How the Texas-California redistricting brawl relates to Tennessee

Tennessee’s redistricting in 2022 divided Nashville into three congressional districts. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

There’s no shortage of symptoms pointing to the declining health of American democracy these days, but the Texas-California (and beyond) congressional redistricting rhubarb has to rank as one of the most acute. Using a legislative majority to redraw maps off-schedule for the sole purpose of inflating and locking in partisan advantage that actual voter demographics and preferences would never support feels like precisely the opposite of functional representative government.

Nashvillians, of course, know this sort of thing intimately: we’ve been living nakedly partisan line-drawing first-hand ever since the state’s GOP majority in 2022 cracked Music City’s reliably blue 5th Congressional District into three solidly red seats. The result: essentially no voice in Congress for a top-25 (population) city that votes almost two to one for Democrats yet found itself represented by outer county chawbacons for whom Nashville is basically just an airport with nonstops to DC. And so as this chart shows Tennessee became the third most gerrymandered red state and sixth most overall. 

This makes for a sad and dispiriting political environment for Nashville’s Democrats — which is to say most of Nashville. But some semicomical schadenfreude does bubble up with California conservatives’ reactions to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to do unto them as Tennessee Republicans have done unto us. 

The Los Angeles Times reports that residents in one of the red California districts to be redrawn “are angry” because the remapping “disregards the needs and wants of rural people.” One voter says of the plan to blend more urban parts of California into her rural district: “Their needs and their wants are completely different than what we need here.” Said another: “All the things we stand for are going down the drain.”

For Nashville Democrats that has a familiar ring! Now perhaps this is where I’m supposed to say two wrongs don’t make a right, and charitably adopt these soon-to-be-disenfranchised California Republicans as sympathetic comrades in gerrymandering victimhood. But you know what? No. Cry me a river. 

Sure, both parties are guilty of gerrymandering to excess — it’s a systemic defect in our system, one the Supreme Court not long ago had an excellent opportunity to remedy but declined. Yet even if gerrymandering is a bipartisan disease, right now there’s only one party in the role of superspreader, unabashedly doing out-of-cycle map-finagling with the express aim of curdling next year’s midterm election. 

 And that party would be your party, California GOP voters, so suck it up. You may lose your representation because Democrats are responding in kind, but the key word here is “responding.” I know it’s childish to point fingers and wail “you started it” but let’s face facts: you started it.

We can find some consolation in the fact that voters do generally frown on this sort of thing. New polling as the Texas-California ruckus unfolded this month found an overall majority of 55% agreeing that drawing districts to win seats “is bad for democracy,” 27% not sure, and only 18% saying all good no problemo (and only 27% of Republicans). The point being: we know this is bad business, and that “we” is bipartisan.

There is also solace in knowing that partisan redistricting sometimes backfires. Occasionally a gerrymander turns into what political scientists call a “dummymander” — the unintended consequence when partisan line drawing spreads a party’s voters so thinly that the district later becomes vulnerable to a subsequent flip. It can happen, though not often. Can it happen here?

In Middle Tennessee right now we have the unfolding spectacle of a special election to fill one of our gerrymandered seats, the mighty 7th, in the wake of Mark Green’s crass decision to skedaddle in pursuit of vague but no doubt lucrative opportunities to cash in on his “public service.” With a rare open congressional seat in play, the CD7 special election has drawn a bevy of hopefuls.

Field set for Tennessee 7th Congressional District special election

The four Democrats in the race are all vocal in their messaging that this is an unusual opportunity to turn a red seat blue. Realistically, their prospects for an upset that flips the seat are rooted more in the history of turnout math in special elections — typically lighter and bluer than usual — than in the fulfillment of a dummymander fantasy. The four are also trying to gin up discontent with the Big Beautiful Bill Congress passed at Trump’s behest, which could be a reach since although the bill is widely scorned nationally, it polls positively in Tennessee, including among independents. 

Meanwhile, the eleven count ‘em eleven Republicans vying in the special all likely assume that the gerrymander in CD7 is alive and well, and that most CD7 voters are okey dokey with what Republicans are up to in DC, so taking the GOP primary will stamp a ticket to Washington. They may harbor some crazy political beliefs but they are not crazy to make these electoral assumptions. 

Painful as it is for Democrats, the gerrymander has to be seen as an odds-on favorite to continue to prevail in CD7. But even in defeat substantial blue overperformance in the special will have wider implications in the runup to next year’s midterms. That will make CD7 fun to watch this fall if Democrats can successfully nationalize the race by drawing outside money and attention. 

As Green rides off into his financially embellished political sunset it’s worth recalling that when the Tennessee legislature in 2022 gerrymandered Nashville, Green called the map redraw “inherently unfair” because as he put it “I believe in representative democracy.” Yes, he actually said that. While it might be nice to imagine he harbored some genuine affection for democratic process, it’s not clear what Green believed in two years prior when he shamelessly voted to overturn the 2020 election.