State and national Democrats are mounting a furious last-minute campaign aimed at pressuring the Maryland Senate to redraw congressional district lines to favor their party, conscious that the clock is ticking toward the candidate filing deadline next week.
Gov. Wes Moore, a fellow Democrat, has exhorted his party to take a vote on a redistricting plan previously passed by the House of Delegates that would create district lines favoring Democrats in all eight of the state’s congressional districts. On Wednesday, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, met with Maryland lawmakers to make the legal case for doing so.
And outside groups are lobbing entreaties, invective and even the occasional veiled threat at lawmakers who have refused to take up the plan.
The Senate Democratic Caucus, led by President Bill Ferguson, says they aren’t budging.
“I appreciate meeting with Leader Jeffries this morning. It’s precisely because we want Leader Jeffries in the majority that most members in the Maryland Senate Democratic Caucus do not support moving forward with mid-cycle redistricting that will backfire in our state courts and lose Democrats in Congress,” Ferguson said in a statement after Wednesday’s meeting.
In an interview Wednesday, Moore urged Ferguson to allow senators to put their intentions on the record.
“When Bill Ferguson says that the votes are not there for redistricting in the chamber, my answer is: I hear you, but the best way to prove that’s the case is to allow for a vote,” Moore told Pluribus News. “I just think that the basic tenant of democracy is voting, that these are representatives who are elected by their people to have the courage to vote on issues.”
“I just think that there needs to be some soul searching among the Maryland Senate about what’s going on, about what is required inside of this moment,” Moore said. “Because I just think there is — seems to be a fundamental disagreement between the Maryland House and the Maryland Senate about the courage that’s required in this moment.”
Sources inside the Maryland Senate say they have been lobbied several times by Moore personally, by Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller, and by U.S. Reps. Steny Hoyer and Jamie Raskin, all Democrats. But they say they have not discussed the House-approved redistricting plan in caucus meetings for the last three weeks.
“We are not going to go the way of Indiana,” one source familiar with Ferguson’s thinking told Pluribus News, referring to a Republican-friendly redistricting plan that failed in December. “We don’t take failing votes. Some states do that. We don’t.”
In the national redistricting wars that have reignited in the battle for control of the House of Representatives, Democrats turned to half a dozen long-shot states to compete with Republican efforts to impose new partisan gerrymanders. Texas Republicans voted to impose a new map that will favor their candidates in up to five Democratic-held districts. California Democrats retaliated with a ballot initiative that would flip five GOP-held seats to their column.
Lawmakers in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio approved new maps that could hand one or two seats to Republicans. In Utah, a court order imposed a new map that would likely favor Democrats in a Salt Lake City-based district.
Battles are ongoing in Florida, Virginia and New York. On Wednesday, Democrats moved to place a measure on November’s midterm election ballot in Colorado that could swing three seats in the 2028 elections.
Read more: Redistricting wars, re-visited
But Ferguson has said he worries that an aggressive effort to redraw Maryland’s maps — a plan that targets U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, the state’s lone Republican in Washington — could open a pandora’s box that puts more Democratic seats at risk.
Already, Democrats hold seven of eight U.S. House seats, thanks to an agreement in 2021 between legislative Democrats and then-Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican. Courts blessed that map. But five of the seven members of the Maryland Supreme Court are Hogan appointees; the source familiar with Ferguson’s thinking said a legal fight — which Republicans would certainly bring if Democrats pass their new maps — could result in a court-imposed map that helps the GOP.
“The risk of going backward is higher, a lot higher, than the risk of potentially gaining a seat,” said the source, who asked for anonymity to detail Ferguson’s thinking.
Time to persuade Ferguson and Senate Democrats is running out. Candidates running for office in Maryland must file paperwork by next Tuesday, Feb. 24, ahead of the June 23 primary. While lawmakers could push back that primary, a legal fight appealed to the state Supreme Court would take months of wrangling.
Leaving Ferguson’s office on Wednesday, Jeffries said the two men had a “productive exchange of ideas and perspectives.”
“Those conversations will continue as we move forward,” Jeffries said. “We made clear our view that a strong, forceful Democratic response is necessary to the unprecedented efforts by Donald Trump and Republicans to gerrymander congressional maps in red states across the country with the sole intention of rigging the midterm elections.”
Moore signaled he isn’t ready to let up the pressure campaign yet.
“I think it was important for [Jeffries] to show up, though, because I think it was important for people to see that this is bigger than you,” Moore said in the interview. “This is a moment in our nation’s history. And while I believe that our democracy should be determined by Marylanders and nobody else, I also do think it was important for the Maryland Senate and for Bill Ferguson to see that it’s not just the eyes of Marylanders that are watching you.
“The eyes of our country, the eyes of the past and the eyes of the future are watching you too.”