GOP redistricting chips away at Black Democrats’ power

More than 30 years ago, Robert Reives Sr. marched into a meeting of his county government in Sanford, N.C., with a demand: Create a predominantly Black district in the county, which was 23 percent Black at the time but had no Black representation, or face a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act.

The county commission refused, and Reives prepared to sue. But after the county settled and redrew its districts, he was elected in 1990 as Lee County’s first Black commissioner, a post he has held ever since. Until this year.

Republicans, newly in power and in control of the redrawing of county maps, extended the district to the northeast, adding more rural and suburban white voters to the mostly rural district southwest of Raleigh, effectively diluting the influence of its Black voters. Reives, who is still the county’s only Black commissioner, fears he will now lose his seat.

“They all have the same objective,” he said in an interview, referring to local Republican officials. “To get me out of the seat.”

Reives is one of a growing number of Black elected officials — ranging from members of Congress to county commissioners — who has been drawn out of their districts, placed in newly competitive districts or bundled into new districts where they must vie against incumbents from their own party.

Almost all of the affected lawmakers are Democrats, and most of the mapmakers are white Republicans. The GOP is currently seeking to widen its advantage in states including North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia and Texas, and because partisan gerrymandering has long been difficult to disentangle from racial gerrymandering, proving the motive can be troublesome.

But the effect remains the same: less political power for communities of color.

The pattern has grown more pronounced during this year’s redistricting cycle, the first since the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and allowed jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination to pass election laws and draw political maps without approval from the Justice Department.

“Let’s call it a five-alarm fire,” G.K. Butterfield, a Black congressman from North Carolina, said of the current round of congressional redistricting.

He is retiring next year after Republicans removed Pitt County, which is about 35 percent Black, from his district.

“I just didn’t see it coming,” he said in an interview. “I did not believe that they would go to that extreme.”

A former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Butterfield said fellow Black members of Congress were increasingly worried about the new Republican-drawn maps. “We are all rattled,” he said. In addition to Butterfield, four Black state senators in North Carolina, five Black members of the state House of Representatives and several Black county officials have had their districts altered in ways that could cost them their seats.