Democrats are justifiably outraged by Donald Trump’s move to steal five Congressional seats in Texas so that Republicans have a better chance of keeping control of the House of Representatives next year. Texans had already perfected the dark art of gerrymandering, but this recent power grab is truly unprecedented.
Still, Democrats should resist the temptation to adopt the same tactics. If they try to fight fire with fire, they could get burned…badly.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is making a big mistake by calling for a “temporary” gerrymander in California. Democrats should not waste their time and money on such initiatives, in the Golden State or elsewhere. They should take the high road, because it is the right thing to do and the smart thing to do politically. Otherwise, they could tarnish their own reputation and “brand”, which are already damaged, without changing the political chessboard much.
The better strategy would be to hammer the Trump and Republicans relentlessly about their “cheating”, which will probably resonate with voters. Trump’s poll ratings have declined, particularly after he began to impose tariffs. His approval rating is 44%, and his disapproval rating is 52%, for a net negative rating of 8 points. By contrast, at this point in his first term Joe Biden had a positive 7-point rating.
Democrats should also emphasize to Texan Latinos that the Republicans are trying to unseat two Hispanic Representatives, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, and they are taking Latinos’ votes for granted. Many Hispanics in Texas and other states who voted for Trump are probably having second thoughts about him because of his vicious deportation campaign, which is targeting Latinos.
A New Low in Election Rigging
Texas is already one of the most gerrymandered states in the Union. Although about 46% of Texan voters are registered Democrats, Republicans hold 25 seats—two-thirds of its Congressional delegation--and Democrats only have 13.
But that’s not good enough for Donald Trump. The President is very worried that his party could lose its narrow House majority (only three seats) next year. The party in power usually loses the House in midterm elections. The risk is even higher now for Republicans because so many of Trump’s policies are deeply unpopular.
Most voters do not like Trump’s tariffs, because they know that these duties will cause prices to rise, hitting their pocketbooks. In fact, this trend has started; the core Consumer Price Index rose 3.1% in July, year over year. That’s the sharpest annual increase in five months, and tariffs are to blame. (Core CPI is calculated by stripping out fluctuations in energy and food prices, which are volatile.)
Job growth has also fallen because of the tariffs. The July report showed only 73,000 new jobs for the month, which is remarkably low. Even worse, the government revised down the job numbers for May and June by a steep 250,000.
Voters also loathe Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, with its huge tax reductions for the rich and draconian cuts in Medicaid and food stamps for millions of Americans.
Americans wanted a secure border, but they are appalled by ICE’s harsh tactics.
That’s why Trump essentially asked Gov. Greg Abbott to “find me five more seats”. Abbott obliged, even though many Texas state legislators worried about blowback from the public. The governor convened a special session of the legislature, which started on July 21. A mere 10 days later, the legislature unveiled new maps that would drastically change five Congressional districts.
Republican lawmakers moved areas of Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, whose residents are mostly Democratic, into districts that would favor Republicans. The Republicans also revised two districts along the border to put Cuellar and Gonzalez at a disadvantage. They created new majority-Hispanic districts, assuming that voters who had supported Trump in 2024 would vote for Republican candidates for the House.
The timing is egregious. States customarily redraw their election maps every 10 years, after they receive new census data. So ordinarily Texas would have revised its maps in 2031, six years from now.
Could It Backfire?
The Republicans’ maneuver could boomerang on them, as Chuck Rocha and Mike Madrid point out on The Latino Vote podcast Redistricting Roulette. Their discussion of the Texas fracas begins after 13 minutes spent on another topic. (Viewer alert: these fellows sometimes use salty language.)
Rocha is a Mexican American, Democratic consultant from Texas. Madrid, also Mexican American, is a moderate Republican operative from California.
The Republicans face numerous risks, in their view:
· This is such a highhanded, anti-democratic move that it will offend many voters.
· The Republicans are gambling that Latinos will support Congressional candidates as much as they voted for Trump in 2024.
· But most Latinos voted for Democratic Congressional candidates in the 2018 midterms, because they were angry about Trump’s policies, and that may be the more relevant case.
· The new maps target two Hispanic incumbents, Cuellar and Gonzalez.
· The Republicans are relying on five-year-old census data, and the composition of the five reconfigured districts may have changed. They may have more Democrats or independents now. The state’s demographics are changing rapidly because of migration from other states.
Democrats should run ad campaigns attacking the latest gerrymandering as disrespectful of Latino voters. Rocha stressed that Democrats must also focus on “winning elections the old-fashioned way”, talking about the economic issues that voters care about…and how Democrats can help them.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom/photo: Getty Images
Democrats’ Chest Pounding
Newsom is not the only Democratic leader threatening to engage in tit-for-tat. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois (another possible Presidential candidate), and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York have also talked about rejiggering their states’ maps, although Hochul recently walked back her statements.
Even Eric Holder, the former US Attorney General who has dedicated years to fighting gerrymandering, has reversed course. Holder has said that Democrats should “temporarily” resort to gerrymandering in states like California to combat Trump’s authoritarian maneuvers to grab seats.
This is a very dangerous moment for American democracy, so Democrats must plan their defense carefully. An emotional, knee-jerk response won’t win the day.
It’s past time for Democrats to man up and fight back against Trump. But they face steep logistical hurdles in trying to change their maps, and they probably would not pick up many seats. Worst of all, they would sink to the Republicans’ level and lose a key advantage over them. Democrats have set the gold standard on fair election practices in several states, and they should loudly proclaim that to voters. Democrats’ record is not perfect on gerrymandering, but overall, theirs is much better than Republicans, who have turned it into a core competency.
Our democracy is in crisis partly because many Americans have lost in key government institutions…and particularly in our system of elections. Many citizens believe Trump’s lies that elections are “rigged”. That is false; there is no significant election fraud in the US. However, many elections are not competitive, because gerrymandered maps have given one party (usually the Republicans) an unfair advantage. As a result, many Americans feel, correctly, that their vote “doesn’t count”.
If Democrats adopt the Republicans’ scorched-earth tactics, this will further erode the public’s confidence in the integrity and basic fairness of our electoral system.
California -The Shining Example
The Golden State has set the gold standard for drawing up fair election maps. In 2008, under Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, voters approved the creation of an independent commission to create election districts. The commission is truly independent, free of any political influence, and its staff is nonpartisan. The commissioners are balanced evenly among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
This approach has inspired similar reforms in Colorado and Michigan.
In late July, Gov. Newsom suggested that California could suspend its current system for several years, to counter the Republicans’ moves in Texas. Newsom is considering asking the state legislature to place a measure on the ballot for voters to approve during a special election on November 4. The measure would set new district boundaries for congressional elections in 2026, 2028 and 2030. Afterwards, the independent commission would resume drawing the maps.
Gov. Newsom’s reaction is understandable, and it certainly generates good press for him as a Democrat who is “fighting back” against the Republicans. But that does not mean that his proposal is sound.
Limited Opportunities to Pick Up Seats
The Democrats might gain only one seat in California, according to Rocha, even if they could surmount difficult logistical issues. Rocha thinks that it would be a waste of resources to launch a time-consuming effort to suspend the independent commission for a few years. That step might alienate, or confuse, many voters. It would give Republican candidates plenty of ammunition to attack Democrats as power-seeking hypocrites.
Newsom would have to win voters’ approval to change the map-drawing systems, and the measure would have to go on the ballot before November this year. That would require a massive effort, and a lot of money, to gather signatures, educate voters etc. in a very compressed time frame. Instead, Rocha suggested, Democrats ought to focus their energies on attacking Republican candidates for supporting Trump’s policies.
Fiasco in New York
Gov. Hochul and Democratic legislators tried to gerrymander New York’s election districts a few years ago. That misguided effort blew up in their faces. They angered voters, who had approved amending the state constitution to establish an independent commission. Most New Yorkers wanted fair maps and competitive elections in their state, not an uneven playing field.
Furthermore, the state’s highest court rejected the maps as unfair. The court ordered new maps to be created, right in the middle of the election season. The resulting confusion may have contributed to New York Democrats’ loss of several Congressional seats, as their candidates scrambled to run in newly configured districts.
In any case, New York’s current maps are generally fair, and Democrats have a decent chance of flipping a few Congressional seats. In addition, as Hochul has recently conceded, it would require amending the state constitution to create new maps. As a practical matter, that cannot be accomplished before the 2026 midterms. Finally, if the Democrats did try to change the maps, that would be a gift to Elise Stephanik, the ultra-MAGA Representative from upstate New York who will run for governor in 2026.
Illinois and Maryland are, unfortunately, already heavily gerrymandered… in Democrats’ favor. It’s unlikely that they would gain many seats by rejiggering the maps yet again.
Avoiding a Nuclear-Arms Race
Republicans are pressuring other states to follow Texas’ lead and redraw their maps. They are calling upon the governors of Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, and New Hampshire to gerrymander their states.
But so far Mike Braun, Indiana’s governor, has resisted, fearing a backlash by voters. If Democrats refrain from gerrymandering, they could provide Braun and other Republican governors with the political cover to keep their maps as they are. Conversely, if Democrats jump on the gerrymandering bandwagon, that could trigger a broader wave of new maps. In a worst-case scenario, the other five Republican states could revamp their maps, while California, Illinois and perhaps Maryland stack the deck against Republicans.
Who knows what other states might then feel compelled to jump into the fray?
Protecting Reforms in Colorado, Michigan
By taking the high road, Democrats would help to preserve the independent commissions that were set up a few years ago in Colorado and Michigan. Both are purple states, almost evenly split between Democratic and Republican voters. The reforms in Michigan helped Democrats to gain more seats in Congress, as well as in the state legislature. By setting a powerful example of fair elections, Michigan also helped to pave the way for redistricting reform in neighboring Wisconsin, which had been highly gerrymandered.
Democrats could preserve those reforms by exercising restraint rather than following Texas’ lead.
Texan Republicans are truly “deplorable” in trying to steal five Congressional seats. But Democrats will damage themselves and our democracy if they copy the Republicans’ unsavory tactics. Better for them to run on the issues and beat the Republicans the old-fashioned way.
The Wall Street Democrat
It seems a bit naive to think that just pointing out how bad the rethugs are will get the job done.
I think it’s way past that point.
Go high when they go low might work in a different world. Not here, not now.
We’re on the cusp of armed conflict-tit for tat gerrymandering is a measured response.
Was this written about 20 years ago? Why should only one party be handicapped by following convention? Republicans have their eyes on nearly 40 additional gerrymandered seats in Congress. Their goal is one party rule. Finally, finally democrats have shown some courage and, as much as I might not like it, I completely support it. Democrats have made it clear they want to allow citizens, not politicians to draw congressional maps. Republicans have shown no inclination to allow that. This might be the only way to make Republicans change their minds. When they go low, we need to go low with them. We are in a war and it's going to be bloody. Democrats need to begin behaving accordingly and prepare themselves for the street fight. We are not victims.