Will new maps make it safer for GOP in 2022?
BY ZAK KOESKE
COLUMBIA, S.C.
After taking public testimony last month on two very different congressional map proposals, a panel of South Carolina House lawmakers will decide Monday which, if either, they favor.
The bipartisan seven-member House redistricting committee will choose between its initial map that makes significant changes to four of South Carolina’s seven U.S. House districts, an alternative that hews very closely to the Senate’s proposal, or some modified version of either. The House Judiciary Committee, which is slated to meet two hours after the redistricting committee, will take up whichever map is advanced and — if the recently approved state legislative maps are any indication — could pass it out the same day.
The full House and Senate, which has yet to finalize its own map plan, are then expected to come together sometime later this month to convert their proposals into a single map.
The 2022 legislative session starts Tuesday.
Lawmakers last month approved new state House and Senate district maps, but punted on redrawing congressional lines until January due to pushback over what was then the lone congressional proposal.
Gov. Henry McMaster signed the state maps into law in early December, but the constitutionality of the House map has since been challenged in court.
A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP claims that map intentionally dilutes the power of Black voters and asks for it to be redrawn.
As of last week, when the House redistricting committee took public input on its alternative congressional proposal, both plans were on equal footing, committee chairman Rep. Jay Jordan, R-Florence, said. Compared to its original congressional proposal, which makes the 1st District more competitive, the alternative House plan gives Democrats little chance to win back South Carolina’s only seriously contested congressional district.
Lynn Teague, vice president for issues and action with the League of Women Voters of South Carolina, called the alternative House proposal “an obvious racial and partisan gerrymander” that should be rejected. “In most respects it’s very similar to the map that was initially proposed in the Senate, although the Senate subcommittee has so far wisely chosen not to act on that map,” she testified at last week’s hearing.
Teague criticized the alternative House proposal for splitting Black communities in Richland and Sumter counties, but said its most egregious racial gerrymander was in the Lowcountry, where predominantly Black enclaves of Charleston County are separated from largely white areas and slotted into the 6th District, a majority-minority district represented by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, South Carolina’s sole Democratic House member.
“Dividing Charleston County and even the city of Charleston as you have in this proposal serves principally to ensure a low minority population in (the 1st Congressional District) so that white occupants of the lower Charleston peninsula, Mount Pleasant, Seabrook and Kiawah can dominate that district,” she said.
The 1st District, which has flipped from Republican to Democrat back to Republican over the past three cycles and is currently represented by U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Daniel Island, would favor the GOP by about 14 points under the alternative House plan, according to Dave’s Redistricting.
The popular map-drawing and analysis tool rates the latest House proposal lower than the chamber’s original plan in measures of competitiveness, proportionality, compactness and splitting. The plan scores roughly the same on those measures as the current congressional map and the Senate plan, which last month came under heavy criticism from Democrats and good government groups.
The South Carolina House redistricting subcommittee released an alternative congressional map proposal on Dec. 22, 2021. The map differs considerably from the committee’s original plan, but closely resembles a proposal released by the state Senate.
The 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th Congressional Districts appear to be identical in the alternative House and Senate plans. The 1st, 2nd and 6th Districts are similar, but do contain some differences in where, or if, counties are split.
The House’s alternative plan splits 10 counties compared to the 13 broken up in the Senate’s proposal and the eight split in their original proposal. Beaufort, Calhoun and Orangeburg counties, which are split between two districts in the Senate map, remain whole in the new House plan.
Beaufort, which the original House plan was criticized for placing in the 2nd District, is now in the coastal 1st District. Calhoun and Orangeburg counties, which the Senate proposal splits between the 2nd and 6th districts, are fully contained in Clyburn’s 6th District in both House plans.
The new House plan and the Senate plan both split the Lowcountry counties of Colleton and Jasper between the 1st and 6th districts, but do so at different points.
Read more at: https://www.thestate.com/article256875152.html#storylink=cpy
