A redistricting effort led by some Maryland Democrats, but resisted by others in the party, failed to make it to a final vote before the state’s legislative session ended on Monday, bringing an official end to an attempt to redraw the state’s map before the midterms.
The redistricting had been championed by Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat. In February, the Maryland House of Delegates approved a gerrymandered map that would have made it easier to eliminate the state’s lone Republican seat in the U.S. House.
But the effort met resistance in the State Senate, even though that chamber is also controlled by Democrats.
Bill Ferguson, the Senate president and a Democrat, has been a vocal critic of the attempt to redraw Maryland’s map. He said the measure came too close to the midterms and warned that legal wrangling over the change could backfire in the long run for Democrats, who control seven of the state’s eight congressional seats.
Enough of his fellow senators appeared to agree, and the redistricting bill languished in the Senate Rules Committee. That was despite the efforts of some state and national Democrats, including Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrat in the U.S. House, who supported the redraw.
Neither Mr. Ferguson nor Mr. Moore immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday.
Democrats in several states have been trying to keep up with Republicans in a redistricting arms race that started in Texas last year. In response to President Trump’s demands, Republican legislators there took the unusual step of redrawing the state’s U.S. House map in the middle of the decade with the explicit aim of helping Republicans in the midterm elections.
“If the rest of the country is going to have this conversation about mid-decade redistricting, then so should Maryland, and so should every other state,” Mr. Moore said in a conversation with the Rev. Al Sharpton at the National Action Network in New York last week. “Because until it is done nationally, we have to make sure this election is not stolen right before our face.”
Some Republican-led states, including Missouri and North Carolina, quickly redrew their own maps, while others, like Indiana and Kansas, have resisted.
Until now, most Democratic-controlled states that have pushed for redistricting — including California, which has redrawn its maps, and Virginia, where the effort is still underway — have not run into serious resistance from within the party.
Jacey Fortin covers a wide range of subjects for The Times, including extreme weather, court cases and state politics across the country.
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