North Carolina Hangs In The Balance

Roy Cooper and Dan Forest

In 2017, a panel of judges threw out North Carolina's gerrymandered legislative districts, calling them unconstitutional and telling the State Assembly to redraw nearly half the 170 districts. The new map of the state's House and Senate districts have been submitted to the same panel.

Although North Carolina is a swing state when it comes to statewide elections-- in 2016 current Gov. Roy Cooper (D) ousted ex-Gov. Pat McCrory (R) 2,281,155 (49.0%) to 2,276,383 (48.9%) on the same day that Senator Richard Burr (R) won reelection over Deborah Ross 2,371,192 (51.1%) to 2,102,666 (45.3%)-- the gerrymandered legislative districts yield lopsided results for the GOP. Currently, there are 29 Republicans and 21 Democrats in the state Senate and 65 Republicans and 55 Dems in the state House. (Of the 13 congressional seats, the Democrats hold just 3 and the Republicans have 10.) The Associated Press' Gary Robertson reported yesterday that although "outside analysts say the new maps are less weighted in Republicans' favor than those used in last year's elections," the maps certainly won't guarantee majorities for the Democrats. In fact, there's a good chance the Democrats will have fewer state House seats in 2021 than they do now.

"Given a baseline of perfect symmetry, one would find the remedial plans better than their predecessors but still reasonably far from treating both parties equally," wrote Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a University of Chicago law school professor involved in a previous partisan gerrymandering lawsuit in Wisconsin.

It's unclear whether that will satisfy the judges, who could reject some or all of the altered districts and redraw them with the help of an outside "referee." A decision isn't expected until at least next month.

Their Sept. 3 ruling marked the first major decision in a partisan gerrymandering case since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in June to stay out of such controversies. But the federal justices suggested state courts could intervene, and the North Carolina judges did just that in a trial held in July.

Political parties and redistricting overhaul advocates nationwide are watching the results closely as they weigh similar state-level challenges before the next decennial round of remapping begins in 2021.

The North Carolina maps, once finalized, will be used next year. Republicans took sole control of the legislature in 2011 for the first time in 140 years, and they approved maps that help expand their majorities. Their seat margins narrowed in 2018 so that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes can be upheld if Democratic lawmakers stay united.

Based on 2016 and 2018 vote totals, generic Republican candidates still appear favored to win a majority of both the House and Senate districts under the new maps, according to academic analyses.

In the House, where Democrats won 55 seats last year, picking up nine over the previous cycle, the analysts calculate they would be in good position to win anywhere from 49 to 53 seats in 2020. A House majority requires 61 seats. The Senate seems a little better chance for Democrats, who currently hold 21 of the 50 seats. Based on recent election results, Democrats are in good shape to win 22 or 23 seats next year, the analysts said. A Senate majority requires 26 seats.

...The panel of three judges said Republicans had previously manipulated districts to make it virtually impossible for Democrats to win a majority, citing the subpoenaed files of late GOP consultant Thomas Hofeller in their order. But the judges' didn't order legislators to make the new districts as politically competitive as possible. Instead, they prohibited legislators from using voter registration percentages and election results and from "any intentional attempt to favor voters or candidates of one political party."

The legislature elected in 2020 will re-draw the congressional districts, although if Roy Cooper is reelected, he will be able to veto anything he deems too unfair and extreme. Lt. Governor Dan Forest (R) and state Rep Holly Grange are vying for the nomination to take him on. All the polling done over the summer shows Cooper being reelected. The most recent poll, by Harper/Civitis shows a dead-heat for Trump's reelection but a substantial win for Cooper, 48% to 36% over Forest and 48% to 30% over Grange. The same poll shows Democrats slightly ahead in state legislative races but gerrymandering would easily and substantially wipe out those margins.

Jason Butler is a progressive pastor in Wake County running for the Republican-held second congressional district. It's an area once represented, in part, by Brad Miller, but gerrymandered by the Republicans to drive Miller out of Congress. Butler is taking on far right Congressman George Holding not by running the kind of Republican-lite campaign the DCCC insists on, but by offering progressive solutions to the issues people in the district are most concerned about. We asked him for his assessment of the political situation in his state and how gerrymandering will impact elections there going forward. Please consider contributing to her campaign by clicking on the 2020 congressional thermometer below.

If North Carolina’s political story was a movie it would be Gerrymandering Land. This place is like the wild west of politics. Just last week the Republicans in the NC Legislature pulled a deceptive fast one on the Democrats and took a vote to over-ride Gov. Cooper’s budget with only a handful of Democrats in the capitol. You may have seen Deb Butler’s “I will not yield” moment on the news. But even though we have a Democratic governor and are a swing state, let’s make no mistake, Republicans are in charge of North Carolina. They have so surgically gerrymandered this state that people of color barely have any representation-- despite 23% of the state’s population being African-American! And this is what gerrymandering is all about-- not just limiting the voice and vote of Democrats-- but limiting the voice and vote of the black and brown community. From gerrymandering, to unconstitutional voter ID laws, to deceptive votes, to proposing laws to give ICE unfettered access to our rural communities, to denying Medicaid expansion-- it goes on and on. Republicans are out not just for power-- they are out to marginalize the community of color here in North Carolina. And this is precisely how they stay in power.

2020 will be vital for the future of North Carolina, and for our nation, but nothing is guaranteed. Gov. Cooper’s opponent, Dan Forest, is raising money fast and tapping into the evangelicals here to build his Trump-backed network. Even though there are new maps-- they are still biased and will limit the democratic voice. And the 2020 census is key here too. North Carolina has grown by over a million people in the last 10 years and many of those are Democrat voters and this census could deeply impact North Carolina’s congressional landscape. By the end of 2020 there’s an opportunity to completely reshape the future of NC politics-- but it will be extremely difficult. The Republicans will pull out all their tricks to hold onto their power. As Democrats, we’ll have to up our game here. We’ll need to assume that both Trump and Dan Forest are stronger than the polls show and that the Republican legislature will do all it can to derail the census, use new methods to gerrymander, and suppress the African-American vote. The next year will be a political bar fight. And that’s why we need the national attention of our progressive movement to be deeply focused on NC. The Tar Heel state is a microcosm of our current national reality and here’s what we all should be very aware of-- whatever happens in NC will not stay in NC-- it will ripple out to the rest of the south and could determine the balance of power in Washington for years to come.