NC Republicans consider another awful gerrymander as a gift to Donald Trump | Opinion

Donald Trump’s gerrymandering battle has sadly but unsurprisingly come to North Carolina, where Republican leadership could once again redraw the state’s congressional districts, this time to perhaps win political favors from the president.

CBS 17 of Raleigh reported Thursday that Senate leader Phil Berger may accept a Trump endorsement in his 2026 primary challenge in exchange for redrawing congressional maps to create yet another GOP-leaning district in the state.

Berger denied the report in a post on X, saying he’s never spoken to Trump about the issue, and he accused Democrats of “spreading lies to hurt Donald Trump.”

But his post also signaled that he’d be open to the possibility of drawing new congressional maps to protect the GOP’s edge in Congress.

“I’ve been watching what’s going on in California with Gavin Newsom trying to steal the Republican majority in Congress,” Berger wrote. “We have drawn four Congressional maps in the last six years in redistricting fights with Democrats because of their sue-until-blue strategy. If we have to draw one more map this year, we will.”

If the report is true, the fact that Berger might be willing to dilute the votes of even more North Carolinians for his personal benefit is alarming. It’s also corrupt, and it shows contempt for the rights of voters that he would even consider doing so, given how deeply Republicans have gerrymandered the state already.

There is also some irony in Berger’s situation. His Senate district is extra red because it was drawn to mostly exclude Greensboro. That protects him from a Democratic challenge but makes him more vulnerable to a Republican primary from the right, which he now faces. He certainly would welcome Trump’s endorsement.

Redrawing maps wouldn’t just be wrong, however. It also might not be as politically wise as Republicans think. In drawing maps that would lead to the election of 11 Republicans and three Democrats, Berger and his collaborators may stretch Republican voters too thin and actually lose some of North Carolina’s 10 Republican congressional seats in a blue wave election.

Unfortunately for North Carolina, Republicans may choose to do so anyway. House Speaker Destin Hall also hinted he might be open to new maps in his own X post.

“You know, I’m something of a redistricting expert myself,” Hall joked alongside a GIF from the movie “Spider-Man.”

How did we get to a point where our leaders are joking about gerrymandering on social media?

Even if it’s not done specifically to gain Trump’s endorsement, the apparent willingness to enter North Carolina into some sort of gerrymandering arms race is troubling enough. That effort began not with Democrats but with Trump, who ordered Texas to redraw its congressional districts earlier this year because he believed Republicans were “entitled to five more seats.”

In response, California Democrats have crafted proposed new congressional maps, and Missouri also passed new maps in an attempt to net Republicans another seat. A mix of red and blue states have left the door open to doing the same.

North Carolina should not be one of them. Our state is no stranger to partisan gerrymandering — this attempt would be North Carolina’s fifth congressional map in just six years. Currently, just four of the 14 members of North Carolina’s U.S. House delegation are Democrats. That’s not a fair balance in a state that’s evenly divided politically, and redrawing the maps would make the discrepancy more stark.

While Berger may attempt to justify more gerrymandering by pointing to the actions of Newsom and California Democrats, the truth is that it’s not an apt comparison. In California, maps are constitutionally required to be drawn by an independent redistricting commission, so enacting new maps drawn by the legislature would require voters’ approval.

That’s not the case in North Carolina. If Republicans choose to move forward with this plan, voters will have no say at all. That’s become all too common in North Carolina.