Today, Monday February 19 2024, Wisconsin governor Tony Evers signed new state legislative maps into law, ending ~14 years of GOP gerrymandering. Even so, some progressives are just a bit upset about these final maps, because they didn’t give the Dems as big an advantage as possible. Some Democrats were even calling on Evers to veto the maps! But I think Evers made a perfect play in this situation, because it forces the GOP to take credit for the new maps and takes away (some) of their ability to organize against it.
The Democrat-majority state supreme court was preparing to pick from 4 proposed sets of maps; three of these gave democrats a slight edge in both the state assembly and state senate, while the fourth gave dems a 3-seat advantage in the senate but the GOP a 1-seat advantage in the assembly. This fourth proposal was actually created by Gov. Evers himself, and is the plan that was just passed and signed.
I think this proposal was bait!
The state supreme court was preparing to impose maps themselves, but they gave the GOP-controlled state legislature the chance to pass new maps themselves first. Nobody expected them to agree to maps which both Evers would sign, and the court would accept as sufficiently nonpartisan. However, as the GOP looked at the 4 possible maps they’d have forced on them, they decided to take initiative and pass the Evers plan, as its the least-bad map for them. Today, Tony signed those maps, cementing them in for the rest of the decade (assuming the court approves them, which is very likely).
The brilliance of this move is that the new maps are bipartisan!! These new maps were approved by most GOP legislators. They now “own” these maps. They can whine and complain about process, but in the end they consented to them. This will weaken their ability to organize around undoing the maps, the way Dems have organized since 2011 around ending the gerrymandering. It also significantly complicates their attempts to overturn the maps in court. If the GOP is able to flip the state supreme court in 2025, they will be on much weaker grounds to overturn these new maps (that THEY passed) compared to if the dem court imposed the new maps. It also lets Evers campaign as a bipartisan unifier.
Finally, the Evers plan has a few swing seats in areas that are trending blue. The map score is based on 2020 results, but there’s no reason why the continuation of trends (suburbs getting bluer) won’t lead to this map becoming a more dem favoring map this fall or the following cycle. Also, some of these areas will have the first contested elections in 15 years, so local organizing will hopefully bump up the dem vote share enough to win a majority.
Overall I’m feeling great about it!
EDIT: I also want to point out that basically all the old school moderate GOP members of the state legislature are gone now, there’s really nothin left but the crazies, and I expect them to do terribly in these close swing seats. They wont be able to run on “dems rigged the maps” when they literally voted for them! I think we are gonna clean up.