With early voting on Virginia's redistricting amendment headed into its final week, a look at the history of the Commonwealth’s unsuccessful constitutional amendments may offer insight to the ongoing referendum today.
Since the early 1970’s, there have been dozens of constitutional amendments put before Virginia voters. And most of them, all but seven, have passed.
The most recent failed amendment was in 2016. It aimed to enshrine the language of Virginia’s 'right to work' law, a ban on mandating union fees for collective bargaining. But it got just 46% of the vote.
Former Shenandoah Valley Delegate and Republican strategist Chris Saxman wasn’t involved in that effort, but he tried to get something similar passed more than ten years earlier. Still, he wasn’t surprised when the 2016 effort failed.
“Right to work’s popular, they didn’t do groundwork ahead of time with editorial boards, there was no grass roots campaign to it," Saxman told Radio IQ. "And it was poorly timed."
Poorly timed, Saxman said, because Donald Trump was on the ballot and the sentiment against the would-be president likely played out on the referendum vote.
"It’s an abject lesson on how not to run a constitutional amendment campaign,” Saxman said.
In the early 90's, a pair of amendments that would have expanded the state’s ability to raise funds for transportation projects also failed. Radio IQ politics analyst Jeff Schapiro notes they were first passed under former governor Gerald Baliles, and then again by incoming governor Douglas Wilder, but: “Wilder did not feel particularly strongly about the measures largely because he was wrestling with, as were Virginians, a downturn in the economy.”
And they both failed dramatically.
“We, sitting around our kitchen table wrestling with our finances in these difficult times, are tightening our belts, why shouldn’t our state government?” Schapiro said of voters' likely feelings at the time.
Will Governor Abigail Spanberger’s early hesitation for Virginia’s redistricting amendment play out like those under Wilder? Or will the anti-Trump sentiment that killed the 'right to work' effort give Democrats the 10-1 maps they desire? Voters are deciding through April 21st.
