Barack Obama released a video Friday urging Virginia voters to approve a congressional redistricting ballot measure, a move that could flip the state's delegation from a narrow 6-5 Democratic edge to a commanding 10-1 advantage ahead of the 2026 midterms. The former president framed the initiative as a check on Republican mapmaking in other states, but critics call it an unconstitutional power grab that would strip redistricting authority from Virginia's nonpartisan commission and hand it to the Democrat-controlled legislature.
The video dropped on the eve of the final day of early voting, with the statewide referendum set for Tuesday. Polling shows support for the ballot initiative only slightly ahead of opposition, a margin thin enough that Obama's star power could prove decisive.
Virginia Democrats passed a proposed congressional map designed to deliver four additional left-leaning U.S. House seats, though the plan still depends on voter approval and court review. If the measure succeeds, the Democrat-controlled legislature would hold temporary redistricting power through the 2030 election, sidelining the nonpartisan commission that currently draws the lines.
In the video, produced in coordination with the Democrat-aligned group Virginians for Fair Elections, Obama cast the referendum as a matter of fairness. As the AP reported, he told voters the amendment would ensure their "voting power is not diminished by what Republicans are doing in other states."
"By voting yes, you have the chance to do something important, not just for the Commonwealth, but for our entire country."
Obama also said the state would return to a bipartisan commission after the 2030 census, an assurance that does little to address the immediate effect of handing map-drawing authority to one party's legislators for two election cycles.
But here is where the former president's record creates a problem. Obama has spent years publicly denouncing gerrymandering. In the same video, he declared that "for too long, gerrymandering has contributed to stalled progress and warped our representative government." He has also said that "because of things like political gerrymandering, our parties have moved further and further apart, and it's harder and harder to find common ground."
Those words are now being used against him. Virginians For Fair Maps, the leading Republican-aligned group opposing the referendum, has featured a six-year-old Obama quote on mailers to highlight the contradiction: the same man who built a post-presidential brand around fighting partisan mapmaking is now asking voters to let a partisan legislature draw the maps.
Obama has a long track record of inserting himself into political controversies well after leaving office, from calling for protests in Minneapolis to making headline-grabbing media appearances. Redistricting, however, has become something closer to a signature cause. Breitbart noted that his involvement extends to fundraising for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and backing California's similar measure, Proposition 50.
Virginia's referendum does not exist in a vacuum. It is one front in a nationwide redistricting war that both parties are waging ahead of the midterms. President Trump first floated the idea of mid-decade congressional redistricting last spring, a rare but not unheard-of maneuver. When reporters asked him about the plan last summer, he pointed to Texas.
"Texas will be the biggest one. And that'll be five."
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott responded by calling a special session of the GOP-dominated Texas legislature to pass a new map. Democratic state lawmakers broke quorum for two weeks, fleeing the state in protest, but the maps moved forward.
Republican-controlled legislatures in Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina have also drawn new maps as part of the president's push. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis and state lawmakers in the GOP-dominated legislature are hoping to pick up an additional three to five right-leaning seats through a redistricting push during a special legislative session that kicks off April 28.
Democrats have answered in kind. California voters in November passed Proposition 50, which temporarily sidetracked the state's nonpartisan redistricting commission and returned map-drawing power to the Democratic-dominated legislature in Sacramento. That measure is expected to produce five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts.
Not every Republican effort has succeeded. Late last year, a Utah district judge rejected a congressional map drawn by the state's GOP-dominated legislature and approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the midterms. In Indiana, Republicans in the state Senate in December shot down a redistricting bill that had passed the state House.
The Supreme Court is expected to weigh in as well, with a ruling anticipated in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that could reshape the legal boundaries of mid-decade redistricting for both parties.
Strip away the rhetoric and the ballot measure is straightforward: it would temporarily remove redistricting authority from Virginia's nonpartisan commission and give it to the Democrat-controlled legislature through the 2030 election. The result, as Newsmax reported, would be a new set of congressional maps designed to maximize Democratic representation, potentially turning a 6-5 edge into a 10-1 rout.
Republicans have labeled the effort an "unconstitutional power grab." Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin appeared on "The Will Cain Show" to discuss the referendum, warning that the proposed redistricting would "disenfranchise millions of Virginians." The framing from the right is plain: Virginia created a nonpartisan commission specifically to keep politicians from drawing their own districts, and now one party wants to suspend that safeguard when it suits them.
Obama remains one of the most popular former presidents, and his favorable ratings among Democrats remain high more than a decade after leaving the White House. That popularity is precisely why Virginians for Fair Elections brought him in. But popularity is not the same as consistency, and the former president's record on this issue is anything but consistent.
The same Obama who once warned that gerrymandering "warped our representative government" is now the face of a campaign to let one party's legislators draw their own favorable maps. That is not anti-gerrymandering. That is gerrymandering with better branding. The former president's knack for carefully produced video appeals has not gone unnoticed, but the polish does not change what the measure would do.
Virginia voters head to the polls Tuesday with a clear choice. They can preserve the nonpartisan commission that was designed to keep redistricting out of the hands of self-interested legislators. Or they can hand that power to the Democrat-controlled legislature, which has already drawn the maps it wants to use.
Obama's video frames the choice as a response to Republican redistricting in other states. But two wrongs have never made a right, and the voters being asked to approve this measure are Virginians, not Texans or Ohioans. The question is whether Virginia's own system of nonpartisan mapmaking should be suspended so one party can lock in a near-total grip on the state's congressional delegation.
The former president has never been shy about lending his voice to partisan causes, whether on voting rules or redistricting fights or national security disputes. But there is something especially revealing about watching a man who built a brand on opposing gerrymandering ask voters to hand map-drawing power to a partisan legislature.
When both parties play the redistricting game, at least call it what it is. Don't wrap a power grab in the language of fairness and expect no one to notice.
