North Carolina Gerrymander Boosts Odds of GOP Holding House

Congresswoman Kathy Manning, protesting state legislative interference in presidential elections, has now likely lost her seat to a partisan gerrymander. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Common Cause

The ejection of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Republicans’ excruciating 22-day struggle to elect a new Speaker were rooted in the narrow margin of control Republicans won in 2022. Since any five House Republicans have the power to defy and even defenestrate their leadership, the temptation to do just that is powerful; it won’t necessarily go away now that the exhausted House GOP conference has settled on Mike Johnson.

The obvious way out of this hellish trap is for Republicans to increase their majority in next year’s elections. North Carolina Republican legislators are doing their part: Following an extended political and legal fight, they have secured a reredistricting measure that could provide their party with a net gain of three to four seats, as Politico explains:

North Carolina’s new map, which was approved Wednesday by the state legislature, is particularly efficient at securing a GOP advantage in a state that’s closely divided for many statewide races — setting off a scramble among Republicans for the opportunity to run in the newly safe seats.

The map packs as many Democratic voters as possible into three blue districts, while distributing Republicans across the remaining districts to make sure they remain largely out of reach for Democrats. The maps were drawn so Republicans would hold a strong majority of the state’s seats even in particularly bad years for the GOP.

The new map will remake the state’s delegation from an even split of seven Democrats and seven Republicans to one that would likely lock in 10 Republicans and three Democrats, with one competitive battleground seat that Democratic Rep. Don Davis currently holds.

Freshman Democratic representatives Wiley Nickel and Jeff Jackson and second-term Democratic representative Kathy Manning will all now live in heavily Republican districts.

The reredistricting was made possible last year when Republicans flipped control of the North Carolina Supreme Court, which had approved the existing 7-7 map after striking down a prior Republican gerrymander as violating the state constitution. Under that constitution, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper plays no role in the redistricting process. So barring a successful court challenge, the new gerrymandered map (along with a Republican-leaning state legislative map) will go into effect for the 2024 elections, which will also determine the term-limited Cooper’s successor.

The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear it will not police partisan gerrymanders in the states. Opponents of the North Carolina gerrymander will have to make the complex case that the GOP operation violated the Voting Rights Act by denying Black voters the right to choose or influence their representation in Congress. Not coincidentally, Republicans left Democratic majorities in two of the districts represented by Black congressmen alone and made the third just slightly more competitive. A Voting Rights Act challenge to the Tar Heel State’s gerrymander is likely a very long shot.

A Voting Rights Act challenge to Alabama’s Republican-dictated congressional map did succeed earlier this year; in a bit of a surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court order requiring that the legislature create an additional majority-Black (and also safely Democratic) U.S. House district. The Supreme Court decision has spurred additional litigation in Georgia — where a federal district court judge has just ordered a reredistricting — and in Louisiana that could also lead to Democratic gains in those two Republican-controlled states. Add in the complex partisan battle going on in New York over the Empire State’s congressional map for 2024, which could be redrawn to benefit Democrats, and it becomes clear that North Carolina Republicans are doing more than their share to shore up their party’s odds of hanging onto or enhancing their majority in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson is counting on them.