The story of Lee County, NC county commissioner Robert Reives, Sr., the only African American county commissioner in that county, is being repeated across the U.S.: white Republicans are gerrymandering voting districts to squeeze out black Democratic officials.
"Republicans, newly in power and in control of the redrawing of county maps, extended the district to the northeast, adding more rural and suburban white voters to the mostly rural district southwest of Raleigh and effectively diluting the influence of its Black voters. Mr. Reives, who is still the county’s only Black commissioner, fears he will now lose his seat.
'They all have the same objective,' he said in an interview, referring to local Republican officials. 'To get me out of the seat.'
Mr. Reives is one of a growing number of Black elected officials across the country — ranging from members of Congress to county commissioners — who have been drawn out of their districts, placed in newly competitive districts or bundled into new districts where they must vie against incumbents from their own party.Almost all of the affected lawmakers are Democrats, and most of the mapmakers are white Republicans. The G.O.P. is currently seeking to widen its advantage in states including North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia and Texas, and because partisan gerrymandering has long been difficult to disentangle from racial gerrymandering, proving the motive can be troublesome.But the effect remains the same: less political power for communities of color." (our emphasis)
As the article notes, similar efforts in Georgia, Ohio, Texas are underway to skew and diminish the votes of predominantly minority Democratic constituencies. Republicans have had virtually no luck in the past few decades in attracting black voters due to their neo-Jim Crow policies and catering to the rural white supremacist far-right. So their approach has been increasingly to select the voters, rather than have the voters select them. Partisan gerrymandering by Republican legislators is expected to harvest a number of House seats for them in 2022, giving them numbers out of proportion to the voting public's desire.
This grab for power is another deadly challenge to democracy, one which must be fought by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the For The People Act of 2021. There's apparently a new sense of urgency by President Biden on this legislation, as the 2022 elections are less than a year away. Since no Republicans will support legislation that undermines their chicanery, Dems will need every last vote -- even if it means some compromise with the obnoxious Sens. Manchin and Sinema -- to carve out a filibuster exception for these two Constitution-protecting bills.
