A banner reading "Mess with Texas" is flown around the State House, reportedly one of six state capitals subjected to the message Monday. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Mess With Texas Project)
A small plane circled the Maryland State House throughout Monday morning and afternoon, trailing a banner with a call to action: “MESS WITH TEXAS.”
It was an apparent reference to the redistricting fight in Texas, where state Republicans are pushing for a rare mid-decade redistricting plan that would flip five U.S. House seats currently held by Democrats before next year’s elections. Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state to prevent a scheduled vote Monday on the redistricting bill, while Democrats in other states are considering responding in kind it Texas goes through with its plan.
Maryland is among those states.
“What’s happening is ruinous, really, to there being any sort of state parity or ground rules,” said Del. David Moon (D-Montgomery) of the proposed Texas redistricting. “Ultimately, it just helps take accountability away from elected officials.”
Moon — who said he saw some of the on-the-lam Texas House Democrats in Boston at the National Conference of State Legislatures convention Monday — said last month that he plans to introduce a bill that would automatically trigger a Maryland redistricting if any other state redistricted “outside of the regular decennial census period.”
Typically, states redraw their congressional district boundaries every 10 years, when decennial Census numbers come out, so for Texas to do it mid-decade would be “ruinous,” Moon said. If the once-per-decade norm is broken by one state, it can affect all other states, said Moon, the House majority leader.
“If one of the 50 states decides to break from the norm and redistrict whenever they want, that’s just not a sustainable system — unless every other state also exercises that same right,” Moon said. “Ideally, once everyone has the same power, nobody exercises it, because it’s destabilizing the Congress itself to have the prospect of redistricting happen every election cycle.”
Maryland is one of the Democratic-led states considering such a response to Texas. More planes trailing “Mess with Texas” banners, backed by “an anonymous group of self-described democracy advocates,” according to Politico, had plans to fly over state capitols Monday in New York, Maine, New Jersey, Illinois and California.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the effort. Employees at two aerial advertising companies, FlySigns.com and Aerial Advertising Outdoor Maryland, were unable to confirm whether the planes had been rented from them.
A “MESS WITH TEXAS” banner was spotted Monday over Albany, according to posts on Facebook and Reddit, where New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) stood with five Texas Democratic lawmakers and said New York was looking into how it could mount a mid-decade redistrictinf if Texas does.
Maryland House Minority Leader Del. Jason Buckel (R-Allegany) said he is also against mid-decade redistricting. But Texas is growing much faster than Maryland — potentially fast enough to merit one or two additional congressional districts compared to 2020, he said.
Texas is a much larger state with more minority seats than Maryland, Buckel said, so even if it redistricts, there will still be Texas seats available to Democrats. In Maryland, only one of the state’s eight congressional seats is held by a Republican.
“Under what Del. Moon is proposing, he wants to potentially gerrymander a map that would have absolutely zero Republican representation in the state,” Buckel said. “That’s just kind of absurd, and I don’t think there’s a way for them to do it.”
Maryland Del. Joe Vogel (D-Montgomery) wrote in a post on X that he will co-sponsor Moon’s bill if it moves forward.
Vogel said he doesn’t support partisan gerrymandering, and he hopes that Texas backs away from its effort. But if Texas engages in partisan mid-decade redistricting, then Maryland will engage back, Vogel said.
“I’m by no means excited about this. First, because I do not generally support partisan gerrymandering, and second, because I think that this could result in a nationwide battle around redistricting in a way that I think further polarizes our country,” Vogel said. “But, again back to this point: Texas is starting it. Texas lawmakers are starting it.”
Moon called the current once-per-decade redistricting norm “basically a treaty among the states,” but said that treaty requires cooperation by all 50 states, which can’t be done if Texas redistricts now.
“This era of unilateral disarmament is over,” Moon said.
Comments