The Texas congressional maps have been all the rage over the last month or so, and the controversy is now coming to a head.
Gov. Greg Abbott finally signed the maps into law, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom conducted a preemptive strike of his own.
Vice President JD Vance was doing a Sunday media tour this weekend, and the Texas maps were a hot topic, but he quickly put a reporter in place on the subject when she tried to make the GOP out to be the bad guys.
I will be the first person to tell you that gerrymandering is wrong, and I will then tell you that everyone does it, and that Democrats are some of the worst offenders.
For instance, California is a state with about a 60-40% split in Democrats' favor, yet its maps have only 12 Republicans, about half of what it should be.
Connecticut has five House seats, all of which go to Democrats, even though the state is about 55-45% in favor of Dems. Nearly 45% of voters are Republicans, yet they have no representation in Congress.
Illinois has 14 Democrats and three Republicans in the House, yet Trump captured nearly 43.5% of the vote in the last election. Based on those numbers, Dems should have no more than a one or two-seat advantage, but Republicans are only represented by 17.6% of the congressional seats.
Maryland has eight congressional seats, but only one of them is filled by a Republican.
Roughly 35% of voters in the state are Republicans, yet they have only 12.5% of the seats, so conservatives are shorted about two seats in the state.
Yet, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, is talking about removing that one seat to fight back against Texas.
Moore was asked, “There is one seat here that is actually Republican and it is a seat held by Rep. Andy Harris. Are you considering trying to redraw lines in Maryland?" He responded, "When I say all options are on the table, all options are on the table.”
Vance appeared on Meet the Press this weekend with Kristen Welker, and she went right after him regarding the Texas maps, but Vance was ready and shut the narrative right down.
He stated, “First of all, Kristen, you have to ask yourself why have Democrats gerrymandered their states aggressively in the past 10 to 20 years. If you look, for example, at the popular vote in a lot of these states, in Massachusetts, where 32% of the residents of Massachusetts voted for Republicans, zero Republican federal representatives.”
He continued, “All we’re doing frankly is trying to make the situation a little bit more fair on a national scale. The Democrats have gerrymandered their states really aggressively. We think there’s opportunities to push back against that, and that’s really all we’re doing.”
I have no problem with the media calling out gerrymandering, but it has to be done equally. You cannot give Democrat states a pass on this simply because they redrew their maps immediately after the census reports were finalized. Either do them by voter percentages or look at the final voting and make the maps relative to voter pockets, but also keep that in line with percentages. If you do that, perhaps we will have fairer elections in this country. Until then, this gerrymandering will continue to be a problem, always tilted in favor of the party in power.
