Photo credit: elections-daily.com
Looks like the NCGOP is trying for a home run here, and hopefully will get it. If the partisan Democrat NC Supreme Court had not invented a "law" and overturned the original GOP map which was submitted a couple of years ago, Republicans would have won 9 or maybe 10 at most (out of 14) seats in Congress. Now, ironically, they may have a chance to do even better (11-3). Ha ha.
The left-wing author of the linked article is outraged, naturally, yet was strangely silent about hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymanders in the recent past (Illinois, Pennsylvania, etc.) and will be gleeful about ones which are probably coming up in the near future (New York, Wisconsin, etc.).
If the Republicans can pick up 3 seats or so in North Carolina, that reduces the probability of election-denying Brooklyn homeboy Hakeem Jeffries wielding the Speaker's gavel come 2025. It probably doesn't reduce that probability enough, however. Even if "re-redistricting" between now and the 2024 elections is 100% neutral, the number of truly vulnerable Republican representatives exceeds the similar number for Democrats as things stand now.
If a minor miracle or 2 takes place in the 2024 Senate elections, the outcome could well be that the GOP loses the House but gains nominal control of the Senate.
Don't be too fast to count those North Carolina chickens, though. Lawsuits have surely been prepared in anticipation of this day, and whether those suits have any merit or not is irrelevant -- the idea, at a minimum, is to delay the implementation of this "harsh gerrymander" past 2024, so don't be surprised if that's exactly what happens.
First tactic will be to use the Alabama strategy and insist that because North Carolina is 21% black then they are "entitled" to 3 out of 14 districts on that basis.
NC is also 10% Hispanic, which could mean another entitlement of one district. Both of those racist factors would combine to limit the GOP to at most 10 out of 14 seats. Which is still much better than the 7 they hold now.
Another tactic they'll use is that the filing deadline for 2024 is coming up soon, as if that deadline can't be changed, and claim that it's "too late" now to implement a new map. That's the trick the Rats tried in 2022 in New York when they (temporarily) didn't get their way. It didn't work then, but who knows if it will now?
Tags:
North Carolina
Redistricting
U.S. House
|
Photo credit: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
The article states, quite accurately, that a "prior left-wing court invented out of whole cloth a constitutional provision that forced the legislature to create so-called fair districts."
Last November the voters in North Carolina delivered a 5-2 Republican majority to the state Supreme Court, and today that court came through by not merely overturning the illegal judicial interference with last year's redistricting, but also restoring a voter ID law which was duly passed by the voters in 2018 before being thrown out by partisan Democrat judges.
This is all great news, although the hyperventilating in the article about the GOP picking up 4 House seats in the Tarheel State in 2024 after the maps are redrawn is not terribly realistic, however a gain of 2 or even 3 might be. On the flip side of the coin, Democrats in New York are suing because they were not allowed to implement the most ridiculously partisan gerrymander (with all due respect to Illinois) in the entire nation. The lawsuit seeks to restore that gerrymander or something very close -- if not worse.
Many of the series of fluke U.S. House victories the GOP attained in New York in 2022 -- CD-3 (Santos), CD-4 (D'Esposito), CD-17 (Lawler), CD-19 (Molinaro) and CD-22 (Williams) -- were likely to be undone in 2024 even without a new gerrymander, plus CD-1 (LaLota) and CD-11 (Malliotakis) aren't exactly 100% safe either; Malliotakis may appear safe due to the margin she received in 2022, but that's only because the Democrats ran a complete stooge against her and they will not make that mistake again.
If the Democrats prevail in New York court, it will offset the presumed North Carolina gains, and more.
Adverse changes will also be coming to the district map in Ohio and possibly other states, with South Carolina as another example. If those changes in Ohio are not implemented for the 2024 election then they definitely will be by 2026. Republicans expected to pick up 2 House seats in 2022 in Ohio while maybe sacrificing one seat (that sacrifice was pretty much mandated by liberal court order when the court rejected the Republicans' original Ohio map); what actually happened was that the Republicans picked up nothing while losing one seat, as the much ballyhooed (and mis-named) "red wave" became not even a trickle, though at least they held the U.S. Senate seat with J.D. Vance.
Because the expected gains never materialized, even a less favorable district map might do little or no damage to the composition of the Ohio congressional delegation, in which the Republicans currently hold a 10-5 edge.
Tags:
North Carolina
Redistricting
Democrat gerrymander overturned
New York
Democrat gerrymander restored
|