Pritzker on redistricting: ‘That’s not something that I want to do’

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), a possible 2028 presidential candidate, said he is not inclined to engage in a partisan redistricting push in his state ahead of the 2026 midterms.

In a Sunday interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Pritzker warned against more states redrawing their maps in the middle of the decade, but he said Democrats should consider alternatives if more Republican states redistrict.

“That’s not something that I want to do. It’s not something that any of us want to do,” Pritzker said when asked whether there’s “any chance Illinois redraws its congressional lines before next year’s midterm elections.”

“But I have to say, if Donald Trump is going to force his will on the American people by going to his MAGA allies in various states and having them redraw in the middle of a decade — when you’re supposed to be doing it right after a census, with a year ending in one, not a year ending in five,” Pritzker continued.

“If he’s going to do that all over the country, I think all of us have to think about what it is that we can do to counter that,” he added.

Pritzker said it is “possible” to redraw congressional maps in Illinois to favor Democrats even more than they do already, but he said he would “like it to stop here,” after Texas and California — amid a push for other states to undertake a similar endeavor.

“I can tell you this, that, yeah, it is possible to have more Democratic districts in the state of Illinois, and we could do it. Like I said, it’s not something that I want to do, and I’d like it to stop here,” he said. “I know Texas is now signing this map into law… And we’re now going to see it in California, probably.”

“I hope that it ends there. It ought to end there. And we ought to, you know, get a census done in 2030 and a new map done in 2031,” he said.