GREENWOOD -- Is gerrymandering bad or good? It depends on who gets to do the gerrymandering and who is benefited by it.
A Mississippi legislative panel recently held a series of hearings around the state, including one in Itta Bena, to gather public input as the Legislature embarks on the process of redrawing voting lines for its body as well as for Congress.
Redistricting is legally required after every census, is usually contentious, frequently winds up in court and often creates some odd alliances.
It’s a hugely important process, since those who draw the lines often dictate who maintains power for the next decade.
Several states have tried to take the politics out of redistricting by handing the responsibility over to either a nonpartisan or bipartisan commission. Mississippi is not one of them.
It reserves this right to the party in power. With Republicans controlling supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, that means the GOP will most likely draw lines that continue that dominance and probably enhance it.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2019 seems to assure it. The court’s conservative majority ruled that drawing voting lines to help one party over another is constitutional, as long as the gerrymandering is done for a partisan reason and not a racial one.
It’s a confusing decision, though, because in most states, and particularly so in Mississippi, partisan divisions and racial divisions are almost identical. Blacks historically have voted as a bloc for Democrats, and whites have largely become one-party voters as well, but on the opposite side of the political aisle with the Republicans.
Thus, a district packed with Republican voters is almost guaranteed to elect a white candidate, and one packed with Democratic voters is almost guaranteed to elect a Black candidate.
Such packing has not only been condoned by the federal courts, it has been ordered by them when they have stepped in and taken over the line-drawing as a result of a legal challenge.
In the 1980s, the courts redrew the 2nd Congressional District, in which Greenwood resides, several times until it achieved the desired result of electing the state’s first Black member of Congress since Reconstruction. It was an exercise in gerrymandering, too, but it was one that the courts justified by saying it was needed to redress historic discrimination against Black voters and Black candidates.
By concentrating such a large bloc of Democratic voters in just one congressional district, though, it resulted in the state’s other districts becoming easy wins for Republicans. Three of the state’s four congressional districts are now deemed to be perpetually in the GOP column.
A similar process has been going on for decades with seats in the state Legislature. White Republicans and black Democrats have an unspoken deal. In exchange for drawing lines that guarantee Black candidates winning in a minority of districts, the lion’s share of the seats are reserved for Republicans.
With each redrawing of the voting lines, this arrangement has produced larger numbers in the GOP column. Black Democrats get the seats they want. White Republicans get the supermajorities they want. The losers are white Democratic officeholders, who have been almost gerrymandered out of existence at the state and congressional levels, but for whom the courts have shown little concern.
The dilemma that line drawers have this year is how to deal with the population loss in the Delta and other heavily Black areas of Mississippi.
The Clarion Ledger reports that the 2nd Congressional District, from which Rep. Bennie Thompson has been elected since 1993, has lost nearly 9% of its population.
Because districts by federal law have to contain a roughly equal number of residents, the 2nd District is going to have to be enlarged to pick up more voters. Thompson doesn’t need additional African American voters to hold his seat as long as he wants. Nevertheless, don’t expect the Democratic congressman to be lobbying to add any Republican strongholds to the district he represents. At the hearing in Itta Bena, Thompson implored the panel to not break up any “communities of interest” — code words for saying to keep his district at least as Black, if not Blacker.
That may be good for Thompson, who has accumulated enough seniority in Congress to become chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, a consequential post. It’s not so good, though, for aspiring Democrats in other regions of the state.
At the state legislative level, the districts in the Delta also are going to have to be enlarged to equalize the population within them. In the past that has meant drawing lines that keep Black incumbents in office but reduce the number of Democratic lawmakers overall.
The net result for the Delta is a shrinking political influence in Jackson to match the region’s shrinking population.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
