Editorial: Gerrymandering invites a concerning tit-for-tat

Published 1:30 am Saturday, August 16, 2025

By The Herald Editorial Board

Lawmakers in several U.S. states appear to be girding loins — and doesn’t the thought of middle-aged and senior solons tucking their robes into their belts paint a mental picture? — for a tit-for-tat battle of gerrymandering congressional districts as each party seeks advantage ahead of next year’s midterm elections for the U.S. House of Representatives.

It’s not that efforts to rig districts to the benefit of a state’s majority party haven’t happened before; it’s that usually such gerrymandering — named for a 19th century Massachusetts governor who approved a salamander-shaped district — typically happens only after the every-decade national census.

Mid-decade redistricting now is raising its amphibian head following a recent demand by President Donald Trump of Texas’ governor and legislature to redraw congressional boundaries to squeeze out five more districts that would favor Republican candidates, shifting the current makeup of 30 Republicans and eight Democrats. Proposed maps of the new districts were prepared, but before they could be adopted, Texas Democrats fled the state to deny the legislature a quorum, prompting threats to arrest and fine the absent lawmakers.

Now, those lawmakers are reportedly ready to return, allowing under protest adoption on the new maps. But that’s raised a new threat — specifically from California’s governor and its legislature — to retaliate if Texas adopts new districts with its own redistricting effort that could help secure five more seats for Democrats among its current delegation of 43 Democrats and nine Republicans.

Call it mutually assured gerrymandering.

Several other states are considering their own mid-decade redistricting campaigns, including New York, Missouri, Maryland, Florida, Ohio and Indiana.

Washington state, wisely, is staying above the fray, recognizing that there wouldn’t be time for the state’s redistricting commission to consider such changes before the 2026 elections, nor the inclination among a board of four bipartisan voting members — two Republicans and two Democrats — to break a tie on proposed boundaries.

Yet, even without this Washington’s participation in the map sweepstakes, there’s heightened interest from at least one of its delegation, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, the 1st Congressional District Democrat, who as national chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is responsible for advising Democrats’ campaigns for election and reelection to House seats.

DelBene earned reappointment to the position on the strength of Democrats’ finish in the 2024 election, which held Republicans to a slim majority in the House — following what was expected to be a “red wave” election — after Democrats picked up two additional seats, among 14 seats in districts that voted for Trump, including that of Washington’s 3rd district, Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez.

Good government advocates have decried the practice of gerrymandering and pushed for national reforms that would put redistricting in the hands of independent commissions, free from partisan interference.

Legislation in 2021 in the then-Democratic-controlled House, H.R. 1, would have required independent commissions and barred mid-decade redistricting. DelBene, as did the Washington delegation’s six other Democrats, voted in favor of the bill, but a Senate version was filibusted and did not advance.

DelBene, during a conversation Thursday with the editorial board, still supports such reforms.

“Folks want to pick their representatives. They don’t want their representatives picking their voters,” she said. But in the face of Republican gerrymandering in Texas and possibly other Republican-led states, she spoke in support of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal, noting important distinctions between the two states’ approaches.

The big difference, she said, was that the demand to redistrict didn’t come from voters in Texas; it came from the White House.

Newsom’s proposal, instead, would put the question first before voters on Nov. 4, and set new district boundaries only if Texas or other Republican-led states actually adopt gerrymandered districts. As well, redrawn maps would be used only for elections in 2026, 2028 and 2030, with redistricting authority returned to California’s state commission after the next census in 2030.

“We’re not going to let this go unanswered,” DelBene said. “If this is the path they go down, this impacts everyone’s representation across the country. … California has said we’re going to take the case to the voters, that this is how we respond, and the people will decide. That’s a huge difference.”

With the midterms more than a year away, however, redrawn boundaries won’t guarantee control of the House.

Already, some in Texas are warning that redrawn districts in Texas will have to count on Republicans keeping the allegiance of Hispanic voters who went Republican in 2024, but may be cooling to the Trump administration and Republican officials, in particular over a mass deportation policy that has not focused solely on criminals as promised but has also swept up hardworking — if undocumented — immigrants.

Nor should Democrats — many who have previously argued against politically directed redistricting — think themselves immune from the cynicism of voters skeptical of the party’s conditional embrace of partisan gerrymandering.

There’s much at stake in next year’s congressional elections, DelBene noted. Even if Republicans keep their majority in the Senate, a resumption of Democratic control of the House could allow a significant shift in D.C.’s power dynamic, with Democrats again able to provide oversight, call hearings, question Trump administration officials, determine what bills come to the floor and even find some support among enough Republicans for bipartisan priorities, including on trade, tariffs, budget negotiations, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, national security and — importantly — on Congress’ own role in the check and balance of powers.

But those behind this summer’s redistricting battles ignore one point: Republicans and Democrats should remember that even gerrymandered boundaries don’t necessarily decide elections; the voters do.