Henrico loses House of Delegates seat, gains state Senate seat as Virginia Supreme Court approves redistricting maps

The Virginia Supreme Court Tuesday approved the revised state redistricting maps proposed by the two special masters it appointed to create them after a committee of citizens and lawmakers failed in its attempt to do so.

The approval means that Henrico County will lose one of its six seats in the Virginia House of Delegates but gain a third seat in the Virginia Senate. All eight of the House and Senate districts that currently include portions of the county will shift to other localities and be replaced by eight different ones.

Those changes all were part of the first maps proposed Dec. 8 by the two special masters – Bernard Grofman (a political scientist at the University of California at Irvine) and Sean Trende (a senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics). The two men made a number of amendments, however, to their first state and congressional map proposals after receiving public input about each of the three maps.

The new House districts – 57 (Three Chopt), 58 (Tuckahoe), 59 (Brookland), 80 (Fairfield) and 81 (Varina) – generally will mirror Henrico’s five magisterial districts. The 57th, 59th and 81st would have no incumbents, while Democrat Rodney Willett (who currently represents the 73rd District) would be the only incumbent in the new 58th.

Meanwhile, two Democratic incumbents – Schuyler VanValkenburg (72nd) and Lamont Bagby (74th) – now have been drawn into the 80th District together.

Current Delegates John McGuire (R-56th), Dawn Adams (D-68th) and Delores McQuinn (D-70th) will be districted out of Henrico altogether under the new House map, once the first elections take place in the new districts. That's scheduled to happen in November 2023 but could occur next November, instead, pending the outcome of a lawsuit currently in federal court that seeks special elections as soon as possible in the new districts.

The district shifts present the potential for an interesting game of political musical chairs in two years, when all seats in the House of Delegates and Virginia Senate will be up for grabs.

Would VanValkenburg seek a move to the newly drawn 16th Senate District (which includes western Henrico and where he could face current 12th District Republican incumbent Siobhan Dunnavant) and leave the 80th, in a heavily Democratic area, to Bagby? Or could he instead run in the new 57th House District, which the Virginia Public Access Project ranks as a toss-up politically, based upon previous voting results?

Might Bagby, who previously represented the Fairfield District on the Henrico School Board and is entrenched in the district, seek a move to the newly crafted 13th Senate District (which includes heavily Democratic Richmond and northern Henrico)?

And if he does, would he face current 16th District incumbent Democrat Joe Morrissey – who held Bagby’s current seat from 2008 to 2015 – in a primary election there?

Virginia House and Senate members must live within the districts they represent, but the same is not true of U.S. representatives. That presented Democratic incumbent Abigail Spanberger, a western Henrico native and resident, with options to consider when next November’s U.S. House races take place. Wednesday, she made her decision, announcing that she would seek a third term to continue representing the new Seventh District – even though its boundaries have shifted to Northern Virginia and out of her home in Henrico.

The newly redrawn district now includes Prince William and Stafford counties, while western Henrico and western Chesterfield have shifted to the newly drawn First District (which since 2007 has been represented by Republican Rob Wittman and which otherwise generally contains localities north and east of the Richmond region).

In a statement Wednesday morning, Spanberger said that she opted to pursue re-election in the new Seventh in part because some of her current constituents will remain in the new district.

"Nearly 200,000 Virginians in the new Seventh District have already been my constituents under the current district lines, and I look forward to continuing my service representing them as well as my future constituents," she said. "I will continue to work hard on behalf of their families, their businesses, their farms, and our local economies in the years to come. Much like the current Seventh District, the new Seventh District includes a diverse mix of Virginia’s suburban, rural, and military communities. "