I’m amazed we were able to dump the Cleo Fields’ district. You’d have thought it would’ve been enshrined for perpetuity.
In the case of NC, the Dems have the legislature, so we have no say there. Our high water mark was an 8-4 GOP/Dem margin after the 1994 elections. We dropped 2 seats to a tie in ‘96 (we lost the 2nd district needlessly to a rodent because of a personal problem of the incumbent’s, and we lost the 4th because it was generally too liberal for us to hold — the incumbent who was narrowly upended in ‘94 reclaimed it again, that being the odious Dave Price). If we had control of redistricting in the state, we could draw a 10-3 GOP majority (leaving just the 2 Black Dems and the liberal hive in the center of the state centered on Durham/Chapel Hill where Price is). Same in my state of TN, which votes majority GOP, but we hold only 4 of 9 seats. We could draw a 7-2 GOP majority if we won control of the legislature (ceding only Memphis and my district in Nashville to the rodents).
BTW, Fields lost a court battle to be on the ballot in his re-elect bid for state senate, and so found himself out of a job this election cycle.
NC’s kind of a downer. We don’t even contest the Etheridge or McIntyre seats seriously, Robin Hayes is just hanging in there, and I’m still wondering if we can knock off Shuler next year. It’s almost like Arkansas, three Dem seats that could be contested, but we just let them go. Meanwhile, the Dems are picking over any GOP seat they can find that even remotely looks competitive.
And Tennessee has one of the worst examples of packing with the seventh district that drains out the GOP areas out of Tanner and Gordon’s districts. At least Lincoln Davis is thinking of running for governor, which would open up his seat.