Thursday, September 16, 2021

On Politics: Where Redistricting Stands in 14 States

We take a look at possible shifts in partisan power as redistricting maps start to trickle out.
Redistricting is happening in every state.Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press

Republicans are jockeying for a structural advantage in next year's elections and beyond, Democrats are trying to squeeze everything they can out of their limited leverage, marginalized groups are lobbying state officials to maximize their voting power and lawsuits are looming inescapably on the far side of it all.

Yes, the decennial redistricting process is well underway. And with draft maps starting to trickle out of legislatures and redistricting commissions, it's a good time to check in on where things stand.

Redistricting is happening in every state, even those with only one congressional district, because state legislative maps have to be redrawn, too. But we'll focus here on congressional maps in some of the states whose choices will shape the battle for control of the House next year. (Some other states — including Texas, which is gaining two seats and could be a gold mine for Republicans — are too early in the process to report anything meaningful, but watch this space.)

Under each state, we've indicated the possible shift in partisan power. But remember, there's still plenty of time for proposals to change.

Colorado

Democrats may gain one seat

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Colorado's redistricting commission recently redrew a draft map that would have combined liberal Boulder with conservative rural areas, putting Joe Neguse, a Democrat, and Lauren Boebert, a Republican, in the same district. The new draft would keep them separate. It would create five Democratic-leaning districts and three Republican-leaning districts, an improvement for Democrats over the current 4-3 split as Colorado gains an eighth congressional seat.

Georgia

Republicans may gain one seat

Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux — Democrats who flipped two House seats in the Atlanta suburbs in 2018 and 2020 — are the main targets for Georgia Republicans. As those suburbs become bluer, legislators are expected to consolidate more of them within one district and add conservative exurban areas to the second district.

Illinois

Democrats may gain one seat; Republicans may lose two

Illinois Democrats haven't drafted a new congressional map yet. But if their aggressive redistricting of the state legislature is any indication of their approach, it is possible that Illinois, which is losing a House seat, could go from 13 Democrats and five Republicans to 14-3. Democrats could accomplish this by turning Rodney Davis's red district blue and eliminating Adam Kinzinger's district. They could also protect swing seats like the one held by Lauren Underwood by adding Democratic areas to them.

Indiana

Republicans may protect one competitive seat

The Republican-controlled Indiana legislature released a draft map this week that would protect the only seat Republicans were at risk of losing. The proposed map would move some of the increasingly blue suburbs north of Indianapolis into the Seventh District, which is safely Democratic, thus securing the competitive Fifth District for its Republican incumbent, Victoria Spartz.

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Iowa

Democrats may gain one seat

Iowa's nonpartisan redistricting body released a draft map today that would create one safe Democratic district, one competitive district and two safe Republican districts. But the Republican-led state legislature may reject the map because it would give Democrats — who hold one of Iowa's four House seats — a good chance of winning two seats. (That said, it would also effectively cap Democrats at two seats, preventing them from holding three as they did in 2019 and 2020.)

Maryland

Democrats may gain one seat. Or Republicans might (but probably not).

Maryland's redistricting commission recently released a draft map that would create a second Republican district, making the state's delegation 6-2 rather than 7-1 in favor of Democrats. But given that the state legislature has the final say and Democrats hold majorities there, the chances that such a map would actually be enacted are minuscule. Democrats would rather go in the opposite direction and eliminate the sole Republican seat, held by Andy Harris.

Missouri

Republicans may protect one competitive seat

By packing more Democratic voters into the deep-blue district that includes St. Louis and is represented by Cori Bush, Republicans could make an adjacent district safer for a Republican incumbent, Ann Wagner. On the other side of the state, an aggressive gerrymander could theoretically allow Republicans to flip the district that includes Kansas City and is represented by Emanuel Cleaver. But it's not clear that Republicans intend to go that far.

Nebraska

Republicans may protect one competitive seat

Nebraska Republicans could gerrymander the Second District, which includes Omaha, to make it redder after Representative Don Bacon faced competitive races in 2018 and 2020 — and after President Biden narrowly won the district last year. (Nebraska is one of two states, the other being Maine, that awards some of its electoral votes by congressional district.)

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New Hampshire

Republicans may gain one seat

New Hampshire has been consistently Democratic in presidential races and is represented entirely by Democrats in Congress. But the state has elected Republicans to state offices, and it is those Republicans who will control the redistricting process. That means the competitive First District, represented by Chris Pappas, may be redrawn to be safely red.

New Mexico

Democrats may gain one seat

An independent redistricting commission is considering realigning the state, dividing it east to west rather than north to south, and creating more competitive districts than currently exist. But Democratic legislators will have the final say, and they may try instead to make all three of the state's House seats safely Democratic after one of them flipped to a Republican, Yvette Herrell, last year.

New York

Democrats may gain four or five seats

New York, which is losing one of its 27 House seats, has a bipartisan redistricting commission, but its recommendations are not binding and its members are struggling to agree anyway. The Democratic governor and Legislature are likely to bypass the commission and draw their own lines. They could knock at least four Republican incumbents out of Congress by combining conservative areas represented by Chris Jacobs, Tom Reed, Elise Stefanik, Claudia Tenney, Andrew Garbarino and Lee Zeldin into three districts instead of six, and adding liberal parts of Brooklyn to Nicole Malliotakis's swing district, which includes Staten Island.

Oregon

It's wide open

Democrats and Republicans recently released draft maps that would take Oregon's House delegation — which currently consists of four Democrats and one Republican, and will gain a sixth member — in opposite directions. The Democratic plan would make the new seat blue and would probably result in a 5-1 split. The Republican plan would create more competitive seats but could result in a 4-2 split in favor of Republicans, though Oregon is a blue state.

South Carolina

Republicans may protect one competitive seat

South Carolina Republicans are likely to try to cement their 6-1 advantage in the House by shifting some left-leaning voters from the competitive First District — represented by a Republican, Nancy Mace — to the overwhelmingly Democratic Sixth District, represented by Jim Clyburn. This strategy would make the First District safe for Mace, who narrowly defeated a first-term Democrat, Joe Cunningham, last year.

Tennessee

Republicans may gain one seat

Republicans control redistricting in Tennessee. They have not yet released draft maps, but Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report reported last week that they were considering dividing Nashville — a rare Democratic stronghold — among multiple House districts. That would allow Republicans to unseat Representative Jim Cooper and claim eight of Tennessee's nine House seats, instead of their current seven.

Officer James Blassingame, Capt. Carneysha Mendoza and Senator Lisa Murkowski all spoke to The New York Times about their experiences at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack.Jason Andrew for The New York Times

How the Capitol riot changed lives

By Emily Cochrane, Luke Broadwater and Ellen Barry

Before Jan. 6, the Capitol seemed almost impenetrable, its pristine dome the physical embodiment of a secure and stable democracy. For many, the Capitol is now tinged with a sense of hypervigilance, trauma, anger and sadness.

On Saturday, far-right activists will hold a rally at the foot of Capitol Hill to demand "justice" for those arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, part of an effort by Republicans to play down or deny what happened.

The attack remains excruciatingly real for the people who were there. We interviewed some of them over the last five months.

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Tuesday, September 14, 2021

On Politics: What does the California recall mean for the U.S.?

Gov. Gavin Newsom argued that he was running not on his record, but against Trumpism.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California at a rally on Monday, in his final push to survive a recall effort.Doug Mills/The New York Times

Let's start with the obvious caveat: California is different. That's true for many, many reasons, but this week all eyes are on its bizarre — some say unconstitutional — recall process, in which a small minority of Californians have forced today's no-confidence vote on Gov. Gavin Newsom, despite a vast majority's support for him.

The latest polls show that Californians overwhelmingly want him to stay, and are especially wary of his leading opponent, the conservative talk-show host Larry Elder. But this being politics in 2021, let's also concede that there is always a chance that the polls are disastrously wrong. By tomorrow, could we all be talking about Elder's brilliant campaign and bright future?

With those two huge caveats in mind, let's take up the opposite question: What does Newsom's likely cruise to victory say about American politics over the coming years?

Again, this being 2021, we can't talk about politics, national or local, without talking about Donald J. Trump and, by extension, Trumpism. The man and the phenomenon (or is it a movement? or an ideology?) played into the race in two ways, both of which we're going to see repeated in coming races.

First, Newsom and the Democrats seem to have persuasively argued that he was running not on his record or against a particular candidate, but against Trumpism — that the alternative to Newsom was, as this paper put in a headline, "the abyss."

"We defeated Trump last year, and thank you, but we haven't defeated Trumpism," Newsom has told anyone who would listen.

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Such scaremongering is a time-honored tactic, but it's an especially salient and effective one today. Trump is always in the news, always taking the extreme position, and as long as he lays claim to being the head of the Republican Party, Democrats will try to tie their opponents to him.

And it works. Because Trumpism is so vague, opponents can make it anything they want it to be. Incipient fascism? Rampant libertarianism? White supremacy? Check, check and check. It can also mean specific things, like eviscerating climate policy or canceling mask and vaccine mandates. California has a lot of problems, but Californians generally approve of Sacramento's pro-government, pro-regulatory approach. Rather than be forced to defend their specific policies, the Democrats can simply paint their opponents as Trump manqués bent on destruction.

Another caveat: This is California, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by two to one, forcing the Republican Party into a corner, where it has become captive to its base. That means it's going to behave in ways that the Republican Party of Texas or Florida, for example, might not.

"Compare it with, let's say, the Democratic Party in Mississippi," said Chris Stirewalt, the former digital politics editor at Fox News. "It's probably a very weird space."

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Will the Democrats' strategy work in purple states, or even a state like Virginia, where Republicans are more numerous and better organized — and where Terry McAuliffe is already deploying it against his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, in their race for governor?

Traditional political analysis would say no. But again, this is 2021. Following their base, many Republicans have largely (but not entirely) abandoned the political middle, where most Americans say they abide. Democrats have spent months painting their opponents as anti-democratic and anti-reality, a message that has played well among independents and moderates, starting with the Senate runoffs in Georgia, and with Trump ringing in with false claims about election fraud, expertly timed to prove their point.

Not every race is going to play out that way. Most Republicans will read the room, so to speak, and adjust their campaigns accordingly. Look at Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego who's also running to replace Newsom. Yes, he has the requisite photo of himself standing beside Trump. But his message has been about pragmatic solutions to state problems, exactly the sort of campaign you'd expect from someone trying to put space between himself and his national party.

Then again, Faulconer is running a distant second behind Elder and barely registers in the national conversation. One reason is the uniqueness of the race. It's a battle royal, not a primary; the candidates had little time to prepare; and as a result, name recognition, which Elder has and Faulconer doesn't, is critical.

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But another is the new dynamics of right-wing politics — and the second way in which the recall illustrates the lasting impact of Trump and Trumpism.

Newsom has been running with his "me vs. the abyss" strategy since the recall began. But it didn't stick at first, because the recall was focused on Newsom and his performance during the pandemic — including an embarrassing maskless dinner at the French Laundry, one of California's most exclusive restaurants, during the state's shutdown.

"In a vacuum, there was a lot of discontentment with Newsom and ambivalence with him among Democrats," said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant in California.

That started to change once "the abyss" got a name.

Elder isn't the Trumpiest candidate imaginable, but he's close. A novice campaigner with a background in conservative talk radio, Elder has a treasure chest full of embarrassing comments in his past — about women, about Black people — and a penchant for making more of them on the stump.

"Larry Elder has been the gift that keeps on giving," said Steven Maviglio, a Democratic political consultant in California.

Again, Elder has been effective because this race is so much more about celebrity than policy. But he's also effective because he, more than anyone else, is attuned to the Trumpist base, and is willing to tack accordingly.

After he drew fire from the right for telling the editorial board of The Sacramento Bee that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, he reversed himself. He has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the recall race is rife with fraud. He is crushing it among the "guys with an Uncle Sam costume in their closet" demographic, but not much else.

Arguably, Elder isn't a serious politician; he's running not to win, but to raise his media profile. But that very fact says something about today's Republican Party. Many of its highest-profile figures blur the line between politician and celebrity, and act accordingly, even if their success as the latter undermines what we expect out of the former. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn — and, yes, Larry Elder — are only nominally politicians. In substance, they're entertainers.

True, they're entertainers who say scary things about guns, political violence, the pandemic and anyone to their political left. And true, some of them do win elections, usually in deep-red districts. And true, many people in the Republican Party are much smarter, or at least more thoughtful about elected office, than they are.

Still, Elder and Co. highlight a lasting, possibly permanent dynamic on the right: the rejection of politics as anything other than smash-mouth spectacle, in which the most outrageous and insincere figures draw the biggest crowds — and force their colleagues to play constant defense against their own party.

That's not an insurmountable challenge. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida seems, at least for now, to have figured out a way past it. But many won't — and many Republicans won't even try. Remember when the party could dismiss as side shows the occasional extremist figures like Todd Akin, who made comments about "legitimate rape," and Christine "I'm Not a Witch" O'Donnell? In 2021, that's become much, much harder to do.

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