Elbridge Gerry: Fouding Father’s Complex Legacy Confounds Historians

As an MS NOW headline from earlier this week noted, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is asserting that “the GOP started the gerrymander fight — and Democrats will finish it.” Well, in a technical sense, 214 years ago, the Democrats — or at least their Democratic-Republican Party forbears — actually started the gerrymander.

The gerrymander was named after Founding Father and Democratic-Republican politician Elbridge Gerry. “Constantly referred to yet forgotten” sums up Gerry quite well, a paradoxical yet principled politician hard to pin down. We primarily know his name through what Clifford Chesley Hubbard described in the third volume of the Commonwealth History of Massachusetts as his party’s “shortsighted methods by which it hoped to maintain itself in power.” The Democratic-Republican Party’s creative redistricting resulted in the election of 29 of their own ranks to the state senate to just eleven Federalists, despite the latter party’s candidates receiving more votes in 1812.

About the Author

Daniel J. Flynn

Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, is an American Spectator senior editor, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and YouTuber @RightWingWilderness.

Featured Tags

Manage following

American History

Founding Fathers

Declaration of Independence

As an MS NOW headline from earlier this week noted, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is asserting that “the GOP started the gerrymander fight — and Democrats will finish it.” Well, in a technical sense, 214 years ago, the Democrats — or at least their Democratic-Republican Party forbears — actually started the gerrymander.

The gerrymander was named after Founding Father and Democratic-Republican politician Elbridge Gerry. “Constantly referred to yet forgotten” sums up Gerry quite well, a paradoxical yet principled politician hard to pin down. We primarily know his name through what Clifford Chesley Hubbard described in the third volume of the Commonwealth History of Massachusetts as his party’s “shortsighted methods by which it hoped to maintain itself in power.” The Democratic-Republican Party’s creative redistricting resulted in the election of 29 of their own ranks to the state senate to just eleven Federalists, despite the latter party’s candidates receiving more votes in 1812.