By Bob Gibson
Very little in politics remains more partisan than redistricting, a task that awaits the Virginia General Assembly in April when new census data will allow legislators to draw all of the state’s congressional and state legislative district lines.

Every 10 years, the process is so full of deals and lines cut in back rooms that public input is considered window dressing.

This year may be a little different in Virginia for two reasons, but don’t expect major changes this year. Political pros are not betting on significant loss of the dominant partisan flavor of the process.

Two reasons things could change are a bipartisan split in control of the General Assembly’s chambers and the appointment Jan. 10 by Gov. Bob McDonnell of a bipartisan redistricting commission to advise the legislature.

Two somewhat more powerful factors keeping the process highly partisan are the self-interest of the two political parties in maintaining power bases and the prevailing legal and practical influence of the Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act for all practical purposes guarantees that districts with a majority of black or Hispanic residents stay about as strongly majority black or considerably Hispanic for the next 10 years as they were during the past decade.

This creates a powerful, if odd, alliance between black Democratic legislators and white Republican legislators.

The 18 black Democrats generally do not seek districts made more competitive through dilution of the percentage of black voters. The Republicans benefit from having fewer Democratic-leaning voters drawn into surrounding districts.

Authors of redistricting plans do not want to be sued and know that they can lose in court if they dilute mostly minority voting districts.

The informal alliance of black Democrats plus Republicans is a majority in both legislative chambers, even if the Democratic Party controls the Virginia Senate with 22 members to 18 in the GOP.

Anyone creating new district lines, whether members of the governor’s new advisory commission or legislators trying to strengthen their voter base, must respect the demands of the Voting Rights Act.

While minority districts must be preserved under the law, areas of Virginia that have lost population or grown much more slowly than other parts of the state will be losing seats in the legislature.

Southside and Southwest Virginia will lose seats. Northern Virginia will gain seats.

In the GOP-controlled House of Delegates, Democrats may lose seats in Southside or Southwest and see some GOP-friendly districts carved in Northern Virginia.

In the Democratic Senate, protecting the minority voting strength of black Democrats in Hampton Roads may curtail Democratic voting strength in adjacent districts held by two white Democrats.

Political leaders expect the majority party in each chamber to craft plans designed to preserve their party’s majority status in their chamber. They expect congressional lines to be redrawn in ways to protect incumbents, eight of whom are Republicans and three of whom are Democrats.

The two new factors that help those arguing for change are the governor’s bipartisan advisory commission and that for the first time in Virginia’s history of redistricting sessions the two legislative chambers are controlled by different parties.

Several of the 11 members of the governor’s advisory commission on redistricting say they believe the process can be made less partisan and create more competitive districts with broad public support.

“I am hopeful that this will focus attention on the fact that this redistricting process needs to be as non-political as possible,“ said James W. Dyke Jr., a former state secretary of education from Fairfax named to the advisory commission chaired by Bob Holsworth, a Richmond political scientist.

“It is going to be an uphill battle, but you’ve got to start,“ Dyke said, referring to the bipartisan nature of the commission and a desire to create more compact legislative districts with more community of interest. He has represented Newport News and Hampton in previous redistricting cases.

Teams of college students from across the state will present model districts they are crafting with an eye to creating more competitive districts. “We will review the ones that the students come up with,“ Dyke said.

Strong public support for less partisan plans developed by the commission could allow the governor to push back against gerrymandering if excessive partisanship is seen in legislative maps with too many ugly partisan lines.

“I think it is going to be hard for the General Assembly to ignore what this group recommends,“ said member Sean O’Brien, executive director of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier.

O’Brien called his 10 fellow members of the panel “a very serious group” with extensive experience in public affairs and a strong desire to add citizen input to a usually closed and partisan process.

Who knows what impact more sunlight might have on a process once exclusively the province of back-room politics?