Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s redistricting advisory commission voted in private Tuesday to recommend a new set of congressional district boundaries that would give Democrats a better chance of winning all eight House of Representatives seats.
The map significantly redraws the Eastern Shore-based 1st Congressional District, currently represented by Republican Andy Harris, stretching it across the Chesapeake Bay to sweep in liberal and purple areas of Anne Arundel and Howard counties. All told, the district would connect Ocean City and Columbia.
Other districts in Central Maryland would also be shifted, but appear to remain favorable to Democrats.
Democrats currently hold seven of the state’s eight House seats.
The map now goes forward to the General Assembly for consideration, where passage is not assured. Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, is opposed to redistricting and says the majority of his chamber is behind him.
The governor’s office is expecting the map to be introduced in the House of Delegates, where conditions are more favorable. But both chambers would need to vote for the map to be put into place.
Ferguson and Cumberland Mayor Ray Morriss, the only Republican on the commission, voted against the map. The other three, all Democrats, voted for it: U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, state Del. C.T. Wilson and Brian Frosh, the former state attorney general.
Ferguson blasted the map as “objectively unconstitutional” in a statement issued after the vote.
He said the commission had not heard from legal and elections experts. The chosen map’s districts don’t have equally balanced populations as required, and communities are divided more than the current map, he said.
“Ultimately, a flawed process has delivered a flawed product,” Ferguson said.
Morris said he didn’t feel it was right for Maryland to redistrict. He wasn’t sold on the pitch from Democrats that they needed to “save democracy” from President Donald Trump’s influence by disenfranchising Republican voters.
“I look to the last 20 to 25 years and I would tell you the Democratic Party has systematically gerrymandered the state away from Republicans already,” Morriss said. “They didn’t need an excuse to do it before. Now they are using President Trump as the reason to do it.”
Frosh, meanwhile, said before the meeting that he thinks the chosen map would pass legal muster, despite having a district crossing the Chesapeake Bay.
“It’s compact, contiguous and it respects geographic and political boundaries to a very large degree,” he said.
Maryland Republicans, who oppose mid-cycle redistricting, have vowed to challenge any new map in court. Lawsuits could take months to resolve, putting deadlines related to the June primary election at risk.
Alsobrooks, who chaired the commission, said in a statement that the recommendation was “developed through a transparent redistricting process.”
While the commission took hours of public testimony over video, members discussed whether to move forward to review maps during a closed meeting in December. Then they met in a private video call on Tuesday to pick a map.
Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, all members except for Alsobrooks said in interviews they thought the meeting should be open to the public.
“This vote is not the end of public input — it’s a next step forward,“ Alsobrooks said in her statement. ”We encourage Marylanders to continue participating, reviewing the proposed map, and sharing feedback as the General Assembly debates and votes on this map.”
Moore, speaking to reporters ahead of the meeting, said he felt the commission has been transparent so far, hearing plenty of testimony from Marylanders.
The Democratic governor described the planned meeting as “administrative” in nature.
Maryland is the latest state to weigh new maps amid nationwide call-and-response partisan redistricting that was kicked off when Trump urged Texas to draw Republican-friendly districts. Maryland officials have gotten pressure from national Democrats to redraw the map in hopes of defeating Harris.
While Harris’ 1st Congressional District would be swept across the bay in the new map, the 3rd Congressional District represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Sarah Elfreth would be reworked even more.
The 3rd currently includes the northern half of Anne Arundel County, all of Howard County and a small part of Carroll County. Under the proposed map, the district would swing clear across to the other side of Baltimore City to include Cecil County and parts of Baltimore, Carroll and Howard counties, along with a sliver of Baltimore City.
“After the Republican Party’s mid-cycle redistricting in Texas, I’m more than ready to run in, win in, and serve in any district the Maryland General Assembly draws,” Elfreth said in a statement. “But ultimately the decision doesn’t lie in my hands.”
Another district that would shift significantly is the 8th, currently stretching across D.C. suburbs and represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Under the recommended map, that district would stretch from the D.C. border in Montgomery County all the way north to the Pennsylvania line in Carroll County.
Banner reporter Brenda Wintrode contributed to this report.
