Senate reapportionment plan would split Etowah County across two districts
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Etowah County would fare differently in competing redistricting plans being considered by the Alabama Legislature, as lawmakers race against a Friday deadline to change the state’s congressional map.
The House on Wednesday approved a plan, which had cleared a committee on Tuesday, that would keep the county in District 4, represented by Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville. .
However, the Senate on Wednesday approved a plan offered by Sen. Steve Livingston, R-Scottsboro, co-chair of the Legislature’s reapportionment committee, that would place 12% of Etowah County’s population in Aderholt’s district (Mountainboro, Sardis, Walnut Grove and the Egypt and New Union areas) and the rest in District 3, represented by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Saks.
The plans will be considered on Thursday by committees in the opposite houses, and a conference committee could have to work out a compromise before the deadline.
Alabama must redraw its congressional district lines after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that the current map, which has just one majority Black district, the 7th, likely violates the Voting Rights Act given that 27% of the state’s residents are Black.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which originally ruled against that map, set the Friday deadline, and Gov. Kay Ivey called a special session for that reason. If the deadline isn’t met, or if the results aren’t satisfactory to the judges, a special master could be appointed to draw the map.
State Sen. Andrew Jones, R-Centre, whose District 10 includes Etowah County, is a member of that Senate committee and voted against Livingston’s plan both in committee and in the full Senate. It was the only non-party-line vote cast on the plans.
Jones in a Facebook post on Tuesday said, “Our area is currently well represented by both of these men (Aderholt and Rogers),” but that he wanted to see the county kept whole.
“Etowah County should continue to have only one congressman, as it has had for decades,” he added.
Jones told the Alabama Reflector that constituents he’s heard from oppose the split.
Gadsden Mayor Craig Ford, who recently wrote an opinion piece advocating that Etowah County remain in Aderholt’s district, briefly left Tuesday’s City Council meeting to take a call from the congressman and unloaded on the Senate committee’s mood afterward.
“Nothing against Congressman Rogers, he’s a friend of mine, but that would be a disaster for Etowah County for them to split us in half,” Ford told the council. “The ones that get split get nothing,” referring to federal funding that the city has greatly benefited from under his administration.
In a subsequent statement, he challenged Jones to “go to battle for Etowah County, so we can stay with the congressman that (the county) has chosen 14 times over two-and-a-half decades.”
Ford decried “political games” being played with the reapportionment process and said the county’s legislative delegation needs to be “in lockstep about what Etowah County voters have chosen for a quarter of a century.”
He again said it’s no knock against Rogers but has “everything to do with preserving the preferences of Etowah County’s voters.”
Etowah County Commission Chairman Craig Inzer Jr. said his preference would be to remain in District 4, because of the relationships and rapport county officials have developed with Aderholt over the years. "He's been good for Etowah County," Inzer said.
He said county officials would try to work with Rogers if the Senate map prevails, but he thinks the county should be in a single congressional district, regardless of the representative. He's adamantly against splitting it across two districts, noting that the Senate map would put Commissioners Jamie Grant and Tim Ramsey in different congressional districts from their colleagues.
Jones said he hoped the dispute “can be resolved without a filibuster,” but Ford raised the possibility of legal action to the 11th Circuit “to show they divided our communities of interest and gerrymandered Etowah County to satisfy the political agenda of another senator.”
The mayor also pointed out that the Senate plan would mean a minority population of only 38% in District 2, which is the subject of the debate, compared to 42% in the House version. (Democrats insist neither plan will pass court scrutiny.)
He suggested that the Senate “take away the new part of Tuscaloosa County in District 4 to keep Etowah County whole. It’s an even swap and better reflects the 4th District’s original makeup.”
Ford, a longtime legislator, was in Montgomery on Wednesday and will return on Thursday for the debate.
The mayor in a statement on Thursday said, “The consequences of this decision will have generational impacts on Gadsden and Etowah County, and I know from experience this is a live football and we’re just coming out of halftime. So, that’s why we need our entire state delegation to fight like hell to uphold the will of our voters who have overwhelmingly chosen Congressman Aderholt as their representative for 25 years straight.”
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: One redistricting plan would divide Etowah County
