House primaries in Texas, North Carolina will be first to use partisan redrawn maps
Tuesday’s U.S. House of Representative primaries in Texas and North Carolina mark the first round of elections that will use congressional maps drawn during last year’s scramble of mid-decade congressional redistricting.
Redistricting is usually done once every decade. But last August, Texas Republicans, at the urging of President Donald Trump, passed a new congressional map in August that redraws five Lone Star state congressional districts to lean more Republican.
The move sparked a back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats in mid-decade redistricting, including in North Carolina, where the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a new map in October that could allow the GOP to flip one U.S. House district. The state's governor, currently Democrat Josh Stein, is not allowed to veto maps passed by the General Assembly.
While the partisan primaries won’t answer yet whether the GOP’s attempt to flip six seats across those two states are successful, they will determine which Democrats and Republicans will face off in the redrawn districts in November’s general elections.
In Texas’s 9th Congressional District, for instance, state Rep. Briscoe Cain, former Harris County judge candidate Alex Mealer and former U.S. Representative Steve Stockman are among the Republicans vying for the chance to flip the redrawn district currently held by Democratic Rep. Al Green. Trump has endorsed Mealer.
But the winner of that primary won’t face Green, because Green switched to running in the new 18th Congressional District. This has sparked an incumbent-on-incumbent primary, as Green will face the seat’s current representative, Christian Menefee.
Candidates in Texas primaries must get more than 50% of the vote to win outright; if not, the top two vote-getters proceed to a runoff.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the Republican-spurred redrawn map mainly targeted the 1st District currently held by Democratic Rep. Don Davis, one of the state’s four Democratic U.S. House members.
Davis -- who has called for banning mid-decade redistricting nationally -- is running for reelection and faces no primary opponents.
In the Republican primary, five candidates are running for the chance to flip his seat, including former Defense Department official Laurie Buckhout and Lenoir County Commissioner Eric Rouse. Buckhout was the Republican nominee in the district in 2024, losing to Davis by just around 2 percentage points -- before the district was redrawn to lean more Republican.
Regardless of who advances after Tuesday’s primaries or potential runoffs, neither party plans to give up on trying to flip or hold the six redrawn seats.
“In Texas, we've got a number of pickup opportunities there … North Carolina [District] 1 in my backyard. We've got a real great pickup opportunity there,” National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., said at an event hosted by Bloomberg Government on Wednesday
“I think that we have opportunities in Texas despite what they've done, because the American people… want folks who are going to stand up for them, and we have great candidates running,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., said at the same event.
