Mid-decade redistricting in some states is all about control of the U.S. House, the Capitol Columnist writes
In a perfect world, our legislators could blow up 28 balloons to exactly the same pressure and squeeze them into a big cake pan shaped precisely like the state of Florida, then declare that to be the legal map of our congressional districts.
Some balloons would bulge upward like big urban blisters, others would sprawl flapjack-flat over vast areas of scattered population. But all would represent the same number of people.
Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect world and, despite the good intentions of dewy-eyed idealists and the cynical scheming of professionally partisan political planners, the redistricting process is about winning, not representation.
Some well-meaning reformers won approval for a pair of “Fair Districts” constitutional amendments in 2010, requiring Florida lawmakers to draw legislative and congressional boundaries honestly, but the decisions are still made by elected politicians with party loyalties and self interests.
Which is like sending lettuce by rabbit. The politicians still pick their people, instead of the other way around.
As President Donald Trump and his Republican allies contemplate midterm elections less than a year away, with stakes much higher than usual and with the partisan divide in Washington, D.C., so crucially close, we see a bold new facet added to the Rubik’s Cube of congressional redistricting.
Republicans and Democrats are challenged to cheat more skillfully in a few states for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Normally, states reapportion every 10 years, after the national census. Legislators try to keep straight faces while creating a new district here or moving some a line there, to protect fellow party members, advance their own ambitions or torpedo some other member’s career. They grudgingly protect the interests of minority voters, just enough not to get whacked by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, while pretending to be aghast at any suggestion of partisan or personal motives in setting political boundaries.
But this year, with Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana clinging to a razor-thin GOP advantage in the House, both parties are engaged in a mid-decade redistricting war. Waiting for the 2030 census wouldn’t do them any good.
Texas started it, realigning districts to give Republicans a good shot at up to five more seats next year. Democrats retaliated with an effort to create some blue-leaning districts in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom won voter approval of a plan that could let Californians draw more Democratic districts.
Democrats are also looking at some other states where they’re in control. Meanwhile, North Carolina and Missouri went along with the GOP effort.
Florida is also in the mix as Gov. Ron DeSantis and lawmakers consider remapping to dislodge Democrats in our delegation.
“There’s this war going on all over the United States. Who can out-cheat the other one?” Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film star who governed California from 2003 to 2011, said of Newsom’s Proposition 50 campaign. “Texas started it; they did something terribly wrong, and then all of a sudden California says, ‘Well then we have to do something terribly wrong,’ and then, now, other states are jumping in.”
Newsom countered that if Republicans succeed in carving themselves a wider advantage in Washington, they’ll not only be Trump’s willing accomplices through the latter half of his White House term but will be well-positioned for 2028 and beyond. So sometimes, he reasons, doing the right thing means doing the wrong thing.
Democrats see their chances of retaking the House slipping away — thus losing the chance to chair committees and run some get-even investigations of Trump and his friends in the 2026 to 2028 term.
Making House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the next speaker would also mean another quixotic run at impeaching Trump. No one thinks the Senate will have 67 votes to convict him but the newly empowered left wing of the Democratic Party would demand another try — if just to look tough for the 2028 presidential race.
All of this plays out with an explosive Louisiana case pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments in mid-October on a move to eviscerate what’s left of the Voting Rights Act. The court’s 6-3 conservative majority seems inclined to severely limit consideration of race — if not eliminate it entirely — in the drawing of districts.
Bottom line: Bad news for Democrats.
This is the same Supreme Court that disapproved race-based admissions in a Harvard and University of North Carolina case in 2023. And the justices haven’t changed much, except to move a bit to the right, since a 5-4 ruling that scrapped much of the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.
The party of a two-term president usually loses congressional seats in his sixth year. With the constant turmoil in Washington, Trump’s best hope of bucking that trend seems to be re-rigging the districts in Republican-run states, like Florida, ahead of next year’s elections.
Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at wrcott43@aol.com.
