Welcome to the gerrymandered Democratic wastelands, Charleston

by Brian Hicks

So, Katie Arrington recently asked Nancy Mace to take a drug test.

If she knew South Carolina history at all, she’d realize that’s dangerous. Henry McMaster once made the same request of Sen. Fritz Hollings in a campaign.

Fritz replied, “I’ll take a drug test if you’ll take an IQ test.”

Instead of recycling that zinger, Mace made it a gotcha moment to suggest Arrington take a lie detector test about losing her Pentagon security clearance. Ouch.

All that is to say, as usual, the 1st District race to represent Charleston in Congress is an absolute hoot ... and fairly important.

Too bad most of Charleston is going to miss it.

Last week, the Charleston County Board of Elections sent out notices informing residents of their brand-new political voting districts. And that’s how most folks in West Ashley and downtown south of Calhoun Street — about 80,000 people — learned that they had been gerrymandered out of Charleston’s congressional district.

Yes, the seat in Congress held by Charleston pretty much forever now doesn’t even include the core of the city, just its islands. The peninsula and West Ashley have been dumped into the 6th District … along with North Charleston and most of Columbia.

Countywide, more than 100,000 voters were moved out of the 1st District and into the 6th.

“They took the heart of the community out of the district,” says Lynn Teague of the League of Women Voters. “The only thing that makes it contiguous is the ocean.”

The new 1st District goes from Berkeley County through Mount Pleasant — then jumps the mouth of the harbor from Sullivan’s Island to Folly Beach and follows the Sea Islands down to Beaufort.

The good news for Charleston is that it’s now mostly represented by Congressman Jim Clyburn, one of the most powerful lawmakers in Washington. He already represents the upper peninsula and Neck Area.

But the 6th is also South Carolina’s only safe district for Democrats, who are packed in shamelessly so the GOP has little competition for the state’s six other seats.

Which means Charleston Republicans are about to find that their votes, at least for Congress, won’t count for much.

Welcome to the short end of the gerrymandering stick.

Election headquarters staff has been fielding confused and angry calls since the notices went out. Which was a courtesy; this isn’t their fault. The Legislature did this. And the League of Women Voters tried to warn everyone.

State lawmakers, who draw congressional districts (and their own) after each census, held off on unveiling the new congressional maps until December … and then passed them in January.

The last vestiges of downtown Charleston were cut out of the 1st District in the last amendments to the map.

The league pointed out the redistricting plan violated all promises of keeping “communities of interest” together — it split the State Ports Authority terminals into two districts, and lumped the state’s three largest cities into the same district, diluting their power.

The league had proposed a map that kept all of Charleston County together. In fact, you want to talk about a community of interest — the Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties metro area has enough people for its own seat in Congress.

During the 2011 redistricting, the Legislature built an 11-point Republican advantage into the 1st District. But in 2018, Democrat Joe Cunningham won the seat (against Arrington, no less).

Instead of conceding they nominated a weak candidate, Republicans just redrew the 1st District last year — this time with a nearly unbreakable 17-point Republican advantage.

Basically, the new map guarantees