2024年，卡马拉·哈里斯在德克萨斯州第35国会选区以超过33个百分点的优势获胜——该选区当时从圣安东尼奥市中心延伸至奥斯汀郊区。次年，德州共和党重新划分选区，将奥斯汀和圣安东尼奥大部分地区排除在外，纳入更多农村县份。按新界线计算，特朗普本将以10个百分点的优势赢得该区。
In 2024, Kamala Harris won Texas’s 35th congressional district — which then stretched from central San Antonio up to the Austin suburbs — by more than 33 points. The next year, Texas Republicans redrew the district to exclude Austin and much of San Antonio and incorporate more rural counties. Under the new lines, Trump would have won it by 10 points.
如今，在中期选举前几天，这个德州中南部席位已成势均力敌的摇摆区。迄今为止，共和党在广告上花费1390万美元，力推空军老兵卡洛斯·德拉克鲁斯；民主党花费1230万美元，支持贝萨尔县副警长约翰尼·加西亚。（该席位现为空缺，现任民主党众议员格雷格·卡萨尔正在重新划分后的第37选区——环绕奥斯汀一带——竞选连任。）
Now, days before the midterms, the south-central Texas seat is a toss-up. So far, Republicans have spent $13.9 million on ads trying to elect Air Force veteran Carlos De La Cruz, compared to the $12.3 million Democrats have spent to try to elect Johnny Garcia, a deputy sheriff in nearby Bexar County. (The seat is open, with the incumbent, Democratic Rep. Greg Casar, running in the redrawn 37th district, surrounding Austin.)
这场竞争折射出全美众议院选战中的一种讽刺：特朗普要求共和党主导的州重划国会选区地图，以期为共和党赢得更多众议院席位。如今，该党却面临失去几个亲手绘制的选区的风险，并花费数百万美元试图赢回它们。
The race captures an irony playing out in House contests across the country: Trump demanded Republican-led states redraw their congressional maps in an effort to win more House seats for the GOP. Now, the party is at risk of losing several of the very districts it drew — and is spending millions to try to win them.
据《国会山报》周五的评级，在18个被列为“势均力敌”的众议院竞选中，近三分之一是近期共和党精心杰利蝾螈式划分的选区。特朗普在2024年赢下了其中两个，其余三个被重新划分为让总统对哈里斯领先10个百分点。这些选区本应是共和党的友好腹地，结果该党却在为它们苦战。据MS NOW对广告追踪公司AdImpact截至周六可用数据的审查，在这五个席位上，共和党广告支出比民主党多出1230万美元。
Of the 18 House races the Cook Political Report rated as toss-ups as of Friday, nearly a third are recent Republican gerrymanders. Trump carried two of those five in 2024, and the other three were redrawn in ways to give the president a 10-point lead over Harris. Those districts were supposed to be friendly territory for the GOP. Instead, the party is fighting for them. Republicans have outspent Democrats on ads across those five seats by $12.3 million, according to an MS NOW review of data available through the ad-tracking firm AdImpact through Saturday.
共和党即便在自己划定的必胜选区也陷入挣扎，原因显而易见：特朗普的支持率处于历史低位，通胀持续，伊朗战争陷入僵局。
It’s not hard to see why Republicans are struggling, even in the districts they drew to win. Trump’s approval rating is at a historic low, inflation persists, and the war in Iran grinds on.
资深共和党策略师、反特朗普组织“林肯计划”联合创始人迈克·马德里表示，共和党的重划选区行动反映出“一种根本性的误解——特别是在德克萨斯州南部和佛罗里达州——对2024年推动这些选民的因素的误解。”
Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said the GOP’s redistricting push reflected “a basic misunderstanding — especially in South Texas and Florida — of what was moving these voters in 2024.”
马德里周五对MS NOW表示，共和党“以为那是对他们的向往和支持。并不是。那是对拜登-哈里斯政府的谴责，就像这将会是对唐纳德·特朗普的谴责一样。”在德克萨斯州的这场竞选中，德拉克鲁兹似乎意识到，被视为与总统关系过于紧密可能是个累赘。今年夏天，他修改了自己的网站，删去了将自己描述为“特朗普保守派”的字眼。
The GOP “believed that it was aspirational and supportive of them. It was not,” Madrid told MS NOW on Friday. “It was a rebuke of the Biden-Harris administration, the same way this is going to be a rebuke of Donald Trump.”In the Texas race, De La Cruz seems aware that being seen as too closely tied to the president could be a liability. This summer, he altered his website to remove a description of himself as a “Trump conservative.”
他曾称总统的关税“范围宽得太过分”——尽管他也曾告诉《德克萨斯论坛报》，任何暗示他正在与特朗普保持距离的说法都是“胡说八道”，并且上个月曾在圣安东尼奥的一次集会上与总统及共和党参议员提名人肯·帕克斯顿同台亮相。
He has called the president’s tariffs “way too broad” — though he also told the Texas Tribune that any suggestion he was distancing himself from Trump was “hogwash,” and he appeared with the president and Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton at a San Antonio rally last month.
与此同时，加西亚一直在反对总统的关税，并承诺扭转国会共和党支持的医疗补助削减。他还给德拉克鲁兹贴上了总统“搭档”的标签，称他将成为总统议程的“另一个橡皮图章”。
Garcia, meanwhile, has campaigned against the president’s tariffs and promised to reverse Medicaid cuts backed by congressional Republicans. He has also branded De La Cruz the president’s “wingman” who would be “another rubber stamp” for his agenda.
在其他由共和党重划选区形成的势均力敌选区中，民主党人正在进行类似的竞选活动，将他们的竞选描绘成对共和党掌控华盛顿的公投。在佛罗里达州第22选区，另一个被评为势均力敌的公开杰利蝾螈选区，民主党人皮娅·丹迪亚誓言要反对特朗普的关税，并抨击她的共和党对手凯西·阿斯卡尔从网站上删除了关于总统的表述。
Democrats in other GOP-redrawn toss-ups are running similar campaigns, casting their races as referendums on Republican control of Washington. In Florida’s 22nd district, another open gerrymandered seat rated as a toss-up, Democrat Pia Dandiya has pledged to fight Trump’s tariffs and has called out her GOP opponent Casey Askar for scrubbing references to the president from his website. (Askar has since added some back.)
（阿斯卡尔后来又加回了一些。）而在北卡罗来纳州第1选区，这是一个特朗普在2024年赢下的选区，民主党众议员唐·戴维斯以结束伊朗战争为竞选纲领，并批评总统的关税，他的共和党对手劳里·巴克豪特则为这些关税进行了辩护。
And in North Carolina’s 1st District, a seat Trump carried in 2024, Democratic Rep. Don Davis has campaigned on ending the war in Iran and criticized the president’s tariffs, which his Republican opponent, Laurie Buckhout, has defended.
“外交政策和经济的大局对这位总统来说是坏消息……这还没算上候选人的素质，”布雷南中心华盛顿办公室副主任卡里姆·克雷顿说。布雷南中心是一个设在纽约大学法学院的无党派智库。
“The tectonics of foreign policy and the economy present bad news for this president … and that’s before you even get to the quality of the candidates,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Washington office of the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan think tank based at the New York University School of Law.
一些策略师认为，共和党自己的选区划分让本已艰难的中期选举前景雪上加霜。为了创造新席位，划图者不得不将该党选民更稀疏地分散到更多选区，留给失误的空间更小。他们是在得克萨斯州和佛罗里达州等红州这样做的，这些州的人口因移民而迅速变化。依据过去人口普查结果绘制的地图可能迅速与选民结构脱节。
Some strategists argue that the GOP’s maps themselves made Republicans’ already tough midterm odds worse. To create the new seats, mapmakers had to spread the party’s voters more thinly across more districts, leaving less room for error. And they did so in red states like Texas and Florida, whose populations are changing rapidly because of immigration. A map built on past census results can quickly fall out of step with the electorate.
在佛罗里达州，警告信号显而易见。无党派的公民数据与研究所4月分发的一份备忘录发现，划定新的共和党席位将需要“将现有的共和党得票优势稀释到更大的地理范围内”。如今，共和党可能在该州两个胶着选区中双双落败。一个是空缺的第22选区。另一个是第14选区，前共和党州议员迈克·贝尔特兰试图击败民主党众议员凯西·卡斯特。截至周六，共和党在这两场竞选的广告支出比民主党多出1470万美元。
In Florida, the warning signs were clear. An April memo distributed by the nonpartisan Civic Data and Research Institute found that drawing new GOP seats would require “diluting existing Republican vote margins across a larger geographic footprint.”Now, Republicans could come up short in both of the state’s two toss-up races. One is the open 22nd District. The other is the 14th District, where former Republican state legislator Mike Beltran is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor. Republicans have spent $14.7 million more than Democrats in advertising across those two races as of Saturday.
中佛罗里达大学政治学家奥布里·朱伊特认为，共和党州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯以及支持新选区地图的共和党官员“没有足够认真地对待”几件事：特朗普的不受欢迎、他任内的经济困境，以及他“似乎对宴会厅、把自己的名字挂在肯尼迪中心上、建造拱门更感兴趣，而不是专注于把物价降下来”。
Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida, believes Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP officials who backed the new map “didn’t take seriously enough” several things: Trump’s unpopularity, the economic woes on his watch and the fact that he “seems a lot more interested in ballrooms and getting his name on the Kennedy Center and building arches rather than focusing on bringing prices down.”
全国民主党人抓住共和党在保住自己重划的席位上的挣扎大做文章。在给MS NOW的一份声明中，民主党国会竞选委员会发言人越·谢尔顿表示，共和党人“低估了公众对政客挑选自己选民这一想法的厌恶程度”，并且选区重划“产生了惊人的反效果，净效应是迫使共和党人在更多地方进行防守”。
National Democrats have seized on Republicans’ struggles to keep the seats they redrew. In a statement to MS NOW, Viet Shelton, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Republicans “underestimated how much the public hates the idea of politicians picking their voters” and that redistricting “has backfired spectacularly and has had the net effect of forcing Republicans to defend in more places.”
“他们没有创造出安全的红色席位，”谢尔顿说，“反而为民主党人创造了新的竞争机会。”
“Instead of creating safe red seats,” Shelton said, “they created new opportunities for Democrats to compete in.”
全国共和党国会委员会发言人迈克·马里内拉反驳称，选区重划“为共和党人创造了攻势，并迫使民主党人把宝贵资源花在他们从未想过要防守的选区”。一位获准匿名以便畅所欲言的全国共和党操盘手告诉MS NOW，党内官员认为民主党人只是在“租用”部分重划后的选区。他们相信，在不同的政治环境下——比如2028年总统选举——这些席位对共和党人来说会更容易拿下。
Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, countered that redistricting “created offense for Republicans and forced Democrats to spend precious resources in districts they never expected to defend.”A national GOP operative, granted anonymity in order to speak freely, told MS NOW party officials see Democrats as “renting” some of the redrawn districts. They believe those seats will be easier for Republicans to win in a different political environment — like the 2028 presidential election.
战略师们也告诫民主党人不要过度自信，指出在本轮选举周期赢得共和党绘制的席位，并不意味着共和党人日后不会从这些地图中获益。
Strategists also caution Democrats against overconfidence, noting that winning GOP-drawn seats this cycle doesn’t mean Republicans won’t benefit from those maps down the road.
“这一切完全关乎共和党人，与民主党人毫无关系，”马德里说，“民主党人的麻烦从周三早上开始。”
“This has everything to do with Republicans and nothing to do with Democrats,” Madrid said. “The Democrats’ problems start Wednesday morning.”