The only Republican member of Congress in Maryland, Andy Harris, spoke out Tuesday after Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore said he was looking closely at redistricting options in the state, potentially joining a nationwide battle over partisan redistricting.
If Moore followed through with that, Harris could be drawn out of his district.
“It disenfranchises huge amounts of the Maryland population. It just wouldn’t be fair,” Harris said in an interview with WTOP.
Some Democratic governors have vowed to consider redrawing congressional maps in retaliation against Texas Republicans, who are moving forward with rewriting their congressional lines to give the GOP more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, Moore said “all options are on the table.”
“For the governor, it would be a stunning reversal from his position,” Harris said. “If you want to go and listen to his inaugural address, he talked about, ‘If they’re good ideas, you work across the aisle.'”
Harris said the move “is the most un-bipartisan thing you could do.”
“The most partisan thing you could do is gerrymander a state that has had two Republican governors out of the last four, into a state that can’t send a Republican to Congress,” Harris said.
He pointed to 2022, when a judge threw out a congressional map drawn by Maryland’s General Assembly, finding that it unfairly favored Democrats.
Harris said he was already weighing his legal options.
“We will take this to court, it will go as high as necessary, and in the end, a judge could draw a map that actually has two or three Republican congressmen,” Harris said. “I’d caution the Democrats, be careful what you wish for.”
The redistricting fight is just one of many disputes involving Maryland and the Trump administration.
Another came when President Trump recently threatened to send in National Guard members to Baltimore to “quickly clean up” crime.
Harris said he could support the idea of putting National Guard members in Baltimore.
“There are many areas of the city where you can’t go in or you’re afraid to go in because crime is just not controlled,” Harris said. “If it takes National Guard troops to clean it up, to stop the drug dealing, to stop the homicides, to stop the carjackings, then I would welcome that.”
“It’s easily justified, and I think the people of Baltimore would benefit from it,” he added.
As part of the growing bitterness between Trump and Moore, the president also threatened to possibly withhold federal funding for the project to rebuild the collapsed Key Bridge in Baltimore.
Harris again sided with the Trump administration.
“I think the funding for the Key Bridge might have to be reinvestigated, because it’s a little unusual that we allowed 100% payment by the federal government,” Harris said. “Normally, it’s a lower amount.”
Though he acknowledged that a different cost-sharing plan could cost Maryland around $200 million.
“If Wes Moore has enough money to spend tens of millions of dollars suing the Trump administration, then maybe Maryland should pick up more of the tab on the Key Bridge,” Harris said. “If the Trump administration rethinks about allowing 100% payment for the Key Bridge, that’s fine with me.”
The Key Bridge reconstruction project is expected to cost about $2 billion and take about four years to complete.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
