The redistricting war is on.
In a Sunday interview on CBS News’s Face the Nation, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said he is currently considering opportunities to redistrict in his own state. He told host Margaret Brennan, “When I say all options are on the table, all options are on the table.”
However, with only one Republican representing the state in Congress out of eight districts, further gains through redistricting may be a heavy lift. Maryland may have already squeezed most of the juice out of the gerrymandering lemon.
Nevertheless, Moore is exploring the possibility of flipping that lone red seat — held by Rep. Andy Harris since 2011 — into Democratic hands. The district is currently rated R+8.
Maryland lawmakers have never been shy about redrawing district lines. Prior to a 2022 redraw of the state’s 3rd Congressional District, it was widely regarded as the most gerrymandered in the nation.
The map below vividly illustrates the extreme lengths to which Democrats were willing to go to maintain a safely blue seat — its notoriously convoluted boundaries earned comparisons to a “broken-winged pterodactyl lying prostrate across the center of the state” and “blood spatter from a crime scene.”
Perhaps that why they changed it.
Moore compared President Donald Trump’s push for Texas to redraw its district maps to yield five more Republican seats in Congress to his request that Georgia election officials find 11,780 more votes to flip the state after the 2020 presidential election.
“The fact that the president of the United States — very similar to what he did in Georgia, where he called up a series of voter registrants and said, ‘I need you to find me more votes’ — we’re watching the same thing now, where he’s calling up legislatures around the country and saying, ‘I need you to find me more congressional districts.'”
Moore stressed that his priority is to ensure “we have fair lines and fair seats, where we don’t have situations where politicians are choosing voters, but that voters actually have a chance to choose their elected officials.”
“We need to be able to have fair maps,” he told Brennan. “And we also need to make sure that, if the president of the United States is putting his finger on the scale to try to manipulate elections because he knows that his policies cannot win in a ballot box, then it behooves each and every one of us to be able to keep all options on the table to ensure that the voters’ voices can actually be heard.”
It’s hard to miss the irony in Moore’s remarks. In November, former Vice President Kamala Harris won nearly 63% of the vote in Maryland compared to 34% for Trump. Yet, the state’s representation in Congress is 87.5% Democratic and just 12.5% Republican. Should a state where one in three voters supported Trump in the last election really have no Republican representation in Congress?
To be sure, both parties have engaged in gerrymandering to maximize political power in the states they control, but Democrats have elevated the practice into an art form. Republicans are actually late to the party.
As Democrats strike back at Texas’s redistricting moves — California chief among them — it begs the question: in an all-out redistricting war, which party will come out on top? If every state that can redraw its lines actually does, who’s the real winner?
It is widely believed that Republicans would benefit the most in such a scenario.
The New York Times estimated on Friday that a redistricting war could provide Republicans with up to 7 new seats in Congress. According to the Times, five new seats in California would cancel out the five additional seats in Texas. (If nothing else, this would force out Rep. Al Green, who famously shouted down Trump during his joint address to Congress in March, and maybe even Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who has quickly become the most outspoken — and obnoxious — member of the Democratic Caucus). Additionally, the GOP could gain one to two seats in Indiana, one in Missouri, two in Ohio, and two in Florida.
The Times emphasizes that this calculation depends upon everything going according to plan. It assumes that California voters approve Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan for legislators to claw back control of redistricting in the state from the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, which they voted to create in 2008 and 2010. Newsom’s proposal is currently facing headwinds among his constituents.
Regarding threats from Democratic governors of Illinois, Maryland, and New York to join the redistricting race, the Times writes, “the reality is that these moves appear increasingly unlikely because of an array of legal and procedural challenges.”
We shall see.
NOTE: I corrected this post to reflect the fact that the map (in the tweet above) of Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District was redrawn in 2022 and now has a far more normal shape. The new map can be viewed here.
I apologize for my error.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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