Hakeem Jeffries pressures Maryland to redistrict; Senate pres. holds firm

Katharine Wilson, The Baltimore Sun on Feb 18, 2026

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BALTIMORE — U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went to the Maryland State House on Wednesday to press state Senate President Bill Ferguson, a fellow Democrat, to pass a new congressional map in the hopes it would give their party an additional seat in the House of Representatives.

“I also had [a] productive exchange of ideas and perspectives with Senate President Bill Ferguson, and those conversations will continue as we move forward,” Jeffries said in a news conference after meeting with Ferguson. “I appreciated the opportunity to share my perspective. He shared his perspective, and we’ll see where it goes from here.”

The Senate president has been firmly against putting the redistricting map on the Senate floor for a vote, arguing that passing a new map could lead to legal ramifications that could jeopardize the current map, which already favors Democrats 7-1. Ferguson also argues that any action taken now would be too close to the state’s midterm elections, with the candidate filing deadline on Feb. 24, potentially throwing off the schedule.

In a statement after the meeting, Ferguson said that most state Senate Democrats do not support mid-cycle redistricting.

“It’s precisely because we want Leader Jeffries in the majority that most members in the Maryland Senate Democratic Caucus do not support moving forward with mid-cycle redistricting that will backfire in our State courts and lose Democrats in Congress,” Ferguson said.

Jeffries argued in a statement that the only way to be sure the State Senate does not have the votes to move forward is “an immediate up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.” During the news conference, he said that the map would make three or four congressional districts competitive, giving an “opportunity for the people of Maryland to decide who they should send to represent them in Washington.”

The new congressional map passed the Maryland House of Delegates earlier this month. It would significantly reshape the 1st and 3rd congressional districts and could put Rep. Andy Harris, the state’s only Republican member of Congress, at a substantial electoral disadvantage by pulling into his district Democrat-leaning areas of Anne Arundel and Howard counties.

Harris is the leader of the House Freedom Caucus, a Trump-aligned group of Republican lawmakers. Del. Matt Morgan, the leader of the Maryland Freedom Caucus, responded to Jeffries’ visit by criticizing the New York Democrat for getting involved in Maryland politics.

“This has everything to do with Hakeem Jeffries and congressional Democrats trying to get the majority,” Morgan said. “It has nothing to do with fairness in the state of Maryland.”

Typically, congressional redistricting is done following the U.S. census every 10 years. But a wave of mid-cycle redistricting began last year when Texas approved a new map that draws line to favor the election of five additional Republicans in the House of Representatives.

The new Maryland map was introduced after Gov. Wes Moore created a Redistricting Advisory Committee to look into redistricting in the state. Jeffries said he met with Moore and members of the House of Delegates to thank them for their work on redistricting before meeting with Ferguson on Wednesday. Moore’s office confirmed that the meeting with Jeffries was to discuss redistricting and ways to counter the Trump administration.

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