Former Attorney General Eric Holder openly advocated for gerrymandering in New York state in order to secure more seats for Democrats, during a recent MSNBC interview.
Holder, who now oversees the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, saw several major defeats last year in his group’s mission to “favorably position democrats for the redistricting process,” according to its own tax records.
Democrats were defeated in every single race targeted by the NDRC during the 2020 election, as well as a crushing Supreme Court loss that determined partisan gerrymandering did not violate the US Constitution.
However, former President Barack Obama’s self-declared “wing man” has been undeterred by the blow-back. In fact, he has redoubled his efforts to “sue till blue” in the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections, when Republicans are expecting a red wave to re-take Congress and curb the unchecked ambitions of the catastrophic Biden administration.
Despite his duplicity over gerrymandering that benefits Democrats, Holder has long accused Republican legislatures of harboring nefarious intentions—even in states where Democrats have dominated the political arena, such as New York.
“If the maps are drawn in a fair way, Democrats and progressives will do just fine,” Holder claimed in the MSNBC interview.
“Now, in New York, we should follow the population trends,” he continued. “New York City, a Democratic component of New York State has increased in population. The rural areas in New York state have lost population.”
Holder then made plain that he hopes to remove Republican seats and replace them with more Democrat-friendly districts.
“And so, if you’re going to pull out a district for people—you’re going to decrease the number Representatives, they probably ought to come from a rural area which is probably means, you know, a couple of Republican seats there,” he added.
Holder had previously claimed that he supported nonpartisan commissions being used to redraw the electoral maps instead of leaving that authority for state legislatures.
However, due to the heavily Democratic representation in New York, he appeared to flip-flop in support of the partisan redistricting process there—even as he and the NDRC have prepared pre-emptive lawsuits in battleground “red” states like Wisconsin and North Carolina, both of which have Republicans controlling the legislature.
Andrew Romeo, communications director for the Republican State Leadership Committee, called out Holder’s hypocrisy.
“Eric Holder’s desire to have Democrats gain seats through gerrymandering in New York is further proof that his so-called support for independent commissions is phony,” Romeo said.
“If Holder was really for ‘fair maps,’ he would hold Democrat-led states like New York, Illinois, and Maryland to the same standards he applies to those where Republicans control redistricting,” Romeo added. “Don’t be fooled—the only reason Eric Holder and the Democrats won’t be doing more gerrymandering in 2021 is because they didn’t win the state legislatures they set their eyes on in 2020.”
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
