By Julia O'Donoghue
Thursday, December 16, 2010

A number of local seats in the Virginia General Assembly appear likely to grow in terms of geographic size and reach following the 2010 political redistricting process.

Over the last 10 years, Fairfax County’s residential population appears to have increased at about half the rate of Virginia’s population overall. As a result, Fairfax’s share of representation in the General Assembly is expected to shrink relative to that of other localities, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan organization that studies Virginia government.

Some state legislators said Fairfax could lose up to one seat in the House of Delegates and one-half of a seat in the State Senate, reported the Virginia Public Access Project on its website in early November.

That organization and others have based their predictions on population estimates from 2009 provided by the Virginia Department of Legislative Services. The official 2010 census numbers, which are the figures used for political redistricting, will not be released until February.

"Now, it looks like all Fairfax seats [in the House of Delegates] are going to have to grow in population but that could all change when the real numbers come in. Hopefully, Fairfax will do a little bit better relative to the rest of the state when the real numbers come in," said Del. Mark Sickles (D-43), who represents Franconia.

IF EARLY ESTIMATES hold, several of the delegate and senate seats in the central, southern and southwestern portion of the Fairfax could shift outward toward Prince William County to account for tremendous growth in Northern Virginia’s outer suburbs.

"You cannot change one district without having a ripple affect on many others. I can’t imagine that every single district won’t be impacted," said Sen. Janet Howell (D-32), who represents northern Fairfax and leads the committee that oversees redistricting in the Senate.

Unlike Fairfax representatives, many General Assembly members representing Loudoun and Prince William counties must lose constituents during this redistricting cycle.

For example, Del. Bob Marshall (R-13), who represents a district that includes parts of Prince William and Loudoun at Fairfax County’s border, holds a seat that is estimated be 186 percent the size of a delegate district’s target population. In the next redistricting, he could shed as many as 68,000 constituents, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

FAIRFAX DELEGATES with districts closest to Loudoun and Prince William will not be able to absorb the all the excess population from Marshall’s seat and others that are too large. Many of Fairfax’s outer ring seats also contain growing communities and have less of a need to pick up new constituents.

For example, Del. Dave Albo (R-42), who represents Springfield and Lorton at the Prince William border, needs only 4,000 new constituents — one or two precincts — to reach the target delegate population in the next census.

Sen. George Barker (D-37), whose district stretches from Clifton to Springfield, needs his district to grow by only 3 percent overall, about two precincts, to reach the ideal Senate seat size.

But Barker and Albo’s seats could shift so that other districts in Fairfax’s core can take pick up some of the excess population in Prince William and Loudoun.

House of Delegates District 41, represented by Eileen Filler-Corn (D), is located north of Albo’s and is the most under-populated of any in Fairfax, according to the estimates. Filler-Corn’s seat, which includes West Springfield and Burke, needs to grow by more 10 percent, or 9,000 residents.

Senate District 35, represented by Chap Petersen (D) needs to increase by about 8 percent, the most of any senate seat in Fairfax. Petersen represents the City of Fairfax and Vienna.

"I need to pick up the equivalent of a couple of precincts. There would be no huge change if everything else were static. But most of the other districts around me also need to pick up precincts and the cumulative affect of that could be rather large," said Del. David Bulova (D-37), who represents the City of Fairfax and surrounding parts of the county.

If Fairfax County’s seats have to push out, it is likely that more of the local General Assembly seats would straddle two localities.

Currently only six of the 17 delegates in Fairfax County also represent another city or county. Seven of the Fairfax’s 10 state seats are also split between two localities.

"We might have more districts with half of their precincts in Loudoun and half of their precincts in Fairfax," said Sickles.

Sickles added that some Republicans might be pleased about having to absorb part of Prince William and Loudoun, which tend to be more conservative.

"I know there are some members who would probably welcome some Prince William and Loudoun precincts, and they are probably going to get them," he said.

There is the possibility that the Republican leadership would just remove a house seat from Fairfax County altogether, and move it either to Prince William or Loudoun.

"I am hoping that we don’t lose a seat, but that could happen," said Sickles.

EVEN DISTRICTS that have not undergone wild population shifts could be subjected to dramatic population changes.

Approximately 40 percent of Del. Vivian Watts (D-39) district changed after the 2000 political redistricting, even though her seat needed relatively few adjustments on paper.

"They moved 30,000 new people into my district and took 27,000 of my old constituents away. I had not represented any of the Springfield area before that and they took most of Annandale away from me," said Watts.

According to Watts, the Republican-controlled House of Delegates moved the more liberal part of her district into another seat in order to make her next election more competitive for Republicans.

"They made two other districts less competitive and gave me as many new voters as they could," she said.

What happened to Watts’ seat is typical during a partisan redistricting process, said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University political scientist and expert on redrawing political districts.

"There is an approach where you change up the district a lot on the incumbent so they have new constituents. I expect that type of technique to be used if there is a partisan gerrymander," said McDonald.

A few legislators said they are going to refrain from making predictions or speculating what might happen with redistricting until the official census data is released.

"It really too early to tell. … We don’t have the numbers yet. And you never know, somebody could decide to retire and that changes everything," said Del. Tim Hugo (R-40).