Earlier this week, yet another court case dealing with North Carolina’s legislative and congressional districts was kicked off. This case, brought by the League of Conservation Voters and other radical Democrat activists,challenges maps recently adopted by the N.C. General Assembly as part of the decennial redistricting process, following the 2020 census.
The plaintiffs say the new maps are unfair, primarily, because they are likely to result in continued Republican majorities in the N.C. House and Senate as well as our delegation to Congress, and so they’re asking the court to throw them out.
We’ve seen this movie before. ‘Sue til Blue’ has been the mantra of North Carolina Democrats ever since they realized they were incapable of reclaiming a legislative majority in the N.C. General Assembly by actually winning elections. And sue they have, over and over again, in an attempt to get from the courts what they could not achieve honestly via the electoral or legislative process.
It’s a tactic Democrats have repeated ad nauseam, and the people of North Carolina are sick of it. They are sick of the lawsuits funded by radical outsiders like George Soros and Eric Holder constantly disrupting our elections. They are sick of the Left’s empty and meritless smears of racism. They are sick of the massive hypocrisy.
For months, Democrats have spun Republicans’ constitutional and transparent redistricting process as a secret conspiracy wherein legislators arranged continued power via racist and partisan gerrymanders.
Yet, the Democrat activists behind this suit have asked the court to not only throw out the maps adopted by our elected officials, but to replace them with maps crafted entirely in secret by liberal activists. Those maps—which the plaintiffs have labeled as “optimized maps”—have Democrats winning a majority, a result the Democrats’ very own experts noted as a near statistical impossibility. That same expert maintains that ‘fair’ maps reliably produce Republican majorities.
In other words, while pointing fingers at Republicans, Democrats are trying to force a secretly constructed gerrymandered map on North Carolina, produced by the plaintiffs’ very own attorneys. The very same attorney that decried secret map making as a “dangerous” practice that breeds mistrust. This massive hypocrisy is enabled only by the Democrats’ insatiable craving for political power in which the ends justify the means.
More revealing still is an admission coming from the courtroom on Tuesday. One of the Democrat activists’ expert witnesses, UNC professor Dr. James Leloudis, told the court that black voters and legislators are essentially powerless unless Democrats control the legislature.
Think about that. The implication? Black citizens of North Carolina are beholden to the Democrat Party and the Democrat Party only. N.C. Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, the first black lieutenant governor in state history and a Republican, just might have something to say about that.
The fact is that last year’s Republican-led redistricting process was the most open, transparent, and accountable in the history of our state. The legislative and congressional maps this process produced are fair, constitutional, and completely within the purview of their legislative authority.
To the activists interested solely in political power, however, anything less than simply handing Democrats a majority is untenable. So, true to form, they launch smear campaigns about gerrymanders and racism, and they file lawsuits pretending to have the moral and legal high ground in hopes that they come before fellow activists on the bench willing to hand them electoral power by fiat.
The Democrats’ hypocrisy is on full display this week in this redistricting case. It is an affront to every voter in the State of North Carolina. We at the NCGOP are hopeful the courts see this redistricting challenge for what it is – a brazen and hypocritical Democrat powergrab to make up for their lack of electoral success – and the People of North Carolina get the election clarity they deserve.
Michael Whatley is the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party