North Carolina may have caught a break in getting out of the basement of state ratings courtesy of the North Carolina appellate court system, which decided Common Cause v. Lewis in favor of plaintiffs Common Cause. The complaint? That gerrymandering of districts by the GOP resulted in the denial of the rights of North Carolina citizens.
Or, as state Senator Jeff Jackson (D) put it on Facebook:
Which will no doubt lead to hellacious battles for seats, since district redrawing will happen again in a year or two, as I understand it.
Most remarkably, the GOP has announced it will not appeal. Rick Hasen on Election Law Blog speculates as to their strategy:
- They know they will lose in the Democratic-dominated state supreme court, and there is no viable path to federal court review.
- They would rather NOT get a holding from the state Supreme Court (this was a three-judge trial court ruling), which would have greater precedential value.
- They hope they would have a better chance to have their “nonpartisan” map accepted by the Supreme Court if they throw in the towel (that is, they are trying to avoid a worse court-drawn map).
- They will use this ruling to run against the Supreme Court and try for a state constitutional amendment to give them the right to engage in partisan gerrymandering after the 2020 census.
I’ll select reasons 2 and 3, with a reserve reason that they’ll try to use this decision as a spoon to stir up their base concerning the biased, liberal court system that’s against them. Given how it can be difficult to detect gerrymandering without a lot of data and advanced tools with which to analyze it, this will be an effective tactic unless the Democrats can penetrate the base with data and truth.
Another, more prosaic reason, might be financial resources. I am not privy to North Carolina GOP financial resources, but I do know that the Minnesota GOP was in some serious difficulties a few years ago. It’s quite possible that facing a Court possibly hostile to them, and having a strike or two against them already, they decided to make an economic decision and try to fight again another day. This is particularly true in the face of a competitive special election just days away in the 9th district, although outside money will lessen the drain. There is also a special election in the 3rd district, but I suspect it’s not considered competitive; the late incumbent, Rep Walter Jones (R-NC), didn’t face a Democrat in the 2018 mid-terms, and Trump won the district with a +23.6 margin.
