Politics without shame: Gerrymandering makes hypocrisy a political punch line

Former diplomat and Democratic senator Adlai Stevenson once remarked that “a hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.” If so, this week in politics was nothing but the worst form of stump speeches.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) declared that the move by Texas Republicans to redistrict mid-decade was a "legal insurrection of our U.S. Capitol." 

In Texas, Democratic State Rep. Jolanda Jones (D) must have felt "insurrection" did not quite capture the infamy. Instead, she insisted, “I will liken this to the Holocaust." 

Others repeated the Democratic mantra that it was the death of democracy. That includes former President Barack Obama, who had said nothing when Democrats made his own state the most gerrymandered in the union.

In Illinois, surrounded by Texas legislators who had fled their state to prevent a legislative quorum, Gov. JB Pritzker (D) bellowed that gerrymandering was an attempt to “steal” congressional seats and to "disenfranchise people."

It did not matter that the stump Pritzker and Texas Democrats were standing on in Chicago is located the most gerrymandered state in the country. The redistricting law, signed by Pritzker left Republicans with just three of the state's 17 congressional seats, even though they won nearly half the votes in the last election.

What is missing in any of this is any sense of shame. The most telling moment came when Pritzker went on the Stephen Colbert's show on CBS — a show that offered him a reliably supportive audience and a long track record of 86 percent of jokes slamming conservatives or Republicans.

Pritzker received roaring cheers when he said that he was protecting democracy from Texas gerrymandering. Colbert then showed him the map of Illinois, which features ridiculously shaped, snaking districts that stretch across the state — all drawn to maximize Democratic performance in elections. Pritzker just shrugged and joked how they had kindergarteners design it. Colbert and the audience laughed uproariously.

So let's recap. Pritzker had just declared gerrymandering a threat to democracy. He followed up by making a joke of his own unparalleled gerrymandering. The New York audience cheered both statements.

Some of the outrage by Democrats seemed part of a comedy routine. In Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey pledged to retaliate by gerrymandering her heavily gerrymandered state. The problem? It is already so badly gerrymandered that there are no Republican House members in the state — there haven't been any since the 1990s.

We have reached the point in our age of rage where one's hypocrisy can be openly acknowledged but then dismissed with a chuckle.

It is not cheap to lock Republicans out completely in heavily Democratic states. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) quickly pledged to order a new round of gerrymandering in a state where Republicans constituted roughly 40 percent of the congressional vote in 2024 but received only about 17 percent of the House seats. To reduce the Republicans to near zero would require passage of a ballot proposition, costing more than $200 million, even as California faces a budget crisis and a deficit greater than $20 billion. 

And that may prove to be just a fraction of the true cost.

In response to the gerrymandering, Democratic strategist James Carville seemed to call for what Texas State House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu (who fled to Illinois) described as "launching nukes at each other."

Carville insisted that once the Democrats retake power, they should "unilaterally add Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states" and pack the Supreme Court to guarantee that the Republicans can never win again.

He is not the first Democrat to openly advocate such a plan. In an October 2020 interview, Harvard law professor Michael Klarman explained how Democrats needed to use their power to enact “democracy-entrenching legislation,” which would ensure that “the Republican Party will never win another election.”

Perhaps you can appreciate the unintended humor there. But Professor Klarman noted that Democrats would still have to gain control of the Supreme Court to make such legislation stick.

What is striking about the Carville interview is that he was describing rigging both the legislative and judicial branches, all in the name of democracy. Carville admitted that "in isolation," each of these ideas may be objectionable and open "Pandora's box." However, when done together, they somehow become acceptable. It is akin to saying that burning a home is arson, but torching a city is urban renewal.

Nevertheless, Carville declared: "If you want to save democracy, I think you got to do all of those things because we just are moving further and further away from being anything close to democracy."

Again, no one listening to such unhinged ranting would fail to see the hypocrisy. What is chilling is that no one really cares. You can stack the Supreme Court and the Congress. You can gerrymander legislative and congressional maps. You can even engage in ballot cleansing by barring Republican and third-party candidates from elections. You can do all of that and still claim to be righteously defending democracy.

You can even commit the most venal acts as a form of virtue signaling ... even though there is not a scintilla of virtue in what you are saying.

There may be one benefit to Carville and his counterparts in opening up Pandora's Box. In the story, Pandora released an array of evils on the world, including sorrow, disease, vice, violence, greed, madness, old age, and death. However, few recall the last thing to escape the jar and perhaps the thing that the vengeful Zeus least wanted humanity to have: hope. 

It is possible that citizens will finally get fed up listening to these self-righteous hypocrites and join together to end gerrymandering once and for all. Rather than yield to our rage, reason could still prevail in this country in barring or at least limiting partisan redistricting. When we do that, these clear-cutting politicians will not have a stump to stand on.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of the best-selling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”