Documents made public by the daughter of a late GOP gerrymandering strategist reveal that he said Republicans “got greedy” when they redrew Pennsylvania’s congressional maps in 2001 to create districts favorable to their party, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The documents were disclosed by Stephanie Hofeller, the estranged daughter of Thomas Hofeller, who led GOP gerrymandering efforts across the country before he died in 2018. She uncovered the files after her father’s death and made them public on Sunday via a website called the Hofeller Files. “GOP gerrymandering got greedy the last time and bad political climate caused it to unravel,” one of the documents in the file reads in reference to Pennsylvania. “Democrats will be concentrating on trying to safe up their gains.” The extensive files are largely disorganized—they allegedly include random items such as a coconut cake recipe and a solicitation from a landscaping service. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled the state’s congressional maps as unconstitutional in 2018.
Benjamin Geffen, a lawyer who represented Democrats who filed a Pennsylvania suit over the altered congressional maps, said the documents “confirm what we already knew.” “Pennsylvania was in the crosshairs of national political operatives who sought and for a time succeeded in manipulating districts not to benefit voters in those districts, but to serve a national political agenda.”
Read it at The Philadelphia Inquirer
