Here we go-go again-again
There was a time in this country when redistricting happened once every ten years. Not in North Carolina since 2011. I’ve lost count of the number of maps we’ve seen. So many that the local League of Women Voters sponsored the first Gerrymander 5k here in 2017.
Well, the latest batch of maps from the GOP coven dropped late Wednesday. Daily Kos Elections offers this summary:
● NC Redistricting: North Carolina Republicans unveiled new congressional and legislative maps on Wednesday that would rank as some of the most extreme gerrymanders in the country. The new proposals would cost three to four House Democrats their seats in Congress and lock in GOP majorities in the legislature in this longtime swing state. And in the near term, there’s little Democrats can do to stop them.
Republicans put forth a pair of congressional maps that would both upend the state’s House delegation, which currently includes seven Democrats and seven Republicans thanks to a court-drawn plan. Instead, if these new maps go into effect, North Carolina would almost certainly send 10 or 11 Republicans to Washington and just three or four Democrats.
The GOP’s legislative maps, meanwhile, would turbocharge their existing gerrymanders and make it effectively impossible for Democrats to secure majorities, even though they’re routinely capable of winning statewide elections. (The current governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat, as is Attorney General Josh Stein, who is running to succeed Cooper next year.)
Even worse, the new proposals would likely ensure that, in all but the most Democratic of election years, Republicans would maintain the three-fifths supermajorities they’d need to override gubernatorial vetoes and to place constitutional amendments on the ballot.
The GOP’s two different congressional maps aim to elect 10, if not 11, Republicans. The maps would do this by packing Democrats into three overwhelmingly blue districts while meticulously spreading out Republican voters to ensure their own seats are just red enough to be safe without wasting GOP votes. The maps’ approaches differ somewhat, even though their end goal is the same: One of the maps features 11 safely Republican seats, while the other would have 10 solidly red seats and one GOP-trending swing district.
Both maps would make it all but impossible for Democratic Reps. Jeff Jackson, Kathy Manning, and Wiley Nickel to win reelection by giving them districts that Donald Trump would have carried by double-digit margins in 2020. The maps also target 1st District Rep. Don Davis but in different ways. The first map would draw him and fellow Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee into the same heavily blue district, guaranteeing the state would lose one of its three Black members. And the second map would place Davis in a district that would have voted just 50-49 for Joe Biden in 2020 and 52-46 for Republican Sen. Ted Budd in 2022.
Republicans held committee hearings on their new maps on Thursday and have previously said they could pass them into law as early as next week. While none of the targeted Democrats have announced what they’ll do in response to the new maps, Jackson strongly implied he wouldn’t seek reelection. Should either map pass, he said in his newsletter Thursday, “I’m completely toast,” calling both plans “absolutely brutal gerrymanders.”
New congressional maps for NC just dropped.
— Rep. Jeff Jackson (@JeffJacksonNC) October 19, 2023
A brutal gerrymander.
Just being honest: I’m probably toast in Congress. pic.twitter.com/Y0rnrBANyX
Before the new maps were released, Jackson had refused to rule out running for state attorney general to succeed Stein, so the GOP’s decision to target him could come back to haunt Republicans as they seek to win the post at the ballot box for the first time since 1896.
Nickel also blasted the maps, saying they would allow Republicans “to hand-pick their voters and predetermine the outcome of elections before they ever happen,” though he didn’t address his own future. Davis was noncommittal, saying only that he was “reviewing both maps.” Manning, meanwhile, had said last week that she would run for a third term, though she doesn’t appear to have said anything about the new proposals yet.
While many Republicans could run for these new, gerrymandered districts, one is of particular note. Tim Moore, the powerful speaker of the state House, has long been rumored to be interested in running for Congress. He refused to rule out the prospect when he announced earlier this year that he would not seek reelection. Very conveniently for Moore, both proposed maps would dismantle Jackson’s solidly blue 14th District and create a new district west of Charlotte that would be safely Republican and include Moore’s home base—but no GOP incumbent.
North Carolina is in this situation due to critical elections for the state Supreme Court that Republicans won by modest margins last fall and in 2020. Those victories allowed them to turn what had been a 4-3 majority for Democrats last year into a 5-2 GOP advantage that Republicans swiftly used to reverse a series of major rulings in favor of voting rights.
One of those decisions by the previous Democratic majority had struck down the GOP’s maps for both Congress and the state Senate, ruling that partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution. However, the new GOP-run court took the unprecedented step of rehearing the case months later and overturned the court’s prior ruling. That immediately paved the way for a new round of Republican gerrymandering.
That decision echoed a similar one issued by the U.S. Supreme Court a few years earlier when it prohibited voters from challenging gerrymanders in federal court. That leaves North Carolina Democrats with only one realistic path to undo this state of affairs: retaking the state Supreme Court. However, the earliest that would be possible, barring unexpected vacancies, would be five years from now. To prevail, Democrats would have to win four of the next five court elections between 2024 and 2028. Democrats are defending one seat each in 2024 and 2026, while three Republican seats will be up in 2028.
Locally, they’ve redrawn local state House and Senate districts to create liberal ghettos again. Not to mention scrambling the distict numbers.
NC 114 is now the safest, bluest state House district (the city) occupied by Rep. Caleb Rudow (D; currently 116). They’ve drawn the new 115 to be roughly 54% Democrat, although our incumbent, Rep. Eric Ager (D), won the existing district (114) with 69% of the vote in 2022. Rep. Lindsey Prather (D), our incumbent living in District 116 (currently 115) won with about 58% of the vote in 2022. Her new district is drawn to be 52% Republican. They’ll all want to review my analysis of how the unaffiliated voters break in those precincts.
On the state Senate side, the GOP has again sequestered all those troublesome lefties even more tightly together in the city by ringing it with conservative precincts. Sen. Julie Mayfield (D) need not worry. District 46 extends two counties east. What was red got redder.
Sucks to be me. Sucks worse to be Jeff Jackson, Kathy Manning, and Wiley Nickel.
(h/t BF)