Hutzell: Andy Harris and the Maryland redistricting vote loom over Annapolis

Oh, Andy.

What is Maryland to do with you?

To hear Republicans in the State House tell it, you’re the damsel in distress, a starlet in the clutches of a King Kong gerrymander unleashed on the state by Democrats.

“This one’s personal for a lot of us,” Del. Lauren Arikan said. “Not just because we know and love Congressman Andy Harris, but because we know and love our constituents who deserve to have representation.”

She mentioned the perils of handing out condoms in preschool, too, but that wasn’t her point. The Harford County Republican was on a freedom roll.

“You know who’s not going to be real excited about this decision? Yeah, the president.”

Only Harris — retired anesthesiologist, lover of Hungarian autocrats and chair of the right-wing Freedom Caucus — can do the job in Washington as President Donald Trump and Eastern Shore voters need it done.

At least, in the words of his State House fan club.

“He can talk to the waterman, he can talk to the farmer, he can talk to the small-business person, he can certainly defend the interest of Ocean City,” Del. Christopher Adams of Wicomico County said.

“He’s authentic, an authentic, realistic, pragmatic fighter for Eastern Shore values.”

Harris and his fate loomed over Annapolis during two days of debate in the General Assembly’s just-concluded special session.

Tuesday night, Democrats passed a state constitutional amendment clarifying the state’s power to draw congressional boundaries how and when the State House majority pleases. If voters approve, Democrats probably will redraw them for 2028.

There were discussions of national politics and federal judges, of what’s right and wrong, what’s on the table today versus what’s coming tomorrow.

And Andy Harris.

If he wins against Democrat Dan Schwartz in November, and runs again in two years, a yet-undrawn map might prevent him from serving a 10th term for the 1st District.

Gov. Wes Moore and legislative Democrats said they were responding to the national crisis, a mid-decade gerrymander launched by Trump to game congressional midterm elections in favor of Republicans.

Harris, they assured, wasn’t the target.

“It’s not about Andy Harris,” said Del. David Moon, House majority leader. “It’s not about a map. It’s simply clarifying a new confusion that I never thought about until Donald Trump went to Texas and asked them to find him five new votes in Congress.”

Republicans rallied ’round the Harris flag so often that, at one point, I thought I spotted him. Was he seated behind his wife, Maryland Republican Party Chair Nicole Beus Harris, as she testified against the change?

“I believe that gerrymandering is wrong, no matter who is drawing the maps,” she said.

Strangely, she was among the minority of Republicans who failed to invoke him — except by virtue of her last name.

But no. As Republicans complained and cajoled about Democrats disenfranchising voters in Harris’ district, the congressman was elsewhere.

He has been busy this summer. He signed on to efforts to repeal the 17th Amendment, reversing 114 years of expanded suffrage by taking the power to select U.S. senators away from voters and giving it back to state governments.

“I co-sponsored this resolution because the Founding Fathers designed the House to represent the people and the Senate to represent the states. The 17th Amendment disrupted that constitutional balance,” Harris told The Cecil Whig in June.

Republicans, if you hadn’t guessed, control 23 state governments to Democrats’ 16 — and gerrymandering is named for the Massachusetts governor who started this with a pencil and a map to push out the Federalists.

“Returning the selection of senators to state legislatures would restore the Senate’s original role and strengthen the voice of the states in our federal system,” Harris said.

Oh, Andy.

Harris doesn’t talk to me. So, I sent yet another email to his staff, asking what he thinks of this Democratic obsession with Maryland’s most nettlesome Republican.

He was far from Annapolis, dredging the Ocean City Inlet in time for the White Marlin Open. Then he walked the docks of Harbour Island Marina among the prize tuna, swordfish and wahoo he helped land.

The congressman called in Thursday to Baltimore’s conservative coffee klatch, “C4 and Bryan Nehman” on WBAL NewsRadio.

“It’s just an embarrassment for Maryland,” he said, “and the bottom line is that it’s going to be challenged almost immediately in court because they took shortcuts.”

Everyone, it seems, wanted to talk about Harris. Even the governor, who often likes to talk about himself, couldn’t resist.

“I think we need to have national redistricting reform,” Moore told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo Thursday.

Congress is the place to address gerrymandering, he said, and Congress has repeatedly failed to pass reforms.

“You had Congressman Andy Harris from Maryland who voted against it,” he said.

During the debate in Annapolis, Del. Tom Hutchinson of Cambridge joined the lovefest.

Waving away Harris’ move from Cockeysville to Cambridge — and, by implication, his own New Jersey origins — this, he said, is what a real Easternshoreman looks like.

Hutchinson urged Democrats to talk about constituents’ financial woes, gas and grocery prices and energy bills. No one, he said, complains to him about Harris.

“I’m not getting calls about, ‘Hey, can you get rid of Andy Harris?’”

Oh, Tom.

If words were truly just hot air, the State House would have lifted from its ancient hill in Annapolis long ago and drifted away, an 18th-century balloon bursting like an inconsequential soap bubble over the Chesapeake Bay.

All the talk about silencing voters — genuinely felt as it might have been — and Harris as the indispensable man were, in the end, failed attempts to run out the clock.

If voters approve. If Democrats redraw. If Harris runs again. If he wins in 2028.

If it comes to pass, he would likely represent Annapolis in Congress.

Harris and all the rhetoric last week now hang over the state capital, a reminder that words have consequences.

Only votes matter more.