Transcription
The gerrymander wars keep escalating as both Democrats and Republicans try to carve out as many safe seats for their party as they possibly can in order to either save the Republican, uh, House majority or Democrats to, um, reclaim it in 2026. Where does this escalation end? And who ends up on top? Oh, and is this good for America? From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is PTOIC Watch. Welcome. I'm Paul Jingo here on PTOAC Watch, the daily podcast of Wall Street Journal Opinion, and I'm here with Alicia Finley and Kyle Peterson, uh, my colleagues who follow these things.
Now, gerrymandering has been with us since the American founding, and the name was, uh, first coined in 1812. But the practice has really been escalating in recent decades as both parties refine the techniques for finding their voters and carving districts that, uh, get those voters in or out as, uh, they might prefer. And the most recent round was kicked off by Donald J. Trump prodding Texas House, Texas legislature, and Governor Greg Abbott to redistrict this year to carve out more Republican seats for, uh, his party come 2026. He's hoping to get five more seats, and we'll talk a little bit about whether that's realistic. But let's listen to Trump recently on CNBC.
"But in Illinois, what's happened is, is terrible what they're doing. And they, you notice they go to Illinois for safety, but that's all gerrymandered. California is gerrymandered. We should have many more seats in Congress in California. It's all gerrymandered. And we have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. We have a really good governor. And we have good people in Texas. And I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know. And, uh, we are entitled to five more seats."
I don't know. I'm not sure that word "entitled" is, uh, is accurate. Uh, nobody is entitled to the number of seats. Just for background, currently there are, uh, 38 seats in the House in Texas. 25 of them are held by Republicans, 13 by Democrats. Republican candidates for the House won 58.4% of the vote in 2024 compared to 40.3% for Democrats. So that 25-13 mix is not really that greatly out of whack with the proportion, uh, as a proportion of the vote. But, uh, they're hoping to get at least three more seats out of this, uh, Alicia, and, uh, probably can do that if they apportion it because there are an awful lot of Republican seats that have big, big Republican majorities. But, uh, what do you think?
Well, I think that's right. I think it's a little optimistic and ambitious to think that they could get five more seats, and that suggests that they could win two seats down in southern Texas, and that, uh, hinges heavily on the Hispanic vote, uh, which can be a swing vote and has, uh, in the past voted, uh, for Donald Trump, but then has elected Democrats for Congress. Now, the three other seats I think are, uh, well, uh, or they can well pick up, uh, and that's in part because they added, uh, more Republican, uh, Republican votes, uh, taking them away from other, uh, other heavily Republican districts.
So, this is the new map they're talking about. Under the new map, many of these other Republican districts actually, they had pretty fat margins with about 20, uh, 20, uh, Republican or 20-point Republican advantage. Now, what they did is they, they shaved off the margin down to about 15 votes or 15, uh, points, um, in order to, uh, spread those votes into some new Republican districts. Uh, so unless there's a wave election, uh, and it would have to be a big, pretty big wave, it looks like Republicans are going to pick up, uh, about three seats.
And that wave, of course, would be the, uh, Democratic wave you're talking about in 2026, which is if there is something like happened in 2018 where the Democrats really picked up a lot of seats. Uh, what about, um, Kyle, I want to talk about Trump's point about Illinois and California. And first, let's listen to JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, um, respond to Trump's attempt and the Republican attempt in Texas.
"They don't care that they're violating the Voting Rights Act and racially gerrymandering their state. Well, they're hoping they can rob the bank and get away before anyone notices. Texas Republicans are trying to diminish the voting power of their own constituents, and in doing so, diminish the rights of Illinoians and all Americans. Texas House Democrats are putting their lives on hold and their livelihoods at risk because they don't want to live in a country where the president rigs elections."
Those, of course, are the behind Governor Pritzker are Texas Democrats who have fled to Illinois to not have to vote on the Republican map plan. Um, and I'm not quite sure they're risking their livelihoods. Bo, uh, or has a big pack that is raising money to pay for any fines they're, they're, they're subject to for not, uh, uh, being in the state and, and denying a quorum to the Republicans. Not much doubt that sooner or later they'll have to return, Kyle, and, and vote on this. But, um, um, what about this point about Illinois, uh, and in particular, uh, because they are in Illinois, and I mean, Pritzker is the, is the, I mean, he's the granddaddy of, uh, of, uh, gerrymandering.
Yeah. I mean, Illinois has 17 House seats, and Democrats control 14 of them above and beyond their proportion of the vote that they generally win. If you look at the Illinois map, some of these districts are not pretty. They are, you know, there's one that is from basically the outside of St. Louis, you know, cutting up to Champaign, a college town, and on either side of it is a pretty rural Republican district. So, it is, it is carving a channel through, uh, parts of, of Red Illinois to create this Democratic district. Uh, Pritzker was pushed on this and had a kind of a funny response, I thought. He's, he was trying to defend this. This wasn't gerrymandering. He says, "Oh, we just, we draw the districts, but then they keep reelecting Democratic candidates because we're doing such a good job of representing the voters in Washington." And that is, uh, darkly amusing.
But there is something that is escalating, I think, about what Texas is doing here in terms of, uh, a redistricting mid-decade. And so, I mean, this has historically been a fight that happens once every 10 years after the census. All of these states go and they draw new maps, and Democrats complain about Republican gerrymanders, and Republicans complain about Democratic gerrymanders, and then over the course of the next decade, voters move, the issues change, and those gerrymanders kind of get eroded. Uh, and there is something escalating about what Texas is trying to do here again to re-entrench, uh, its Republican majority mid-decade. And then also just, uh, by the, the, the clear, bald partisan way, uh, that the president of the United States is calling for this, uh, without really any, any of the rhetorical cover that you usually have. He's saying, "We're entitled to five more seats."
Right, which of course they are not. But, uh, just to elaborate on the point about Illinois, though, Kyle, Republican House candidates in 2024 won 48% of the House votes in, in Illinois. That Democrats won 52%. Yet the Republicans only hold three seats. If it were a proportional, uh, representation, the Republicans would have something like, uh, maybe eight to nine for the Democrats. But, uh, it's gerrymandered so, uh, uh, exquisitely for the Democrats. I mean, there's one district, another one in the state that starts up in Rockford, a city, meanders down to the Quad Cities area, Moline, East Moline, and Rock Island, and then, uh, goes down further, uh, all the way down to, uh, Peoria, where they pick up some more urban votes, and that's just designed, and that's carved out of, uh, uh, is surrounded by, uh, rural Republican districts as well. So, um, I mean, Trump is right. Uh, Democrats have gerrymandered the heck out of Illinois. And, uh, uh, uh, so, but, um, what about California? Uh, Nuome, Alicia has said, Governor Newsom has said he's going to see if he can change, uh, the, uh, uh, uh, procedural, some procedural details to be able to pick up maybe three or, or more, uh, Democratic seats in that state. But that's already very heavily Democratic. What is it, 43 to 9 right now, Democrat to Republican?
Right. Uh, Democrats have about 83% of the districts. Uh, Harris won about 60% of the vote. Uh, so actually, if you consider the, by many metrics, California's current map is more gerrymandered than Texas's map would be, even if Republicans picked up all five of the seats that they hoped to. Now, in, in California, voters approved a ballot initiative in 2010 that gave this, quote, unquote, independent redistricting commission power to redraw the maps both for the state legislature and congressional seats. Now, it's supposed to be independent, but Democrats have essentially hijacked it and put in, uh, all kinds of requirements for districts, communities of interest, and such. Now, what Gavin Newsom hopes to do is to put a ballot initiative on this November ballot. The legislature would have to do it, uh, approve new maps and vote, allow voters to vote on them in November, and overrule, at least for the next, the three elections, overrule the independent commissions. Now, Newsom is out there saying, "Well, we could reduce Republican seats to just four in the state." I think that would be very difficult to do in part because the maps are already very gerrymandered. And if they were to take out some Republicans to try to spread Republican votes, uh, around a little more, that would thin the Democratic margins in some seats. For just example, Young Kim, uh, who in Orange County, now, if they were to try to, uh, eliminate her seat, um, it would probably put the former Katie Porter seat Democrats in jeopardy if you were to try to somehow take out the Republican votes there and spread them out somewhere else. So I think that it's, uh, they're running a bit of a risk if they try to do that. I think Gavin Newsom knows that he also runs a bit of a political risk that in, if voters, uh, reject his ballot initiative in November, um, and there is a campaign by some good government groups and Arnold Schwarzenegger who plan to, uh, campaign against it, I think it would be a very big defeat for him. I agree with you, Alicia, but on the other hand, he's thinks this is a big potential win for him because he is showing national Democrats, he's fighting Donald Trump and fighting the, uh, the Republican gerrymanders. And if he succeeds, um, he thinks that that would, uh, could be a big boost to his likely presidential campaign.
Let's sort this out a little more broadly. So, we've got potential Democratic gains in California. Hard to see anymore in Illinois, but they might try. Potential Democratic seats of a couple possibly in New York, although again, that's a problem because, uh, they'd have to get around their law that says a commission, uh, sets the, uh, uh, districts. But it's possible they could maneuver that with a friendly, um, state court ruling, highest court in the state. But Republicans aren't done in Texas. Uh, they could, Trump is saying Indiana should try to carve out another seat for Republicans. Missouri could carve out another seat for Republicans. Ohio and maybe Florida. So where this all comes out at the end of it, um, could be a wash. Could be a narrow gain for one or more parties. But, um, but meanwhile, we have this phenomenon, and you referred to it, Kyle, where, you know, both parties now are saying if they can carve out some advantage mid-decade, we're going to, we're going to redo it, redistrict. You know, is it going to be every two years, every four years? I guess it's going to be every time they think that there is some, uh, some advantage. And, um, I think in this case, why is Trump being so, uh, uh, uh, hard-headed about this? Why does he want this so badly? And I think it's because he fears a Democratic House, uh, in after 2026. He knows, and I think suspects, and I think he's right, they'll impeach him again. Uh, uh, maybe, maybe twice. Who knows? And they, and they, uh, you know, it is his, if, if the Democrats do take the House, his domestic presidency is essentially over, Kyle.
Right. But there's an opposite reaction on the other side, which is Democrats and their base and their voters are saying, "Look, we're going to be locked out of power." Not because, uh, there's not going to be a typical, uh, backlash against the or swing against the incumbent president in the White House, which is often what happens in a new president's first midterm election, but because we're going to be locked out of the system by the gerrymandering in the rules, and that's why we need to escalate. And so, I mean, you're right. Republicans could go to Missouri and Ohio. Democrats could go all sorts of other places. So Oregon is one. Oregon's second district is the one Republican-held district in the state. It is the eastern two-thirds roughly of Oregon. Uh, I'm looking at the, the map at the Cook Political Report. It is an R+14 district, but it is right next to those, uh, Portland and Portland suburbs. Those are two districts. One is D+24, one is D+20. It is not all that hard to imagine how you could redraw those so that Oregon has six Democrats in Congress and zero Republicans. Um, similar sort of story in, in Illinois. The 16th district, uh, in kind of the center of the state, held by Congressman Darin LaHood, that is an R+1 right next to a D+18 and a D+18. Uh, Maryland is another place. Maryland has a Republican congressman. New Jersey is another place where there are some very heavily Democratic areas that are in safe Democratic seats that you could figure out a way to spread out.
And voters, the public, they hate this kind of stuff. And I think that's one of the things that has been a limitation on gerrymandering so far. I mean, the reason that Oregon has one Republican in Congress and the eastern two-thirds of the state, uh, is because, I mean, one explanation for that is that the people drawing the maps think, you know, maybe that's, it's good for the state to have a rural constituency that is represented in some ways. And also, if we gerrymandered this to make it 100% Democrats, uh, the public would, would despise that and would accuse us of, of rigging the political game. And so, that's why they've always left that seat there. But if this is an opportunity where, uh, the Democrats in those states can say, "Look, Republicans are escalating, so we have to escalate too." Um, I mean, I think it's bad for the political system, but the, the end result might be a wash between red states and blue states. It's, it's mutual assured gerrymandering destruction in some sense.
Yeah, that's a point I was trying to make. We don't know what the rules, how it's going to come out, but it could turn out to be, uh, uh, just a lot of reshuffling of seats across states, but no real edge for, uh, either party. But we, we shall see. Certainly, the fact that Trump, uh, has been so vocal in, in, in, in driving this is going to probably help Democratic turnout if this keeps up. Uh, Alicia, that would be my guess. But what about the president's claim today that, uh, what we need here mid-decade is a new census, and if we have a new census, it will be done so they will eliminate illegal migrants and not include those in the count, and if that happens, of course, he thinks that would be in that plus for Republicans. Uh, as I read the Constitution of the United States and the, uh, enumeration clause, you only get to have a, a census, an enumeration, a change in redistricting based on a new census every 10 years. You couldn't do it. You can count, uh, because you know people, uh, but you can't then redistrict based on it except every 10 years.
Right. And there are reapportionment. Can't, uh, change the, uh, number of Congress or House seats, uh, going to each state more than once every 10 years. Now, he, in his first term, tried to or attempted to put a citizenship question on the census, which got, uh, tied up with all kinds of litigation. Blue states sued, uh, it eventually went up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court blocked it under a ruling that it was arbitrary and capricious. So they never actually reached the merits of the argument that the, the census or the Commerce Department, uh, didn't have the authority to put this question on. But so that's still an open question. I would argue that it does. But there's a broader, uh, practical problem is that you cannot, doing a census and preparing for a census takes many years. In fact, they start preparing for it soon after finishing the next or the last census. And that's because there's all kinds of statistical work that goes into it. Um, and even right before you, uh, embark on the census, you have to hire, um, tens of thousands of census workers. So, it's not something you could do in, in a year or even two. Uh, uh, so I think that that's, uh, a pie in the sky. It's not going to happen. Uh, maybe, uh, Donald Trump can rant and rave about it, uh, but this isn't just, it's unrealistic.
So, here we are. Uh, uh, the redistricting wars are certainly going to rage for a while here, back and forth. Is it ever going to end, or are we stuck with this? Uh, the Supreme Court said that, uh, political gerrymandering based on partisan preferences is not justiciable. In the Rucho case in 2019, Rucho v. Common Cause, so you can gerrymander to your heart's content as if you can do it, and, and claim it today. Just, I'm just trying to elect more people in my party. Um, the one place where these, uh, gerrymanders are justiciable, uh, at least up to now, is for racial, uh, reasons. The court has said that, uh, has tolerated majority, uh, minority districts, uh, under the Voting Rights Act. But now the court has taken a Louisiana case for next term that, uh, that would be, they will take that up, and maybe, maybe they will bar, uh, racial gerrymandering as well. Now, let's assume for the sake of argument, I don't want to get into the details of that case, but let's assume for the sake of argument that, uh, the court does say, we're going to stay out of racial, the racial gerrymanders as well. Um, and you can just gerrymander, assuming it'll be based on partisan reasons. Um, uh, is, are we just fated to have this go on forever, Kyle?
Yeah, I mean, as sad as it sounds, we might be. There are a couple of, uh, caveats I would add. One is that there is some self-limiting nature to gerrymandering in the sense that the more you spread out your party's voters to try to win more seats, uh, the thinner those margins become. And so one thing that could limit gerrymandering is if some of these states think they are creating five new Republican districts or three new Democratic districts, and then the political winds shift in such a way that they get wiped out in a wave election and that gerrymander fails. Uh, that would be an interesting lesson for some of the mapmakers in those states. Uh, the other thing that could happen is you could have increased efforts to ban partisan gerrymandering. Uh, the trouble is at the state level, we've had some of those, uh, including in New York, and the people who are in power in those states now seem to deeply regret that their state voters passed those restrictions, and they see it as unilateral disarmament. I mean, there are some real procedural hurdles now in the state constitution of the state of New York, uh, that are going to be a problem if Democrats are going to try to respond to Texas by re-gerrymandering New York. And so, uh, they may be not, that may serve as a warning to other states, uh, against those kinds of proposals. Though voters in states that have ballot initiative processes could always take them up and put them in the constitution even over the objections of the reigning political powers. Um, Congress could also get involved here. One of the, the California Republicans who is potentially at risk of being gerrymandered out of his seat now here by Gavin Newsom is, uh, saying he's going to offer some legislation to ban mid-decade redistricting, and that would help. The difficulty, as always in Congress, is that in order to get something passed, you need both parties, you need, uh, to surmount a Senate filibuster for something like that. And so you'd have to convince everybody that this kind of rule would not disadvantage either side. And given that Republicans seem to feel like they're on the offensive here in Texas, they might not want to do that right now.
Yeah, I think the only, uh, uh, real check on this is probably political defeat. Uh, trying to go so far that it backfires on you. Uh, but I don't see, other than that, I mean, politicians will seek political advantage, and particularly in this hyper-polarized era where, um, the stakes seem very large about holding or losing, uh, one house of Congress, they are going to keep doing it.
All right, we're going to end it right there, uh, on that happy note. Uh, uh, thank you, Alicia. Thank you, Kyle Peterson, Alicia Finley. Thank you all for listening. We're here every day on PTOIC Watch. Hope to catch you tomorrow.
[Music]