Maryland Gov. Moore Weighing Redistricting With Just One GOP District
The state’s 3rd Congressional District, in fact, is widely regarded as the most gerrymandered in the nation.
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.
This is a map of Maryland's 3rd congressional district where gerrymandering is obscenely made obvious. pic.twitter.com/5Xq9vRvhG8
— GDPops (@gdpops1950) August 2, 2025
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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Comments
If this were to happen, I would love for them to lose two close ones in a race.
The extreme gerrymandering definitely runs the risk of a wave election blowing it up as the closer CD, the ones with less d+ advantage due to inclusion of more GoP voters from prior GoP CD suddenly turn into losses. Any CD with less than a 5% structural advantage in registration and voting history is capable of being flipped with the right candidate and right local/National issues, conditions and circumstances. Not to mention these sorts of extreme gerrymandering examples in blue States make it far more likely for Red States to follow that path as well as for the Judiciary to uphold these politically partisan motivated Red State actions instead of rejecting them in favor of ‘majority minority’ CD demands. If Red States are acting here in a purely partisan political redistricting then why should that be ‘OK’ in Mass and Maryland but not in Alabama, LA, GA, Miss, FL, SC and so on? Much tougher to demand/declare race as the basis when it is purely partisan political motivation in a quest for political power
as the basis for the action. The d/prog are putting short term power concerns influenced by TDS ahead of the likely long term consequences they are opening up.
Any district with less than a 5% structural advantage is considered a swing district. A tossup. You need at least 15% to be considered “safe”, and over 20% to be safe in special elections.
Kinda. Technically, by Cook Political definition, the +5 mark is based on the CD specific polling relative to national polls. So if the national polling has a 50/50 split then a CD polling within +5 would be a swing….though not necessarily a toss up.
Then there’s the incumbency factor. Incumbent seeking re-election are rarely defeated, the incumbent win % is well above 90%. For open seats and very occasionally when after a redistricting the CD is vastly altered then incumbency is mooted.
Personally I’d say that any CD +5 to X party by registration is safe when the registration advantage has been trending to that same party advantage. Registration is very much a lagging indicator. Plenty of States were electing GoP candidates Statewide while d/prog held a clear Statewide registration advantage but trending towards the GoP. Then there’s something like 20 States that don’t have partisan registration which makes them iffy and dependant on less objective measures to find data.
Isn’t “democracy” grand? The Soviets refined it even more… the ultimate “card check” the unions wanted here in the US. When one voted, the ballot already had the name of the chosen Party candidate. If one didn’t like the selection, one could fill in a write in name… all one had to do was go to a designated desk and, in front of everyone, reject the selected candidate and write in the name one wanted and return the ballot to be submitted. You had the freedom to select anyone you wanted and your ballot was “secret”… just everyone there knew you were not a “Party Man”.
That Maryland district is obscene and creating such districts should be illegal.
According to the SCOTUS, gerrymandering based on race is illegal. It looks like several blus states are due for a day in court.
That is the stated reason for Texas re-districting in 2025, so as to comply with SCOTUS. It is hard (legally) to argue with that. If Maryland were to attempt a re-districting this year, they’d run the risk of a Federal lawsuit in which the Court of Appeals would apply the SCOTUS decision and force Maryland to do away with racial gerrymandering. That can’t be what the Maryland Democrats want. I suspect they’ll figure this out out and decide not to redistrict — better to tolerate one ‘rethuglican’ rather than open up the map for two or three.
Not so fast. Racial gerrymandering is illegal except when it’s mandatory. “Majority-minority” seats are sometimes required, and sometimes illegal, and it seems impossible to know which is which without asking a court. I think the last time this came before SCOTUS was two years ago, and the numbers just weren’t there to overturn this farce. There has been no change in the court since then, so I would expect that the numbers are still not there.
IMO if a Red State followed the lead of CA and TX in the context of a transparently partisan redistricting battle that might just be enough to tip the balance. It would remove ‘race’ as a claim b/c the entire context is raw partisan political advantage which SCOTUS has held is a legitimate part of the political process. To rule against a Red State blowing up ‘majority minority’ CD in favor of a purely partisan political redistricting would be to effectively embrace a multi tier review system that disadvantaged Red State GoP majority legislatures (and their voters whose political will they represent) who happen to have larger number of ‘minorities’ under the very racist assumption that ‘minorities’ don’t vote for GoP candidates as ‘only’ d/prog politicians could effectively represent them.
It is past time to end the blatant racism of majority minority CD. The underlying assumptions no longer apply. It ain’t 1954 or 1964 not even 1994. The political climate and racial acceptance are vastly different today.
SCOTUS has accepted a case for its next session that could abolish minority-majority districts entirely. VRA Section 2 could end up in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Louisiana v Callais
Arguments scheduled for Oct 15
Not holding my breath that they’ll have the spine to do it. The 3 Libs for sure, obviously, wilm support the racial gerrymandering. Roberts and all 3 of Trump’s appointees are, as usual, a crap shoot.
There are only two actual Conservatives.
The thing is, what’s changed in the last two years? The court’s the same, so unfortunately I expect the same outcome.
This presumes that the current political environment has no effect on their decision process. Ideally, it shouldn’t. But between progressive judges thumbing their nose at SCOTUS and a progressive justice thumbing her nose at her colleagues, perhaps the squishy conservative justices will strengthen their spine a bit. Who knows?
Fuggem. They want a stupid war, bring it. Texas still has two or three slots they can add to make these doomed idiots regret this grade-school resistance.
Republicans have more seats to pick up if this redistricting goes national. Ohio, indiana, missouri, more red states exploring options now. This all newscum fault.
Republicans have more seats to pick up….if they find their spines. Unfortunately, they probably won’t. While DeSantis will definitely deliver a couple/few extra seats, it’s HUGELY unlikely his success is replicated anywhere else, particularly in the more densely populated states that could deliver multiple seats. The problem is there are too many poor weak governors (Kemp, DeWine, Braun, Cox, etc) and even worse GOP-controlled state legislatures. Democrats will do anything to expand their power. Republicans won’t. It’s maddening.
The Republicans have been cowed into submission because the Democrats have controlled the Media Narrative since 1930.
DeWine is worthless. Unfortunately, his dem opponent in the last election was worse.
classic what to get someone who already has everything
the left controls everything
media
schools
business
speech
etc etc
so all they need/want now is total control
no opposition no diversity where it really counts >>freedom
rank choice voting is just another one of their trickeries
How much of this is Trump rope-a-dope? Get TX to pull one stunt that will have some short-term benefits, knowing half a dozen Dem states will go REEEEE!!! and try to stomp them, then will get hammered in court and have to spend energy and money on that. All the while not absolutely needing those extra seats, anyway, because you plan on GOTV with Trump in 2028.
He might be taking Trump Troll to the next level.
Or, just maybe, he’s going to go all Jengas Con on the blue states in terms of electoral votes.
Gerrymandering is always a tradeoff between shoring up your own seats and grabbing new ones. When the winds blow against you, an overly gerrymandered map can blow up in your face, as it did for the Republicans in the state legislative elections in Virginia in 2017 and 2019. TX and CA could face this problem if they aren’t careful. Try to grab too much and you can end up with nothing. So could other states have maps blow up. Remember, all political majorities are temporary.
That is in fact a fair comparison. In both cases Trump was asking for something that was completely legal and above-board, though perhaps for something that wasn’t actually possible.
In Georgia Trump asked the AG to look for votes that were surely there to be found; there was nothing wrong with that. The Dem spin was that he wasn’t actually asking him to find the votes, he was asking him to “find” them, with “find” serving as a sooper seekrit codeword for “manufacture”; I guess that’s how Dems would understand such a request, because they’re used to manufacturing votes. If a Dem president were to make such a request of a Dem AG, they would understand what he really meant. But we speak normal English, and one of the standard definitions of “find” is “to come upon by searching or effort”, and from the context it was obvious that that’s what Trump meant.
In Texas, I’ve never seen a news report of Trump ever requesting a redistricting, and don’t believe he has anything to do with it, but if such a report exists, or if it should transpire that this is what happened, then again, there would be nothing wrong with that. Both the federal and Texas constitutions allow it, so why shouldn’t Trump have asked for one, assuming he did?
Again, the invalid argument from percentages. Yes, it is easy to imagine a state where 34% of the voters deserve to carry no seats at all. Maryland isn’t that state, but it’s very easy to have a state where that 34% is spread evenly enough that one would have to gerrymander in order to create a seat where they were a majority, just like those “majority minority” seats that the courts have for decades been ordering states to create, and which we continue to hope SCOTUS will eventually strike down.
As an additional point, comparing POTUS vote percentages to state representation seems like apples & oranges. Compare the number of votes for a Republican representative – even if they lost – to the percentage of eventual representation.
And if CA does that, TX can come back and grab another 4 seats or so. If I were making those decisions I’d pass such a plan now, while the quorum is there, but conditioned on CA or NY redistricting. If Newsom’s and Hochul’s plans don’t end up happening then the Dems keep those extra seats; if they do, then they lose them. That would give them an incentive not to do it.
Given that the electorate has moved right, nationwide, over the past decade (as CNN’s Harry Enten has been documenting), with a net shift from D to R of 4.5 million registered voters in the thirty States that register voters by Party, it’s possible that any major D attempt to gerrymander could backfire on them.
For CA to flip 5 R seats to D, they have to weaken the +D advantage in nearly a dozen other Districts. The result might well be that the 5 R districts stay R while several of the weakened D districts flip to R.
This is simply further evidence that careerist politicians will do or say anything, no matter how stupid or immoral, if they think it will help their careers. They believe in nothing other than their own greed for wealth and power and have absolutely no self-respect or honor. Their lack of smarts is simply the cherry on top.