In 2017, before he ever ran for office, Blake Moore was one of the original Republican co-chairs of Better Boundaries — the Utah group formed to take congressional map-drawing away from politicians. He was one of the original signatories on the application to gather signatures putting Proposition 4 on the ballot.
Utah voters passed it in 2018. It created an independent redistricting commission and standards for fair maps.
Then the Legislature replaced it with a version of its own and drew a map splitting Salt Lake County four ways. Activist groups sued in 2022. Last November a judge sided with them and adopted the plaintiffs' map — which cut Utah's solid Republican seats from four to three and created a Democratic-leaning district covering most of Salt Lake County.
The reform Moore helped start finally worked. And Moore, by then the fifth-ranking Republican in the U.S. House, criticized the ruling and called on Better Boundaries to stand down.
What he says now
Moore has not renounced Prop 4 outright. Asked about it, he says: "I don't regret taking a principled position. I think every state should reckon with this."
But look at what he has actually done since the map came down:
- He publicly opposed the court rulings, arguing the judge should have sent the map back to the Legislature to redraw rather than adopt the plaintiffs' version.
- He called on Better Boundaries to stop its campaign — the campaign to block a Republican effort to repeal Prop 4.
- He now says he intends to be "the most credible voice" on a future constitutional amendment clarifying that ballot initiatives cannot override lawmakers' policy authority.
That last one is the tell. Proposition 4 was a ballot initiative overriding lawmakers' policy authority. That is the entire mechanism. Moore is not just unhappy with one judge's map — he wants to amend the state constitution so that the tool he used in 2017 cannot be used the same way again.
You can hold the position that courts overstepped. You cannot simultaneously claim you don't regret the principled position while working to disarm the instrument that made it real.
His proposed fix for gerrymandering is not a fix
In May 2026, Moore sat with the KSL and Deseret News editorial boards and said he wants to end the national redistricting arms race. His words:
"I think the American people are seeing how much of a race to the bottom that constant gerrymandering every two years will do to us, and I want to be a part of it not existing."
Then he was asked how. His answer:
"I think all 50 governors in 2030 should get together and say: 'Enough's enough. We're all going to stick to some very basic standards in place.'"
Fifty governors. Voluntarily. In four years. Of both parties, in the middle of the most aggressive redistricting war in modern American history, with no enforcement mechanism and nothing binding anyone to anything.
Moore is a member of the United States House of Representatives — the one institution that could actually set national standards for how congressional districts are drawn. He is not a bystander to it. He is the House Republican Conference Vice Chair, the fifth-ranking Republican in the chamber. And his proposal is that somebody else handle it, later, on the honor system.
To be fair: he did break with his party once
Moore's record here is not uniformly bad, and it should be said plainly.
When Texas Republicans moved to redraw their map mid-decade in August 2025 at Trump's urging, Moore put out a statement against it: "It undermines established norms and gives blue states a glaring green light to do the same. Partisan gerrymandering is clearly done by both sides, but to allow this wildfire to spread mid-decade is a step too far."
He was right, and almost nobody in his party said it. He has also called out his own side's double standard — noting how "ironic and even frustrating" it is that Republicans cheered a Virginia court for stepping into a map fight there while blasting the Utah court for doing the same thing here.
That is a real observation, honestly made. It also makes the rest harder to explain, not easier. He can see the double standard clearly enough to name it in an interview. He just lands on the side of it anyway when it is his own map, his own state, and his own primary.
Which is where the primary comes in
State Rep. Karianne Lisonbee challenged Moore in the June 2026 Republican primary and made his Better Boundaries history the centerpiece, pinning the new Democratic seat on him personally. Utah Republican delegates then rejected him at the state convention on April 25, giving Lisonbee 61.5% to Moore's 33.7%. The fifth-ranking Republican in the House lost his own party's convention vote and only reached the ballot because he had gathered signatures.
He won the June primary anyway.
He survived. But the sequence tells you what the pressure was, and which direction it pushed him: away from the reform, toward an amendment that would neuter citizen initiatives, and toward a national "solution" that requires nothing of him.
Utah is not the only place where this has played out. In Missouri this month, voters rejected by 80% a measure to hand one congressional district veto power over citizen initiatives — the same instinct, put directly to voters, and buried. Voters like being able to override the legislature. Legislators, and the members of Congress they produce, keep trying to take it back.
The bottom line
Blake Moore in 2017: helped launch the movement to stop politicians from drawing their own districts.
Blake Moore in 2026: opposes the ruling that enforced it, asks the group he co-founded to stand down, wants to amend the constitution so initiatives can't override legislators, and offers as his gerrymandering fix a voluntary 2030 handshake among fifty governors.
The principle didn't change when the facts did. It changed when the map did.
Source
- Blake Moore says it's up to states to stop 'race to the bottom' on gerrymandering — KSL, May 12, 2026. Photo: Kristin Murphy, Deseret News.
- New Utah map creates primary challenge for House GOP leader Moore — Deseret News, April 20, 2026
