Even with Republican redistricting efforts, red states are “not even remotely as gerrymandered” as blue states such as California, Chuck Devore, Chief National Initiatives Officer at Texas Public Policy Foundation, said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.
DeVore walked through the story of Texas redistricting, jogging memories by reminding the audience that New York Democrats started this fight “with their 2024 back changes.”
“That needs to be made very, very clear. Everyone seems to forget that New York did kick this off. Then, generally speaking, we also need to understand that the Democrats have been far more ruthless and efficient when it comes to gerrymandering, or I always like to occasionally say gerrymandering, because it’s named after Elbridge Gerry, who did the original gerrymander in 1812 when he was governor of Massachusetts — signed off on on some pretty aggressive lines, and was rewarded for that with being the vice president,” he said, calling it an “age-old tradition.”
“But if you go back to California, right? So you got New York kicking things off in 2024. Well, the California maps weren’t particularly fair at that point either. Because even though California passed a supposedly independent redistricting commission, the Democrats had figured out how to game it, and they gamed it by creating these synthetic groups — these synthetic groups of interests that convinced — not that the independent redistricting convention, you know, commission needed convincing, because that’s the other thing that Dems did is they figured out how to game that and got most of the positions within that so-called independent commission,” he said.
So Democrats, he explained, created their own “synthetic communities of interest” and determined that they needed their own districts.
“And so the bottom line is, is that California’s districts, as they stood at the beginning of the year, were more aggressively partisan and efficient than Texas’s districts were after Texas did what it did,” DeVore argued.
“In other words, Texas goes through this whole rigmarole to pick up four to five seats. And if you look at the partisan advantage, how many Democrat votes versus Republican votes versus seats in Congress? The resulting districts in Texas were less aggressive than the old districts were in California, and so then, of course, under Gavin Newsom, they said, ‘Ok, fine. You guys want to play, you know, we’ll kick it into hyperdrive,’” DeVore said.
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When asked about the redistricting efforts in Florida, DeVore said it is important that Republicans do this where they can, noting the dangers of Democrats gaining more power in the House of Representatives.
“I just look at the fact that under Governor DeSantis and under Republican leadership, Florida has gone from a purple state to a reliably red state. And given the stakes, given the fact that if the Democrats take over the House, it is guaranteed that they’re going to gin up fake impeachment charges against President Trump and do everything possible to stop all of the important reforms that the President is trying to push through,” DeVore pointed out.
“And so I just look at it from the standpoint of an American who would love to see this republic go on for at least a few more decades. And I’d say, ‘Look, this is really important for the nation that we do as much as we can,’” he said.
“Given the fact that even with the efforts in Texas and other states, Republican districts are still not even remotely as gerrymandered as they are in California or Massachusetts or Virginia, right? So I’d say, ‘Go for it,’” he added.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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