The Texas redistricting fight could end up being the first test of mettle for Democrats eyeing a 2028 play for the White House.
With Greg Abbott, the state’s Republican governor, directing lawmakers to gerrymander up to five congressional seats to add to the GOP’s total, Democrats suddenly find themselves flush with political opportunity.
For months, polling has shown that Democratic voters want their representatives to take on louder roles in opposition to Donald Trump. Survey after survey has shown the frustration the party’s base harbors for members of leadership, frustration which boiled into rare public view earlier this year during an intra-party spat over a potential government shutdown.
Now, Texas is giving Democratic governors, at the very least, an opportunity to give the voters what they want.
That’s why those same governors — the ones with Democratic state legislatures to back them up, that is — are lining up to threaten their own mid-decade redistricting efforts. And the list reads like a who’s who of expected presidential contenders.
In Illinois, New York, and California, three of the Democratic Party’s most prominent national leaders were fired up in their responses to questions this week about redistricting and their individual responses to the Texas plan to add as many as five GOP-leaning congressional seats.
Adamantly backing them up was Ken Martin, the party chair who is on his own personal crusade to rebrand the Democrats’ national image after the bruising 2024 cycle.
“We’re not here to tie one of our hands behind our back,” Martin said in an interview with a Portland, Oregon news outlet.
“In the past, I think our party would bring a pencil to a knife fight. We’re going to bring a gun to a knife fight.”
He was even more explicit at a press conference with Democratic lawmakers who fled Texas to prevent the redistricting from taking place, telling reporters: "Now is not the time for one party to play by the rules while the other party has completely ignored it. They've decided to cheat, and we're going to respond in kind."
The governors vowing to match any partisan redistricting committed by Texas Republicans offered similar analogies.
The strongest response came from California’s Gavin Newsom, who recently visited South Carolina as it is heavily speculated that he is considering a national campaign. He vowed that his state would fight “fire with fire” and trigger its own redistricting process were Abbott to move forward in Texas.
New York’s Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, told reporters that she would push for ending the state’s independent redistricting commission, explaining that she would no longer fight with her hand “tied behind my back.”
“We’re sick and tired of being pushed around when other states don’t have the same aspirations that we always have,” the New York governor said on Monday. “I cannot ignore that the playing field has changed dramatically, and shame on us if we ignore that fact and cling tight to the vestiges of the past.
“That era is over — Donald Trump eliminated it forever.”
In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is publicly harboring the escapee Democratic lawmakers from Texas, demurred on the prospect, though his office confirmed to Axios that he won’t rule out his own reciprocal efforts: "Here in the state of Illinois, it is possible to redistrict -- it's not something that I want to do,” he said on Tuesday.
Maryland’s Wes Moore, another rising star in the party, issued a similar statement through a spokesperson on Tuesday; “all options” are on the table. The Democratic leader of the state’s House of Delegates just introduced legislation that would allow Maryland to pursue redistricting if another state did so mid-decade.
In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy is prevented from pushing for state lawmakers to begin their own redistricting efforts under the state’s constitution. But Murphy told reporters on Monday that the issue was to be a talking point in conversations with other Democratic governors.
“I suspect as the Democratic governors get together for a drink or a coffee, this will be high on the agenda,” he said, according to The New Jersey Globe.
While Democrats are likely limited in the number of states where they could mount their own bids to boost congressional representation for their party, the sheer size and density of California and New York could give them an edge.
In general, the issue is providing the party the “knife fight” it was looking for. With three Texas lawmakers risking arrest by fleeing the state to break a quorum in the legislature, Democratic voters are seeing the first hints of effective, unified Democratic resistance to the second Trump era coalesce across the country.
It still remains to be seen if Texas Republicans will even be successful in their push. Assuming the GOP isn’t scared off by threats from Democrats, court challenges could still prevent the state’s new maps from going into effect next year — or at all.
Abbott, however, seems to have ignited a spark within the Democratic Party. Even Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was vowing that his party would respond from “coast-to-coast” to prevent his caucus from losing up to five of its members in Texas, or at the minimum respond in kind.
As the Democrats’ leader in the House, Jeffries’ own political future is tied to his ability to protect his members and repair a somewhat fractured party leadership as he braces for a wave of primary contests in 2026. On Monday, the Democratic minority leader vowed: “We’re going to respond and respond forcefully.”
“What is going on in Texas right now in terms of this second attempt to gerrymander the map we believe violates the Voting Rights Act,” Jeffries said during a CNN interview.
“You will not see that happen in Democratic states, but you will see governors and state legislatures and, of course, Members of the House Democratic Caucus respond in kind. There is no unilateral disarmament when we’re in the middle of an all-out assault by Donald Trump.”
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