Gray’s redistricting idea is wrong, expensive and unnecessary

If Secretary of State Chuck Gray wanted to show his leadership and critical thinking skills during his campaign for Congress, he picked a murky issue from the bottom of the barrel when he chose gerrymandering on the Wind River Indian Reservation. 

Gray’s audience for this misfire of the ages consisted of one person: President Donald Trump, who told leaders of all red states to
“redistrict” their political maps to favor Republican candidates.

Many GOP-led states have followed this marching order, including Texas, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Louisiana. Wyoming is not on the list because, besides Gray, few people want to support doing something so wrong, so expensive, and totally unnecessary.

Gray latched onto the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Louisiana case. The state had a district that was composed of predominantly Black voters, and the high court ruled that the map needs to be redrawn because a district cannot be gerrymandered for racial reasons.

The ruling will likely wipe out the electoral power of Louisiana’s Black population, which makes up about one-third of the state, and do the same across the nation.

I don’t know Gray’s thought process, but I think it probably went something like this: He saw a way for Wyoming to get its own redistricting plan to curry favor with the president. The Equality State is 84.6% white and 7.5% multiracial; all other races combined total less than 8%. The state doesn’t have enough of a minority population to racially gerrymander a district.

Wait a minute, Gray must have realized, Wyoming does have House District 33, which was designed to include many Native Americans (who make up only 2% of the entire state’s population) who live on the Wind River Indian Reservation. The district was designed in that manner because when the Legislature approved its redistricting plan in 2021, it emphasized the need to put “communities of interest” in the same district.

It’s a concept that was made possible by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which the high court has decimated over the years. What the Supreme Court did in the Louisiana case was basically tell states they can gerrymander wherever they want for political reasons, but not if it’s based on race.

There are many problems with Gray’s call for Gov. Mark Gordon and Fremont County commissioners to do something about this racial issue in House District 33, which is allegedly in conflict with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Let’s look at one of the most fundamental: Gray does not understand the difference between sovereign tribal nations and race.

The Native American identity is rooted in citizenship within a tribal nation, not a racial classification. Tribal nations determine their own membership based on their own laws and traditions, not race.

Levi Rickert, in an excellent op-ed in Native News Online, explained the difference: 

“Tribal sovereignty is not a relic of the past — it is a living, legal, and political reality. It is time for the United States to respect and uphold this truth, ensuring that tribal nations are recognized for what they truly are: self-governing, sovereign entities that exist not because of race, but because of the enduring power of Indigenous political identity.”

Rickert also noted that the U.S. has entered into 374 treaties with tribal nations, affirming their self-governing status.

Gray is also exploiting the Supreme Court’s decision to try to move up Wyoming’s political ladder by earning praise from Trump for sticking to his redistricting plan. The president knows that gerrymandering favoring Republicans is one of the only ways he can prevent a “blue wave” from taking control of the House and Senate.

Secretary Gray, Wyoming has no business tearing up the state’s political map just to make you look better. Because it’s your job to supervise elections, you know better than anyone that Wyoming Republicans maintain a huge advantage in voter registration over Democrats.

Wyoming has only one U.S. House representative — the position Gray is vying for — and it’s guaranteed (even if it isn’t him) that a Republican will win the election in November. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 178,000 as of this month.

Why is Gray calling for redistricting now, after the candidate filing period started last week and the primary will be held Aug. 18? Redistricting can’t happen that fast.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry suspended his state’s May 16 and June 27 primaries after the Supreme Court’s decision because “we don’t have a map that our voters can vote on.” Gee, I wonder why? Then he threw out 45,000 ballots from people who had already voted. That’s scary.

Landry is the kind of political hack that Gray apparently wants to emulate.

Has Gray considered the cost of redistricting to the state, since it has to be approved by the Legislature? Changes to House District 33 will result in altering other districts. It would require an expensive special legislative session.

The only thing positive for the GOP coming out of redistricting is that the House District 33 seat now held by Rep. Ivan Posey, D-Fort Washakie, could be taken over by a Republican.

Voters should ask Gray why it’s necessary to throw our primary elections into chaos, so a Legislature where Republicans hold 85 seats to the Democrats’ eight can add one more?

Finally, has anyone else noticed that Gray has no actual plan for redistricting? It’s a bunch of suggestions. He’s made a lot of noise about the issue, but all he did was send a letter to the Fremont County Commission asking it to take “immediate” steps to eliminate its own race-based county commission district, which also sits on the reservation.

The next day, Gray wrote a letter to Gov. Mark Gordon that called for an immediate review of House District 33’s boundaries to make sure they comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling. 

Beyond that, he suggested a legislative committee take up the issue and encouraged Gordon to join the GOP bandwagon of governors who’ve called special legislative sessions or issued executive orders to reexamine district maps.

That’s some non-plan, Mr. Secretary. Thanks so much for your input.

I think it’s time for voters to do what an irritated Gordon told Gray to do at a contentious State Land and Investment Board meeting in April: “Stop! Shut up!”