Maryland Democrats are pushing a ballot measure that would eliminate the state's last Republican-held congressional district — proving once again that when the party of "democracy" can't win on ideas, it redraws the map.
The stakes are straightforward: one of the last vestiges of Republican representation in an otherwise deep-blue state could vanish, and with it, the voice of hundreds of thousands of conservative Maryland voters in Washington. The Washington Examiner reports that the next fight in this cycle's redistricting wars will be decided on election night in Maryland, and the outcome could determine whether mid-decade congressional redistricting becomes the new normal.
House Democrats need to net just three seats to reclaim the majority in the 435-member chamber. The Examiner notes that goal has been made tougher by Republicans benefiting from their own mid-decade redistricting efforts in GOP-controlled statehouses, spurred by President Donald Trump's political team. Now Maryland Democrats want their turn at the lever.
What's remarkable is the silence from the establishment press. The Detroit Free Press, given the same opportunity to cover the redistricting story, instead filed a piece on Michigan legislative races — a parochial look at statehouse control in Lansing that never once mentions the Maryland map manipulation. The Free Press framed its story around "affordability" and which party voters trust on kitchen-table issues, quoting Democratic state Sen. Darrin Camilleri claiming Democrats "stand with the little guy over the big corporations." Republican state Sen. Roger Hauck countered that under Democratic control, Michigan is "pretty much last in every meaningful category in the United States." Fair enough — but none of it touches the Maryland gerrymander story at all. The Free Press simply didn't cover it.
That omission is the story. When Republicans redraw maps, it's a national crisis. When Democrats do it, the legacy press looks the other way.
Maryland's 1st Congressional District, currently held by Republican Andy Harris, is the target. If the ballot measure passes, the map would likely be redrawn to crack or pack the district so thoroughly that no Republican could win it — the same partisan cartography that Democrats have denounced as a threat to the republic when practiced by the other side.
The broader question is whether mid-decade redistricting becomes standard practice for whichever party holds the governor's mansion and state legislature when the mood strikes. The Examiner framed the Maryland measure as a test case: if it succeeds, the precedent holds; if it fails, the mid-decade redistricting push may stall out.
Either way, Maryland conservatives are about to learn whether their votes still count — or whether the map-makers in Annapolis have already decided the answer for them.
