The top Democratic leader of the Maryland Senate has struck down state Democrats’ efforts to redistrict the Free State.
Bill Ferguson, president of the Maryland Senate, sent a letter to his colleagues in the upper chamber Tuesday evening informing them why the Senate is not moving forward with mid-decade redistricting. He cited legal risks, the tight timeline before the midterm elections, and the political risks of messing with the state’s existing map.
The push from democratic lawmakers to redistrict Maryland came as part of the national redistricting battle between blue and red states. The gerrymandering feud was sparked by President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) redistricting of Texas and turned into a political push-and-pull with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) move to fight back with Prop 50 in California.
“Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” Ferguson wrote in the letter, shared with Politico.
Democratic Maryland lawmakers sought to redistrict the state in an attempt to flip blue the last remaining Republican congressional seat. Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) represents Maryland’s 1st district, which hugs the Delaware-Maryland border, encompasses cities like Salisbury and Aberdeen, and contains the northern part of the Eastern Shore.
Ferguson said it was an “unlikely possibility” that any redrawing of the congressional map would give Democrats an extra seat. According to Ferguson, 31.5% of Maryland’s registered voters are Republican. Seven out of the state’s eight congressional seats are held by Democrats.
He pointed to a 2022 lawsuit from Republicans that challenged a special session re-written map of 2021. State legislators then had to pass a new congressional map before the end of the 2022 session. The current congressional map has not been reviewed by the state’s supreme court, of which the majority of justices were appointed by Republicans, and Democrats would like to keep it that way.
“Any redrawing of the current map could reopen the ability for someone to challenge the current map and give the court the opportunity to strike it down, or even worse, redraw the map itself,” Ferguson said in the letter.
The Senate Democratic leader also raised concerns that the mid-cycle redistricting could have effects on the timeline of the 2026 elections, that it could encourage other Republican states to redistrict in retaliation, and about the need to preserve equitable voting access.
Ferguson did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s requests for comment.
Democrats with a national reach in Maryland have spoken in support of the redistricting over the past few weeks, including Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
DEMOCRATS TRY TO KEEP UP WITH REPUBLICANS IN NATIONAL REDISTRICTING WAR
“Now MAGA wants to roll over us with extreme mid-decade gerrymandering. It is a political and ethical imperative to fight back across America, from coast to coast, from California to the Free State,” Raskin wrote in an X post on Oct. 22.
As California’s vote on Proposition 50 comes in less than one week, and North Carolina just voted to redistrict their map in favor of Republicans, redistricting talks are also playing out in states like Virginia and Illinois.
