“Fear is driving all of this,” David Pepper, a former Ohio Democratic Party chairman, said on Wednesday at a hearing to discuss a proposed map that would give Republicans 13 of the state’s 15 congressional seats. “Fear of what would happen if we actually had a real democracy.”
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Several other states have completed maps for the 2020s that entrench existing Republican advantages. Republicans in Alabama and Indiana shored up G.O.P.-held congressional districts while packing their state’s pockets of Democrats into uncompetitive enclaves. In Utah, a new map eliminates a competitive district in Salt Lake City that Democrats won in 2018. Republicans have made an Oklahoma City seat much safer, while Colorado’s independent redistricting commission shored up the district of Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican and Trump ally, so much that her leading Democratic opponent, who had raised $1.9 million, dropped out of the contest to defeat her.
And in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a map that protects the state’s 23 Republican incumbents while adding two safely red seats, a year after the party spent $22 million to protect vulnerable House members.
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In one of the few states where Democrats are on offense, Illinois will eliminate two Republican seats from its delegation and add one Democratic one when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs the map that the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature approved last month. New York is likely to add seats to the Democratic column once the party’s lawmakers complete maps next year, and Maryland Democrats may draw their state’s lone Republican congressman out of a district.
Democrats in Nebraska also managed to preserve a competitive district that includes Omaha after initial Republican proposals sought to split the city in two.
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Wisconsin Republicans on Thursday passed a congressional map that would shift a Democratic seat to certain Republican control, though Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, promised to veto it. Michigan and Virginia, which had gerrymandered districts, have adopted outside commissions to draw new lines. Pennsylvania has a Democratic governor certain to veto Republican maps.
And it’s not clear what California’s independent commission will do when it completes the state’s process later this year.
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Still, Republicans have far more opportunities to press their advantage. G.O.P. lawmakers in New Hampshire proposed changing a congressional map largely unaltered since the 1800s to create a Republican seat. In Georgia, Republicans are set to place Representatives Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux, Democrats who hold seats in Atlanta’s booming northern suburbs, into a single Democratic district while forming a new Republican seat.
Officials in both parties are preparing for years of legal fights over the maps, with the potential for courts to order the redrawing of maps well into the decade. Lawsuits have already been filed over maps in Oregon, Alabama, North Carolina and Texas.
