We also discuss why, in the light of new rulings striking down GOP gerrymanders in North Carolina and Ohio, state supreme court races are so important. Plus, how would you react if your former congressman sent you an email that began, "I don't know what I'm doing"? Enjoy a chuckle with us.
David Beard:
Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir:
And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. For those of you just checking us out, the Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the thousands of elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate city council.
David Beard:
This is our fourth episode. So if you haven't already listened to them, we've already got an interview with Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, 2022 midterm overview with Daily Kos elections editor, Jeff Singer, and a discussion of Democrats current polling with Civiqs co-founder Drew Linzer. So you can look back and check those out as well. And while we're still in the early days of this podcast, we'd like you to subscribe to the Downballot, to tell your friends who you think might like it and leave a five star rating interview. But let's go ahead and dive into today's episode. What are we covering Nir?
David Nir:
Today we are going to be talking with Daily Kos Elections contributing editor, David Jarman, who is going to walk us through district by district of the changes that redistricting has made to the maps in some of the biggest states in the country, including New York and Texas and several others. But before that, we are going to take a quick look at a few of our weekly hits. We're going to discuss some redistricting rulings and state Supreme Court elections in North Carolina and Ohio. And then we are going to talk about a couple of members of Congress. One current, one former, both of whom have been enmeshed in scandal and are hoping to prolong or revive their political careers.
David Beard:
So, let's go ahead and dive into this week's weekly hits. Nir why don't you go ahead and start us off.
David Nir:
So last week I talked about a pretty distressing redistricting ruling. That was the Supreme Court staying a decision in Alabama that said that black voters were entitled to a second congressional district in the state. This time, I want to talk about a much more positive set of redistricting rulings. And those are in the state of Ohio, which is a state that has not been particularly friendly to Democrats in recent years. And in fact, Republicans have very large majorities in the state legislature. They completely control the government there and they passed extreme gerrymanders, both for the state legislature and for Congress. But they ran into a massive roadblock and that is the Ohio Supreme Court. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected all three maps, state house, state Senate and Congress in different cases saying that they violated the state constitution as illegal partisan gerrymanders. Right now we don't know what the replacement maps will look like.
David Nir:
It'll probably be a while before we do. But what I wanted to emphasize is not the case itself, but how we got to this point. The reason why is elections for the state Supreme Court. These are races that get far too little attention, and that progressives often overlook. I will say that the right does not overlook these. Big industry spends a lot of money to try to win these elections for top courts in states around the nation so that they get friendly justices who will rule in their favor on cases where big money is at stake. However, in Ohio, Democrats actually succeeded in flipping a Republican held seat on the state Supreme Court in 2020. It was won by Jennifer Brunner. That still was not enough for Democrats to take the majority there. However, one of the judges on the Supreme court who is a Republican, the Chief Justice, Maureen O'Connor, is quite moderate in her views.
David Nir:
And she joined with all three Democrats to invalidate these GOP gerrymanders. And she was quite angry about what Republicans were trying to do to her state. And this outcome would not have been possible, had Brunner not won her race and also had O'Connor not been on the court. A standard Republican would have voted with their party and we would've lost four to three. There are three seats on the Ohio Supreme Court that are up for election in November, including O'Connor's. So, Republicans could wind up wresting control back. Brunner is actually running for O'Connor's seat as Chief Justice. A couple of other Democrats are challenging the two incumbent Republicans who are also going to be on the ballot. These are hard races to win, but their importance just cannot be overstated. And also I'll add, no one likes electing judges. It's a terrible system. No other country in the world does it this way.
David Nir:
They think we're insane for doing it this way. We are insane for doing it this way. But this is the system we have. And as long as we have this system, then progressives have to focus on winning these races. And not just in Ohio, because there are many other states at stake as well. And one of them, which also in a similar fashion just gave us a very strong anti-gerrymandering ruling, is a state that I know Beard wants to talk about. And that's his home state of North Carolina.
David Beard:
Yes. So, I'm from North Carolina originally. And the state Supreme Court there is very closely divided as well. It has a four three democratic majority. So, four Democrats and three Republican and there's unfortunately, no Maureen O'Connor on the North Carolina Supreme Court. So the ruling has been the four Democrats ruling against the gerrymandered maps from the North Carolina legislature and the three Republicans all ruling to keep the maps. Unfortunately, the way that the North Carolina system is set up, the governor Roy Cooper, who is a Democrat, does not have any veto power over the maps. So the state legislature has the ability to pass them with a simple majority vote. So, the Supreme Court is the only real check on the legislature's ability to pass whatever maps they want.
David Beard:
And so similarly to Ohio, there are North Carolina Supreme Court elections this year. It is two Democratic seats that are both up. And so those will be very hotly contested. They are seats that Democrats really need to take seriously and do everything in their power to win, as we've said and will continue to say, it may be a rough year for Democrats. And so it may be an uphill battle to win these seats, but we have to do everything in our power to try to do this and try to hold on to the majority in the North Carolina state Supreme Court.
David Nir:
In North Carolina, where they also rejected the GOP's congressional labs and the legislative maps, things are a little bit further along and Republicans have actually now come back with round two on their congressional maps. What are those looking like?
David Beard:
Let me preface this by saying this is an extremely fast moving situation as it is in Ohio. So, you may listen to this and the events on the ground may have changed a bit, but as of when we're recording this, there are two maps that have been proposed. One by the North Carolina Senate, one by the North Carolina House. I believe the Senate has already said they're going to propose a new map on Thursday. So, this is still very fluid, but the similarity in both of these maps, and I think what folks expect to be the sort of map that gets passed, is what you would call sort of a seven, 7-5-2 map, which is seven strong Republican districts, five democratic districts, mostly strong one is a little more unstable in a more heavily Republican year. And then two districts that you would classify as competitive, but that were one by Trump and that are more than likely Republican leaning, particularly in 2022, you would really expect Republicans to hold onto them.
David Beard:
In a good Democratic year you could definitely see them being vulnerable, but it's definitely not sort of a non-gerrymandered map. It is a less gerrymandered map than the originals, but it is definitely not a fair partisan free map. And you can see this if you just spend a few minutes looking at them, both of them maps take Orange County, which is where Chapel Hill is located. So it has a very liberal population, a lot of students. And instead of connecting it with any of the many cities around it, not Greensboro, not Winston-Salem to the west and not Durham or Raleigh to the east, it instead takes Orange County. And one of the maps traverses it all through central North Carolina to Union County, which is a suburb of Charlotte on the South Carolina border. And the other map takes it up to the Virginia border and travels you all the way west for reasons, sort of beyond understanding all the way to the mountains of North Carolina, to Watauga County, which is another college town.
David Beard:
But with enough rural more Republican leaning areas in between to keep it a Republican seat. So, it seems very strange that they've done this. It's clearly a gerrymander, there's no reasonable reason to do this. And so it's a question to see obviously what the final maps will look like A, but then B, will the Supreme Court of North Carolina sort of accept a less gerrymandered map where there are some improvements, for example the Winston-Salem, Greensboro seat that Kathy Manning holds, which was cracked in the original map has been recreated. And as again, a safe Democratic seat, or will they say this is still a gerrymander, this is not like a nonpartisan map. And so you need to go back and try again. So, that's something to be determined and something we'll definitely be following in the weeks to come.
David Nir:
So, we've been talking a lot about Republicans we don't like, particularly in the Ohio and North Carolina legislatures. But let's take a moment to talk about a Democrat who we really, really don't like.
David Beard:
So, down in south Texas, there's a competitive house race in Texas 28th District. The democratic primary is coming up in a couple of weeks. And representative Henry Cuellar is being challenged by Jessica Cisneros. Cisneros is running for the second time, and she's been endorsed by Daily Kos back in 2020 when she lost a very narrow election to Cuellar 52-48, and is now running again. And some of the myriad reasons that Daily Kos and a lot of progressive organizations have endorsed Cisneros is because Cuellar is the last anti-choice Democrat in the House. He's one of the last anti-labor Democrat. He voted against the Pro Act, which was a big major pro-labor bill that passed the House last year. And he has generally been a thorn in the side of a lot of democratic priorities while he's been in Congress. And so it's been a very close race.
David Beard:
It's been very heated. It was upended by a federal investigation that has been ongoing and came out a couple of weeks ago when the FBI rated Cuellar's house and his campaign headquarters. We don't really know much about the investigation. There have been reports that it's associated with the oil-rich former Soviet Republic, Azerbaijan, but it's very much just sort of out there in the ether and something that's very concerning. And so it was particularly strange for Cuellar to come out with an ad calling Jessica Cisneros a risk and associating her with a lot of left-wing ideas and left-wing groups. Because I think it's a lot more of a risk for a candidate to be under federal investigation than for somebody to have somebody who said something be associated with them.
David Beard:
And so this is somewhat of a competitive seat. It was a seat that Biden won, but it's not a big democratic seat. It's a seat that's moved to the right due to the shift in Hispanic vote in south Texas. There definitely is worth thinking about the general election, but the idea that the candidate under federal investigation is the safe choice, I think is a bit too much to believe.
David Nir:
That really does take a lot of chutzpah. And that transitions us perfectly to our final weekly hit because we're going to talk about another, in this case, former member of Congress who has also been tarred by scandal. Now, all of you like us, you're on a lot of email lists from candidates. You get messages all the time. But imagine if you got one that started like this, "I don't know what I'm doing." That is exactly how former Republican rep Scott Taylor started an email to his list recently saying that he's thinking about trying for a comeback in Virginia's second congressional district. Why is he trying for a comeback? Well, because he got his ass handed to him in 2018 after his staff tried to get a former Democrat on the ballot as an independent in order to pull votes away from the real Democrat, Elaine Luria by faking signatures. This completely blew up in Taylor's face.
David Nir:
The fake independent was kicked off the ballot, multiple of his staffers were indicted and charged. Taylor himself claimed not to have any knowledge of this scandal, but Democrats ran tons of ads hammering him over it. And Luria ousted him in the Democratic wave of 2018. He tried to run against her again, this time he lost by a bigger margin. The first time he lost by two points. The next time he lost by six points. So when he says he doesn't know what he's doing, maybe we should believe him. Well, I'll tell you who definitely does believe him. That would be House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, just a couple of days after Taylor sent this really bizarre email, he specifically endorsed state Senator Jen Kiggans, for this race. Clearly he doesn't want his old member back. And that really is saying something, especially if Kevin McCarthy knows what he's doing more than someone else does.
David Nir:
We are going to take a short break. And when we are back, we are going to do a deep dive of some of the big, new congressional maps that have recently been enacted with the help of Daily Kos Elections contributing editor, David Jarman. Stay with us. Joining us today is Daily Kos elections contributing editor, David Jarman, who has been a member of the DKE family for many, many years going back to our days as the Swing State Project. He joined us in 2008 and over the years, he has developed an incredible acuity for analyzing political maps and understanding the implications of how districts are drawn and what that will mean for elections based on these new congressional redistricting plans that we've been seeing nationwide. So, we are going to take a deep dive, go far into the weeds with Jarman, looking at various congressional maps that have been completed across the country and seeing what they might hold in store for not only the midterm elections, but for the coming decade. Jarman, thank you so much for joining us.
David Jarman:
You're welcome. Glad to be here.
David Nir:
So, why don't we start with my home state of New York? This is a state where demo credits had total control of the redistricting process and they decided they were not going to unilaterally disarm and they wound up producing what has to be regarded as a pretty aggressive gerrymander. So, why don't you walk us through some of the most salient feature of this new map?
David Jarman:
Yeah, this is a good place to start because it's probably the biggest surplus of any democratic gain of any state. What we had before, was a 20 Democrat to seven Republican map. Although in one of those seats that Biden won, there's a moderate Republican who has great endurance, John Katko, but the new map has 22 Democratic districts and four Republican districts. So, you could look at that as a net of three to four seats probably. Well, on Long Island, there used to be two slightly Republican seats in Suffolk County, which is the furthest east part of Long Island, they rearranged that so that now one of the seats is likely to be Democratic going forward. And the Republican occupant of that seat Lee Zeldin already helped us out by running for governor. So it's an open seat as well. Following that is Staten Island seat, which is new York's 11th district.
David Jarman:
This is a traditionally Republican seat that links Staten Island with Southern parts of Brooklyn that are Republican leaning. And what they did instead, was taking out areas around Brighton beach and Coney Island that are Republican and parceled those out to other districts that are much safer. And instead stuck in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which is... You associate that with well educated, younger white people, hipsters basically. And they've grafted that onto Staten Island, which makes it on the balance, a Democratic leaning seat and another likely pickup.
David Nir:
So, the Staten Island seat, that's the 11th district, the one held by Nicole Malliotakis. And this is the seat where Bill de Blasio was thinking about running for a little while?
David Jarman:
Yes. And mercifully he's spared us that trauma. So likely the nominee will be Max Rose. The former representative filled the seat for two years before losing in 2020. He does potentially face a primary though.
David Nir:
Right. And Rose was definitely a more moderate Democrat, but obviously having held that seat, he brings a lot of name recognition. So, why don't we then move further on upstate to see what else Democrats were able to rest from Republicans?
David Jarman:
Well, we could talk about the 22nd district, which was centered on Utica. That's the seat that is essentially got vaporized because New York had to go down from 27 to 26 seats. It very narrowly missed being able to retain its 27 seats in the census, but they felt just short of the mark. And one of the seats had to go overboard. And the person who went overboard with it is Claudia Tenney, who represented the 22nd. Though we should point out that she is likely going to run in the 23rd, which is the old Southwestern New York seat where Tom Reed is retiring. And a very small portion of the old 22nd is now in the new 23rd. So she can bring 70,000 constituents with her. But most of the territory will be new to her. But it's a solidly red district. So, if she can survive the primary, she will still be around.
David Nir:
So now you mentioned the 22nd district, the district number shifted a little bit, right? And so now there is a new district that's numbered the 22nd district, but that really is the successor to the old 24th district. And you were alluding to that one earlier?
David Jarman:
Yes. That's the Syracuse based district where John Katko was the representative for a number of years. However, he too is retiring not to run for anything else. Just, I think he saw the writing on the wall regarding his district and he is leaving office. And that is now likely to be a Democratic seat in the future.
David Nir:
About how blue is that seat? How good of a shot do Democrats have at picking that one up?
David Jarman:
Yeah, it's nearly a 60/40 seat, which it's 58 to 40. So, I don't think there's any coming back from that, even with a Katko style moderate.
David Nir:
Right. And the odds of a Katko style moderate winning a GOP primary, even in a district that gave 58% of its vote to Joe Biden is probably not in the cards. In fact, I'd say it's not in the cards really anywhere for Republicans. So, that run through gives us then Republicans losing half their seats going from eight to four, and then Democrats going from 19 to 22, if my math is correct there. And so, I think you said at the start, you could either consider that a gain of three or a gain of four either way it goes. That's probably the biggest shift on the margins in terms of maps favoring Democrats that we're going to see this year.
David Jarman:
Yeah, absolutely. The next biggest contender is probably Illinois, which is another state where the Democrats had complete control of the redistricting process. And they did not hold back in any sense at all. In fact, I think the map is a little more aggressive looking than New York's. And that went from a 12 Democrat and six Republican map previously, though one of those seats that Trump narrowly won was held by a Democrat Cheri Bustos. That is now a 14 Democrat and three Republican seat. So, several Republicans went overboard and while Cheri Bustos is retiring, it's a much bluer seat now. And whichever Democrat tries to succeed her is likely to have a better time.
David Beard:
Yeah. And one thing I want to just note, is that obviously one thing that's come up a lot among prognosticators, is that in a big Republican year, which this might be, there's worry that seats that Biden won and seats that are Democratic leaning might be won by Republicans if it's a bad year for Democrats and a good year for Republicans. And that's true, but we're looking at these from the perspective of the median year. So, it may be the case that's one or more of these seats are held onto or won by Republicans in 2022, but that's not true in 2024 or so on. These are districts that in most cases are going to be around for 10 years. So the fact that a Republican might win at once in a big Republican year, is maybe not as relevant as the fact that overall we would expect Democrats to win them throughout the decade.
David Jarman:
Yes, that's right. There's kind of a Schrödinger's cat quality to this whole discussion because we're talking about what would happen all of things being equal versus what would happen in a midterm where there's a Democrat in the White House, and the losses are going to occur because of thermostatic public opinion more so than what happened in the redistricting process.
David Nir:
Thermostatic public opinion is definitely a topic you will hear us talk about a lot this year on the Downballot podcast, but we're going to shift gears from talking about Democratic gerrymanders and look at some states where redistricting was in the hands of an independent board.
David Beard:
So let's move to Michigan where they have an independent redistricting commission for the first time after it was passed by ballot initiative. And their commission has undone sort of a GOP gerrymander that had taken place in the previous decade. It had started to break down in 2018 due to strong democratic performances. So, the number of democratic and GOP representatives may not change as much, but there's a big change on the ground in terms of how the districts are set up and how democratic or Republican leaning they are. Jarman, why don't you kick us off with sort of the Detroit suburbs area and how things have shook out there?
David Jarman:
Basically what happened is that two democratic representatives got put together in the same seat, Haley Stevens and Andy Levin, they're both running for a pretty blue seat that ‘scentered in Oakland County, which is the more affluent of Michigan's two big suburban counties. And there's another one which is the 10th going forward, which is very narrowly a Trump won district. But potentially one where a democratic candidate could still win, but that's an open seat. So, there is a possibility of one fewer democratic representative in the Detroit area than we currently have. But on the flip side, we may well gain a seat in the grand rapids area where the seat that Peter Meijer holds, who's a Republican freshman, went from a narrowly Trump won seat to one that Biden won by a decent amount and will probably support a Democrat in most years.
David Beard:
And it's worth noting that the Michigan-11, Oakland County seat, if you go back to 2010, 2012 was originally drawn as a Republican gerrymandered seat. And because of the big shift in suburban areas, particularly in suburbs like Oakland County, it was won by a Democrat in 2018. It had become still competitive, but more and more democratic leaning. And now with the new draw where it's not gerrymandered, it's a very safe Democratic seat that wouldn't have existed if you go back a decade.
David Jarman:
Ironically, you see that in a number of states, even in Illinois, where the seats that were drawn to be Republican vote sinks, are now Democratic. And some of the more rural seats that were intended to be democratic friendly are now pretty solidly Republican owing to changes in the party's coalitions over the course of a decade.
David Nir:
And that's a point really worth emphasizing, just circling back to what both Beard and Jarman were saying earlier, just because you have a sense of how a map might perform in 2022, who knows what it'll look like in 2028 or 2030?
David Beard:
Exactly. And I just want to touch briefly on a couple of other districts in Michigan that had some small changes, both with Democratic representatives, Michigan-07, which is now a Lansing based district that had previously gone into the Detroit suburbs and Michigan-08, which is the sort of Flint district. So both of those sort of just changed a little bit. And so got a little better, a little worse for the democratic representatives. Right?
David Jarman:
Yes, that's right. Dan Kildee, who represents the Flint area district, it has a pretty closely divided district that Biden narrowly won. But on the other hand, Elisa Slotkin who represents the Lansing area seat had a seat that Trump formerly won, which now narrowly Biden won seat. So, that strengthens her position. She probably would've been the most and probably may well still be the most vulnerable Democrat in the Democratic caucus in Michigan, but she's a little better positioned to survive now in 2022.
David Beard:
So, let's move on to Arizona, which is another state with an independent redistricting commission. It has five members, two Democrats, two Republicans and one independent. And last cycle back in 2011, 2012, when redistricting happened, the Arizona legislature and the governor felt like the independent member was too friendly with Democrats because they were Republicans and they tried to get rid of her. They went to court, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the independent member. And so we had very fair, very competitive maps that Democrats did pretty well in because they won close races. And so this cycle there's been another commission, the independent commissioner who has to be a registered independent. I think the wide belief was that she was a little friendlier with the Republicans this time, tended to vote a little more with the Republicans than the previous cycle. So, there were some changes, I wouldn't call it exactly like an aggressive gerrymander or anything like that, but it's definitely made some tweaks that benefited Republicans. So, why don't you tell us Jarman what some of those changes are?
David Jarman:
Yeah. On the surface, you might look at it and say, well, that map didn't really get any worse. It's still a five-four map to the extent that there are still five districts that Joe Biden won. And four that Donald Trump won, which is pretty much right in line with Arizona being one of the closest states in the 2020 election. But what happened a little below the surface, is that previously there was only one democratic held seat that was close at the presidential level. That one is now pretty solidly a Republican seat. The former first district, which is now the second district held by Tom O'Halleran in the Northern part of the state, including Flagstaff and the Navajo Nation. But the new first district is what used to be the sixth district. That's in Phoenix's eastern suburbs and it's held by a Republican, David Schweikert.
David Jarman:
This is now one of the two districts that we're very narrowly won by Joe Biden. I think this is one that the Democrats have a good shot at going forward in future presidential years. But even though it's about a 50 for Biden, 48 for Trump's seat currently, probably not the best odds of picking it up under these kinds of midterm conditions. And the other seat that's at issue is the former second. Now the sixth, which is in the Tucson area, the Anglo parts of Tucson that used to be Ann Kirkpatrick's seat. She is retiring. And that seat used to... Previously went for Biden by about 10 points, and now it went for Biden by less than a fraction of one point. So, between that and the open seat status there, that is going to be a difficult retention.
David Nir:
I have to compliment you Jarman for keeping track of all of these changes in district numbers. This is something that is really important to stay on top of whenever you are analyzing new maps. And it can be really tricky to know which old district is which new district and vice versa. But fortunately, at Daily Kos Elections because we love data so much, we have a resource that shows exactly how new districts line up with old districts. We will include that link in our transcript. We'll link it right there. So, if you're interested, just find our transcript, you can find a link to the transcript in the show description, and then a link to our old versus new district resource in the transcript.
David Beard:
And one of the things about Arizona, like we've talked about for some of these previous states, is because the way it was set up that two districts are extremely narrowly won by Biden that you can think in any sort of good Democratic year where it's even just a little bit good, there's a good chance that Democrats will win five seats and Republicans will win four seats, but because of the narrowness of the new first and the new sixth districts, any Republican lean at all will easily make this map a sixth Republican three Democrat map, which is far from what you would think of as fair if there's only a slight Republican lean in the country for a state that was so closely contested.
David Jarman:
But in a more neutral presidential type election, it could easily revert back to a five-four map, or if there's a midterm under a Republican president at some point in the coming decade.
David Nir:
And people talk about the number of competitive seats shrinking overall, thanks to the most recent round of redistricting, the one that we're undergoing right now. And that's absolutely correct. However, when the House is as closely divided as it is right now, it doesn't take too many competitive seats obviously to shift the playing field, but that playing field has in fact gotten a lot smaller and maybe the best state to talk about in terms of how it's shifted and how the number of competitive seats has really shrunk is Texas, which is the largest Republican held state in the country. It gained two congressional districts as a result of the census most recently, and Republicans have full control of the redistricting process there. And they really engaged in what has been called a defensive gerrymander. So, Jarman, what exactly is a defensive gerrymander and how did it play out of Texas?
David Jarman:
Well, what happened in Texas is that there were nearly half a dozen seats in the 2020 election that hadn't really been competitive earlier in the decade but because of their educated suburban populace were pretty close in the most recent election. Though in each of the cases, Trump only narrowly won against Biden. And what's nefarious about the Texas gerrymander, on the surface it looks, okay, that was fine because the Democrats added a seat in Austin and the Republicans added a seat in the Houston suburbs, but those five or six seats that I was talking about where Trump won by only a few points have all been transformed into ones that he won by over 10 points or more.
David Jarman:
In fact, one of them, the 24th, is a seat that Biden actually won narrowly in 2020. And even that one is now one that Trump won by more than 10 points. That's in Dallas' northern suburbs currently held by Republican Beth Duyne. And her win in 2020 seemed like a bit of an upset that was probably on everyone's list is one of the most likely seats to flip. But it did not flip in 2020.
David Nir:
What are some of the other seats that have gotten a similar treatment and that are probably off the table for Democrats at least for the near future?
David Jarman:
Well, in the Houston area, there's the second, the 10th and the 22nd. And in the Dallas area, the third and the sixth as well. The 10th, actually you could call that an Austin area seat. It's one of those weird worm shaped seats in Texas that spans from one metropolitan area to another one in a totally different part of the state. I will call it a Houston area seat though.
David Nir:
Do you think that any of these seats by the end of the decade, if you're able to say even though there's no certainty of course in such predictions, but do you think any of them might shift toward Democrats and Republicans might not have shored themselves up as well as they think, or did they really create something rock solid?
David Jarman:
It's pretty solid considering that they've boosted them all to more than a 10 point edge. I think you'll see some... If the trends that we've seen in the last four years continue where college educated suburbanites continue to flee the Republican party, then yes, it will get closer, but there's always the possibility that we've essentially maxed out on that. And whatever coalition changes we see coming in the next decade, will be coming from some other direction that we haven't really foreseen yet.
David Nir:
Now, Republicans did not engage only in defensive gerrymandering in Texas, they also went on the offense and they in particular seemed pretty excited about possible trends towards the GOP among Latino voters, especially in south Texas. So, what did they rearrange there?
David Jarman:
Well, the 15th district in the McAllen area, which is sort of the heart of the Rio Grande Valley was previously one that Biden won pretty narrowly. It's one that Democrats won pretty comfortably in previous parts of the decade, but the sudden shift in the Latino vote in the Rio Grande Valley turned this into a swing district. And they with the map, they turned that narrowly into a Republican leaning district. So, that's possible they will... That will be the one Republican pickup in Texas in 2022. To flesh that out with some numbers, the 15th went from a 50 for Biden, 49 for Trump district on the old map, to now 48 for Biden, 51 for Trump. So, that doesn't seem like a big shift on paper, but when you're talking about a district that's that narrowly divided, that could be what's decisive.
David Nir:
And also, as we were saying, the trends have not been favorable for Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both won that area by much larger margins. So, if those trends continue, then Democrats could definitely face some difficult sledding ahead in south Texas. But of course, we don't know if it's a trend because it really was just that one election.
David Jarman:
Yeah. They could be losing the 15th anyway, regardless of the Republicans making that a more difficult district. But on the other hand, we can see the same thing that I was talking about with the suburbs in reverse that the Latino shift to the right in rural Texas just stops, where It was a one-time occurrence and reverts more to the norm. But again, we won't simply won't know that for a few more cycles.
David Beard:
And then there was one other district that the GOP sort of shored up out towards El Paso that had been quite competitive in the last decade. And they sort of moved to make that one more Republican in the hopes to keep it off the board. Right?
David Jarman:
Right. That's the 23rd district, which is geographically an extremely large district that reaches from El Paso to parts of San Antonio and then down towards the Rio Grande Valley as well. And that moved from being one that for instance, Clinton and Obama won pretty convincingly to one that Biden lost anyway, just because of the shift among Texas Latinos and the Republicans added a couple more points of Trump percentage to that one in the redistricting process. So, that is likely moving out of our reach as long as Latino trends continue where they are.
David Beard:
So, there've been a ton of maps obviously already enacted. We can't go through all of them here today, but we do want to hit a couple of states where maps have been proposed are sort of in the legislature and process. There's some clarity as to where things are going, but there's still a lot of in this case, GOP and fighting. And so those states are Florida and Missouri. So, let's kick it off with Florida where the GOP completely controls the process. There is a fair district's amendment in the state's constitution, but it relies on the state Supreme court to enforce it, which is now very conservative. So, it's a little unclear year as to how aggressive the Republicans are going to be. The state Senate has largely been on the more moderate following sort of the spirit at least in part of the fair district's amendment, whereas the state House, and particularly Governor DeSantis has gone extremely aggressive into a gerrymander. So, Jarman, why don't you tell us where sort of the big changes are and where sort of these controversies are between the different GOP factions?
David Jarman:
Right. The map from the Florida Senate was surprisingly neutral keeping in mind they're Republican controlled just as the house is in Florida. It may well have resulted in a democratic gain of one seat, just in terms of where they put the new seat in the I-4 corridor. And like you said, that's the Florida Senate trying to comply with the fair district's requirements and trying to generate a map that won't be subject to much further litigation. But I think the maximalist position is coming from the governor instead, who wanted to not only destroy the seventh district, which is a light blue seat in the Orlando suburbs that's held by democratic representative, Stephanie Murphy, who's retiring. But also going after the fifth district, which in its current configuration is a black majority, or at least black plurality seat that links Jacksonville with Tallahassee. So, what DeSantis would like is to break that district up and eke out one more Republican district in the Panhandle area. So, he's going for the maximum Republican gain of probably those two seats.
David Nir:
And there's a backstory here as well, which is that Ron DeSantis has presidential ambitions and it's a base pleasing move to push for a maximalist gerrymander. And he's even hinted that he might veto a map passed by his fellow Republicans, which of course would mean he's sticking it to the rhino squishes the swamp creatures that the Trumpists hate. The interesting thing there though, is that Democrats seem to be pretty okay with what the GOP is proposing. In fact, the Senate map passed with a mostly bipartisan vote. So we could actually see a bipartisan override of Ron DeSantis's ambitions. And we're seeing a similar story play out in Missouri, where we have hardcore fanatics also pushing for a hardcore gerrymander. What's going on there?
David Jarman:
What the hardcore contingent in Missouri would like is a seven Republican to one Democrat map, which is a change from the current six-two configuration. And I guess the more establishment Republican perspective on the new map is they would just continue with six-two, but what they would like in a seven-one map involves having to split Kansas City several ways, essentially cracking it in redistricting and adjoining the different pieces of Kansas City to other rural dark red districts.
David Nir:
Why do you think that the establishment, the GOP leadership in Missouri is resisting the opportunity to break up Kansas City between multiple red districts?
David Jarman:
Well, one part is that they probably don't want to risk what's known as a dummymander where your bright idea about maximally redistricting bites you in the butt later in the decade when coalitions change, or just when the wave is running the other direction in a midterm. The other aspect is the Anne Wagner in the second district in the St. Louis suburbs on the other end of the state, is pretty adamant about not wanting her district to get redder so that she doesn't lose in a primary. Not that she's moderate, but that she's pretty much the archetype of establishment Republican and is worried about having, as she said, too many wacko birds in her primary.
David Nir:
Well, the wacko birds right now in the Missouri Senate are controlling the agenda. They've been filibustering, they've been putting up procedural hurdles and there is tremendous bad blood right now. There's no real clear exit path at all. In fact, there's no murky exit path. Perhaps a total standstill would lead to a court drawn map. We will just have to see.
David Beard:
One other thing to keep in mind about Missouri is that the GOP lost their two-thirds majority due to some resignations in one of the Houses. And they need that two-thirds majority to pass the law as a emergency legislation to allow to go into effect early. Otherwise, it goes into effect as all laws going to affect apparently in Missouri in August. And that would be too late for things like the filing deadline and the primary to get set up. And so they need a two thirds majority in both chambers to be able to do this cleanly.
David Beard:
The Democrats can stop them from doing that, which could result in a court map, which is, I think part of the reason why the Republican sort of established majority is just like, "Let's go with a status quo map, let's just pass this through." And why the radical conservatives have been all up in arms where they're holding the floor and doing the sort of filibuster, which the establishment Republicans could overcome, but are sort of reluctant to do to their own party. So, it's a very messy situation and it's not clear how it will turn out.
David Nir:
And redistricting is indeed often a messy situation for every state you have like New York or Texas, where everyone is reading from the same hymnal and marching to the same drummer. You have a state like Florida or Missouri, where the infighting, often GOP infighting is leading to messy outcomes or no outcome at all. David Jarman, thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive across the redistricting landscape. We look forward to having you back on to about new maps once those are in place.
David Jarman:
Thanks for having me. And I will see you again soon.
David Beard:
That's all from us this week. Next week, we'll have a comprehensive preview of the Texas primary that's coming up on March 1st. Thanks to David Jarman for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday, everywhere. If you haven't already, please like and subscribe to the Downballot and leave us a five star rating interview. Thanks also to our producer, Cara Zelaya, and editor, Tim Einenkel. We'll be back next week with a new episode.