ICYMI: NDRC’s Marina Jenkins Discusses the Mid-Decade Redistricting Fight on the At The Kitchen Table Podcast

Washington, D.C. — This week, Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), joined Caroline Wells and Debra Shigley of the At the Kitchen Table Podcast to discuss the NDRC’s work to defend democracy ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

During their conversation, Jenkins, Welles, and Shigley discussed the NDRC’s mission in the fight for fair maps, the threat of Republican mid-decade gerrymandering, and the importance of passing Virginia’s redistricting referendum in the upcoming April 21 special election to put a check on the Trump administration.

Excerpts from the interview are below:

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MARINA JENKINS ON FIGHTING THE MID-DECADE GERRYMANDERING CRISIS: “I think what we really were challenged with last summer was this idea that some states are going to play by these nice rules and produce maps that are very reflective and responsible, and then some states are just going to try to get the most amount of power for their the political party that is leading that government—that state government—and everybody else gets screwed . . . AG Holder thought hard about this, and . . . with the support of President Obama, came out and said, ‘Listen, we have to meet this moment, and we have to fight for the American people.’ And if, at the end of the day, what the American people want in fall of 2026 is to have a check on this out of control administration, that’s what we’ve got to get.”

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MARINA JENKINS ON THE THREAT OF A MID-DECADE GERRYMANDER IN FLORIDA: “The state that we’re really watching is Florida. Governor DeSantis has made no secret of his desire to join Governor Abbott in being the worst of the worst on this issue. He has said he wants to see as many as five or six seats. You know, it’s interesting in Florida—Florida actually is a state that in the 2010s when there was this energy and effort for all this redistricting reform, there was a successful ballot initiative in Florida. So Florida actually has a prohibition against partisan gerrymandering in their state constitution. So they’re between a rock and a hard place in Florida, because you can’t racially gerrymander—even if, no matter what happens to the Voting Rights Act, you cannot intentionally discriminate on the basis of race. And you can’t partisan gerrymander in Florida. And so, I think there’s, there’s a lot of talk coming out of Florida, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens. The other interesting thing, and you guys have been living through some really exciting, exciting special elections and state elections. I think the energy that folks have, that voters have right now, is going to result in an incredible turnout of people who want some accountability for Republicans right now. And I think the idea that the more that DeSantis tries to stretch his map to create more of these seats that he thinks will be just for Republicans, I think some of that could backfire, right? And so . . . the greedier he is, the more dangerous it becomes. So, . . . we could see a lower number of seats at play in Florida for those reasons.”

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MARINA JENKINS ON THE VIRGINIA REDISTRICTING REFERENDUM: “Virginia is our number one priority. We are encouraging folks in Virginia to get out and vote on April 21. There is a special election there, similar to what was passed in California back in the fall. There is a ballot initiative in Virginia to temporarily put a new map into place. Virginia is a state that has a commission. The commission is different from California’s, but they have a constitutionally mandated political commission in Virginia. And so the idea is that there is a temporary map that can go into place in the short term, and after 2030 they go back to the commission process. So that’s April 21 in Virginia. Tell your friends in Virginia.”

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