Scoop: Cobb commissioner to announce run for Congress next week
Democrat Richardson launches congressional run as district lines remain unclear
The ongoing legal and political uncertainty surrounding the contours of Georgia’s voting districts isn’t stopping a Cobb County commissioner from kicking off a run for Congress.
Democrat Jerica Richardson is set to announce next week she will be running for the 6th congressional district, which serves suburban and exurban counties north of Atlanta and is currently held by Republican U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick.
A new Richardson congressional campaign account has surfaced on Instagram and posted Thursday that she is making a “big announcement” in six days. And a fundraising page says she will be hosting a campaign kickoff next Wednesday at the Avalon, an upscale neighborhood in Alpharetta.
Richardson was first elected to the Cobb County commission in 2020, winning a close race in a competitive East Cobb district and handing her a party a historic majority on the five-member panel.
But her term on the commission has been dominated by a standoff with state Republicans. In response to the county commission’s new Democratic majority, GOP state legislators passed a new redistricting plan that removed Richardson as a resident of her district, which would have forced her to leave office before the end of her four-year term.
She and her Democratic colleagues then invoked a rarely-used legal theory to essentially overrule state lawmakers and pass a map of their own, one where Richardson remains a resident of the district she represents. The entire dispute is currently being argued in court after the state sued to throw out the county’s map and put theirs back in place.
Richardson, who could not be reached for comment, will now forgo a run for a second term on the county commission and instead mount a run for Congress.
But she is only jumping from one legal battle to another.
Once a stomping ground of Georgia’s Republican politics, the 6th district emerged as one of the country’s most competitive districts over the last decade. Fueled in part by the party’s decline in suburban areas, what were once double-digit Republican victories in the district were reduced to single digits and even Democratic wins by the end of the decade. The 6th district also became the site of some of the country’s most high-profile congressional races.
Republican state lawmakers used the recent round of redistricting to wrest the 6th district back into their column by stretching it into more exurban and rural counties north of GA-400 such as Cherokee and Forsyth, thereby restoring it to its Republican ancestry. McCormick, an emergency room physician, easily won the seat back for his party in the 2022 elections.
But a lawsuit has been filed to overturn Georgia’s congressional and state legislative maps, with civil rights groups alleging that Republican lawmakers drew boundaries that put voters of color at an unfair disadvantage. They are arguing that Black Georgians have powered the state’s population surge and that there should be more districts where they comprise of voting-age majorities.
Arguments in that case began this week. After a recent Supreme Court ruling upholding key parts of the Voting Rights Act, many legal and political observers are expecting Georgia’s voting maps to be struck down. The judge hearing the case has also previously suggested that the GOP’s maps may be unconstitutional.
In other words, we could have an entirely new set of voting maps just in time for the 2024 election — which means that the 6th District could look completely different between now and November 2024.
What is unclear, however, is who exactly will be drawing those new maps. In most cases like these, the judge either gives the legislature the chance to draw a new map or refers the entire matter to an outside party, also known as a special master.
As all of this plays out in court, it’s possible that Richardson is jumping into murkier waters with her congressional run. The court process and the expected appeals could take several months and quite possibly make its way before the U.S. Supreme Court, which could carry all of this uncertainty into the new year.
Not to mention, if the maps are in fact redrawn, a new majority-Black district in Atlanta is surely to attract several ambitious candidates. After all, it’s not every day a new district is drawn under a court order. Richardson might be attempting to clear the field by launching her campaign this early, but will it pay off?
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