Maryland Democrats target lone Republican in redistricting scheme

The Hill ^ | BY REID WILSON - 11/19/21

[11th_VA]

Maryland Democrats are considering a radical overhaul of congressional district lines that would give them a chance to win all eight of the state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, putting the lone Republican representative at risk.

Two of the four draft maps released by the General Assembly’s Legislative Redistricting Advisory Commission spell trouble for Rep. Andy Harris (R), who represents a district that covers the Eastern Shore.

Those proposals would add hundreds of thousands of voters from Anne Arundel County, home of Annapolis, in with voters from the less populous counties on the Eastern Shore. The two halves of the district would be connected only by the Bay Bridge, the four-mile span that crosses the Chesapeake...

“The issue of going to all-Democratic representation in the Congress in a state where we’ve got one-third of the voters who are in fact Republicans, I don’t know how you sell something like that,” Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D) said on WBAL on Wednesday. “I think that’s an overreach. For me, that’s a bridge too far.”

None of the four Democratic members of the Legislative Redistricting Advisory Committee returned requests for comment. The other two versions would largely keep Harris’s district intact.

[TBP]

Much better than the old map.