During a Friday public listening session for Gov. Wes Moore’s redistricting commission, Maryland voters in favor of redistricting said the state must eliminate the lone Republican congressional seat now that the Supreme Court has allowed Texas to use a new congressional map that favors Republicans.
This was the commission’s third meeting, and all of its members — U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, Senate President Bill Ferguson, Del. C.T. Wilson, former Attorney General Brian Frosh and Cumberland Mayor Ray Morriss — were present. The commission’s final listening session will take place Dec. 12. Alsobrooks, Ferguson, Wilson and Frosh are Democrats. Morriss is the lone Republican on the committee.
At Friday’s meeting, Bobby LaPin, a sailboat tour business owner from Baltimore eyeing Ferguson’s senate seat, hoisted an annotated copy of Project 2025 to emphasize that redistricting in Maryland is imperative.
“We have witnessed where this got us,” he said, referring to the policy manual that many have said has inspired President Donald Trump’s policy agenda. “Mass police taking away our neighbors, the U.S. military occupying American cities, science being overridden, civil servants being threatened, basically rights stripped away with just the stroke of a pen. This isn’t a warning.”
LaPin added that all he asks is that “the voices of Marylanders should be heard. And this redistricting vote should be allowed to come up in both the House and the state Senate.”
Jane Horvath, a Prince George’s County resident and member of the pro-democracy group Indivisible, said that although she believes voters deserve “better shared representation,” redistricting is “an unfortunate decision that we need to make.”
“We need to redistrict to protect ourselves, to protect Marylanders and other people across the country from an administration that is totally bent on reducing Medicare and Medicaid, income security, food security and environmental protection,” she said. “We’re doing it for more than just Maryland.”
Although the Supreme Court’s Texas decision has pro-redistricting Marylanders more fired up, they still face a key obstacle: Ferguson. As things stand, the Maryland Senate president has the majority of his caucus behind him. Out of the Senate’s 34 Democrats, only three have told The Baltimore Sun they support redistricting. Without Ferguson’s support, any redistricting legislation is dead on arrival in the Senate.
Ferguson’s opposition to redistricting has been that Democrats could lose more congressional seats if Maryland’s highest court throws out the current congressional map, which has seven Democratic seats and one Republican one. The last time the state began a redistricting effort in 2021, Ferguson argued, a judge on Maryland’s high court raised concerns that the current congressional map is highly gerrymandered.
Ferguson has been steadfast in his opposition, despite political analysts predicting that he might diminish his power by maintaining his stance.
But pro-redistricting Democrats argued that Ferguson and his ideology must be defeated because refusing to counter Trump would amount to capitulating to him and the GOP.
Larry Stafford, executive director of the grassroots group Progressive Maryland, told The Baltimore Sun his group is preparing to spend $100,000 on an ad blitz calling out Ferguson and some of his colleagues for “enabling the Trump administration.” Ads will be displayed in the districts of anti-redistricting senators and will appear online and on TV. Progressive Maryland will also send mail to voters, encouraging them to pressure their senators to change their stance.
“The Texas decision has increased the level of urgency for all of us in the country, and particularly here in Maryland, where we can at the very least do our part to push back on the radical right-wing ploy to rig the 2026 midterms,” Stafford said.
While Ferguson himself wasn’t a topic during Friday’s meeting, pro-redistricting speakers repeatedly said that redistricting should be pursued.
“We’re all in the midst of a huge constitutional crisis, the Trump administration is seeking to undermine democracy,” Michael DeLong, a self-described community advocate from Silver Spring, said. “The need for Maryland redistricting to counter these abuses is quite urgent.”
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