Dark Money Activists Behind Key Virginia Redistricting Lawsuit
A lawsuit could increase Democrat influence in the state’s largest city, and that’s by design.
by Hayden Ludwig
A far-left Beltway group is behind a lawsuit to boost Democrat control of a major Virginia city by redrawing its voting maps, Restoration News has learned.
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a D.C. litigation group once bankrolled with millions of dollars from infamous crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, is representing two Virginia Beach plaintiffs in a lawsuit to change how residents elect their city council and school board officials. If successful, the lawsuit could carve out new Democrat-controlled “majority-minority” seats, or districts whose residents are mostly non-white.
The lawsuit centers on Virginia Beach’s complex “7-3-1” voting system, which is divided into seven single-member council districts—where candidates must reside to run for local office in order to properly represent those neighborhoods—and three at-large council seats, whose eligible candidates may live anywhere in the city. Residents also elect a mayor city-wide, hence “7-3-1.”
In practice, voters might cast their ballots for 5 councilmembers total: One member for their district plus one member per at-large seat, in addition to the mayor. This system is embedded in Virginia Beach’s city charter, which also requires the local school board follow the same system—meaning the stakes are high for controlling the future of Virginia’s largest city.
Progressives from the Black Lagoon
From the start, partisan politics dictated this lawsuit.
The Campaign Legal Center lawsuit began in 2017, when two residents challenged the city’s at-large districts as “racially discriminatory” against minority voters, in violation of the Constitution’s 1st, 14th, and 15th Amendments, as well as the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Litigants’ objective: Replace the at-large districts with three more single-member council districts, each with a non-white majority virtually guaranteed to elect a non-white councilmember (i.e. a Democrat).
Far from being racially discriminatory, in fact, Virginia Beach has elected multiple black councilmembers and a school board member who ran in at-large races. The lawsuit is unnecessary… unless you’re trying to boost Democrat influence in the Republican-leaning city.
Restoration News was the first to report that a key official involved in redrawing Virginia Beach’s district maps—required by law to be non-partisan—failed to disclose his history with Democrat political groups and campaigns on the resumé presented to the Virginia Beach court.
(RELATED: Virginia Beach Voting Lawsuit Tainted by Undisclosed Partisan Ties)
Then there’s the Campaign Legal Center itself, which routinely sues to block voter ID laws, reinstate felon voting, block states from requiring proof of citizenship to vote, and draw district maps that favor Democrats.
The Virginia Beach plaintiffs are represented by CLC’s top redistricting lawyers, each with a background in left-wing activist organizations. Mark Gaber engaged in a 2023 lawsuit (Clarke v. Wisconsin Election Commission) in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new “progressive” majority struck down Republican-drawn district maps, replacing them with maps designed to help Democrats win more seats in the Republican-controlled legislature.
Senior legal counsel Simone Leeper, a former law clerk for Democrat Sen. Ed Markey (MA), participated in lawsuits to overturn witness and notary requirements for mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, the most basic security measure for voting by mail. And attorney Annabelle Harless used to work for Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a “racial equity” litigation group critical of America’s “deeply entrenched systems of discrimination, racism, and economic oppression.”
From 2021 to 2022, CLC was reportedly “almost single-handedly funded” with $2.5 million by Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur sentenced to 25 years by the Justice Department for orchestrating multiple fraudulent schemes. Bankman-Fried’s contributions may have constituted over 95% of all revenues for CLC’s advocacy arm in 2021 alone.
(RELATED: Virginia Beach Referendum on Local Election System on the Ballot)
Restoration News has exposed more contributions from far-left mega-funders, among them:
Democracy Fund, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s philanthropy involved in numerous efforts to weaken election security;
George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, a pillar of the far Left;
Atlantic Philanthropies, a defunct Bermuda-based foundation that bypassed U.S. charitable restrictions on political activity, bankrolling the campaign to pass Obamacare;
Ford Foundation, one of the largest funders of “progressive” groups in America;
Hewlett Foundation, a top abortion funder;
Joyce Foundation, a left-wing Chicago-based philanthropy whose board once included Sen. Barack Obama;
Southern Poverty Law Center, responsible for defaming countless conservative organizations as “hate groups”;
Wellspring Philanthropy, a little-known dark money group that’s funded numerous political campaigns orchestrated by the Arabella Advisors activist network;
and the Sandler Foundation, which bankrolls the leftist investigative journalist site ProPublica to attack conservatives with biased reporting.
Rumblings from the Supreme Court
While the Virginia Beach lawsuit is still ongoing, the issue of majority-minority districts may soon become altogether moot.
Restoration News has reported on a powerful new case recently taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court that is expected to rule majority-minority congressional districts unconstitutional under the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
There are 144 majority-minority House of Representatives districts nationwide, about 30% of all congressional seats, and all but 23 controlled by Democrats. If the majority-minority provision is overturned, as many as 36 of these safe Democrat districts could be made competitive for Republicans after the next Census—which could be as early as 2026, per President Trump’s recent order.
That has the potential to create a massive Republican House majority… and there’s nothing Democrats could do to block it. The court will announce its ruling in October.
Hayden Ludwig is Founder and Managing Editor of Restoration News, launched in 2023, and Executive Director for Research at Restoration of America. This column is republished with permission from Restoration News.
