Rearranging the deck chairs in the Fifth, Sixth after the Supreme Court ruling

All those people who rushed to switch their endorsements to Tom Perriello in the Sixth District Democratic race are feeling mighty stupid right about now.

Assuming Friday’s Supreme Court of Virginia ruling in the referendum case stands, and let’s go with that being a safe assumption, Perriello won’t be running in the Sixth District, but rather the Fifth, since his home base, in Albemarle County, is geographically in the Fifth District, as it was rendered in the latest redistricting, which was drawn up by judges in 2021.

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ICYMI

• Two of the MAGA justices that overruled 1.6 million of us signed their own career death sentence

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Note: no, it wasn’t, in fact, the redistricting commission created in the 2020 referendum that drew up the maps we’ve been using of late.

Those of y’all who voted “No” last month got lied to about that, among so many other things.

Republicans took advantage of the stupid process that Democrats agreed to ahead of that 2020 referendum to force what was supposed to be a bipartisan undertaking to the MAGA-majority state Supreme Court.

Democrats are such cucks.

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ICYMI

• 10-1 doesn’t have to be dead, if Virginia Democrats could just show some courage

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Anyway, Perriello, who served a single term representing the Fifth, from 2009-2011, is back in the race for the Dem nomination over there, in the wake of the same Supreme Court that put the current maps in place defending its work with this week’s ruling, in which the high court whited out the results of a referendum approving new maps in which 1,604,276 of us voted “Yes.”

The Fifth District seat is currently held by the ineffectual MAGA John McGuire, who won the seat in 2024 by a 15-point margin, in a district that Donald Trump carried that year by 12.2 points.

The 2025 governor’s race was closer in the Fifth, which stretches from Albemarle County to the North Carolina border, largely down Route 29.

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ICYMI

• Back to square one: Reset of Virginia’s congressional races post-Scott v. McDougle

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Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears outpolled Democrat Abigail Spanberger by 6.6 points in the Fifth District in 2025.

McGuire’s main value as a politician is that he has a pulse, but he’s also an R in a district that the Supremes made sure could bury the heavily Democratic Charlottesville/Albemarle region in a sea of red.

You know, through that fair, impartial process that we have in place.

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ICYMI

• Tom Perriello: ‘What people remember is when we stand up for people’

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“Folks around here want change,” Perriello said in a statement released after the Supreme Court ruling was handed down on Friday. “They are sick and tired of Washington kicking them when they are down. Because of Rep. McGuire and this clown car of a Congress, we’re all paying way too much for gas and groceries, not to mention healthcare and electric bills.”

“I won this district by focusing on cutting costs, increasing paychecks, and putting common sense back in the driver’s seat. McGuire has voted to take money out of our pockets to support the corruption and kickbacks for the Mar-a-Largo set. People here are working harder than ever just to stay afloat, and they deserve leadership focused on lowering costs and fighting for them,” Perriello said.

Back over in the Sixth, which runs down the Interstate 81 corridor from the Winchester/Frederick County area to the Roanoke/Salem area, we’re going to have a lot of local Dem leaders who abandoned bestselling author Beth Macy to side with Perriello tucking their tails between their legs.

Ken Mitchell, the 2024 Democratic nominee in the district, is also coming back to the race; he had been focusing his efforts in what was going to be the newly-drawn Seventh District race before the Supreme Court ruling.

Nothing against Mitchell, but his 2024 campaign came up well short in his challenge to the feckless MAGA incumbent, Ben Cline, who beat Mitchell by a 28.2-point margin.

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ICYMI

• A conversation with author, candidate Beth Macy: On grace, and government cheese

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Even for Macy, who has name recognition from her books, one of which, Dopesick, was made into a popular TV series, is going to have a tough time.

The 2025 cycle was more favorable for Ds across the board, but the Sixth was still Earle-Sears +17.4 last fall.

“I got into this race because my neighbors urged me to help turn this country around, and that doesn’t change based on a court ruling,” Macy said in a statement issued on Friday.

“What this moment makes clear is that Ben Cline needs to be held accountable. Virginians deserve a representative who will fight for them – not a lapdog for the forces that are working to rig elections, undermine democracy, and enrich themselves. I intend to be that fighter, and this Supreme Court decision doesn’t change that,” Macy said.