North Carolina congressional map deals blow to Democrats

A new congressional map in North Carolina could set multiple House seats up to flip in Republicans’ favor, dealing a blow to Democrats heading into 2024.

The GOP-led state Legislature approved the new map this week that could tilt the balance of North Carolina’s House delegation — now evenly split between seven Democrats and seven Republicans — and boost Republicans as they try to defend their narrow House majority next year.

“The Republicans, with this egregious gerrymander, created quite the hill for Democrats to climb,” said Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist based in North Carolina. “It’s not that they’ve just thrown Democratic districts into swing districts. They’ve thrown Democratic-favored districts into heavily Republican-favored districts.”

Jackson predicted the new lines will see challenges under the Voting Rights Act.

The new lines make at least 10 of the state’s 14 districts favor Republicans, according to multiple analyses — and the changes have already spurred shake-ups in the state’s 2024 election landscape.

Just after the map was approved, first-term Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-N.C.) decided against running for reelection to his seat and announced a bid to become North Carolina’s attorney general in 2024.

“I’ve officially been drawn out of my congressional district by a small group of politicians,” the lawmaker said, calling the new lines “blatant corruption.”

The map is also expected to severely threaten the seats held by Democratic Reps. Wiley Nickel and Kathy Manning. A fourth Democrat, Rep. Don Davis, has also been drawn into a more competitive district.

That puts Republicans in a position to take as many as 11 House seats, leaving just three for Democrats, according to an analysis from Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.  Republicans have a narrow 221-212 majority in the lower chamber.

“These maps were created for one purpose only: to ensure Republicans win more House seats so that they can maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives,” Manning said in a statement. She did not share specific plans for next year.

Nickel said Wednesday he didn’t want to give the new maps “any credibility by announcing a run in any of these gerrymandered districts” and knocked Republican legislators for the move.

“It’s time to sue the bastards. I’ll make a decision about running for office once the courts have spoken,” Nickel said.

Former Republican Rep. Mark Walker (N.C.) had been campaigning for governor in the state, but he announced Wednesday he’d end his gubernatorial bid and run for the House, citing the new maps.

Walker decided against running for reelection to the House in 2020 when earlier redrawn lines put him in a Democratic-leaning district.

“What you end up with is a state where Democrats and Republicans each receive about 50 percent of the vote when it’s allocated across the state, to Republicans being elected to represent 80 percent of voters,” said Jackson, the strategist.

“Regardless of what legal theory you’re operating under, that’s an egregious gerrymander.”

The latest development in North Carolina’s district lines comes after the state’s Supreme Court — with a Democratic majority at the time — struck down GOP-drawn maps in 2021 because of what it considered illegal partisan gerrymandering.

A temporary, court-drawn map was used for the midterms and resulted in the state’s current split of seven Democrats and seven Republicans.

But in April, the state Supreme Court — with a new Republican majority — overruled the earlier decision, making room for partisan redistricting.

“This is a direct result of the actions of arrogant, anti-democracy politicians who pursued map manipulation in order to acquire unearned power and the actions of state supreme court justices who acted as ideologues instead of neutral arbiters of the law,” said former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), in a statement on the new maps.

“In reversing, without a sound legal basis, its own very recent precedent, the North Carolina Supreme Court is complicit in this unprecedented attack on free and fair elections,” Holder said.

Recent analysis from Duke University mathematics professor Jonathan Mattingly, who researches gerrymandering, found that the new GOP-proposed plans were “more gerrymandered and less responsive” than those struck down back in 2021.

Experts also say new state legislative maps could also disadvantage Democrats at the state level.

“This definitely shakes up the state to be another battleground for 2024,” North Carolina-based Democratic strategist Douglas Wilson said of the changes, which he said will make it “extremely difficult” for Democrats in the impacted districts.

Democrats in the state will need not only to try to “win as much as they can” in 2024, Wilson said, but will also need to lay out a long-term “electoral plan” for expanding their candidate bench and strengthening their outreach.

Raleigh-based Republican strategist Jonathan Felts, who worked on Sen. Ted Budd’s (R-N.C.) Senate campaign, said the new congressional map will play a “key role” in helping Republicans maintain the House majority and will likely bring in a “bigger cast of characters” as GOP hopefuls jump into some of these races.

“I don’t buy the argument that North Carolina is this dark shade of purple,” Felts said. “I think these districts are a reflection of where North Carolina is as a state.”

Republican Reps. Patrick McHenry and Virginia Foxx announced this week they’re running for reelection in the redrawn districts.

The redrawn lines, though — which notably aren’t subject to veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper — are expected to draw legal challenges.

“Democrats can’t win at the ballot box in North Carolina, so their only hope is to win in the courtroom,” said Felts, the Republican strategist.

North Carolina was already expected to be a closely watched battleground state in 2024 as Democrats look to flip the state in the presidential race. The new congressional districts could put even more attention on the Tar Heel State.

Strategists pointed to how close the presidential contest was when former President Trump won the state in 2020 — beating Biden by slightly more than a percentage point — as the former and incumbent presidents are likely heading toward a rematch in 2024.

Eyes are also set to be on North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, as term-limited Cooper leaves the seat up for grabs. In the attorney general’s race, Jeff Jackson now goes against Republican Rep. Dan Bishop.

“North Carolina is going to be an incredible battleground,” said Jackson, the Democratic strategist. “It’s going to be a super competitive year in 2024.”

Felts suggested congressional candidates are going to get “overwhelmed” by the presidential and gubernatorial races. “No matter what the maps look like, congressional candidates will have a hard time breaking through that noise,” he said.

But Wilson contended that while North Carolina Democrats are “going to endure a little bit of pain for a while, because the Republicans are in charge,” there’s cause for optimism that the landscape could change in the coming years.

He also suggested the congressional map changes could be a motivator for Democrats in the state to turn out in 2024.

“It’s not a lost cause, say, forever. But it’s going to take us some time,” Wilson said.

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