You know how North Carolina is getting a new seat in the House of Representatives? The state is now working on redrawing districts for federal and state elections -including how Wake County could be split up into different congressional districts- by mid-November.
The General Assembly’s holding several meetings throughout the state to be more transparent about how our new districts will be drawn, but the closest one will be in Durham Tech on Sept. 15 (Wed.) from 6pm, with more details to be revealed soon.
This thread is made separate from existing threads about the city council (which is for city policies), city statistics, and general headlines about Raleigh. This is still obviously important to DTR and Wake County since different congressional and assembly districts could mean some residents may become part of totally different electorates.
Make the Senate based on state population too, and the make the House and Senate seats whole state races. Make the Presidential election based on national popular vote. Boom, fixed. Sorry Rhode Island and Wyoming…
Hmm… there was a debate about this in drafting the Constitution called “The Great Compromise”. If you change that, does it cause bigger issues? Would you stick around in a relationship where your concerns/needs went unheard, unaddressed?
The former theologist and professor served for over 3 decades in Congress, and is the chair of the House subcommittee on transportation, housing, and urban development (which is a part of side of Congress that tells federal agencies how to use taxpayer money). That means he had a hand in making regional projects like Raleigh’s New Bern BRT into reality. He was also a big advocate on campaign finance reform and transparency in the NCAA.
Cary-based State senator Wiley Nickel has already raised $250k+ in a bid to take his place. We’ll see if he succeeds, though, since we don’t even know where our new congressional boundaries will be, yet.
Update on new voting districts: state judges approved the General Assembly’s changes to gerrymandered maps for its own districts. For congressional elections, though, they rejected maps drawn by them and those from voter advocacy groups, and instead approved a map drawn by neutral, court-appointed Special Masters:
Naturally, no one is happy about these results (House Republican leaders are angry about the congressional map being more competitive, and the Cooper administration’s pissed about state senators drawing their own maps). But if the final maps stand as they are now, we could see Raleigh being split in half by congressional districts, with the fissure running not too far from downtown.
More champions on the Hill! (Though likely at least two freshmen from the Triangle, which is quite different from having the chair of the transportation appropriations subcommittee.)
The 4th district (where David Price’s retiring) plus the 13th (it’s essentially new), right? True, it’ll be sad to lose that influence, but I think it’ll be nice to have a younger, more prominent voice from North Carolina that’s not from Madison Cawthorne.
You could even argue we’ll have three newbie representatives if we zoom out a bit. The additional open seats would be in:
1st district, which includes Henderson and Rocky Mount. G.K. Butterfield’s retiring. Note that this district no longer includes Brier Creek and northern Durham County. Probably going to lean Democrat since it’s been that way since at least the end of the Cold War.
9th district, which includes Chatham County, the Moncure megasite, Sanford, and Fort Bragg (but not Fayetteville proper). All the congressmen who represented parts of this district got redistricted elsewhere and/or aren’t running in 2022. I assume they would lean Republican at first, but I’m curious if this could change as development in the Triangle expands southwards?
…and that’s why I think this could be interesting. Depending on how quickly the Triangle housing market expands and sprawls out, (sub)urban voters might end up dividing and conquering.
Excellent news at the congressional level, nothing fuels radicalism like gerrymandering. Competitive inter-party races that favor centrists >>> deciding races in primaries mostly voted in by party activists.
If it’s up to me, we get rid of all this districts nonsense across the board. If a state gets 20 reps, and the votes splits 55% Rep and 45% Dem, there would be 11 Rep and 9 Dems going to congress. This would also allow 3rd parties get get a foot in the door. Even if they only get 5-10% of the vote, they would be able to send 1-2 folks to congress.
Yes I realize this is a pipe dream and will never happen…
The issue is you’d probably end up with 20 party insiders from big cities instead of rural districts getting reps that speak to their issues. If you thought politicians felt removed from the regular people now…
(I was an Int’l Politics major in college, voting systems took up waaay too much of my time )
Independent commissions. Hell some states appoint random everyday citizens for their commissions. But I think our Constitution gives the power entirely to the legislature and the only way to take the map drawing away would be if the legislature voluntarily gives up that power.
Some other states have done that, but I doubt our legislature would. There is some questions as to whether the selected map that the district court chose will stand since it wasn’t drawn by the legislature. Either way, that map is only good for one year, so if it does stand, we get to do this again next year!
Not even “with the fissure running not too far from downtown”… it literally runs right through the middle of downtown. As shown in the map below, the northern and western sections of the downtown grid are in the more-Democratic leaning 2nd District, whereas the southern and eastern sections of the downtown gird are in the light-Democratic, competitive 13th district.
I’m overall supportive of the expected partisan outcome of this map (7R-6D-1C), but not necessarily impressed by how it’s achieved. There are significant splits of cities with a high Black population (e.g., Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, and Fayetteville ~ all of which are basically split down the middle). The fact that the historically African-American area of Raleigh is separated from the rest of Raleigh in this congressional map, and instead pairs it with the more Republican Wake suburbs and more rural Johnston, Wayne, and Harnett counties, seems in really bad taste. The map makers could have easily kept SE Raleigh with the rest of the 2nd district (which includes all of the rest of Raleigh) and transferred more of Cary/Morrisville into the 13th district … which makes more sense from a communities of interest standpoint anyway. The minority population of SE Raleigh will now have a significantly reduced chance of being represented by someone of their choosing due to them being grouped with the much whiter Wake County southern municipalities and the whiter Johnston, Harnett, and Wayne counties.
Wait…politicians drawing up funny political maps with the high probability of marginalizing certain population groups??? Sarcasm aside, I wish I could be surprised but I am not. After growing up in this state, it feels like our voting maps have been in the news for the last 5-10 years at least.
This is not a perfect map but it’s way more competitive than their original attempt which, please correct me if I’m wrong someone, would have been closed to 10-11 Rep. vs 3-4 Dem.
Yeah, agreed that this map is way better than the original one drafted by the Republican legislature. But just a point of correction, this map was not drawn by sitting politicians, it was done by “special masters” appointed by the NC Supreme Court. They aren’t completely neutral, of course, but they are, as the map shows, much more neutral than the Republican legislature. As special masters, I would’ve hoped they’d protect communities of interest more than they did. Again, I’m happy with the outcome of the maps, just not exactly how it gets to that outcome in a few cases.
Yeah I noticed that. I think the 13th district will be a swing district, to be honest. Definitely winnable for a moderate Republican (if those still exist lol).
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