Top GOP lawmaker relied on secret maps, later destroyed, NC gerrymandering trial reveals
A political trial that has mostly been dominated by math and academic research erupted in drama late Wednesday, when a top Republican redistricting leader said on the witness stand that he had used secret maps, drawn by someone else, to guide his work.
That statement, made under oath, appears to directly contradict what he told Democratic lawmakers at the legislature in November, shortly before the Republican-led legislature passed those maps into law over Democrats’ objections.
A Durham Democrat and former judge, Rep. Marcia Morey, asked the GOP redistricting leader, Rep. Destin Hall, at the time if he had used any outside materials to help in drawing the maps. Hall said no.
On Wednesday, on the witness stand, he said he did — although under cross-examination by attorney Allison Riggs, Hall denied relying on the maps too much. He called them “non-consequential.”
In the 2021 redistricting process, GOP lawmakers drew new maps of the political districts for North Carolina’s state legislature and U.S. House of Representatives seats, which will be used in every election from 2022 through 2030 — unless they are overturned in court, which is what this week’s trial has been about.
Republicans have defended their work as the most transparent redistricting process in history, and devoid of any political data that could have helped them tweak the maps to make them as favorable as possible to GOP candidates in the future.
But on Wednesday Hall, a Lenoir Republican who leads the House redistricting committee, said that he would sometimes refer to “concept maps” that his top aide, Dylan Reel, had brought to him.
Sometimes Reel would bring the maps up on his phone for Hall to look at while drawing the official version of the map, Hall said in a deposition just before the trial, details of which came out during his testimony Wednesday. Other times they would meet in a back room, to discuss the maps away from the public mapmaking terminals which were livestreaming video and audio.
So the liberal challengers in the lawsuit asked if they could see those concept maps — to analyze them, potentially for signs that they used a process that violated the rules the legislature was supposed to be following.
But the legislature says those maps no longer exist.
The challengers accused lawmakers of withholding evidence, and suggested they knew it was going to be destroyed and didn’t try to stop it.
They asked for sanctions on those grounds, but the judges denied that request. They said that since Reel left his job working for Hall shortly after the maps became law — he is now vice president of a prominent government consulting firm in Raleigh, McGuireWoods — then he is no longer “subject to the demands” of the lawsuit.
A fight over transparency
Democratic Rep. Zack Hawkins, a member of the House redistricting committee, testified after Hall did on Wednesday and said he feels lied to. Hawkins also said he thought Hall, as the leader of the committee, could and should have done more at the time to ensure that outside materials with political data didn’t make their way into the process.
He was one of several Democrats who directly told that to Hall during committee meetings before their work began. Hall shot those requests down.
“Generally, it was that ‘Those sorts of things can’t be policed,’” Hawkins said of Hall’s responses.
But he said he had no idea Hall was actually going to a back room to have secret discussions about maps, which had been drawn by someone else, to be used as what Hall would later call a “gameplan” in his deposition.
Hall, however, drew the maps only for the N.C. House seats.
The N.C. Senate seats and congressional map were both drawn by Sen. Ralph Hise, a Republican from Spruce Pine. Hise testified that he didn’t use any similar outside maps in his work, and the challengers didn’t suggest otherwise.
“The Senate did not use any political data or conduct any map drawing outside of the public committee room,” said Pat Ryan, a spokesman for Senate leader Phil Berger, in a text message during the trial Wednesday. “Sen. Ralph Hise swore to that under oath. All the evidence supports that fact, and the plaintiffs presented no evidence to the contrary. The reason there is no evidence is simple: Because it didn’t happen.”
Ryan also questioned why Democrats would be upset about Hall’s admission about using an outside map. He pointed out that one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the N.C. League of Conservation Voters, has proposed its own set of maps to replace what the legislature drew.
“This effort seeks to invalidate the Senate and Congressional maps and replace them with maps drawn in secret by a Washington, DC lawyer,” he said.
The challengers’ maps were drawn entirely out of public view, to the point that the two sides even held a protracted legal battle over whether the source code would be made public.
An analysis of the League of Conservation Voters’ proposed maps shows they would result, in the congressional map, in a likely 8-6 advantage for Democrats — although there would be several competitive seats that could swing either way.
According to some of the expert witness testimony from the plaintiffs in the case, by University of Michigan professor Jowei Chen, an 8-6 Democratic advantage is actually less likely than the 10-4 Republican advantage that the lawsuit calls an unconstitutional partisan outlier.
“Chen’s report says a 6-8 map occurred 0 times in his simulations in multiple election scenarios,” Ryan said.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under the Dome
On The News & Observer's Under the Dome podcast, we’re unpacking legislation and issues that matter, keeping you updated on what’s happening in North Carolina politics twice a week on Monday and Friday mornings. Check us out here and sign up for our weekly Under the Dome newsletter for more political news.
