GOP Paid Millions to Gerrymandering Expert Behind Census Citizenship Question
Tom Hofeller wasn’t just an outsider who happened to push a narrative identical to the Trump administration’s.
Russ Chom
Last week brought a bombshell revelation in the fight over a controversial question about citizenship status on the 2020 census: Despite the Trump administration’s insistence that it wants to add the question for better voting rights enforcement rather than political gain, key wording in its legal rationale matches memos written by Tom Hofeller, a Republican gerrymandering expert. Hofeller, who died last summer, wrote that if the 2020 census asked about the citizenship status of respondents, it “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.”
Republican Party financial filings with federal regulators add a twist to this backstory: The party’s main political apparatus paid Hofeller more than $2 million for his work. That suggests that Hofeller’s memos weren’t simply independent advocacy for a pet issue, but that he and his work were deeply embedded in the heart of the GOP’s strategic operations.
According to Republican National Committee filings with the Federal Election Commission, from June 2009 until just weeks before his death last August, the GOP’s main political apparatus paid Hofeller just over $2 million for “legal and compliance” work. In fact, from Trump’s inauguration until July 2018, Hofeller was paid $422,000, in what appear to be regular monthly payments of $22,247.
A case challenging the effort to add the question to the census is currently being considered by the Supreme Court, with the conservative majority appearing sympathetic to the Justice Department’s position that the question would be helpful to protect the voting rights of minorities. Many experts believe, however, that the question would discourage people of color and immigrants from responding to the census, causing these populations to be undercounted and giving Republicans an advantage when redrawing congressional districts based on the 2020 census—a conclusion that Hofeller himself reached.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/gop-paid-millions-to-gerrymandering-expert-behind-census-citizenship-question/
Reminds me of a book :
Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind The Secret Plan To Steal America's Democracy
by David Daley