Democratic Reps. Steny Hoyer and Jamie Raskin are inserting themselves into the state’s redistricting fight, escalating pressure on state lawmakers and the senate president to take up the mid-decade redrawing of congressional lines ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The two prominent Maryland Democrats sent a four-page letter to the entire Maryland General Assembly Monday, where they framed their endorsement of redrawing the state’s maps as a way to rebuff the president’s “authoritarian attack on democratic elections and voting rights” while casting the fight as an “ethical moral and political imperative” to act.
That nationwide effort has been stymied in Maryland, where the state’s Senate president, Bill Ferguson, has rejected the push to change maps in the state.
“We write today to applaud the governor’s redistricting initiative and urge you to move forward to explore what we can do as a state to help prevent the imminent disaster of President Trump determining the results of the 2026 congressional elections through aggressive mid-decade gerrymandering and therefore clinching control of the U.S. House of Representatives before a single vote is even cast,” the lawmakers write.
The letter comes a week after Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) announced the creation of a redistricting advisory commission that is expected to solicit feedback from Marylanders on whether the state should move forward with redrawing maps. Democrats dominate the state’s congressional delegation and if the party is successful in redrawing the maps it could only pick up a single seat — currently occupied by Republican Rep. Andy Harris, who chairs the House Freedom Caucus.
While the state’s top Democrats, including Moore and Maryland House Speaker Adrienne Jones, are all on board with exploring redistricting, Ferguson has remained a holdout.
Two weeks ago Ferguson sent his own letter to dozens of state lawmakers bucking his party and outlining why the Maryland Senate would not take up the effort. Part of his rationale was that the Maryland Supreme Court is packed with several justices appointed by Moore’s successor, former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan. He suggests that not only raises the possibility that any new maps that give Democrats an 8-0 advantage could be struck down, but it could trigger a loss of Democratic seats in the state, something he referred to as “the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic.”
Ferguson’s office acknowledged it had received the letter but did not comment.
Moore, a potential 2028 presidential hopeful, said in an appearance on CBS “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Maryland should not stand on the sidelines as other states, especially Republican-led states, jump into redistricting.
“If other states are going to have this process and go through this- go through this journey of identifying whether or not they have fair maps in a mid-decade cycle, then so should Maryland,” Moore said. “I’m just not sure why we should be playing by a different set of rules than Texas, or than Florida, or than Ohio or all these other places.”
There’s been pressure mounting on Maryland to move for weeks, and Ferguson is seen as the party’s biggest impediment to moving forward. Democrats’ resounding victories last week in Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races, as well as the overwhelming passage of a ballot initiative passed by California voters to redraw state lines to pick up five liberal-leaning seats to counteract a similar move in Texas to net five Republican-leaning seats, is ramping up the urgency to act.
Hoyer and Raskin’s letter calls Ferguson out by name and attempts to undercut some of his reasons for hesitating on moving forward.
“While Senator Ferguson is obviously right that there is an element of uncertainty in all litigation, there are some well-established doctrines that courts follow out of deference to the legislature’s constitutional power over redistricting,” the lawmakers write. “Chief among these is the principle that, when a court strikes down a newly enacted map as unlawful, the legislature must be afforded a reasonable opportunity to remedy the violation.”
The letter also appears to be aimed at pressuring Ferguson by energizing some of the state lawmakers that he leads, possibly ramping up the stakes they could move against him.
“We don’t need to remind you that Marylanders have paid a heavy price during the first year of the second Trump Administration,” they write, listing off items including 15,000 federal employees that have been fired since Trump returned to power and thousands more workers and federal contractors that have been furloughed since the shutdown began more than a month ago.
The memo also asks state lawmakers three questions they should answer as to whether they deem the redistricting fight as imminent. “Are we in the fight of our lives to defend American democracy and freedom and our Constitution, Bill of Rights and rule of law?… is it an ethical, moral and political imperative to use every lawful means at our disposal to fight back…: can we successfully and lawfully redistrict to respond to these GOP assaults?”
To all three questions, Raskin and Hoyer write, “We believe the answer is yes.”
