The Daily Signal - Former Virginia Governor Warns Voters: Stop the Mid-Decade Gerrymander Before April 21

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Like the Wild West hero who rides back into town just as the community is in peril, former Gov. George Allen has rejoined a fight he helped win in 2020, establishing a nonpartisan way to draw Virginia’s congressional districts. Now critics want to undo all that effort, and Allen sits down with Joe Thomas—whom he calls “Set ’Em Up Joe,” after the Vern Gosdin song—to take us inside the story. 👉For more videos like this, subscribe to The Daily Signal’s YouTube channel and enable notifications to be alerted the second a new video drops: https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Plans start at just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. Our Daily Signal podcast here, Joe Thomas, Virginia reporter, because, well, I'm the one who admits that I'm in Virginia. I love her here. I'm not packing a moving van, and they're stuck with me here. Joining us, another fellow who is everything to Virginia, I understand he's just recovering from some knee surgery because he's discovered he has a couple of years of eligibility left,

and he wants to get in on some of the name image likeness deals at the University of Virginia. He has also been Virginia and Senator from Virginia. He is the great George Allen. Good to see you, George. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing great, Joe. And no, I wouldn't get much NIL.

And if I did, you're much better off in states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida where there's no state income tax. Somebody suggested that this General Assembly session, but apparently that didn't fall under the umbrella of affordability for the leadership in Virginia. George and I have known each other for many, many years, but in 2020, we came together in an organization called One Virginia, 2021 at the time. Now it's known as no gerrymandering Virginia.

And George and I gave credence to a lot of folks who thought this was a left-wing stunt, the idea of taking the gerrymandering Virginia. The district drawing out of the hand of the politicians and putting them into a commission of folks who might have a different view of it. And I think, you know, I was pleased. I was talking to Brian Cannon last week, and I was actually really pleased when I saw how the process worked where it, you know, it struggled a little bit, but then it had planned for the struggle and it had a backup. And I think we wound up with really good congressional districts. George, but here we are. We're back again. Did you ever think you'd be back in the fray talking about gerrymandering this soon? No, I didn't, but I brought all my, still have my files from in 2019.

We're trying to get this constitutional amendment passed in Virginia to take redistricting out of the hands of conniving, self-dealing politicians and put it into an independent, bipartisan commission. And there was a backstop if the, you know, the commission members weren't able to agree because you needed to get support from the Republicans and some from the Democrats and some from the independent members of the commission. If not, then it goes to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court picked a Republican and a Democrat. The result is, and it's not just you, Joe or me saying this, Virginia's districts, there's a group out of Princeton. I think it's called the Princeton redistricting project or something like that. But they analyze all the districts across the country, and they grade them, as you would expect,

out of Princeton University. And Virginia is one of only four or five states with an A grade. Our districts are compact with communities of similar interest. And they looked at the Blue Ridge Mountains, and that's a barrier. You're either in the valley or you're in the valley or you're in the. the Piedmont. And they had the concentrated areas in northern Virginia, the urban, densely populated, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Prince William, Loud. You know, those were all districts. And they were communities of similar interests, which is one of the criteria in our Constitution in Virginia.

But we first had to persuade Republicans to do this because the Republicans were in the majority. And they said, you know, the census is coming up in 2020. We're going to be able to, gerrymander. Republicans were our main fuss with it, but we convinced enough, persuaded enough to vote for it. Then you had the elections in 2019. They passed it again in 2020, and we need to keep the Democrats who, for a whole decade, were saying, we got to stop this gerrymandering, and enough of them stuck with it. This is where Brian Cannon, a very reasonable Democrat, was important.

And then it went to the voters in the presidential election year of 2020. and 66% of the voters, 2.7 million voters in Virginia said, yes, we want to have fair districts. We don't want these politicians, jerry-rigging elections, picking out what voters will vote for them rather than the people deciding who they want to have as their representatives. And so it's gone very well until now. And I will say this. Our group is a bipartisan group. no gerrymandering Virginia group is bipartisan as we were, many of them back five, six years ago. This was precipitated and was by President Trump urging the Texas Republicans to gerrymander in this unusual way mid-decade. This is very abnormal. And you've probably heard me say this

through the years. Texas, I wish our policies in our whole country had the audits. audacity and policies of Texas. We'd be much more free and prosperous. But they were wrong in this. I think the president was wrong. I think the Texas Republicans are wrong. Well, so they did that. Then California washed it all out by them gerrymandering mid-deck.

Then, you know, so you can look at what Texas did was wrong, North Carolina, Missouri. However, there's some examples of principled leadership, rather than this hypocritical situational principles that we have these days prevalent in politics. And you had South Carolina Republicans, Kansas Republicans, saying, no, we're not going to do it. And the most prominent of all were the Indiana Republicans.

You said, no, we're not going to do it. And they got blasted by President Trump's political people. But I was publicly on it, do a radio show on WRVA every Friday morning. And I was saying, no, what they did in Indiana, the Republicans was the right thing to do rather than going along with this abnormal approach. Then you even have some principal Democrats in Maryland who are refusing to do it. So let's not just look at what are the worst states. Let's look at the ones who have acted admirably. Now, here we are in Virginia.

The way that they've gone about this is so wrong. They've rushed this thing through two days before the end of voting. Virginia doesn't have election day. election season for 45 days. There wasn't a single person. And the reason you have, for your listeners and viewers, the reason Virginia has a process by which you amend the Constitution has good reason and rationale behind it. You pass it once, and then you have an election of the House of Delegates and possibly

governor. And then after that election, you pass it again in the exact same. form, not a comma, nothing changed. Now the reason for that is that in that intervening election, people have a change to discuss it, to peruse it, to understand it. And what they did, there wasn't a single candidate for the House of Delegates nor governor, any statewide office who's saying, elect me, I'm going to go in there and we're going to gerrymandered districts. We're going to cut the Shenandoah Valley five different ways. We're going to make sure they're represented by Northern Virginia, and we're going to have suburbs of Richmond put in with Northern Virginia,

and we're going to put Matthews County in the Chesapeake Bay rural areas in with Northern Virginia. Not a one of them, not a one of them. But note, they all were talking about three other constitutional amendments, one on abortion or reproductive rights, another constitutional amendment to restore voting rights for convicted felons, and another one for gay marriage or marriage equality. And they were all saying the Democrats and Republicans, some of them were saying, well, I don't like this one or I like that or whatever. The point is, it was part of the debate. It was part of the consideration for the voters, the owners of the government, the people. And those three constitutional amendments have all been passed again in this recent session of the General Assembly.

And they'll be on the ballot in November, not on April 21st. No one's considering voting on April 21st. And so they're ramming this through. They don't want people to know. They're spending $28 million so far. And this is money from New York and D.C. and California, trying to get fagel and sucker Virginians into this jerry-rigging of elections. And they don't want people to see these maps.

You put a sixth grader, excuse me, a six-year-old. You put the maps of the current maps for Congress. and say, okay, that makes sense. And then you look at these others, they'll say, well, that kind of looks like a lobster. Well, that one kind of looks like a giraffe. Oh, that one looks like an ostrich. Oh, that one looks like a worm of some sort. And you just could see these things are just done for political purposes rather than the best

interests of the people in their communities. Oh, absolutely. And when I was talking with Brian last week about it on this podcast, I even said that. This is a master's class and everything we were talking about in 2019 and 2020. This is politicians picking their voters. They just take these blue districts and they pull them like you pull an elastic band as far west as you can go until you get a majority of Democrats. George Allen is visiting with us, former senator, former governor of Virginia back out on the road with the no gerrymandering VA. group. That includes a great former Democrat Senator,

Chap Peterson, as well as Brian Cannon. If you need me, you know where I'll saddle up. You know, just make sure Vern Gosden is queued up. And I'll be there for you, George. I wanted to ask about... Pat Peterson, by the way, Chad Peterson and I wrote a co-authored an op-ed, you know, against this taking away of fair districts than we have in Virginia. Chap is an example of what's wrong with gerrymandered districts. If you get so many districts that are designed to be just for Republicans or just for Democrats,

you end up with legislators who care about their primaries more than they care about what's the good of all the people. Chap Peterson is a principled person of integrity. I liked him as much as half the Republicans. I didn't agree with him on everything, but he was an honest person. He fought against the excessive lockdowns in Virginia, shutting down businesses and enterprise and caging people and all that. Because of that, he gets knocked out in a Democratic primary. And that's what you end up with when you have these districts that are just so partisan.

Now, it may be that you're, you know, Southwest Virginia's conservative. And that's where they are. But there's a lot of places. And including in Virginia under these current maps where Abigail Spanberger actually won in the recent governor's race. the first and second congressional districts, which are currently represented by Jen Kiggins and Rob Whitman. And so you can win. It's not guaranteed, but they're fair districts. And so to me, it shows a lack of confidence in either their candidates and or their ideas that they're not

very popular with the people, so they need to cheat and configure these districts in such a way to guarantee the results. Well, I did some arithmetic like Ronald Reagan once asked us to do, and I took, instead of the 2025 election results, which everyone points to saying, oh, it's a 10 to one map, I said, well, if you look at the election results, because we don't register as partisans in Virginia, we just register to vote, and how we vote is how we vote. I could have voted for a Democrat here or a Republican there, and you don't know. You just know what the results are. And if you look, look at the results of the 2021 gubernatorial election, at very best, this is a wash. These districts would in in 2021 have still come out. I think there's a chance one district could flip and the Republicans would actually gain a district based on how we turned out in 2021 for the governor's race. So it's a real dodgy idea anyway because you have no predictable outcome. You can't look at voter registration and say, well, here's where all the Republicans live.

You guess because that's what the results are. But even more than that, I've heard some folks, George, and as you tour the Commonwealth, are there concerns that this is going to go beyond just the congressional districts? And then once given the authority to do this, we could see them redrawing Virginia's Senate and House districts this way as well. Well, they'd have to go through this process. again. And let's assume common sense prevails. And if this is a close vote, and I'm hoping for a vassal uprising that the people of Virginia in this 250th anniversary of our declaration of independence is going to stand strong for honest, fair, represented democracy and knock this down. If it's even a close vote, we'll see what the Supreme Court does, but I don't know.

hope for the Supreme Court. But they'd have to go through this again. Here's what we do know. And this is what's so deceptive. One is the wording of this ballot measure. And it says, restore fairness. We have fairness. We have fairness. What they're doing is destroying fairness. They're destroying representative democracy to save democracy. The same people, including President Governor Spanberger, who just a few years ago said gerrymandering is detrimental to democracy. Now they're somehow rationalizing it. Now, then they say it's temporary. And very rarely do you see anyone report this correctly?

Yeah, it's temporary for at least six years. This upcoming election, the 2028 election, and the 2030 election. Then you get the census numbers in 2013. And then the districts for 2032 would then hopefully revert to censical districts. Right. But I don't consider six years temporary. Six years is a long time. Heck, a governor's term is four years.

A U.S. senator's term is six years. Who would want to say, well, let me just let someone else elect our governor, let somebody else, I won't vote for a U.S. senator. Right. It's temporary. It's only temporary. It's only for six years. Well, and if you can temporarily suspend your constitution, you don't have a constitution,

George. Well, right, but they still have to go. to the voters to do it. That's right. They will need to go to we the people to do it. And I think we can send a heck of a good message against these monarchical elitists

that no, we're not going to get manipulated suckered and inveigled by your deceptive, deceitful ads. And the more people get to know about this, I think the better off we are. I think that I know you're in the valley now, you know, the supervisors,

the Board of Supervisors in Augusta and Rockingham County passed resolutions against it. Same with Washington County, which is Abingdon, near Tennessee, down by Bristol. The Virginia Farm Bureau, I just salute the heck out of them.

A lot of businesses are kind of timid. They don't like to bother the powers that be, but the Virginia Farm Bureau saw this is disenfranchising the voices of many of their members, and they've come out against it. And it's to their credit, because a lot of other business organizations just stay in the tall grass and they may have some views, but they're too reticent to say anything about it.

So this is why you're so important, Joe, and your listeners. And each of us, each of us can do what we can. Use social media. Use any kind of media you can. And it seems to me that there's a lot of people who, though, are still confused by this. And I can understand why. And I chuckle at the disingenuous outrage from folks like Louise Lucas and Dan Helmer because a mailer went out with a picture of Barack Obama over the vote no saying when they're billboards on the side of Interstate 81 with President Trump's face over the message vote yes. Yeah.

Well, here's it here's and there's a lot of deception. Let's say there's deception on both parts. However, we have found that what is persuasive is to actually use these politicians' past statements. And what is put in everything from our no gerrymandering Virginia group, we put out a digital ad and it quoted Abigail Spanberger. And she was right on principle then. And those principles haven't changed. And so you use Barack Obama was all against gerrymandering. So properly, you can use that quote from President Obama or Abigail Stamber or any of these folks who now are taking inconsistent positions from their past proclamations.

So Governor Allen has challenged this week, Governor Spanberger, to debate, I imagine, publicly televised. and in front of all three times on this issue before April 21st. Have you heard from Governor Spanberger regarding your invitation? We haven't heard directly. We're very polite in the way that we made an invitation, and that's exactly right, Joe. An invitation to have three debates, look to people of Virginia on the eye,

let people hear both sides. And she can explain to people her journey in her own internal debate on why she's changed from what she's changed from what. she believed before to what her position is presently. And I think three debates would be great. There should be one, let's say, in the Shenandoah Valley, since it's cut up five different ways. Have another one in Yorktown or historic Williamsburg and maybe one in Northern Virginia since they want to give them half of the delegation from Virginia. Regardless, if you have confidence in your ideas, you should be willing to stand up and say it. I think part of the

leadership that's so important is integrity and honesty and transparency and state to the people why you believe what you do and she could have her positions. I'd be very polite through it and I'd say, here's my view. And voters can listen, especially the undecided voters. All right, which one makes more sense? And do we have higher standards here in Virginia than they do in some of these other states? and we clearly do because we have a constitutional amendment. That two-thirds of unions overwhelmingly supported recently, not five decades ago or a century ago earlier in this same decade. And many of the very senators and delegates that voted for this plan,

this scheme this time around, voted against it for five years ago, George, it is so good to catch up with you. Where can people find out more about no gerrymandering VA? do you keep a calendar on Facebook as to where you guys are going to be holding events, town halls, and that kind of thing? Yep. No gerrymandering VA. We have a Facebook page.

We have a Twitter or X account. Brian Cannon, at least there's one Democrat, apparently, who's willing to have a debate. Amen. It's going to have a debate at William and Mary tomorrow evening. I hope it's live streamed, and they'll have a Democrat, a state legislator Democrat. So it'll be a Democrat versus Democrat. But Brian Cannon is one who stands strong on principles. And at least there's that.

And we're trying to raise money. We're trying to do whatever we can. And there's a lot of different groups. There's a Fair Maps group, which is a pure Republican group. Ben Klein, as you know, has been going all over. John Reed's been going all over. Tim Anderson. And then a lot of just people buying a billboard on Route 23 in Scott County against.

Somebody, one of my live, Listeners asked me this, George, not to go on, it's not a tangent per se, but they asked, well, what about these court cases out of Daswell that have all made it to the Supreme Court? You mentioned them a little bit earlier. And I think the mistake a lot of people will make is hope for a ruling, because it's clear to anyone with common sense that the party in majority right now broke at least three Virginia laws on their way to this amendment. But putting your eggs in that basket, counting on the Supreme Court to come down with a ruling against it, I think, is a fool's errand when we have the opportunity to turn out in big numbers and vote like we did in 2020, I think.

Do you agree? Yeah, I completely agree to say, oh, well, we don't have to worry about this. The Supreme Court will act. Understand the Supreme Court is elected by the General Assembly. And there's some justices who may care more about hopefully getting reelected or reappointed by. by the General Assembly rather than standing on principle. I don't know how people like that could sleep at night. Well, but that's, to me, if this passes, then the Supreme Court is going to have to say,

all right, well, this was illegal. After you've gone through all of this, I just wouldn't wait for that. We have the power in our own hands, seize that prerogative that we have presently and slap it down. and slap it down. And if we, if we, the other side, this money coming in from, from New York and California and D.C., these monarchical elitists from urban Northern Virginia in D.C., if we, the people stop this. And what we're doing is preserving honest representative democracy in fair districts.

Yeah. If we do that, that'll be, that'll be, what a beautiful story this is. is a 250th anniversary of our declaration of dependence. Amen. And by the way, hope for someone else to come in, we're not going to get Lafayette and Rochambeau and DeGras and the French Navy. It's going to be up to us, Virginians, and all sorts of grassroots efforts. And I think it can be done.

It's not going to be easy. The other side's got at least four times, five times as much money. They don't care about the truth. They're deceitful. They're deceptive. but I think there's still enough people in Virginia at common sense, not just Republicans, but independents, libertarians, and also there are some reasonable Democrats who are on our side. And I can think it'd be just a great day for representative democracy and self-government

here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the cradle of American liberty. Right, just like we did 250 years ago, saddle up and we'll do it again. George, it's so great to catch up with you. and best to you and Suzanne and everyone and let me know and I'll be there, you know, as soon as you need somebody to host one of these events with no gerrymandering VA, because you're right. We did this. We went to this rodeo.

The bell rang and now they want to get back on the bowl again. And I appreciate it as always, sir. Thank you for taking so much time with us, and we appreciate it very much. Well, we appreciate having the golden voice of Joe Thomas. It always raises the level of any conversation, any event. And so, Joe, thank you for staying strong for freedom. And your voice is still as influential as ever. George calls me, Set Em Up, Joe, in honor of the Vern Gosden Stong.

And we will talk to you again very soon, Governor. All right. Adios. Stay strong for freedom, Joe.