SC Republicans, accused of racial gerrymandering, say politics, not race was paramount

A trial over South Carolina’s new congressional map got underway Monday with lawyers for the state NAACP arguing it unconstitutionally diluted the power of Black voters and should be redrawn.

Not only had the Republican General Assembly discriminated against Black voters by prioritizing racial considerations above all else when drawing three of the seven congressional districts, the plaintiffs argued in their opening statement, but it had done so intentionally to relegate Black voters to electoral irrelevance in all but a single district.

Lawyers for the defense countered that there was no direct evidence of racial discrimination and that plaintiffs’ alleged evidence of such was entirely circumstantial.

Political considerations and other traditional redistricting principles, such as preserving the cores of existing congressional districts and respecting communities of interest, drove line-drawing decisions, not racial animus, they argued.

The resulting map, which solidified the 6-1 GOP advantage by making the coastal 1st District more Republican-leaning, passed the General Assembly in January. The South Carolina chapter of the NAACP challenged the map about a month later, arguing it violated the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which granted all citizens equal protection under the law and gave Black men the right to vote.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers argued Monday that the General Assembly achieved its goal of turning the increasingly competitive 1st District, represented by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, who recently bought a house on Isle of Palms, into a Republican stronghold by unnecessarily carving out Black communities, most notably the majority-minority city of North Charleston, and moving them into the 6th District.

The sprawling 6th District, which stretches more than 100 miles from Charleston to Columbia, is represented by U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, the only Black member of South Carolina’s U.S. House delegation.

The trial over the map’s constitutionality, which is being held in Charleston federal court, is expected to last about two weeks and and will be decided by a three-judge panel no sooner than Oct. 28.

Witnesses testify about map’s impact on Black community

The plaintiffs’ first two witnesses Monday testified to their perception that the enacted congressional map negatively impacted the ability of Black South Carolinians to elect candidates of their choice and criticized the process Republican lawmakers used to create it.

Lawyers for the defense countered that the redistricting process was more transparent than in year’s past and driven by race-neutral principles and politics.

Anjene Davis, a Black North Charleston resident who testified Monday for the plaintiffs, said he thought the new congressional map, which left the 1st District with the smallest percentage of Black voters, dispossessed the area’s already marginalized African American population.

Davis, a Charleston County School District employee and founder of the Lowcountry Black Parents Association, said he attended a public redistricting hearing last year in hopes of better understanding the process and advocating for fairer representation, but hadn’t felt heard by lawmakers.

“I feel they did not take into consideration what was said,” lamented Davis, who called splitting Charleston one of the most blatant examples of race driving the map-drawing process.

“It doesn’t seem to make sense,” he said.

State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, the plaintiffs’ second witness, testified that she also had concerns about the enacted map, the legislative process that led to its creation and leadership’s failure to statistically analyze whether the map diluted Black voting power by packing and cracking African American communities.

Rather than leaving redistricting to the House Judiciary Committee’s Election Laws subcommittee, as had been done in the past, Republican leadership made it the purview of an ad hoc redistricting committee composed of members with no prior reapportionment experience, said Cobb-Hunter, the body’s longest-serving member and a veteran of three redistricting cycles.

Leadership’s decision to form an ad hoc committee and not appoint state Rep. John King, D-York, the Black vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to it, was a red flag that “this would be a process that excluded people,” she said.

The plaintiffs spent considerable time Monday rehashing an episode during the committee process in which House Judiciary Chairman Chris Murphy, R-Dorchester, tapped state Rep. Weston Newton, R-Beaufort, to preside over a redistricting hearing in his absence rather than letting King, an outspoken critic of the mapmaking process, conduct the meeting.

Murphy, who, according to the defense, tested positive for COVID-19 the day of that hearing, missed a large portion of the legislative session last year due to what colleagues said were health problems. He recently announced he was seeking treatment for alcohol abuse.

When Judge Richard Gergel, one of three judges who will rule on the case, commented that the plaintiffs were “beating a dead horse” by continuing to harp on the King incident, attorney Leah Aden defended its relevance saying it showed the redistricting process excluded Black members.

Lawyers for General Assembly defend redistricting process

Lawyers for the House and Senate defendants countered that the ad hoc redistricting committee was actually larger and more politically, geographically and demographically diverse than the past Election Laws subcommittee had been.

From start to finish, the redistricting process, which included numerous opportunities for public testimony, chamber-specific committee and subcommittee hearings, and the acceptance of public map proposals, constituted a “robust” process, said John Gore, an attorney for the Senate defendants.

Gore said in his opening statement that the House and Senate adhered to established redistricting guidelines, such as proportionality, contiguity and minimizing county, city and voting precinct boundary splits.

He claimed the new map, which hewed closely to the previous map enacted a decade before, preserved the cores of districts better than any other plan proposed, which he said was the “cleanest expression” of respecting communities of interest.

None of the other proposals were as consistent with traditional redistricting principles while achieving the Republicans’ political goals of keeping the 1st District solidly red, Gore said.

Partisan considerations, which some Republican members denied had been a driving force during the process, played an important role in the map’s construction, he argued.

The defense intends to have state Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, a redistricting committee member who presented the plan on the Senate floor, and Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, take the stand later in the trial to testify that politics, not race, was of paramount concern.

Even state Rep. Justin Bamberg, a Black Democrat who sat on the House redistricting committee, will testify for the defense that racial discrimination had not animated Republican mapmakers, Gore said.

Rather, the defense argued, staff members who drew the map were instructed to follow traditional redistricting principles, including taking incumbency and political considerations into account, and to incorporate requests from sitting U.S. House members.

Such requests included Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, R-Springdale, asking that Fort Jackson be kept in his district and a staffer for Clyburn conveying the Democrat’s desire for a “minimal change” plan, Gore said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Luke Rankin, R-Horry, who chaired the Senate redistricting committee, also directed the cartographer not to touch the 7th District, which encompasses the Pee Dee and Grand Strand, more than was necessary, he said.

The 7th District, which South Carolina added during last decade’s redistricting cycle to accommodate the state’s population growth, is currently held by Rep. Tom Rice, who state Rep. Russell Fry, R-Horry, ousted in this year’s Republican primary.

Cobb-Hunter, who said last cycle she advocated unsuccessfully for giving Black voters significant influence in the 7th District, bemoaned that the newly enacted map had reduced competitiveness by turning the state’s only swing district into a likely Republican seat.

If districts were competitive, she said, candidates would have to appeal to all voters and couldn’t simply discount the interests of voters of color. Cobb-Hunter said that’s why she supports codifying redistricting rules — South Carolina is the only state without a law setting redistricting criteria, procedures and guidelines — and creating an independent redistricting commission.

The third and final witness who testified Monday, Tufts University mathematics professor Dr. Moon Duchin, spoke extensively about her research analyzing redistricting maps, including assessing for “excessively race-conscious line drawing.”

The trial’s first day wrapped up before Duchin could deliver her assessment of South Carolina’s congressional map, but she was expected to take the stand Tuesday to pick up where she left off.

Other witnesses scheduled to testify Tuesday are Black Beaufort County voter Taiwan Scott, the suit’s only individually named plaintiff; Dr. Kosuke Imai, a Harvard professor of government and statistics; Brenda Murphy, president of the South Carolina NAACP; and Henry Griffin, who will speak to the importance of effective congressional representation for Black people in his community.