If you want to understand how Congress became so polarized, look no further than Texas.
Egged on by President Trump, Gov. Greg Abbot (R) and Republican leaders in the state are trying to engage in mid-decade redistricting, bucking the norm of waiting until the conclusion of the census every 10 years to redraw congressional maps to accommodate population changes.
Both Democrats and Republicans have weaponized gerrymandering over the years. But only Texas Republicans have tried twice — in 2003 and now — to exercise the nuclear option of mid-decade redrawing of districts.
I understand the motivations of these Republicans — and the desire of Democrats to take revenge. In 2012, I chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and we had a score to settle with Republicans for eliminating six Democratic seats in Texas in their 2003 mid-decade assault. We might have tried to persuade Democratic governors and legislators to strike earlier than the typical redrawing of maps after the 2010 census, but we decided not to retaliate against Republican rule-breaking with rule-breaking of our own. Instead, we waited for the regular process to take place ahead of the 2012 election.
Once the decennial census concluded, we quickly realized that our best opportunity to pick up more seats was in Illinois, where the House delegation had eight Democrats and 11 Republicans. Gov. Pat Quinn and Democratic leaders in the statehouse became political Picassos, redrawing districts to create three more Democratic seats after the 2012 elections.
That was not a one-off. Both parties have regularly engaged in designing their own abstract district art. Pennsylvania’s old Seventh District — designed in 2011 to protect Republican incumbent Rep. Patrick Meehan — was famously called “Goofy kicking Donald Duck” for its bizarre resemblance to the Disney characters.
In 2000, Arizona created a district that snaked oddly along the Colorado River so as to include the Hopi Reservation but not the surrounding Navajo Reservation, circumventing longstanding tensions between the two tribes.
In 2022, a plan favored by Democrats in New York extended my former Third Congressional District across several bridges and the Long Island Sound, into the Bronx. But that gerrymandering plan backfired, as a state judge struck it down.
The result of this map madness is that the moderate, competitive districts have shriveled, while the number of highly partisan districts has skyrocketed.
When I first entered Congress in 2001, there were 29 districts with a partisan voting index within a range of four points, reliably swinging between a two-point Republican or Democratic advantage, depending on national trends. In other words, they were toss-ups, and the incumbents needed crossover voters to win reelection. Bipartisanship wasn’t a fuzzy goal — it was an urgent strategic imperative.
Today, the number of those districts is just 16.
Most of the other districts have been drawn to be more red or blue. That means that many House members don’t lay awake at night fretting about being defeated in the general election by someone in the other party. Instead, they lay awake thinking about being defeated by a fringe, extreme candidate in their next primary.
The political gravity of Congress has shifted. Our system forces legislators to the ideological extremes, when most Americans fall closer to the center.
That’s without even accounting for the trend of partisan residential sorting, as Americans increasingly live with ideologically likeminded neighbors. We’ve divided ourselves into Fox News and MSNBC districts, where contradicting views are rarely found on any given block.
Of course, some states have attempted redistricting reforms. California and Arizona adopted independent commissions. New York has a bipartisan redistricting commission that places guardrails on just how much Democrats can gerrymander.
And that’s part of the problem Democrats face: Republicans in Texas and elsewhere play to win by breaking the rules, while in Democratic controlled states, leaders often play to protect the rules, even when it costs them.
Over the years, many have argued that Democrats need to fight fire with fire. Instead, Democrats have historically focused on writing a fair fire code even as arson consumes American bipartisanship.
But this new Texas mid-decade redistricting push seems to have finally changed the Democratic mindset. Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Kathy Hochul of New York and JB Pritzker of Illinois are teasing mutual assured gerrymandering destruction by threatening mid-decade redistricting in their own states if Texas Republicans go through with their plan. Each of these efforts faces an uphill legal climb, however, given that voters in two of those three states outlawed such practices.
Democrats have realized that patiently waiting until the next redistricting cycle is not an option. Congressional majorities aren’t won on a moral high ground but on the streets. Only when Republican members of Congress from New York, California and Illinois see their seats turn blue will national GOP leaders recognize that, in gerrymandering, “an eye for an eye” makes the whole political system blind.
And so to restore bipartisanship in the long run, Democrats may need to play by Texas Republican rules.
Steve Israel represented New York in the House of Representatives for eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015.
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