New reports expose the dark GOP money behind the Virginia Supreme Court betrayal
Virginia's redistricting battle continues
Mark
Last month, the people of Virginia voted to redistrict their congressional maps for the upcoming election in an effort to fight similar Republican gerrymandering tactics in Florida, Texas, and other red states. But almost as soon as citizens voted to give the state four more Democratic seats, the decision was contested, sent up to the Virginia Supreme Court, and struck down on a technicality.
Coupled with the complete gutting of the Voting Rights Act earlier this month, the decision was a blow to liberals hoping to beat the GOP at their own game. It was also… you know… kind of shady. Republicans get to redraw their own maps while disenfranchising voters of color along the way, but when Democrats do it, suddenly it’s illegal?
The math was not mathing, and thanks to reporting from V Spehar of UnderTheDeskNews and the DC newsletter Punchbowl, we may now know why.
That’s weird… that’s suspicious
♬ original sound – UnderTheDeskNews
How about we take this to the next level?
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“You gotta follow the money,” Spehar said in a post uploaded yesterday. “Because it’s not just about the voting, it’s about the lobbying.”
It sure is!
In April, Punchbowl wrote about a small bank based in Maryland and founded by state rep April McClain Delaney and her husband John. The Delaneys are democrats, but the causes the bank has funded have been primarily GOP aligned. These include the Win It Back PAC, which seeks to maintain a Republican hold on the House, and the right-wing Super PAC Club for Growth Action which supports Republican candidates in smaller primaries across the country and vows to defeat “big government Democrats.”
The bank has also paid $400,000 in interest over the past few years to campaigns boosting Republican representatives and senators, including House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, who praised Tr*mp earlier this year for “delivering on his promises” to put America first and lower cost of living. Um… who’s gonna tell him?
The bank did fund Democrats as well, but the interest paid by Forbright to those campaigns looks puny by contrast.
While banks can lend and store money without being considered partisan, the relationship has struck several reporters as strange at the very least. It’s also interesting that the Delaneys filed for an IPO for Forbright earlier this month.
Which could mean nothing! But in light of the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to throw out of the new maps, it’s start to look a little bit fishy. People were already spitting mad about a decision that threw out the will of the voters and replaced it with a seemingly Mike Johnson-approved ruling putting all the power back into the hands of the GOP.
But as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie explains, this is not the end of the story in Virginia. The higher court was able to overturn the vote by claiming that the midterms are already ongoing due to the existence of early mail-in voting in the state. Using that very weird and implausible definition, they were able to throw out the vote by claiming that you can’t vote on a new map during an ongoing election.
Shadier and shadier! “This is an absurd ruling,” Bouie says. “[Something] you can obviously portray as pure partisanship.”
There’s already been plenty of outrage concerning the ruling, but perhaps, as Bouie points out, not enough outrage.
“The court may think that they can override the people in their capacity as sovereigns,” he says, “but it can’t.”
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