Bravo! Moran takes principled stand against Trump redistricting plot | Opinion
Sen. Jerry Moran is the voice of reason on redistricting, and the Kansas Legislature would do well to listen.
In an interview with KMUW public radio, Kansas’ senior senator said he doesn’t think state lawmakers should redraw the state’s congressional districts this year.
That puts Moran at odds with the national plans of President Donald Trump, who’s trying to tilt the political playing field in an effort to hang on to a narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections.
“There’s a bit of fairness that I think ought to be preserved about this issue,” Moran told KMUW. “And we have a practice that we’ve utilized for a long period of time. We reapportion at that census moment, and that makes sense to me.”
The “census moment” the senator alludes to is the once-every-10-year U.S. Census, the comprehensive count of the people living in the United States that establishes how many representative each state gets in the U.S. House.
With the number of seats fixed at 435, states that are growing get more representatives, while some states that lag in population lose them.
The “bit of fairness” Moran alludes to is the post-census redistricting process that redraws congressional boundaries to even up the population between them.
“Bit” of fairness is the right word there. Redistricting is never really fair — politicians being who they are, self-protection comes first.
But most legislatures historically have at least made some sort of effort to keep the unfairness from getting completely gross.
Until Trump.
Election tampering, Republican style
The Kansas Constitution says that redistricting should happen every 10 years, on years that end in “2” — 1992, 2002, 2012, 2022, etc.
But state Senate President Ty Masterson and state House Speaker Dan Hawkins are bound and determined to ignore the Constitution and follow orders from the Trump White House instead.
They’re all-in on Kansas redrawing its districts off schedule to try to get rid of Rep. Sharice Davids, the only Democrat, the only woman and the only minority (Native American and lesbian) currently representing Kansas in the House.
The only reason she’s still there is because Republicans vastly underestimated her popularity when they last drew maps in 2022.
Despite GOP legislators’ efforts to corner Davids in an unwinnable district, she kicked their collective keisters in the elections of 2022 and 2024.
Fast forward to 2025.
With his popularity waning and opposition to his autocratic style of governing getting louder and better organized, Trump’s pulled the emergency cord and ordered red states to fiddle with their congressional districts to try to hold onto power.
It started with Texas redrawing its districts to try to replace five Democratic congresspersons with Republicans.
California retaliated — voters there recently approved a ballot measure by about a 2-1 margin to redraw their districts to the Democratic Party’s advantage, seeking to negate Texas’ effort.
Several states — Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah — also tinkered with their districts to make it harder for Democrats to win, according to a scorecard being kept by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The NCSL is also tracking a handful of other states on both sides that have started the process, including Virginia, Maryland and Florida.
Indiana lawmakers recently voted to stay above the fray and keep their districts the way they are.
New districts are being challenged in Missouri, where opponents have gathered 300,000 signatures on a referendum petition to put it to a public vote.
But the process of verifying those signatures is expected to last until midsummer, and certain to be followed by extensive court challenges.
Carving up Johnson County
The Trump-ordered redistricting game is anti-democratic, unflinchingly partisan and corrupt to the core.
So of course Ty Masterson and Dan Hawkins are eager to play.
The plan is to carve up Johnson County like a pizza, dividing its moderately progressive voters and sending them off to be buried in deep-red districts where they’ll never be heard from again.
It’s the same scam — just on a larger scale — that the Republicans ran in 2022 to eviscerate the voting power of African Americans in Kansas City, Kan., and liberals in the college town of Lawrence.
But our fearless leaders were dealt a setback when they couldn’t get enough lawmakers to sign on for a special session of the Kansas Legislature to take up redistricting.
It was especially embarrassing because they’d already paid $34,000 for special software designed to maximize Republican election dominance.
They’ve vowed to try again when the Legislature returns to Topeka, where it’s easier to arm-twist their colleagues to go along with the anti-democracy scheme.
Moran’s comments against out-of-turn redistricting weren’t the longest or strongest condemnation of political corruption we’ve ever heard.
But for Kansas in 2025, it qualifies as a principled and even courageous stance in defense of our democracy — the kind we’d all like to see more of, especially under our Capitol dome.
So keep talking, Senator. Next time, say it loud enough to echo through the halls of the Kansas Legislature.
Politicians may not want to hear it, but the people of Kansas are on your side.
