Voting Wrongs
Meacham, Jon
Voting Wrongs You think minorities and Republicans won in redisricting? Think again by Jon Meacham North Carolina's new 12th congressional district was conceived, appropriately, during a brief...
...It was a clever move that was repeated across the country...
...I guess it was kind of funny, meeting like that," Hardaway says...
...the Democrats then realized that Justice would accept oddly designed districts to satisfy the majority-minority edict...
...The amendment presumes that those representatives of choice would belong to the same racial or ethnic group: Blacks would want black congressmen...
...Clinton's margin of victory in the state was 16,000 votes...
...Voting rights seem to be a different thing entirely...
...Ron Dellums and Missouri Rep...
...they were grudgingly drawn by Democrats to preserve as much of the status quo as possible...
...At bottom, politics ought to be about building consensus and offering legitimate choices...
...Graphic: The Raleigh News & Observer North Carolina's 12th Congressional District: Take a right at the gas station, left onto the highway, get off at exit 24...
...The only whites that can get elected are very conservative, whether Democrat or Republican...
...The most egregious maps, the ones that make you intuitively say something's wrong with this, were drawn by Democrats trying to hold on to what they had," says Ben Ginsberg, the RNC's chief counsel and principal enforcer of the Voting Rights Act strategy...
...Justice, in rejecting the first plan, expressed an interest in what the Republicans had drawn...
...Democrats are the only players on the field...
...For us, it was sort of, 'What the hell, let's maximize our suburban base,' " says Tony Snow, who was Bush's deputy assistant for media affairs...
...The question is, did we really win...
...at this point, the only Republican in the state's 10-member delegation was Newt Gingrich...
...And Republicans hoped to pack as many minorities into districts as could conceivably fit...
...But partisan motives produced distorted districts—in places, one side of the interstate is in one district, and the other side is in the 12th...
...John Lewis's Atlanta district— it's unfair to question their logic or, in a race-conscious time, their necessity...
...That's not happening now in either of the major parties...
...But the Republican victories came at a heavy price: Black turnout was up 34 percent in Georgia in 1992, where blacks make up a quarter of the electorate...
...Think back to the fall campaign: Did Bush appeal for minority votes...
...Minorities, as a result, are exiled to political reservations and given a few voices in Congress, while white Democrats and Republicans represent overwhelmingly white districts...
...Georgians for Fair Redistricting, a nonprofit corporation monitoring reapportionment and supported by the Republicans, eventually filed suit, claiming that the legislature would be unable to do the job in time for the May qualifying deadlines for state and federal offices...
...There are more and more Democrats who know that the Clinton strategy will work," says Bositis of the Joint Center...
...In North Carolina, for instance, the average in 1990 was 15 percent...
...Even without a GOP governor, the Republicans filed lawsuits claiming reapportionment was at an impasse...
...In fact, in 1991, before reapportionment, 40 percent of the black representatives in Congress were elected from non-majority-black districts...
...The good news for minorities is that historic numbers of black and hispanic representatives were elected to Congress (58 minority representatives, 52 of whom are from majority-minority districts, up from 38 minority representatives in 1990...
...It's hard to put white hats on the Democrats or the Republicans," says Laughlin McDonald, a lawyer who runs the American Civil Liberties Union's Southern Voting Rights Act Project...
...In many states, the facts bear Ginsberg out...
...There was another way Republicans and minority activists could get around Democratic legislatures...
...The better question is, who isn't...
...But the new districts also led to increased Democratic voter turnout—a turnout which, without question, helped the Democrats capture the White House...
...It instead was a matter of playing strategic games to maximize partisan advantage...
...House seats nationwide...
...Charlie Rose, at a Howard Johnson's off Interstate 95 in Gold Rock, North Carolina...
...If there was a Republican governor with veto power (as in California and Alabama), the governor could nix the Democratic legislature's plans and send the process to court...
...Civil rights supporters argue that participation in government is necessary to bringing minorities into the political mainstream...
...As the plan went to the Justice Department for review, a Republican state legislator introduced an alternative, proposing a second majority-minority district—one that stretched from the middle of the state to the Atlantic coast...
...Originally intended to guarantee Southern blacks the right to vote, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was amended in 1982 to give racial and ethnic minorities the right to "elect representatives of their choice...
...This means that one casualty of the 1982 law's enforcement could be, ironically, the particular concerns of the minority community...
...With that threat looming over the Georgia legislature, the leadership broke down and drew a third majority-black district, siphoning Democratic voters out of other districts...
...There's a national element to all this as well: People don't vote for a presidential candidate because of who their congressman is, but political coalitions and alliances begin at that level...
...Where majority-minority districts are geographically compact—in Memphis, for example, or in Rep...
...That's what people haven't seen yet," says Thurmond...
...Just look at the North Carolina district, or at the one in Georgia that meanders from Atlanta to the sea, or at the one in New York where a majority-hispanic district wanders from Manhattan to Brooklyn to Queens...
...A minority voter in a majority-minority district—virtually all of which are heavily Democratic—has no real choice to make between the two major parties...
...While the Democratically-controlled state legislatures drew up the plans, the federal Justice Department could, in nine of the states, review any laws affecting reapportionment...
...What made the North Carolina district possible—and others like it in Georgia, Texas, Illinois, Florida, New York, and elsewhere—was the partisan manipulation of the relatively obscure Voting Rights Act of 1982...
...And, ironically, the initial signs are that the newly gerrymandered districts may actually hurt those who most eagerly lobbied for them: minorities and Republicans...
...Alan Wheat come to mind) who win in districts where minorities don't make up overwhelming percentages...
...It doesn't help that the 1982 amendment makes race a prerequisite in some elections...
...28 The Washington Monthly/March 1993 And a minority congressman, once in Washington, has few common points of interest with the representatives of neighboring, snowy-white districts...
...In that light, the 1982 amendment seems a fine, bipartisan piece of legislation...
...Says Clarence Carter, director of African-American political affairs for the Republican National Committee (RNC) in 1992, "It's intractable, really: The Republicans have found it expedient to wall us off, and the Democrats take us for granted...
...Those white Democrats who did win are decidedly centrist, even conservative...
...In Georgia, where the legislature first met on reapportionment in August of 1991, the state GOP chairman said it would be "an abdication of (the legislature's) responsibility" not to draw as many majority-black districts as possible...
...Justice finally agreed, ending the matter before the federal court deadline...
...Think again by Jon Meacham North Carolina's new 12th congressional district was conceived, appropriately, during a brief political tryst at an interstate motel...
...it's a demographically pure enclave...
...Because of the rapid growth of the Republican-leaning Atlanta suburbs in the eighties, the state had already picked up a new congressional seat...
...Consider North Carolina, where racial gerrymandering hit a new low...
...in the 13 states where new majority-minority districts were created, Republicans picked up 12 seats...
...These districts weren't created to give minorities a break...
...In middle Georgia, the requirement for a majority-black district cost a white incumbent his political base, helping elect a freshman Republican in his place...
...To convince the courts that more minority districts (and consequently, more competitive districts for Republicans) were possible, the GOP drew alternative maps...
...The result was the election of two new black representatives and three new GOP congressmen...
...To plot how to draw majority-black congressional districts without jeopardizing existing Democratic districts...
...During reapportionment, Republicans decided to press for minority districts, figuring (correctly) that quarantining minority voters would necessarily create competitive districts next door...
...Did Clinton embrace a minority agenda...
...That's the point at which Hardaway and Merritt had their reapportionment meeting at the Howard Johnson's...
...Not coincidentally, the GOP proposal would have sucked Democratic voters out of three incumbent Democrats' districts...
...As much or more than Clinton, the reason for the additional black turnout was due to the new minority districts, both congressional and state legislative," says David Bositis, a senior research analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies...
...In the past two years, the 1982 Voting Rights Act was chiefly enforced in 13 states with high percentages of minorities, and in the Southern states, where there has been a pattern of racial discrimination: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia...
...But while there may be a greater number of minorities in Congress, it's also true that minorities are now in a more tenuous position...
...Although passed by Congress 10 years ago, the 1982 law affected its first congressional election in 1992, after the once-a-decade redrawing of districts...
...hispanics, hispanic congressmen...
...But the headlong quest for high numerical majorities undermines traditional notions of March 1993/The Washington Monthly 29 representation and ignores examples of minority candidates (California Rep...
...Because of population growth, North Carolina had picked up a congressional seat, and the legislature's first plan conceded the new district to the Republicans...
...now, of the four districts held by RepubliGraphic: The Wall Street Journal...
...Only one of those Republicans, an hispanic, is from a majority-minority district—one based in the heavily Republican community of Cuban-Americans in south Florida...
...It's also true, however, that such districts can be drawn without meandering around existing districts, creating grotesquely shaped legislative inventions...
...From 1990 to 1992, the first year under the new congressional map, the percentage of blacks represented by Republicans in Congress dropped...
...But neither party accepted that fundamental premise during reapportionment...
...The courts, the group argued, should now step in...
...A majority-black seat now held by a black freshman Democrat, the district toddles and twists 141 miles across the state, connecting clusters of racial minorities in four major cities...
...The resulting district, the 12th, is equally amusing, or at least equally bizarre: It runs along three interstates, has a perimeter of 907 miles and is, in places, only as wide as the road...
...Caught mapping Who's to blame...
...The Democrats rightly feared that removing key blocs of minority voters from majority-white districts would put Democrats at risk...
...If Justice thought the plans failed to maximize a minority candidate's chances of getting elected, it would reject them...
...The Republicans have given up, and the Democrats are coasting on old loyalties...
...Certainly, these are exceptions to the rule of minimal minority political success, but they prove that minority candidates are competitive in political arenas that aren't racially gerrymandered out of all proportion...
...The problem is that criticism comes from a party that opposes preferential policies in hiring, contracting, and all other arenas of political life...
...The purpose of the rendezvous...
...Welcome to the new world of racial gerrymandering...
...The result was a wild redrawing of congressional district maps...
...Consequently, while you get more minorities elected, you get fewer progressive votes in the delegation as a whole...
...It's not a community...
...As long as you don't mind killing a few black men on death row or insulting Sister Soul-jah or appearing to have a tiff with Jesse Jackson, you'll do well, and you'll get the black vote anyway...
...You're talking about new districts, new candidates, new excitement—it really churned the pot...
...That way, the courts or Justice, acting under the 1982 Voting Rights Act, could force recalcitrant legislatures to draw the new majority-minority districts—or do it for them...
...Eighty-eight thousand more black voters turned out in 1992 than had in 1988...
...Michael Thurmond, a state representative who was head of the Legislative Black Caucus during reapportionment, opposed the final plan, believing it put race ahead of a traditional liberal agenda...
...The answer is no on both counts...
...What happened in Georgia's delegation could happen elsewhere...
...This state of affairs is no accident...
...It combined blacks and Native Americans, therefore not guaranteeing that a black would be elected, but giving blacks significant influence...
...In Georgia, as elsewhere, the prospect of having Reagan-Bush federal judges shaping the map terrified Democratic lawmakers...
...That's one of the critical consequences of racial redistricting: Will minority representatives become lonely voices for traditionally liberal causes now that neighboring representatives have so little political stake in explicitly racial issues...
...The district respects no county lines, no city limits, no test of common sense...
...In a suburban Atlanta district where a freshman Republican narrowly won, blacks were cut away to boost minority percentages in the huge majority-black 11th Congressional District, which picks up voters in three different cities from Atlanta to Savannah—kind of a second Sherman's march...
...With Clinton making headway in the suburbs, Bush lost, and the black vote made the difference...
...I think the outcome was very, very good," says Don Hill, a consultant to the Georgia GOP...
...Early in the process, the Democratic legislature (the governor, in a quirk of law, has no veto) drew one majority-black district in the eastern part of the state...
...Over the next eight months, the Justice Department would reject three separate Georgia congressional plans passed by an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature...
...One day in 1991, Thomas Hard-away, a Democratic state representative, met with John Merritt, an aide to incumbent Democratic Rep...
...Of course, in some places, majority-minority districts are required in order to send a minority to Congress...
...As for the Republicans, gerrymandering led to short term gains, allowing them to net 10 new GOP U.S...
Vol. 25 • March 1993 • No. 3
