From§Each

Page B52From§Eachthe morning edition — 4 November 2026

Texas and Missouri redraw maps to dodge voters, voters redraw them back; Georgia's governor takes the hint.

By MortThe Records Bureau

“Brian Kemp rebuffs calls to redistrict Georgia map and curtail Keisha Lance Bottoms’s powers”, 4 November 2026 (Photo via Washington Examiner — the original report)

As it ran on the front

Here lies a strategy, born in the Texas and Missouri legislatures sometime in 2025, dead at the count on Tuesday.

Missouri's trouble started in court, not at the ballot box. The legislature drew a congressional map in 2022, then drew a second one in 2025 reaching for the same result, and on September 25 the U.S. Supreme Court's own conservative majority let a lower ruling against that second map stand — the third time the courts had struck it down. Lawmakers then asked voters directly: Proposition A would have let the legislature pass yet another set of lines. Voters said no Tuesday, the fourth rejection, the first one by ballot instead of bench.…

…(cont) Texas tried the quieter version — new lines meant to hold seats the party already had. One of those seats held the opposite answer. Voters sent a Democrat to the 9th district, the one redrawn specifically to keep it Republican. By October 5 the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had already added six more races to its target list under the new maps, and by October 26 the Washington Examiner was running down the candidates now running in districts that did not exist that way a year earlier. The maps had been drawn to shrink the battlefield. They enlarged it. By October 16 the president himself was attacking fellow Republicans over the fight.

One day later, in Georgia, the strategy's presumed heir got the message. Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) had the tool on his desk — a special session, the same instrument Texas and Missouri had used — and the occasion: Keisha Lance Bottoms (D-GA) had just won the governor's mansion Tuesday, a result Democrats themselves had doubted. As recently as October 31, party polling showed them far more confident in Senator Jon Ossoff's eight-point lead over Rep. Mike Collins than in Bottoms replicating it statewide. She won anyway. Kemp is not a man allergic to using emergency power when it suits him — he suspended the state's fuel tax in March and again in May, over the objections of nobody in particular — and he is not a man allergic to reversing himself for the party, having campaigned against Collins in the primary before endorsing him in September. On redistricting, on this one, he simply declined. He said he would respect the results.

A strategy survives exactly as long as the next official willing to try it again. Kemp looked at the body on the table — a legislature's map struck down three times, a ballot measure rejected a fourth, a protected seat lost to the voter it was drawn against — and did not reach for the scalpel.

In lieu of flowers, the next governor tempted by this procedure might ask Missouri's legislature how the fourth try went.

“They draw the lines to pick their voters instead of the other way around, and the voters drew them right back anyway — that's the whole racket, right there. Kemp didn't suddenly grow a conscience; he watched two states set the same fire and decided not to hold the match, and that's the only lesson these guys ever learn.”
Sal
“Kemp made the responsible call — respecting an election outcome isn't surrender, it's governance. Sure, Republicans in Texas and Missouri tried the other way and it blew up in their hands, but that's not — look, every state is different, every map is different, I'm not saying Kemp is better than Abbott, I'm saying — did I say Abbott? Strike that.”
Chip

Earlier in this story

The receipts

Brian Kemp rebuffs calls to redistrict Georgia map and curtail Keisha Lance Bottoms’s powers Georgia Republicans wanted a new map before Democrats could govern. Kemp refused.
Washington Examinerright§

Outgoing Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) has ruled out calling a special legislative session to redraw Georgia’s congressional maps, saying he will respect the results of Tuesday’s election after Democrats captured the governor’s mansion. The decision curbs efforts by Georgia Republicans to redraw congressional districts before the 2028…

· Why Keisha Lance Bottoms is trailing Jon Ossoff in Georgia from the morgue, 31 Oct 2026

· Keisha Lance Bottoms presses Kemp to pause diesel tax as rising prices show no sign of slowing from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026

· Kemp endorses Mike Collins in Georgia Senate race after initial stump for his primary opponent from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026

This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.