On Redistricting and “Partisan Gerrymandering”
By Alton Absher III
When the General Assembly released its proposed legislative maps, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth from NC Democrats. Right on cue, they decried the maps as an egregious political gerrymander, constituting an unprecedented Threat to Our Democracy™. To hear them tell it, these maps are the worst thing to happen to our country since the buffalo horns guy sat in Nancy Pelosi’s chair.
This is gaslighting of the highest order. Democrats are in no way, shape, or form against gerrymandering. When Democrats have the power to do so, they aren’t shy about drawing favorable districts. Take Illinois as an example. In 2022, Republican statewide candidates averaged around 43% of the vote – but Republicans only hold 3 of the state’s 17 House seats (a mere 17.6%). Are Democrats clamoring to give Illinois Republicans the additional 4-5 seats to true up their house delegation so that it corresponds to the parties’ respective vote share? Of course not.
And NC Democrats have a long and storied history of politically gerrymandering our state. They were so good at it, that they managed to hang onto power for well over 100 years: from post-Reconstruction until 2010. I suspect many of us remember the old 12th District that snaked from Durham through Greensboro, over to Winston-Salem, and down I-85 to Salisbury, over to Statesville, then down to Charlotte, and finally (mercifully) terminating in Gastonia. The 12th was so narrow and serpentine that former NC Rep. Mickey Michaux (D-Durham) famously joked “if you drove down the interstate with both car doors open, you’d kill most of the people in the district.”
In the 1990s, NC Democrats also drew the 1st District, which Prof. Michael Bitzer of Catawba College accurately described as a “Rorschach octopus” that “began at the Virginia border in the eastern portion and dropped tentacles down to almost the South Carolina border.” Bitzer, Redistricting and Gerrymandering in North Carolina, p. 56. Those tentacles touched bits and pieces of nineteen counties—strategically placed to scoop up Democrat votes.
Compared to these maps drawn by NC Democrats, the maps from our GOP-led General Assembly look positively restrained!
Lacking a substantive rebuttal, Democrat partisans try to brush these inconvenient facts aside as “ancient history.” To the contrary, this history is highly relevant because it shows us exactly what NC Democrats do when they’re in power. If they truly wanted nonpartisan redistricting, they had over 100 years of uninterrupted power in Raleigh to enact such a plan. Their refusal to do so tells us all we need to know.
The facts are simple. NC Democrats are only against “partisan gerrymandering” when they are out of power. But when they’re in power, they embrace it with both arms. Keep that in mind the next time you hear a Democrat complain about our maps.
Alton Absher III is President of the Forsyth County Republican Men’s Club. He practices law in Winston-Salem, NC