Democratic Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger will lose her current seat under a redistricting map drawn by two court-appointed officials.
Spanberger’s seat, Virginia’s Seventh, is currently centered on the suburbs of Richmond, and stretches from Culpepper County in the north to Nottoway County in the south. However, the new map, drawn by one Democrat and one Republican appointed by the state supreme court, places the Seventh District in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. The new seat would become Democrat +19, and the northwest Richmond suburbs that Spanberger currently represents would move to the Tenth District, which is currently represented by Democrat Jennifer Wexton. (RELATED: ‘F*cking Torn Apart Again In 2022’—Virginia Democrat Allegedly Lights Up Caucus Call On Election Performance)
New: Virginia special masters’ map eliminates Abigail Spanberger’s (D) current suburban Richmond #VA07 & turns it into a safe Dem seat in Northern Virginia. Rep. Elaine Luria’s #VA02 would remain highly competitive, for a 6D-4R-1C split overall. pic.twitter.com/2Q6JIutp88
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 8, 2021
The two special masters, Sean Trende of the American Enterprise Institute and RealClearPolitics and Bernard Grofman of the University of California Irvine, were appointed by the Virginia Supreme Court in November after a bipartisan commission failed to come to an agreement on the new maps.
“We carefully drew districts that met constitutional and statutory population requirements. In doing so, we minimized county and city splits, while respecting natural boundaries and communities of interest to the extent possible,” Trende and Grofman wrote in a memo accompanying the new maps.
Virginia’s current map includes five safe seats for Democrats, four for Republicans, and two competitive districts. The new map would create six safe seats for Democrats, four for Republicans, and one competitive district, according to calculations from Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman.
A former CIA agent, Spanberger was first elected to Congress in 2018. She defeated incumbent Republican Dave Brat by two points, before holding the seat in 2020 against Republican challenger Nick Freitas.