Good government advocates are stuck in a bind, as Republicans in Texas push to squeeze five more Republican seats out of their state with new maps, and Democrats in states where anti-gerrymandering reforms have taken hold look to fight back with new maps of their own.
“They’ve triggered this response and we’re not going to roll over and we’re going to fight fire with fire,” Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters regarding his plan to push through new district maps in California in response to the GOP’s effort to push through new maps in Texas.
Indeed, President Donald Trump’s directive to Texas Republicans, insisting they draw new maps to give themselves more House seats — and potentially extend their House majority indefinitely, whether or not Democrats make gains in the popular vote — has set off an arms race, with leaders in states like New York, Illinois, Ohio and Missouri also saying that they will look to redraw their House maps ahead of the 2026 elections. Other state leaders have indicated an interest as well, such as in South Carolina, where Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., has suggested the state ought to replace its only majority Black district with another Republican district.
However, for good government advocates and some in the Democratic Party, the efforts to redraw maps in New York and California, in particular, have spurred criticism.
While anti-gerrymandering advocates have spoken out against the efforts in Texas and elsewhere, a return of partisan redistricting in New York and California would mark the rollback of two major victories for the movement, with both states passing laws in recent decades to enshrine independent redistricting into law.
Common Cause, one of the leading anti-gerrymandering organizations in the United States, has staked out a position opposing redistricting mid-decade, even if Republicans do so in Texas.
“Point blank, this is a dangerous move,” said Darius Kemp, executive director of California Common Cause. “We know independent redistricting works because California has been the national leader for years. We can’t afford to put our state’s democracy on the line during a time of national instability.”
For some, however, the situation presents a dilemma, as a refusal by Democrats to respond in kind to Republicans could create a situation where Democrats are left without any opportunity to return to the majority in the House, giving Republicans and President Donald Trump further power and more time to enact their agenda or curbing civil freedoms and unraveling democratic institutions.
Carol Kuniholm, a co-founder of Fair Districts PA, told Salon that, although she is not in one of the states considering redistricting, she understands why groups like Common Cause have voiced opposition to redistricting in California.
“To say we can’t bring a knife to a gunfight,’ to me, that’s rather troubling language and and when you weaponize the foundations of democracy, you’re really undermining democracy itself. And I would say that gerrymandering steals power from voters no matter who does it,” Kuniholm said.
When asked whether she was concerned that a refusal by Democrats to gerrymander could make them uncompetitive nationally, Kuniholm said that there needs to be structural solutions implemented on the national level. In 2021, Democrats in Congress attempted to pass a bill banning partisan gerrymandering, but the bill died in the Senate due to a Republican filibuster and Democratic opposition to work around or abolish the filibuster.
“I would say that trying to solve those structural problems by ripping apart one solution that has been effective in some states is, to me, really problematic,” Kuniholm said. “I believe that we need, we need a federal redistricting reform bill of some sort, and it’s unfortunate that those have been blocked, and I believe that the Supreme Court needs to up its game and address some of this and and maybe they will, and maybe they won’t, but I still think that its best to help voters understand what’s at stake, to help return agency to voters, to let voters know that they no matter how badly gerrymandered those districts are, there are still ways to to influence the process and still ways to be heard.”
Kuniholm’s sentiments echo those expressed by state anti-gerrymandering advocates, like Kemp, who said, “Gavin Newsom is wrong on redistricting.”
“California is the gold standard when it comes to people-first districts. Governor Newsom can still choose to lead with our state as a gold standard, rather than pick a fight that honestly, his political party cannot and will not win,” Kemp said in a statement in late July.
Common Cause declined to comment for this story.
Some Democrats, too, have come out against efforts to redistrict in response to Texas. In California, state Rep. Alex Lee, who is one of the most progressive members of the state legislature and was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, has come out against the effort, saying Republicans “resort to cheating to win.” He received significant pushback online from other
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Some Democrats, too, have come out against efforts to redistrict in response to Texas. In California, state Rep. Alex Lee, who is one of the most progressive members of the state legislature and was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, has come out against the effort, saying Republicans “resort to cheating to win.” He received significant pushback online from other Democrats, including other progressives, like Texas state Senate candidate Karthik Soora, who called his stance “naive.”
“We win by running clear platform [sic] for the working class & delivering,” Lee argued in a post on X. “Fundamentally, gerrymandering UNDERMINES democracy. The right answer is to abolish politicians picking their own voters & drawing maps nationally for good. It is dangerous to kick off a race to the bottom w/ gerrymandering.”
Other Democrats, like Xavier Becerra, the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, have come out in favor of redrawing the maps in California if the maps are redrawn in Texas.
“Legally, we can do it,” Becerra told Politico. “Politically, we must do it.”
In terms of where this leaves the United States in terms of a precedent, Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon who has advised on redistricting processes in New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, told Salon that the situation is reminiscent of the 1800s.
“I’ve noticed that a lot of people say either that mid-decade redistricting is illegal, or that it breaks the rules of a law, or something like that. But from a historical perspective, mid-decade redistricting was actually quite common in the 19th century,” Cervas said.
Cervas added that, although Democrats might be able to make up for seats lost in Texas by redrawing lines in New York and California, a redistricting arms race is ultimately something Democrats are unlikely to win.
“One big difference in my mind is actually the practical ability of doing a gerrymander. It’s very, very easy in most states to draw Republican leaning gerrymandering. It’s very difficult in most states to draw a Democratic leaning gerrymander,” Cervas said.
Cervas said that, using computer algorithms, political scientists are able to run simulations testing millions of different maps in different states and then compare the average number of Democratic and Republican districts.
“What you find is that it’s much easier to draw extreme Republican maps than it is to draw extreme Democratic maps, and that’s because of political geography,” Cervas said.
While the effect of gerrymandering on how many House seats each party wins varies by election and by state, a classic example of the effect it can have comes from Pennsylvania in 2012. In those House elections, the Democratic Party received 51% of the popular vote, but won only five of the 18 House seats.
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