2026-04-06T11:00:55.684Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
弗吉尼亚州朴次茅斯——
去年夏天，弗吉尼亚州参议院临时议长L·路易丝·卢卡斯在波士顿参加州议员会议时，得知一群得州民主党议员为阻止以唐纳德·特朗普总统名义推行的共和党选区重划，逃离本州后也来到了波士顿。
卢卡斯前往市政厅出席他们的新闻发布会。活动结束前，卢卡斯认定弗吉尼亚州也应加入这场斗争，并公开表达了这一立场。
她在州众议院的同僚后来得知了此事。
“我当时就想，‘哇哦，这位女士，你到底在做什么？’”众议院议长唐·斯科特——卢卡斯的亲密盟友——近期告诉CNN。斯科特表示，当时他正专注于当年秋季赢得更多州议会席位，不想让任何关于选区重划的讨论“打乱我们的选举节奏”。
但卢卡斯态度坚决。“我们必须以火攻火，”她回忆自己当时对斯科特说道。
最终，这位82岁的曾祖母推动通过了可能是2026年选举周期中最极端的政治选区重划方案之一。她和其他民主党人希望选民在4月21日的公投中支持这份新选区地图，该方案有望帮助民主党在11月拿下弗吉尼亚州11个美国众议院席位中的10个。
目前民主党占据其中6个席位，共和党占5个。反对者正援引民主党高层过去支持无党派美国众议院选区地图的言论进行反击，而最新民调显示，公投前该州选民态度两极分化。
新的弗吉尼亚州选区地图可能决定哪个政党能在11月的中期选举中掌控美国众议院。若民主党掌控众议院，将能在特朗普总统任期的最后两年阻挠其立法议程，并启动对他及其政策的新调查——这也凸显了特朗普推动共和党领导的州打破十年一次的常规节点进行选区重划的紧迫性。
弗吉尼亚州民主党领导层中的多数人原本希望争取8或9个席位，而非10个。卢卡斯将此描述为非此即彼的选择：“我们何必大费周章只为拿下8比3的席位比例？”她说。
“这关乎反击唐纳德·特朗普对国会的我所谓的不受制约的控制，因为他们没有足够的勇气与他对抗，”她告诉CNN，“我知道很多人确实喜欢他们的国会议员，但他们没有能力履职。”
为推动最终提交投票的选区地图通过，卢卡斯动用了参议院财政与拨款委员会主席的实权，并用“10比1”梗图和一连串脏话嘲讽两党议员。
卢卡斯在渴望与特朗普政府及本党领导人公开对抗的民主党人中拥有大批在线粉丝。
比如她对得州参议员特德·克鲁兹的回应——克鲁兹曾批评弗吉尼亚州的10比1选区地图是“厚颜无耻的权力滥用”。
“是你们先挑的头，我们他娘的给你们玩到底，”她在X平台上回击道。
卢卡斯的狠话也针对任何她认为阻碍其目标的民主党人。卢卡斯的一篇帖子将弗吉尼亚州两名民主党联邦参议员比作“戴绿帽者”，警告他们不要插手州议会的选区重划审议。
一位反对卢卡斯政策主张和网络言行的弗吉尼亚州共和党策略师表示，这份提交选民投票的10比1选区地图凸显了“她如今完全掌控着弗吉尼亚州的局势”。
这位要求匿名以免与卢卡斯发生冲突的策略师称，她在社交媒体上的行为理应受到谴责，而非赞扬。“别把她捧红。”
卢卡斯已代表家乡朴次茅斯在州议会任职三十余年，她为自己说话强硬、行事果敢的作风感到自豪——她表示，这源于她一生直面并克服重重困难的经历。
她14岁时生下第一个孩子。年轻时，她加入诺福克海军造船厂的学徒计划，成为该厂首位女性造船钳工，每天都要扛着焊接材料走过跳板登上停泊在朴次茅斯滨水区的巨轮。
“和我一起工作的男人们总是吹口哨、说风凉话之类的，”她回忆道，“那些日子里我经常冲他们竖中指，回嘴骂回去。你必须强硬，必须能怼回去。”
“我会两种语言，”卢卡斯开玩笑说，“我会说英语，还会说船厂黑话。”
卢卡斯表示，她的成长经历塑造了如今的自己：她是父母七个孩子中的长女，在朴次茅斯长大。乘车驶过整洁的老城区时，她指着早已不复存在的地标位置，比如那家名为“The Famous”的高端百货商店——她记得母亲莉莉·布恩当年在种族隔离时期连帽子都试不了。
她14岁生下儿子杰弗里的经历打断了学业，但并未终结她的求学之路。她完成了高中学业，在造船厂工作，之后在诺福克州立大学——一所位于伊丽莎白河对岸她家乡的黑人学院和大学——获得了两个学位。
她在联邦政府工作18年后进入政界，当选朴次茅斯市议员。如今，卢卡斯是州议会参议院任职时间最长的议员。
如今，朴次茅斯的部分地区留有她的印记。
L·路易丝·卢卡斯大道直通里弗斯赌场，这条大道是她推动立法的成果，旨在为这个中位数收入仅为阿灵顿等北弗吉尼亚城市一半的城市创造就业机会。
此外，距离赌场约4英里的卢卡斯专业中心是她各项私人企业的总部。这些企业包括为发育障碍成年人提供的集体之家、一支货运车队，以及由她孙子经营的大麻商店，店内售卖大麻主题T恤和芒果、樱桃味CBD冰沙。
她联合发起了成人娱乐大麻合法化的立法。她正积极申请明年的销售许可证。
当被问及经营大麻生意是否与其立法角色存在伦理冲突时，她对此不屑一顾。
“法律没写我不能拿许可证，”卢卡斯回应道，“当初推动赌场法案的时候我没考虑到这一点，但这次不会了。”
显然，她很享受自己“斗士”的名声。她拥有多副不同颜色的Everlast拳击手套，这是几年前竞选活动的噱头，如今已成为她战士形象的一部分。
“你的手套呢？”最近一个工作日，卢卡斯快步走过老虎机区参观里弗斯赌场时，一名赌场员工开玩笑问道，她飘逸的湖蓝色连衣裙随步伐轻轻扬起。
对于朴次茅斯或里士满州议会大厦以外的人来说，卢卡斯可能因那些梗图为人所知。
其中一张卡通风格的图片显示她将美国众议员罗布·威特曼拽离众议院军事委员会主席职位的可及范围。作为委员会副主席，若共和党继续掌控众议院，威特曼有望明年接任该委员会主席。但他也是受新选区方案影响、连任前景堪忧的共和党议员之一。
卢卡斯表示，她受到身边年轻人的影响——实习生、孙辈以及其他人——他们会给她发送想法供她参考。“我没有同龄朋友，”她说，“他们要么退休了，要么去世了。”
她的许多社交媒体帖子都会先发给政治顾问本·特里贝特，两人已合作二十多年。特里贝特说，他有时会劝她“收敛一点”，但卢卡斯并不总是听从他的建议。
虽然她的工作人员会代她发帖，但卢卡斯表示，她账号上的所有内容都经过她的批准。
她62岁的女儿丽莎·卢卡斯-伯克曾是朴次茅斯市议员，今年再次参选。她说母亲的社交媒体习惯让她时刻离不开手机。
“我一直跟她说，‘我们能不能至少吃饭的时候把手机放下？’”
尽管卢卡斯在社交媒体上声名狼藉，但她真正的权力来自参议院财政与拨款委员会主席的职位。她曾以此闻名对抗前州长格伦·扬金，两年前扼杀了共和党为北弗吉尼亚州一座职业体育场馆提供20亿美元财政支持的计划。
她辩称，球队老板应该自掏腰包，并嘲讽该项目为“格伦穹顶”。
（当被问及对卢卡斯的置评请求时，扬金的发言人贾斯汀·迪斯吉尔告诉CNN，这位前州长“永远不会为路易丝·卢卡斯在社交媒体上可悲的挑唆行为给出回应”。）
弗雷德里克斯堡玛丽华盛顿大学的政治学家斯蒂芬·法恩斯沃思表示，弗吉尼亚州的权力掮客都明白，“如果你想在州议会办成事，就得想办法让卢卡斯参议员站到你这边”。
“因为如果你不这么做，就别想有什么进展，”他补充道。
卢卡斯喜欢拿这次体育馆事件证明自己的影响力。
例如，今年早些时候，她在发给斯科特的一条短信中，同时也转发给了州长阿比盖尔·斯潘伯格的幕僚长，宣称将抵制任何关于选区地图提案的会议，因为她认为“州长及其幕僚一心只想搞出除10比1选区地图之外的任何方案”。
“我明确说：我要彻底给他们来个‘格伦穹顶’，因为除此之外毫无意义，”她向CNN展示的这条短信中写道。
卢卡斯表示，她将这条写给议长的信件告知了斯潘伯格的团队，因为她喜欢在所有政治行动中保持透明。“我不会躲在背后搞小动作，”她说，“如果我打了你脑袋，我想让你知道是我干的。”
斯潘伯格的发言人在给CNN的一份声明中表示，州长办公室对10比1方案的反对仅集中在技术层面的困难，即根据弗吉尼亚州的数据系统和临近选举的紧张时间表，部分议员最初提出的地图方案无法顺利实施。
“在众议院和参议院制定新地图的过程中，”声明写道，“州长的主要目标是确保地图能够被弗吉尼亚州选举管理人员顺利实施，而议会最初提出的多份10比1选区地图方案均无法满足这一条件。”
声明补充道，斯潘伯格“本人深知赢得国会席位以制衡总统的紧迫性”，并正敦促弗吉尼亚人支持公投。
卢卡斯等人推动的极端方案可能超出了许多弗吉尼亚人的接受范围。
《华盛顿邮报》周五发布的民调显示，可能选民以5个百分点的优势支持该地图，但发现共和党和地图反对者的投票热情远高于民主党和选区重划支持者。
此外，弗吉尼亚人在创建10个民主党倾向选区是否公平的问题上存在分歧。44%的人表示该地图公平反映了弗吉尼亚州的政治倾向；48%的人认为不公平。
共和党联邦众议员本·克莱因所在的谢南多厄谷选区在新地图方案中将被拆分，他最近几周在全州展开巡回宣传，呼吁选民投反对票。新地图方案通过将华盛顿特区郊区的民主党聚居区延伸至该州农村地区，试图翻转四个席位，尽管新的选区边界并不能保证民主党完全拿下这些席位。
“这真的是对弗吉尼亚州人民的侮辱，对我所代表的农村地区民众的侮辱，他们眼睁睁看着谢南多厄谷被拆分为五个选区，像糖果一样被分割，以平衡北弗吉尼亚地区的选区席位，”克莱因说。
他的“停止选区重划”非营利组织是目前活跃在反对地图运动中的多个团体之一。
据政治广告追踪公司AdImpact的数据，截至周五下午，民主党在电视广告投放上仍拥有巨大优势，“支持”阵营已投入3360万美元，而共和党仅为330万美元。众议院议长迈克·约翰逊将于本周晚些时候前往弗吉尼亚州参加反对阵营的筹款活动，另一个反对团体“弗吉尼亚人支持公平选区”也于3月最后一天从一家关联非营利组织获得了500万美元捐款。
回到朴次茅斯，卢卡斯办公室外整齐摆放的传单上印有前总统巴拉克·奥巴马的照片，呼吁弗吉尼亚人投票“支持”该地图，以“阻止MAGA的权力攫取”。
众议院议长斯科特表示，如果他和卢卡斯——两位克服逆境登上弗吉尼亚州权力职位的非裔美国人——能帮助本党在全国选区重划斗争中击败特朗普，那将是“诗意的正义”。
“这真的证明了黑人社区的坚韧和信念，让我们能走到今天，”他说，“我们必须在这一刻挺身而出。”
CNN记者大卫·赖特对本文亦有贡献。
How a trash-talking, meme-posting great-grandmother pulled Virginia into a fight that could define the midterms
2026-04-06T11:00:55.684Z / CNN
Portsmouth, Virginia—
L. Louise Lucas was attending a conference in Boston last summer for state legislators when she learned that a group of Texas Democrats were in town after fleeing their home state to try to block a Republican gerrymander done at President Donald Trump’s behest.
Lucas, the president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate, made her way to City Hall to attend their news conference. Before the event was over, Lucas had concluded that Virginia needed to join the fight — and said so.
Her Virginia House counterpart found out later.
“I was like, ‘Whoa, lady, what are you doing?’” Speaker Don Scott, a close ally, told CNN recently. At the time, Scott said, he was focused on winning more state legislative seats that fall and wanted to avoid any redistricting talk that could “throw a monkey wrench in our election.”
But Lucas was insistent. “We’ve got to fight fire with fire,” she recounted telling Scott.
In the end, the 82-year-old great-grandmother, who rose from a childhood in the Jim Crow South to become one of the most powerful figures in Virginia politics, helped push through what could be one of the most extreme political gerrymanders of the 2026 election cycle. The map she and other Democrats want voters to back in an April 21 referendum could help their party win 10 of Virginia’s 11 US House seats in November.
Currently, Democrats hold six of those seats and Republicans five. Opponents are fighting back by citing top Democrats’ past statements supporting nonpartisan US House maps, and recent polling shows the state is closely divided ahead of the referendum.
A new Virginia map could help determine which party wins control of the US House in November’s midterm elections. A Democratic-led House would be able to block Trump’s legislative agenda and open new investigations of him and his policies in the final two years of his presidency — underscoring Trump’s urgency in pushing Republican-led states to redraw their maps outside of the once-a-decade norm.
Much of Virginia’s Democratic Party establishment wanted to go for eight or nine seats rather than 10. Lucas framed it as a binary choice: “Why would we go through all this for an 8-3 map?” she said.
“This is about pushing back on Donald Trump having what I consider unchecked control of the Congress because they don’t have backbone enough to push against him,” she told CNN. “I know a lot of folks really like their members of Congress, but they don’t have the backbone to do the job.”
To help advance the map ultimately put on the ballot, Lucas wielded her raw power as the chair of the Senate’s Finance and Appropriations Committee and trolled Democrats and Republicans alike with “10-1” memes and a dose of profanity.
Lucas has developed an online following among Democrats hungry for open confrontation with the Trump administration and leaders of their own party.
Consider her response to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s criticism of Virginia’s 10-1 map as a “brazen abuse of power.”
“You all started it and we f**king finished it,” she fired back on X.
Lucas’ trash-talking also extends to any Democrats she views as thwarting her goals. One Lucas post compared Virginia’s two Democratic US senators to cuckolds and warned them to stay out of the state legislature’s redistricting deliberations.
A Republican strategist in Virginia who opposes both Lucas’ policy moves and her online activity said the 10-1 map now before voters underscores that “she completely controls what’s happening in Virginia right now.”
The strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid a confrontation with Lucas, said her actions on social media deserve condemnation, not celebration. “Don’t glamorize her.”
Lucas, who has represented her native city of Portsmouth in the state legislature for more than three decades, takes pride in talking and acting tough — an outgrowth, she said, of a life facing and overcoming obstacles.
She had her first child at age 14. As a young woman, she joined the apprenticeship program at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and became the first woman shipfitter there, each day walking her welding materials up the plank to the ships that loomed over Portsmouth’s waterfront.
“There were catcalls and all that kind of stuff” from the men she worked with, she recalled. “I gave them the middle finger a lot of days with the words that go along with it. You had to be tough. You had to dish it out.”
“I speak two languages,” Lucas joked. “I speak English, and I speak shipyard.”
Lucas said she was shaped by her upbringing in Portsmouth, the eldest of her parents’ seven children. On a ride through its tidy Olde Towne district, she points out the locations of long-gone landmarks like The Famous, a high-end department store where she remembers her mother, Lillie Boone, could not try on hats at a time when segregation still held sway.
Her teen pregnancy with her son, Jeffrey, interrupted, but did not end her education. She finished school, worked in the shipyards and went on to earn two degrees from Norfolk State University, an HBCU just across the Elizabeth River from her hometown.
She entered politics as a member of the Portsmouth City Council after an 18-year career with the federal government. Lucas is now the longest-serving senator in the General Assembly.
Today, parts of Portsmouth bear her mark.
L. Louise Lucas Drive leads visitors to the Rivers Casino, the fruit of legislation she championed to boost employment in a city where the median income is less than half that of northern Virginia cities like Arlington.
Then, there’s the Lucas Professional Center, a low-slung brick building about 4 miles from the casino that is the hub of her various private enterprises. They include group homes for developmentally disabled adults, a fleet of vans and a cannabis shop managed by her grandson that sells marijuana-themed T-shirts and mango- and cherry-flavored CBD slushies.
She co-sponsored legislation that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana for adults. She is eager to apply for a license to sell next year.
She brushes aside a question about whether running a pot business presents an ethical conflict, given her legislative role.
“There was nothing written into the law that said I couldn’t get a license,” Lucas responded. “I should have thought about that when I did the bill for the casino, but I didn’t. So I said, ‘That’s not going to happen this time.’”
It’s clear that she revels in her reputation as a fighter. She owns several pairs of Everlast boxing gloves in an array of colors, a campaign gimmick from a few years ago that has become part of her warrior persona.
“Where are your gloves?” a casino employee asked, jokingly, as Lucas walked briskly among the slot machines on a recent weekday visit to Rivers, her flowing turquoise dress gently billowing in her wake.
For those who have heard of Lucas outside of Portsmouth or the state Capitol in Richmond, it may be due to the memes.
One cartoon-style image shows her pulling US Rep. Rob Wittman out of reach of the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee. Wittman, the committee’s vice chair, is poised to lead the panel next year if Republicans retain control of the chamber. But he is among the Republicans whose reelection chances could be endangered by the proposed map.
Lucas said she’s influenced by the young people around her — interns, grandchildren and others — who send her ideas to consider. “I don’t have a friend who’s my age,” she said. “They’re all retired or dead.”
She bounces many of her social media posts off Ben Tribbett, a political consultant who has worked with her for more than 20 years. He said he sometimes encourages her to take “it down a notch,” but Lucas doesn’t always heed his advice.
While her staff will post on her behalf, Lucas said she approves of everything that appears on her feeds.
Her 62-year-old daughter Lisa Lucas-Burke, a former Portsmouth City Council member who’s running for the office again this year, said her mother’s social media habits keep her glued to her phone.
“I keep telling her, ‘Can we put the phone down for at least the dinner hour?’”
For all her social media notoriety, Lucas’ real power derives from her perch atop the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee. It’s something she famously wielded against then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin two years ago to kill the Republican’s plans for a $2 billion financial package for a pro sports arena in northern Virginia.
She argued the teams’ owners needed to foot the bill and derisively referred to the project as the “Glenn Dome.”
(Asked for comment about Lucas, Youngkin spokesman Justin Discigil told CNN that the former governor “will never dignify Louise Lucas’ pathetic trolling on social media with a response.”)
Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, said Virginia powerbrokers understand that if “you want something out of the legislature, figure out a way to get Sen. Lucas on board.”
“Because if you don’t, you won’t get very far,” he added.
Lucas likes to invoke the arena episode as proof of her influence.
For instance, in a text earlier this year to Scott that she also shared with Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s chief of staff, Lucas declared she would boycott any more meetings about map proposals because, she argued, the “governor and her staff are hell bent on doing anything other than 10-1 map.”
“Let me be clear: I am about to go freaking Glenn Dome on their ass because nothing else will make sense,” she added in the text, which she showed to CNN.
Lucas said she made Spanberger’s team aware of the correspondence with the speaker because she likes to be upfront in all her political maneuvers. “I don’t throw over a rock and hide my hand,” she said. “If I hit you in the head, I want you to know I did it.”
In a statement to CNN, a Spanberger spokesperson indicated that any pushback from the governor’s office to a 10-1 plan centered only on the technical difficulties of carrying out elections using some of the maps initially proposed by legislators.
“As the House of Delegates and Senate went through their process of drawing a new map,” the statement read, “the Governor’s principal goal was to make sure that map could successfully be implemented by Virginia’s elections administrators given the constraints of Virginia’s data system and the short timeline before them — and multiple 10-1 maps initially proposed by the General Assembly could not.”
Spanberger “personally understands the urgency of winning congressional seats as a check on the president,” the statement added, and is urging Virginians to support the referendum.
The maximalist approach pushed by Lucas and others may have been a bridge too far for many Virginians.
A Washington Post poll released Friday showed likely voters favoring the map by a 5-point margin, but found that Republicans and map opponents were far more enthusiastic about casting ballots than Democrats and redistricting backers.
Additionally, Virginians were divided over whether it’s fair to create 10 Democratic-friendly districts. Forty-four percent said the map was a fair representation of Virginia’s political leanings; 48% responded that it was unfair.
Republican US Rep. Ben Cline, whose Shenandoah Valley district would be splintered under the proposed map, has barnstormed the state in recent weeks trying to drum up the “no” vote. The map seeks to flip four seats by snaking districts out from Democratic areas in the Washington, DC, suburbs into rural parts of the state, although the new district boundaries do not guarantee a full Democratic sweep of those seats.
“It’s really insulting to the people of Virginia and insulting to the folks in rural areas like the ones I represent, who are seeing the Shenandoah Valley cut into five different districts and parceled out like candy to even out these districts out of northern Virginia,” Cline said.
His Stop the Gerrymander nonprofit is one of several groups now active in the campaign against the map.
As of Friday afternoon, Democrats still had an enormous spending advantage on the airwaves, pumping $33.6 million into the “yes” campaign to $3.3 million by Republicans, according to data from the political-ad tracking firm, AdImpact. House Speaker Mike Johnson is set to attend a fundraiser in Virginia later this week for the opposition effort, and another opposition group, Virginians For Fair Maps, received $5 million on the last day of March from an affiliated nonprofit.
Back in Portsmouth, neatly arranged flyers outside Lucas’ office feature a picture of former President Barack Obama, urging Virginians to vote “yes” on the map to “stop the MAGA power grab.”
Scott, the House speaker, said he would see it as “poetic justice” if he and Lucas — two African Americans who both overcame adversity to rise to positions of power in Virginia — helped their party prevail over Trump in the national redistricting battle.
“It’s really a testament to the endurance and faith of the Black community that we’re here,” he said. “We have to stand up in this moment.”
CNN’s David Wright contributed to this report.
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