Congressman Cline is desperate to keep his seat in Congress. This will be a lot harder if the VOTE YES campaign– to redistrict Virginia to fight back against Trump-ordered redistricting in other states– succeeds.
Cardinal News reported last month that Cline has formed an anti-redistricting group:
Cline, who represents the current 6th District, announced Wednesday that heβs formed a group called Stop the Gerrymander that intends to rally a get-out-the-vote-campaign against that amendment and has seeded it with an undisclosed amount of his own campaign funds.
And he’s trying to guilt-trip his supporters by telling them that if they don’t donate NOW to his “Vote No” campaign, it will be π΅π©π¦πͺπ³ fault if the referendum passes and he and other Republicans lose their seats to Democrats.
Instead of using the current Congressional recess to hold open town hall meetings and connect with his constituents, Cline is traveling across Virginia with Republican operative Scott Presler to rally opposition to the redistricting amendment on the April 21 ballot. (Early voting began March 6 and is ongoing.)
Cline has been posting about the tour on his campaign Facebook page. For example:
Presler is a dubious character, but a lot of Republicans– including Cline– think he is an effective organizer.
Presler’s pose as an opponent of partisan gerrymandering in Virginia is laughable. He was a leading proponent of the unsuccessful effort to gerrymander Indiana to add more Congressional seats for Republicans.
Cline has never criticized Republicans legislators in Texas and other states, who meekly submitted to Donald Trump’s demand that they create new GOP Congressional districts– which triggered the Democratic effort in Virginia to level the playing field. Does anyone believe that if Cline happened to be a member of the Texas legislature, he would have been the only Republican to vote NO?
If Cline was serious about preventing partisan gerrymandering, he could have supported the For the People Act, which would have restricted it nationwide. Of course he opposed it.
Of all the phony arguments against the Virginia redistricting amendment, the most ridiculous is that it will force rural Virginians into Congressional districts represented by out-of-touch urban Democrats who will ignore their needs and interests.
In an op-ed at Cardinal News, Cline wrote:
Fairfax is cut into five pieces and attached to districts that reach into rural Virginia, thereby guaranteeing that those rural folks will almost always be represented by someone from the D.C. suburbs.
There would be no connection β geographic, economic or cultural β that would bind these groups of people together, even though theyβd be thrown into the same congressional districts to build clout for one political party. So, in addition to a lobster, also think of an octopus, because Fairfax County would have its tentacles running everywhere.
Now let’s look at the example of Congressman Cline.
Recently in Congress, Cline has mis-represented his rural constituents by:
β’ Voting to double or triple the cost of health insurance for 33,000 of his constituents– including small business owners and farmers– under the Affordable Care Act.
β’ Voting to slash Medicaid and food assistance for tens of thousands of his constituents while cutting taxes for the ultra-wealthy under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. One immediate result was the closure last year of three primary care facilities in Cline’s Sixth District.
β’ Supporting a raise in the age of eligibility for Social Security– a special hardship for rural constituents working physically demanding jobs.
β’ Opposing a law to protect pregnant workers. (How is this “pro-life”?)
β’ Backing Donald Trump’s tariffs and misbegotten war in Iran, which have driven up costs for all of us.
Many more examples are included on this website.
Let’s ditch the false narrative that corporate-backed Republicans like Cline– a sycophant for the extremely non-rural Donald Trump– care more about rural Americans than anyone else does. Their voting records tell a different story.
Cline Watch 