As Texas Republicans approached a special legislative session aimed at redrawing the state’s congressional map to carve out additional districts likely to elect Republicans, the New York Times published an account of their plans. It cited former attorney general Eric Holder as having “led efforts to reverse gerrymandering in the House.”
Not anymore.
In response to the special session, prominent Democrats are calling for redistricting efforts of their own in deep-blue states like California, New York, and New Jersey to counteract any Republican gains. Holder should, in theory, oppose such efforts: As head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), which says it works to oppose “mid-decade map redraws” and “combat ongoing gerrymandering,” Holder has denounced “gerrymandering done by either party.” At first, Holder and the NDRC issued statements that condemned the Texas session—and threatened to sue any map that came from it—while ignoring calls for a Democratic gerrymander. Then, on July 15, the group’s Bluesky account reposted a video from Texas Democrat Isaiah Martin outlining a “plan” to outmaneuver Republicans on redistricting.
“We need Texas state legislators to leave the state of Texas to do a maneuver called a quorum break. A quorum break is when there’s not enough people present in the room to pass a bill,” Martin said. “Now here’s where things get dicey. The answer is for them not to go to Washington, D.C., ’cause Trump has control there. It’s instead to go to California.”
“Now see, when they get to California, they’re not just going there for a vacation. They’re going there to demand that California gerrymander Republicans the same way they do Democrats,” he continued. “But you guys know me. I don’t wanna just beat Republicans, I wanna crush ’em. I’m calling for a wave of blue state gerrymandering across the country.”
Martin’s video—and the NDRC’s repost—came one day after Holder and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) joined a call with some 40 Democrats in the Texas House to discuss the sort of “quorum break” Martin outlined in his video. It was the closest Holder and his organization had come to commenting on growing left-wing calls to gerrymander in blue states—until July 17, when Holder appeared on Chris Hayes’s MSNBC show. Hayes asked Holder whether Democrats should “fight fire with fire” by drawing a “52 to 0 Democratic map in California.” Holder did not say he would oppose the move; rather, he said doing so would not be “as easy as people think.”
“I don’t think we’re going to have the ability to draw a 52 to 0 map in California,” Holder told Hayes.
For Adam Kincaid, president and executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the ordeal reflects the true nature of Holder’s group: to give cover to Democrats while preaching “fairness.”
“They’re openly talking about violating their state constitutions,” Kincaid said of Democratic calls to gerrymander in California, New York, and New Jersey. “And no one on the left seems to care, really, or push back on it at all. It’s just, ‘Oh, you know, they’re fighting back.’ No, they’re not just fighting back, they’re talking about open lawlessness. It shows how desperate they are right now.”
The NDRC and Holder did not respond to requests for comment. The NDRC did, however, remove its repost of Martin’s video after the Washington Free Beacon contacted the group.
Proponents of the blue-state redistricting efforts—including Jeffries, who recently told CNN that “some of the best and brightest lawyers in the country are looking at every single aspect of what’s possible”—present them as a tit-for-tat political move, a way to “fight fire with fire.” The reality is more complicated, given the stark differences between the redistricting process in Texas and the processes in California, New York, and New Jersey.
In Texas, the legislature passes congressional redistricting plans like any other law. While boundaries are usually drawn every 10 years, as federal law requires, nothing prevents Texas lawmakers from assembling mid-decade to redraw them, as they did in 2003.
It’s a different story in California, New York, and New Jersey. Voters in all three states have passed constitutional amendments that place the redistricting process in the hands of distinct commissions. The amendments also include specific timelines for commissioners to meet and approve maps. In other words, Democrats could not draw new maps in the three states without amending—or blatantly violating—the states’ constitutions.
Holder has opposed such moves in the past. In 2018, he issued a statement criticizing a constitutional amendment from New Jersey Democrats that would have given them more control over the members of their state’s redistricting commission and the congressional map those members produce. Holder has since cited that statement as proof that he’s willing to take on “gerrymandering done by Democrats.” His more recent actions as head of the NDRC tell a different story.
Holder, who is perhaps best known for charging corporate clients as much as $2,295 an hour to develop equity plans that get them sued, formally launched the NDRC in January 2017 following months of coordination with the Obama White House. He pledged to produce “fairer maps,” calling the issue “critical to the future of our democracy.” Obama himself identified the group “as the main focus of his political activity once he leaves office,” Politico reported at the time, a fixation that likely came about because he blamed Republican gerrymandering for Democratic losses in the House in 2012.
Holder has made good on his commitment to oppose maps that favor Republicans, with his group routinely challenging redistricting plans in red states like Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. But he’s never challenged a Democratic gerrymander, even as his partymates in Illinois moved forward with an aggressive one in 2021 that nullified nearly two million GOP votes. NDRC senior adviser and left-wing attorney Marc Elias, meanwhile, went as far as to defend a Democratic gerrymander in Maryland three years ago.
Elias was also at the center of recent Democratic efforts to gerrymander New York.
If New York’s redistricting commission can’t agree on a congressional map, state legislators in Albany have the authority to pass their own, so long as they do not violate a provision in the state constitution that bars them from redrawing districts for partisan gain. When the commission failed to pass a map in the wake of the 2020 census, Elias worked with then-House Democratic leader Sean Patrick Maloney to produce a “hyper-aggressive” gerrymander benefiting the party. A state judge eventually blocked the map’s use in March 2022, ruling “that Democrats had unconstitutionally drawn new congressional districts for partisan advantage,” as the New York Times reported. New York’s Court of Appeals upheld the decision shortly thereafter.
Holder, for his part, did not condemn the Elias-drawn map as an example of a Democratic gerrymander. Instead, after the appeals court struck it down, he issued a statement suggesting that it was “fair” because it reflected “a population shift away from rural areas and into urban and suburban areas.”
The 30-day special session in the Texas state legislature started on Monday. Republicans reportedly plan to take up a new congressional map early on in the session in an attempt to dissuade Democrats from leaving the state before additional policy priorities are taken up.
To successfully break quorum, 51 of 62 Democrats in the legislature would need to join a walkout. Doing so would be expensive—members who join are subject to $500-a-day fines, and lawmakers cannot use their campaign accounts to pay them.
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