Democratic Party leaders across the country are reeling from the recent decision by the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn the Commonwealth’s redistricting plan approved by voters. Some fear the worst, believing that their effort to retake the House in the midterm elections this fall may fail. While the Virginia case may cost them some seats, it is not at all clear that the Republican gerrymandering scheme will actually increase their margin of victory.
Most of the congressional districts being redrawn are currently represented by Black Members of Congress. Civil rights leaders throughout the country are outraged. “It is a direct attack on our democracy and our Constitution to dismantle majority-Black districts. A democracy without Black representation is not a democracy,” said Kristen Clarke, the NAACP’s General Counsel.
Republicans hope this last-minute move will help them retain control of the House by creating a firewall to protect against the president’s record low popularity. They should know better. They were the ones who helped create so many congressional districts gerrymandered to elect more Black Members of Congress in the first place.
Gerrymandering is a tradition nearly as old as our democracy. Elbridge Gerry (pronounced Gary) was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a member of the Continental Congress, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, a member of the First Congress, governor of Massachusetts, and later vice president under James Madison. At the Constitutional Convention, he warned against the people becoming “dupes of pretended patriots,” and he pressed for impeachment as a check on executive abuse. He was one of the few authors of the Constitution to refuse to sign it out of these concerns.
In 1812, as governor of Massachusetts, Gerry approved a state Senate map drawn by his Jeffersonian Republican allies to protect their partisan advantage. One Essex County district looked to Federalist critics like a salamander, and on March 26, 1812, the Boston Gazette christened it the “Gerry-mander.” The term has lasted over two centuries.
In 1988, Lee Atwater became chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and made redistricting a central national objective. Atwater tasked Ben Ginsberg, then general counsel to the RNC, to lead the redistricting effort. Ginsberg’s strategy was highly unconventional and breathtakingly audacious. Black voters in the South had often supplied the margins for White Democratic incumbents without getting a realistic chance to elect Black representatives of their own. Rep. Bobby Scott later told Jeffrey Toobin that, before the 1990s, White Democrats often kept African American percentages around 35 or 40 percent, enough to help White Democrats win but not enough to elect Black Democrats.
In 1994, Ginsberg told the New York Times that “the strategy and tactics were meant to break the back of the Democratic gerrymandering of 1980 and create fair and competitive districts… A good part of that was the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.” If Ginsberg could significantly increase the size of the CBC, Republicans would dominate the congressional districts surrounding the new Black ones. He invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in state-of-the-art redistricting software and sold it to Black civil rights leaders like the NAACP for a pittance.
The RNC effort successfully increased Black representation in Democratic districts, making the surrounding districts whiter, more conservative, and more Republican. In 1990, there were 25 members of the CBC. Today, there are 62. 1994 was also the year Republicans won the House for the first time in over 40 years.
Atwater and Ginsberg used the Voting Rights Act as a shield and a sword. Today, many Republicans are effectively discarding both.
Today, Republicans believe they could gain as many as 17 seats by this year’s redistricting strategy and many Democrats fear they are right. It’s not. President Trump lost more than 40 seats in the House in 2018. President Barack Obama lost more than 60 in 2010. Today, President Trump’s approval rating is lower than Richard Nixon’s was the month he resigned.
David Graham’s Atlantic analysis notes that to create more Republican-favored districts, GOP legislators must spread their voters more thinly, and if Democrats perform well, Republican candidates can find themselves at risk. AP reported that Texas Republicans saw a prior gerrymander’s advantage erode in 2018, when Democrats flipped two seats that had been considered safe for Republicans during a backlash against Trump. That’s why University of Texas at Dallas political science professor Thomas L. Brunell calls it “dummymandering.”
If Black Democratic voters are no longer packed into protected districts, they do not vanish. Motivated by their disenfranchisement, their votes may well determine whether this year’s Republican gerrymander becomes a firewall or a firestorm that engulfs them.