Maryland’s redistricting commission drafted a new map with the potential to oust the state’s lone Republican member of Congress, one of four proposed redistricting plans that shuffle some voters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
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The four options released late Tuesday by the Maryland Legislative Redistricting Advisory Commission redraw the state’s eight sprawling and tentacled congressional districts, which favor Democrats and have been labeled among the nation’s most gerrymandered.
Karl S. Aro, the chairman of the seven-member commission comprising top legislative leaders, said the proposed maps are a “starting point” and the result of testimony during the commission’s nine public hearings.
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“The message has been consistent — Marylanders think their representation can be improved with more compact and easily followed districts,” Aro said in a statement.
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With Democrats clinging to slim majorities in Congress, power brokers across the country are watching how states including Maryland recast their maps and whether those revisions will tip the scales in Washington.
Although one of the four options released Tuesday would make it more difficult for conservative Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md) to win reelection, three others redraw the existing boundaries in ways that might not yield an additional Democratic seat for the reliably blue state. Two options would make some districts held by Democrats more competitive for Republicans. Several hew to the current map, whose political gerrymandering a decade ago triggered a legal challenge that ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019.
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The commission, empowered by the state’s General Assembly leaders to draft options, released the maps for public comment in advance of the legislature’s Dec. 6 special session to pick a plan.
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Aro said that “to the extent practicable,” the commission tried to keep Maryland residents in their existing districts. He said “no map is perfect” and asked the public to weigh in on the options proposed.
A spokesman for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Joanne Antoine, the executive director of Common Cause Maryland, a nonpartisan group that advocates for fairer maps, said Common Cause had been anxiously awaiting the release of the commission’s proposed maps. She said she was pleased to see that the commission released a variety of proposals.
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“We’re happy. … We thought it might be just one map,” she said. “Giving the public and advocates different options to weigh in on is helpful.”
She said advocacy groups will offer feedback in the remaining three public hearings that the commission has scheduled over the next week, including a statewide virtual hearing Monday evening.
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Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has offered a competing proposal and lambasted the Democratic supermajorities in the legislature as conjuring up proposals behind closed doors. The independent citizen redistricting commission Hogan convened presented him with its own plan for how the congressional and legislative districts should be drawn.
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On Friday, Hogan called on the Democratic-controlled legislature to use the citizen drawn maps and not its own. “For decades now, Maryland’s political power brokers have conducted the state’s redistricting process in secret behind closed doors, which is why we want to make sure that the people of Maryland are actually the ones drawing the lines — not the politicians or party bosses,” Hogan tweeted on Monday.
Maryland is not among the states that have directed mapmakers to draw compact districts or avoid favoring a political party. The General Assembly has the final say on which plan takes effect.
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The redistricting that followed the 2010 Census roiled some advocates, who complained that the misshapen districts were drafted to target one of the state’s two Republican congressmen. The gerrymandering by Maryland’s Democrats occurred as Republicans in other states, notably Wisconsin, similarly redrew boundaries to benefit their party.
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Since then, some Maryland state lawmakers from both parties have sought to strip the legislature of the exclusive power to draw the electoral maps.
Nationwide, advocacy groups affiliated with Democrats have filed lawsuits in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Minnesota seeking to weigh in on the map-drawing process and blunt what they see as efforts to favor Republicans. Advocacy groups aligned with Republicans have similarly moved to challenge maps that they say unfairly favor the left.
Redistricting battles kick off early as Democrats scramble to try to cut into GOP advantages
Last week, Hogan said he was hopeful that the Maryland General Assembly would pass “fairer” boundary lines, but he also predicted that if Democrats decided to “blatantly gerrymander” again, the maps could result in another legal challenge.
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State Senate Minority Whip Justin Ready (R-Carroll) on Tuesday blasted Democrats for even considering a map that could edge out Republicans.
“An 8-0 map would be a complete outrage and unjustifiable by any objective measure,” Ready tweeted. “[Seven to one] is really unjustifiable when you look at the (yes blue but not 7-1 statewide) makeup of Maryland.”
Andy Harris, Maryland’s only Republican in Congress, fears being written off the map. Some say it could happen.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan lambastes ‘closed-door’ redistricting process