With Texas Republicans moving ahead with a plan to rewrite their congressional maps mid-decade to secure up to five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Democrats are apparently split on how to react. Some believe that retaliating is a mistake, largely because they’ll lose an arms race but also because it’s bad policy that will justly open them up to charges of hypocrisy after years of advocating for non-partisan districting. Others believe that they have no choice to but to react if they want to have any chance of taking back control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections.
On at least one part of that dispute, it should be easy to pick the correct side. If the Democrats will lose an arms war then they shouldn’t participate in one, right?
And it’s pretty easy to explain why they’d lose one. Districts are supposed to be drawn up by states every ten years after the census is completed to begin a new decade. In order to engage in mid-decade redistricting, states must have both the will and the power to do so. The easiest way to get the power is to have a trifecta of control of both chambers of the state legislature and of the governor’s mansion. Currently, there are 15 Democratic trifectas, 23 Republican trifectas, and 12 states with split government.
But some states have taken power away from the governor and/or legislatures to draw the maps. To overcome this, the states would need to either change or ignore the law. So, the issue becomes a matter of will as much as power. The Republicans are easier to convince to ignore the law, especially when Donald Trump demands that they ignore the law. The Democrats don’t have a leader who can inspire fear, demand respect and issue orders. They also have to contend with the hypocrisy charge.
When you add this all up, it seems like the Republicans would wind up with more seats in a redistricting arms war than the Democrats. The Democrats would also, in the end, be much farther than they are now from a world in which partisan redistricting is a thing of the past.
But that doesn’t mean that they can afford to do nothing. California Governor Gavin Newsom is adamant that his state will redistrict to eliminate Republican seats if Texas goes ahead with their plan to redistrict to eliminate Democratic seats.
Map makers are looking at options that would target Republican Reps. Ken Calvert, Darrell Issa, Kevin Kiley, Doug LaMalfa and David Valadao, according to a person associated with Newsom’s redistricting efforts.
Once approved by the Democratic-controlled California Legislature, where Newsom has been successfully lobbying lawmakers for weeks, the maps would likely be put to California voters in a statewide ballot measure. The referendum plan is subject to change and has yet to receive final approval from Newsom, who has also publicly suggested the Legislature could change the maps without voter approval.
I’m not an election lawyer, but I can see that there are complications in California that don’t exist in Texas. What if the people of California reject the referendum? Is Newson correct that a referendum isn’t necessary? Does he think the conservative Supreme Court would agree with him?
Still, if Newsom can pull this off, it will offset the gains the GOP gets in Texas, making its effort pointless in terms of affecting control of the House after the upcoming midterms. The best way to prevent an arms war is to dissuade the other side from beginning one. I think that’s what Newsom, is attempting here. And from that standpoint, it’s unassailable.
He’s doing what he can to prevent an arms war, but also aiming to neuter the Republicans’ first step in the process. It’s within his power to attempt this, and there’s no good reason that he shouldn’t exercise it.
One of the books that I have found most illuminating is Sanford Levinson’s Our Undemocratic Constitution. It explains all the reasons that our Constitution is structurally flawed. This is not surprising–it was the first democratic constitution of the modern era, and the founders had few examples to go on. If we were writing the constitution today, we would never adopt the same system.
Because of these flaws—and because it is almost impossible to amend—we are reliant on the Supreme Court to interpret the constitution in ways that make it workable and democratic. Unfortunately, the Roberts court has done the opposite. Citizen’s United, unitary executive, presidential immunity…time and time again, they have chosen a path that makes it harder and harder for the constitution to work in a democratic manner.
Among these bad decisions is Rucho vs. Common Cause, where the Roberts court, in a 5-4 decision, declined to regulate Gerrymandering. Given the technology we have now, this would seem to create an irresistible motivation to gerrymander party-controlled states as much as possible. The logic is the same that led all states to adopt winner-take-all in the electoral college. If your state votes one way, why dilute its influence? The constitution would seem to prohibit winner-take-all in congressional seats, but gerrymandering is a way to get close.
I agree with you that if we want to prevent this, the only feasible way is to threaten tit-for-tat. Even if our tat is not as strong as their tit, the threat of a war might make the Rs think that it’s not worth the effort.
But the larger story is that the Roberts court, in their obtuseness (and maybe with actual malice) is changing our constitution bit by bit so that it will collapse into presidential dictatorship.
Terrific post, straight to the point.
Jimmy Breslin’s Watergate book, “How the Good Guys Finally Won”, is, among other things, an excellent meditation on political power in the midst of a constitutional crisis (and is therefore worth seeking out).
Among the points Breslin makes is that the perception of power is power. So is the perception of powerlessness: “At the end, Nixon had not the personal political power of a city councilman. He sat in the Oval Office, but he might as well have been in City Hall, in Dayton.” The more Democrats (and all of us) exercise the power we have, the more likely that power is to grow. https://masscommons.wordpress.com/2022/06/08/how-the-good-guys-finally-won-mirrors-blue-smoke/