Posted on 02/06/2016 7:21:16 AM PST by RightGeek
That’s what I don’t understand about the whole thing. I thought states were obligated to provide black majority districts.
The courts are getting fagitronic, is it time to get rid of the relevant portions of the voting rights act?
The VA, NC, etc. maps were struck down not because they purportedly violated the VRA, but because they purportedly violated the 14th Amendment by using race as a primary factor when drawing districts. Of course, the reason why race was used as a primary factor is because the VRA *required* states to use race as a primary factor in order not to have “retrogression” (i.e., fewer black-majority districts than before).
It’s funny how black groups sued because of the racially based gerrymander in NC in which a black-majority CD was drawn that went from Charlotte to Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point, and another black-majority CD was drawn that took in black precincts in over a dozen VRA-Section-5-covered counties in East Carolina, when (i) both such districts were created by the Democrat legislature in 1992 and drawn practically the same by the Democrat legislature in 2002 and (ii) the Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, the melanin-deprived but otherwise “African-American” G.K. Butterfield, threatened to sue the GOP legislature in 2012 because the NC-01 took in too many whole counties and left out black precincts of VRA-Section-5-covered counties (and thus was “only” 50% black), thus forcing the GOP legislature to make the district less compact and to substitute black Raleigh precincts with black Durham precincts (because Durham was covered by Section 5 of the VRA and Wake County wasn’t). As the late Justice Scalia said in a similar lawsuit from Alabama, the plaintiffs were here a few years ago making the exact opposite argument (that legislatures were drawing districts with too small of a black majority).
Getting rid of the VRA won’t help us any; what we need is for the courts to rule that so long as districts are contiguous (which actually wasn’t the case for the Democrat-drawn 2002 NC map, not to mention that horrendous Democrat-drawn 1992 NC map that eventually was struck down), and so long as the aim is not to split up a racial or ethnic group that otherwise would be expected to elect a congressman, state legislatures should be able to do draw districts however they want.
It’s a tragedy, though, that freaking Kennedy had muesli for breakfast instead of eggs and sausage the day that he voted on the Arizona Redistricting Commission, so he sided with Ginsburg in “interpreting” the words “state” “legislature” to mean “state legislature, or maybe the voters acting through a referendum that created a stupid commission.” Because, you know, the Framers didn’t really want states to have a republican form of government, and loooved the concept of direct democracy, so *of course* they didn’t mean “legislature” when they wrote that the “state” “legislature” was in charge of the time, place and manner of holding elections (which happens to be the only reason why states get to draw districts in the first place).
No chance of that, the 3 rat districts are still heavilly rat. I don’t see the POTUS numbers at the link but they have everything else, Tillis got under 32% in all 3. Carried every other district, weakest was the 7th. It wouldn’t be possible to draw them down to 2.
Anyhow, looks like Holding is gonna primary Elmers (He now lives in Price’s rat district). Guess I know which one FR will be supporting. :p
Rat Alma Adams (lives in the new open GOP 13) is running in the rat Charlottle seat despite living in Greensboro, far away. Highly vulnerable to a primary challenge, perhaps the underdog, but that’s naught to us.
No idea on contenders for the new 13th.
Seems Mark Walker lives just inside the new 13th, he may run there and the 6th might be the open seat.
If I’m not mistaken, the corrected map drew Walker just outside the new 13th so as to avoid having him in the same district as Adams; there is no way that Walker would run in the new 13th, since most of his current CD is in the new 6th (and very little of it is in the new 13th) and the new 6th is several points more Republican than the new 13th.
You can find presidential vote percentages from 2004 and 2008 for the new CDs in the “Stat Pack” that was added at my link at the request of a legislator (the original package given to legislators before they voted didn’t include specific racial or presidential-election info for the proposed CDs, presumably so that the NAACP and the courts couldn’t say that race was the predominant factor in drawing the districts). The lowest McCain percentage among the 10 GOP CDs was his 51.4% in the new 13th (the other 9 redrawn CDs gave him 53%+), but the new 13th likely gave Romney around 54% in 2012 (my guesstimate based on the GOP improvement in the counties located wholly or partly therein) and with Obama no longer on the ballot (and black turnout down) I think that whoever wins the GOP nomination will be the strong favorite. But there is zero chance of the GOP winning more than the 10 seats that the party currently holds.
With respect to Alma Adams, she may not be as crazy as it sounds to run in the 38% black, overwhelmingly Democrat, all-Charlotte NC-12 instead of the only 22%-black, GOP-leaning NC-13 that includes her base in Greensboro as well as nearby High Point. While it would be almost impossible for Adams to replicate the 43% or whatever she got to avoid a run-off in the 2014 special primary when the NC-12 was 53% black and included parts of Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem and was only partly in Charlotte, she actually could win the 2016 primary with 25% or so (with the several interested Charlotte candidates splitting the rest of the vote) because the NC legislature is doing away with the run-off just for the U.S. House primaries (which will take place in June, three months after the state primaries and run-offs) so she won’t need to get 40%+. Sure, she’d be vulnerable to a Charlotte primary challenge in 2018, but by that time she would have represented the district for 2 years and most of its voters for 4 years, so she wouldn’t necessarily be seen as a carpetbagger.
BTW, with primaries for state offices taking place in March and for the U.S. House in June, and with no run-off requirement if the winner of the U.S. House primary gets under 40%, there’s a good chance that we’ll see state legislative nominees running for Congress as well, and then vacating their state nominations if they win the congressional primary. It definitely could be a factor in the open NC-13. And maybe we can get a top-tier conservative challenger (such as a state senator) to Code Pink RINO Walter Jones, Jr. in NC-03. Ironically, the only reason why Jones is a “Republican” congessman today is that he finished first in the 1992 Democrat primary for the black-majority NC-01 (much of which had been represented for decades by his late father, also a Democrat) but only got 38%, just missing the 40% he needed to avoid a run-off, and then lost the run-off to black candidate Eva Clayton. Just two years later, Jones claimed to have become a conservative Republican, conned his way into the GOP nomination (it helped that the district didn’t have much of a GOP tradition, although its conservative Democrats had been voting for Jesse Helms for years), and beat the Democrat in the Republican Revolution election; he generally voted conservative and stayed quiet until 2003 or so, when he started voting like Democrat Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, and he’s been a thorn on the side of conservatives ever since. I hope that East Carolins Republicans take out the trash this June, but it only will happen if Jones faces a single Republican challenger (and such challenger is a prominent, experienced conservative).
Small correction: There won’t be run-offs for federal *or state* primaries to in 2016.
No runoff eh? Good news for Alma, I read at least 2 prominent Charlotte rats are already interested. Politics1 reports there will be no runoffs for ANY (emphasis their’s) offices. Alma’s reason why should get the nod are pretty lame “I have Seniority!!” and “These people weren’t interested in running against me yesterday when I didn’t live 90 miles outside the district”. LOL. Definitely a better bet for her than a GOP leaning district though.
Just other day in a thread about a RINO effort to primary Steve King in IA, a poster said something like “These are the same bastards who are trying to get rid of Walter Jones in NC”.
I had to pick up my eyes after they rolled out of my head. How can people be of the mind that one of the worst Republicans in Congress is actually one of the best? Last election freepers were gung-ho on challenging incumbents, but Jones’ contest was ignored and his win celebrated by the few who noticed it.
If Holding primaries Ellers, perhaps Ellers will retire. Those rumors about her and Kevin McCarthy filtered to the public.
Gotta love the irony. They hate "career politicians" and they claim "standing with Israel" is "the most important issue" but they defend some career politician Paultard Palestianian tooth-and-nail, and scream "GOPE!!!!!" at anyone who dares speak out against him.
I'd love to confront Levin and other Amash fanboys with some of Amash's treasonous votes and ask them why its OKAY for this jerk to vote with Hamas.
Today on local Raleigh radio WPTF, was an hour interview by Don Curtis, owner of station, with Renee Ellmers.
She really sounds wound up for her coming race.
[ She may have said more but — couldn’t listen to more right now — have it on auto record. ]
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