Across a significant chunk of Wilmington, voters are going into polling places this year, and finding a surprise: they wouldn’t be voting in Senate District 7, where long-time Republican incumbent Michael Lee is running to keep his seat against Democrat David Hill.
Local resident Russ Green went to CFCC’s downtown campus to vote, and was surprised to hear he’d been moved to a new district.
"I do know Michael Lee and I'm not voting for him, but I didn't realize they had expanded the district, and this wasn't even his district anymore," Green said, adding that he was disappointed.
Like many others, Green’s been pushed into Senate District 8, covering Brunswick and Columbus counties. His choices are now Republican incumbent Bill Rabon and Democrat Katherine Randall — who was herself gerrymandered into a new district. Green said he didn't recognize either of their names.
Randall described her district during a recent WHQR candidate forum.
"I am here representing and running for the Senate District Eight, which encompasses all of Columbus County, all of Brunswick County, and then a little gerrymandered notch of New Hanover County, which encompasses the kind of the downtown districts of Wilmington. So if you live in the north side, south side, those areas, I will be on your ballot, and that's the area of Wilmington that I live in as well," she said.
Origin of the notch
Where exactly did the notch into New Hanover County come from?
Asher Hildebrand is Professor of the Practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He said, "the New Hanover state senate district is a classic, classic example of what happens when politicians are allowed to select their voters instead of voters selecting their politicians.”
Hildebrand said New Hanover County never would have stayed whole, given its population growth: districts are required to be about the same size, so voters are represented equally. But he thinks a more fair map might have taken the northern section of the county: Castle Hayne, Porter’s Neck, and other unincorporated areas, and put that section with Rabon’s district.
"Knowing what we know about Brunswick and Columbus County, that's how it should be," Hildebrand said. "There's nothing wrong with Senate District 8 being a safely Republican seat. It's the act of taking portions of Downtown Wilmington, the voters there, putting them with people who are from Whiteville and Brunswick County, and taking them out of their community in New Hanover County, that kind of raises some concerns from a democratic perspective.”
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project grades the state senate map for this election at an F, giving a significant partisan advantage to Republicans. Senator Lee’s district is now safer, and Rabon’s isn’t seriously impacted by the relatively small influx of voters from Wilmington’s downtown.
For the last legislative election in 2022, North Carolina’s Democrat-majority Supreme Court had thrown out unfair congressional maps. A panel of experts appointed by a lower court drew congressional maps, creating seven districts won by Democrats, and seven won by Republicans. That’s changed completely this year, Hildebrand says, since the state supreme court flipped Republican and again allowed the legislature to draw the state’s electoral maps.
“The new map that’s been enacted is one of the most extreme in the entire country," Hildebrand said. "The Congressional map is just mathematically speaking, the most disproportionate in the entire country. The state legislative maps are slightly less extreme, but still very extreme.”
Hildebrand is a Democrat himself, and used to work as the chief of staff for Congressman David Price. But says he’d feel the same way about gerrymandering if it were done by the other side. He says the ideal, the most democratic process, would be an independent commission whose members aren’t politicians, but are citizens with a balance of perspectives and ideologies.
"Then draw districts based on a set of transparent criteria that is agreed on by the Commission on a sort of bipartisan or nonpartisan basis,” he explained.
WHQR asked candidates at its forum whether they’d support an independent commission to select boundaries. Senator Rabon did not attend, and Senator Lee said he would only support them if they were truly independent.
"Those folks that have created what they call independent commissions have found that there's an extreme amount of bias, and they're truly not independent. You can take California, for example: the legislature that passed that independent commission ended up having more of the majority party after they passed it than before," Lee said. "So if we can find a way to do it, we can find some other states that are doing it the right way, then I wouldn't be able to support something like that, especially since I have one of the most competitive districts in the state, it might actually help me."
