Ben Cline, trying to block the April 21 redistricting referendum, because he knows what’s about to happen, has joined a suit filed by national MAGAs with the same bumfart Southwest Virginia judge who got his hand slapped by the Virginia Supreme Court earlier this month.
Cline has come to realize that he stands no chance at winning re-election in a leans-D congressional district, because of his years of being a pandering MAGA twit in Congress and on the B and C list MAGA propaganda streaming TV news channels.
He could try to moderate into being less of a pandering MAGA twit.
Instead, he runs to the handpicked judge, who, predictably, pats him on the head and tells him it will be alright.
ICYMI
“The Democrats’ unfair redistricting scheme is illegal,” said Cline, in a statement issued after their guy did as he was told to do, and granted a temporary restraining order requested by the Trump/Republican National Committee and the National Trump/Republican Congressional Committee.
“We are grateful,” Cline said, speaking in the first person plural, when it’s him who would be out of a job, “that the court has agreed and swiftly applied justice to stop this unconstitutional power grab that would disenfranchise millions of voters by reassigning them members of Congress from other parts of the state.”
Gotta stop here – huh, what?
Cline lives in Botetourt County, near Roanoke, and represents Winchester, a two and a half-hour drive up Interstate 81, in Congress.
Botetourt, Winchester – different parts of the state.
I live in between, and have felt disenfranchised for the past 35 years.
Moving on.
“This ruling is an important victory in our fight to make sure that politicians don’t get to select their own voters,” said Cline, who, as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, from 2002 to 2018, literally picked his own voters, after the 2010 Census – House Republicans, famously, used redistricting to carve out eight additional seats in the House of Delegates in the next election cycle.
Even the bipartisan redistricting commission that was created as a result of the 2019 constitutional amendment failed to do what it was supposed to do after the 2020 Census, because, guess who, Republicans gummed up the works, leading to the district maps being drawn not by the commission, which couldn’t come to an agreement on the boundary lines, but by judges.
This is the process that Cline and the national Trump/Republican committees that have filed suit would have you believe is sacrosanct.
“Despite nearly half of Virginians supporting President Trump, Abigail Spanberger and Democrats are working to silence voters and lock in permanent political control,” Trump/RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement, ignoring so, so much.
That, as mentioned above, Republicans tried to lock in permanent control in the 2010-2011 cycle, though that didn’t exactly work out for them – their own fault: you put slate after slate of White nationalist candidates on the ballot in leans-R districts, eventually, they’re going to flip.
One other problem pops up in the second half of the Gruters press statement:
“They’re ignoring the state Constitution, misleading voters, and rushing a sham election. The RNC is stepping in to stop this power grab and defend Virginia voters who would be effectively disenfranchised by Democrats.”
Um, “ignoring the state Constitution”?
The referendum is literally on a question to amend the state Constitution.
Basic logic here: if the voters approve the referendum, the Constitution has new language on redistricting.
A constitutional amendment, by definition, is not unconstitutional.
The details of the latest ruling from the loyal MAGA from the hollars aren’t worth going through, and I’m saying that as a guy with a degree in constitutional law.
ICYMI
- Virginia Republicans cry foul over Dems’ congressional redistricting move
- Republican judge says Dems’ redistricting effort is ‘blatant abuse of power’
Just know that Attorney General Jay Jones has already issued a statement affirming the obvious, that his office “will immediately appeal the ruling issued by the Tazewell County Circuit Court,” noting that “these arguments are already before the Supreme Court of Virginia, the proper forum to consider the arguments, which has set a schedule for receiving arguments and has justifiably allowed the vote to proceed during this time.”
What will happen next: the Supremes will, again, slap the hand of the guy down in Tazewell, who might be well-advised to prepare himself for impeachment proceedings in the near-term, and the referendum will go on as scheduled.
Thereafter, the likes of Cline and the Trump/Republicans will file more frivolous lawsuits:
- ahead of the referendum.
- after it passes.
- between April and the June primaries.
- in the summer.
- around Labor Day.
- up until 7 p.m. on Election Night.
- as the votes are being counted.
- after the results are announced.
- the date Jan. 6, 2027, would seem to be one that we also might need to circle.
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Chris Graham
