redistricting

INDIANAPOLIS — The Republican leader of the Indiana Senate announced Friday that he would give up his position after six GOP incumbents who opposed President Trump on his congressional redistricting push in the state lost their primaries.

Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray drew the ire of Trump in December when he voted against the redistricting plan after saying for weeks that it didn’t have enough support to pass. The rejection came after intense lobbying from Trump, Vice President JD Vance, national conservative groups and others.

Bray, who has held his leadership position since 2018, said in a statement Friday that he would not seek reelection to the post when Senate Republicans choose their leaders in November. His current Senate term runs through 2028 and he will remain in office, albeit not as the Republican Senate leader.

Trump reacted to the news in a social media post by saying Bray had “foolishly led” the state Senate, noting the May primary defeats of those who defied him on the redistricting plan.

Bray did not mention Trump or the redistricting fight in his statement announcing his position to step down from the leadership position. Bray said holding the job “has been among the most significant honors of my life, but it’s time for the Senate to choose another leader.”

Imagine if Sunday’s World Cup final were played under rules that blatantly favored one side over the other. Let’s say Argentina was spotted four goals against Spain.

Spain could, conceivably, overcome that 4-0 deficit. But it would be awfully hard and something of a miracle if the Spanish team prevailed.

Fans the world over would be rightly outraged. Why bother holding the tournament? What’s the point if one team is saddled with near-insurmountable odds?

Increasingly, that’s what elections for the House of Representatives look like.

As recently as the late 1990s, around 4 in 10 congressional districts were considered competitive, meaning Democratic and Republican candidates each had a plausible shot at winning. Today, per the nonpartisan handicappers at the Cook Political Report, only 18 of 435 House districts are considered toss-ups.

Another 20 districts are rated as either leaning Democratic or Republican, meaning candidates from one party or the other enjoy a noteworthy advantage, but aren’t necessarily a lock to win in November.

In sum, that means fewer than a tenth of all House seats are even somewhat competitive.

That’s hardly an accident, as lawmakers have increasingly manipulated the election process to suit themselves, rejiggering congressional districts to sideline voters and boost their political parties.

It’s undemocratic, and it stinks.

Stifling competition, rewarding extremes

“Every voter has a stake in making sure that these elections are fair and that the process is transparent,” said Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Republican who represents a large, mostly rural swath of western and southern Colorado. “Gerrymandering undermines representative democracy … by preventing voters and communities from having cohesive representation.

“It unfortunately rewards political extremes,” he went on. “It reduces competition and contributes to the polarization and dysfunction that prevents Congress from effectively addressing the issues that our constituents care about.”

Hurd is a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of 44 House members dedicated to working through their ideological and political differences to — lordy! — try to get stuff done.

Recently, to mark Independence Day, the caucus announced a framework for legislation aimed at bringing competition back to many congressional races, in part by limiting the redrawing of political maps to once every 10 years, following the census. Among other reforms, the bipartisan group also called for establishing a uniform, national standard requiring that congressional districts be drawn “using clear, objective criteria while rejecting partisan advantage and incumbent protection as legitimate goals.”

The effort is, of course, too late for this election. The hope is Congress will enact the changes in time for the next scheduled round of redistricting, which is due to take place after the 2030 census. The rules would be in place starting in 2032.

The chances of passage are not strong. As Hurd noted: “Any reform that asks politicians to give up political leverage is going to be challenging.” But if ever there was a time for a badly needed systemic fix, it’s now.

A race to the bottom

Gerrymandering has been around for more than 200 years. The term derives from the efforts of Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry to skew state Senate races in the election of 1812. The portmanteau, which appeared in the Boston Gazette, described one politically engineered, misshapen district that resembled a salamander.

The practice reached new heights of creativity (or deviousness, depending on your perspective) in the modern age, when ever-more sophisticated computers allowed for ever-finer slicing and dicing of the electorate.

In 2019, the Supreme Court effectively greenlighted the practice in a 5-4 decision by the conservative majority, decreeing that partisan gerrymandering was beyond the purview of federal courts. In other words, have at it! And lawmakers did.

But this last year, in particular, has broken new, insidious ground.

Pressured by President Trump — who fears losing the GOP’s whisper-thin House majority — lawmakers in Texas tore up their political map mid-decade and redrew the state’s congressional districts in hopes of nabbing five additional seats this November. California responded in kind, with passage of Proposition 50, a measure that shelved the work of a nonpartisan redistricting commission in favor of a map aimed at handing Democrats five additional seats.

More than half a dozen other states — most of them Republican-run — have jumped into the fight, gerrymandering their congressional districts to gain a partisan edge. Lawmakers in several Democratic-run states are now looking at the prospect of retaliatory gerrymandering ahead of the 2028 election.

There’s not much upside to all this self-dealing — if, that is, you care about political competition and allowing the electorate a genuine say. But all that manipulation and maneuvering has, at least, made voters much more aware of the once-obscure practice of congressional line drawing. And that offers reformers a flicker of hope.

One ally, improbable though it may seem, is Paul Mitchell. He’s the Sacramento political guru who drew the gerrymandered map that California voters approved with passage of Proposition 50. (California, he said, was left no choice but to respond after Texas made its move.)

Mitchell said he has long favored a national redistricting standard that would apply to all 50 states and put the much-abused process on an even footing. “I really believe that redistricting should … serve the public, not serve the politicians,” Mitchell said.

Still looking on that bright side, he suggested perhaps the current redistricting war will prove so odious and have “done so much harm” that combatants will reach a point where they “put down [their] arms and embrace a kind of nonpartisan, non-politicized, public-oriented redistricting.”

It seems far-fetched. But miracles do happen.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Californians rallied to save the coast 50 years ago. Trump is spoiling the celebration
The deep dive: On birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court originalists split on history and Trump
The L.A. Times Special: Inside the states’ case to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger: ‘Each side is taking risks’

Until next time,
mzb
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ATLANTA — Georgia’s Republican legislative leaders on Wednesday rejected Gov. Brian Kemp’s call to redraw congressional and legislative districts during a special session, citing concerns about moving too quickly after a U.S. Supreme Court decision weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters.

House Speaker Jon Burns sent Kemp a letter hours before a special session was set to begin Wednesday, and he announced the decision as demonstrators filled the Georgia Capitol with chants of “Black voters matter!”

The decision marked a setback for both Kemp and President Trump, who has urged Republican-led states to redraw congressional districts to their advantage. Ten states already have enacted new congressional districts ahead of the November midterm elections. Georgia would have been the first to change districts for the 2028 elections.

Burns said lawmakers want to take their time after the court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander and laid the groundwork for other Southern states to redraw their congressional districts. Burns said it was more important for lawmakers to focus on economic matters rather than “partisan games.” He also cited pending litigation over existing Georgia districts and the need for the state to understand the full ramifications for how race can or cannot be used in redistricting.

Republican legislative leaders did not rule out revisiting redistricting later this year.

Minority voting rights are especially salient in Georgia, where the Capitol complex includes a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and sits blocks from where the slain civil rights icon lived, preached and led the movement that yielded the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Conservative justices gave the green light

Before Callais, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was understood to require maps — for Congress, state legislatures and local legislative bodies — that gave historically marginalized minorities a reasonable chance to select candidates of their choice. Nationally and in Georgia, those so-called “opportunity districts” have disproportionately elected Black and other nonwhite representatives.

For example, about a third of Georgia’s 180 state representatives are Black. Latino, Asian and other minorities bring the total nonwhite share to about 40% — roughly reflecting the state’s overall population. Georgia’s U.S. House delegation has five districts out of 14 total where the electorate is majority or plurality nonwhite. All elected Black Democrats in 2024.

With the Callais ruling, issued in April, a conservative majority of justices concluded that jurisdictions drawn with racial makeup in mind are discriminatory and violate the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause. The justices declared that apportionment should be “race neutral.”

Their stated reasoning did not hinge on party interests, and federal courts have said partisan gerrymandering is constitutionally permissible. But in Southern states, especially, party loyalty dovetails considerably with race and ethnicity. So the decision has allowed Republicans — a party dominated by white people — to redraw maps to goose likely GOP districts by redistributing nonwhite voters who tend to support Democrats.

That, many civil rights activists and experts argue, makes it impossible for Southern legislatures to be genuinely “race neutral” when drawing boundaries.

Emory University professor Carol Anderson compared Callais and the resulting redistricting push to poll taxes and literacy tests imposed by white Southern conservatives — and blessed by the Supreme Court — during the Jim Crow era.

“They used racially neutral language for policies that were clearly racially targeted,” said Anderson, who is also a board member of Fair Fight Action, a group organizing against the Georgia redistricting.

There were risks for Kemp and Republicans

It’s not guaranteed that Georgia Republicans can get what they want from new maps.

Partisan gerrymandering involves redistributing voters — packing certain citizens into fewer districts or dividing them across more districts. Around metro Atlanta, spreading nonwhite, Democratic-leaning voters across more districts could make more seats seem to lean Republican. The risk, however, is that more battleground districts emerge because white metropolitan voters are trending less conservative, which could give Democratic candidates of any race or ethnicity more chances to win.

That’s perhaps not a major factor in the Georgia state Senate, which already is considered gerrymandered for Republicans. But it could be a consideration when drawing state House and U.S. House maps.

Kemp was effectively asking Republicans, especially in metro Atlanta, to redraw their own boundaries and take on new, unfamiliar territory.

Trump started the fight before the Supreme Court decision

Nationally, a partisan redistricting battle started last year when Trump urged Republican-controlled states to redraw congressional boundaries to shore up the GOP’s narrow House majority in Washington this November. Texas answered the call first.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats in Sacramento answered with their own gerrymander that voters later approved. A succession of states followed. The outcome would have been close to even had the Virginia Supreme Court, controlled by conservatives, not struck down new Democratic-drawn maps approved by the state’s voters. All told, Republicans think they could gain as many as 16 seats from their redistricting efforts while Democrats think they could gain six seats from new districts in California and Utah.

That still may not be enough for the GOP to hold a congressional majority, given Trump’s lagging approval ratings. But it could mitigate Democratic gains and set Republicans up well for 2028 and beyond.

Barrow writes for The Associated Press.

The most important thing political junkies might need this week is patience.

With so many key races expected to be tight, officials are warning it could takes days — perhaps even more than a week — to know the outcome of Tuesday’s primary election.

Here are some important things to watch as the results roll in:

From left; Steve Hilton at the California Republican Convention in San Diego; Tom Steyer campaigning in downtown Santa Ana; and Xavier Becerra in San Diego.

(Los Angeles Times)

1. The fight for the second top spot

Most polls and pundits say Democrat Xavier Becerra is likely to be the top voter-getter in the primary to replace Gavin Newsom as California governor.

Until recently, it was assumed that Republican Fox News host Steve Hilton would also advance, especially after he was endorsed by President Trump.

But a new poll suggested Hilton was in a tight race for second place with Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer, who is spending heavily from his own fortune. If he is successful, California could see a competitive Democrat-versus-Democrat general election come November.

Under California’s election rules, the top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of party preference.

Hilton is urging Republicans to unite around him to avoid being shut out. His main GOP opponent is Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

A few months ago, Hilton and Bianco led some polls amid a crowded Democratic field, prompting fears that Democrats might be locked out of November’s general election. But those concerns have subsided somewhat with Becerra’s rise in the polls.

More to read:

Left to right: Karen Bass on Friday, April 8, 2022; Spencer Pratt on April 16, 2025; Nithya Raman on March 3, 2026.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times; Jordan Strauss / Invision/AP; Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

2. Is the mayor’s race really a tossup?

It’s rare for the Los Angeles mayor’s race to become a national story. But that has happened this year thanks to a showdown few would have predicted.

Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt is a big reason for all the attention, running from the right in a very liberal city. Embattled Mayor Karen Bass is the incumbent, with City Councilwoman Nithya Raman running from the left.

A UC Berkeley-L.A. Times poll released last week found a close race with Bass at 26%, Raman at 25% and Pratt at 22% among likely voters. Other polls have shown Pratt doing better.

Pratt had overshadowed his opponents when it came to social media (and old media) attention. But is that enough to get him into the runoff? Bass has big labor on her side, and we’ll see whether that helps her get out the vote. But Bass is also unpopular, according to polls. Does that give Raman an opening among Democrats who are looking for an alternative?

More to read:

Dan Egelhoff plays with his dog at a “Barbecue, Beer and Ballots” event at Rep. Ken Calvert’s office.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

3. The fallout from California redistricting

When it comes to congressional elections, this should be a good night for Democrats, by design. That’s because California voters last year approved Proposition 50, which redrew congressional districts to favor Democrats.

It was part of a national battle by both red and blue states designed to help their respective parties secure control of Congress. The new California maps give Democrats an advantage in some areas, but it’s still unclear how sweeping the victories will be. There are some notable intra-party battles in “safe” districts as well.

The Times’ data and graphics team has identified a few races to watch:

• Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) lost his seat in redistricting and is now challenging incumbent Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) in the 40th District.
• In San Francisco, several factions of the Democratic Party are vying to replace former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 11th District.
• California’s 48th Congressional District in San Diego and Riverside counties has traditionally been red. But the sudden retirement of longtime Republican incumbent Darrell Issa and redistricting puts it in play.
• Veteran Rep. Brad Sherman is facing a strong challenge from fellow Democrat Jake Levine in the 32nd District.

More reading:

Want more information about the ballot-counting process? Times reporter Grace Toohey breaks it down, including how to track your mail-in ballot, how races get called and why it takes so long.

WASHINGTON — The Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday called on major corporations across the U.S., including those that previously expressed support for voting rights and racial justice, to oppose redistricting efforts by Republican-led states that seek to eliminate majority-Black U.S. House districts.

In a letter sent to more than 250 companies, members of the Black Caucus urge them to condemn the redistricting efforts, which the lawmakers describe as “coordinated efforts to silence Black voices at the ballot box.” Some of the companies had co-signed their own message to Congress five years ago urging lawmakers to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a Democratic proposal to restore and update the Voting Rights Act.

That 2021 coalition, Business for Voting Rights, was backed by many of the country’s most valuable and influential companies, including Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, Salesforce, Target, PayPal, Intel and Starbucks.

Tuesday’s letter is the latest effort by the Congressional Black Caucus and its allies to gather support for preventing more Republican-led states from redrawing their legislative maps in ways that would dilute Black political representation. Several states have moved to eliminate congressional districts represented by Black Democratic lawmakers after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that severely weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

“Corporations that have profited from Black consumers, relied on Black workers, and amassed wealth in part from Black communities cannot look away while Black political power is dismantled in plain sight,” Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Black Caucus, said in an interview.

Clarke described the letter as “putting corporate America on notice,” but she said the caucus was not seeking an adversarial relationship with corporations. Among those receiving Tuesday’s letter were companies based overseas that have a significant presence in the U.S.

The caucus last week called for Black athletes to boycott public universities in states that are gerrymandering their congressional maps to eliminate districts held by Black lawmakers. The 59-member Congressional Black Caucus consists entirely of Democrats, including more than a third from Southern states.

Some lawmakers have said mass protests and federal legislation might be necessary to undo the efforts underway in Republican-led states. Any new federal voting rights law would almost certainly require Democrats to secure majorities in both chambers of Congress and win the presidency.

It is unclear how companies will respond to the demands. The Associated Press was making efforts to contact them.

“Many companies that previously issued statements after the murder of George Floyd, pledged billions toward racial equity initiatives, and spoke forcefully in defense of democracy following January 6 now face a defining test of whether those commitments were rooted in principle or convenience,” the caucus’ letter states.

It also represents the latest instance of the caucus expressing frustrations with corporate America. A 2024 Black Caucus report noted that lawmakers were “troubled that some corporations that made pledges in 2020 have taken several steps in the opposite direction,” such as rolling back or failing to follow through on pledges to diversify their workforces.

“We understand who the occupant in the White House is and the reality of Republicans being in charge,” Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada said of the caucus’ message. “But what corporate America also understands is that there will be a shift at some point.”

The letter calls on companies to publicly condemn the redistricting plans, meet with Black Caucus members to discuss corporate America’s role in protecting voting rights and disclose their political donations to Republican politicians in states that are redistricting their congressional maps.

President Trump last year kicked off the unusual mid-decade round of congressional redistricting when he pushed Texas lawmakers to redraw their maps in a way that would add Republican seats. Democratic-led California responded, but it has been mostly Republican states redrawing their lines since as the party tries to maintain its majority in the U.S. House during this year’s midterm elections.

The effort was supercharged by the Supreme Court decision, which allowed even more Republican states to redraw congressional maps that previously had protected minority communities.

Horsford, who chaired the Black Caucus during President Biden’s Democratic administration, said the caucus is demanding that companies “stand on the side of democracy, fairness and equal representation.”

“This is about power, who holds it and what it’s used for,” he said. “And when you’re diluting Black economic and political power, we need to know where these companies stand in this moment, and what side of history they’re on.”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.