Urban voters and Republicans would be the big winners under proposed legislative districts that reflect the continued shift of political power from North Carolina’s rural areas to its booming cities and suburbs.
Maps released Tuesday also would pit dozens of incumbents against each other and could help minority candidates.
Lawmakers are scheduled to vote later this month on new legislative and congressional districts that will shape N.C. politics for at least a decade.
The changes reflect the state’s unbalanced growth that over the last decade has seen urban areas explode and rural areas stagnate.
Mecklenburg County, for example, would get an additional Senate seat for a total of five. Wake also would have five, sharing one with neighboring Franklin County. The Triad counties of Guilford and Forsyth also would have up to five senators.
That means that the state’s three largest metro areas alone would account for a quarter of a Senate once dominated by rural interests.
Mecklenburg and Wake each would add two House seats, giving them a total of 23 in the 120-member House. Suburban areas also won. Union – the state’s fastest-growing county – gained an entire House seat.
By contrast, areas in Eastern North Carolina and the western Piedmont lost representation.
“Both the congressional map first, and now the legislative districts, clearly show the burgeoning political power of the our biggest metro areas, particularly the Raleigh-Durham Triangle and the Mecklenburg region,” said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at UNC Chapel Hill.
Both maps also reflect the first Republican control of the General Assembly in more than a century.
New Senate District 41
A new Senate District 41 in Mecklenburg County, for example, would stretch virtually the length of the county from Davidson to Matthews, connected in places by the width of a single precinct. The district would lean Republican.
The GOP map would put at least 10 senators into districts with other incumbents, sometimes at the expense of Democrats.
Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, would be in the same district as Sen. Don Vaughan, a Greensboro Democrat. The district cast 56 percent of its vote for Republican John McCain in 2008.
Sen. Pete Brunstetter, a Forsyth County Republican, would be in a district with Sen. Linda Garrou, a Winston-Salem Democrat. McCain carried the district with 61 percent.
GOP Sen. Debbie Clary of Cleveland County would be in a district with fellow Republican Sen. Warren Daniel of Burke County. Clary had announced plans to resign.
Democratic Sens. Bob Atwater and Ellie Kinnaird, both of Chapel Hill, would find themselves in the same district.
The House plan would pit 28 incumbents against one another, according to Rep. Nelson Dollar, a Cary Republican and co-chair of the House Redistricting committee. That includes 15 Democrats and 13 Republicans.
John Davis, a pro-business political analyst from Raleigh who studied the Senate plan, said “the majority party will likely be Republican for the remainder of the decade.”
In a newsletter, he said 30 of the 50 Senate districts gave McCain 50 percent or more of the vote in 2008. McCain would have carried 34 of the new districts.
Democrats criticized the proposed districts even as they continued to analyze them.
“They’re splashing a purple state with a can of cheap red paint,” state Democratic Chairman David Parker said.
Republicans say registered Democrats make up the majority of voters in more than two-thirds of the 50 Senate districts and 73 House districts.
“We have fair and legal districts and, more important, we have competitive districts,” said Sen. Bob Rucho, a Matthews Republican who chaired the Senate Finance Committee. “If those folks decide to team up with the unaffiliated voters then they … can win those districts. That’s what the people asked for – competitive districts. And that’s what we gave them.”
Opportunities for minorities
Both plans create more opportunities for minority candidates.
The Senate plan would create nine majority-minority districts and one where black and Hispanic voters together form a majority. There are now seven African-American senators.
The House plan would create 23 majority-minority districts. That could boost the number of black House members by a third.
Democrats have accused Republicans of “packing” black voters into districts to dilute their influence elsewhere.
Rucho has said all along the goal is “fair and legal” districts, particularly given the state’s long record of litigation. A succession of legal fights – including several that went to the U.S. Supreme Court – have centered around interpretations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“Given this history, our primary goal is to propose maps that will survive any possible legal challenge,” Rucho wrote in a statement accompanying the new map.
Republicans argue that majority-minority districts must have a voting age minority population of at least 50 percent to pass legal muster. In 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court concurred with a state court ruling in the so-called Strickland case that started in Pender County. The court said the threshold for a complaint under the Voting Rights Act was 50 percent, an actual majority.
Democrats have argued that districts don’t necessarily need that big a minority population to elect a minority candidate.
By Jim Morrill
Posted: Wednesday, Jul. 13, 2011
