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Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore is pushing to redraw the state’s congressional maps, announcing on Tuesday the creation of a commission that will propose new lines ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Moore’s announcement that he’s creating the Governor’s Redistricting Advisory Commission comes a week after Democratic state Senate President Bill Ferguson sent a letter to dozens of state lawmakers declaring “the Senate is choosing not to move forward with mid-cycle redistricting.”
It sets up a clash between the two Democratic leaders in a blue-leaning state where any effort to redraw the map will net a single seat, given that Maryland Democrats already dominate the state’s congressional delegation with seven of its eight U.S House seats. It also comes as Democrats are ramping up their efforts to change maps to match President Donald Trump’s moves to redistrict red-leaning states to net additional seats for Republicans.
“My commitment has been clear from day one — we will explore every avenue possible to make sure Maryland has fair and representative maps,” Moore said in a statement Tuesday. “This commission will ensure the people are heard..”
The commission will be chaired by Maryland Democratic Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a close ally of Moore’s who he helped get elected to the Senate last year. Moore’s other appointees include Brian Frosh, the state’s former Democratic attorney general who served under former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, and Ray Morriss, the nonpartisan mayor of the city of Cumberland.
The other appointees of the commission include Maryland House Speaker Adrienne Jones, who has been public about her intent to launch a redistricting push, and Ferguson “or designee.”
Reached for comment on whether he’d join the commission, a spokesperson for Ferguson responded simply: “We’ll see.”
Moore, considered a potential 2028 presidential candidate, is itching for Maryland to enter the national mid-decade redistricting fight that touched off earlier this year when Trump urged the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature to redraw districts to pick up five seats that favor Republicans ahead of next year's midterms.
Moore himself has characterized what Trump is doing as “nothing more than political redlining,” a reference to the discriminatory housing practice that kept Black Americans out of predominantly white neighborhoods by denying them mortgages.
Ferguson, who is white, in his letter last week also made a racial argument against moving to redraw state lines. He said Maryland, which has a governor, House speaker and attorney general who are all Black, has long fought against racial gerrymandering that was aimed at “diluting” the Black vote. It would be “hypocritical to say that it is abhorrent to tactically shift voters based on race, but not to do so based on party affiliation,” he wrote.
In California on Tuesday, voters take up a ballot measure, Proposition 50, the mid-decade gerrymander that is being led by Gov. Gavin Newsom. If it passes as expected, it would offset the GOP pickups that the Texas redistricting effort created.
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