Underrated consequence of gerrymandering; weakening bench of opposition party?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Oftentimes, congressional reps and state legislators are the main pool from where potential statewide candidates are drawn from, especially folks who may have won hard races.

However, a heavily gerrymandered state means not only will the minority party likely have fewer reps, but they have little ability to actually elect people who have proven they can win hard/competitive seats because those seats don't exist. The minority party's Congressional and State Leg delegations will largely just be made up of politicians representing packs, packs whose politics are out of line with the state at large, and packs where re-election is all but guaranteed once one gets past the primary.

Good example might be TX - the bench for potential statewide Dems is pretty underwhelming, especially if one is just looking at the pool of existing politicians. Most Dems are too liberal and don't have enough experience with competitive general elections to win or even just be competitive statewide. I think this is largely because for the past 2 decades or so, TX Dems have largely been confined to representing urban packs - I wonder if the bench would be stronger if Dems actually had opportunities to compete and win competitive Congressional and State Leg districts. Even today, the one guy running against Cruz for Senate happens to be one of the 2 TX Dems who broke the gerrymander of last decade and won a genuinely competitive seat.

TDLR; Gerrymandering reduces the ability of candidates of the minority party who may be more palatable statewide to be elected to lower-level positions in the first place.

What do ya'll think?

[ottermax]

I think it is just more difficult to be a minority party in a larger state due to the cost of running a campaign in a larger media market.

The states that have decent benches of opposition that aren't swingy include places like Alaska, Montana, Maine, Kansas, or even Vermont... smaller states just have more opportunity.

One place that does seem to fit your hypothesis well in Nevada but that's not necessarily a gerrymander but the odd political geography of the state.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Ossoff and Warnock basically came from nowhere.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I’ve thought this for as long as I’ve really thought about gerrymandering. Look at Nevada, there’s really no prominent incumbent republicans in the state to run for senate. I think Wisconsin has had a similar issue. They had a few state wide officials but no prominent congressmen willing.

[Sol]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That reminds me of how before the 2000 redistricting Sherrod Brown represented a swing district. The Ohio Republicans feared him running statewide so they told him that they would draw him a safe seat in exchange for him promising to not run statewide. Brown basically said "sure, pink swear I won't."

And then in 2006 he did anyway.

[Tekken_Guy]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

[Sol]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

[Tekken_Guy]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

[Sol]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

[Tekken_Guy]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

Why not?

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

Why not?

North Carolina isn’t Arizona. Whereas Arizona is just one massive city with little to no rural population, North Carolina has several medium to large cities but also a large rural population, and is general just much more inelastic

[ProgressiveModerate]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

Why not?

North Carolina isn’t Arizona. Whereas Arizona is just one massive city with little to no rural population, North Carolina has several medium to large cities but also a large rural population, and is general just much more inelastic

This, plus in AZ Dems can win the state leg just by continuing to flip suburban Pheonix and Tucson seats. In NC, just making gains in suburbs is unlikely to be enough to flip the state leg; Dems have to hold down and claw back in some of these rural areas where they've been losing ground for a while.

For instance, here's the State Senate map; Biden won 19 seats in 2020. Where are the extra 6 or 7 seats coming from that would allow Dems to win? SD-07, SD-18, and maybe SD-34 seem like the only ones with decent long-term trajectories.

[Tekken_Guy]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

Why not?

North Carolina isn’t Arizona. Whereas Arizona is just one massive city with little to no rural population, North Carolina has several medium to large cities but also a large rural population, and is general just much more inelastic

This, plus in AZ Dems can win the state leg just by continuing to flip suburban Pheonix and Tucson seats. In NC, just making gains in suburbs is unlikely to be enough to flip the state leg; Dems have to hold down and claw back in some of these rural areas where they've been losing ground for a while.

For instance, here's the State Senate map; Biden won 19 seats in 2020. Where are the extra 6 or 7 seats coming from that would allow Dems to win? SD-07, SD-18, and maybe SD-34 seem like the only ones with decent long-term trajectories.

NC Dems should focus on statewide races first. If they get the courts back they can get fair maps both for congress and the legislature. Eventually Dems will hit their floor in rural areas and can focus on maximizing their performance in the big cities.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

Why not?

North Carolina isn’t Arizona. Whereas Arizona is just one massive city with little to no rural population, North Carolina has several medium to large cities but also a large rural population, and is general just much more inelastic

This, plus in AZ Dems can win the state leg just by continuing to flip suburban Pheonix and Tucson seats. In NC, just making gains in suburbs is unlikely to be enough to flip the state leg; Dems have to hold down and claw back in some of these rural areas where they've been losing ground for a while.

For instance, here's the State Senate map; Biden won 19 seats in 2020. Where are the extra 6 or 7 seats coming from that would allow Dems to win? SD-07, SD-18, and maybe SD-34 seem like the only ones with decent long-term trajectories.

NC Dems should focus on statewide races first. If they get the courts back they can get fair maps both for congress and the legislature. Eventually Dems will hit their floor in rural areas and can focus on maximizing their performance in the big cities.

The NC GOP doesn’t play “fair”. They were the ones who gutted all powers from the governor in 2016, they were the ones to push for the independent state legislature theory. If NCDems take back the Supreme Court I wouldn’t put it past them to pass constitutional amendments barring them from redistricting

[ProgressiveModerate]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

Why not?

North Carolina isn’t Arizona. Whereas Arizona is just one massive city with little to no rural population, North Carolina has several medium to large cities but also a large rural population, and is general just much more inelastic

This, plus in AZ Dems can win the state leg just by continuing to flip suburban Pheonix and Tucson seats. In NC, just making gains in suburbs is unlikely to be enough to flip the state leg; Dems have to hold down and claw back in some of these rural areas where they've been losing ground for a while.

For instance, here's the State Senate map; Biden won 19 seats in 2020. Where are the extra 6 or 7 seats coming from that would allow Dems to win? SD-07, SD-18, and maybe SD-34 seem like the only ones with decent long-term trajectories.

NC Dems should focus on statewide races first. If they get the courts back they can get fair maps both for congress and the legislature. Eventually Dems will hit their floor in rural areas and can focus on maximizing their performance in the big cities.

Agree, I think the fear is because the state leg is so powerful they will make more power grabs that make statewide positions including the state court less powerful, or try to do something like electing justices from districts that would prevent liberals from ever having a majority.

Rs have already grabbed the court by changing court elections from non-partisan elections to partisan election where Rs more often than not win.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Honestly if the NCGOP could get away with it I wouldn’t be shocked if they’d switch to a parliamentary system

[Tekken_Guy]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

Why not?

North Carolina isn’t Arizona. Whereas Arizona is just one massive city with little to no rural population, North Carolina has several medium to large cities but also a large rural population, and is general just much more inelastic

This, plus in AZ Dems can win the state leg just by continuing to flip suburban Pheonix and Tucson seats. In NC, just making gains in suburbs is unlikely to be enough to flip the state leg; Dems have to hold down and claw back in some of these rural areas where they've been losing ground for a while.

For instance, here's the State Senate map; Biden won 19 seats in 2020. Where are the extra 6 or 7 seats coming from that would allow Dems to win? SD-07, SD-18, and maybe SD-34 seem like the only ones with decent long-term trajectories.

NC Dems should focus on statewide races first. If they get the courts back they can get fair maps both for congress and the legislature. Eventually Dems will hit their floor in rural areas and can focus on maximizing their performance in the big cities.

Agree, I think the fear is because the state leg is so powerful they will make more power grabs that make statewide positions including the state court less powerful, or try to do something like electing justices from districts that would prevent liberals from ever having a majority.

Rs have already grabbed the court by changing court elections from non-partisan elections to partisan election where Rs more often than not win.

They can’t really do those kinds of things if they don’t have a supermajority.

[ProgressiveModerate]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

Why not?

North Carolina isn’t Arizona. Whereas Arizona is just one massive city with little to no rural population, North Carolina has several medium to large cities but also a large rural population, and is general just much more inelastic

This, plus in AZ Dems can win the state leg just by continuing to flip suburban Pheonix and Tucson seats. In NC, just making gains in suburbs is unlikely to be enough to flip the state leg; Dems have to hold down and claw back in some of these rural areas where they've been losing ground for a while.

For instance, here's the State Senate map; Biden won 19 seats in 2020. Where are the extra 6 or 7 seats coming from that would allow Dems to win? SD-07, SD-18, and maybe SD-34 seem like the only ones with decent long-term trajectories.

NC Dems should focus on statewide races first. If they get the courts back they can get fair maps both for congress and the legislature. Eventually Dems will hit their floor in rural areas and can focus on maximizing their performance in the big cities.

Agree, I think the fear is because the state leg is so powerful they will make more power grabs that make statewide positions including the state court less powerful, or try to do something like electing justices from districts that would prevent liberals from ever having a majority.

Rs have already grabbed the court by changing court elections from non-partisan elections to partisan election where Rs more often than not win.

They can’t really do those kinds of things if they don’t have a supermajority.

They currently have supermajorities in both chambers, and good chance the gerrymandered maps allow them to retain it in 2024. Rmbr, in NC  a supermajority is only 3/5.

On the State Senate map, Biden only won 19 seats, Dems would need to win 21 seats to break the supermajority. Winning all the Biden seats shouldn't be that hard given the 2 marginal ones have been marching left, but still winning 2 Trump 2020 seats will be tricky. SD-18 is probably part of the path of least resistance.

Biden won 50 seats on the new State House maps (Ds need 49 to break GOP supermajority), but a ton of those Biden seats are marginal and there aren't many narrow Trump seats that are winnable; breaking the supermajority is a decently heavy lift

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

How hard would it be to change the super majority? I know some states have it as just 50%+1

[Beet]

Gerrymandering is deeply corrosive to democracy. However, if one party does it, the other party has little choice but to follow suit, creating a tragedy of the Commons. It would be best if the courts just nixed it, similar to how they did for unequal population districts in the 1960s, but our current judiciary does not care about healthy democracy.

[Tekken_Guy]

100%. This was and still kind of is a big problem for NC Dems.

To be fair the 2022 class gave us Nickel and Jackson, both of whom are potential strong statewide candidates. “Moderate white guy” has always been a winning formula for the NC Dems, as seen by Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. Of course it also gave us Cal Cunningham.

Who got elected on non-gerrymandered maps!

If Dems hadn’t let the court slip away they could have had fair maps for much longer. The hope is that Mark Robinson begins the Arizonification of the NCGOP and that leads to the party’s luck changing on SCOTUS races.

Well, I hope so but I wouldn't bet on it.

Why not?

North Carolina isn’t Arizona. Whereas Arizona is just one massive city with little to no rural population, North Carolina has several medium to large cities but also a large rural population, and is general just much more inelastic

This, plus in AZ Dems can win the state leg just by continuing to flip suburban Pheonix and Tucson seats. In NC, just making gains in suburbs is unlikely to be enough to flip the state leg; Dems have to hold down and claw back in some of these rural areas where they've been losing ground for a while.

For instance, here's the State Senate map; Biden won 19 seats in 2020. Where are the extra 6 or 7 seats coming from that would allow Dems to win? SD-07, SD-18, and maybe SD-34 seem like the only ones with decent long-term trajectories.

NC Dems should focus on statewide races first. If they get the courts back they can get fair maps both for congress and the legislature. Eventually Dems will hit their floor in rural areas and can focus on maximizing their performance in the big cities.

Agree, I think the fear is because the state leg is so powerful they will make more power grabs that make statewide positions including the state court less powerful, or try to do something like electing justices from districts that would prevent liberals from ever having a majority.

Rs have already grabbed the court by changing court elections from non-partisan elections to partisan election where Rs more often than not win.

They can’t really do those kinds of things if they don’t have a supermajority.

They currently have supermajorities in both chambers, and good chance the gerrymandered maps allow them to retain it in 2024. Rmbr, in NC  a supermajority is only 3/5.

On the State Senate map, Biden only won 19 seats, Dems would need to win 21 seats to break the supermajority. Winning all the Biden seats shouldn't be that hard given the 2 marginal ones have been marching left, but still winning 2 Trump 2020 seats will be tricky. SD-18 is probably part of the path of least resistance.

Biden won 50 seats on the new State House maps (Ds need 49 to break GOP supermajority), but a ton of those Biden seats are marginal and there aren't many narrow Trump seats that are winnable; breaking the supermajority is a decently heavy lift

In the state senate, beating Lisa Barnes is a pretty tall order but they have a shot at defeating Michael Lee in New Hanover.

In the state house, there are four marginal Trump seats that are winnable. Tricia Cotham’s seat in Mecklenburg, two in Wake, and one in Buncombe. All are trending leftward and Budd underperformed Trump in each of them.

If they lose the three Biden-Budd sets in the Black Belt, Dems need at least two of the Trump seats to win. That is assuming they don’t also lose the north Mecklenburg swing seat or the Granville/Vance county seat.

[Sol]

For instance, here's the State Senate map; Biden won 19 seats in 2020. Where are the extra 6 or 7 seats coming from that would allow Dems to win? SD-07, SD-18, and maybe SD-34 seem like the only ones with decent long-term trajectories.

Completely agree with your big picture argument, though I'd add SD-25 as a potential long-range pickup opportunity (though if 2024 polls are indicative of political shifts, that might not be the case).

[Joseph Cao]

That reminds me of how before the 2000 redistricting Sherrod Brown represented a swing district. The Ohio Republicans feared him running statewide so they told him that they would draw him a safe seat in exchange for him promising to not run statewide. Brown basically said "sure, pink swear I won't."

And then in 2006 he did anyway.

Flip side of that same cycle was Tom Sawyer also threatening, like Brown, to challenge a Republican officeholder statewide if he didn't get a safe seat… and then ended up losing his primary.

IIRC Ted Strickland also threatened to run against a neighboring Republican, I believe at the time it was Bob Ney, and made the same promise and broke it too later on.

[Del Tachi]

This comes up quite often in the context of VRA districts.  Democrats in Alabama/Mississippi would have much better statewide recruits if the entirety of their legislative party didn't come from >50% AA vote sinks.