Klas: Republicans just got a wake-up call on their midterm maps

After widespread defeats in last week s off-year elections Republicans should realize they made a bad bet by following President Donald Trump s lead on mid-decade redistricting Desperate not to lose the House in the midterms the president sought to rig the contest He pressured legislatures in red states to create new Republican-leaning districts and lawmakers duly redrew their maps That weakened particular safe red seats but the GOP assumed that it would hurt Democrats more Last Tuesday s results demonstrate the folly of Trump s gamble Related Articles Trump signs bill ending longest executive shutdown What went wrong for California Republicans in the Proposition fight Barabak Proposition is a short-term domination against Trump But at what cost Could California s Prop be scaled back There s already an effort to ask voters to limit the new maps to With Nancy Pelosi s pending retirement Bay Area will miss her counseling her fire and her voice Wake-up call Trump s coalition is crumbling To win in less-red Republican districts the party will need all the voters Trump pulled together to achieve his percentage point success in young men Latino voters and his MAGA base But exit polls show that in the governors races in both Virginia and New Jersey men and Latino voters abandoned the GOP in massive numbers and in races across the country multiple supported Democrats In New Jersey of Latino voters broke for Democrat Mikie Sherrill So did of men under the age of In Virginia of Latino voters went for Democrat Abigail Spanberger So did of men under A multitude of of these voters had voted for Trump last year The exit polls show that both Sherrill and Spanberger won of Trump s voters with Sherrill getting a whopping of Trump s Hispanic patronage in the state This is our wake-up call revealed U S Representative Maria Salazar a Miami Republican in a two minute post-election rant on X If the GOP does not deliver we will lose the Hispanic vote all over the country and unfortunately it happened last night in New Jersey and Virginia For months Republicans bragged that Trump had captured of the Latino vote across the country in They assumed these voters would stay with them in and that became part of the GOP s calculations in Texas to create five additional Republican congressional seats That gambit is a classic example of taking Latino votes for granted Mike Madrid a Republican political consultant explained me in August This is a pocketbook economic working-class voter he noted Assuming their backing for Trump in was evidence of a permanent realignment was believing their own press clippings here which is dangerous he explained at the time In a Substack post on Friday Madrid could tell readers Recounted you so The Latino vote shift that helped build Democrats blue wave last week isn t a realignment It s a dealignment he stated Latino voters were punishing the party in power for their economic pain Trump s disappearing coalition is only part of the president s redistricting difficulty The president s performance is weighing GOP candidates down like an anchor even as Democrats are buoyed by a new wave of enthusiasm The Republican gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia lost by double digits In Georgia Democrats flipped two statewide Georgia Community Provision Commission races by -point margins In Pennsylvania they held onto three Supreme Court retention contests In last week s Miami mayoral race Democrats turned out in numbers that were points higher than the presidential balloting last year and opened the door for a Democrat to take control of the office for the first time in years reported Matt Isbell of MCI Maps a Democratic statistics consultant Republicans are hardly going to admit it but they should evaluate whether Trump s push to ignite a redistricting arms race may have made it easier for a blue wave to wipe out more Republicans than if they had left their maps alone Ohio Republicans have already cut their losses They approved a map drawn by the state s bipartisan redistricting commission that makes relatively minor changes to the current plan and allows Democrats to keep their five seats in the -member delegation Kansas Republicans have also backed down State House Speaker Dan Hawkins reported on Tuesday that his chamber lacked enough sponsorship to call a special legislative session to redraw the House seat of U S Representative Sharice Davids the only Democrat in the state s four-person congressional delegation The next place to watch is Indiana where Senate Republican leadership has publicly disclosed they don t have the votes to pass new maps despite intense pressure from Governor Mike Braun and the White House Down to DeSantis That leaves Florida where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is on a mission to get lawmakers to redistrict five of the eight districts Democrats hold in Congress which would weaken neighboring GOP seats in Miami Fort Lauderdale Tampa and Orlando As with the Texas gerrymander Florida Republicans hazard weakening red districts that swung from Biden in to Trump in and could just swing back Isbell stated me I don t expect Florida to go Democratic in the general ballot but there are a lot of congressional seats that are swingy and if you start screwing around with them and Democrats really surge it s going to make a big difference Meanwhile Democrat-controlled states are lining up to try to cancel out Republican gains After Governor Gavin Newsom led California s redistricting initiative to a -point mastery last week Maryland Governor Wes Moore communicated that he won t sit on our hands and has formed a commission that could target the lone Republican seat in the eight-member congressional delegation Virginia Democrats who swept Tuesday s elections also revealed they would try to amend their state s constitution to allow them to gain control over three of the districts held by Republicans And New York and Colorado are also considering entering the redistricting war If Democrats follow through they could create up to additional seats that favor Democrats and essentially match the number of districts Republicans say they could gain if they succeed with gerrymandering efforts in Texas Missouri North Carolina Indiana Ohio and Florida The bottom line There is no guarantee that the electorate that evidenced up in is going to be the one that goes to the polls in Instead of securing additional seats in Congress Trump s redistricting gamble looks like it might just boomerang back on him Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and program columnist for Bloomberg Opinion Bloomberg Distributed by Tribune Content Agency