Moore, Ferguson, and Peña-Melnyk coordinating announcement for after Tuesday’s primary — voters would decide constitutional amendment in November
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
With Maryland’s primary election two days away, the state’s top Democrats are preparing to call a special legislative session that would put a redistricting constitutional amendment before voters in November — a coordinated move that would give the party a legal pathway to pursue an 8-0 congressional delegation and eliminate the state’s lone Republican U.S. House seat.
A formal announcement is expected to come jointly from Senate President Bill Ferguson, Governor Wes Moore, and House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk, whose offices have been coordinating on the effort. The timing is deliberate: a potential special session of the General Assembly would come after the June 23 primary elections.
The move represents a significant reversal for Ferguson, who spent months blocking redistricting efforts in the Senate. The Maryland Senate left the redistricting bill in committee during the regular session, with Democrats who control the chamber concerned it could backfire under judicial review. Ferguson said the pro-redistricting push did not have enough votes in his chamber to pass, citing worries that a map pushing the state’s congressional delegation from 7-1 to 8-0 for Democrats could face legal challenges.
Now he’s changed course. Ferguson said in a statement he would consider amendments to the state constitution to remove language a judge cited when blocking a prior set of maps. Moore, who has pushed redistricting from the start, made clear that any special session should go further. “I’m glad to hear the Senate president is willing to have a conversation about it,” Moore told reporters. “I think it needs to include the maps.”
The Constitutional Workaround
The strategy being discussed would bypass the legal obstacle that killed the earlier attempt. In 2022, a state judge struck down a Democratic gerrymander as unconstitutional under the Maryland constitution’s own anti-gerrymandering language. The proposed amendment would remove that language — then send the question to voters in November. If voters approve the amendment, Maryland Democrats could use it to pursue a new congressional map for the 2028 elections that could give Democrats a shot at winning all eight of the state’s U.S. House seats.
That’s the stated floor. Moore has also indicated he wants the 2026 maps on the table.
Ferguson’s Primary Problem
The timing of Ferguson’s reversal is not coincidental. He is fighting for his political life ahead of Tuesday’s primary. His primary challenger, Bobby LaPin — a community activist, small business owner, and Army veteran — mounted an insurgent campaign directly in response to Ferguson’s decision not to pursue partisan redistricting.
LaPin has not been subtle about his interpretation of the flip-flop. “I took a stand because it was right. He took a stand because it was safe and he chose poorly,” LaPin said, adding that Ferguson’s new openness to a special session “is simply because he realizes he’s losing a race.”
Whether that’s accurate or not, the optics are impossible to separate: the Senate president who blocked redistricting for months is now embracing it 48 hours before his primary election.
Moore’s Accountability Problem
For MDBayNews readers, the more significant question is what the special session reveals about how Maryland’s government operates.
Governor Moore spent months publicly pressuring Ferguson, then snubbed his reelection endorsement in May. The governor welcomed Ferguson’s decision to pursue a special session, but added that Maryland Democrats should “be able to move aggressively on it.” The entire redistricting saga — stalled by internal Democratic disagreement, now revived on a primary-eve timeline — was driven less by principled debate about fair representation than by partisan calculus and intra-party politics.
Moore compared Trump’s redistricting push to discriminatory housing practices, saying the president and his allies “are doing everything in their power to silence the voices and trying to eliminate Black leadership.” That framing — redistricting as civil rights — is the public argument. The internal one, well-documented throughout this process, is simpler: Democrats want Andy Harris’s seat, and a special session is now the vehicle to pursue it.
Maryland voters will have a say — eventually, potentially, if the amendment passes, and if the courts don’t intervene first. But they’ll do so after the legislature has already acted, and after the primary whose political pressures shaped this entire timeline.
Tuesday’s results will clarify whether Ferguson’s last-minute conversion bought him anything. The special session announcement, whenever it drops, will reveal whether this was strategy or panic — or both.
Sources: The Baltimore Banner; NBC News; Democracy Docket; PBS NewsHour; Maryland Matters; Wikipedia — 2025–2026 United States Redistricting.
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