Wes Moore confronts the limits of his own power in a clash with Maryland Democrats

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN

(CNN) — Wes Moore struggles to describe how he’d feel if he falls short in his push to gerrymander another Democratic seat in his state and the US House of Representatives ends up staying Republican.

The easy smile and motivational speaker energy evaporate. The prepared lines disappear. His eyes close.

“So angry,” he says, after a beat.

The Maryland governor is so popular in his solidly blue state that former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, who’d been eager to take another run at his old job, preemptively pulled the plug on a comeback campaign. Moore is a Rhodes Scholar and bestselling author. Oprah Winfrey spoke at Moore’s 2022 inauguration, candidates around the country are already putting in requests for him to join them, and George Clooney keeps saying he wants Moore to run for president, even hosting the governor on his yacht off the coast of Italy last Labor Day.

But neither Moore nor national Democrats have swayed Bill Ferguson, the Baltimore-based president of the Maryland Senate. Ferguson is blocking Moore’s push to redraw the state’s US House maps and try to eliminate the only Republican-held seat out of eight, rejecting even holding a vote on a proposal that moved easily through the state House of Delegates.

Ferguson warns that going for an 8-0 map could backfire in court, potentially letting judges draw a map that costs Democrats a seat. He cautions against bowing to anger at President Donald Trump and his launching of the national battle to redraw maps ahead of the midterms.

Moore knows that if redistricting doesn’t happen in Maryland, national Democrats who want a no-holds-barred approach to Trump won’t blame state legislators whose names they don’t even know.

For all that he can tout about bringing crime down and economic development up, the redistricting fight will be one measure of what Moore can deliver as a governor with full party control of his state heading into a potential 2028 White House run.

“If we end up with a Republican House and part of the reason is because Maryland did not move, none of that — forget politically, right?” Moore told CNN in an interview giving his most extensive comments about his own role in the redistricting battle. “For my soul, none of that will matter, because it just means that we kowtowed as a state.”

In part, what’s happening in Maryland is a well-worn tale of state legislators rebuffing a governor from their own party whom they brush off as not knowing history or the way things really work around the capital. There are parallels to the Republican state senators in Indiana who rejected Trump’s pushing them on redistricting last year.

But Moore also allowed Ferguson to get out in front of him to oppose Maryland redistricting, letting momentum and time dissipate. He waited to formally launch his redrawing effort until the morning after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s big gerrymandering win in November’s California ballot proposition.

Moore argues his delays were only about getting the process right.

“When I hear people say, ‘Don’t worry about it, because we’re going to win overwhelmingly anyway,’ my answer always back is, ‘Says who?’” Moore said. “I would never forgive myself, nor anyone else, if we come up short and the reason that we have to keep on dealing with this is because we didn’t do our job. That would be unforgivable.”

The potential value of one seat

A single seat in Maryland takes on heightened importance for Democrats, who are three seats behind Republicans in the redistricting battles, according to CNN’s analysis. Strategists in both parties believe that even in a so-called blue wave this fall given Trump’s unpopularity, there will be far fewer competitive seats than usual, in part due to redistricting.

The bill that Moore and new House of Delegates Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk settled on would adopt new maps for 2026, targeting US Rep. Andy Harris, the sole Republican in the state’s delegation. Those maps would then go before voters via ballot proposition to hold until the next regularly scheduled redistricting, after the 2030 census and Trump’s second term is finished, with other measures about holding back state courts from overturning future maps also included.

Ferguson is an attorney, confident as much in his reading of the law as in his support from his fellow senators. He laughs off being called the most hated Democrat in America or having his manhood insulted by Virginia Senate Pro Tem L. Louise Lucas, who recently tweeted that Ferguson needs to “grow a pair and stand up to this President.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries stood next to Moore in Statuary Hall in the Capitol, saying that Maryland needed to help stop the “scheme” to “artificially maintain the extremism that we see here from Republican members of Congress.” Ferguson’s response was to tell local reporters, “I appreciate their thoughts and advice.”

He has advised Moore and anyone else who will listen that he, unlike the governor, was in Annapolis in 2021 when an attempt at a different 8-0 gerrymander was stopped by the state Supreme Court and the current map of 7-1 was created by legislative compromise.

Push forward with trying to go 8-0 and the five Hogan-appointed judges out of seven on the state Supreme Court could strike it down, Ferguson’s team argues. They could be left with a map that’s 6-2, instead giving Republicans an additional seat.

Moore “sees the same threat as Bill does, but he thinks it’s worth the risk and we don’t,” Ferguson’s communications director, David Schuhlein, told CNN.

In a recent private meeting with the governor and Peña-Melnyk, Ferguson said again that he wouldn’t move. He brushed off former state attorney general Brian Frosh – who is backing Moore in the effort – telling him in a closed hearing about the maps that his stated concerns about how courts, “if that argument was made in a law class, I’m sorry to say it wouldn’t get an A, or even a B,” according to a person on the call.

Ferguson held his own press conference, repeating that he isn’t interested in putting up for a vote a bill that he knows will fail.

“The world is uncertain, the world is crazy, and we have a limited amount of time and energy and focus — and we have to put it where it matters most,” Ferguson explained.

Moore’s allies reject that: “We are moving redistricting legislation, immigration legislation and energy affordability all in one week,” said David Moon, the majority leader in the House of Delegates. “I feel like we can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Like many legislative leaders in Annapolis and other state capitals, Ferguson has also made clear that he expects members dependent on him for their own power and bonuses to stick with him. He already pulled a chairmanship from one of the most pro-gerrymandering state senators, a move that was followed by his fellow Democratic state senators unanimously reelecting him to another term as leader.

Just let a vote happen, Moore and his allies have turned to saying. They want to dare state senators to stick to their “No” votes if they’re not just private assurances to Ferguson but lit up next to their names on the electronic board up on the wall of the chamber.

“We should not just count this idea that because one person thinks something, that’s what everybody thinks. And listen, my thing is this, prove me wrong,” he said.

As for Ferguson, Moore said, “I have not tried to psychoanalyze why he does not see the assault that I’m seeing or the urgency of this.”

Right now, though, Moore doesn’t have the votes. Of Maryland’s 47 state senators, 34 are Democrats. They need 29 to pass the plan since the state constitution requires a three-fifths majority for amendments. State senators involved say the most generous current count gives Moore’s side 10, maybe 11.

As of this weekend, “nothing has changed on the Senate side. That’s probably the way leadership wants it. They want it to be, ‘Nothing to see here, moving on,’” one Democratic state senator told CNN, asking to remain anonymous to discuss the internal conversations. But once the bill passes the House of Delegates and the clock ticks down on the end of February candidate filing deadline, the senator added, “I think it’s really just a matter of time to see what the advocates will do to ramp up the pressure on senators.”

‘A really bad chapter’

Last fall, Moore made a little news by ruling out running for president. Almost no one believes him, including a bunch of the people who work for him. He’s continuing to meet with major donors, as he did on a recent trip to New York.

Most observers figure he’ll get through what, without Hogan, is looking like a glide-path reelection in November and be ordering new campaign signs by early next year.

Several in Newsom’s orbit are already savoring the contrast the California governor could make on a future debate stage. Newsom retaliated against Texas Republicans by creating five more likely Democratic seats via a ballot proposition that he pushed through and won.

Newsom himself was more diplomatic.

“We’ve been discussing his unique circumstances — including the fact (that) his calendar (is) different than ours,” Newsom told CNN in a text. “Bottom line: Trump is just winding up (on November vandalism). We all need to stand guard — lots more has to be done to counter.”

Caught between saying he just wants fair maps that under the new proposal would make every district more competitive and that he’s doing this to help Democrats, Moore accuses Trump of “political redlining” and describing the special burden he feels as the only current Black governor in America. He waves away those who argue Maryland’s moving forward would prompt other Republicans to retaliate, given that Gov. Ron DeSantis is already pushing ahead in Florida.

“I am not wondering or hoping anymore that somehow others will see better angels. They won’t. They are very clear on what they want to do. And they’re very clear they’re not stopping,” Moore said. “And so I don’t see how this idea that, ‘Oh, if we just sit quiet, the beatings will stop.’”

Moore says he gets why people talk about him running in 2028, but that he still doesn’t look in the mirror and see a president. That has never been part of his thinking, he insists.

Asked what he says to Clooney and others who keep pressing him to run, Moore writes it off to the past year of this Trump presidency having “absolutely accelerated a hope for what comes next, because I think people are just desperate to get to know what comes next.”

With the story he tells of his beginnings, his military service in Afghanistan and the work he’s been doing as governor, Moore says he knows that there are those who see him as the potential vessel for that hope.

“I don’t want to feel despair. I don’t want to turn on television to see this. I want to feel inspired. I want to feel hopeful. I want to feel that, you know what, this is going end up becoming just a really bad chapter of a really good book,” Moore said. “When you hear people say, ‘Thank God I’m in Maryland,’ I kind of love that, because it means that we’re taking this moment seriously. But I don’t want to be the vessel for the frustration.”

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CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that the Maryland Senate would need 29 votes to pass a redistricting plan instead of 24.