Beto O’Rourke said Sunday that Republicans’ redistricting push in Texas could put more seats in play for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections, even as he promoted fighting fire with fire to counter GOP gerrymandering.
President Donald Trump hopes a mid-decade redistricting in the Lone Star State will help Republicans eke out as many as five new GOP seats and stave off Democrats’ bid to retake the House. And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is leaning on the state Legislature to redraw the maps in a summer special session. The effort bears a striking resemblance to 2003, when Texas Republicans — enjoying unified control in state government after decades in the minority — redrew the state’s congressional districts, resulting in big gains in the 2004 elections.
But diluting Republican vote shares in their current districts could carry serious risks for the party in a potential wave election year.
“This may end up biting Republicans in the ass. You have the possibility that they will disperse Republican voters to make up these 3 or 4 or 5 new congressional districts and put those districts in play,” O’Rourke told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “So in Texas, we’ve got to get out there and register and meet the voters who are going to decide the outcomes in these next elections.”
And O’Rourke, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020 and then lost to Abbott in the 2022 Texas governor race, wants Democrats to go on offense by launching gerrymandering campaigns of their own in blue states.
And in California Gov. Gavin Newsom, O’Rourke may have an ally. Newsom in recent weeks has floated redistricting from Sacramento — potentially circumventing the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission — if Texas Republicans move forward.
“We have to get serious,” O’Rourke told Tapper. “We have to be absolutely ruthless about getting back in power. So, yes, in California, in Illinois, in New York, wherever we have the trifecta of power, we have to use that to its absolute extent.”
And O’Rourke isn’t worried about members of his party being dubbed hypocrites for decrying gerrymandering in one part of the country and getting behind the maneuver when it helps their cause in others.
“We have got to fight back,” he told Tapper. “We cannot roll over. We cannot play dead. We cannot submit to them as Democrats for far too long have done. We’ve got to fight back with everything that we’ve got by every single means necessary.”