New congressional maps are bad for Democrats but good for the country

I am a Democrat who believes that the new congressional maps for New York, formulated by a court-appointed special master, may be bad for my party but good for the country. I say that because the maps will create competitive districts where both Democratic and Republican candidates will be drawn not to the extremes of their respective parties, but closer to the center.

The process itself was a shambles. No state should leave the formulation of 10-year congressional maps to a single individual, as happened in New York. But the outcome itself will help restore bipartisanship on Capitol Hill.

I’m often asked why Congress has veered so far to extremes, why it seems harder than ever for Democrats and Republicans to find compromise. The answer is twofold.

First, gerrymandering. When districts are drawn by politicians to be safer for incumbents of both parties, they become bluer and redder. As a result, candidates become more attentive to their bases.  

When I served in the House, I knew moderate Republicans who represented districts where a majority of constituents supported common-sense gun safety legislation. Yet the representatives felt compelled to oppose such measures because any vote for gun safety ignited the Republican base and invited a primary in an increasingly red district. As one friend once told me, “Moderates will forgive me for voting against background checks, but my base will never forgive me for voting for it.”

The second problem: We are choosing to live in neighborhoods where everyone tends to agree. We don’t want to see the tribal colors of the opposing party flying from flagpoles across the street. We want Fox News or MSNBC neighborhoods. Trump or Biden neighborhoods. Today, U.S. means us, not them.

When I was elected to Congress in 2000, there were about 150 fairly competitive districts. They were moderate places where compromise was valued, not vilified. They were a tick to the right or left of center. By 2011, when I chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the battlefield of competitive districts had shrunk to about 75. In this midterm election, the Cook Political Report estimates fewer than 50, half of which are pure toss-ups.

The center aisle has become desolate.

Republicans weaponized redistricting in 2003, when they tossed out sitting Democrats in Texas in a tradition-defying mid-decade plan. They ran up the score again when they swept state houses in 2010, producing gerrymandered maps so bizarre that one district in Pennsylvania was infamously called “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck.” In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that an element of the Voting Rights Act which helped inhibit racially motivated redistricting was unconstitutional. 

How did Democrats respond? We tried to even the score. Unilateral surrender is never a good strategy in politics, and we aggressively sought to match Republicans in supporting maps that restored blue seats.

It has gone too far. The ideological rigidity of congressional districts means there is no longer any political incentive to compromise.

Even worse, it is subverting democracy. In polling, a plurality of Americans see themselves as centrist. But congressional gerrymandering and residential self-sorting has resulted in two parties locked in irreconcilable conflict.

Redistricting reform is the surest way of bringing America back to the center. We need more independent commissions like the ones in California and Arizona, stronger legal protections requiring fairly drawn districts, and greater public oversight of the process to foster what our founders intended when they created representative democracy: an ability to move not further and faster to the left or right, but forward.