Corey Lewandowski, political analyst, former campaign manager and current senior advisor to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has been recently eyeing a run against incumbent Governor Kelly Ayotte in the upcoming midterm elections, according to an October 2 article by Politico.
According to public records, Lewandowski maintains a residence at 21 Emerson Rd, Windham, N.H., positioning him for a 2026 run for governor of New Hampshire. However, the political analyst has been living in Washington, D.C. for some time and dealing with a rumored affair with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, as reported by multiple outlets– including Politico.
Politico added the consideration for running has arisen in conjunction with recent pressure from the Trump Administration being placed on New Hampshire over Ayotte’s resistance to redraw the state congressional map.
Similar pressure was placed on Texas Democrats to accept the politically charged redrawing of the Texas congressional district map by Governor Greg Abbott and the conservative legislature. There is a lot to unpack with this situation and how people may be approaching the different aspects of it, beginning with redistricting.
Redistricting
As it has been established over many decades of precedent, congressional districts are typically redrawn every 10 years following the most recent federal census. In New Hampshire’s case, the State Supreme Court established the ‘least change’ map in 2022 after Governor at the time Chris Sununu vetoed the republican legislature’s proposed map over concerns of the competitiveness of the map, according to a May 31, 2022 NHPR article.
The current congressional map, which is still the default map established in 2022 according to Cook Partisan Voting Index, has a rating of Democrat +2 (D+2) in both districts. These would be considered some of, if not the most, competitive districts in the entire nation, as districts with a D+4 / R+4 rating or less are considered very competitive.
In the case of New Hampshire, redistricting would simply be a partisan tactic to justify making a guaranteed Republican (GOP) district for the sake of taking power, or rather, consolidating unjust power. New Hampshire’s districts are something that are only brought up in republican rhetoric. The GOP crows about the desire for ‘lessening gerrymandering’ and making more districts competitive because of the ‘disenfranchised GOP voter.’ I am all in favor of making districts less gerrymandered and re-enfranchising the ‘unheard GOP voices.’ We could move to a proportional representation voting system (If we were feeling pretty ambitious, but my expectations are low). States would become one single district and the number of representatives a party would receive would be based on the voter turnout percentage.
This would alleviate the problem Vice President J.D. Vance had posted about recently, saying that voter turnout in New England is 40 percent GOP, giving them eight of the 21 congressional seats in New England. This creates a problem the GOP would have to reckon with if their true intentions were electoral fairness; many Republican-majority states or solid-red states may no longer have that same majority. Texas will be the example as the GOP government of the state works with the Trump Administration to “find five more seats” for Trump, as he requested.
Texas currently has approx. 18 million registered voters, with 38 percent of those being GOP and 46 percent of those people being Democrats; a comfortable plurality. Texas also has 38 congressional seats, with 13 of those being held by Democrats- only 34 percent of the total seats. The redrawing of the map to add five GOP seats would leave only eight Democrats, meaning 46 percent of the voters of Texas would be represented by 21 percent of the total House delegation.
I thought fairness and equity were the GOP’s complaint about congressional districts? Instead of gerrymandering out five democrats and tipping the scales more, we would be adding four more democratic seats to make the representation more even.
Power-grabs
What we are seeing in Texas, and more recently in New Hampshire with the development of a possible Lewandowski Gubernatorial campaign, are attempts at power grabs. Trump is looking to bolster his numbers in the midterms and give himself a more agreeable House of Representatives in brazenly undemocratic and unprecedented ways.
A Lewandowski governorship would mean the New Hampshire governor would no longer be independent of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but sympathetic to the whims of the mad king; a want-to-be dictator with the temperament of King Geoffrey and the acuity of Curly– but then again I would have more faith in Curly.
This could and would likely mean that redrawn district maps in N.H. would no longer be competitive but clearly skewed toward one party. Unfortunately, sometimes parties lose even when it seems to be favorable for them. As an example, Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District (D+1) is a Republican. You could go down the list of competitive districts and many more cases like Fitzpatrick, however MAGA Republicans seem to want their cake and to eat it too. There is a clear desire for undemocratic practices in the electoral system that would bolster GOP candidates at the clear expense of others around them. Lewandowski would do that to New Hampshire if he were to win, along with bowing to the whims of the mad-king himself.
Timothy Fitzpatrick can be contacted at
tfitzpatrick@kscequinox.com
