In Maryland redistricting, looking back to the future could be best for the Bay and its people

Last week, the congressional redistricting plan that was approved by Governor Moore’s appointed task force was adopted by the House of Delegates after an intense debate. Among the most vocal critics were those who feel it disenfranchises the Eastern Shore and violates key statutory and constitutional redistricting principles.

Perhaps we can agree, as adults, to set aside lofty lamentations about the absence of integrity or fairness in this process. Those noble principles were crossed off the punchlist years ago by Republican and Democratic states alike.

Indeed, one of the very few points of bipartisan agreement inthis hyperpartisan age is that the majority party in so-called “uniparty states” – those in which one party controls both the executive and legislative branches of government – can manipulate and abuse the redistricting process to run up the score on the hapless minority party. Those who decry what is being proposed in Maryland and yet said nothing about the procedural atrocities that took place in Texas – or plan to mount an attack over Florida’s shambolic process while finding nothing wrong with our own maps – may respectfully sit down and be quiet. There are no ingenues or heroes in this long running morality play.

So let us circle back to the more localized critique that it makes a mockery of the 1st Congressional District and disenfranchises the Eastern Shore. Such protests, while understandable, ignore the fact that 1st been a mess now for nearly 40 years.

Let’s go back in time.

For decades, culminating with the 1990 election in which Wayne Gilchrest unseated five-term incumbent Roy Dyson, the 1st District was a stable and highly functioning aggregation of communities with similar demographics, economic characteristics and cultural interests. Conjoining the nine Eastern Shore counties with Southern Maryland’s tri-county area, the district blended two regions where traditional farming and seafood harvesting economies co-existed with the emerging defense technology industry.

Both sides of the district offered quaint, walkable downtowns – Easton, Chestertown and Leonardtown – that balanced the fast-growing regional hubs of Waldorf and Salisbury. Both offered an appealing blend of centrist Democrats with political stature – from Kent County’s Clayton Mitchell and Talbot County’s Bill Horne to St. Mary’s County’s Johnny Wood and Calvert County’s irrepressible George Owings.

Across the aisle, the region offered GOP voters an appealing mix of moderates and principled conservatives – from Calvert County Commissioner Mark Frazer to Wicomico County’s legendary Lew Riley. Because the two regions were separated only by a strip of the Chesapeake Bay that was longer than it was wide, one could be sitting in Prince Frederick and still clearly pick up the newscasts from WCEI-FM in Easton and WCEM-FM in Cambridge.

In an epochal campaign of that era, a little-known schoolteacher and itinerant house painter from Kent County, Wayne Gilchrest, emerged from a crowded field of eight supremely qualified GOP candidates that included Del. Richard F. Colburn, Calvert County Commissioner Mark Frazer, veteran congressional aide Luis Luna and former Bush Administration official Ray Briscuso. Gilchrest, of Kent County, went on to soundly defeat Dyson, the St. Mary’s County native and moderate, defense-friendly Democrat whose promising career was derailed by scandal.

After this, things got messy. Very messy.

An unfortunate split

A redistricting map pushed by then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer in 1991 and approved by the legislature separated the Shore and Southern Maryland. Under the new maps, the rural Eastern Shore was paired with a large swath of Anne Arundel County that captured Annapolis and then rolled up Ritchie Highway, collecting communities up to the Baltimore City line. For good measure, it even slipped into Curtis Bay – a geographically and politically isolated community on Baltimore City’s south peninsula.

Having worked two congressional races here in the 1990s, this author can confirm the obvious – that there was virtually no connective tissue between the rural communities of the Shore, the affluent and well-manicured communities of Annapolis and Severna Park, and the blue-collar, heavily Italian and Polish neighborhoods of Glen Burnie and Brooklyn Park. Try as they might, rural Democrats like the late, much-beloved Samuel “Q” Johnson – the owner of Johnson’s Seed and Feed in Salisbury, who ran unsuccessfully for the seat in the 1992 Democratic primary – never quite clicked with the denizens of the Roland Terrace Democratic Club, a group that largely consisted of retirees of Bethlehem Steel and the Coast Guard Yard who drank beer by the bucket under the approving eye of club president Walter “Lucky” Uzialko.

This district remained generally intact until the 2011 redistricting, by which time the principled and genial Gilchrest had been replaced by the execrable Andy Harris. Proving Lily Tomlin’s erudite quote that things will get a lost worse before they get worse, the 1st District’s lines went from bad to patently absurd under the stewardship of the Democratic legislature. In this iteration, Annapolis, Ritchie Highway and Lucky Uzialko were out. In were deep red communities in northern Harford County, a splattering of communities in the eastern and northern reaches of Baltimore Counties, and Carroll County communities such as Hampstead and Taneytown, right up to the Pennsylvania state line.

This, so the Democratic majority could extend its partisan advantage within its congressional delegation from 6-2 to 7-1 and in so doing, reward then-Sen. Rob Garagiola – a loyal ally of Senate President Mike Miller – with his own congressional seat (a plan foiled by the willingness of John Delaney to invest mightily into winning that seat.) 

Keep in mind that under the best practices enumerated in both the Constitution and in statute, an acceptable redistricting process was one in which counties were kept intact, communities of shared interest were aligned and maps were geographically compact.

This district split Harford, Baltimore and Carroll Counties. It forcibly matched places in Maryland that were wholly unfamiliar with one another and that had nothing in common. To the question of compactness, this writer’s trusted app says a trip from Crisfield, the southernmost outpost of the district excluding Smith Island, to its northern tip in Taneytown would take three hours and 28 minutes.

For reference, one could complete, in fifteen fewer minutes, a trip from the Fishbowl’s offices in Hampden to the Steamboat Marketplace in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Back to the future

The map that exists today, and under which the 2026 elections would be contested if Senate President Bill Ferguson’s position were to stand, was hurriedly assembled in 2022 after the courts rejected an earlier iteration as an example of “extreme partisan gerrymandering.” It, too, is a mess for the people of the 1st District, forcibly pairing the Shore with lovely but far off communities like Fallston, Aberdeen, Kingsville and Upperco.

This brings us to the modern day and the debate within the legislature over a new set of gerrymandered lines. This version bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1992-2010 map. It takes the First District across the Bay Bridge, encompassing predominantly Democratic communities in Anne Arundel and Howard Counties now represented by Rep. Sarah Elfreth (D-3).

Before we go any further, let us make one thing perfectly clear. This writer abides by the words of former U.S. Rep. Carlton Sickles, who would often state that there are times in life when one must rise above principle. If this latest flawed map, submitted for legislative approval as the product of a flawed process, were to somehow be memorialized in law, then I would be perfectly happy with it. A district map that would provide the cerebral and relentless Elfreth with a decisive advantage over Harris – who could be replaced with a dry-rotted fence post without attracting the notice of his voters – would be a self-evident good for the Shore, the state of Maryland and the world.

However, if at some point in the future we were to concern ourselves with creating a 1st congressional district that abides by the principles of redistricting and offers its residents with real political competition and choice, then there is only one sensible way to go.

As my mother would say, put it back where you found it.

Go back to the future.

Reunite the Eastern Shore, minus Cecil County, with Southern Maryland.

Those who decry the lack of true purple, swing districts in this era of partisan balkanization would love this new district. According to the latest registration data, it would feature 217,000 Democrats, 203,000 Republicans and 123,000 unaffiliated voters. The evolution of St. Mary’s and Calvert counties into deep red territories is offset by the simultaneous metamorphosis of Charles into a deep-blue jurisdiction.

The population of this hypothetical district hovers around 750,000, in the ballpark of the necessary size of a congressional district.

Two regions that once relied predominantly upon the land and the Bay are now wrestling with the same pressures of growth and suburbanization – from crime prevention and sprawl development to traffic congestion and aging infrastructure.  

At the same time, these neighbors by the Bay also retain characteristics of their agrarian histories. Both have emerged as prime destinations for weekend visitors, second homebuyers and retirees. Both are in urgent need of new bridges to replace those that are failing – the William Preston Lane and Thomas Johnson, respectively.

While both regions have suffered through the election of occasional extremists, both are represented in Annapolis by sensible, results oriented leaders like Sens. Steve Hershey (R-Queen Anne’s) and Jack Bailey (R-St. Mary’s), and at the county level by accomplished consensus builders like Commissioner Reuben Collins (D-Charles), Keasha Haythe (D-Talbot) and Rick Travers (D-Dorchester).

Perhaps most important, the two regions – conjoined as they are by hundreds of miles of Chesapeake Bay shoreline – share powerful economic and cultural incentives to safeguard Maryland’s beloved natural resources from the existential threats of climate change, sea level rise and its causes. The representative of this restored 1st District would truly go to Washington with the stature and responsibilities that come with being the guardian of the Chesapeake.

The practitioners of modern politics are, as a lot, futuristic looking people. How often have we heard our candidates blow through town promising to Move Maryland Forward, and how many times has that led, as a practical matter, to change for its own sake?

In this case, the answer can be found in the rear-view mirror. A set of congressional district lines that made sense in the age of Carter, Reagan and Bush makes even more sense today, offering competition, choice and common-sense leaders.

It is time, later if not sooner, to go back to the future and put the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland together once again.