(AFP) – Republican-controlled Texas and Democrat-run California forged ahead Thursday with creating new congressional maps, in a cutthroat struggle to tilt the outcome of next year’s US midterm elections. The battle between the country’s two largest states was set off by President Donald Trump’s drive to protect the thin Republican majority in the US House of Representatives and avoid becoming mired in Democratic Party investigations from 2027.
Under pressure from Trump, Texas fired the starting gun in a tussle that pro-democracy activists warn could spread nationwide. Its state house on Wednesday approved new congressional boundaries that would likely eke out five extra Republican districts. The state senate is expected to green-light the bill on Friday morning and send it to Governor Greg Abbott for a signature.
California Governor Gavin Newsom — an early frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination — struck back with a plan for a new map that would likely cancel out Texas by adding five Democratic seats. The state’s legislature on Thursday overwhelmingly approved the plan, with thumping majorities in the house and the senate, both of which are Democrat controlled.
“We will not let our political system be hijacked by authoritarianism,” Speaker Robert Rivas said, shortly before the vote. “Today, we give every Californian the power to say no… to Donald Trump’s power grab and yes to our people, to our state and to our democracy.” Voters will now be asked if they want to temporarily redraw constituency boundaries for elections, up to and including 2030.
The Texas House approved its new district boundaries after a two-week drama sparked by Democrats fleeing the state in an effort to block the vote and draw nationwide attention to the issue of partisan redistricting, known as “gerrymandering.” The Senate Special Committee on Congressional Redistricting passed the new map in a 5-3 vote Thursday lunchtime, teeing up a Friday vote of the full chamber. Redistricting usually occurs once every decade, taking into account population changes registered in the latest census.
– ‘Clinging to power’ –
The unusual mid-decade effort in Texas is expected to spark a tit-for-tat battle, potentially dragging in liberal-leaning Illinois and New York, and conservative Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri. “The Great State of Missouri is now IN,” Trump announced Thursday on social media, in a post understood to be referring to redistricting. “I’m not surprised. It is a great State with fabulous people. I won it, all 3 times, in a landslide. We’re going to win the Midterms in Missouri again, bigger and better than ever before!”
But New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul called the push the “last gasp of a desperate party clinging to power,” warning Trump that she would “meet him on the same field and beat him at his own game.” Former president Barack Obama endorsed California’s retaliation as a “smart and measured” response to anti-democratic moves by Trump. “(Since) Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House and gerrymandering in the middle of a decade to try and maintain the House despite their unpopular policies, I have tremendous respect for how Governor Newsom has approached this,” he said.
Newsom has a tougher task than Abbott in pushing through the redistricting plans, as California voters must first agree in a referendum in November to bypass the independent commission that normally controls the process. Californians have traditionally been wary of partisan redistricting, and while Democrats have called for independent commissions nationwide, a new Politico-UC Berkeley Citrin Center poll shows they would make an exception for the pushback against Texas.
Republicans are suing Democrats, alleging that November’s vote would be unlawful, although the California Supreme Court rejected an initial challenge late Wednesday. “Yes, we’ll fight fire with fire. Yes, we will push back. It’s not about whether we play hardball anymore — it’s about how we play hardball,” Newsom said in a call with reporters.
– Huw Griffith with Frankie Taggart in Washington
© 2024 AFP
