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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Pete Buttigieg rallies Indiana Democrats against GOP push to draw new
congressional maps
By Eric Bradner, CNN
Updated:
4:20 PM EDT, Thu September 18, 2025
Source: CNN
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Indiana Republicans
are “ashamed of what they’re doing” on Thursday as he rallied
opponents of a potential effort by GOP lawmakers to redraw the
state’s congressional maps ahead of next year’s midterm elections
to add one or two US House seats more favorable to the party.
Buttigieg, the former South Bend mayor, returned to his home state for
an appearance at the Indiana Statehouse where he urged Republican state
lawmakers who are being pressured by ’s administration to redistrict
to “show some backbone before it’s too late.”
“Refraining from cheating is a low bar,” he said. “But you’ve
got to start somewhere, because they are under so much pressure from
Washington to do something wrong.”
Even as Buttigieg enters the fray, Indiana Democrats face a daunting
political reality: They have no way of stopping Republican Gov. Mike
Braun and the state’s supermajority Republican House and Senate from
redrawing its congressional maps to try to tilt the GOP’s current 7-2
House seat advantage to 8-1 or 9-0.
Braun and GOP legislative leaders have not yet made a public argument
in favor of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps. However, Braun
told state reporters Tuesday that redistricting “probably will
happen.”
“I want it to happen to where the leaders and the legislators feel
comfortable with it,” he said.
Braun said in an interview on Fort Wayne’s WOWO radio this week,
according to an Indiana Capital Chronicle report, that lawmakers could
vote on new maps either at the beginning of next year’s legislative
session in January, “probably more ideally sometime in November.”
That timeline hinted at a possible path to approving new maps without
Braun calling a special session. Lawmakers typically gather each
November for “organization day” — a largely ceremonial one-day
start to the next year’s session in which newly elected lawmakers are
sworn in and legislative leaders are chosen.
Indiana Republicans face a pressure campaign from Trump’s White House
to add one or two more GOP-leaning districts to bolster the party’s
chances of maintaining its narrow House majority in next November’s
midterms.
Already, Texas Republicans to add five more seats that favor GOP
candidates, and California Democrats intended to add five
Democratic-leaning seats. The California maps must still be approved by
voters this November. Missouri Republicans last week aimed at handing
the GOP one more House seat there.
Republican state Rep. Ed Clere told CNN that Missouri’s approval of
new congressional maps last week “has only increased the pressure on
Indiana, but for all the wrong reasons.”
“This is being driven by very raw and very cynical politics,” he
said.
Clere has been one of the Indiana GOP’s most vocal opponents of
mid-decade redistricting. He said doing so “establishes a dangerous
precedent,” and said there is deep opposition within the party to
redrawing the maps.
“There are Republicans who are more concerned with upholding
principles than with cheating to win elections. And that’s what this
is: It’s cheating,” he said. “This is about a lot more than a
congressional map or an election. This is about who we are as a people,
and whether we are willing to prioritize democracy over politics.”
Multiple Indiana Republican lawmakers, speaking on the condition of
anonymity, said they expect Trump will eventually get his way.
The pressure on the GOP supermajority has ratcheted up with Vice
President JD Vance traveling to the Statehouse on August 7 to meet
privately with Braun, state House Speaker Todd Huston and state Senate
President Pro Tem Rodric Bray.
Indiana’s full seven-member Republican congressional delegation
endorsed mid-decade redistricting in social media posts in August, on
the same day state House Republicans were caucusing to discuss the
prospect. The same month, the White House invited the state’s GOP
legislators to Washington to further press their case.
The topic was prominently featured at Sen. Jim Banks’ Hoosier
Leadership for America Summit last weekend, where state Rep. Andrew
Ireland, a supporter of redistricting, said on X he’d spoken about
it.
Braun, the first-term Republican governor, noted that some Republican
state legislators had initially opposed mid-decade redistricting, but
have since reversed their positions.
“You clearly saw certain legislators that had an ‘absolutely not
interested’ to where they’re publicly out there changing their
mind,” Braun told reporters this week.
One of those public GOP flips is state Rep. Jim Lucas, who in August
repeatedly staked out his opposition to a mid-decade redistricting
effort.
After visiting the White House, and in the hours after the shooting of
conservative activist Charlie Kirk — who had waged a social media
campaign to pressure Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional
lines, vowing to support primary challenges against those who turned
Trump down — Lucas said he’d changed his mind.
“I am now a rock solid HELL YES for redistricting!” he said on X.
Lucas argued in another post the next day that because a Democratic
House would impede Trump’s agenda, redistricting “went from a state
issue to a national issue.”
The reversal by Lucas prompted an unusual back-and-forth with another
veteran Republican state lawmaker, Rep. Heath VanNatter, on Lucas’
Facebook page — throwing the kinds of discussions GOP lawmakers have
had in caucus meetings, including House and Senate members gathering
separately last week, into public view.
“I knew you would fold. Maybe you should keep your powder dry next
time,” VanNatter said.
Lucas responded by citing Hoosier legislators’ trip to the White
House last month and the assassination of Kirk.
“After going to DC and hearing solid information from the federal
level of how every Hoosier would benefit by redistricting and now the
assassination of Charlie Kirk, I have ZERO problem to publicly come out
and explain my changed position,” he wrote.
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