The Indiana House on Friday approved a new map that would deliver all the state’s congressional seats to Republicans. But it remains unclear whether the redistricting plan, which President Donald Trump has pushed, has sufficient support for passage in the state Senate.
Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers.
The new map, which passed the state House by a vote of 57-41, would target the two Democrat-held seats: Rep. Frank J. Mrvan’s 1st District in the state’s northwestern corner and Rep. André Carson’s Indianapolis-centered 7th District.
Under the new map, Carson’s seat would be dismantled, with the Democratic stronghold of Marion County split among four districts. The 7th District, which backed Kamala Harris by more than 41 points last year, would shift to one that backed Trump by 38 points, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.
Mrvan, who is already a GOP target this cycle, would see his Gary-anchored district shift from one that Trump lost by less than half a percentage point to one he would have carried by 12 points.
In all, Trump would have carried every Indiana seat by double digits under the redrawn map, according to Inside Elections.
The Indiana Senate is expected to take up the measure when lawmakers return to the state Capitol on Monday, but several Republican state senators have already declared they will oppose the bill. On Friday, 12 Republicans in the state House joined Democrats in voting against the new map, Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.
“The issue of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps mid-cycle has received a lot of attention and is causing strife here in our state,” Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray said in a statement last month announcing his chamber would meet the week of Dec. 8 to consider “any redistricting proposal sent from the House.”
Bray had initially resisted the redistricting effort, declaring that there weren’t enough votes in his chamber.
That prompted an angry reaction from Trump, who has urged Indiana to join other GOP-controlled states in redrawing their congressional lines to help House Republicans flip seats and maintain their majority in next year’s midterm elections.
Trump referred to Bray and state Sen. Greg Goode as RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only, and signaled he would support primary challengers against GOP state senators opposed to the effort. Amid the public criticism from Trump, at least 11 elected Indiana Republicans have been targets of swatting incidents since the state Senate’s initial decision to forgo mid-decade redistricting.
They included GOP state Sen. Jean Leising, who said over the weekend that her house was the target of a pipe bomb. Leising said last week that she remained opposed to redrawing Indiana’s congressional lines.
“It is disappointing that redistricting is taking attention away from issues relevant to my constituents,” she said in a statement. “I will not cave on my position against redistricting but will stay focused on the needs of my seven-county district and the state of Indiana.”
Attempts to redraw congressional lines have spread across the nation to both red and blue states.
Texas Republicans kicked off the process with a new map that could help the GOP gain up to five seats. That map received the green light from the Supreme Court on Thursday, reversing an earlier lower-court ruling.
California responded to Texas’ move with a map, approved by state voters via a ballot measure last month, that could flip an identical number of seats for the Democrats. Republicans could see one-seat gains in Missouri and North Carolina under those states’ new lines. A new map in Ohio could help Republicans flip two seats there, while Utah’s new map gives Democrats a clear shot at gaining a Salt Lake City-anchored seat.
Other states pursuing mid-decade redistricting include Democrat-controlled Maryland and Virginia, and GOP-led Florida, where a state House redistricting committee met Thursday.
Andrew Menezes contributed to this report.
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