Republicans Don’t Have a New Map to Start Special Session

A spokes­man for state House Speak­er Bill How­ell (R) said Re­pub­lic­ans don’t have a map to start out with ahead of Monday’s start of the spe­cial ses­sion on re­dis­trict­ing. “We haven’t done the pre­lim­in­ary work ne­ces­sary to craft a plan,” Matt Mor­an said in an email.

Gov. Terry McAul­iffe (D) called for a hol­ist­ic fix to the map, say­ing minor changes around Rep. Bobby Scott’s (D-VA 03) dis­trict wouldn’t be enough. 

“Any ef­fort to rem­edy that vi­ol­a­tion with minor tweaks to a fun­da­ment­ally flawed map will ne­ces­sar­ily re­main tangled in ra­cial con­sid­er­a­tion and there­fore re­main il­leg­al,” McAul­iffe said in a state­ment. “The only rem­edy that could sur­vive court chal­lenge is one that starts fresh and draws new maps based on the prin­ciples of equal rep­res­ent­a­tion, com­pact and con­tigu­ous dis­tricts, and the in­teg­rity of com­munit­ies of in­terest.” (Hamp­ton Roads Pi­lot)