‘Powerful’ Eastern NC district gets a redder tint, after a century of electing Democrats

Former Rep. G.K. Butterfield saw red when he reviewed the congressional map North Carolina lawmakers released in 2021 near the end of his 18-year Capitol Hill career.

He accused the General Assembly of drawing a partisan map that helped Republicans, by racially gerrymandering his district in the far northeastern part of the state and disadvantaging Black voters in its communities.

The courts, too, saw the map as improperly skewed.

They said that the map had been politically gerrymandered to favor Republicans and ordered state lawmakers to redraw it. When they didn’t provide a satisfactory alternative, judges asked mapmakers they selected to make new maps.

And that’s how North Carolina ended up with a congressional map that reflected the purple nature of the state with seven Republican districts and seven Democratic districts.

“This 7-7 map, I say, is a fair map,” Butterfield told McClatchy last week. “And that map, or a resemblance to that map, should be continued.”

That was a pipe dream, because judges allowed room for state lawmakers to redraw the congressional districts map after the 2022 elections.

And redraw them, they did.

This week, the General Assembly approved congressional districts which, based on past voting data, could give Republicans 10 districts and Democrats three, and leave one swing district that could go to either party.

That is Butterfield’s old district — the one now occupied by his successor, Rep. Don Davis. Now retired, partly out of frustration over the 2021 map and partially because he said it was time, Butterfield sees history repeating itself.

“In the legislature, the governor doesn’t have veto power, and so now Republicans have done at the state level what Republicans have already done on the federal level, and that is go to the extreme,” Butterfield said.

1st Congressional District

Butterfield and Davis are both from what is now North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. Butterfield is from Wilson and Davis is from Snow Hill.

The district is currently made up of 18 counties, plus a portion of Pitt County, a community that Davis has also lived in.

The region is very rural and has large areas of poverty. It runs along the Virginia border, picking up the counties between Gates and Vance before wrapping around Wake County as it dips south, cutting through Pitt County as it wraps back east, and grabbing Martin, Washington and Tyrrell before going back north and picking up Pasquotank.

Under the new maps, the district would lose Pitt entirely, as well as Franklin, and pick up Camden, Currituck, Lenoir, Wayne and portions of Granville.

“It’s the only competitive district in the state,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.

It’s also a unique region in terms of voters under the new map.

“If you just look at the Trump vote, it looks like it leans slightly towards the Democratic Party,” Cooper said. “If you look just at the U.S. Senate vote for 2022 it looks like it leans towards the Republican Party. It’s a rare case where which election you choose seems to give you slightly different answers and reinforces how powerful that district is.”

Political parties

The 1st Congressional District hasn’t had a Republican representative since 1883.

Whether Davis can win reelection in 2024, based on past voter data, is essentially a coin toss and will come down to candidate quality, Cooper said.

“It appears that the district is probably trending a little redder, more toward the Republican Party, but at the same time, he does have the advantage of the incumbency,” he said.

Davis has another thing going for him: he tends to be a more moderate Democrat. VoteView, a website tracking the political ideology of members of Congress through history, ranks Davis more liberal than 62% of the entirety of the U.S. House and more conservative than 76% of his Democratic colleagues.

He does vote with the Democratic Party 82% of the time, VoteView reports.

“I have fought just as hard for my Republican constituents, as I have for my Democratic constituents, as I have for my independent constituents and so on,” Davis said.

Losses and gains for Don Davis in NC-1

Davis has had a lot to digest since the maps were first released.

The U.S. House has been paralyzed after Democrats helped eight Republicans vote out House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as the chamber’s leader.

For 22 days, Republicans argued with one another on who should replace McCarthy before finally settling on Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson Wednesday afternoon, the same day North Carolina lawmakers adopted the new map.

Davis quickly realized the new maps took away Pitt County, home to East Carolina University, something he saw as a major loss.

“In many ways, they’re that shining light that guides us in the east because so many rely on their services from rural counties across the east and have to actually go into Pitt County for different reasons, whether it’s for health care, education or just a host of reasons,” Davis said. “And so it’s devastating, even the thought of losing Pitt County, because they’re just amazing people in Pitt County.”

But looking at the counties he picked up, he also sees opportunities to help those communities.

Take Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Wayne County. Davis serves on the Armed Services Committee and said he’s already been fighting for things they need there.

He’s also looking at how his work in Congress can help Global TransPark in Lenoir County, he said.

Lawsuits over maps and Black voters

In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act that gave Black people the right to sue if they could prove their vote was being diluted because of an election system.

Butterfield, a civil rights advocate and attorney, said as time went on it was clear that Democratic legislatures at the time were drawing congressional maps in a way that submerged Black voters into congressional districts that were predominately white and had a history of racially polarized voting.

“In other words, it was clear that white voters refused to support the preferred candidate of the African American community,” Butterfield said. “And because of that there was polarization in voting, and because the white population was larger than the Black population then Black candidates, the preferred candidates, didn’t get elected.”

In the late 1900s, North Carolina had one district with the potential to elect a Black member of Congress, and the Supreme Court ordered lawmakers to do better.

Right now, the state is represented by three Black members of Congress: Reps. Davis; Alma Adams, of Charlotte; and Valerie Foushee, of Chapel Hill.

The new maps largely leave alone Foushee and Adams’ districts.

Butterfield said lawmakers can now use predictive modeling that can predict with almost absolute certainty how voters will vote.

That’s how North Carolina ended up with a 10-3 map for a time under Republicans, he said, prior to. North Carolina gaining a its 14th Congressional District in 2022 due to population growth.

“So we sued, and we sued and we sued and we sued,” Butterfield said.

He’s recommending to members of Congress who have reached out to him about the new map that they sue again.

“It is a political and a racial gerrymander,” Butterfield said of the new districts map. “And it does not represent the demographics of North Carolina, and I think it should be challenged. The problem is a partisan map cannot be challenged in federal court. A racial gerrymander can be tried in federal court, but not a political gerrymander.”

For that reason, the maps are likely to stand or fall on their treatment of race, under tests for compliance with the Voting Rights Act.

Republicans have said they made political considerations, but not racial ones, in drawing the maps, and defended them as being in line with constitutional requirements.

“We wouldn’t pass these maps if we didn’t think they (would) stand up in court,” Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters on Tuesday.

In the 1st district, at least two Republicans have announced plans to run, with weeks left until candidates must file for office.

Davis sent out a news release Wednesday promising his constituents that while analysts and attorneys review the map, he will continue to focus on representing his district.

He worries about Eastern North Carolina’s health care, storm recovery, education and most of all jobs, he told The N&O.

“We need to stand up for our farmers,” Davis said. “We need to stand up for our military installations, and all of those opportunities in between.”

Politics reporter Kyle Ingram contributed.