I’m Keith Duggan, Washington Correspondent for The Irish Times, filling in for Denis Staunton while he is away.
While the cult of personality has never been more prevalent in US politics and will dominate decision-making in the crucial November midterms, a subterranean battle is taking place involving city and county maps, shifting demographics, predictive patterns and old-fashioned political chicanery. The offstage national redistricting battle is reaching its zenith.
On Monday, the supreme court predictably reversed a lower-court decision to block the Texas redistricting map redrawn last year and signed by governor Gregg Abbott which, Republicans believe, could help flip five of the Lone Star state’s 38 House seats in their favour. The lower court found the map may violate US constitutional protections through racial discrimination, but the highest court scotched that.
Meanwhile, oral arguments began in the Virginia supreme court on Monday concerning a Republican challenge to that state’s redrafting of the voting map that was approved last week following a referendum. The referendum gives the state assembly the power to draft a mid-decade congressional map – if other states have redistricted first. And other states are determined to go down that road. In Florida, state lawmakers meet today to examine proposals by governor Ron DeSantis to engage in redistricting there, with the aim of redrafting voting districts in a way that may increase seats for the Republican Party.
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Some Republican strategists have voiced scepticism about the wisdom of this. When the Texas legislation was approved last July, the Trump administration was still in a relative honeymoon phrase. Almost a year later, indications are the high cost of living and the administration’s hardline immigration policy may have disenchanted some urban voters who were persuaded by Trump’s promises in the election but are now drifting away. California’s redistricting effort, led by governor Gavin Newsom, could lead to the Democrats winning five more seats there, negating the theoretical Texas gains. The Democratic message is that the Republican’s gerrymandering plans are backfiring.
“If they go down the road of a DeSantis dummymander the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as the Texas Republicans, who are on the run right now,” Democrat House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said recently.
DeSantis retorted by warning that Florida is “not going to be cowed by threats from some machine politician from Brooklyn. It doesn’t work that way down here.”
But like everything in US politics just now, the gerrymandering campaigns are continuing at a feverish pitch. The national conference of state legislatures noted that while the practice of redistricting every 10 years, following the release of census data, is commonplace, states are engaging in mid-decade redistricting “at rates not seen since the 1800s”.
Right now, the Democrats are buoyant about their prospects of regaining control of the House, and even the Senate, after November. But party strategists have issued bleak and even existential warnings about their prospects in the presidential election of 2032 – and all future elections from that point – as demographic patterns show significant population shifts towards the warmer climes of the southern states. Projections suggest those shifts could diminish the power of the traditional “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In that scenario, Republican strongholds Texas and Florida stand to gain anything from eight to 12 additional congressional seats after the 2030 census.
“These are states that have GOP trifectas that will control redistricting,” Florida Democratic strategist Steve Schale stated recently in The Bulwark.
“Other states that could see new seats include Utah, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. How many legislative chambers do you think Democrats control in these four states? If you guessed zero, you nailed it.”
But in a political environment in which more seems to happen in a single week than happened in a year during previous administrations, the 2032 election seems a remote concern.
Please let me know what you think and send me your comments, thoughts or suggestions for topics you would like to see covered to denis.globalbriefing@irishtimes.com
