South Carolina Public Radio and Newsmax each carry the same AP feed about the SC review of a federal lower court opinion favoring NAACP contentions, (Interestingly each AP feed carry was headlined a bit differently: PubRadio: "Supreme Court to review South Carolina congressional map for discrimination against Black voters, Newsmax truncates: "Supreme Court to Review South Carolina Congressional Map").
Quoting the PubRadio item;
The justices said Monday they would review a lower-court ruling that found a coastal district running from Charleston to Hilton Head was intentionally redrawn to reduce the number of Democratic-leaning Black voters and to make it more likely Republican candidates would win.
The case probably will be argued in the fall, and decided in the run up to the 2024 elections, [...]
The [... lower court] said in its opinion in January that the districts violated the federal Voting Rights Act by unfairly diluting the power of Black voters.
[...] Republican Rep. Nancy Mace currently represents the 1st District. She narrowly beat Joe Cunningham in 2020 [... while after] the round of redistricting that took place following the 2020 census, [...] Mace won by 14 percentage points in November.
Republicans defending the map have said partisan considerations, the desire to maintain the 6-1 Republican edge in the state's congressional districts, drove their decision, not race.
Civil rights groups quickly sued, labeling the plan the Legislature adopted "perhaps the worst option of the available maps" for Black voters.
[italics added] In effect, the claim against being sued is that discrimination was not intended, politics was, while the NAACP asserts the effect was racially intrusive, where levels of intent is a secondary concern.
For further detail: ScotusBlog's
issue summary clearly shows that the appellant's contention is race was
not motivating map boundaries, and that boundaries were fair and
consistent with redistricting precedent and practices. (Briefing and other court papers are posted at that ScotusBlog link.)
Separate ScotusBlog reporting helps claify:
The South Carolina case began as part of a broader challenge, filed by the South Carolina NAACP and an individual voter, to three of the state’s seven congressional districts. A three-judge panel ruled in January that one of the districts was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the legislators had deliberately moved tens of thousands of Black voters to a different district, making the district a safe seat for Republicans. The panel ordered the state to draw a new map.
The legislators appealed to the Supreme Court. They stressed that the three-judge panel presumed that they had acted in bad faith, with a focus on race in drawing the district. But in fact, they emphasized, they had focused on politics – specifically, trying to ensure “a stronger Republican tilt” in the district. They cautioned that if the panel’s decision is allowed to stand, it would “place state legislatures in an impossible bind: it would improperly turn the purported racial effect . . . of pursuing political goals and traditional criteria into racial predominance across an entire district.”
The challengers urged the justices to leave the panel’s ruling in place. They told the court that “[w]hether partisanship was the Legislature’s ultimate goal (though Defendants disclaimed it at the time) or a post-hoc rationale, the panel correctly found that race was the gerrymander’s primary vehicle.” The legislators’ reliance on race “is impermissible even if mapmakers used race as a proxy for politics,” they insisted.
Clyburn activities as reported: ProPublica, Salon, and Portside each has posted a report authored by ProPublica, stating:
Facing the possibility of an unsafe district, South Carolina’s most powerful Democrat sent his aide to consult with the GOP on a redistricting plan that diluted Black voting strength and harmed his party’s chances of gaining seats in Congress.
The meeting was arranged in secret. On Nov. 19, 2021, the chief of staff for South Carolina’s Senate Judiciary Committee texted Dalton Tresvant, a key aide to Rep. Jim Clyburn, the state’s most powerful Democrat.
“Hey Dalton - Andy Fiffick here,” he said. “We wrapped up some morning things quicker than we thought, so if you want/can come earlier than 1:30 we’re available.”
The state legislature had begun the crucial task of redrawing voting district lines after the 2020 census. Even small changes in the lines can mean the difference between who wins office, who loses and which party holds power. As the process commenced, Clyburn had a problem: His once majority Black district had suffered a daunting exodus of residents since the last count. He wanted his seat to be made as safe as possible. Republicans understood the powerful Black Democrat could not be ignored, even though he came from the opposing party and had no official role in the state-level process. Fortunately for them, Clyburn, who is 82 and was recently reelected to his 16th term, had long ago made peace with the art of bartering.
Tresvant made his way to the grounds of the antebellum Statehouse, a relic still marked by cannon fire from Sherman’s army. The aide carried a hand-drawn map of Clyburn’s 6th District and presented it to Fiffick and the other Republican committee staffers who were working to reconfigure the state’s congressional boundaries.
Some of Tresvant’s proposals appealed to Republicans. The sketch added Black voters to Clyburn’s district while moving out some predominantly white precincts that leaned toward the GOP. The Republicans kept Tresvant’s map confidential as they worked through the redistricting process for the following two months. They looped in Tresvant again near the end, according to public records obtained by ProPublica.
The resulting map, finalized in January 2022, made Clyburn’s lock on power stronger than it might have been otherwise. A House of Representatives seat that Democrats held as recently as 2018 would become even more solid for the incumbent Republican. This came at a cost: Democrats now have virtually no shot of winning any congressional seat in South Carolina other than Clyburn’s, state political leaders on both sides of the aisle say.
As others attacked the Republican redistricting as an illegal racial gerrymander, Clyburn said nothing publicly. His role throughout the redistricting process has remained out of the public view, and he has denied any involvement in state legislative decisions. And while it’s been clear that Clyburn has been a key participant in past state redistricting, the extent of his role in the 2021 negotiations has not been previously examined. This account draws on public records, hundreds of pages of legal filings and interviews with dozens of South Carolina lawmakers and political experts from both sides of the aisle.
While redistricting fights are usually depicted as exercises in raw partisan power, the records and legal filings provide an inside look that reveals they can often involve self-interested input from incumbents and backroom horse trading between the two parties. With the House so closely divided today, every seat takes on more value.
South Carolina’s 2021 redistricting is now being challenged in federal court by the NAACP. The organization contends that Republicans deliberately moved Black voters into Clyburn’s district to solidify their party’s hold on the neighboring swing district, the 1st. A three-judge federal panel ruled in January that aspects of the state’s map were an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that must be corrected before any more elections in the 1st District are held.
But Clyburn’s role already has complicated the NAACP’s case. The judges dismissed some of the group’s contentions partly because Clyburn’s early requests drove some of the mapping changes. The Republicans are now appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, which has yet to decide if it wants to hear oral arguments in the case.
The redistricting process was the first South Carolina has undertaken since a series of Supreme Court rulings made it easier for states to redraw their districts. In 2013, the high court significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act, removing South Carolina and other Southern states, with their history of Black disenfranchisement, from Department of Justice oversight. And in 2019, the Supreme Court opened the door to more aggressive gerrymandering by barring federal court challenges on the basis of partisanship. But it can be illegal to draw lines based on race. Republican gerrymanders in Florida, Texas and several other states have recently been challenged for targeting Black voters.
Clyburn’s role highlights an underbelly of the redistricting process: In the South, Black Democratic incumbents have often worked with Republicans in power to achieve their own goals.
Few state Democrats will criticize Clyburn by name on the record. Bakari Sellers, 38, a former state Democratic lawmaker who once served on the redistricting committee, said, “There is a very unholy alliance between many Black legislators and their Republican counterparts in the redistricting process.” Clyburn’s district “is probably one of the best examples.” Moving that many Black voters into Clyburn’s district meant “we eliminate a chance to win” in other districts, he said.
“I’m not saying that we could win, but I’m saying we could be competitive, and people of color, those poor people, those individuals who have been crying out for so long, would have a voice,” Sellers said.
In an interview, Clyburn said the redistricting plan signed by the Republican governor in early 2022 proves he did not get all that he wanted, mainly because his district lost its majority Black status. On questions about Tresvant’s work, a Clyburn spokesperson acknowledged that the office had “engaged in discussions regarding the boundaries of the 6th Congressional District by responding to inquiries” but did not answer detailed follow-up questions about his role. Tresvant did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
[...] Clyburn’s district, the 6th, itself resulted from what political experts would later describe as a racial gerrymander. After the 1990 census, a federal court imposed a plan that gave South Carolina’s Black population, then about a third of the state, a fair shot at electing a member of Congress. It hadn’t done so since 1897.
The 6th’s boundaries brought in Black people from across the state to create a crescent-shaped district. Black people made up almost 6 in 10 residents. National Democratic Party strategist Bill Carrick, then a South Carolina campaign consultant, said race guided the GOP. “It was like the Republicans decided, ‘Let’s see how many African Americans we can put into one district — instead of our own,’” he said.
This redistricting technique is known as “packing.” Packing can be a double-edged sword, giving underrepresented communities a voice but also limiting them to one — and only one — member of Congress. Clyburn, the first Black person in modern times to head a South Carolina state agency, won the seat in 1992. He rose to prominence in Washington, climbing to the post of House majority whip by 2007. His 2020 endorsement helped Joe Biden seal the Democratic presidential nomination, and he was recently named a co-chair of Biden’s 2024 campaign.
Clyburn’s stature within the state was unparalleled. He had learned early in his career the value of backroom negotiations, at first dealing with staunch segregationists running the state government. His role in Washington required negotiating with GOP leaders to pass legislation though he would publicly criticize them when they rejected Democrat’s initiatives, like new voting rights proposals.
He is best known back home for delivering federal money. Clyburn’s name is emblazoned on taxpayer-funded structures all over the state, including a Medical University of South Carolina research center and an “intermodal transportation center” (otherwise known as a bus station) in his hometown, Sumter.
Clyburn also was willing to help local Republicans. When the family business of George “Chip” Campsen, a top GOP state leader, had a dispute with the National Park Service over how much it owed the federal government, Clyburn co-sponsored a Republican lawmaker’s bill to pressure the service into mediation. The parties then settled in 2002 on favorable terms to the Campsen family company. Clyburn’s office said he did nothing improper. (Campsen did not respond to a question about the deal.)
[...] Clyburn’s district had lost about 85,000 people. Each new district had to be drawn to represent 731,203 people. One obvious place to look for additional constituents would be the 1st District, just to the southeast along the coast. That district was overpopulated by almost 88,000. The First District was the last remaining swing district, with a history of tight races. In 2018, a Democrat had won by about 4,000 votes. Two years later, a Republican, Nancy Mace, won it by about 5,000. If the GOP could remove enough Black or Democratic voters from that district, it could give the party a lock on the seat.
The map Clyburn’s aide Tresvant had quietly brought to the GOP at the beginning of the 2021 process included suggestions that would help both Clyburn and the Republicans. His map gave his boss a larger portion of heavily Democratic Charleston County, drawing from Mace’s district. Clyburn’s suggested lines reflected a move of about 77,000 new people to his district, according to an expert who analyzed the maps for ProPublica.
[map omitted]
Not every request of his was about race. Clyburn also sought to move an additional 29,000 people into his district from Berkeley County, which he split with Mace. Berkeley is a fast-growing area, adding white voters, but is also home to some of the state’s largest employers.
Clyburn didn’t only suggest adding Democratic voters. He was also willing to give up pockets of his district where elections were trending Republican. One such proposal would help Republicans seal control of the 1st. Clyburn suggested giving up about 4,600 people in Jasper County, an area that was trending Republican as white Northern retirees relocated there.
During the NAACP’s trial, some Republican senate aides said they did not rely on Clyburn’s map. But the staffer for Senate Republicans who was chiefly responsible for redrawing the lines testified that he used it as a starting point. And then the GOP went further. As the redistricting plan made its way through the legislature, Republicans further solidified their hold on the 1st District. Clyburn monitored their progress in calls to Democratic allies, according to two state senators who spoke with him during the period.
A plan proposed by Campsen, the state senator whose family company Clyburn helped years earlier, moved almost all of Charleston County’s Black and Democrat-leaning precincts to Clyburn. The shift gave Clyburn the city of Charleston, where he had deep connections, and consolidated the county’s major colleges and universities into his district, a political plus. The new borders for Clyburn gave him a number of small pockets of Black voters, including about 1,500 in Lincolnville, which juts out of the election map like an old-fashioned door key. “The congressman was hoping to get Lincolnville years and years ago” and finally succeeded in 2022, said the town’s mayor, Enoch Dickerson.
As a result of Campsen’s plan, the Black voting-age population of the 1st District fell to just over 17%, the lowest in the state. In the 2022 election, Mace beat her Democratic opponent by about 38,000 votes — a 14 percentage point landslide, up from her 1 percentage point in the previous election.
Clyburn said nothing publicly as some Democrats in Charleston County, led by former Rep. Joe Cunningham, protested Campsen’s plan. On the Senate floor, Campsen praised Clyburn and said Charleston County would be well served by having both Clyburn and Mace looking out for its interests.
“Jim Clyburn has more influence with the Biden administration perhaps than anyone in the nation,” Campsen said.
As Clyburn monitored the debate, Fiffick kept Tresvant in the loop, texting him again on Jan. 14, 2022, to share a link to the redistricting webpage. It’s unclear why Fiffick sent it.
Campsen’s plan was approved by the legislature and signed by the governor Jan. 26, 2022.
In the end, Clyburn didn’t get everything he wanted. Republicans moved all of rapidly growing Berkeley County to the 1st District. The percentage of Black voters in his district has dipped below 50%, the threshold he long sought to preserve.
The congressman soon got to work serving his constituents. Shortly afterward, Clyburn had Lincolnville added to a federal program that protects historic stops along the Gullah Geechee trail. In the 2022 election, Clyburn won 62% of the vote, lower than the 68% he won in 2020 but comfortable nonetheless.
Consequences
Soon after the new redistricting plan went into effect, the NAACP pressed ahead with its lawsuit against state Republican leaders, charging that many congressional mapping decisions were based predominantly on race. The case dealt with more than just the changes in Mace’s district that had an impact on Clyburn.
A three-judge federal appeals panel ruled that the plan’s division of the 1st and 6th districts was an unlawful racial gerrymander aimed at creating “a stronger Republican tilt” in Mace’s district. The court said that the movement of about 30,000 Black voters into Clyburn’s district was “effectively impossible” without racial gerrymandering.
But the court knocked down some of the NAACP’s claims. In several cases, it said, Clyburn had requested the mapping changes. The NAACP declined to comment.
If the court orders that the map be redrawn, it could have ripple effects on Clyburn’s district and other parts of the state. Although a Republican challenger gained ground on him in 2022, he’s considered a shoo-in if he chooses to seek reelection, no matter how the lines are drawn.Taiwan Scott, who lives in Mace’s district and is the lead plaintiff in the NAACP lawsuit, said racial gerrymandering has deprived Black voters of fair congressional representation. A small businessman in Hilton Head, Scott said Black people are showing disapproval by declining to vote.
“It is bigger than myself. It’s systemic,” he said.
ProPublica
included this photo of Plaintiff Scott. Opinion here, the man is a
newer generation of black man than Clyburn, and that changing of the
guard is a net positive for the State and nation.
Nearly
complete quoting is used, because the report is factual and detailed,
and while the Crabgrass headline opines, facts are most important and
where circumstantial conclusions can be drawn; proper vs. improper
conduct apart from whether any law was breached, being ultimate
circumstantial inferences from as full a factual record as available.
Below, a self-explanatory screen capture from here. Two eighty year olds.
That pair of octagenarians together bear responsibility for "the Harris problem," where from the range of websearch returns,
it appears there is much fretting among Democrats that Harris has not
overwhelmed voters with her persona while having approval ratings lower
than Biden's. How true of a problem exists can be debated, yet, Biden
had the opportunity before the 2020 ticket was set to have chosen a
different black woman after committing to naming a block woman to the
second ticket spot. Barbara Lee comes to mind, from California, as is
Harris. Harris was a Senator a former prosecutor, and by marriage had
strong Hollywood ties. Crabgrass opinion is that with Biden such a
conservative a better ticket balance was possible.
BOTTOM LINE: The dislike at Crabgrass toward Clyburn is not because he is black, but because he is three disliked things. He is: selfish as the reporting shows, conservative (including anti-Bernie), and successfully pushy-powerful toward what Crabgrass views as bad results. What is there to like?
...................................
UPDATE: Two items opining over "the Harris problem" end up differing in their endings, with each worth reading; here and here. Also of interest, this op-ed.
All three items seem to conclude, the ticket is set, Biden at his age could fail to finish a second term, and the chips will fall as they do. Not particularly insightful, but seemingly correct.