# Elbridge Gerry and the salamander

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Elbridge Gerry and the salamander," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/elbridge-gerry-and-the-salamander/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's account of the origin of the word gerrymander — Elbridge Gerry, vice president and former governor of Massachusetts, drawing district boundaries to elect his friends, and Benjamin Franklin saying the shapes looked like salamanders — together with a piece of trivia from his unpublished book on cemeteries.*

The etymology came up in the middle of a discussion of the 2025 redistricting battles, after Kiriakou's co-host described the famous early American political cartoon of a voting district drawn as a dragon-like monster, and attributed it to Benjamin Franklin's paper. [1]

## The name

Kiriakou supplied the background. The man was Elbridge Gerry — he spells it, "G-E-R-R-Y" — and notes that the name was pronounced *Gary*. Gerry was the fourth vice president of the United States, and before that the governor of Massachusetts; Kiriakou places him as Madison's vice president. [2]

Gerry was, in his description, "intensely partisan," and in order to get his friends elected to Congress "he just took out a map of Massachusetts and he drew the district boundaries." [3]

When Benjamin Franklin saw the resulting shapes, Kiriakou says, he remarked that they looked like salamanders and called them "Gerry's salamanders." That became *Gerrymander*, and over the years *gerrymander*. [3]

## The cemetery footnote

Kiriakou then adds what he calls "a little bit of trivia from John's someday-to-be-published cemeteries book": Elbridge Gerry is the only vice president of the United States buried inside Washington, DC. [3]

Asked where, he answers precisely — Congressional Cemetery, up on Capitol Hill. [4] The aside is one of several references Kiriakou makes to a manuscript on cemeteries that had not, at the time of the broadcast, found its way into print.

## The context

The history was offered as perspective on the redistricting fights then under way. Kiriakou had just laid out the sequence — the Texas House preparing to redraw boundaries in a way likely to cost five Democratic seats, California's countermeasure requiring a referendum and a special election, the Republican National Committee committing $15 million in advertising to defeat it, and New York and Illinois considering their own redraws against Missouri and Florida. [1]

His verdict on the whole episode was that "we have never seen anything like this in the history of the republic" — bad form, sour grapes, and "the worst of gerrymandering." He noted the same afternoon's federal ruling that Mississippi's boundaries were illegally gerrymandered and would have to be redrawn to add a majority-Black district. [1] Neither man claims the cartoon was truly the first of its kind. [4]

## See also

- [Home rule in Washington, DC](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/washington-dc-home-rule)
- [The book the publisher sat on](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-book-the-publisher-sat-on)

## Sources

1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-21), at 23:26. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUtq-Dx0LGo&t=1406s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-21-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-21), at 23:58. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUtq-Dx0LGo&t=1438s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-21-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
3. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-21), at 24:31. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUtq-Dx0LGo&t=1471s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-21-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
4. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-21), at 25:02. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUtq-Dx0LGo&t=1502s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-21-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/elbridge-gerry-and-the-salamander/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt