A top Democrat's case against a Maryland mid-decade remap

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore) offers some reasons that often get missed in national discussion

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore), according to Politico, has sent a letter to colleagues explaining why his chamber “is choosing not to move forward with mid-cycle congressional redistricting,” despite political pressure to do so. I recommend reading the full letter, which makes a number of points often skipped in other coverage:

* Ferguson has “spoken with my counterparts in other states. One theme has echoed throughout all these conversations that I do not think is being captured in national discussions regarding redistricting - several Republican states are resisting pressure to redistrict and are mostly able to do so because Maryland and other Democratic states are not redistricting either.”

* There is a very real chance that the Supreme Court of Maryland would strike down a proposed new map, given the example / precedent of Judge Lynne Battaglia’s opinion striking down the attempted gerrymander last time. (Politico says Ferguson “has previously alluded to the makeup of the state Supreme Court being a threat to redistrict, with five of the seven justices being appointed by former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.”)

* Significantly, a round of new challenges could imperil the existing map, which Maryland’s highest court has never reviewed. (The existing map is one the legislature pulled out of its desk drawer after Judge Battaglia struck down its attempt to put through an extreme partisan gerrymander; it was sufficiently acceptable to then-Gov. Hogan and Republicans that the legal challenges were dropped. I myself have described the second-try map, which became law, as moving 80 percent of the way from the egregious first map toward a genuinely neutral one). A truly neutral map, if the state high court chose to impose one, might give Republicans a better chance of adding another seat or two. “In Maryland, 31.5% of registered voters are registered Republicans,” Ferguson observes. They currently hold one of eight House seats from the state.

* Maryland has a tight schedule for the 2026 election and would probably have to delay its June primary to accommodate a mid-decade remap even if it went smoothly. But no one can predict how long the legal challenges would take.

* A new mid-cycle map might undercut the position of some black representatives.

* Finally, Ferguson expresses what he terms “personal” concerns about mid-cycle redistricting and its “potential long-term effects on the resilience and trust in democracy. It is true that I believe that mid-cycle redistricting in Maryland twists rules for potential short-term advantage while undermining trust in institutions and ultimately, democracy, but that is not the reason we should not pursue it. Simply put, it is too risky... the potential for ceding yet another [seat] to Republicans here in Maryland is simply too great.”

That seems a little upside-down to me -- I wouldn’t apologize for taking a position that I thought bolstered democracy and trust in institutions and insist that I was doing it instead from purely partisan motives. But he’s the successful politico and I’m not.

[NOTE: I served as co-chair of Gov. Larry Hogan’s citizen-based nonpartisan Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission, as well as two earlier commissions on redistricting. The Maryland legislature did not adopt the maps we proposed in 2022.]

Map of current Maryland congressional districts from Wikimedia. By StarBoyX - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119393556

Detail, division of Baltimore-area House districts under enacted gerrymander in effect 2013-2023.