Democrats celebrated two wins in the redistricting wars on Wednesday, as a Pennsylvania court approved the party’s preferred map and a panel of North Carolina judges rejected GOP-drawn Congressional districts and instead accepted new boundaries proposed by a non-partisan group.
“Today is probably Democrats’ single best redistricting day yet,” tweeted Dave Wasserman, a well-respected analyst for Cook Political Report.
Wasserman said Democrats are now in a favorable position to retain all their Pennsylvania Congressional seats and that they will be competitive in three North Carolina races that would have been slam dunks for the GOP if their gerrymandered map hadn’t been rejected.
Republicans are furious about the North Carolina decision in particular. Tim Moore, the GOP speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, called the judges’ decision “egregious” and vowed to appeal.
POLITICO explains how Wednesday’s rulings are the result of an intense Democratic effort to retain their majority in the House:
Across the country, state high courts have played a massive role in shaping the contours of the House map for the next decade. A landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2019 punted the issue of partisan gerrymandering out of federal judges’ hands into state courts, and Democrats embarked on a concerted campaign to gain control of those bodies ahead of redistricting.
Republicans seethed at the rulings, blaming them on the Democratic effort helmed by former Attorney General Eric Holder and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
“We allowed Barack Obama and Eric Holder to outmaneuver the Republican committees in those states and the RNC,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christe, a co-chair of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, said to reporters. “And we can’t take for granted these these Supreme Court elections and what impact they can have on the maps that are going to rule the country from a congressional perspective for the next decade.”
Reuters provides key context:
Republicans need to flip only a handful of seats in November’s midterm elections to recapture control of the U.S. House and stymie much of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.
States must redraw their congressional maps every 10 years under federal law to account for population shifts. In most cases, lawmakers control redistricting, leading to partisan gerrymandering, the process by which one party manipulates district lines to increase its power.
With more than three dozen states having completed new maps, neither Republicans nor Democrats have gained a significant advantage. Republican gerrymanders in states such as Texas, Tennessee and Georgia have been countered by Democratic ones in Maryland, Illinois and New York.