GA Senate passes map cementing GOP majority
Tuesday's vote was the first big step in a process that will reshape state politics for the next decade
Georgia State Senators on Tuesday passed a new map of that would cement the Republican majority in the 56-member chamber only a week after the map was first made available to voters.
The Republican-backed proposal passed the Senate on a party-line vote, with all 34 Republicans voting to approve the maps and all 21 Democrats opposing them.
It was the first major step in redistricting, a task that the Georgia legislature must undertake every decade in order to adjust political boundaries to account for population shifts.
Oftentimes, however, the party that controls state government will use the process to reconfigure district lines to benefit their own candidates, a tactic known as “gerrymandering.”
The new map is being perceived by analysts as a status quo map: it reduces the number of county splits, it does not pair any incumbents together and it will not significantly change the current partisan makeup of the chamber. In 2020, former President Donald Trump would have carried the median Senate district by 16 percentage points on this new map despite his narrow loss in the state.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the biggest takeaways from this new map.
Rural GA loses representation
Georgia is becoming increasingly metropolitan, and the new State Senate map reflects that: several rural districts now encompass more counties in order to make up for population losses — and some have even been dismantled entirely. Meanwhile, most of the districts in the Atlanta area have had to shed population.
Republican mapmakers dismantled the districts of two of their colleagues who are running for statewide office. State Sen. Tyler Harper’s South Georgia district has been stripped for parts as he makes a run for Agriculture Commissioner. State Sen. Bruce Thompson’s district, which included parts of Cherokee and Bartow counties, also no longer exists in its current form. Thompson is running for Labor Commissioner.
The decline in population — and representation — in rural Georgia could mean that the region will have fewer seats in the table when the legislature debates some of the region’s most important industries, specifically agriculture and hurricane relief.
Agriculture remains the largest industry in the state, but a legislature dominated by lawmakers from metro Atlanta might not be in as big of a rush to address the issue as their rural counterparts. This will be a very important thing to keep an eye on as the decade progresses.
“Hey, I'd be scared of me too.”
Republican state Senators appear to have their sights set on a district in the north Atlanta suburbs.
State Sen. Michelle Au, a Democrat from Johns Creek, currently represents one of the most diverse districts in the chamber. SD 48 (outlined in yellow) currently stretches from Johns Creek to Lawrenceville. Whites currently make up less than 40% of the district’s population.
But on the map that was approved Tuesday, Au’s district would shed its most Democratic precincts in exchange for whiter, Republican-leaning in precincts Forsyth County, a configuration aimed at imperiling Au’s re-election chances. The white population of SD48 would increase to around 50% on the new map.
"This map before us does not represent the Georgia of today," Au said of the new maps. "This map does not see Georgia for who we have become and this map is not what our voters asked for."
Some of Au’s Democratic colleagues have suggested that she is being unfairly targeted because she is the only Asian-American woman in the chamber. “Isn't it true that our current map that we are considering at this time specifically targets a woman and a woman of color to not be able to maintain her seat,” asked one Democratic State Senator during debates on Tuesday.
Facing unfamiliar territory, Au has yet to announce whether or not she will seek re-election in her new district.
GOP leaders defend maps
Top Republicans in the Georgia Senate have been quick to defend their new maps.
State Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Macon who chairs the Senate Reapportionment & Redistricting Committee, said that the maps maintain communities of interest and argued that the maps are similar to the ones that Democrats proposed a few weeks before the start of the redistricting session.
Kennedy also brushed off any criticism from his Democratic counterparts by reminding them of the gerrymandered maps that they themselves enacted in the early 2000s. From the AJC:
“Quite frankly the Republicans are not going to be lectured by Democrats who ran the system 20 years ago the way they did and come into this chamber and talk about how horribly unfair it is and what a challenge it is to democracy,” said Kennedy, a Macon Republican. “No, not at all. Let’s be honest. If you’re not consistent, you’re not going to be credible.”
The next steps
Like any bill, the Georgia Senate map must now be approved by the State House before being sent to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk. There is an unspoken agreement that House will sign off on any Senate redistricting plan, and vice versa. So don’t expect much drama in the House when Speaker David Ralston brings the Senate map to the floor.
The House is also expected to pass their own redistricting plan in the coming days. It appears that legislators are attempting to complete state legislative redistricting before beginning debate on congressional maps.
Republican leaders have said that they would like to complete the redistricting session before Thanksgiving. Given the fast pace at which things are moving, they are well on their way towards meeting that self-imposed goal.