Will Chamberlain - Senior Counsel, The Article 3 Project Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, if we get into a redistricting war, they wouldn't
be good for Democrats, that's for sure. Will Chamberlain joins
a senior council at the Article three Project. I think
the question isn't whether or not Republicans could win a
redistricting war. The question is would they fight? What do
you think?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
I think that's a good way to frame the question,
But I think they would. I mean, I don't think
that the other states are going to stand by. Why California,
you know, decides to jerrymander out, you know, everyone but
three or four Republican congressmen in a state where you know,
we lost California by less than we won Florida and
Texas this last presidential election. So yeah, that's not something

(00:40):
I think people would stand for, and I expect that
Republican states would respond in kind.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, I'm looking at the map right now. California they
could only redistrict if they put it up for a vote,
did have to have a special election, which evidently they're
willing to, at least Gavin Newsom is willing to do.
If you could come up with enough votes, Oregon they
could do it. Illinois could redistrict and I think I
want to say, maybe Maryland could redistrict, but you'd look
at all these red states Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida,

(01:12):
South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, New York, Ohio, Indiana, they
could all redistrict, and those are all red states.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, there's a lot more red states that can redistrict,
and the red states that canry district have more Democrat
congressmen in them generally speaking, you know, if you look
at it broadly, largely because of the Voting Rights Act
and how it used to be interpreted, So you have
a lot of these majority minority districts and states that
could easily completely lock out Democrats from having any seats,

(01:41):
like Louisiana, for example. It's a good example of that. Alabama.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
I think Alabama might have two Democrat seats of all things,
which is actually crazy when you think about it, because
Alabama is one of the hardest red states in the country. Yeah,
I think it's safe to say, you know, to get
back to the are willing to fight thing? Certainly Democrats
know that. Are they counting on the idea that the
Republicans wouldn't fight back against them redrawing maps and blue states,

(02:05):
all right.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
I think they're sort of in this weird spot where
they don't have any because they don't have a leader,
they don't have strategic command and control, so they're all
just doing things to get social media likes. And it
doesn't if it doesn't fit into a strategy or leads
to negative consequences for the party as a whole, well
there's nobody who can you take the larger view and

(02:27):
stop it? You know. In a sense, Republicans are much
able to act much more strategically because Trump is the
leader of the party. So Trump and is confident that
if he makes a decision and sees what the right
move is, everybody else will fall into line. So Democrats
don't have that. They're just stuck trying to, you know,
appeal to their base and act and resist in any

(02:48):
way that they can, even if there's this us ultimately
leads to worse consequences down the road.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
But all this acting up seems to be eroding their
base at least to a certain extent, don't.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
You think, yes? Oh yeah, I mean, well it's you know,
moderate Democrats are leading the party in droves that kind
of I mean, and it really gives you sort of
wondrous that who's going to be, you know, the nominees
going forward, because you know, all the kind of people
who would have voted for the moderate Democrat, a lot
of them are becoming Republicans, even in big city So
you know, you see, this is how you get some

(03:18):
of the like Zaranmumdani as the Democrat nominee in New
York City.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
You know, the kind of people who who would have
voted for a moderate like a Cuomo or in Adams,
They're they're becoming Republicans and so they're not even in
the party necessarily.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
I have the one on one last one for you here,
and that is with all these moderate Democrats coming over
to the Republican Party, is there a danger there that
that pushes the Republican Party more towards the middle, less
MAGA and more towards the middle.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
To a degree? But I think, I mean, you know,
in a sense Trump, Trump's already done a decent job
of that if you look at and not in a
bad way. I think the Republican Party's platform now is
much more in the middle of the country than it was, say,
twelve years ago under with Mint Romney and Paul Ryan.
You know, we're much more moderate on things like entitlements

(04:08):
than we were, but we're hard on immigration, which is
the number one issue for a huge chunk of the country.
You know, you look at where we are. We just
we've embraced a really, really tough immigration policy, which is
what the majority of the country wants. And so we
were just in a very strong position in terms of
our policy platform, much stronger than we were a decade ago.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
All right, well, thanks appreciate your time, Senior Counsel at
the Article three project, that is Will Chamberlain, seven twenty
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