New advocacy group takes aim at gerrymandering

Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s uphill effort to reduce political influence over how Maryland redraws congressional and state legislative districts may get a boost from a new advocacy group led in part by a bipartisan pair of former elected officials.

Former Baltimore County Sen. James Brochin, a Democrat, and ex-Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman, a Republican, have signed on as the first board members of Fair Maps Maryland for the once-in-a-decade redistricting process. The pair joins Doug Mayer, a Republican strategist and Hogan adviser, who is spearheading the group.

Democrats at the State House in Annapolis, who hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly, will again be in the driver’s seat as the state redraws the political maps used to elect U.S. representatives, state delegates and state senators.

The map that Democratic legislative leaders drew after the 2010 census was approved by voters statewide in a 2012 referendum by a 2-to-1 margin. The process resulted in Democrats easily controlling seven of Maryland’s eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, even though Republicans account for about a third of voters statewide.

Maryland’s congressional district map is frequently cited as among the most heavily gerrymandered in the country, but has survived several legal challenges, including a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Fair Maps Maryland will drag this shady practice into the light and force politicians committed to drawing hyperpartisan districts to defend this practice,” said Mayer, who also worked on Hogan’s 2018 reelection campaign and previously served as communications director on Hogan’s gubernatorial staff.

Hogan announced earlier this year that he’d appoint what he billed as a nonpartisan commission — a nine-member panel of Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters — to draft maps.

Under Maryland law, the governor draws the first draft of the maps following the national census. But a majority of state lawmakers can vote to redraw the proposed electoral lines. States are awaiting official data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which has been delayed but is expected later this summer.

Mayer said the new outfit will try to pressure state lawmakers to accept the maps from the Hogan-backed commission, although that’s something Democratic leaders in the General Assembly have expressed little interest in.

The group will also lobby lawmakers during next year’s legislative session to pass an overhaul of the state’s redistricting process.

Fair Maps Maryland has lined up six-figure financial support from Maryland citizens, Mayer said. He declined to name those supporters, but said the group will register as a grassroots lobbyist organization and identify its donors in future disclosures with the Maryland State Ethics Commission.

Nationally, Republicans hold the political advantage in many statehouses and have used that power to tilt electoral maps in their favor. That’s drawn loud condemnation from many Democrats, who nonetheless have pressed their advantages in states such as Maryland, Illinois and New York.

Hogan has made redistricting an issue since he first ran for governor in 2014 and has unsuccessfully proposed legislation that would create a nonpartisan process to draw the maps.

He vetoed Democrat-backed legislation in 2017 that would have created a nonpartisan redistricting process for Maryland if five surrounding states adopted the same framework.

Fair Maps Maryland’s first digital video advertisement takes aim at the 3rd congressional district, a sprawling seat that takes in pieces of Baltimore City and Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Howard and Montgomery counties. It was once infamously described by a federal judge as “a broken-winged pterodactyl, lying prostrate across the center of the state.”

Brochin, a former four-term Democratic state senator who represented Towson and parts of northern Baltimore County, described gerrymandering as an attempt to “silence political opponents” and blamed it for “deepening political division.”

As a senator, Brochin crossed party lines to back Hogan’s reform proposals. He said he sees signing on to the advocacy effort as a “continuation of my belief that gerrymandering is really the death of democracy. I want to do everything I can to make sure politicians stop picking their constituents.”

Brochin and Kittleman’s board positions at Fair Maps Maryland are unpaid.

Kittleman lost a reelection bid in 2018 after a single term. Hogan then appointed Kittleman to a post on the Maryland Worker’s Compensation Commission, where he was paid about $156,000 in 2020, according to the latest state records available.

Kittleman said rooting out gerrymandering is “about safeguarding our democratic processes for the future.”