North Carolina Congressional Map Looks Better-- But Republicans Are Still Cheating

North Carolina leans a little Republican. The state's shifting PVI is currently R+3 but that doesn't tell the whole story. As of November 9 of this year this is how voters were registered:

• Democrats- 2,492,008
• Unaffiliated- 2,209,405
• Republicans- 2,032,934
• Libertarian- 38,870

Recent presidential election results have been incredibly close: Obama beat McCain 2,142,651 (49.70%) to 2,128,474 (49.38%). Four years later, Romney beat Obama 2,270,395 (50.39%) to 2,178,391 (48.35%). And last year the Democrats' status quo candidate, in a year voters were looking for change, was defeated 2,362,631 (49.83%) to 2,189,316 (46.17%).

Meanwhile in the last gubernatorial election (2016) Democrat Roy Cooper beat incumbent Republican Pat McCory 2,309,157 (49.01%) to 2,298,880 (48.80%). Last year the state House of Representatives elected 65 Republicans and 55 Democrats, a net increase of 9 for the Democrats, although the big news was that 1,866,432 voters (50.54%) chose a Democrat and 1,779,584 (48.18%) voted for a Republican. That's what a partisan gerrymander looks like. All 50 seats in the state Senate were also up for grabs and the Democrats managed to win a net of 6 seats, breaking the GOP super-majority, although with the GOP still in control, 29-21.

Let's call it a 50/50 state. But when Republicans took over the governor's mansion and state legislature in 2010, they took the opportunity to gerrymander everything-- and extremely so. In September a state court invalidated the legislative districts and in October the same court finally put its foot down on the congressional districts. Congressional maps had been drawn to give the Republicans 10 seats and the Democrats just 3. That's a little extreme in a 50/50 state. In fact, the Republican scumbag in charge of redistricting, David Lewis, is not in prison, but his map is in the trash can admitted, after he admitted that "I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats, so I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country."

On Friday, the state legislature approved a fairer map which is likely to give North Carolina 6 Republican seats and 5 Democratic seats. The court still has to study the proposal and make sure it passes constitutional muster. Democrats in the legislature opposed the plan, because, though, better, it's still a partisan gerrymander. They criticized that lack of swing districts. Under this new plan, two right-wing nuts, George Holding and Mark Walker would almost definitely lose their seats, as the 2nd and 6th districts become safely blue.

George Holding has already checked out

Brian Murphy, reporting for the News&Observer yesterday afternoon, wrote that "Minutes after the vote, the plaintiffs in the case said they would challenge the map, calling it another extreme partisan gerrymander."

Democrat Kathy Manning, who lost to U.S. Rep. Ted Budd in 2018, said she is considering running in the new-look 6th District, which includes Greensboro, High Point and part of Winston-Salem.

“This is really exciting for North Carolina. We have really struggled with these gerrymandered maps,” Manning said. “I think this moves us in the right direction. I’m not convinced it gets us to where we need to be.”

The districts currently represented by Democrats-- Butterfield, David Price and Alma Adams-- remain largely unchanged and safe seats. In the map, no current representatives are “double bunked,” or assigned to the same district based on their home addresses.

The map splits 12 of the state’s 100 counties, and no county is in more than two congressional districts, Republican Sen. Ralph Hise told a Senate committee earlier Friday, satisfying the criteria that the redistricting committee had put into place.

“These maps get us into a good place,” Hise said, noting the opening of filing on Dec. 2.

The Senate debate lasted more than an hour with Republican Sen. Jerry Tillman complaining that Republicans were having to redraw the districts in the first place.

“For 140 years, you all drew the maps,” he said toward Democrats. “You drew them for 140 years, we sat there and didn’t like it, but we took it... We’re doing exactly what you all did for 140 years and it was constitutionally OK.”
He said the state constitution was clear that it was up to the political party in power to draw the maps.
“It doesn’t say one thing about splitting a county, a precinct,” he said. “It doesn’t say a thing about being fair.”
...“A map forced through by the majority party on a partisan vote does not instill confidence in the fairness of the new districts. We believe the congressional districts passed by the legislature today remain a partisan gerrymander,” said Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause NC.

If a new map is not in place by Dec. 2, the congressional primaries scheduled for March could be postponed. In 2016, North Carolina held a separate primary for Congress. Turnout in that June election was 7.73%, down from 35.69% in the original primary, which was held in March and included the presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial primaries.

The maps will only be used in 2020 as they will have to be redrawn for the 2022 election using new Census data. That process should start in March 2021.

“This map is a one-time deal,” said Sen. Dan Blue, a Democrat. “Even though people are upset about it, it’s going to be corrected 15-16 months from now.”

North Carolina voters have elected representatives under different maps in 2010, 2012, 2016 and now, likely, 2020. The 2012 maps were ruled an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

“Eric Holder and (former President) Barack Obama have raised a lot of money for this outcome, and they’ve pursued a really aggressive legal strategy for their partisan outcomes, and right now they’re calling it partisan gerrymandering, but what they’re seeking is partisan gerrymandering for the left,” Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican from Denver, said Thursday.

“We basically have a Wild West of redistricting. This will be the fourth map in six cycles, and I think that is so confusing for voters and has a major negative impact on voters.”

In A Big Win For Civil Rights, Courts Move Two Anti-Gerrymandering Cases Forward

by Josh King,
candidate, Virginia House of Delegates

In 2015 I ran for the Virginia House of Delegates and lost by 125 votes – just 1%. I’m running again this year and the Republican incumbent dropped out, making this an open seat and Virginia Democrats' best chance to flip a district from red to blue. This is the first step to winning back the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017 and sending Trump a message that Democrats won’t let him destroy all the things that already make America great.

The second step is redistricting reform. On March 1, 2017, we got one step closer to that.

In a big victory for civil rights, the U.S. Supreme court ruled 7-1 to give plaintiffs another chance to strike down 11 racially gerrymandered Virginia House of Delegates districts.

The ruling came a day after a Richmond court rejected the Virginia Republican Leadership's attempt to dismiss a separate court case that is also challenging Virginia's State House and State Senate map.

If either of these cases ultimately succeed, it will force Virginia to redraw districts and give us a shot at fair representation in the statehouse and Congress. It will take Virginia’s House of Delegates, where Democrats have only 34 of 100 seats despite holding every statewide elected office, and put it back in play.

I support these court cases and non-partisan redistricting reform because voters should pick their Representatives, NOT the other way around. Democrats have won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections. We wouldn’t have a Congress controlled by extreme Republicans if we had fair districts.

You and I both know that its Republican’s control of Congress that makes Trump’s terrifying agenda possible. We need to resist Trump and take Congress back. And to take Congress back we need to win seats like mine, take back statehouses, and end Republican’s systematic gerrymandering of our country.

I hope you’ll stand with me today and donate to my campaign. These court cases make winning back Virginia’s Statehouse a real possibility.

Can The Democrats Prevent Another Decade Of Republican Gerrymandering?

As I mentioned this morning, Blue America had some significant successes with the state legislative candidates we championed this cycle-- although those were mostly seats in blue areas where progressive Democrats prevailed over conservative Democrats. The big story in regard to the state legislatures is that the 2010 redistricting is coming up rapidly and the Democrats are in sorry shape. To start with, remember that even if Cooper wins in North Carolina, which looks likely (he's up 2,281,155 to 2,276,383 right now), Republicans will hold 33 governorships, the most I can remember-- and one the Democrats' 17 is West Virginia reactionary Trumpist billionaire, Jim Justice.

25 states -- including Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Texas, each of which is infamous for grotesque gerrymandering-- are in the hands of a Republican governor and both houses of the state legislature. The Democrats have a similar, though not exactly the same, situation in just 4 states-- California (where there is no partisan redrawing of districts), Oregon and two deep blue states with 2 districts each, Hawaii and Rhode Island. By dint of tie-breaking vote siuations they also have that in Connecticut and Delaware, after suffering defeats in both states last week. In other words, if the redistricting maps were drawn today, the Democrats wouldn't get one addition seat.-- not one, from their states. Even in stalwart blue states like Massachusetts (where all the seats are blue anyway), Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Washington and Illinois, the Democrats have to deal with either a Republican governor or at least one GOP-controlled chamber.

Of the 99 legislative chambers in the country, the Republicans hold 69 and the Democrats hold 30. The only good news for the Democrats-- aside from the North Carolina governorship, which isn't as much help as it should be because the GOP has a veto-proof super-majority in the legislature-- was that they flipped the New Mexico and Alaska state Houses and both chambers of the Nevada legislature. But that was more than balanced out when they lost control of the Iowa state Senate, the Kentucky House, and the Minnesota state Senate.

The Democrats gained control of the Alaska House by winning a seat and then forming a coalition with 3 Republicans and 2 independents-- the opposite of the situation in the Washington state Senate, where a right-wing fake Democrat caucuses with the GOP, giving them control over that chamber.

Democrats hold 2,023 state House seats to the Republicans' 2,630. And there are 545 Democratic state senators to the GOP's 654. On the brighter side of things, Democrats made inroads in several states. By netting 3 seats in the California Assembly, they now have a super-majority there, for example. These are the states where Democrats gained seats in the lower House:

• New Hampshire +20 (3 recounts are still underway today)
• Vermont- +4
• Rhode Island- +2
• New York- +2
• West Virginia- +1
• North Carolina- +1
• Florida- +3
• Michigan- +2
• Indiana- +1
• Kansas- +12
• Texas- +6
• New Mexico- +5
• Arizona- +2
• Colorado- +3
• Utah- +5
• Nevada- +10
• Washington- +2
• California- +3
• Alaska- +1
• Hawaii- +1

Democrats also gained some state Senate seats:

• Maine- +2
• Vermont- +4
• Rhode Island- +1
• Georgia- +1
• Florida- +1
• Michigan- +1
• Missouri- +2
• Kansas- +1
• New Mexico- +2
• Arizona- +1
• Nevada- +1
• Washington- +1
• Hawaii- +1

In states where they need to make gains to be able to prevent the worst of the GOP gerrymandering in 2020, they mostly failed. The 10 states where the Democrats most need to flip at least one chamber by 2020 look like this today:

• The Democrats blew their chance to win the Colorado Senate which remains at 17 Dems and 18 Republicans. They increased their majority in the state House from 34-31 and are now over the GOP 37-28.

• Iowa was a disaster, with the Democrats in the state Senate going from a 25-23 majority to a big Republican win, giving them a 29-20 majority. The state House there saw the GOP increase it's majority from 57-43 to 59-41.

• Michigan's state House saw the Dems up from 45 to 47 but the Republicans won a vacancy and also went up-- from 62 to 63.

• Minnesota's state Senate flipped from a 38-28 Democratic body to a 34-33 Republican body. The House was Republican 73-61 and is now worse so, 76-57.

• New Hampshire's state Senate went from 13 Republicans to 14 and the Democrats remained at 10. There are still several state House races that haven't been called yet but the Democrats look like they came short of reversing their 157-230 disadvantage.

• New York's state Senate still has votes being counted and a 1 vote GOP majority.

• Virginia's state Senate is run by the GOP 21-17 and their House is run by the GOP 66-34.

• Pennsylvania state House is under GOP control 122-81 and the state Senate is also Republican-dominated, 34-16.

• Florida's state Senate is 25-15 Republican and their House is 79-41 Republican.

• Wisconsin's state Senate went from 14 Democrats to 13 and from 18 Republicans to 20.

These are states where Democrats would need to make serious inroads to prevent another decade of Republican gerrymandered congressional majorities in Congress. The Democrats have a Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee which is as lame and congenitally incompetent as the DCCC. The executive director, Jessica Post, is a typical incompetent EMILY's List alum who could make a contribution to the Democrats by switching parties and going to work for the Republicans. The Chairman is Mike Gronstal, who was, until Tuesday, the Iowa Senator Majority Leader.

In coming weeks, we'll be discussing an alternative, grassroots organization getting started to do the job that the DLCC has proven itself incapable of doing.

Darren Soto Hates Being Called Florida's ConservaDem Poster Child, But He'd Be Another Gwen Graham Or Patrick Murphy In Congress

There are definitely some big changes coming due to the judicial redistricting in Florida, likely among them will be the end of House careers for several conservatives: Carlos Curbelo who finds himself in a neatly blue district and will be facing Annette Taddeo, who can probably beat him; Daniel Webster, who also finds himself in a Democratic district he can't win, certainly not in a presidential year (although he is probably going to move to FL-06 and try it win the seat Ron DeSantis is giving up; David Jolly, who took one look at the new map and decided to run for the Senate, leaving his district to Charlie Crist who's been a Republican, an Independent and a Democrat and is likely to be a mix of all three in Congress; and Blue Dog Gwen Graham, the most right-wing Democrat in the House, whose newly redrawn district no longer has the Democratic voter base to make it feasible for even as far right a Democrat as she to expect to win. John Mica's Orlando area district is now also good territory for a Democrat but the DCCC recruited a total conservaDem loser, Bill Phillips, who even the DCCC sees can't win against Mica (or, probably any other competent Republican).

But the district I want to talk about today isn't one of them; it's district 9-- Alan Grayson's very blue Orlando-area seat. The PVI is D+8 and Obama won it with just over 60% both times he ran. In 2012 Grayson won the seat against Republican Todd Long 165,098 (63%) to 98,984 (37%). And in 2014, a bad midterm year for Democrats, Grayson, despite a poor turnout, was reelected 93,739 (54%) to 74,903 (43%). Grayson is leaving the House to take over Rubio's abandoned Senate seat. The key is to get a progressive voice like his into that House seat. But, of course, the DCCC has different ideas. Officially "neutral," they're surreptitiously backing one of the most conservative Democrats in the state Senate, Darren Soto. We'll come back to him in a moment.

The contours of the new district make it slightly less blue, but still relatively safe for a Democrat, particularly in presidential year. I'm estimating that the PVI will probably drop from a D+8 to a D+5. The whole part of Orange County west of the airport-- basically over 100,000 people in communities like Hunters Creek, Meadow Woods and Southchase, a very Puerto Rican area, is now going to be part of FL-10 (Webster's district, likely soon to be Bob Poe's district). FL-9's Hispanic population will drop from around 45% to around 31 or 32%. To make up for the loss of population, FL-9 pushes west further into Polk County and picks up neighborhoods like Lake Alfred, Winter Haven, Inwood and Auburndale that had been the southernmost part of FL-10.

The governing philosophy of the Emanuel/Van Hollen/Israel DCCC (and Israel's sock puppet Ben Ray Luján isn't making any changes in that regard) is to run conservatives as indistinguishable from a Republican as possible-- a losing strategy for holding seats when the inevitable midterm rolls around and Democratic base voters don't want to go vote for a Republican with a "D" next too his or her name. And, of course, that's exactly what Darren Soto is. Another Chamber of Commerce Democrat, Soto earned an "A" from the NRA (the only Florida state Senator to be so honored) and is widely considered a complete gun lobby shill-- exactly what Washington does not need. Another thing Washington doesn't need is another charter school goon, which is what Soto, who voted to divert public funds to private school vouchers several times, is. He also voted for mandatory ultrasound, 24-hour waiting periods and parental notification laws, all positions that are abhorrent to people who believe women should make decisions about their own body without government interference. He's been mediocre on the environment and way to generous with tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations, pushing more of a tax burden onto the middle class.

Back in July, when Soto first made it clear he intended to run for Grayson's seat if Grayson jumped into the Senate race, our old friend Kartik Krishnaiyer ran down Soto's abysmal record-- first here and then here-- for the Florida Squeeze. "Soto’s voting record through his eight sessions as a legislator," he wrote, "is on the extreme rightward end of what is acceptable as a Democrat... Free from the constraints of tough primaries and quickly emerging as a favorite of business and school 'choice' lobbyists in Tallahassee, Soto became the poster child for conservative Democrats who seek higher office by running in safe Democratic seats backed by Republican money and the support of large elements of a bipartisan political establishment. The Sunshine State News, one of the voices of record that conservative political insiders in the state swear by said the following about Soto:

Soto is about as good as conservatives can hope for from his liberal Democratic district.

The SSN is spot-on, but here’s our perspective-- Soto is about as BAD a Democrat for liberals and progressives as anyone in the state."

Krishnaiyer went on to list many of Soto's short-comings and got some serious pushback from some right-of-center establishment Democrats who have virtually wrecked the Florida Democratic Party over the last few decades, which is why he wrote the second post in which he explains that "Democrats in Florida are badly in need of developing a values based party that represents something beyond simple electoral and political “moderation”.  Right now we don’t have a clear set of values that drive us as a party collectively forward.

While it is true Soto voted for the onerous HB 71 “personhood” bill days after winning a Special Election in 2007 and also cast anti reproductive-rights votes in 2008 and he voted for Parent Trigger in 2012 (one of only two Democrats in either chamber to do so), and that he got an “A” rating from the NRA in 2010 and 2012, and numerous other bad votes let’s focus on his more recent record in the Florida Senate this very calendar year.

Before walking through this it is important to remember President Obama got close to 65% of the vote in Soto’s current Senate district in 2012 and that Congressional District 9 where Soto is running currently is an area where the President got about 62% of the vote in 2012.

Let’s review what some of the conservative special interest groups that lobby the Legislature thought of Soto’s 2015 performance.

• Soto scored 100% on Jeb Bush’s Excellence in Education Foundation which advocates for the privatization of public education

• Soto scored 100% on the Florida Chamber scorecard; This was higher than many conservative Republicans

• Soto scored 96% on the Associated Industries of Florida scorecard; This was higher than many conservative Republicans

Keep in mind Soto was casting these votes with right-wing interest groups just as he was planning on launching a campaign for Congress in a liberal seat. With one eye one must surmise toward who could help him raise the most campaign cash in a safe Democratic district, Soto cast his lot for the past several months with conservative Republicans. Or perhaps Soto is just a conservative who will serve the interests of the US Chamber of Commerce and other business interests were her to be elected to Congress? Either way, progressives throughout Florida should be alarmed.

...Soto’s game has been like that of any transactional politician. Find allies in other offices, schmooze special interest lobbyists while pretending to be a good progressive in front of local audiences that will have a bearing on future runs for office. For us at TFS, this is exactly the type of politics we abhor and are committed to opposing it while trying to reform our party.

There may be as many as half a dozen Democrats in the race, including some strong progressives, but you can always count on the DCCC to find the worst of all and just for him, in this case Darren Soto. Thursday, one of the most extreme right of the defeated anti-Choice Pennsylvania Blue Dogs, Jason Altmire, now a Florida-based lobbyist, is holding a fundraiser for Soto. We used to write a lot about Altmire when he was in Congress for 3 terms. He was one of the worst of the worst, very much like Soto. It makes sense that he's helping him now. Alter voted with the Republicans against the Affordable Health Act, voted with the Republicans against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act and was an anti-Choice fanatic with a ZERO rating from NARAL.

Yesterday we looked at a study about what accounts for low Democratic voter turnout. The author wrote that "it’s clear that many voters are alienated by parties, and many see very few differences, which can depress turnout. Low-income Americans are the most likely to perceive large differences, possibly because parties overwhelmingly favor the preferences of the rich. Some have advocated Democrats pushing toward the center, but a working paper by political scientist Seth Hill finds that parties are far more successful in pulling in new voters than in converting swing voters." That describes the Soto type Democrats and Hill, whose data is all from Florida, emphasizes that "swing voters contribute on average 4.1 percentage points to change in party vote shares, while change in turnout influences outcomes by 8.6 points." Or, we can make it even simpler, watch the video: