Earlier this week, people living and working around the Maine State House looked up to see a small plane trailing a banner reading simply "Mess with Texas."
The same cryptic message flew over the capitols of Maryland, New York, California and a few other states — all part of a campaign to convince Democrats in blue states to redraw their congressional maps in response to a Republican redistricting attempts in Texas.
But don't expect to see a similar push in Maine, where the state constitution makes such gerrymandering more difficult if not impossible given the current state's current political balance.
"Maine actually has one of the best, most equitable, sort of nation-leading mechanisms that we use to do our redistricting," said Senate President Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick. "So we can't have that type of manipulation. Our process is fair, it's transparent. And what I think is really important when we are discussing what's going on in Texas is our requires us to be bipartisan."
It seems highly unlikely that Maine would become a flashpoint in the national fight over redistricting. After all, Maine only has two House seats, compared to 52 seats held by California and 38 by Texas. Both of Maine's House seats are also currently held by Democrats, although the 2nd Congressional District has become a perennial battleground for the two parties given the district's conservative lean.
But Maine is among the states where voter have put in place policies to make such partisan gerrymandering less likely in the first place.
A special bipartisan commission comes up with the new boundaries for Maine's two congressional seats every 10 years following the big nationwide census. That plan must then receive approval from two-thirds of the Legislature and the governor. And if the Legislature can't reach agreement on the maps by a certain date, the state constitution says the responsibility shifts to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
Altering that process would require changing Maine's constitution — a process that typically takes years and would be all but impossible right now. Democrats currently hold a narrow majority in the Maine House and proposed constitutional amendments require two-thirds votes in both chambers. A majority of voters statewide must then approve the changes.
Texas Republicans are pushing a redistricting plan (at the behest of President Trump) that would likely allow them to pick up five more seats in the U.S. House. Democratic lawmakers from Texas have since left the state, thereby denying Republicans the quorum they need to vote on the redrawn maps.
Trump and his allies are pursuing talking about similar efforts in other states. That has prompted lawmakers and governors in deep-blue states like California and New York to threaten their own early-redistricting plans to neutralize or overcome the Republican gains.
In an interview on Thursday, Daughtry said she understands why some Democrats are "looking to even-out and balance the game." But she accused Texas Republicans of voter manipulation and attempting to rig the system. And Daughtry said she hopes that level heads will prevail because she believes the current process is bad for the country as a whole.
"There are a multitude of reasons why I am grateful to live in this state but I am especially glad when we have things like this: institutional, once-in-a-decade changes that have so many levels of protection built into them so that we can't have what happened in Texas happen in Maine," Daughtry said.
