‘Together, we will rebuild a democracy where voters pick their politicians—not the other way around…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an organization led by former Attorney General Eric Holder that targets Republican “gerrymandering,” released a “sneak peek” of the states it has designs on leading up to the 2020 presidential election and national Census, The Washington Free Beacon reported.
“After gaining momentum on Election Day 2018, our fight to shift the balance of power away from Republicans before redistricting occurs in 2021 continues,” NDRC said on its website.
Overall, for 2019 and 2020, the group says it has its sights on 12 states.
The targets, available on the NDRC website, include the 2019 governor races in Kentucky and Louisiana, as well as upcoming state-legislature races in Virginia, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
Additionally, it is focusing on a down-ballot race in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The NDRC, which boasts of being the “first-ever strategic hub for a comprehensive redistricting strategy” touts a four-pronged approach:
- litigation (also known as its “Sue till Blue” approach)
- mobilization (using the database from the Obama campaign arm to cultivate an army of gerrymandering activists)
- reform (using ballot initiatives to establish ‘independent’ redistricting councils instead of empowering the democratically elected state legislatures)
- elections (voting in Democratic candidates who will challenge and undermine Republican-friendly redistricting proposals)
“NDRC is attacking this problem from every angle to ensure the next round of redistricting is fair and that maps reflect the will of the voters,” its website says. “Together, we will rebuild a democracy where voters pick their politicians—not the other way around.”
While it may all seem laudable and noble, the group’s focus only on red states calls into question whether its objective is more partisan than reform-oriented. In fact, the group is organized as a political-action committee and not a nonprofit, according to its fundraising page, and is largely subsidized by the ActBlue PAC, which spent more than a billion dollars on 2018 Democratic campaigns.
Wherever Obama’s self-described “wingman” Holder goes, the stain of unethical, ends-justify-the-means, unabashedly partisan activity is sure to follow, and while NDRC claims its mission is “creating fair districts,” this is tantamount to saying that selling guns to Mexican drug lords to track their movements helped level the playing field for the ATF in the “Fast and Furious” scandal.
While attempting to right the “wrong” of gerrymandered districts—which both parties have benefited from for much of the country’s history—it creates a far worse injustice of allowing unaccountable, activist judges to decide elections—not to mention the big-money backers whose dark money is supporting NDRC’s lawsuits and mobilization efforts.
The group touted its 2018 successes in several state-level races where it was able to install more Democratic-friendly representatives and judges into positions where they would exert some power over redistricting. Despite high-profile losses in states like Florida and Georgia after hard-fought recount battles, NDRC boasted that its efforts helped in flipping six legislative chambers and winning seven governor’s races.
It also seems that some of NDRC’s efforts are having a national impact in other tightly contested races.
In North Carolina, for instance, where Democrats successfully led a court-mandated redistricting campaign, the Republican candidate for the 9th Congressional District, Mark Harris, nonetheless won the race. However, due to Democrats’ previous behind-the-scenes work, which included fighting a legal battle to install Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper—who in turn had authority over appointing the state’s nine-member elections board—the board refused to certify Harris’s election.
Complaining of irregularities in Bladen County, known for fraud issues (Cooper’s opponent, former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, had also pointed to issues in the county), the state elections board now is investigating the district’s mail-in absentee ballots, with the nearly unprecedented possibility of a re-vote as Democrats call the shots on the board.
The fundraising advantage that the Democrats would have in the race—not to mention the mobilization efforts of groups like Holder’s, with access to the Obama campaign database—would almost certainly throw the election the opposite way of the will of the voters.
Similar situations exist in many of the states targeted by NDRC, where Holder and company have for several years worked to establish an infrastructure of corruption that is now coming into fruition. Their aim, of course, is to emerge victorious in the 2020 elections, so that people overseeing the 2021 redistricting following the next Census will be Democrats who can then gerrymander with impunity.