GOP gets historic chance with redistricting

Rocky Mount Telegram
November 3, 2010

RALEIGH - The Republican sweep at the N.C. General Assembly means more than just control of the House and Senate for the next two years after being out of power almost continuously for more than a century.

The GOP can expand its influence in 2011 because it will get to redraw district boundaries for the Legislature and the state's congressional seats based on this year's census data. Their legislative leaders will get every opportunity to pen districts that would protect the majority through 2020.

Controlling redistricting may be the biggest prize the GOP earned on Election Day, when Republican candidates won at least 66 seats in the House and 30 seats in the Senate - securing the majority in both chambers, according to unofficial results Wednesday. At least 12 Democratic incumbents in the House and six in the Senate were driven out of office Tuesday, with five seats too close to call or likely headed for a recount. Another seven open seats held by retiring Democrats also flipped Republican.

It's a remarkable feat for a party who as recently as 1994 held only 53 seats in the 170-member General Assembly. North Carolina had been the one southeastern state whose Legislature remained solidly Democrat in a region turning increasingly to the GOP.

"Republican legislators will have a chance to solidify over the course of the decade what they've gained in 2010," said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. "They certainly have an opportunity now to draw districts that will nearly ensure Republicans the ability to continue building a majority."

Republicans insist they'll draw the districts fairly and follow state and federal laws and don't have to manipulate the districts to put the GOP in the driver's seat. But the GOP also points out that they've been hamstrung for decades by Democratic-penned boundaries that favored their incumbents - until Tuesday.

"I actually feel some pressure to look at the citizens of North Carolina in the eye and not be guilty of the same gerrymandering that we've had for the last century," said House Minority Whip Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, who is seeking the speaker's post in 2011. "I don't know how many meetings I have attended where people said they were sick and tired of the political boundaries being wired or making (incumbents) less accountable."

The state constitution and other law give the legislature the power to draw the boundaries for all 170 General Assembly seats and the 13 U.S. House districts. The governor - Democrat Gov. Bev Perdue - can't veto the maps, giving legislative leaders complete power to draw the maps. Legal precedent gives lawmakers the right to draw maps to help protect incumbents and for political benefit.

The makeup of those maps are subject to the U.S. Voting Rights Act and other federal and state rules. The population of each district, for example, must be identical, or roughly 80,000 for each state House district. Federal civil rights law requires that black residents can't be placed in a situation with new maps that would likely worsen their ability to elect the candidates of their choice.

A series of state and federal court rulings during the 2000s have also placed limits on how lawmakers can draw their seats.

Lawmakers must follow the North Carolina constitution's "whole county provision" discouraging district boundaries from crossing county lines and that all county residents should be placed in a single district. The U.S. Supreme Court also agreed last year that the state isn't obliged by the U.S. Voting Rights Act to draw electoral districts where black residents comprise less than half the voting-age population. The court said such racial gerrymandering is required only if a district has a numerical majority of minority voters.

"Sone Republican partisans will advise that (the GOP) aggressively gerrymander the districts," said John Hood, president of the conservative-leaning John Locke Foundation, but "it's very difficult to do anymore because of the litigation of the last decade."

Hood said there are opportunities for Republicans to make more competitive U.S. House seats currently held by Democratic U.S. Reps. Mike McIntyre in southeastern North Carolina and Larry Kissell in south-central counties. Both withstood tough GOP challenges Tuesday.

Rep. Grier Martin, D-Wake, who chaired a legislative redistricting to fix two House districts affected by the 2009 court ruling, said Republicans will still be tempted to twist the districts to give them a larger advantage than population shifts allow.

The biggest fights over redistricting may not involve partisanship but population patterns. A 2009 analysis by Guillory's group found urban centers such as Charlotte and Raleigh and suburban counties surrounding them stand to gain the most because their populations are outgrowing the state's rate as a whole. That means rural districts will cover more land, potentially putting two incumbents in the same district to seek one seat.

Democrats could be the ones who sue for a change if they feel the districts are harming their prospects unlawfully.

"The history ... has been one of constant litigation," Martin said. "I would be thrilled if that ceases, but I'm not optimistic."