Peter Thiel-backed group contributes $2.5 million to oppose Virginia redistricting

By Jen Rice

FILE – Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, offers a pair of hundred dollar bills to attendees during a keynote address at the Bitcoin Conference, April 7, 2022, in Miami Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

A group linked to tech billionaire Peter Thiel has waded into the Virginia redistricting battle, contributing $2.5 million to the PAC behind controversial GOP mailers. 

Per Aspera Policy Inc. made the donation to the Justice for Democracy PAC on March 26, according to campaign finance records. 

The PAC sparked outrage last month by sending out mailers targeting Black voters that compared the redistricting referendum to the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow-era voting restrictions.

In a statement Wednesday, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones (D) slammed Thiel for supporting a misleading campaign.  

“Peter Thiel, one of Donald Trump’s top billionaire backers, is spending millions in Virginia to push a campaign built on lies and racial division,” Jones said. “These ads deliberately exploit the history of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement to mislead Black voters and suppress participation.”

Thiel has made no secret of his skepticism about democracy, writing in a 2009 essay: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Virginians for Fair Maps, another GOP-aligned PAC, has raised around $8 million to oppose the referendum — the vast majority of it coming from a dark money group of the same name. 

Meanwhile, Virginians for Fair Elections, the similarly-named PAC powering the Democrats’ pro-redistricting campaign, has brought in more than $32 million, a staggering sum fueled largely by the Democratic-aligned House Majority Forward super PAC.

With early voting in the April 21 election underway, Virginia Democrats are asking voters to approve a plan to help counter President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering gains in other states, including Texas, Missouri and North Carolina. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has called a redistricting special session set to begin April 20 that could result in Republicans picking up at least two more seats in Congress. 

Republicans have filed numerous lawsuits* to block Virginia Democrats’ redistricting plan, but the Virginia Supreme Court cleared the way for the referendum election to move forward. Litigation is still pending.  

*Defendant-intervenors are represented in the lawsuit by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.