By: Emily Kennard, NOTUS  |thecity.nyc | Editorial credit: Ron Adar / Shutterstock.com

This story was produced as part of a partnership between THE CITY and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Rage over a proposed map that’s projected to cost Texas Democrats up to five seats in the U.S. House during the next election has pushed party leaders at every level to promise an all-out, tit-for-tat redistricting war.

After Democrats spent years railing against partisan gerrymandering — framing the practice as a threat to democracy, and even leading efforts to force states to have bipartisan, independent commissions draw maps nationwide — many Democrats are now whole-heartedly supporting efforts to cook up their own partisan maps.

“All’s fair in love and war. That’s why I’m exploring with our leaders every option to redraw our state congressional lines as soon as possible,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York told reporters at a news conference Monday, as she sat alongside Texas legislators who fled the state the day prior to block Republicans from enacting their proposed map.

Democrats far and wide are endorsing an unusually aggressive strategy to fight back against the GOP, a seeming admission that the party’s usual approach of relying on legal challenges and public pressure to fight gerrymandering isn’t sufficient to counteract well-organized Republican efforts.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which supports candidates for state legislatures, says Democrats everywhere should work to retaliate.

“To fully fight back against Republicans, Democrats must take up this issue all across the country,” the organization’s president, Heather Williams, wrote in a statement to NOTUS on Monday. “Our Democratic majorities in statehouses should not shy away from using their power to counter GOP gerrymanders — including mid-cycle redistricting.”

The DLCC’s Monday news release, though, hints at a darker reality of how a map war might turn out for the party nationwide: Democrats don’t hold “enough legislative majorities to win an all-out, state-by-state battle.” A majority of states still put its legislatures in charge of drawing maps — and a majority of state legislatures are controlled by Republicans.

Still, national Democrats are celebrating their Texas counterparts’ maneuvers. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Monday lauded it as “good trouble,” after he visited state lawmakers in Austin last week. He told CNN on Monday that the party’s response would be “all hands on deck” for Democrats at every level.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s options to force the map’s vote in the state Legislature will narrow as primary election deadlines approach — as long as Democrats remain out of the state, which is something they failed to do in 2021 due to party infighting. Abbott’s gone so far as to order their arrests to force the Legislature’s special session to continue.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was reported last month to have pledged six figures in opposition to the proposed Texas map, and the group’s chair, Rep. Suzan DelBene, has said that all bets are off when it comes to blue states retaliating in response to the proposal.

“We are not going to fight this battle with one arm tied behind our back,” DelBene told MSNBC last week. “We’re gonna see governors like Governor Newsom understand the impact that this has across the country. Trying to change the system so that people’s voices aren’t heard impacts everyone, and so whether it’s California, or others, folks are gonna stand up.”

Democrats embracing partisan gerrymandering is a stark departure from the party’s earlier responses to Republicans redrawing maps. Where Republicans have spent heavily to flip state legislatures with the expressed intent of drawing more favorable congressional maps — like with the 2010 Redistricting Majority Project, better known as REDMAP — Democrats have argued that lawmakers need to find a better way.

Eventually, Democrats turned to legal challenges to Republican-drawn congressional maps. But by that time, most of the damage had already been done.

Now, as Democrats signal a new willingness to fight back with their own cleverly drawn maps, they still might not have many options. In the Democratic states most primed for a redistricting, party leaders don’t have many immediate options — often restrained by the independent commissions and redistricting regulations that their party had previously pushed for. Still, Hochul said she’d support abolishing New York’s independent commission, citing the high stakes.

“I’m tired of fighting this fight with my hand tied behind my back,” Hochul said. “I will put saving democracy as my top priority at any cost because it is under siege.”

Redistricting New York before the next U.S. House election would be a long-shot effort, requiring approval both by voters via referendum and also by state legislators this year and again the next.

More Democratic governors have pledged their support. Although redrawing his state’s seats likely wouldn’t create many more Democratic pickup opportunities, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois is shielding some Texas state lawmakers from threats of arrests and lawsuits. Gov. Gavin Newsom also says he’s pushing, as a show of “strength,” to get California redistricted with a proposition on a November special election ballot, despite the state’s independent commission. It’s likely he’ll face a plethora of logistical and legal challenges, on top of an expensive campaign.

Federal and state Democratic leaders are reportedly coalescing behind specific redistricting plans for California in the hopes of gaining five more Democratic House seats, which would nullify what Republicans are estimated to gain in the chamber if Texas’ proposed map is enacted.

Some vulnerable House Republicans are looking to put a stop to a potential redistricting war before one starts. Calling Newsom’s plan a “corrupt scheme” on Monday, Rep. Kevin Kiley of California pledged to put up a bill to prohibit mid-decade redistricting nationwide. Rep. Mike Lawler on Monday said he would propose legislation to “ban” gerrymandering, too.

Some civic Democratic groups that have spent years advocating for fairer map practices, like the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, acknowledge the contradiction of Democrats actively rooting for partisan redistricting.

But they say the Texas Legislature’s map proposal created a need for Democrats to get behind gerrymandering.

“Our enduring commitment to fairness does not blind us to reality,” Eric Holder, the former attorney general and now-NDRC chair, wrote in a statement on Monday. “In this moment steps must be taken to respond to the authoritarian measures being considered in certain states and now so brazenly taken in Texas. We do not oppose — on a temporary basis — responsible responsive actions to ensure that the foundations of our democracy are not permanently eroded.”

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