NC Democrats brace for Republican control in congressional redistricting

A North Carolina Supreme Court ruling Friday gives the General Assembly free rein to draw North Carolina’s congressional districts however it sees fit with little oversight from the courts.

North Carolina’s state lawmakers had already planned to redraw the state’s 14 congressional districts, but Friday’s court decision green-lights Republicans to draw the map in their favor.

“Now that the state supreme court has held the courts can’t involve themselves without specific constitutional direction, the legislature has the power to draw congressional districts to maximize Republican opportunities for winning US House districts,” Michael Bitzer, political science professor at Catawba College, said in an email.

Bitzer predicted that Republicans are also likely to redraw state legislative maps after Friday’s ruling.

It’s not yet clear how the state Supreme Court ruling will impact a parallel case playing out in the U.S. Supreme Court, which had already been heard by the justices there before the state justices announced they would reconsider their ruling.

This saga began following the 2020 census after North Carolina’s population grew large enough to give the state a 14th seat in the U.S. House.

Originally, Republicans drew a congressional map that would likely win the party 10 seats.

But the state Supreme Court, then led by Democrats, intervened and declared the map unconstitutional due to partisan gerrymandering. Republicans produced a second map that left the courts unsatisfied and led to special mapmakers producing the current districts that voters used in 2022.

That map gave Republicans and Democrats seven seats each.

But the election also yielded a newly elected Republican majority on the state Supreme Court, and in an unprecedented move, the new justices said they would again take up the case, known as Harper v. Hall — resulting in Friday’s ruling.

“It’s likely that we’ll see at least a 10-3 Republican advantage with a potential swing district left, but it could go even further in a Republican advantage,” Bitzer said. “It’s dependent on whether Republicans decide to ‘pack’ Democratic votes into a few urban-based districts, or decide to ‘crack’ Democratic urban voters into adjoining areas that are heavily Republican, and thus dilute Democratic votes to create Republican districts.”

North Carolina has one true swing district — the 13th— held by Rep. Wiley Nickel, a Democrat from Cary. Democrats like Reps. Kathy Manning, of Greensboro, and Jeff Jackson, of Charlotte, are also in areas that can easily be drawn to give Republicans an advantage.

That could help Republicans maintain or widen their control of the U.S. House, where they now have a majority of just a handful of seats.

Democrats react to redistricting ruling

North Carolina’s seven Democratic members of Congress released a joint statement calling Friday “a sad day for democracy” and saying the ruling “disenfranchises the people of our state.”

They promised to pursue legislation at the federal level, but they are in the minority in the U.S. House.

Reached by phone as he landed in North Carolina from Washington, Nickel called the ruling an attack on democracy and the right to free and fair elections.

“We had a fair map in the last election and they elected seven Democrats and seven Republicans, which is exactly what we should have in a 50-50 state,” Nickel said. “The bottom line with all this is that voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around, and I’m going to redouble my efforts to continue to fight for nonpartisan independent redistricting reform so we get fair maps and voters have a real choice.”

Anderson Clayton, the new elected chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, echoed Nickel on Friday evening. She told McClatchy that as she talked with people following the announcement, Republicans repeatedly told her that Democrats gerrymandered the state to their advantage first and this was just a page out of their own playbook.

“I’m not in favor of it when we did it either,” Clayton said. “I’m in favor of an independent redistricting committee doing this, because it’s supposed to be the voters’ decision to pick their representatives, and you had seven and seven because that’s what North Carolina looks like.”

Clayton said what is most frustrating to her is she once viewed North Carolina as a leader in ensuring all voices were heard at the ballot box, but the state has and continues to regress. On Friday, the court also ruled that people with felony convictions must complete their sentences before they can vote, and it reinstated a voter ID requirement.

Common Cause’s executive director, Bob Phillips, called Friday’s decision on redistricting “dreadful.”

“I think it’s the worst decision perhaps the state Supreme Court has ever made, the greatest assault on our democracy in North Carolina, and again, it goes against what the people of North Carolina know, and that is gerrymandering is wrong — including the very people who are defending it.”

Republicans react to Supreme Court ruling

The decision could make it easier for House Speaker Tim Moore, a Kings Mountain Republican, to draw a district for himself if he wants to serve in Congress. That would be somewhere near the 14th, where Jackson currently serves.

Moore did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment Friday evening.

He said in a statement that the decision, and another the court issued Friday reversing itself on voter ID, ensures the state constitution is honored

“We will fulfill our constitutional duty to redraw state house, senate and congressional maps,” he said in the statement.

Moore has said in the past that he was waiting for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling to decide when to schedule lawmakers to redraw the map.

North Carolina is unique in that the person leading the charge to find and retain electable Republicans for all of the U.S. House districts across the country happens to be from the state. Rep. Richard Hudson, of Southern Pines, became the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee in January.

Hudson wasn’t available Friday, but his staff sent a statement.

The committee’s communications director, Jack Pandol, said that in light of the ruling, “we look forward to the state legislature drawing fair lines that best represent North Carolina.”