And that’s how one might react to the following comment recorded in the News & Observer‘s “Under the Dome”:
The spin: “The most recent round of legislative redistricting has left many progressives frustrated, but they should not be,” said Gerrick Brenner, executive director of Progress North Carolina. “There are competitive districts all over the state if the right people step up and run for office.”
One wonders whether Mr. Brenner missed the memo: Left-of-center critics of the Republican-drawn legislative election maps must fume about their unfairness and unconstitutionality. Republicans have somehow drawn maps that will guarantee their dominance of the legislature in perpetuity.
Nonsense. As Mr. Brenner notes, candidates matter. Election cycles matter. Republicans won large legislative majorities in 2010 using maps drawn to favor Democrats. While the new maps undoubtedly lean more toward the GOP, those maps guarantee nothing.
I offered the following comments last summer about congressional redistricting:
Observers should avoid the additional mistake of framing the merits of the new maps in terms of their likely impacts on a single election involving current incumbents. Could Republicans swing as many as four races from the “D” column to the “R” column with the new maps? Potentially. But that outcome is certain only in Republicans’ wishes and Democrats’ nightmares. That outcome assumes that Republicans would hold all existing districts and pick up every targeted Democratic seat. Elections rarely follow such a one-sided course.
Would the new maps guarantee that Republicans could hold a 10-3 — or even an 8-5 — advantage in North Carolina congressional elections for the next decade? Hardly. To make some districts “more” Republican, it’s necessary to make other districts “less” Republican.
Change the numbers, and the same principle applies to legislative races. Republicans have a better shot of maintaining their majorities under the new maps. But voters could send them packing at any time.
