Maryland General Assembly approved redistricting measure aimed at eliminating the last Republican congressional member. Next stop the voters. Delmarva Public Media's Kevin Diaz has this look at the impact on the Eastern Shore.
The national fight over congressional redistricting has arrived in Maryland, and nowhere is the tension more visible than on the Eastern Shore.
In a special session this week, Democratic leaders in Annapolis advanced a proposed constitutional amendment that could clear the way for lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional map before the 2028 election. The move follows a wave of Republican-led redistricting efforts elsewhere, including in Texas, where GOP legislators, encouraged by President Donald Trump, adopted a map designed to help Republicans gain seats in Congress.
For Maryland Democrats, the target is clear: the state’s First Congressional District, the only one represented by a Republican. U.S. Rep. Andy Harris holds the seat, which includes the Eastern Shore and remains one of Maryland’s most reliably Republican districts.
But the debate has created an uncomfortable choice for some Democrats who represent the Shore.
Del. Sheree Sample-Hughes, the lone Democrat in the Eastern Shore delegation to Annapolis, broke with her party and voted against putting the redistricting measure before voters.
“There’s some deep digging into my own personal thoughts of wanting to make sure and protect the fact that our rural communities matter,” Sample-Hughes said. “And I want to make sure that we are safeguarding it and to still be in the posture that we have a voice.”
Sample-Hughes said she had heard comparisons to Texas during late-night debate on the House floor. “We didn’t leave till about 11:30 last night, so I feel like I have maybe flown to Texas and come back,” she said.
Still, she said her concern is less about party strategy than about geography, culture and representation. If the Eastern Shore were joined with more Democratic-leaning communities across the Chesapeake Bay, such as Annapolis or Columbia, she warned the Shore’s distinct rural identity could be diluted.
“We could potentially lose our rural status, if you will, if we’re to connect with the areas of Annapolis or Columbia,” Sample-Hughes said. “It just bodes with the whole argument that we must keep our rural way of life and make sure that we are able to do so.”
Republicans seized on that argument throughout the debate, casting the proposal as a partisan power play that would leave the Shore without a member of Congress rooted in the region. Del. Tom Hutchinson, a Republican from Cambridge, said the stakes were direct for his constituents.
“If this constitutional amendment is passed, we will not have representation residing on the Eastern Shore,” Hutchinson said.
Hutchinson went further, offering an amendment that would ask Shore residents whether they wanted to secede from Maryland. “It will add a question on the November 2026 ballot to the people of the nine Eastern Shore counties, whether the Eastern Shore should secede from the state of Maryland,” he said.
The proposal failed, but it underscored how deeply the debate has resonated in the region, and how quickly a national redistricting battle has become a local argument about identity and political power.
Gov. Wes Moore and Democratic leaders have argued Maryland is responding to a broader national escalation. Moore said Republican actions in Texas and other states have forced Democrats to consider their own response.
“The reason that we are here is because Donald Trump has forced us back here,” Moore said.
Republicans, however, appealed to a broader skepticism of partisan mapmaking. Del. Jesse Pippy, speaking for the House GOP conference, said gerrymandering should be rejected regardless of which party benefits.
“Gerrymandering is wrong,” Pippy said. “It’s wrong in Texas. It’s wrong in Ohio. It’s wrong in North Carolina. It’s wrong when Republicans do it, and it’s wrong when Democrats do it.”
Pippy also warned that if Democrats redraw the map to eliminate the Republican-held district, Maryland Republicans, whom make up roughly a quarter to nearly a third of the electorate, could be left without a member of Congress from their party. “And so we’re going to end up in a state where millions of Marylanders have no voice,” he said.
Senate President Bill Ferguson said the amendment differs from redistricting efforts in other states because it would first go to voters. The measure would not itself draw new congressional lines; instead, it would ask Marylanders whether to change the state constitution to clear the way for mid-decade congressional redistricting.
“This process allows for Marylanders to have a say in what their democracy looks like moving forward,” Ferguson said. “You look at what other states have done, they have not engaged their voters. They have done it unilaterally. They’ve done it through special processes. That’s not what we’re doing here.”
The Associated Press has reported that the proposed amendment could allow Democrats to pursue a map favoring their party in all eight of Maryland’s congressional districts. Maryland currently has seven Democratic-held seats and one Republican-held seat, Harris’ 1st District, centered on the Eastern Shore. In 2022, a judge struck down an earlier Democratic map, calling it an extreme partisan gerrymander.
Now, voters may be asked to decide whether Maryland should reenter the redistricting fight. For Sample-Hughes and other Eastern Shore Democrats, the question is especially fraught: whether to resist gerrymandering as a matter of principle, or to join a partisan battle Democrats say was started elsewhere.
This article is based on original reporting by a Delmarva Public Media journalist. Artificial intelligence was used to assist with production, and the content was reviewed by our editorial team before publication.
