By any objective measure, North Carolina Republicans have already imposed a heavily gerrymandered district map on the state’s citizens. Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project recently gave the state’s map an “F” rating, and the Brennan Center for Justice concluded that North Carolina’s district lines reflect some of “the most extreme levels of partisan bias” in the country.
Democrats still hold four of the state’s 14 congressional seats — despite relative parity on overall vote totals — which has apparently led GOP officials in Raleigh to conclude that a bad map can still be made worse. The New York Times reported:
Republican lawmakers in North Carolina announced plans on Monday to redraw the state’s already gerrymandered congressional maps to further favor their party. It’s the latest effort to help the Trump administration retain control of the U.S. House in the midterm elections next year. Phil Berger, the State Senate leader, and Destin Hall, the speaker of the State House of Representatives, said in a joint statement that they would hold votes next week on the rare mid-decade redistricting effort.
North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Josh Stein, was elected last fall, but he won’t have legal authority to block this partisan scheme: Under the state Constitution, a governor cannot veto redistricting plans.
In other words, if Republican state lawmakers want to follow through on their plan to abuse their power, there isn’t much of anything Democratic officials can do to stop them.
By way of a defense, the GOP chairs of the legislature’s redistricting panel issued a written statement to explain their motivation. “We’re stepping into this redistricting battle because California and the radical left are attempting to rig the system to handpick who runs Congress,” Republican state Reps. Brenden Jones and Hugh Blackwell argued. “This ploy is nothing new, and North Carolina will not stand by while they attempt to stack the deck. President Trump has called on us to fight back, and North Carolina stands ready to level the playing field.”
In other words, poor, unsuspecting Republicans are the victims of an outrageous Democratic assault, and North Carolina has a responsibility to help put things right.
This is, of course, shamelessly ridiculous.
While gerrymandering is a phenomenon that’s nearly as old as the United States — even predating the modern Democratic and Republican Parties — it was GOP officials in Texas, acting at Donald Trump’s behest, who got the ball rolling a few months ago on the latest redistricting fiasco, rigging the Lone Star State’s map to give Republicans five additional seats.
Democrats in California felt the need to respond and launched an effort (which has not yet passed) that would create five additional Democratic seats in the Golden State, specifically to match the Texas gambit.
Undeterred, the White House told Republican officials in Missouri to further gerrymander their map — predictably, they obeyed, resulting in one additional GOP seat — and Team Trump is still trying to orchestrate a related scheme in Indiana.
So the idea pushed by North Carolina Republicans that “the radical left” is trying to “rig the system” and “stack the deck” is completely contradicted by reality. That GOP officials in the state are cynically trying to deceive the public with lazy lies does not, however, mean they won’t succeed. Realistically, North Carolina Republicans might be able to squeeze out another Democrat or two, which might seem like a lot of effort for a modest payoff. But let’s not forget that the GOP majority in the U.S. House is already tiny, and if historical patterns hold true, Democrats are likely to make meaningful gains in the 2026 midterm cycle. And so a multifaceted partisan scramble is underway, with Trump and his allies targeting mail-in ballots, voter-ID laws, the census, voter registrations and indefensible gerrymandering — not because it’s responsible, and not because it’ll benefit the public, but because of Republicans’ desperation to hold onto power and prevent Democrats from gaining a toehold that might lead to some degree of accountability for the president. The stakes, in other words, are high, and if the redistricting arms race can result in a net gain of a half-dozen or so seats for the GOP — in effect, ensuring wins before voters can even cast their ballots — it might very well keep Republicans in power for the rest of the decade, no matter what the American people actually want. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
