(Headline USA) During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, top party leaders and their wealthy patrons first hatched the plot to regain their Obama-era congressional losses by claiming Republicans had an unfair redistricting advantage.
Their “sue till blue” efforts helped shift the balance in several areas, including the Philadelphia region, Wisconsin and parts of Virginia and North Carolina, where they were able to use the courts to force GOP-led legislatures to redraw their 2011 maps—sometimes repeatedly.
But after groups like the Eric Holder-led National Democratic Redistricting Committee gained traction in the 2018 midterm race, Republicans began to push back.
If anyone tells you that @EricHolder is “fighting against gerrymandering” and for “fair maps,” just look at the form his organization filed with the IRS. The truth: their mission is to “FAVORABLY POSITION DEMOCRATS FOR THE REDISTRICTING PROCESS.” pic.twitter.com/1f6J2SnIlX
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) August 22, 2019
With a Supreme Court loss already under the belt, the NDRC redoubled its efforts in 2020. However, it lost 100% of the targets it had identified, despite Joe Biden’s historic sweep at the presidential level, in which he allegedly eclipsed Barack Obama’s record-setting win by more than 10 million votes.
Now, Democrats are complaining that the reforms they previously insisted upon—namely, independent commissions to replace state legislatures—are unfair to them.
In Democrat-controlled Colorado, Virginia and Oregon, new congressional maps drawn by commissions or bipartisan power-sharing agreements are unlikely to give the party the sort of political advantages it could have otherwise enjoyed.
Republicans, meanwhile, haven’t given up their legislative authority, controlling the process in 20 states, including Florida, Texas and North Carolina.
The imbalance could come with major consequences. Democrats currently control the House of Representatives by just an eight-seat margin.
“There should be concern within the Democratic Party that we may have been too quick to seek reform without really looking at the long-term implications,” said Rick Ridder, a Democratic strategist in Denver.
This year, commissions will draw 95 congressional seats that otherwise would have been drawn solely by Democrats and only 13 that would have been drawn by Republicans.
To be sure, not all Democratic states have sacrificed power for reform. Democratic-controlled states like Illinois and Maryland are heavily gerrymandered. And Democratic-controlled state legislatures can overrule commissions in New Mexico and especially New York, where the party could erase several GOP House seats if it controls the map.
Already, Holder has jumped into the New York debate, arguing hypocritically that the legislature should oversee the process there, but not in the red states.
But given the narrow margins, the commission states matter. In Colorado, where President Joe Biden allegedly won by 13 percentage points last year, the nonpartisan commission released a preliminary map on Friday which could lead the two parties to evenly split the state’s eight congressional seats.
In contrast, some Democratic maps split 6-2 in their favor. The difference, a net of four congressional seats, is half the current Democratic margin in the House.
In Virginia, where Democrats gained control the legislature and hold the governor’s office—in part due to their previous “sue till blue” efforts—party leaders are worried the bipartisan commission could deadlock, kicking control of redistricting to the state Supreme Court, dominated by GOP-appointed judges.
The court would likely hire experts to draw the maps determining the political composition of the state’s 11 congressional districts and its state legislative seats.
And in Oregon, a solidly blue state that is gaining a congressional seat, the Democrats who control a supermajority in the state legislature agreed to evenly divide their redistricting committee between Democrats and Republicans.
On Friday, the two parties released dueling maps for the state. The Democratic map shores up one swing district represented by Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio by pulling in more voters of his party, and creates a safe Democratic district west of Portland for Oregon’s sixth and newest district. The Republican version keeps both districts competitive. A deadlock kicks the process to the Democratic secretary of state.
Republicans argue that both parties gerrymander. Democratic worries about the Colorado and Virginia commissions expose the party’s hypocrisy, said Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, which oversees line-drawing for the GOP. “It’s as if they see these commissions as an extension of the Democratic Party and not as the fair-minded independent bodies they say they are.”
Currently, 10 states have redistricting commissions that draw lines for congressional districts, including reliably Republican Montana and swing state Arizona, where the GOP would otherwise control the process.
However, six of the commission states are ones whose governments are controlled by Democrats—including the nation’s biggest state, California, with its 52 congressional seats. That’s part of the reason the GOP controls the redistricting process in states representing 187 congressional seats, and Democrats in ones with only 75 seats.
Often, nonpartisan commissions are pushed by the party out of power. California, for example, cannot be gerrymandered by Democrats because its last Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, passed a 2008 ballot measure creating a nonpartisan commission.
In Michigan, where Republicans had full control of state government in 2010, groups with ties to Democrats in 2018 pushed a ballot measure taking the pen from the GOP legislature and giving it to a nonpartisan commission.
In Virginia, when Republicans controlled the state legislature in 2019, Democrats in that body voted to put a commission measure on the ballot. The following year, after Democrats took control of the legislature, only some Democrats took the required second vote to place the measure before voters, now aided enthusiastically by out-of-power Republicans.
The initiative passed overwhelmingly in November of 2020, as voters handed Biden an alleged 10 percentage point win.
Half of the commission’s 16 members are state legislators. If the commission formally deadlocks, the state Supreme Court draws the maps, a prospect that alarms Democrats given its lack of progress so far.
“We have made a mistake,” said Lashrecse Aird, a Democratic delegate who voted against the measure both times it came up in the state legislature.
In Colorado, Democrats in 2018 backed a ballot measure to hand control of redistricting to a nonpartisan commission that does not include legislators. The initiative was first proposed by a wealthy businessman and former Republican. Some Democrats signed on enthusiastically, others grudgingly, but eventually the party threw its full backing behind it.
But the commission’s maps, though inching the way Democrats have lobbied for, still leave the state as something of a tossup.
Under the latest version, the state’s 4–3 split would be preserved and a new seat would appear in Denver’s northern suburbs encompassing an area that voted Democratic by only 1.9 percentage points in 2020. Strategists acknowledge that seat could easily fall into Republican hands during a bad election cycle—like they may face next year.
“This looks like a 4-3-1 map in a state that went for Biden by 13.5,” said Craig Hughes, a veteran Colorado Democratic strategist. “That’s not a good result for Democrats.”
Republicans have disagreed with some of the maps, but will be thrilled if the state’s House districts stay relatively evenly split.
Either way, it is hard not to note the poetic justice resulting from Democrats seeing their efforts to rig the game backfire against them.
“As Republicans, we will look at that as a gift from the gods,” Greg Brophy, a former GOP state lawmaker involved in a group lobbying the commission, said, “because we didn’t deserve this.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
