MAP QUEST
ALYSSA SCHUKARand used his email list and social media
profile to draw attention to the fight
against gerrymandering. “In America,
politicians shouldn’t pick their voters,”
Obama said in a 2018 video promoting
Holder’s group. “Voters are supposed to
pick their politicians.”
For Holder, the cause was personal.
“The right to vote,” he said when he
launched the ndrc in 2017, was “a right
that has been a part of my consciousness
as long as I can remember.” As a 12-year-
old in 1963, Holder sat in his basement in
East Elmhurst, Queens, and watched on
a black-and-white television as Vivian
Malone became one of the first black
students to integrate the University
of Alabama. Twenty-six years later, he
would marry her younger sister, Sharon,
an obstetrician. Vivian went on to lead a
group that registered black voters in the
South and worked in the Justice Depart-
ment’s Civil Rights Division. She died
in 2005, before Holder became the first
black attorney general. “Her not being
able to see her brother-in-law become
attorney general of the United States is
one of those really unfortunate things,”
Holder told me in Wisconsin, his eyes
welling up. “Even thinking about it now,
I can get a little emotional.”challenging the gop’s redistricting
edge required a multipronged approach:
Holder’s group has filed or assisted a
dozen lawsuits against gerrymandered
maps, supported local candidates whose
races had implications for redistricting,
and backed state ballot measures to es-
tablish independent redistricting com-
missions. “He’s a uniting force between
the different pieces of the Democratic
ecosystem to get onto a shared strategy to
rebuild Democratic power in the states,”
said Jessica Post, executive director of
the Democratic Legislative Campaign
Committee and an ndrc board member.
“Having a central electoral coordinating
hub is really important.”
The Democrats’ gains in 2018 were im-
pressive. Holder’s group raised $35 mil-
lion—comparable to what redmap raised
in 2010—helping Democrats flip about
300 state legislative seats, six legis lative
chambers, and seven governorships.
In four states, including Wiscon sin,Republicans lost sole control of state
government, and with it their ability
to single-handedly draw new districts.
The ndrc targeted 230 state seats held
by Republicans, focusing on suburban
areas that were changing demograph-
ically; Democrats won 60 percent of
them. Holder stumped for candidates
in 24 states. “We gave financial support
to races that otherwise might not have
gotten financial support,” he said. “I cam-
paigned in races that would not have
gotten that kind of high-level attention.”
Though he hoped to elect more
Demo crats, Holder’s overriding goal
was to make the redistricting process
less skewed, putting him in conflict with
some Democrats who wanted to maxi-
mize partisan gain. When New Jersey
Democrats proposed giving legislative
leaders more power over the draw-
ing of district lines last year, Holder
quickly denounced the plan. “I’m here
for a fair process, not to gerrymander
for Democrats,” he told me.
Holder, who has never run for elected
office, is an unlikely public face for a
major political campaign. He’s char-