Here’s how the NYT recorded this momentous moment at our State House.
Well, the madness has passed us by, for now. Or at least that wave of it has.
I mentioned yesterday that Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey was expected to oppose Trump’s plan to usurp (for his own purposes, as is his wont) a key responsibility of our state Legislature — drawing election maps. And he stood up and did so in fine style:
“If we don’t consider the concerns of South Carolina, there is no one left,” Massey said. “We are the last lines. I have too much Southern blood in me to surrender.”
Amen to that, brother Shane. It’s time that someone in this state stood up for for a States’ right that matters, and is entirely justified. Something good, instead of, you know, what our ancestors stood up for that other time.
Enough Republicans stood up with him to defeat the effort to eliminate the sole Democratic member member of South Carolina’s congressional delegation, Jim Clyburn.
These are the other four:
- Sean Bennett, R-Summerville
- Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms
- Tom Davis, R-Beaufort
- Greg Hembree, R-Little River
Good for Tom Davis and the rest.
Those were the votes that took courage. Of course, they would have accomplished nothing if the Democrats hadn’t all been voting against it. The Dems celebrated appropriately after:
South Carolina Senate Democrats welcome today’s defeat of the sine die resolution that would have allowed the legislature to return for a politically motivated special session on congressional redistricting.
“Today’s vote sends a clear message that South Carolina should not be dragged into another unnecessary and divisive redistricting battle driven by Washington insiders,” said Senate Democratic Leader Brad Hutto. “South Carolinians rejected a politically motivated power grab orchestrated by a White House shaped by perpetually online New York City activists with little understanding of South Carolina. The people of this state expect us to focus on real issues affecting their daily lives, not carry out an outside political agenda.”
Senate Democrats will continue fighting for fair representation, transparency, and a government focused on the needs of South Carolina families rather than national political gamesmanship.
Brad Hutto was also quoted in The State as saying:
“We just don’t take documents from Washington and say ‘thank you, sir. Thank you, ma’am.’ We are the deliberative body,” Hutto said.
No, we don’t. I was afraid we might be, that we might do what just happened in Tennessee, but for now South Carolina did the right thing. It’s nice to be able to say that.
Here’s video of Massey’s speech. I haven’t watched it yet myself, but I look forward to doing so….
What has Jim Clyburn accomplished in his decades of tenure as the token black representative? What has he delivered specifically for the black voters in South Carolina? Aside from the multi million dollar footbridge over I277 that in my 30 years here and hundreds of trips downtown, I’ve never seen a single person walking on it.
I’m opposed to drawing any districts based on race. All districts should be created wherever possible with adjoining counties. This would be a perfect application of AI and not very difficult. Remove the politics from district boundaries and we wouldn’t have these silly battles by legislators on both sides.
Well, you and I agree on one thing. I’m opposed to drawing districts base on race, too. But both parties do it, and the Republicans did it in this case because they wanted all the other districts to be as white as possible.
As for what Clyburn has accomplished or is accomplishing, sign up for his newsletter and find out…
Oh, and as for AI drawing the lines….
That might actually be a way to do it — if we could pry the process of from the greedy fingers of the lawmakers.
A funny thing about that proposed new district map I shared on the previous post: My first reaction to it was that, in a vacuum, it looked better than most maps legislatures come up with. Here it is again:
No salamander shape. You have a normal-looking district that includes — in their entirety — all the counties we speak of as the Pee Dee (plus Lancaster, Kershaw and Sumter, which I don’t really think of as Pee Dee, but you have to assemble the numbers for a district)! Imagine. An actual, identifiable region of South Carolina included in one congressional district. Which is the way districts should be drawn — entire communities together, not divided up according to their skin color or voting habits.
I heard at one point that somebody at the White House was messing with AI trying to dictate new maps to South Carolina. Maybe this was one of those; I don’t know.
But as I said, it looked very good to the Democrat who told me about it. And I agreed. A very fair district, not drawn to elect one political party or accomplish any sort of ethnic cleansing.
Of course, I would have been shocked if it had looked like that when it was passed, since the GOP-controlled Legislature would choose its final form.
The irony here is that the point of this exercise — and efforts in other states — is to secure Trump’s political future by electing mostly Republicans to the House. This map would not do that.
So maybe I’m being too cynical here. Maybe there’s an idealist in the White House trying to inject actual fairness to this highly irregular (wrong time of the decade) reapportionment effort. Maybe someone who’s actually trying undermine Trump and build a House that might rise up and impeach him again — among other things.
But I kind of doubt that. This seems more like something someone who doesn’t understand what’s going on would do… someone who (and I’ve run into such people in recent days) look at Clyburn’s crazy, gerrymandered district and thing this was some nefarious thing accomplished those nasty Democrats and black folks trying to force South Carolina to have a black congressman.
But the opposite is the case. This is the 6th district Republicans wanted, because it gets the black voters out of “their” districts, and ensures them 6 out of 7 members of the House delegation will be Republican.
If they blow that up, they are far less likely to be so dominant. Look at the results of the last normal presidential election in South Carolina — 2020 (I don’t think anyone would have called 2024 “normal”). Trump won 55.11% of the vote to Biden’s 43.43%.
Not that it would work out exactly the same, but based on that you would expect the state’s U.S. House delegation to be just over 55 percent, based on actual voters and their preferences.
But instead, the GOP has a firm grip on more than 85 percent of the delegation — 6 out of 7.
That’s because of the way they drew Clyburn’s district…
Oh, and if you want to use 2024 numbers — not very fair to the Democrats, given who their candidate was and what brutal circumstances under which her 100-day campaign operated — fine.
Then, you’d say 58.23% prefer Republicans. But they still control more than 85 percent of the congressional districts…
A momentary respite I’m afraid, since our esteemed governor seems sure to call a special session to focus on redistricting.
Why does Jim Clyburn’s district include the black areas of Columbia? All of Columbia, nope, just the black neighborhoods.
Because that’s the way the Republicans drew it back in the early ”90s. The whole point, for them, was to cram as many black voters as possible into this one district so that ALL of the other districts would be super-white.
The Black Caucus went along because they got a FEW majority-minority districts in the Legislature, in exchange for all the other districts being whiter, and therefore safer for Republicans.
As for the congressional district, I remember at the first editorial board meeting with Jim Clyburn that we had after I joined the editorial board in 1994, Clyburn said something to us along the lines of he really didn’t need his district to be THIS black. But that’s the way the Republicans wanted it.
That’s thing (among so very, very many) these Trumpistas don’t understand. South Carolina is 30-percent black. Those voters have to be SOMEWHERE. The current plan maximizes Republican control of the congressional delegation. You go messing with it, you’re likely to see TWO Democrats in the delegation instead of just one. As I said, that Democrat was looking forward to running in that new 6th district they had drawn.
Despite my outrage at what these dummies are trying to do — this is something that goes beyond the everyday gerrymandering that both parties love when they can do it — it would be entertaining to see what happens if they do it…