Frank Mrvan and Winning the House by Inches

Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-IN)

If you're not from Indiana, Frank Mrvan is not a name that you probably know, even if you watch politics closely.  Mrvan is a Democratic freshman congressman from Indiana.  He was first elected in 2020, upon the retirement of longtime Rep. Pete Viclosky.  He was elected last year with 56% of the vote, certainly not the most impressive of margins, but nowhere near a "close" race, so his contest wasn't one that people particularly worried about in a district Joe Biden won by 9-points.  He was a township trustee, but his biggest political connection is less his own and more his father's (a longtime state senator) famous name, which he shares, that helped him to stand out in this race.  Mrvan is not a liberal, he's not a conservative.  He voted for Nancy Pelosi as speaker.  He is pretty much the definition of a boring backbencher, someone whose political career is not noted enough yet for anyone to really have a lot to say about him, a powerful man with little national name ID.

All of that changed briefly this week with the proposed announcement of the Indiana congressional maps. While the maps are not yet binding (the state legislature needs to approve them), there was a lot of scuttlebutt about what would happen to Mrvan's district.  Indiana is a state where Republicans completely control the redistricting process.  As there has been no gerrymandering reform laws yet passed (thanks in large part to Joe Manchin & Kyrsten Sinema's insistence on keeping the filibuster), Republicans can basically do whatever they want in the state.  It's next to impossible to gerrymander Indianapolis out of at least one Democratic district (it's too large & too blue...diluting it would potentially put 2-3 more districts at risk, and so it's basically just a vote sink for the R's), so there was consensus that the Republicans would try two things.  They would try to shore up Victoria Spartz, who just won her first election by 4-points in a district Donald Trump only won by three, and there was concern that Mrvan's district in Northwest Indiana (think Gary) would be carved up, making it a Trump-won district.

The Republicans, though, appear to have (initially) only done one of these things.  Spartz's district, last year a true swing district, is now solidly red, having gone for Trump by 22-points...this would make this an easy hold for the Republicans.  But they didn't carve up Indiana's first congressional district despite there being clear ways to do so.  Mrvan doesn't get as blue of a district (this seat is now Biden +7), but it's still blue.

It's not clear why the Republicans didn't go for the jugular here, and as I stated above, Mrvan isn't out of the woods until they pass the map.  It's possible that they don't want to worry about lawsuits-the new maps are a gerrymander, of course (Indiana would probably be a 6-3 map based on its statewide results & geography, rather than the 7-2 that this map is proposed to be), but it's not one that wouldn't stand up to current laws...that could be different if they slice up the 1st district.  It's also possible they think this seat is winnable in the long run.  The first is a blue-collar Democratic district, an overwhelmingly poor, white district that is largely built off of demographics that have been shifting way from the left.  Barack Obama won the district by 24-points, Hillary Clinton by 13, Joe Biden by just nine.  If that trend continues, Mrvan could be in trouble by the end of the decade, if not as early as next year if the Republicans are looking at a landslide.

But right now, this is as good of news as Democrats could've gotten in Indiana, and it underlines a point that we need to keep in mind with redistricting in the next year.  A lot of the House members that gain attention in these sorts of redistricting fights are people like Elise Stefanik or Lauren Boebert...partisans out to punish the most famous House members that they've heard of, trying to gain a vengeful hubris without a lot of regard for what is the savviest political move.  But the reality is that most of the gerrymandering casualties or saves are going to be people like Mrvan.  House members even the grassroots community hasn't heard of, people who build a majority even if they aren't very public members of it.

Names like Jim Cooper, Emanuel Cleaver, & Carolyn Boudreaux are going to be the names that Democrats are most likely to see excised from their voting roles next year due to gerrymandering.  Conversely, you aren't going to hear names like Elise Stefanik & Lauren Boebert disappear from the 118th Congress, but instead Republicans like Rodney Davis & Nicole Malliotakis will be the ones that disappear.  And then there will be names like Sharice Davids, John Yarmuth, & Yvette Herrell who will be similar to Mrvan-people who might lose their seat, but also could be spared from a party not willing to press-their-advantage too voraciously.  These sorts of figures don't attract headlines, but they should-you can't built a House majority without someone like Frank Mrvan, and if the Indiana Republicans spare him (as they are currently doing), it will be one small seat that Nancy Pelosi can include in her uphill battle to hold the House next year.