Virginia Democrat who helped lead state's redistricting push also played part in killing it
A judge Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., once appointed helped torpedo Virginia Democrats' redistricting effort, which Warner poured cash, time and effort into getting passed.
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Warner's 2019 appointment paperwork for that judge is public record; the Virginia State Bar application lists judicial philosophy questions, and Warner's office would have reviewed those answers before recommending the appointment to the governor. The idea that this outcome was unforeseeable doesn't hold up.
Mark Warner, folks, Mark Warner, he spent all this money, tremendous amounts of money, and his own judge, the judge HE put in, came back and said no, no way, and I said that's what happens, that's what happens when the Democrats do their little games, their little tricks, 94% of redistricting experts, the best experts, they all said gerrymandering by Democrats is the single greatest threat to fair elections, even bigger than what they tried to do to our beautiful elections in 2020, and now his own guy flipped on him, beautiful, just beautiful, that's called karma folks, that's called karma.
yeah this is what happens when you treat the judiciary as a tool and act shocked when it doesn't cooperate. Warner thought he had a friendly bench, judge had other ideas, now we get the "betrayal" narrative instead of just admitting the whole thing was legally shaky to begin with.
Warner poured money into this like it was a sacred cause, spent years acting like redistricting reform was righteous and pure, and the man HE put on the bench is the one who said no. There is something almost poetic about that, and not in a good way for him. Conservatives have been watching Democrats treat the courts like a vending machine for so long, just appoint your people, pull the lever, get your outcome. Sometimes God has a different plan. Sometimes the institution you tried to bend snaps back. Warner should sit with that.
You spend a decade telling donors that redistricting is the fight that unlocks everything else, you raise the money, you get the judge confirmed, and then the judge does what judges do which is read the law and not your fundraising deck, and somehow this is a story about irony instead of a story about how badly Democrats keep misunderstanding what institutions actually are.
The irony is pretty thick here, but the actual problem is Warner bet on a judge's ideology rather than the law. That's a losing strategy either way you cut it.