Plans for new NC congressional districts would elect more Republicans to Congress

North Carolina Republicans presented plans for congressional districts that would drastically change who voters elect to the US House and may help the GOP expand its veto-proof majorities in the state legislature. 

North Carolina voters elected seven Republicans and seven Democrats to the US House last year. Changes to district lines would mean some of those Democrats won’t be in Congress after next year. 

Senate Republicans presented two proposals for new congressional districts. One would create 11 strong Republican districts and three overwhelmingly Democratic districts. The other GOP congressional plan would create 10 Republican, three Democratic, and one Republican-leaning district. 

The changes could have implications for the nation, where Republicans in the US House now hold a slim majority. 

The changes mean some state residents will have different people representing them in Washington after the 2024 election.

Martha Shafer, a Guilford County resident, asked legislators responsible for the new plans to respect communities of interest when she spoke at a September public hearing in Raleigh.

She said Thursday that the congressional maps are an “abomination for the Piedmont Triad.”

Guilford is the third most populous county in the state. More than 150,000 of its voters are registered Democrats, nearly 128,000 are unaffiliated, and about 88,000 are registered Republicans. The new plans were drawn so that all US House members representing Guilford County will be Republican. 

Republicans are more attentive to their constituents in rural counties, Shafer said.”They’re able to ignore the people who live in Guilford County.”

The proposed congressional plans connect pieces of Guilford County to mountain counties. One of the plans has a district that stretches from northern Wake County to coastal Carteret County. 

“It just looks like they really thumbed their nose at the idea of communities of interest and compactness,” she said.

Click here to explore the General Assembly’s redistricting webpage.

Why North Carolina is drawing new districts again so soon 

States are required to draw new districts every 10 years but North Carolina does it more often because courts often strike down plans legislators create.

After legislators drew maps for the 2022 elections, the Democratic majority in the state Supreme Court said they were unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders and threw them out.  Congressional candidates ran in court-drawn districts last year. Legislative districts were redrawn and approved by the trial court. 

Republicans won a majority on the state Supreme Court last year and quickly reversed the decision on partisan gerrymandering. The new Republican majority said partisan gerrymandering is not a matter for courts. That erased the possibility that redistricting plans could be challenged in state court based on claims of extreme gerrymandering. 

Republican redistricting chairmen said Thursday that their list of criteria for creating new districts did not include consideration of voters’ race. No one has provided the evidence of racially polarized voting that is needed to consider race in drawing districts, they said. 

The decision could draw a lawsuit. 

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice sent legislative leaders a letter saying it “reasonably foresees litigation with respect to the forthcoming redraw of congressional and state legislative voting plans.”

A US Supreme Court decision this year in an Alabama case says that a section of the Voting Rights Act “demands consideration of race,” the letter said. 

Whether the congressional maps violate the Voting Rights Act is “a deeper legal question that will take some time to consider,” Kareem Crayton, senior director for voting rights and representation at Brennan Center for Justice, said in a telephone interview.

One of the places to look for a problem is in eastern North Carolina, which for decades has had a district where Black voters had a chance to elect the representative of their choice. Neither of the proposed congressional plans has a district like that, he said. 

Rep. Don Davis, a Greene County Democrat, now represents that district.

The decision not to consider race  “raises questions as to why they didn’t look,” Crayton said. “They are choosing to be blind to a thing that might end up creating legal exposure.”

Who won and who lost

Democratic US Reps. Kathy Manning of Greensboro and Jeff Jackson of Mecklenburg County were drawn into Republican districts. 

“Two draft maps are out, and both of them draw me out of my district and put in one that is totally unwinnable,” Jackson said in a video posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. 

“If either of these maps become final, it means I’m toast in Congress.”

The 13th Congressional district that Democratic US Rep. Wiley Nickel won last year has been reconfigured in both proposed congressional plans. Nickel’s home has been drawn into the 2nd Congressional District where Democratic US Rep. Deborah Ross is the incumbent. Candidates for Congress don’t have to live in the district they run in. But both configurations of a new 13th District were designed to elect a Republican. 

Ross released a statement denouncing the congressional plans as “an egregious abuse of power and a threat to the strength and vitality of our democracy.” In that email, she announced she will seek reelection. 

The congressional plans place House Speaker Tim Moore in a Republican district with no incumbent. Moore, who is from Cleveland County, has said he is not running for another term in the legislature. He has not said whether he will run for Congress. 

Creating a district where  Moore could run for Congress “was not a goal in drawing the map,”  Rep. Destin Hall, the House redistricting chairman, said after the House committee meeting.  

House member Tricia Cotham jolted the North Carolina political world earlier this year when she switched her party registration from Democratic to Republican earlier this year, giving House Republicans a veto-proof majority. 

Cotham, who lives in Mint Hill, represents District 112, where Democrats handily won races by double digit percentages.

The redrawn state House map puts her in District 105, where Republican candidates have an edge.

She lives in a Congressional district drawn to elect a Republican that US Rep. Dan Bishop is vacating to run for state Attorney General. 

In the plan for state Senate districts, Democrat Sen. Natasha Marcus is drawn into a Republican district with Republican Sen. Vickie Sawyer. It looks very much like a district that Republicans drew in 2021 and later changed. 

Marcus said Thursday she was not ready to comment on the new district. 

The state Senate plan also puts two Wake Democrats, Sens. Jay Chaudhuri and Lisa Grafstein, in the same district. 

Grafstein said in a statement that she was being targeted, and she is “considering other options for continuing in public service,” including moving to another district. 

“These maps take a sledgehammer to Wake County, dramatically altering our community’s districts with the goal of dividing our delegation,” she wrote. 

“Republicans drew me out of the district I represent with the goal of silencing my voice and with it the voices of hundreds of thousands of our residents.”

Sen. Michael Lee, a New Hanover Republican, won his 2022 race by less than two points. He was targeted in the campaign to try to convince at least one Republican to vote to sustain Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the 12-week abortion ban. That effort failed. 

Lee’s district is now safer for him. The proposed Senate map carves out a little sliver out of New Hanover and adds it to a Republican district that’s composed of Brunswick and Columbus counties. 

Senate Democratic leader Dan Blue described the section carved out of New Hanover as its “six most densely Black populated VDTs” or voter districts.

Sen. Ralph Hise, a redistricting committee chairman, told Blue Thursday that he hadn’t looked at it and couldn’t explain it. 

Republican senators who drew the plans did not stay after their committee meeting to answer reporters’ questions. 

Lauren Horsch, Senate leader Phil Berger’s spokeswoman, said she did not know why senators presented two options for congressional districts. 

House and Senate Republicans said they plan to vote on new district maps next week. They do not plan to hold more public hearings, but they said the online portal for comments remains open. 

Hall said House Republicans used a consultant to help draw the plan for state House districts. Hise said Senate Republicans did not use a redistricting consultant. 

An email to the redistricting consultant from Hall listing the criteria House members wanted him to use and asking him to “Please begin work at your earliest convenience” is dated Aug. 23, more than a month before the redistricting public hearings.