Tom Hofeller has been all over the news lately based on the thumb drives and hard drives his daughter found after his death and shared with attorneys for Common Cause. We know he was a central figure in the GOP’s continued attempts to solidify a political advantage through gerrymandering voting districts and putting a citizenship question into the 2020 census. We also know, thanks to the new revelations, that he deliberately sought through his efforts to favor “Republicans and non-hispanic white” voters to the disadvantage all other voter constituents. In other words, he was a straight-up racist pushing a racist cause.
What else do we know about this man? How deeply did his roots and the rot and the racism within the Republican party go? Turns out very deep and very wide….
Hofeller Has Been a GOP Operative Since At Least the 70’s an 80’s
Hofeller apparently was interested in redistricting issues since the 1970’s when he worked a stint for the California legislature, and also founded a think tank at Claremont McKenna college. According to his NY Times obituary from last August, he joined the Republican National Committee (RNC) in 1981 “where he quickly became the national party’s redistricting guru.” He worked there for a number of years before working a number of other GOP jobs, including as “the staff director of a house committee overseeing the [1990] census.” Hofeller returned to “redistricting full time in 1999.”
Hofeller Used To Be Against Gerrymandering...When It Was Used Against Republicans
Way back in 1985 (again according to the NY Times obituary), Hofeller assisted the plaintiffs in a case challenging gerrymanders — drawn by and favoring Democrats — as unconstitutional. When the tables turned and gerrymandering began to favor the GOP, Hofeller changed his position and ultimately became the “Michelangelo of the modern gerrymander.”
Hofeller Was a Key Operative in Project REDMAP
The Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP) was a project started shortly after President Obama was first elected in 2008 by the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC). The RSLC at the time was chaired by Ed Gillespie and backed by Karl Rove (look those dudes up if you don’t know who they are). The explicit goal of REDMAP — “keep or win Republican control of state legislatures with the largest impact on congressional redistricting.” In other words, target money to win GOP control of state legislatures with maximal possibilities of gerrymandering to ensure and extend control.
By 2010, the RSLC had raised and presumably spent $30 million on REDMAP. In the elections that year, the Republicans gained full control of 21 state legislatures, up from 9 previously. Then Hofeller was brought in. According to a 2014 Rolling Stone article, in 2010 the REDMAP Executive Director wrote a letter to state legislators offering “seasoned redistricting experts” that were made available to the state legislators at no cost to them. “Employing computer software known as Maptitude, Hofeller and his team used sophisticated data-mining techniques to draw new districts that maximally disadvantaged Democrats.” Hofeller gerrymandered the hell out of those maps, but attempted to get around an obviously-unconstitutional racial gerrymandering challenge by basing the maps on districts Obama won. REDMAP was employed in at least North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio.
The fruits of REDMAP started to be borne in 2012 — that year in Pennsylvania, for example, the state sent 13 GOP to the House and only 5 Democrats, even though 83,000 more Pennsylvanians overall voted for Democrats over GOP. Similar bloodbaths occurred in North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin...
Hofeller — the “Michelangelo of the Modern Gerrymander”
According to just the three articles cited in this blog (NY Times, Rolling Stone and Slate), it appears that Hofeller has had a hand in redrawing Congressional maps in at least North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Alabama, Texas. There may be others.
There have been Constitutional challenges in the courts to Hofeller’s maps with mixed success. For example, Hofeller’s initial post-2010 map for North Carolina was ruled unconstitutional. Hofeller was again brought in to devise yet another map, and the challenge to that map in the courts is ongoing with a trial apparently slated for July.
Hofeller Linked the Citizenship Question to Redistricting
Hofeller, who had been working on census issues since at least the 1990’s, wrote a memo in 2015 advocating for inclusion of a citizenship question in the 2020 census. Hofeller clearly understood the link between putting a citizenship question on the census and gerrymandering — in both cases the goal is to maximize the voting power of a favored constituency over the voting power of disfavored constituencies. Gerrymandering does this by concentrating the disfavored voters into a small number of districts, with comfortable majorities for the favored voters in the remaining districts. The citizenship question on the census does this in two ways: first by suppressing and undercounting the number of people in disfavored areas, and second by potentially drawing Congressional maps based on citizen count only (called CVAP or Citizen Voting Age Population in Hofeller’s 2015).
What Did Hofeller Say that Was Racist?
In his 2015 Memo, Hofeller noted that a citizenship question would “boost the voting power of Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.” His memo also cynically advocated relying on the Voting Rights Act in response to expected court challenges to the citizenship question.
Counsel for the plaintiffs in a court challenge that has been brought have submitted evidence that Hofeller’s 2015 memo was shared with the DOJ, and that Hofeller discussed the citizenship question with relevant GOP operatives (Neumann and Gore), and helped ghost-write a letter submitted by the DOJ in response to the court challenge. The DOJ letter utilizes many of the same arguments from the 2015 memo, including reliance on the Voting Rights Act.
Conclusions and What to Do Going Forward
From the RNC, to the RSLC and back-channels, and state committees, to the current administration and the citizenship question, the Republicans have been pushing an undemocratic plan to redraw maps to empower white Republicans at the expense of everyone else. And we are all living through it. Hofeller is dead, but his legacy lives on. His daughter has done us all a favor by turning a spotlight on a time when Hofeller “said the quiet part out loud.” It is obvious that racial gerrymandering is racist — but it is good to see that the GOP insiders are not fooling themselves on this fact. They are conscious racists.
To extricate ourselves from his legacy and this rot, it is important to know all the details and rectify them.
Going forward, i want to know how many maps and in how many states Hofeller wrote that are still in place — and I want i want Democrats and right-thinking Republicans to work to rip all of those maps up and replace them with maps that seek to ensure one-person one-vote.
Going forward, i want the truth to be told, that one party has sought to subvert democracy and the concept of one-person one-vote to entrench themselves in power .
Going forward, i want it to be asked of every Republican candidate in office or running for office — where do you stand on the racist gerrymandering and the racist citizenship question?
Going forward, i want the people who lied to the courts in North Carolina about their maps and Hofeller’s involvement to be brought to justice. i want the people who lied to the courts about the real basis for the citizenship question to be brought to justice.
I want the Republicans to stop what they are doing — they must be made to stop.
I welcome any other thoughts folks might have for how to extricate ourselves from this mess going forward. If you’ve made it this far — thanks for reading.