A proposed new Congressional map continued to work through the General Assembly on Tuesday, even as dozens of Democrats took the chance to decry its impact on Black voters in northeastern North Carolina.
The new map moves four counties around Goldsboro and Kinston out of the current 1st Congressional District. In return, six coastal counties — and a small part of Onslow County — move into the district.
Republicans have maintained the move is being done solely for political reasons, to create a lower bar for their party to win an 11th Congressional seat in the state and protect President Donald Trump's agenda. But Democrats point to the district's location in North Carolina's Black Belt and that it has elected a Black politician to Congress for more than 30 years, arguing the move dilutes the power of minority voters there.
Former Congresswoman Eva Clayton was the first Black lawmaker to win election to Congress since the end of Reconstruction when she won the district in 1992. Tuesday, Clayton visited the General Assembly to speak against the maps.
"It was from 1901 until 1992, 91 years, that a Black citizen happened to be elected. It happened to be myself," Clayton said. "And the North Carolina General Assembly appears ready now to make it almost impossible for a Black citizen to be elected from North Carolina's northeastern area."
Clayton also noted that the 1st Congressional District voted for President Donald Trump in the 2024 election and also re-elected U.S. Rep. Don Davis, a Democrat.
The General Assembly announced that it would take up the new map last Monday, and the proposal was released to the public last Thursday.
Since then, lawmakers have received more than 11,000 comments, mostly in opposition, Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, said during a press conference.
Despite comments from Clayton and more than two dozen other North Carolinians who spoke against the map, the House Redistricting Committee voted to move forward. The House Rules Committee also voted in favor of it later in the day.
The full House is expected to consider the map on Wednesday. Republicans hold a significant advantage there, so the map is expected to pass.
If it does, it will go into effect, barring a widely anticipated legal challenge. Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, does not have the power to veto redistricting proposals.
On the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, maintained both that no racial data had been used to draw the map and that North Carolina must add a Republican district to respond to structural advantages in gerrymandering that Democrats have long used to their advantage.
"The purpose of this map was to pick up a Republican seat. That's been stated over and over again. I think there's been a real attempt to try to say, because that's the only legal strategy left, to try to say that it was done for other reasons — that it was done for others and that simply doesn't hold any water," Hise said.
State and federal courts have ruled that they cannot overturn maps that offer undue partisan influence. But they can overturn maps that take away a minority group's power to elect a candidate of their choice, although that could change when the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a Louisiana case it heard this month.
Under the existing map, North Carolina's 1st Congressional District has the highest proportion of Black voters in the state, with about 40%. That declines to about 32% under the new map as Greene, Lenoir, Wayne, and Wilson counties are shifted into the 3rd District.
U.S. Rep. Alma Adams' Charlotte-area district would have the highest proportion of Black voters in the new map.
Adams appeared in front of the N.C. House's Redistricting Committee on Tuesday, telling members that Hise wouldn't need to review racial data to know that redrawing the 1st District would have an impact on Black voters.
"You're not just targeting a Democratic member, that’s obvious. And he is Black, you must know that. You're trying to dismantle the district with the largest record of Black Congressional leadership in North Carolina history, and that's just not right," Adams said.
