This red state knows helping Trump cheat brings more risk than reward
Gov. Mike Braun this week called for a special session of the legislature to look into redistricting. So far, the Republican supermajority in the Indiana General Assembly has shown admirable restraint in the face of external pressure to redraw the state’s congressional districts.
While some other states have been quick to fall in line and pursue a mid-decade round of redistricting, Hoosier politicians have expressed some real doubts about whether this is a wise course of action.
Part of the reason for this hesitancy is that the legislature already did its job four years ago after the last census.
Lawmakers worked on this for months and held hearings soliciting public input in every congressional district. The same people who drew the current maps would have to repudiate their own work after telling the people of Indiana in 2021 that these were “fair maps” that “will serve Hoosiers well for the next decade.”
Everyone knows that the reason behind the push nationwide to get Republican-controlled state legislatures to redraw these congressional districts is the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), currently has a majority that is so incredibly small that Democrats would retake the House if they can pick up just three seats out of 435.
How likely is this to happen? History provides a good guide to what is probably in store next year.
Since the 1930s, the party of the president has lost an average of 28 seats in a midterm.
In 2018, during Donald Trump’s first term, House Republicans lost 40 seats.
Barack Obama’s party lost 63 House seats in 2010.
What does this mean for the Indiana legislature? It means it is entirely possible that the Indiana General Assembly could move heaven and earth during a special session to gerrymander the congressional maps and the House Republicans would still end up losing their majority on Capitol Hill.
The Supreme Court of the United States has typically allowed partisan gerrymandering to happen, but there is no guarantee that a redistricting scheme will end up having the desired effect. One of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions on this issue is actually an Indiana case, Davis v. Bandemer from 1986. The estimable Ted Boehm argued that case on behalf of the Indiana Democratic Party before he went on to serve with distinction on the Indiana Supreme Court.
The Indiana Democrats lost their case in the Supreme Court that year, but they went on to win in the court of public opinion.
The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the district maps in Indiana even after acknowledging that they were drawn in a way that would make it extremely hard for Democrats to get elected. In just a few short years, however, the Hoosier delegation to Congress went from being evenly divided between the two parties (a 5-5 split) to 8-2 after the 1992 elections.
Any student of politics knows that “gerrymandering” is a word coined over 200 years ago to describe a practice that is almost universally viewed as unfair. By all accounts, Elbridge Gerry led a fairly remarkable life. Among other things, he helped to write the Constitution in Philadelphia, he was elected governor of Massachusetts, and he served as James Madison’s vice president.
Today, he is remembered for just one thing, and his name has been immortalized as a synonym for cheating.
Conscience
Many of our political leaders in the state capital have been serving the public for a long time. They were there before Trump and Braun were elected to office, and a good number of them will still be around long after those two have left the scene. For years, they have worked hard to legislate in the public interest.
All of that is put in jeopardy with this redistricting scheme. By breaking faith with Hoosier voters and declaring that they no longer believe in fair elections, they run the risk of having their own political careers being remembered as Gerry is now remembered.
There have been other turbulent times in American politics where leaders have had to make difficult choices, and these episodes can be instructive to us today. In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), expressed her deep frustration with the Truman administration in a famous Senate speech. At the same time, she insisted that her own Republican party needed to adhere to rules of fairness and decency as they sought to retake power.
In her “Declaration of Conscience,” she was sharply critical of the Democrats running the federal government, but she warned that “to displace it with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to the nation … I do not want to see the Republican party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people.”
Hoosiers today are watching and hoping that our elected leaders will make their own declaration of conscience and reject this push to engage in a mid-decade redistricting that presents far more risks than rewards.
- Robert Dion, PhD, holds the Igleheart Chair in Political Science at the University of Evansville. He has taught college courses about American government for over 30 years.