Republicans seek to shift blame for unpopular redistricting war |
Republicans seek to shift blame for unpopular redistricting war
Republicans on Capitol Hill are seeking to shift the blame for the redistricting war onto Democrats, downplaying President Trump’s leading role in a gerrymandering frenzy that’s unpopular with voters of all stripes.
Trump instigated the rare, mid-decade redistricting fight last summer when he pressed Texas state Republicans to redraw their map with designs to eliminate five Democratic seats. Republicans were “entitled” to those seats, he argued, because Democratic gerrymandering in other states had disenfranchised GOP voters.
Almost a year later, that same argument is picking up steam in the Capitol, where a growing chorus of GOP lawmakers are racing to defend the president from Democratic charges that he’s trying to “rig” the midterms to keep Republicans in control of Congress for the final two years of his presidency.
Their message is simple: Democrats started it.
“This started because we had some of our blue states that got overly aggressive trying to displace Republican representation,” said Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas). “When you look at New England, 40 percent of their voters are Republican voters, and yet they have zero representation in Congress.”
Republicans are pointing to a handful of blue states where Democrats control all the seats in Congress. They include much of New England: Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine. But one state in particular seems to be getting special scrutiny: Massachusetts, the most populous New England state, where 36 percent of voters supported Trump in the 2024 presidential contest but all nine House seats are held by Democrats.
Trump denounced that disconnect when he launched the redistricting wars last summer, saying he was merely trying to even the playing field.
“In Massachusetts, I got, I think, 41 percent of the vote — a very blue state — and yet [Democrats] got 100 percent of Congress,” he told CNBC at the time.
“It shouldn’t be that way,” he added. “We should have a couple of Congress people, but we have none.”
A closer examination of the Massachusetts map, however, reveals a more complicated story about demographics,........