"Rigged maps and their corrosive effects on democracy"

“A little-known Republican group is ramping up millions of dollars in funding from major US corporations such as CitiGroup and Chevron to protect the conservative stronghold on the country.

“The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which held the key to the GOP’s political takeover a decade ago – launched the Right Lines 2020 campaign last September, taglined: ‘Socialism starts in the states. Let’s stop it there, too.’ It’s hoping to meet a $125m investment goal in an effort to retain 42 state legislature seats that the group says are key to holding power in the House of Representatives in battleground states including Wisconsin, Texas, Florida and New York.

“‘There’s a decade of power and a decade of dominance that’s truly on the line,’ RSLC president Austin Chambers, a 24-year-old Republican operative, told Sean Spicer on his Newsmax show in March. The group recently appointed party strategist Karl Rove and ousted White House chief of staff Reince Priebus to its board.

“Ahead of November’s election, Republicans face an intense Democratic challenge to unseat Donald Trump, with dark money pouring in on both sides, and consumers who are significantly more vocal and critical of corporations’ politics, especially in the wake of Citizens United. But this year’s election also coincides with the decennial census, from which demographic data helps determine the number of seats in the House. The state legislatures elected this fall will be in charge of drawing almost all the maps.

“The RSLC’s goal is to get Republicans elected in down-ballot races. This can mean funding state candidates and campaign materials, including attack ads. For corporations, funneling their money through the group is a simple way to support lawmakers sympathetic to their bottom line and exert political influence.

“The RSLC has gone to extreme lengths to undertake its mission, changing the political landscape in the process. In the run-up to the 2010 midterms, it led an unprecedented strategy, the Redistricting Majority Project, or Redmap, to flip legislatures in competitive states. Once in charge, Republicans manipulated district maps to their advantage, a tactic known as gerrymandering. ‘He who controls redistricting can control Congress,’ Rove famously said in 2010.

“In 2012, Democrats won 1.4m more votes than Republicans, yet Republicans maintained a 33-seat margin in the House. A 2019 USC study found that 59 million Americans now live under minority rule, where the party that receives the minority share of the vote in a state election controls the majority of seats in the subsequent state legislature. While both Democrats and Republicans gerrymander, Redmap changed the game.

“Over half of the RSLC’s $17m contributions at the end of 2019 came from public companies and trade associations, according to an analysis by The Center for Political Accountability (CPA), which tracks corporate political spending. The largest single donor, however, was the conservative dark money group the Judicial Confirmation Network with $1.1m, the same group behind the nomination of conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“Despite the huge amount of financial support, the RSLC spends relatively little to accomplish their goal, doling out roughly $1m per state in its 2010 coup. The RSLC funnels the money towards groups on the ground that support candidates, or towards independent expenditures, including mailers, robocalls and digital and TV spots – which often veer into attack ads.

“‘The money doesn’t go out broadly,’ said Bruce Freed, CPA president. ‘It goes to specific states that they see as targets of opportunity. And so the company that contributes has much greater bang for the buck.’

“In the recent Wisconsin election, the RSLC spent over $800,000 on TV ads against judge Jill Karofsky attempting to portray her as soft on sex offenders. She unsuccessfully tried to block the ads, and later won the state supreme court seat. Justice Courtney Goodson also sued the RSLC in 2018 when she ran to defend her seat on the Arkansas state supreme court. The RSLC paid for a 15-second spot and mailers lambasting contributions she had received from a friend of her attorney husband, who had been a top donor to her first state supreme court campaign before they married.

“But experts said the RSLC and its donors may no longer be able to fly under the radar. Once an arcane process, gerrymandering is now a contentious issue battled by grassroots movements. ‘Redistricting historically was something that occurred behind the scenes in smoke-filled rooms and the people didn’t pay attention,’ said Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center. ‘Now it’s something that angers people.’

“Rigged maps and their corrosive effects on democracy have drawn fierce protests in states like Wisconsin and Michigan over the past decade. Crowds came out once again last year after the supreme court’s influential ruling drawing a line between political and racial gerrymandering, putting even more pressure on the parties to win control of the redistricting process…” (The Guardian).