Analysis: Republicans want to game the next election. Could Democrats get ‘ruthless' to respond?
Democrats' only real opportunity to set up a roadblock in front of President Donald Trump during his remaining years in office comes with next year's midterm elections. They'd need to pick up just a few seats to take control of the House.
But Republicans want to game the system by pursuing a rare effort to redraw congressional lines in multiple key states and squeeze more seats out of delegations already designed to favor them.
'Very simple redrawing. We pick up five seats,' Trump said recently at the White House, referring to an ongoing effort by Texas Republicans. But the effort extends to other states as well.
It also may not be so simple. The strategy, which is playing in various ways across the country, could backfire if Republicans turn safe seats into competitive ones in the long-shot event that these redrawing efforts succeed and are blessed by courts.
Separately, if Republicans change the maps, Democrats are vowing to abandon years of their own rhetoric about the importance of nonpartisan line-drawing and respond in kind by looking for seats in California, New York and New Jersey, despite legal hurdles in those states.
'Never bring a knife to a gunfight,' New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy told reporters Monday, according to The Hill, quoting the mafia movie 'The Untouchables.' 'We're from Jersey baby, and we won't be laying down.'
But the problem for Democrats is they could face more obstacles in court due to their state laws.
There are some vacancies, but Republicans won 220 seats in 2024; 218 is a majority. The president's party — with only a few exceptions in the past hundred years — loses seats in midterms.
Related: Read the latest from CNN's Manu Raju and Sarah Ferris
Mid-decade redistricting not an unprecedented idea — Texas did it, controversially, in 2003 — but it's far from normal, and it goes against the thrust of the Constitution, which suggests redistricting each decade after the census.
► The legislature in Texas wants to find five more seats by carving up Democratic seats in Texas cities.
► Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis thinks the Trump administration should reconsider the 2020 census and give his state at least one more seat. DeSantis is also entertaining the idea of again redrawing Florida's maps after the state Supreme Court blessed maps he engineered in 2022 that gave Republicans four more seats in Florida and arguably maintained the GOP majority in the House.
'I think the state malapportioned,' he told reporters in Florida on Thursday, adding it would be 'appropriate to do a redistricting here in the mid decade'.
► Maps in Ohio must be redrawn under a quirk of state law since earlier maps were gerrymandered by Republicans. Now they could try to make the state's delegation even more overwhelmingly Republican and carve up two Democratic seats, according to a report in June from CNN's Fredreka Schouten.
► Missouri legislators are also being pushed by the White House to consider a special session to redraw maps and carve up the state's sole remaining Democratic seat.
Making new Republican seats requires carving up Democratic seats, something that could theoretically blow up in Republicans' faces if the national tide turns against Trump.
It's called a gerrymander when lines are drawn by one party to its own benefit. It would be what's called a dummymander if those lines backfired.
In the event of a wave against the president's party by voters, Democrats could theoretically end up winning more seats in the Texas delegation, according to Sam Wang, a Princeton neuroscience professor who also directs the Princeton Gerrymander Project. He laid out his argument in a post on Substack.
'The backfire effect is pretty large,' he said in a phone interview. 'In our preliminary calculations, it looks like this would make up to a dozen seats competitive that are currently safe Republican seats.'
There are other assessments that draw different conclusions.
The consequences of who controls the House — even by one vote — are enormous.
Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have gotten a lot done — see the controversial One Big Beautiful Bill Act — despite having one of the smallest possible congressional majorities.
Democrats, who for years have been preaching for the need to get politics out of map drawing and cut down on gerrymandering, are talking tough about redrawing maps in the states they control.
'I think Democrats in the past too often have been more concerned with being right than being in power,' former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke said on CNN's 'State of the Union' last Sunday.
'We have to be absolutely ruthless about getting back in power,' he said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is exploring the idea even though it would violate the will of voters who in 2008 blessed the nonpartisan commission that's supposed to draw California's congressional maps.
Taking map-drawing power back from the commission would likely require another constitutional amendment, which complicates the timing of any effort to retaliate against Texas.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents a district in New York, told CNN's Manu Raju Democrats are looking at maps in California, New York, New Jersey, Minnesota and Washington state. 'Some of the best and brightest lawyers in the country are looking at every single aspect of what's possible in these states,' Jeffries said.
Expect lawsuits if Democrats try to redraw their maps in these states too.
California, which utilizes an independent commission to draw congressional lines, has been considered something of a leader in depoliticizing the drawing of maps, and many of its districts are more competitive than in a state like Texas. Its lopsided Democratic majority is a testament to how blue the state has become.
'What little competition there is in Congress rises in large part from these independent commissions,' Wang said. 'Stepping back from fair districting would also reduce Congress's responsiveness to voters.'
After the 2020 census, Republicans controlled the process for the drawing of more than 40% of congressional districts, compared with 11% controlled by Democrats. Nearly 20% were controlled by independent commissions, according to the Brennan Center at New York University.
There's a growing perception among Democrats that unless reform can be applied nationwide, they should do more to gain advantage.
David Imamura is the former chair of New York's state redistricting commission, which was paralyzed after the 2020 census. The state's maps, like those in multiple states, were the subject of years of litigation. He is now a Democrat in elected office in Westchester County and a partner specializing in election law at Abrams Fensterman in New York.
He supports a nationwide standard for redistricting like one Democrats have proposed in previous years. But until then, and despite legal obstacles in New York, Democrats should do what they can to win, he said.
'If Republicans are going to cheat, then we have to match them tit for tat,' he said.
Republicans in Utah set aside their own nonpartisan redistricting commission to split the Democratic-leaning Salt Lake City area into multiple Republican-leaning districts.
But Democrats drew advantages for themselves in Illinois, Oregon and Nevada.
Republicans' current advantage as a result is gerrymandering is no more than a handful of seats, according to Wang, even though Republican state governments controlled more of the process than Democratic state governments.
Americans have gotten used to taking power from president's party. All five of the last presidents going back to Bill Clinton lost control of the House in a midterm election. That includes Trump during his first term.
That means no amount of redistricting will save Republicans' slim majority if the country turns against Trump and Republicans.
'In a district-by-district fight for the House, picking up a handful of seats in Texas and maybe a seat or two in Ohio is probably enough for Republicans to hold the majority,' said Nathan Gonzales, publisher of the nonpartisan Inside Elections. 'But if the broader national mood shifts against President Trump and Republicans in power or Republicans have problems turning out the Trump coalition when he's not on the ballot, then Democrats have an opportunity to win control, even with new maps in some states.'
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