be the consequences for a state where you have almost half the voters who are left out?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah. I, I think they will get fed up and when they’re in charge at some point, and we just had a Republican governor and Republican speaker of the House not too long ago, uh, you know, they’ll exact their revenge. Now, maybe they won’t be able to do it via gerrymandering. But the other thing is, and I, and I think this is an important point, Rich, is Democrats don’t have to cheat to win. And if they do cheat, it dilutes and cheapens the win, right? If we really wanna reject Trump, if we wanna say that Rob Whittman and Jen Kiggans have not stood up to Donald Trump nearly enough, and I would be fully on board with saying that, then beating them fair and square is actually the best thing to do.

Rich Meagher:

I mean, you get that this language sounds like old timey, like you should walk in here with a lollipop and a … Like you get this, right? It’s, it’s really … I, and I don’t, I don’t think you’re naive, right?

Brian Cannon:

Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

I know you and I don’t think you’re naive, but it sounds a little naive, doesn’t it? You get that?

Brian Cannon:

I, I think to believe in democracy and to believe in America, you have to be a little pollyannish, right? It was an idea from the get- go with, with a lot of cracks in the foundation from day one. And so I am optimistic about our democracy and I am, I, I’m happy to be … You know, I, I’m not politically naive, but I’m happy to be optimistic about this. And I think, you know, there was a letter that E.B. White was asked to write to the war department during World War II, asking what is, uh, what does democracy mean to him? And he, it’s a beautiful letter. FDR loved it. I encourage everybody to read it. But one of the things was, is he said, one of the lines in the letter was, “Democracy is the, is the not yet disproven position that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time.”

Rich Meagher:

Mm.

Brian Cannon:

And I think that’s true. And we just need structural systems in our democracy that enable the majority of people to speak out and gerrymandering prohibits that.

Rich Meagher:

We, we said earlier, right, and, and you’ve said this a couple times, right? Trump’s gonna be gone in two years.

Brian Cannon:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Is he, right? Some Democrats really worry about that, right? And if it’s not him, maybe it’s an accolade or, you know, whoever his, uh, his appointed successor is. Do you understand that some people just are, are really worried about the stakes here that the time has to be now and we gotta employ everything, right?

Brian Cannon:

Uh-huh.

Rich Meagher:

It’s not that we can say, “Well, we’re gonna take the high road,” and it’s like all roads have to be employed in order to combat what they see as a really, really big menace. Do you get that?

Brian Cannon:

Oh, I totally get that. And, and I mean, uh, like Trump was giving away Trump 2028 hats in the White House last year, right? Like, I, I, I, it’s a … But even, interestingly enough, even he’s stopped joking about that, right? He looks tired.

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Brian Cannon:

Uh, he’s old, right? It happens. And so I don’t think anybody can pick up his mantle the way he’s done. I think he’s, he’s just a one of one, hopefully ever in the history of America, uh, and we’ll be, we’ll be done with him. But there will still be those folks that believe in MAGA that believe in what Stephen Miller and all those, what I would consider pretty evil politicians or, or, or administrators are doing. There will still be people from that, but their voters are still here and they are still our neighbors and we have to work with them.

So, you know, if, if that’s the case, you know, we’ve got to find a way beyond this in, in the long run for Virginia and for our country.

Rich Meagher:

Brian Cannon helped form the bipartisan coalition, No Gerrymandering Virginia. Thanks, Brian.

Brian Cannon:

Thanks, Rich.

Vox-pop #1:

I think it’s smart to gerrymander in response along political boundaries because if the Republican Party isn’t going to do anything to change anything with how they approach gerrymandering, and if the larger federal government can’t figure out how to actually have one person, one vote, representation in government, then I think it’s smart to just flip the law.

Vox-pop #3:

I mean, with everything that’s been going down, I think sticking to the old playbook of following rules and procedures and norms isn’t really working anymore. And if we want to keep this notion of checks and balances, you kind of have to respond to the political moment.

Rich Meagher:

That’s our show. Thanks to our guest, Brian Cannon. Tell us about your issues. Visit our website, rvsgotisues.vpm.org. Follow us on Instagram @richgotissues, or send us an email at [email protected]. Be sure to leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform. RVA’s Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Rachel Dwyer. Script editing on this episode by Nicki Stein. Audio mixed by Steve Lack. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Shawn Freude is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VPM’s chief content officer. Rebekah Sausmikat is our campaign coordinator in absentia. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. Thanks for listening.