Dems Hit a Major Obstacle in Redistricting Wars: Other Dems
The surprisingly messy politics of the push to counter GOP gerrymandering.
AS HOUSE MINORITY LEADER Hakeem Jeffries and other national Democratic leaders scramble to catch up to Republicans in the great redistricting wars of 2025, they’re running into a thorny, perhaps unexpected, obstacle: They can’t get all their colleagues on board.
For months, national Democratic officials, led by Jeffries, have encouraged leaders in Illinois and Maryland to move forward with the map-redrawing process, eager to supplement the work Democrats are doing in California. But some legislators in those states have expressed serious reservations or are explicitly refusing to sign on, arguing that the party’s plans would disproportionately harm black lawmakers by breaking up their districts.
In a Zoom meeting with Jeffries last week, members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus made clear that they weren’t interested in redrawing their state’s map if it meant diluting the share of black voters in districts that have historically been represented by black members. Given that it would be nearly impossible to do a redraw without moving voters out of these districts, it was interpreted as a pretty clear “no.”
When I asked state Sen. Willie Preston, the Senate chair of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, whether he was risking disempowering Democrats nationally in order for black Democrats to hold on to power in Illinois, he told me