Democrats on Sunday defended their party’s tit-for-tat threats to match the partisan Congressional redistricting effort Republicans are pursuing in Texas.
Proposals to draw new maps that have been floated in Democrat-led states like New York and California are a last resort, some party leaders said Sunday. But as the Texas drama grinds on, with Republicans threatening to arrest or oust from office Democratic state legislators who fled the state to stall a vote on an unusual mid-decade Republican redistricting plan, some Democrats said they were prepared to use any tool at their disposal.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, said that Democrats, with whom he caucuses, have little choice but to respond in kind to the Republicans’ plan, which is designed to flip five U.S. House seats into the Republican column.
“What should Democrats do? Sit back and say, ‘Oh, gee?’” Mr. Sanders said on CNN. “Let them win the election when they shouldn’t? So Democrats have got to fight back.”
Mr. Sanders has long opposed partisan gerrymandering. But he told CNN’s Dana Bash that the effort in Texas amounted to an attempt to “rig the system” and keep Republicans in power despite an unpopular legislative agenda. The tools at Democrats’ disposal are limited, and to preserve even the chance of victory in next year’s midterms, Mr. Sanders said, Democratic governors are left with but one unsavory option.
“I think it’s pathetic, but I think that’s what they’ve got to do,” he said.
Eric H. Holder, Jr., the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and former attorney general, said on NBC that “there’s no question that gerrymandering is a threat to our democracy.” But he, too, endorsed Democrats’ plans to counter Texas’ maps in a manner that “is responsive and is temporary.”
Mr. Holder called a proposal by California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, to scrap maps drawn by an independent commission in favor of explicitly partisan districts designed to help Democrats “reasonable.”
Texas’ governor, Greg Abbott, dismissed what he called “big talk and bluster by Democrat governors” as “weak sauce" in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” Democrats drew partisan maps first, Mr. Abbott said, and are now left with little room to maneuver.
“The fact of the matter is that they are bringing a gun to a gunfight, but they have no bullets because they lost their bullets when they engaged in redistricting and gerrymandering over the past decade,” Mr. Abbott said.
On Fox, another Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul of New York, who hosted some fugitive Texas Democrats in Albany, said that “these times call for fighting fire with fire” and criticized what she called “the hypocrisy of the Republicans who are now whining about the fact that we’re doing something in New York.” Governor Hochul has said she is prepared to disband the state’s independent redistricting committee and redraw New York’s maps.
“Where was the outrage when Donald Trump told Texas to just go find five seats for him?" Ms. Hochul said. “Come on. People won’t buy this.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, also a Democrat, pushed back on Republican criticism of his state’s map, which was redrawn in 2021 to give Democrats more seats. Even if Republicans might not like the result, Mr. Pritzker said Sunday on NBC, Illinois’ redistricting process followed protocol and gave voters the chance to weigh in during a legislative hearing.
“It was done at the end of the census, the decennial census, and that’s how it’s done in this country,” he added. Congressional districts are usually redrawn after each census to reflect shifts in population that occurred since the previous census.
Mr. Holder also insisted that Democrats like Mr. Newsom and Ms. Hochul aren’t using the same tactics they find so objectionable in Texas.
“When Barack Obama was president and Joe Biden was president, did either of those presidents call a governor of a state and state legislature and tell them to gerrymander and find five seats?” Mr. Holder asked. “No.”