Dem
47
GOP
53
As a result of the elections Tuesday, two states are going to redraw their congressional maps: California and Virginia. This could net the Democrats about 8 seats, which might cancel out the Republicans' 2025 gerrymandering so far. If the Supreme Court kills the rest of the Voting Rights Act, at least half a dozen states in the South are going to dismember all of their majority-minority House districts, which could net another 5-10 seats for the Republicans, depending on how good they are at it. So the Democrats are scrounging for every seat they can.
Maryland is not exactly the Democrats' happy hunting grounds since there is only one Republican member of its House delegation that could be gerrymandered out of a job. Nevertheless, when every seat counts, well, every seat counts. Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), who previously was lukewarm on redistricting, has changed his mind. He is now going to create a redistricting commission to redistrict Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) out of his MD-01 seat. It may not be so easy. Maryland already has one of the worst gerrymanders in the country, with districts that are anything but compact. Look at the purple district, MD-03, for example. Here is the current map:
MD-07 and MD-08, which are contiguous with MD-01, have plenty of excess Democrats to dump into MD-01. The problem is that districts need to be roughly equal in population and contiguous and there is no place to put the Republicans in the Delmarva peninsula unless Maryland and Delaware renegotiate the border. Even the best gerrymanderers can't move unwanted voters out of state. It will take quite a bit of fine tuning to adjust the border of MD-01 with MD-02, MD-07 and MD-08 to expel enough Republicans. The problem is that the biggest concentrations of Republicans are in Queen Anne's County and Caroline County, which are in the middle of the Delmarva peninsula. The redistricting commission will have its work cut out for it. Of course, MD-01 doesn't have to be a slam dunk. Going from R+8 to, say, R+3, would make it winnable in a blue wave.
This isn't the first time Maryland Democrats have eyed Harris' seat. They went after it in 2020 after the census but a state judge said that the map violated the state Constitution's requirement of fair districts. But it is worth trying again. Maybe a different judge will have a different view in light of what other states are doing. (V)