Former President Barack Obama will hold a fund-raiser in late August for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a fresh sign that Democrats intend to continue their aggressive push to gerrymander congressional districts ahead of the 2028 election.
The fund-raiser will take place on Martha’s Vineyard and will be hosted by Eric Holder, the former attorney general under Mr. Obama and the chairman of the committee, which is the main Democratic group focused on redistricting.
While Democrats appear to have exhausted all of their options for new maps before the midterm elections this year, their focus on the 2028 election still requires investment in crucial, state-level elections this fall. Democrats hope to protect or build trifectas in various states — single-party control of both chambers of legislatures plus the governor’s office — or Democratic supermajorities that would allow them to override a hostile governor’s veto.
The emergence of Mr. Obama on the political fund-raising circuit comes as Democrats, at least at the national level, are facing a significant cash shortfall.
Drawing even with Republicans in the national redistricting wars has been a top priority for Mr. Holder, Mr. Obama and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader. Mr. Obama, who remains one of the party’s most popular and influential figures, was a prominent supporter of a congressional gerrymander in California and an attempted one in Virginia.
“The race by Republicans to gerrymander is not over — and between potential redraws and the November election, the 2028 redistricting fight is already underway,” John Bisognano, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Details of the fund-raiser were first reported by Punchbowl News.
Democrats have largely been playing catch-up on the national redistricting front. Ever since President Trump sparked the battle by imploring Republicans in Texas to take the rare partisan step of redrawing their congressional map last year to benefit Republicans in the midterms, Democrats have faced a host of hurdles, largely because of redistricting reforms pushed by Mr. Obama, Mr. Holder and other Democrats.
The result has been the creation of as many as a dozen new districts that will favor Republicans this year.
Democrats have turned their attention to 2028 with the goal of reversing that new advantage and then some. States including New York, Virginia, Illinois and Maryland have all signaled a desire to redraw their maps for the next cycle. California could also try to redraw its map yet again, and some Democrats hope Washington and Oregon will join the battle, as well.
Republicans are also poised to redraw maps in many states in 2028, including Indiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and Kansas — as well as states redrawn in the past year, including Texas, Alabama and Louisiana, where further opportunities may lie.
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