North Carolina tends to be seen as a “red” state, which is understandable given that in the 11 presidential elections, the state has backed the Republican ticket 10 times. But just below the surface, the Tar Heel State is more competitive than a casual glance might suggest.
President Joe Biden, for example, only lost North Carolina by a single percentage point in 2020. The state also has a popular two-term Democratic governor and a popular two-term Democratic state attorney general. North Carolina has 14 congressional districts, and that delegation is divided evenly between seven Democrats and seven Republicans.
At least, that’s the current delegation. The New York Times reported on the map that’s replacing the status quo.
Republicans in North Carolina approved a heavily gerrymandered congressional map on Wednesday that is likely to knock out about half of the Democrats representing the state in the House of Representatives. It could result in as much as an 11-3 advantage for Republicans.
In other words, in a state where Republicans will receive roughly half of the congressional votes, they’ve also created a map that will ensure that GOP congressional representatives receive roughly 71% — or more likely, closer to 79% — of the power.
How brazen is the party’s gerrymandering? The News & Observer in Raleigh spoke to professor Jonathan Mattingly, a scholar at Duke who researched the map, who concluded that the new district lines “essentially negate the need to have elections for the U.S. House of Representatives.”
Kareem Crayton, the senior director for voting and representation at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the Times the map was “among the most radical examples of gerrymandering that we’ve seen certainly this cycle.”
Gov. Roy Cooper would love to veto the maps, but in North Carolina, governors lack the authority to reject redistricting plans.
For democracy, this is the latest in a series of brutal setbacks. The Times’ report added, for example, that North Carolina’s newly gerrymandered map illustrates a process that renders “voters’ preferences electorally irrelevant.” But from a national perspective, there are related implications: Democrats hope to reclaim the majority in the U.S. House after next year’s elections, and with the chamber narrowly divided, every seat matters. With North Carolina Republicans effectively defeating four or five incumbent Democrats now — not at the ballot box, but through redrawing district lines in an abusive way — it’s now even more likely that the House will have a far-right majority in 2025. What’s more, congressional races aren’t the only ones that matter here. A Daily Kos analysis added, “[T]he GOP’s new state Senate and state House maps turbocharge their existing gerrymanders and will make it effectively impossible for Democrats to secure majorities, even though they’re routinely capable of winning statewide elections. Even worse, the new maps will likely ensure that, in all but the most Democratic of election years, Republicans will maintain the three-fifths supermajorities they’d need to override gubernatorial vetoes and to place constitutional amendments on the ballot.” Or put another way, democracy in North Carolina just took some dramatic steps backward.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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