Masks were necessary, especially in schools, to prevent mass deaths. Or at least that’s what we were told, for a very long time and painstakingly, until suddenly, in the last 10 days, it turned out that this was not the case. The Democratic governors of Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut and California followed the lead of Virginia’s newly installed Republican governor and rolled back mask mandates. Or until, if I may say so, my column in the Washington Examiner last week titled “Back to Normal in School Masks.”
Now let’s move on to another topic that has raised concerns among liberal commentators. They argued that getting rid of gerrymandering was necessary to preserve democracy and prevent it from being overthrown by the forces of repression and one-party dictatorship.
It turns out that these alarms suddenly, to apply the word Watergate, stop working. The turning point may have come last week when David Wasserman, distinguished redistricting specialist at the Cook Political Report, tweeted that his state-by-state accounting showed Democrats gained two to three seats in House redistricting USA in the cycle following the 2020 Census.
So much for laments from Democrats like former Attorney General Eric Holder that Republican redistricting will guarantee one-party control for another decade or even, according to left-wing tweeters, forever. Republicans control legislatures and governorships in states with more House districts than Democrats. However, they are not able to achieve the gains that they achieved as a result of the change in territorial division after the 2000 and 2010 censuses.
Why didn’t things turn out this way?
One reason is that redistricting Democrats have been more ruthless than Republicans, starting with Illinois and the earlier March 14 filing deadline. Democrats drew 100-mile “bacon strip” districts from Chicago neighborhoods to the open prairie and downstate districts that connect with diminutive factory or college towns along the highway. They increased the Democratic advantage from 13-5 to 14-3.
The New York Democrats did even better. Their advantage increased from 19-8 to 22-4 with a plan that connected conservative Staten Island with fashionable Park Slope, Brooklyn, and gave House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler a district that wound from the Upper Manhattan Stockades to the beaches of Bensonhurst.
This appears to be a violation of New York law, but people familiar with how New York courts deal with election law, such as Wasserman, have no doubt it will happen. Similarly, the predominantly Democratic North Carolina Supreme Court struck down a Republican redistricting plan based on the court’s 2019 criteria on a completely inconsistent theory. “I win heads, you lose tails.”
In contrast, the Republican-majority Ohio Supreme Court struck down a partisan Republican map based on similar provisions. Republican lawmakers in Texas focused on strengthening Republican incumbents rather than displacing Democrats.
You see a similar inconsistency in the interpretation of the Voting Rights Act. Black politicians and Republican strategists have long argued that this required maximizing the number of black-majority districts, which resulted in more black members being elected and strengthening Republicans in neighboring districts. Democrats who share this view won a federal court challenge to Alabama’s districts, and the decision was upheld last week pending a full review by the Supreme Court.
But in other cases, Democrats have argued that the bill only requires a enormous percentage of black voters, an option that more Democrats tend to choose. It is possible that the Supreme Court in the Alabama case will clear up the confusion in current Voting Rights Act case law that both sides have benefited from.
The creation of supposedly impartial redistricting commissions—a favorite proposal of those few liberals like the editors of the Washington Post who deplore partisan redistricting—does not end partisan gerrymanders. Democrats managed to negotiate supposedly neutral commissions in California (52 districts), Michigan (13) and New Jersey (12) this cycle.
Those who lament that partisan redistricting means one-party control have historical precedent to support their argument. As I have documented in subsequent issues of The Almanac of American Politics, Democrats’ partisan redistricting helped them maintain a majority in the House of Representatives after the Supreme Court’s one-person, one-vote decision from 1964 to 1992.
This didn’t work for Republicans. Beginning in 1995, no party maintained a majority during the 10-year interprice period. Political changes have frustrated even the most ruthless redistributive actors and may do so again. Donald Trump’s degenerating standing could cause some wealthy districts that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 to become Republican again. Or the emergence of someone like 1992’s Bill Clinton after Biden could make some of the populist districts covered by Trump 2020 Democratic again. Or voters could start splitting their tickets again.
I predict that by 2030, face coverings for school-aged students will be seen as a remnant of a distant and superstitious past, and partisan redistricting of both political parties and “apolitical” committees will become irrelevant to voters.
