State Senate voting district map clears House
Both maps are now awaiting Gov. Kemp’s signature.
ATLANTA — The Georgia House of Representatives this week adopted a new map of state Senate districts drawn by majority Republicans over the objections of minority Democrats.
The 96-70 House vote nearly along party lines sent the bill to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk, ending once-a-decade legislative redistricting carried out by the General Assembly. The Georgia Senate approved a new House map last week.
The state Senate district currently dominated by Floyd County voters will shift farther into Bartow County for the 2022 elections.
Currently, Senate District 52 covers all of Floyd County and parts of Bartow, Gordon and Chattooga counties. It’s represented by Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome.
District 52 will cover most of Floyd except the Armuchee area and points north, most of Bartow except a small southeast corner, and a sliver of western Gordon County.
Chattooga and northern Floyd will be bumped up into Senate District 53, with Walker, Catoosa and Dade counties. That district is currently represented by Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga.
The Polk, Paulding and Haralson Senate District 31 will be just Polk and Paulding counties. A larger part of Gordon County will occupy its current Senate District 54, shared with Whitfield and Murray counties.
As has been the case throughout the special redistricting session that lawmakers began nearly two weeks ago, Democrats accused Republicans of drawing district boundaries to the GOP’s advantage while ignoring minority population growth during the last decade that favors Democrats.
“We are a 50-50 state. We are a battleground state,” Rep. Bee Nguyen, D-Atlanta, told her House colleagues, referring to the close margins of recent statewide elections. “This map creates a 60-40 split with the advantage to the Republican Party.”
Nguyen, who is running for secretary of state, and other Democrats singled
out several Senate districts as examples of what they called Republican gerrymandering. She said the Senate map changes Senate District 48 now served by Sen. Michelle Au, D-Johns Creek, the Senate’s only Asian woman, from a minority voting-age population of 60% to a district with a slight white majority VAP.
Rep. Debra Bazemore, DSouth Fulton, the House’s chief deputy whip, pointed to major partisan changes in the 6th Senate District in Fulton and Cobb counties as well as a dilution of Black voting strength in two Senate districts taking in portions of Henry County.
But Rep. Bonnie Rich, R-Suwanee, chair of the House Legislative & Congressional Reapportionment Committee, said the Senate map complies with the federal Voting Rights
Act and splits fewer counties than the Senate map that has been in place since the last redistricting in 2011.
In other business Monday, the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution ratifying an executive order Kemp issued last May temporarily suspending the collection of the state gasoline tax after the Colonial Pipeline was hit by a ransomware attack and forced to shut down. The suspension lasted from May 10 until June 2.
When those we love have left this earth, we still can feel them near. We’ll see a picture, hear a song, and it’s just like they are here. And when we call upon our faith, when we believe and trust, we know the ones we care about are always close to us. — Constance Parker Graham