By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | A visitor argued during breakfast this week about how politics could change dramatically in the South if progressive politicians spread messages of economic populism to communicate how the current system is stacked against them.
Won’t work, I explained, until South Carolina and neighboring states deal with the scourge of gerrymandering — the intentional manipulation of electoral district lines for political advantage.
Gerrymandering is a term coined from the name of a Massachusetts governor who signed a bill that reshaped electoral districts to help his party. His last name was Gerry. One of the odd districts was so oddly-shaped that it looked like a salamander.
Fiddling with district lines is nothing new. It protects incumbents who want to keep power without significant challenges. It buttresses the status quo so the same old voices continue to be in charge. In short, it’s an anti-democratic strategy steeped in fear because it highlights how power brokers want to shape the kind of say people have, instead of drawing fair districts that reflect what communities really look like.
For generations, Democrats manipulated districts to make sure they got what they wanted. Then with the Voting Rights Act came requirements to make districts fairer, which led to “preclearance” of new lines by the U.S. Justice Department to protect minorities.
“During the 1980s, black Democrats and white Republicans collaborated to form majority-minority districts,” College of Charleston political science professor Gibbs Knotts explained this week. “This resulted in a huge increase in the number of African American representatives, but it also played a big part in the Republican realignment in the South.”
In South Carolina, the rubber met the road in 1994 with backroom deals among legislators that helped secure districts for black lawmakers, but also made white districts whiter, which helped the GOP. In November of that year, the House switched from Democratic to Republican control. Six years later, the same thing happened in the state Senate.
“Gerrymandering is bad for democracy,” Knotts continued. “Safe Republican and Democratic districts ensure general election contests are not competitive. Gerrymandering is particularly troubling in the South because of the continuing legacy of race in Southern politics. Politicians [today] very rarely have to make appeals to both blacks and whites, and biracial coalitions are less common as a result.”
Long-time activist Brett Bursey of Columbia says the way state legislative districts are now drawn, about 75 percent of voters will have only one major party candidate to vote for in the November election — certainly not a formula for robust political debate of different choices when most people vote.
“The majority party, Republicans for the last two rounds of redistricting (2000 and 2010) were allowed to shape districts that are ‘safe’ for incumbents that were approved by U.S. Department of Justice,” said Bursey, director of the S.C. Progressive Network. “All the black folks got to vote [but] they just could only vote for a limited number of candidates.”
Veteran legislator Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, said the way district lines are shaped in South Carolina allows elected officials “to concentrate on a very homogenous group of voters, as opposed to voters who might be of a different political persuasion, race or ethnicity.
“It contradicts the notion of democracy as a system of government by the whole population and reduces the importance of divergent voices and the need to compromise,” she said. “Good public policy is best served by elected officials who have to take a variety of views and opinions into consideration in the development of those policies.”
Politics in South Carolina and across the country should be about considering a variety of options, debating them in full and making decisions based on democratic principles. But because gerrymandering has so influenced how we elect people, it’s no wonder we continue to focus on narrow, skewed social issues and ignore big problems that need courageous leaders, big solutions and hard work.
Anybody who wants real change in South Carolina should start working now to develop strategies to influence the debate when the lines are redrawn after the 2020 Census. A tip: Work together to buy the software used by the legislature so you can offer alternatives to what legislators offer to protect incumbents and parties.
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We Can Do Better, South Carolina!