LA Daily News | Gerrymandering is bad regardless of which party does it: Brad Sherman

I write regarding your December 29th editorial titled Double Standards on Gerrymandering. I applaud you for focusing on the once-a-decade process by which congressional and legislative districts are redrawn after the census, and in decrying the process called "gerrymandering," where the lines are drawn to advantage one political party over the other.

In your editorial, you quote what I said to the New York Times: "When you have a system that says you're going to have purity in California and skullduggery in Texas, you end up with an unrepresentative [House of Representatives]. We want to live in a system where neither party gets screwed. But worst of all, is a system where only one party gets screwed."

You then proceed to say "Sherman did not mention states like Maryland or Illinois." I did talk about Maryland and Illinois and Ohio and Florida to the New York Times—they just didn't quote that part. The fact is that Democrats are screwing Republicans in a few states like Maryland and Illinois, while Republicans are screwing Democrats in more and somewhat larger states, including Florida, Texas, Georgia and Ohio.

You then claim that I'm against gerrymandering only when Republicans do it. Had you called me, I would have told you about my cosponsorship of the For the People Act, which we successfully passed through the House of Representatives in March, and which would abolish gerrymandering in all 50 states.

California's system is a good system, so long as similar systems are adopted nationwide, and that is exactly what the For the People Act would require. I hope that you'll editorialize in favor of its adoption by the U.S. Senate.

Sincerely,

Brad Sherman

Member of Congress

Congressman Sherman's editorial response as issued in the Los Angeles Daily News on December 31, 2021