Maryland Governor Wes Moore has spent months pleading with Democrats in Maryland’s state Senate to adopt a redistricting plan that would likely result in Democrats winning all eight of the state’s U.S House seats, instead of their current seven. National Democratic groups and congressional Democrats such as Jamie Raskin have been making the same case. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries even went to Annapolis last week to urge state Senate President Bill Ferguson to at least hold a vote on the new congressional maps and give each state senator a chance to weigh in.
They have all been ignored. Maryland’s Senate refused to hold a vote on redistricting, and Ferguson has declared the discussion over. The filing deadline for congressional candidates in Maryland was Tuesday, so any change in district lines will be even more complicated to carry out now.
It’s fairly unlikely that Democrats win exactly 217 U.S. House seats in November, falling a single seat short and thereby leaving the House in the hands of a Republican majority that is content to let President Trump ignore the Constitution and govern as a dictator. But if Democrats do end up just one seat short, everyone should point their fingers at Ferguson and the other 33 Maryland Senate Democrats (there are 13 Republicans). And even if that nightmare scenario doesn’t come to pass, Maryland’s lawmakers exemplify a problem that dogs the Democratic Party and therefore the country 10 years into the Trump era: Many Democratic politicians still refuse to acknowledge and act on the reality that they are in a civil war against the Republicans and that winning this war will require breaking with traditional norms and niceties and even some generally solid democratic practices.
Let me be clear: I absolutely hate gerrymandering. It results in elections where the results are predetermined. While both parties have gerrymandered in the past, over the last two decades Republicans have gone way overboard, rigging district maps to ensure huge GOP state legislative majorities in places like North Carolina where the two parties are roughly at parity.
Right now, though, Democrats have to gerrymander. Have to. With Trump’s poll numbers plunging and the GOP on a clear path to lose the House, Trump last summer demanded that Republican-controlled states start redrawing their districts to ensure a continued GOP majority. Redrawing district lines to avoid democratic accountability is literally in the authoritarian playbook: such a common tactic that scholars Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explicitly discussed it in their 2018 book, How Democracies Die. Texas quickly followed the president’s edict, and eventually so did Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina. Republicans, who currently have a four-seat House majority, would have gained around nine seats if they gerrymandered and Democrats didn’t respond.
But Democrats in other states did respond—moving heaven and earth to do so. California Democrats had to get a ballot initiative passed. Virginia Democrats have had to hold two separate votes in the legislature and still must get a measure approved by voters. But Democrats could pick up nine seats from those two states alone.
Democrats don’t have that much to gain in Maryland—only a single seat. But Republicans in North Carolina and Missouri went through with redistricting to flip one seat. After all, the House is more closely divided than ever these days. A single seat could matter. And Florida and other GOP states could still change their districts, so a 9–9 gerrymandering split is far from guaranteed.
So what’s up with Ferguson? He has given a few rationales for his moves. He claims that the redistricting plan is far short of the votes it needs to pass. He should prove that by holding a vote. Whatever they say in private, I suspect some Maryland state senators might not actually be willing to go through with a vote that would be cast as helping Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson.
Ferguson claims Maryland judges might rule the new maps a violation of state law. Fine. Make the judges issue those rulings. He claims that Democrats in Maryland might end up with fewer than their seven current seats, particularly if judges mandate new maps. I am more confident in the electoral judgment of Jeffries, Raskin, Moore, and the 99 Maryland House Democrats (out of 100) who voted for this redistricting than I am in Bill Ferguson.
Why the bullshit? My guess is that Ferguson and other state Senate Democrats don’t like the idea of being pushed by national Democrats and Governor Moore (a relative newcomer to Maryland politics, who is positioning himself for a presidential bid) to do anything, never mind a hyperpartisan action like gerrymandering. Politicians love to think of themselves as leaders and statesmen. Gerrymandering on the orders of party bosses is neither. Maryland Democrats aren’t alone in being wary of gerrymandering. Republicans in Indiana’s state Senate recently refused Trump’s demand to gerrymander the state’s two Democratic U.S. House seats out of existence. Liberals like me cheered Indiana Republicans’ move. Shouldn’t we be consistent and praise Maryland Democrats too?
No. Consistency is an important value. Drawing fair districts is a good democratic practice. But stopping an authoritarian leader from keeping and consolidating power is the highest priority in a country that wants to maintain democracy and freedom. It’s more important than good values and practices.
Why is this so hard for Democratic officials to understand? Bipartisanship is theoretically good. But it was stupid for Joe Biden to spend his first two years as president constantly praising Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans who had acquitted Trump after his treasonous acts on January 6, 2021. Refraining from using the legal system to punish your political rivals is in theory the correct practice. But Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden Justice Department taking essentially as long as possible to file charges against Trump was a huge mistake.
Maryland Democrats not gerrymandering a House seat obviously doesn’t rise to the level of the Democratic blunders that allowed Trump to run for and win a second term. But it’s February 2026. So many average Americans have spent the last 10 years doing whatever they can to defend America from Trump, from donating to candidates across the country to marching and protesting dozens of times.
But we constantly have to watch as Democratic Party politicians, who have far more power and influence than regular citizens, do the bare minimum. Maryland Senate Democrats not only won’t redraw their state’s House districts, they won’t even hold a vote on the idea. Spineless. Pathetic. If Trump, JD Vance, and the rest of the GOP succeed in turning America into an autocracy, they could not have done so without a lot of Democrats like Bill Ferguson.
