Ratf**ked

The explosive account of how Republican legislators and political operatives fundamentally rigged American democracy through redistricting.



With Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008, pundits proclaimed the Republicans as dead as the Whigs of yesteryear. Yet even as Democrats swooned, a small cadre of Republican operatives began plotting their comeback with a simple yet ingenious plan. These men had devised a way to take a tradition of dirty tricks—known to political insiders as “ratf**king”—to an unprecedented level. Flooding state races with a gold rush of dark money, the Republicans reshaped state legislatures where the power to redistrict is held. Reconstructing this previously untold story, David Daley examines the far-reaching effects of this programme, which has radically altered America’s electoral map and created a firewall in the House. Ratf**ked pulls back the curtain on one of the greatest heists in American political history.