Ben Cline breaks his silence on failure to save his job from the gerrymander

Ben Cline has finally spoken on his failed effort to get Virginia to vote down congressional redistricting/save his $174,000-a-year job, and not surprisingly, he can’t get the facts straight.

To wit:

“Under the current 6-5 nonpartisan map,” Cline wrote on his campaign Facebook page on Thursday, “voters in the 6th District voted against the referendum at or above record-breaking 2024 turnout levels. This is incredibly hard to accomplish, and it speaks to the grassroots nature of this effort.”

Not only would it have been hard to accomplish getting turnout in an April referendum “at or above” the 2024 presidential election, it wasn’t accomplished.

Sixth District turnout, 2024 presidential vs. 2026 referendum:

• Roanoke County: 57,400 ballots cast in 2024, 40,118 ballots cast in 2026
• Frederick County: 52,411 ballots cast in 2024, 36,945 ballots cast in 2026
• Rockingham County: 49,135 ballots cast in 2024, 36,092 ballots cast in 2026
• Augusta County: 44,618 ballots cast in 2024, 33,945 ballots cast in 2026
• Shenandoah County: 24,620 ballots cast in 2024, 18,205 ballots cast in 2026
• Botetourt County: 22,058 ballots cast in 2024, 16,696 ballots cast in 2026
• Rockbridge County: 12,893 ballots cast in 2024, 9,758 ballots cast in 2026

“Yes” won by 88,000 votes statewide.

Just in those seven MAGA supermajority Sixth District counties, voter turnout was down 72,000 votes from 2024.

Math is our friend here: Cline had his chance to overturn 10-1, and he failed, because that’s what Ben Cline does when it comes to anything important – he fails.

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ICYMI

• Helping Ben Cline find a new job: Soft landing spots for our MAGA congressman

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Think about it: you can’t name one thing this guy has done for the Sixth District, and he can’t, either, which is why he brags on his socials about the $17 million he got this year that will build, if we’re lucky, a mile and a half of a third lane somewhere along the 300 miles of Interstate 81 in Virginia.

Woo hoo.

“The results of Tuesday’s election shows us what we already know: Virginia’s current map correctly reflects the politics of our Commonwealth, not a gerrymander that reduces the voices of rural Virginians to a meager 9 percent,” Cline wrote, hoping that we all forget his vote in 2011 for a redistricting plan for the General Assembly that gave Republicans a 67-32 majority in the House of Delegates in a state that had voted for Barack Obama for president in 2008, would do so again in 2012, and elected a Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, governor in 2013.

The rules are for thee, not for me.

Cline used his Facebook post to talk up his last gasp: the oral arguments in his suit challenging the legality of the referendum scheduled in front of the Virginia Supreme Court next week.

“As the lead plaintiff in our court case, I am looking forward to oral arguments in SCOVA on Monday, and hope that justice prevails, and the Court makes the right decision to overturn this ham-fisted attempt at a Constitutional Amendment,” Cline wrote.

So, what, if the Supreme Court doesn’t go his way, what would be next there, Bennie?

We all know; he and the MAGAs will run back down to Tazewell County to dial up another cockblock.