Scott Walker Loses Again

It was back in March 2019 that former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was appointed the fundraising chairman of the National Republican Redistricting Trust (NRRT), a national group formed in 2017 and “focusing on the GOP’s redistricting-related legal and data needs,” as its website declares. Specifically it wants to stop federal courts from overruling redistricting done by Republicans, and quotes former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who said the federal judiciary should “not enter this political thicket.”  

As Walker tweeted upon getting the position, “It is my honor to help lead @TheNRRT as we counter the efforts of the far Left to try and gerrymander their way into permanent control of the Congress and state legislative bodies across the country. Republicans win if we have fair maps!”

It was a clear case of projection, of Walker accusing the other side of his own sin, as Urban Milwaukee’s Data Wonk has noted: “The Wisconsin gerrymander, which Walker signed into law, is one of the most aggressive gerrymanders ever, locking the Wisconsin legislature into Republican control for the past decade, even when Democrats win the majority. Barring some sort of extraordinary event, Democrats would need about 55 percent of the vote to win control of the state Assembly. “

Walker and the NRRT haven’t had much luck defending Republican gerrymandering. A recent decision by the federal Court of Appeals, and written by a Trump appointee, Judge Chad Readler, upheld Michigan’s creation of an independent redistricting commission, under a state constitutional amendment approved in a referendum in 2018,  in order to eliminate the Republican gerrymandering of the state.  

“The 13-member Michigan commission includes four members of both major political parties and five unaffiliated members,” Roll Call reported. “Elected officials, lobbyists and relatives cannot serve as members of the commission.”  So no gerrymandering by either party for political advantage is possible. 

Walker and the NRRT previously lost its effort to defend a Republican gerrymander in Virginia, which was struck down by a federal court as racially biased, a decision upheld last year by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Walker also badly lost a Twitter exchange with Democrat Eric Holder, the former Attorney General under President Barack Obama, who has been working to overthrow Republican gerrymanders. Walker charged that Holder “has been raising millions of dollars to spend on local legislative and judicial races. They want to throw out old maps in many states and gerrymander Democrats into long-term control of the House.”

Holder slapped back with this reply: “This is laughable and you’re a hypocrite. Under the maps you and your colleagues put in place in Wisconsin Democrats won 54% of the Congressional vote and got only 38% of the seats in 2018. Scottie, you’re the father of Wisconsin gerrymandering. You fear a fair system – I don’t.”

To which Walker said nothing. He still hasn’t had one victory for the group. 

But the NRRT still has a pending suit in North Carolina, where it hopes to overturn a redistricting which blew up a Republican gerrymander that gave the party 10 of the state’s 13 U.S. House districts though the state is closely politically divided. If the current redistricting is upheld, NPR reported, Democrats would gain at least two seats.