(RALEIGH, N.C.) — North Carolina’s GOP statehouse leaders say the legislature will meet next week to consider redrawing the state’s congressional districts, saying they want to bolster President Donald Trump as the White House continues to encourage Republicans to redistrict mid-decade ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
“President Trump earned a clear mandate from the voters of North Carolina and the rest of the country, and we intend to defend it by drawing an additional Republican Congressional seat,” state Rep. Destin Hall, the speaker of the North Carolina House, wrote in a blog post on Monday.
The Republican-controlled legislature was already scheduled to meet next week. Although North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein is a Democrat, the state’s constitution doesn’t allow him to veto redistricted legislative or congressional maps.
North Carolina’s congressional map is currently being litigated in multiple ongoing lawsuits, according to a roundup from NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, over allegations the map racially discriminates and is a partisan gerrymander.
Currently, 10 Republicans and four Democrats make up North Carolina’s congressional delegation.
Sen. Phil Berger, the Senate majority leader, wrote Monday, “Picking up where Texas left off, we will hold votes in our October session to redraw North Carolina’s congressional map to ensure Gavin Newsom doesn’t decide the congressional majority,” referencing the the California governor’s Proposition 50 special election, when voters will decide if they want to adopt a map that could help Democrats flip five seats.
House Redistricting Chairmen Brenden Jones and Hugh Blackwell said in a joint statement: “We’re stepping into this redistricting battle because California and the radical left are attempting to rig the system to handpick who runs Congress. This ploy is nothing new, and North Carolina will not stand by while they attempt to stack the deck. President Trump has called on us to fight back, and North Carolina stands ready to level the playing field.”
In response, North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton called state Republican leaders subservient to Trump and guilty of corruption.
“North Carolina Republicans Phil Berger and Destin Hall are weak subservient cowards willing to steamroll the people of our state so they can give Donald Trump what he wants — power without accountability. Today, [North Carolina General Assembly] Republicans announced they will be tearing up our already brutally gerrymandered congressional maps and redrawing them to give more seats to Congressional Republicans. Let me be clear: maps should not give you power; voters should. When politicians pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians, that’s not democracy. That’s corruption,” Clayton said in a statement to ABC News.
Stein responded on Monday to the GOP statehouse leaders’ announcement by slamming them for failing voters and calling out how the state legislature has yet to pass a budget.
“The General Assembly works for North Carolina, not Donald Trump,” Stein wrote.
“The Republican leadership in the General Assembly has failed to pass a budget, failed to pay our teachers and law enforcement what they deserve, and failed to fully fund Medicaid. Now they are failing you, the voters. These shameless politicians are abusing their power to take away yours.”
North Carolina Democrats are planning an anti-redistricting rally on Oct. 21 in Raleigh.
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