This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
WASHINGTON — As Republicans move to redraw legislative maps in red states to pad their narrow House majority in Washington, some Democrats are rethinking their embrace of a nonpartisan approach to line-drawing that now complicates their party’s ability to hit back before next year’s midterm elections.
In many Democratic-controlled states, independent commissions rather than the state legislature handle redistricting, the normally-once-a-decade task of adjusting congressional and legislative districts so their populations are equal. Parties in the majority can exploit that process to shape their lawmakers’ districts so they are almost guaranteed reelection.
The commission model limits parties’ ability to game the system, leading to more competitive districts. Not all redistricting commissions were created at Democrats’ insistence. And, like Republicans, the party has exploited line-drawing for its own gain in the handful of states where it controls the process. But unlike Republicans, many Democratic Party leaders have embraced the nonpartisan model.
That means Democrats have fewer options to match Republicans, who are redrawing the U.S. House map in Texas at President Donald Trump’s urging to carve out as many asfive new winnable seats for the GOP. That could be enough to prevent Democrats from winning back the majority next year.
The GOP plan cleared a state House committee Saturday.
Democrats have threatened payback. During a gathering Friday in Wisconsin of Democratic governors, several of them said they wanted to retaliate because the stakes are so high.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who has pushed for a nonpartisan redistricting commission in his state, said Democrats must “do whatever we can” to counter the Republican efforts to redraw congressional maps.
“When you have a gun against your head, you’ve got to do something,” he said.
Despite the ambitious talk, Democrats largely have their hands tied.
Democratic states have limited ability to redistrict for political edge
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he and the Democratic-controlled Legislature will try to redraw his state’s congressional map. But they would need to repeal or defy the 2008 ballot measure creating an independent redistricting commission. Voters extended its authority to congressional districts two years later.
Newsom supported the constitutional amendment at the time, when he was mayor of San Francisco. The Texas redistricting, which is expected to pass the Legislature next week, led him to modify that position.
“We can act holier than thou, we can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be, or we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment,” Newsom said earlier this month.
In New York, which also has a commission, the state constitution bars another map this decade. Democrats have moved for a change, but that could not happen until 2027 at the earliest, and then only with voter approval.
In other states where Democrats control the governor’s office and legislature, including Colorado and Washington, the party has backed independent commissions that cannot redraw, let alone rig, maps in the middle of the decade.
A top Colorado Democrat pushes for the state to redistrict
Former U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo last week called on Colorado Democrats to redraw the state’s congressional maps in their favor in the middle of the 10-year redistricting cycle in response to Republican states trying to gerrymander their districts to improve the GOP’s chances of keeping their U.S. House majority in 2026.
“For the sake of the country, Democrats need to fight back. I applaud Democrats around the country who are moving to redraw their own maps to counter this MAGA power grab and urge Colorado to repeal our independent commission and do the same, “ Caraveo said in a written statement.
That’s much easier said than done.
Colorado voters in 2018 overwhelmingly passed Amendment Y, which was referred to the ballot by the legislature. Seventy-one percent of the electorate backed the constitutional change handing redistricting power to a 12-person commission.
The measure also declared that “the practice of political gerrymandering, whereby legislative districts are purposefully drawn to favor one political party or incumbent politician over another, must end.”
Caraveo is one of seven Democrats running in a primary for a chance to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans next year in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District. Caraveo lost to Evans by about 2,500 votes in 2024 after one term.
Ironically enough, the 8th District, the state’s most competitive U.S. House district, was drawn by the state’s congressional redistricting commission in 2021, during its first cycle of work, to be a battleground. Caraveo entered the 2022 race before the district’s boundaries, and competitiveness, were set. At the time she announced her campaign, the 8th District appeared much more favorable to Democrats.
Caraveo, in a written statement, called on Gov. Jared Polis “to recognize the significance and urgency of this moment.” But the governor cannot change the state’s constitution. Only voters can do that.
Getting a constitutional measure on the ballot is a feat in itself in Colorado. It requires either the support of two-thirds of the members in each the House and Senate, legislative supermajorities that Colorado Democrats don’t have, or for supporters to collect about 125,000 voter signatures, including ones from at least 2% of the voters in each of Colorado’s 35 state Senate districts. The signature gathering can cost millions of dollars.
Finally, and possibly most importantly, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that the state constitution prohibits the new congressional districts from being drawn in the middle of a decade. (Congressional maps are redrawn every 10 years following the census.) That decision came after the legislature, controlled at the time by Republicans, sought to redistrict in their favor.
“We find that the framers of the Colorado Constitution intended to balance stability and fairness by both requiring and limiting redistricting to once per decade,” the Colorado Supreme Court wrote in its ruling. “Had they wished to have more frequent redistricting, the framers would have said so. They did not.”
Assuming the 2003 decision holds, the earliest Colorado could draw new congressional districts, commission or not, would be 2031 for the 2032 election.
Caraveo’s campaign suggested a signature-gathering campaign to put a question on the 2026 ballot would be a way to simultaneously change Colorado’s redistricting process and overcome the 2003 Colorado Supreme Court ruling.
But adding to the state constitution requires the support of 55% of the electorate. Repealing a constitutional provision takes just a simple majority.
Caraveo’s campaign conceded that the former congresswoman voted for Amendment Y in 2018 when it was on the ballot, but said that was a different era.
Caraveo may have a sympathetic ear in former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry, who financed Amendment Y.
“I’m proud to have led the fight against gerrymandering in California and Colorado,” he said on social media. “But I am acutely aware of the potential for harm and unfairness when bad actors seek to capitalize on those reforms. … Lots to consider here. I am opposed to the cancer of gerrymandering, but I respect those who don’t want to bring a knife to a gunfight.”
Democrats say “foundations of our democracy” at stake
When the redistricting cycle kicked off in 2021, after the last census, independent commissions were in charge of drawing 95 House seats that otherwise would have been drawn by Democrats, but only 13 that would have been created by Republicans.
In a marker of the shift among Democrats, former Attorney General Eric Holder, who heads the party’s redistricting effort and has called repeatedly for a more nonpartisan approach, seemed to bless his party’s long shot efforts to overrule their commissions.
“We do not oppose – on a temporary basis – responsible, responsive actions to ensure that the foundations of our democracy are not permanently eroded,” Holder said in a statement last week.
In states where they weren’t checked by commissions, Democrats have redistricted just as ruthlessly as Republicans. In Illinois, they drew a map that gave them a 14-3 advantage in the congressional delegation. In New Mexico, they tweaked the map so they control all three House seats. In Nevada, they held three of its four seats in November despite Trump winning the state.
Even in states where they have a lopsided advantage, Democrats are exploring ways to maximize it.
On Friday, Maryland’s House Majority Leader, Democratic Del. David Moon, said he would introduce legislation to trigger redrawing of the congressional lines if Texas moves forward. Democrats hold seven of the state’s eight congressional seats.
“We can’t have one state, especially a very large state, constantly trying to one-up and alter the course of congressional control while the other states sit idly by,” he said.
Commissions promote “fair representation,” advocates say
Advocates of a nonpartisan model are alarmed by the shift among Democrats. They say the party would redistrict just as aggressively as the GOP if not held in check, depriving voters of a voice in districts whose winners would essentially be selected in advance by political leaders.
“We’re very desperate — we’re looking for any port in a storm,” said Emily Eby French, Common Cause’s Texas director. “This Democratic tit for tat redistricting seems like a port but it’s not a port. It’s a jagged rock with a bunch of sirens on them.”
The group’s director of redistricting, Dan Vicuña, said using redistricting for partisan advantage — known as gerrymandering — is highly unpopular with the public: “This is about fair representation for communities.”
Politicians used to shy away from discussing it openly, but that has changed in today’s polarized environment. Trump earlier this month told reporters about his hopes of netting five additional GOP seats in Texas and more out of other Republican-controlled states.
He has urged new maps in GOP-controlled states such as Indiana and Missouri, while Ohio Republicans are poised to reshape political lines after neutralizing a push to create an independent redistricting commission.
Democrats are divided over how to respond to Texas
In a sign of the party’s divide, Democrats have continued to push for a national redistricting panel that would remove partisanship from the process, even as some call for retaliation against Republicans in defiance of state limitations.
“No unilateral disarmament till both sides are following the law,” said Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, like Newsom a possible 2028 presidential contender, wrote on X. Gallego’s post came a day before his Democratic colleagues gathered to announce they were reintroducing a bill to create the national commission.
An identical bill died in 2022 when it couldn’t overcome Republican objections despite Democrats controlling Congress and the presidency. It has no chance now that the GOP is in charge of both branches.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, another potential 2028 contender, did not express regret over past changes that have put in place independent redistricting boards in Democratic states, saying the party “should never apologize for being for the right thing.”
He added that Republicans “are operating outside of the box right now and we can’t stay inside the box.”
“If they’re changing districts in the middle of the 10-year cycle, we have to do the same thing,” he said.
That approach, however, has not caught on across the party.
“We shouldn’t stoop to their tactics,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “It’s an ideal that we have accurate and fair representation. We can’t abandon it just because Republicans try to manipulate and distort it.”
Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles, Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed to this report.