Democratic Representative Lucy McBath, from Georgia, speaks as the House Judiciary Committee hears the results of the investigation into President Donald Trump’s impeachment, Monday, December 9, 2019. his district, the Republican Party in Georgia removed several Democratic precincts.
Alex Brandon / AP
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Alex Brandon / AP
Democratic Representative Lucy McBath, from Georgia, speaks as the House Judiciary Committee hears the results of the investigation into President Donald Trump’s impeachment, Monday, December 9, 2019. his district, the Republican Party in Georgia removed several Democratic precincts.
Alex Brandon / AP
Republicans in Georgia are set to pass a new congressional map that adds their right of representation in the US House of Representatives even as they voted to cut their own majority in the state legislature. .
On Monday, the Georgia General Assembly will pass a bill that ultimately creates nine Republican and five Democratic congressional districts. The new map shifts a suburban seat north of Atlanta more than 25 points to the right and is likely to push the two incumbent Democrats into a major challenge.
U.S. Representative Lucy McBath, a Democrat, has held the 6th congressional district since 2019. It currently spans three counties just north of Atlanta, having one of the highest percentages of voters. highest college degree and support President Joe Biden by nearly 12 points. in 2020.
The new lines, announced Wednesday morning hours before the first committee hearing on the bill, remove several Democratic precincts, leaving behind a district that should have voted for Former President Donald Trump about 15 points.
Republican lawmakers drastically altered the boundaries by adding all or part of three heavily conservative suburbs, with the northern end of the county closer to Tennessee than Atlanta.
Democrats and suffrage groups have opposed the change, which would make it virtually impossible for McBath, a Black lawmaker known for reducing gun violence, to win that seat. .
Senator Michelle Au, a Democrat, said: “Redivisioning in this way – to make the regions ridiculous, to consolidate fading power – is like a bald guy trying to fool the world with a shameful monster.”
The 7th Congressional District, currently held by Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux, the only Democrat to topple the House seat in the 2020 election, will narrow its geographical footprint to a non-majority community. white in Gwinnett and Fulton counties and moved from a crowded area to a solid Democratic seat.
Democratic strategists predict that McBath and Bourdeaux will likely face each other in a new 7th district primary as both have indicated they want to continue serving in Congress.
Republicans have defended the map, saying the state’s population growth and diversity are quite clearly reflected in the new counties, even one that drastically overhauled the partisan composition of district 6. .
“If you look at any congressional district, which has almost 800,000 people in it, you see diversity at all levels in any given county,” said Macon redistricting committee chairman John Kennedy, a Republican, said after the Senate vote. along the party line to pass the plan. “We drew the best maps we could to make sure they were legal, in compliance with the Voting Rights Act for that person, under the Constitution.”
This year was the first major redistricting cycle in which Georgia and other jurisdictions with a history of racist and discriminatory voting practices did not require federal removal in advance of these changes.
A Growing Georgia
Georgia has emerged as a battlefield nation watched by the whole country after voting for President Joe Biden, the first Democrat to run the state in nearly 30 years, and sending Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff arrives in the US Senate in January 2021. chamber control.
It’s also zero in on the voting wars, with new 98-page voting laws disrupting some accessibility to polls, repetitive problems with long lines, and voting machine and concentration problems. Trump’s sole focus is on proving he has not lost the state by citing false and non-existent fraudulent claims.
In 2022, the state will have tight gubernatorial and US Senate races, with Democrats able to win some statewide office, even if Republicans face with a more favorable environment across the country.
Georgia is on track to become a majority non-white country, if not already. The latest census figures show that 50.06% of the state’s 10.7 million residents identify as non-Hispanic white, down from 55.88% in 2010.
The growth of the state was largely driven by diverse residents moving to counties in the metro Atlanta core. Over the past decade, Asian and Hispanic populations have grown significantly in Georgia, and more than 300,000 new Black residents have moved to Atlanta and surrounding areas alone.
At the state level, this growth and diversification led to concessions from Republican cartographers who saw several new counties being created in Democratic areas in both the divisional plan. the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Republicans currently control 103 of the state’s 180 House districts and 34 of the state’s 56 Senate districts. The new House boundaries, now awaiting Governor Brian Kemp’s signature, create a new Republican seat in fast-growing Forsyth County and several new Democratic seats around Atlanta while eliminating dropped seats in rural Georgia and paired only three groups of non-retired incumbents.
In the state Senate, Republicans added two new seats in the Democratic districts of Atlanta by dissolving seats held by two rural Republicans running for higher office. but the district is represented by Senator Michelle Au, the Senate’s only Asian-American lawmaker, majority white and conservative.
That change, and many others made across the three maps, will likely be challenged in court in the coming weeks.
