Former Attorney General Eric Holder went on CBS News to defend a Democrat-crafted referendum that would redraw Virginia's congressional districts, and in the same breath accused Republicans of "stealing seats" in Missouri and Texas. The performance was a case study in the kind of double standard that has defined the Democratic approach to redistricting for years.
Virginia voters head to the polls Tuesday to decide whether to approve a new congressional map that would favor Democrats over Republicans 10 to 1. Holder, the top proponent of the redistricting push, told CBS anchor Margaret Brennan that Democrats are simply trying to level the playing field.
The math tells a different story. A map that hands one party a 10-to-1 seat advantage is not fairness. It is the definition of the very practice Holder claims to oppose.
In his CBS interview, Holder framed the proposed Virginia map as a defensive measure against Republican redistricting in other states. He cited Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina as places where the GOP had redrawn lines to its advantage. When Brennan pressed him on whether Democrats even needed a new map, noting that a president's party historically underperforms in midterm elections, Holder fired back.
"What were we supposed to do, nothing?"
He then offered the line that drew the sharpest criticism. Holder said Republicans "try to steal seats" and "stack the deck," and that Democrats were merely responding in kind, but fairly.
"All we are trying to do is meet them and try to make the system as fair as it possibly can be, and that's all this is about."
That claim is hard to square with the proposed map itself. Several of the new Virginia districts reach deep into Fairfax County, the state's most reliably Democratic jurisdiction. Another district was intentionally drawn to connect Charlottesville, Lynchburg, and Roanoke, a string of interior cities, in what critics describe as a textbook gerrymander designed to pack favorable voters together.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah wasted no time responding on X. His post cut to the core contradiction in Holder's argument.
"It's only partisan gerrymandering and 'stealing seats' when Republicans do it."
Fox News contributor Joe Concha took aim at the interview itself, arguing that Brennan failed to challenge Holder with the most obvious counter-examples. Concha said Brennan "didn't bother to push back and bring up the fact that several blue states have done this for years." He had a point. The examples are not hard to find, and several sit inside the same fact set Holder was working from.
Consider Illinois. Rep. Eric Sorensen's district forms a thin, arcing line that connects Rockford, Moline, Peoria, and Bloomington, a shape that makes sense only if the goal is to rope together pockets of Democratic voters across a wide stretch of Republican-leaning territory. Rep. Nikki Budzinski's district snakes from East St. Louis to Decatur and Urbana, linked by a thin ribbon of rural land. These are not compact, community-based districts. They are partisan constructions.
Then there is Maryland. Democrats there ultimately rejected a push to redraw their districts, but only after the existing map had already drawn national attention. A federal judge once described Maryland's third district in terms that left little doubt about its purpose. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris' Eastern Shore seat was preserved, but the broader Maryland map still tilts heavily Democratic.
And in New England, critics point out that the entire region lacks a single Republican member of Congress. That is not an accident of geography. It is the product of map-drawing and political consolidation that Obama-era Democrats have championed for years.
Holder's involvement in redistricting is not new. Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has said the current battle traces back to 2016, when Holder left the Obama administration and launched what Youngkin described as a Democratic redistricting commission effort. Youngkin urged Virginia voters to reject what he called the "most gerrymandered" congressional map, arguing the proposed amendment would replace the state's 2020 independent redistricting system with a process that heavily favors Democrats.
That framing matters. Virginia adopted an independent redistricting commission precisely to take partisan manipulation out of the process. What Holder and his allies are now proposing is not a return to fairness, it is an end-run around the bipartisan system voters already approved.
Barack Obama himself has weighed in, publicly urging voters to back the April 21 referendum. In a video message, Obama called the proposed map a way to counter Republican redistricting in other states. Obama told voters that "this amendment gives you the power to level the playing field in the midterms this fall." He added: "Your voting power is not diminished by what Republicans are doing in other states." The involvement of a former president in a state redistricting referendum signals how high the national stakes are, and how central the Obama political network remains to Democratic strategy.
Obama's continued influence within the party is nothing new. Democrats have openly celebrated his era as their high-water mark, and his endorsement carries weight that few other figures in the party can match.
Virginia Democrats say the proposed map could give their party four more U.S. House seats, though the plan still faces legal uncertainty. Rep. John McGuire has gone further, calling the effort an "illegal, unconstitutional power grab." McGuire told Newsmax that Holder and Gov. Abigail Spanberger are "saying that they believe that gerrymandering is bad for our country, and yet they're doing it."
Holder's argument rests on a simple premise: Republicans gerrymander, so Democrats must respond. But the response he is defending is not a neutral correction. It is a map designed to deliver a 10-to-1 partisan advantage. That is not meeting the other side. That is running past them.
Indiana's legislative Republicans, by contrast, balked at calls to redraw their own map to favor the GOP. That restraint, whether born of principle or political calculation, stands in sharp contrast to what Virginia Democrats are attempting.
Holder's record on redistricting is long enough that voters can judge the pattern for themselves. He has spent nearly a decade building a national infrastructure to influence how congressional lines are drawn. The language is always about fairness. The maps always seem to favor Democrats. And the media interviews, like the CBS sit-down with Brennan, rarely force him to reconcile the two.
Concha's criticism of Brennan was not just media sniping. It pointed to a real failure of accountability journalism. When a former attorney general goes on national television to accuse the other party of rigging elections while defending a map that would deliver his own party a near-total sweep of a swing state's congressional delegation, the follow-up questions should write themselves. Reporters not pressing powerful Democrats on obvious contradictions is not a new problem, but it remains a serious one.
The Virginia referendum is not just a local fight. It is a test case for whether one party can dismantle an independent redistricting process, replace it with a nakedly partisan map, and sell the whole thing as reform. Holder and Obama are betting that voters will buy the framing. Republicans are betting that the math speaks for itself.
Political scandals and embarrassing revelations involving Democrats have piled up in recent months. But the redistricting fight in Virginia is not about a single gaffe or bad headline. It is about whether a party that lectures the country about democratic norms is willing to follow those norms when the maps are on the table.
When "fairness" means your side wins 10 to 1, the word has lost its meaning, and the voters being asked to approve it deserve to know that.