Two weeks before the Texas House Democrats fled their state to block a Republican-led redistricting effort, a handful of them flew to Chicago. They met with Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, who promised them a future safe harbor, should they need it.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared that his state would counter any move by Republicans to further entrench President Trump’s grip on power in Washington.
But when one of the Texas lawmakers was in Philadelphia and sought a meeting with Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Mr. Shapiro’s aides replied that the logistics were too complicated to work out, and Mr. Shapiro was too busy in negotiations over the state budget, according to two people involved in the discussions.
For weeks, the Democratic Party has grappled with how to respond to Mr. Trump’s aggressive push for new voting maps in Texas and other Republican-controlled states. If successful, the effort would give his party a major advantage in the race for control of the U.S. House. With Democrats locked out of power in Washington, their party’s governors have emerged as a front line of opposition even though there is little coordination between them on just how to proceed.
Some with national ambitions have embraced openly partisan warfare, and are working through their own plans to redraw the maps in their states to greater Democratic advantage. They’ve welcomed the Texas Democrats to their states and hosted them at news conferences. Others have remained on the sidelines, ceding the spotlight in a moment broadly seen as critical to their party’s ability to hold Mr. Trump to account in next year’s midterms.
At a time when the base is clamoring for signs that Democratic leaders can forcefully take on Mr. Trump, there is a split between the Democratic fighters — a group led by Mr. Pritzker, Mr. Newsom and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York — and those who have shown far less interest in spending their own political capital on the public debate over redistricting, like Mr. Shapiro, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland and others.
Amid deep polarization and the norm-busting tactics of the Trump White House, the divide centers less on redistricting itself, and more around power, and how to wield it.
“This is nothing short of a legal insurrection,” Ms. Hochul said in an interview this week. “History will judge us on how we respond to this moment. You’re a leader of a great state like New York in 2025 when Donald Trump and Republicans decided to hijack our democratic process and twist it to meet their own ends, and what did you do? The answer has to be: We stood up and fought back.”
The redistricting battle has scrambled traditional political alliances. Some governors who have long supported the idea of nonpartisan redistricting commissions find themselves backing a push to draw more Democratic seats in response to the efforts in Texas, where Republicans are ready to implement maps that would give them up to five new and safely red districts.
State Democratic lawmakers scattered in an effort to keep the new maps from coming to a vote, though how long they can hold out is in question.
Even groups like Common Cause, the good-government organization that has long opposed political gerrymandering, announced this week that it would “not automatically condemn” Democrats for attempting to even the playing field.
But for many governors, the ability to act is limited. Mr. Shapiro, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and others who preside over divided or Republican-controlled state legislatures have no power to redraw district lines.
Confined by state politics or constitutions, these governors who have their eye on the 2028 race for the White House must navigate the agitation for more direct confrontation with Trump in the Democratic base along with the disapproval of gerrymandering by voters of all parties. That, of course, comes after working through the realities of governing a state in the Trump era.
Mr. Shapiro last week called the Texas redistricting effort “shameful” and said it was a tactic by Mr. Trump to distract people from the ramifications of his domestic policy bill. (His office declined to comment for this article.) Mr. Walz and Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas earlier this month used nearly identical language at a Democratic Governors Association gathering to say Democratic governors who can draw more blue seats must “respond in kind” to Texas, though there is not much they can do themselves.
Other governors with few options have tried to lend moral support. Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts invited Texas legislators to meet with her when they were in Boston for a conference last week. Mr. Beshear on Thursday spoke with the legislators who fled to Illinois, on a video conference call. And aides to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan have been in regular contact trying to arrange a meeting between her and the Texas lawmakers.
“It’s a fight that nobody asked for, that nobody came looking for,” Ms. Healey, who presides over a state with an all-Democratic congressional delegation, said in an interview this week. “Others need to be thinking about how to match that and fight fire with fire.”
In Illinois, Mr. Pritzker welcomed the Texas Democrats with news conferences, against a backdrop emblazoned with his name. He has helped find lodging for the Texans, who fled to a series of Chicago-area hotels, and his staff has assisted in arranging local news conferences and other media logistics. On Wednesday, Mr. Pritzker declared that “we are messing with Texas” through their efforts.
But no Democratic governor has done more regarding redistricting than Mr. Newsom, who on Thursday launched a campaign to redistrict California and create five more Democratic congressional seats to counter Texas, calling on his fellow Democrats to follow suit.
“We need to stand up, not just California,” Mr. Newsom said. “Other blue states need to stand up. We need to be firm in our resolve.”
Many Democrats have wondered privately why they have not heard more about redistricting from Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, one of just a handful of Democratic governors who share Democratic control of the statehouse, and have state laws that leave redistricting up to the partisan legislature.
Though his state’s congressional districts are already gerrymandered to favor Democrats, activists have argued that the map could be drawn to eliminate the lone district held by a Republican.
Mr. Moore has remained largely quiet on the issue, with his office stating for weeks that the governor will “evaluate all options as states around the country make decisions regarding redistricting.” On Thursday Mr. Moore, in his first public comments on redistricting, told a Baltimore radio station that “all options are on the table.”
The Maryland governor could be in a bind created by his state’s last redistricting attempts. In 2022, a state court knocked down the initial maps drawn by Democrats in Maryland as an “extreme gerrymander,” finding that “the voice of Republican voters was diluted.” Any outright embrace of openly partisan maps by Mr. Moore could risk their success in a future legal challenge.
Nonetheless, there’s growing evidence that Democratic voters want to hear more from their leaders, and few Democratic governors have been as vocal about the need to fight back against the Republican effort as Ms. Hochul, of New York.
Ms. Hochul has unabashedly supported an extreme partisan gerrymander in her state if Texas passes its proposed maps, rebuffing the pleas of some good government groups to maintain redistricting reforms.
In the interview, she ticked through the Republican-run states where lawmakers are discussing implementing new maps to add to their partisan advantage.
“We have no choice,” Ms. Hochul said. “All this could change the power dynamic so quickly, really, not just for a few years, but for a generation, where Democrats will never have a chance to regain the power necessary to have a balance in Washington.”
Though Ms. Hochul and New York will not be immediately able to counter maps from Texas or other Republican states, as the process for amending New York’s constitution to remove the independent redistricting commission will take a minimum of two years, she has been undeterred and unrelenting on the issue.
Other Democratic governors in similar situations have just not talked about redistricting. In Colorado, where Democrats enjoy a trifecta, Gov. Jared Polis has said next to nothing. Nor has Gov. Bob Ferguson of Washington State. Both states have independent redistricting commissions like New York’s, which Ms. Hochul is seeking to upend. But both states would likely net Democrats only a single new district per state.
Neither Mr. Polis nor Mr. Ferguson have joined the fight, rhetorically or practically. Their offices did not respond to requests for comment.
Adrian A. Boafo, a Democratic state legislator in Maryland, said that his most recent town hall meeting, with over 150 in attendance, was overrun by questions about redistricting.
“The No. 1 question I’m getting asked about is what are you going to do, is Maryland going to get in this fight?” Mr. Boafo recalled in an interview. “And my answer is, ‘Yes, I think we will.’”
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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