Copyright The New York Times
The top Republicans in Kansas were ready to join President Trump’s redistricting push and redraw the state’s political map to deliver another seat in Congress to Republicans. Democrats feared that a special session to pass new district lines was inevitable. Then something surprising happened. Some Republicans refused. The pushback on the Plains leaves in place, at least for now, the one Democratic-leaning congressional district in Kansas. It comes as a small but rising number of lawmakers across the country, Republicans and Democrats, have balked at joining the drive to carve up congressional districts to boost their side’s odds in the midterm elections. The national flurry of remapping, set off this summer when Texas Republicans drew a new one at the president’s behest, happened quickly in several states. But growing resistance from state lawmakers, for reasons both practical and philosophical, has put a chill on the effort. When the Republican governor of Indiana called a special session for redistricting last month, the Senate Republicans said the votes were not there. Maryland Democratic leaders are divided. And in Kansas, where top Republicans had hoped to meet about a new map last Friday, House leaders failed to get enough support. The debate over remapping in Kansas is not over, and new boundaries could still pass when lawmakers return for their regular session in January. Some Republican legislators were stripped of committee leadership roles on Friday, a punishment for bucking the party line on redistricting. And several lawmakers said they had considered the possibility of more political repercussions if the president were to become more involved. But the depth and breadth of Republican skepticism, both conservative and moderate, from both rural areas and cities, suggests that redistricting faces an uphill climb in Kansas even if political pressure continues to increase. “I would rather just stand on principle and stand on my morals and ethics,” said State Representative Brett Fairchild, a conservative Republican, who said he believed redistricting went against the intent of the country’s founders and could backfire on his party in future elections. “That way I can actually look at myself in the mirror and sleep at night. It’s not all just about getting re-elected.” ‘Be Expecting a Call’ State Representative Clarke Sanders said he first heard a pitch for redistricting in September at a retreat with his fellow Republicans in Wichita. He said the House speaker, Daniel Hawkins, presented to members of his caucus a letter that would call a special session, and that Mr. Hawkins described meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House, where the president made the case for a new congressional map that would help Republicans in the state. Two-thirds of the Kansas House and two-thirds of the Kansas Senate would have needed to agree for lawmakers to return to the Capitol on Nov. 7 to consider a new map. Democrats were never going to sign that letter, meaning that Republicans could afford only a handful of dissenters from the supermajorities they hold in both chambers. The speaker “told us that if we don’t sign on to this, be expecting a call from the White House,” said Mr. Sanders, a conservative from Salina, a city of 46,000 people in central Kansas. Mr. Sanders did not sign the letter. Sure enough, he said he got that phone call from Washington. Mr. Sanders said he did not remember the name of the caller, who identified himself as a White House staff member, and that they talked for perhaps 30 minutes. The staff member “was saying that it was really important that we get this done,” he recalled. Mr. Sanders, who described the call as cordial, explained his belief that drawing a new map would be politically risky. “I just thought that this would give Democrats a club to beat us over the head with if we went forward” Mr. Sanders said in an interview. White House officials did not answer questions about redistricting in Kansas. On Friday, Mr. Sanders got a call from Speaker Hawkins, he said. He was told that he was being removed from his role as vice chairman of the Higher Education Budget Committee because he had not agreed to the special session. Memos sent by Mr. Hawkins to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times showed that at least six committee chairs and vice chairs were removed from their posts on Friday, and that other committee assignments were also reshuffled. Mr. Hawkins said in his newsletter that 10 House Republicans had not signed the special session letter. Mr. Hawkins, who is running for state insurance commissioner, did not agree to be interviewed. He sent a statement that said: “Democrats have been gerrymandering for years, and now folks want to clutch their pearls that Republicans are finally fighting back. That’s rich.” Redistricting usually takes place once a decade, but that convention went by the wayside this summer after Texas Republicans passed new boundaries. California Democrats responded with a plan of their own, approved this month by voters. Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina and Democrats in Virginia also forged ahead. Leaders in both parties have urged more states to join in. In Kansas, skepticism over redistricting extends beyond the 10 Republicans who did not sign the letter seeking a special session. At least one House member, Mr. Fairchild, said he had signed the letter because he wanted to consider other topics in a special session, but was always a firm no on redistricting. And while the State Senate mustered the support it needed for a special session, not everyone who signed was fully persuaded. “I worry that if we go in and try to redraw now, and if we don’t have good reasons to do so, I think there could be a backlash,” said State Senator Mike Thompson, a Republican from the Kansas City suburbs who signed the letter but said he was undecided on redistricting. ‘It’s Hard to Wrangle Us’ Kansans reliably vote for Republicans in presidential elections, and Mr. Trump carried the state last year by 16 percentage points. But the state’s voters have an independent streak, too. They rejected an effort to strip abortion rights from the State Constitution in 2022 and have twice elected Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat whose veto pen complicates Republicans’ redistricting goals. Voters have also continued to re-elect Representative Sharice Davids, the only Democrat in Kansas’ congressional delegation, even after Republicans made her district more conservative when they last drew maps. Ms. Davids, who flipped a Republican-held seat in the 2018 midterms, has beaten recent Republican challengers by at least 10 percentage points. In late September, when redistricting had seemed more likely, Ms. Davids described herself as “legitimately livid that this is happening.” She spent the weeks that followed making the case against redistricting in her district. “It’s infuriating, but it’s also a little bit confusing because it’s such a bad idea,” said Ms. Davids, who was one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress. “Just basic principles: Voters should be choosing their representatives, and not the other way around.”
