A plan to redistrict states to benefit Republicans was conceived of 15 years ago. It’s been an enormous success
While politicians have gerrymandered since the dawn of the American experiment – even before it got its name from then Massachusetts governor Eldridge Gerry’s party crafting state senate districts around Boston that looked like salamanders – the modern story really begins in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama and a blue wave that delivered Democrats trifecta power and even a US Senate supermajority.
On television that election night, even the sharpest Republican analysts spoke of unbreakable emerging coalitions and demographic changes that could provide Democrats with majorities for a generation. It didn’t exactly work that way. A handful of savvy Republican strategists recognized that while 2008 may have been historic, 2010 could be much more consequential. It would be a census year. And after every census, the nation redistricts every state legislature and US House seat.
A lightbulb went off at the Republican state leadership committee (RSLC). Executive director Chris Jankowski recognized the opportunity first: target states where the legislature controls redistricting. Pour millions into underfunded state legislative races. Drown Democratic incumbents. Flip as many chambers as possible. Redraw the lines. If Republicans could pull it off, they would go from demographically challenged to the catbird seat for a decade.
“We should do this,” Jankowski remembered, in an interview for my book Ratf**ked. “I think we can get millions – and you don’t have to do anything other than what you were going to do anyway.”
They called this Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project. It transformed the nation.
Karl Rove laid out the plan in a March 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed that laid out the specific small towns in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio where national Republicans would come gunning for small-town Democrats. His message: control redistricting, control Congress. “Republican strategists are focused on 107 seats in 16 states. Winning these seats would give them control of drawing district lines for nearly 190 congressional seats.”
Polls showed that huge majorities of voters across party lines despised gerrymandering. Reform efforts won in red states and in blue states with big majorities. And in federal courts, judges appointed by presidents of both parties believed that they had all the tools they needed to strike down maps that decimated true political competition, and took aim at the radical outliers drawn by both parties. Reformers and voters had real momentum.
Enter John Roberts.
