Democrats see consequences from redistricting reform
Sacrificing power for reform could cost House
DENVER – Democrats have long argued that the once-a-decade process of redrawing political maps shouldn’t be a partisan cage match. In the name of good government and balance, they’ve pushed for independent commissions to do the work of rebalancing population changes into congressional districts.
They’re about to feel the consequences of their focus on fairness.
In Democratic-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 power, controlling the process in 20 states, including Florida, Texas and North Carolina.
The imbalance could come with major consequences. Democrats control the House of Representatives by an eight-seat margin. Choosing not to seize advantages in redistricting could cost Democrats the House.
“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 such as 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.
But given the narrow margins, the commission states matter. In Colorado, where President Joe Biden won by 13 percentage points last year, the nonpartisan commission released a preliminary map on Friday which could lead the 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 Democratic margin in the House.
In Virginia, where Democrats control the legislature and hold the governor’s office, 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 super majority 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.
Good government advocates have long argued for nonpartisan commissions to oversee redistricting to end gerrymandering, the centuries-old practice of drawing districts designed to pack opponents’ voters into one place, or scatter them across districts to minimize their voting power. The practice shrinks the number of competitive districts, hardening partisan polarization, and can blunt the political power of some racial and ethnic groups.
Republicans have argued 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,” he said.
Kelly Ward Burton of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee said Democrats have pushed redistricting reforms, unlike the GOP.
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 2020, as voters handed Biden a 10 percentage point victory.
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.
“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.