Crossing the Chesapeake Bay: Maryland Democrats’ Renewed 8-0 Proposal

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Democrats in the Maryland House of Delegates recently passed a map recommended by Gov. Wes Moore’s (D) Redistricting Advisory Commission.

— The potential new map seriously imperils the delegation’s sole Republican, Rep. Andy Harris (R, MD-1), while firming up Democrats’ most marginal seat on the existing map, western Maryland’s MD-6.

— Despite the lower chamber’s vote, state Senate President Bill Ferguson (D) has emerged as a major opponent of mid-decade redistricting; he says he will not prioritize passing a new map.

— Even if the commission’s map passes the entire legislature, state courts could take steps to block its implementation, as was the case with a similar 8-0 proposal in 2022.

Maryland Democrats take another crack at 8-0

On Monday, Maryland’s House of Delegates passed a new Democratic gerrymander. The plan appears to face significant opposition in the state Senate and, even if it passed there, could be struck down by state courts. But now that the map has actually passed one of the state’s legislative chambers, let’s take a detailed look at it.

In Maryland, Democrats are trying to achieve, roughly, what Republicans aimed to do in Missouri last year: both states feature 8-seat maps and a majority party that wants to flip an additional seat while also shoring up their most marginal existing district.

Ahead of the 2022 cycle, Maryland Democrats, who controlled 7 of the state’s House seats, overrode then-Gov. Larry Hogan’s (R) veto to pass a map that put Rep. Andy Harris, the delegation’s sole Republican, into a district that would have narrowly backed Joe Biden in 2020. However, a lower-court judge struck down the map, finding mappers relied too heavily on partisanship. Instead of appealing to the state’s highest court, legislative Democrats and Hogan eventually agreed on a map that was a much cleaner version of what was used in the 2010s. The “compromise” map retained a 7-1 Democratic split for both 2022 and 2024.

As mid-decade redistricting ramped up this summer, Maryland Democrats came under pressure to take a second bite at the apple. In November, Gov. Wes Moore (D) created an advisory commission to hold hearings and draft potential mid-decade maps. Late last month, the commission recommended a plan that, if enacted, would very likely lead to an all-Democratic delegation. That plan, with very minor modifications, was introduced as HB 488 in the legislature—that was what the House of Delegates passed on Monday.

Map 1 and Map 2 show the current and proposed plans, respectively, along with their breakdowns in 2024 federal races.

Map 1: Existing Maryland districts

Map 2: 8-0 map passed by House of Delegates

While Harris would have picked up an additional seat on the proposed map, Hogan would have still carried 4 seats on both maps as part of his 12-point statewide loss in 2024’s Senate race (this represented an unusually strong result for the GOP in Maryland, as Donald Trump lost the state by about 29 points). Hogan’s numbers help show how Democrats are more evenly spread out under the new map. On the existing map, he took almost 65% in MD-1, carried two other Baltimore-area seats with small pluralities, and took about 54% in western Maryland’s MD-6. On the proposed map, Hogan was between 51% and 55% in all 4 of his districts, while Harris was in the mid-50s in those same seats. Maps 1 and 2 also include the 2024 House popular vote, which was usually very close to the presidential result in each district.

The most obvious change between the two maps involves the 1st District, which has long been centered on the Eastern Shore and functions as the current map’s GOP pack. While the proposed MD-1 still contains most of the Eastern Shore, instead of crossing the Susquehanna River to include some of Baltimore’s red exurbs, it crosses the Chesapeake Bay to grab about 420,000 voters who are close to Annapolis and usually vote 2-to-1 Democratic. That change would move the 1st District’s 2024 presidential vote from Trump +17 all the way to Kamala Harris +14. Though the aforementioned Hogan would have still carried the redrawn MD-1 in 2024, we doubt it could realistically elect a Republican in the context of 2026. We may add that Andy Harris, who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, is not known to share Hogan’s moderate politics, so we’d expect him to have less crossover appeal in the bluer parts of a potentially new district. Under the commission’s map, Harris would also be in the same district as first-term Rep. Sarah Elfreth (D, MD-3).

If the proposed plan were enacted, the most marginal seat on the map would be the 3rd District—assuming Elfreth doesn’t move out of the Annapolis area, this would be an open seat. While the potential district includes the majority of Harris +40 Howard County, it also takes in the aforementioned Baltimore exurbs that the old 1st District drops. In fact, outside of Howard County, which makes up almost a quarter of the seat, Harris and Trump were about tied throughout the balance of the seat. Still, though the proposed 3rd is the only district that backed Hogan by double-digits in 2024, it gave Harris, and House Democratic candidates, high-single-digit margins.

In western Maryland, the proposed plan would also strengthen Democrats’ hold on the 6th District. As the table in Map 1 shows, it was the only district on the current map that favored Harris and House Democrats by only single-digits in 2024. For 2022, the district got several points less blue, although not enough for Democrats to actually lose the district. If the commission’s plan passed, Harris’s margin in MD-6 would grow from 51%-46% to almost 54%-43%—this would mostly be because the district would drop some red parts of Frederick County and take in more deeply blue parts of Montgomery County. That change could be enough for us to move the seat off the board entirely (it is currently Likely Democratic) although it may eventually wind up there anyway. The district currently features a primary between two deep-pocketed Democrats: first-term Rep. April McClain Delaney (D) and her immediate predecessor, David Trone, who lost a primary for Senate in 2024.

Though we’ve noted some parallels to Missouri (where a new GOP-backed map could end up being put on hold as its opponents seek a referendum), this effort in Maryland also has some similarities to Republicans’ unsuccessful push to redistrict Indiana last year. For one, the chambers of the legislature seem to be on different pages. In Indiana, the state House passed what was designed to be a 9-0 GOP gerrymander only for the state Senate to soundly reject it. Earlier this week, the commission’s map, which was introduced as HB 488, easily passed in the Maryland House of Delegates but state Senate President Bill Ferguson, who has repeatedly downplayed talk of mid-decade redistricting, is not in a hurry to take up the legislation.

During Indiana’s recent redistricting session, Ferguson was reportedly in contact with his Hoosier counterpart, state Senate President Pro Tempore Rod Bray, who was similarly against his state’s mid-decade remap but faced extraordinary pressure to go along with national leaders. It’s hard to game out what took place behind the scenes, but one wonders if there were any mutual non-aggression assurances made between the two legislative leaders.

In any case, while we would consider this new map operative if it passes the entire legislature and garners Moore’s signature, it is possible that state courts would still intervene against it. Though the high court may simply revert to the 2022 map if it strikes down the commission-favored plan, Ferguson has warned that there still may be some greater risk for Democrats if their map ended up back in court.

J. Miles Coleman is the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ authoritative, nonpartisan newsletter on American campaigns and elections. He also serves as the Center’s Media Relations Coordinator. Follow him on Twitter @jmilescoleman.

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