Republicans again target Democrat Lucy McBath in Georgia congressional map that keeps 9-5 GOP edge
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Republicans on Friday proposed to redraw the state’s congressional districts to create a new court-ordered Black majority district, maintaining the current 9-5 Republican congressional majority and again targeting Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s district for wholesale transformation.
It’s unlikely that any of the newly proposed districts would produce a competitive race between Republicans and Democrats. That’s also the case with Georgia’s current map.
If it passes, the map would set up a new court fight over whether the federal Voting Rights Act protects McBath’s current district from being wiped out. She currently represents Atlanta suburbs including southern Gwinnett County and a sliver of northern Fulton County, an area where no ethnic group has a majority but where Black, Asian and Hispanic voters collectively favor Democrats.
That district would be carved up between two Democratic and two Republican incumbents. Lawmakers would instead create a new majority-Black 6th District in Cobb, Douglas, Fulton and Fayette counties.
Lawmakers were called into special session after U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled in October that Georgia’s congressional, state Senate and state House maps violate federal law by diluting Black voting power. Jones mandated Black majorities in one additional congressional district, two additional state Senate districts and five additional state House districts. Jones instructed lawmakers to create the new congressional district on the western side of metro Atlanta, focusing on a denial of Black representation in Cobb County that he said should be solved.
It’s the second time in two years that Republicans have targeted McBath, a former flight attendant and gun control activist. McBath, who is Black, initially won election in a majority-white district that stretched across Atlanta’s northern suburbs. In 2021, Georgia Republicans took that district, once represented by Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and drew it into much more Republican territory north of Atlanta. At the same time, they made another district more Democratic. McBath jumped into that district and beat Democratic incumbent Carolyn Bordeaux in a primary showdown in 2022.
It’s unclear if McBath would try to jump districts again. Voter registration records show McBath still lives in Cobb County, where she initially won election. U.S. House members aren’t legally required to live in their districts, unlike Georgia’s state lawmakers.
“Georgia Republicans have yet again attempted to subvert voters by changing the rules. We will look to the ruling from Judge Jones in the coming weeks before announcing further plans,” McBath campaign manager Jake Orvis said in a statement. “Regardless, Congresswoman McBath refuses to let an extremist few in the state legislature determine when her time serving Georgians in Congress is done.”
The map makes big changes in a number of other districts. Longtime U.S. Rep. David Scott would go from representing mostly Black areas south and west of Atlanta in his 13th District to representing mostly Black areas south and east of the city, including much of the Gwinnett County area now represented by McBath. U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick would be drawn farther north into the north Georgia mountains from his base in suburban Atlanta.
Some changes would also be made to the six other congressional districts that touch parts of metro Atlanta. Five districts south and east of Atlanta would remain untouched.
The congressional map follows the same pattern as legislative maps that are moving through the process. Republicans have drawn additional majority Black districts in the House and Senate while maintaining GOP legislative majorities.
Friday, the state House voted 101-77 to approve a new House map and the Senate voted 32-23 to approve a new Senate map.
The House map now goes to the Senate for more work, while the Senate map goes to the House. Typically, each chamber has taken a hands-off approach to the map that the other chamber has drawn for itself.
Democrats say the proposals are still racially discriminatory against Black voters. But Republicans said in debate Friday that their legislative plans will meet the terms of Jones’ order.
“We’re going to comply with Judge Jones’ order,” said House Speaker Jon Burns, a Newington Republican. “We’re going to create new Black-majority districts. That’s what we were told to do, that’s what this map does. I feel confident with this map and we’ll move forward.”
Democrats though, are predicting that Jones will find the Republican plans are still illegal and draw his own maps. In the Senate, they say Republicans don’t do enough to fix the problems Jones identified in suburbs south of Atlanta, including two districts untouched that Jones identified as illegal. In the House, Democrats argue that changes to some districts where a coalition of different nonwhite groups has elected Democrats are also illegal.
“You can’t obscure the truth,” said Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, a Stone Mountain Democrat. “The Republican proposal dilutes Black voting power just like the 2021 Republican proposal does.”