Two Democratic Governors Say if Texas Redraws Congressional Maps, They May Too

The Democratic governors of two of the largest states in the country issued their most explicit threats yet to Republicans in Texas: If they draw new Congressional maps to favor their party before the 2026 election, Democrats will look to do the same.

“This is not a bluff,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said on Friday afternoon, minutes after meeting with Democrats from the Texas House. “This is real, and trust me, it’s more real after listening to these leaders today, how existential this is.”

Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois issued a similar pledge. “Everything is on the table,” he said on Friday.

The response from the two governors — both of whom are seen as potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2028 — followed meetings with more than a dozen Democrats from the Texas House, who had flown to California and Illinois on Friday as part of an effort to beat back an aggressive Republican redistricting effort.

“We want the country to understand what’s going on in Texas is a national battle,” said State Representative Richard Peña Raymond, a Democrat from Laredo who was part of the group that met with Mr. Pritzker in Chicago. Mr. Raymond said he stressed to the Illinois governor that the redistricting is “clearly aimed at affecting the entire country.”

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas had called a special session of the Legislature to redraw the maps after private and public pressure from the White House. President Trump has pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their maps — though redistricting usually takes place only after the decennial census — to help preserve the party’s majority in the U.S. House. He has suggested an additional five seats could be created for Republicans in Texas out of the state’s 38 congressional districts. The party already holds 25 seats.

The meetings on Friday with the governors were the most concrete step yet taken by Texas Democrats, who have debated how to respond to the redistricting plan in a state where Republicans control the Legislature and all statewide offices.

After meeting with Texas leaders in private for about 40 minutes on Friday afternoon, Mr. Pritzker said at a news conference that changing maps now is “cheating,” a common criticism from Democrats about the Texas effort.

The governor indicated he did not want to go down the path of redrawing maps in Illinois, but said that if Texas followed through with a partisan gerrymander ahead of the 2026 midterms, he would explore all options.

“If they’re going to take this drastic action, then we also might take drastic action to respond,” he said.

It remains politically and practically challenging for Democratic state leaders to redraw their own maps in the same highly partisan fashion that Texas is pursuing, even in states where Democrats control every level of government.

In California, an independent commission has been in charge of drawing maps for congressional districts, a nonpartisan approach approved by voters in 2010. And redrawing the lines in a state like Illinois could present other challenges for Democrats, because the lines are already crafted to strongly advantage the party.

In his remarks on Friday, Mr. Newsom laid out as many as four different paths that he is considering to change the independent commission process in California, including putting a referendum before the state’s voters that would allow changes to be made ahead of the 2026 election. Or, he said, he could work with the Legislature to come up with another solution.

“We have got to fight fire with fire,” Mr. Newsom said.

But, Mr. Newsom said, any changes or action he would take in California would be “predicated on Texas moving forward.”

Depending on which option Mr. Newsom pursues, he will likely need support from two-thirds of the state Legislature. If he puts a measure on the ballot, he would need to raise tens of millions of dollars to run a campaign.

Other Democratic governors have also been considering moves to redraw their maps, including Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York.

National party leaders have been pressing Texas Democrats for a walkout during the special session to deny Republicans a quorum and halt the legislative proceedings. Such a move is still among the options that state representatives have.

The meetings with the governors took place during a House recess, and so did not represent a walkout. And their travel was paid for by the Texas House Democratic Caucus, according to a person briefed on the plans.

A true walkout would require at least 51 of the 62 Democrats in the Texas House to participate — far more than the number who went to California and Illinois on Friday — and each would face a fine of $500 a day under rules imposed by Republican leaders after the last quorum break in 2021.

So far, Texas Democrats have been hesitant — eager to fight, but unsure whether walking out on the legislative session would stop the maps from being adopted. Previous walkouts, during redistricting fights in 2021 and 2003, did not thwart Republican gerrymanders.

Mr. Abbott has defended the redistricting push by pointing to a July 7 letter from the Justice Department arguing that several majority Black and Hispanic districts in Houston and Dallas needed to be redrawn in light of a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit last year. The department said the districts now constitute “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.”

The Justice Department letter came well after the White House began pushing Mr. Abbott and Texas Republicans to engage in the rare mid-decade redistricting effort. The White House has been quietly pushing since the spring for Texas to be “ruthless” in redrawing the maps, The Times first reported in June.

The appellate court decision, Petteway v. Galveston County, found that “coalition districts” — where no single minority group predominates, but where minority groups together constitute a majority — are not protected by the federal Voting Rights Act. But constitutional law experts said it did not hold that such districts, which are common throughout the country, must be redrawn.

Texas has been defending the 2021 maps in a federal case in El Paso, arguing that race had not been taken into account. Now, Mr. Abbott appears to be changing that position.

“We are no longer compelled to have coalition districts,” Mr. Abbott said in an interview with a Fox affiliate in Dallas, adding that he wanted to “make sure that we have maps that don’t impose” such districts.

“We will maximize the ability of Texans to be able to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Mr. Abbott said, repeating the line three times in response to different questions about the redrawing.

Laurel Rosenhall contributed reporting from Sacramento.

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