Governor Larry Hogan approves New Maryland congressional map

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan signed into law a new congressional map drawn by Democrats on Monday, more than a week after a judge called their previous effort “extreme pride” and threw it away.

Mr Hogan, a Republican, agreed to approve the maps after Democrats rejected their appeal against the judge’s ruling. He described the agreement as “a tremendous victory for democracy and for free and fair elections in Maryland” and said the new map was “a huge improvement” over the original.

The new map will probably turn into a congressional delegation that looks a lot like the current one.

Democrats won six districts under the new map, and Republicans won one, with the eighth district considered competitive, according to Douglas Meyer, a former ally of Mr. Hogan and spokesman for Fair Maps Maryland, an anti-germing organization. . The state is currently represented by seven Democrats and one Republican.

The map rejected in court would create seven secure democratic districts and one competing district, cutting off potential Republican seats.

Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Senior Judge Lynn A. Bataglia decided to toss the earlier map, this is the first time this reorganization cycle has been rejected in a Democratic-controlled legislature map court. Last week, a New York judge threw a map of Congress there, saying Democrats drew it with “political bias.”

Republicans, including in North Carolina and Ohio, have blocked their efforts in court, although Ohio’s maps are bound by legal challenges.

The midterm elections are set to be a test for Democrats, who are trying to retain a slim majority in the House and Senate despite President Biden’s low approval rating. Republicans, on the other hand, seek to regain power by exploiting voters’ frustration with the government and the economy.

But a decade-long process of renewing district lines after the census has emerged as a potential determining factor in determining who will control Congress. Both the parties wanted to give their advantage to the states across the country.

“Garimandering, I think, is a cancer in our politics,” Mr Hogan told CNN on Sunday. It’s bad that no matter what the party does. “

Judge Bataglia, who is the former governor of Paris n. Glendenning, a Democrat-appointed judge, said in his March 25 ruling that the previous map contained “constitutional failures” and ignored the need to focus on “compactness” and keep similar communities together.

He instructed the General Assembly to redraw the map by March 30, an incredibly strict deadline. The Maryland Court of Appeals moved the state’s primary election from June 28 to July 19 due to legal challenges with the map.

In response to the judge’s ruling, Democrats submitted a new map for Maryland, which Mr. Biden received 65 percent of the vote in 2020, but said they would appeal.

On Sunday, when Mr. Hogan was asked on CNN if he would sign the new map, he said, “I will try to persuade them to drop their appeal and then we can move on.” The appeal was dropped on Monday.

Mr Mayer said the new map represents a more contiguous and long-recognized community boundary.

State courts have emerged as a central area for challenging the map of political parties and voters, since the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that bias cannot be challenged at the federal level.

Mr. Hogan said that, in his view, the map of the new Congress was not as good as that drawn by the bipartisan Maryland Citizens Redistricting Commission, of which he appointed co-chairs.

“Of course you can’t get what you want, but we get almost everything we want,” he said.