Utah Rep. Blake Moore says he opposes efforts by Texas lawmakers to redraw congressional boundaries in the Lone Star State in a bid to gain safe Republican seats and shore up a tenuous GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“I do not agree with state efforts to redistrict mid-decade,” Moore said in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune. “It undermines established norms and gives Blue States a glaring green light to do the same. Partisan gerrymandering is clearly done by both sides, but to allow this wildfire to spread mid-decade is a step too far.”
Democratic state lawmakers in Texas have fled the state in order to prevent the Republican-dominated Legislature from having enough members present to go through with their plan to draw new congressional boundaries. Republicans hope to gain up to five GOP congressional seats in the 2026 election.
Normally, congressional districts are drawn every 10 years after the new Census population numbers are released. But with a slim majority in the U.S. House and the party in power typically losing ground in midterm elections, Republicans see the move as a way to fortify their congressional hold.
President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have both said they support the Texas gerrymandering gambit. But Moore, a member of GOP leadership as the House Republican Conference vice chair, is among a growing number of GOP House members to oppose redrawing the maps and, so far, the only member of leadership to do so.
Governors in California and New York have said they would consider retaliating by redistricting their states if Texas went ahead with its plan.
None of the other members of Utah’s congressional delegation responded to questions about their stance on the Texas redistricting scheme.
Sen. Mike Lee posted on X, in response to a post from former President Barack Obama calling Texas Republicans’ plan a “power grab that undermines our democracy,” that “Dems only call it ‘gerrymandering’ when it’s in a Republican state. When it happens in Illinois, they call it ‘democracy.’”
Utah Democratic legislators attended a news conference with their Texas counterparts in Boston on Wednesday, where they were gathered for the National Conference of State Legislators meetings.
“The unprecedented mid-decade power grab currently happening in Texas is not only an affront to the communities who will be directly disenfranchised, but it’s a direct attack on a bedrock principle of our nation, the ability of people to choose their representatives,” said House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, in a statement.
And Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, called it a “blatant abuse of power.”
“Let’s be clear,” she said, “this proposed mid-decade gerrymander is about stealing seats and depriving voters of real representation in order to hang onto power at any cost.”
“I get emotional about this”
Before he was elected to Congress in 2020, Moore was a vocal critic of gerrymandering and served as co-chair of Better Boundaries, the group that spearheaded the 2018 ballot initiative that sought to create an independent redistricting commission and do away with partisan gerrymandering.
“I get emotional about this, it’s something that I believe strongly in,” he said at a forum on the ballot initiative in 2018. “I literally cannot think of one reason in the world why you would need to use voting records to draw a map other than to do it for partisan gain.”
“The old statement that it’s been around for centuries and both parties do it is simply no longer good enough,” he said. “We want a fair, transparent and straightforward process that allows for everybody in the community to feel as if they have some type of representation, some type of voice.”
And in 2018, he suggested red-state Utah, by creating the non-partisan redistricting commission, “could be a real guiding light” to other parts of the country, the Cache Valley Daily reported.
But after being elected, Moore praised the Legislature in 2021 for its work on redistricting. During that cycle, the Legislature ignored the boundaries recommended by the independent redistricting commission and adopted congressional maps that created four safe Republican seats.
“I support the State Legislature’s efforts to date and I am confident they will finalize the process appropriately, with a positive outcome for our state and country,” he wrote then on social media.
And in 2023, Moore joined the rest of the House delegation in submitting a brief to the court in the case seeking to undo the Better Boundaries initiative he had helped pass.
“The Constitution does not stutter,” the delegation wrote in the brief. “Congress, not state courts creating substantive law from vague state constitutional provisions, is the Constitution’s backstop to protect constitutional rights from infringement by State Legislatures. There’s no constitutional right to be free from partisan gerrymandering.”
A spokesperson for Moore said Wednesday that “Congressman Moore’s stance on redistricting has not changed,” and he opposes mid-decade redistricting.
The Better Boundaries law remains in judicial limbo, where it has been for months.
After the Legislature significantly weakened the initiative, the Utah Supreme Court ruled last year that the Legislature could not gut a voter-passed initiative that changes the structure of government without a compelling reason.
The justices sent the case back to a lower court to determine if the Legislature had, in fact, overstepped its authority and if new congressional districts should be redrawn. The judge in the case heard arguments on the issue in January but has not ruled on the matter.
The lieutenant governor’s office said in a court filing that the matter needs to be resolved — either with the existing boundaries left standing or new districts drawn — by November of this year so candidates can file in January to run for the seats.
Attorneys for the state said in court filings that they would appeal if the judge decides to discard the existing districts.