Two Democratic governors say if Texas redraws congressional maps, they may too

AUSTIN, Texas – The Democratic governors of two of the largest states in the country issued their most explicit threats yet to Republicans in Texas: If they draw new congressional maps to favor their party before the 2026 election, Democrats will look to do the same.

“This is not a bluff,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday afternoon, minutes after meeting with Democrats from the Texas House. “This is real, and trust me, it’s more real after listening to these leaders today, how existential this is.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker issued a similar pledge. “Everything is on the table,” he said Friday.

The response from the two governors – both of whom are seen as potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2028 – followed meetings with more than a dozen Democrats from the Texas House, who had flown to California and Illinois on Friday as part of an effort to beat back an aggressive Republican redistricting effort.

“We want the country to understand what’s going on in Texas is a national battle,” said state Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, a Democrat from Laredo who was part of the group that met with Pritzker in Chicago. Raymond said he stressed to Pritzker that the redistricting is “clearly aimed at affecting the entire country.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, had called a special session of the Legislature to redraw the maps after private and public pressure from the White House. President Donald Trump has pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their maps – although redistricting usually takes place only after the decennial census – to help preserve the party’s majority in the U.S. House. He has suggested an additional five seats could be created for Republicans in Texas out of the state’s 38 congressional districts. The party already holds 25 seats.

Friday’s meetings with the governors were the most concrete step yet taken by Texas Democrats, who have debated how to respond to the redistricting plan in a state where Republicans control the Legislature and all statewide offices.

Raymond said before the trip that he would not tell Pritzker to take any particular action – but, he said, Pritzker might be eyeing a White House bid, and “if he wants to run for president, he needs to care about the whole country.”

After meeting with Texas leaders in private for about 40 minutes Friday afternoon, Pritzker said at a news conference that changing maps now is “cheating,” a common criticism from Democrats about the Texas effort.

Pritzker indicated he did not want to go down the path of redrawing maps in Illinois, but said that if Texas followed through with a partisan gerrymander before the 2026 midterms, he would explore all options.

“If they’re going to take this drastic action, then we also might take drastic action to respond,” he said.

It remains politically and practically challenging for Democratic state leaders to redraw their own maps in the same highly partisan fashion that Texas is pursuing, even in states where Democrats control every level of government.

In California, an independent commission has been in charge of drawing maps for congressional districts, a nonpartisan approach approved by voters in 2010. Redrawing the lines in a state such as Illinois could present other challenges for Democrats, because the lines are already crafted to strongly advantage the party.

In his remarks Friday, Newsom laid out as many as four paths that he is considering to change the independent commission process in California, including putting a referendum before the state’s voters that would allow changes to be made before the 2026 election. Or, he said, he could work with the Legislature to come up with another solution.

“We have got to fight fire with fire,” Newsom said.

But, Newsom said, any changes or action he would take in California would be “predicated on Texas moving forward.”

Depending on which option Newsom pursues, he will probably need support from two-thirds of the state Legislature. If he puts a measure on the ballot, he would need to raise tens of millions of dollars to run a campaign.

Other Democratic governors have also been considering moves to redraw their maps, including New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“There’s other states that are violating the rules,” Hochul said during a news conference Thursday. “I’m going to look at it closely with Hakeem Jeffries,” she added, referring to the New York representative who is the Democratic leader in the U.S. House.

National party leaders have been pressing Texas Democrats for a walkout during the special session to deny Republicans a quorum and halt the legislative proceedings. Such a move is still among the options that state representatives have.

The meetings with the governors took place during a House recess, so they did not represent a walkout. And the governors’ travel was paid for by the Texas House Democratic Caucus, according to a person briefed on the plans.

A true walkout would require at least 51 of the 62 Democrats in the Texas House to participate – far more than the number who went to California and Illinois on Friday – and each would face a fine of $500 a day under rules imposed by Republican leaders after the last quorum break in 2021.

So far, Texas Democrats have been hesitant – eager to fight, but unsure whether walking out on the legislative session would stop the maps from being adopted. Previous walkouts, during redistricting fights in 2021 and 2003, did not thwart Republican gerrymanders.

Abbott has defended the redistricting push by pointing to a July 7 letter from the Justice Department arguing that several majority Black and Hispanic districts in Houston and Dallas needed to be redrawn in light of a decision from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year. The department said the districts now constitute “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.”

The Justice Department letter came well after the White House began pushing Abbott and Texas Republicans to engage in the rare middecade redistricting effort. The White House has been quietly pushing since this past spring for Texas to be “ruthless” in redrawing the maps, The New York Times first reported in June.

The appellate court decision, Petteway v. Galveston County, found that “coalition districts” – where no single minority group predominates, but where minority groups together constitute a majority – are not protected by the federal Voting Rights Act. But constitutional law experts said it did not hold that such districts, which are common throughout the country, must be redrawn.

Texas has been defending the 2021 maps in a federal case in El Paso, arguing that race had not been taken into account. Now, Abbott appears to be changing that position.

“We are no longer compelled to have coalition districts,” Abbott said in an interview with a Fox affiliate in Dallas, adding that he wanted to “make sure that we have maps that don’t impose” such districts.

“We will maximize the ability of Texans to be able to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Abbott said, repeating the line three times in response to different questions about the redrawing.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.