Beaufort stays in Senate District 1, while remaining whole in House District 6 with Washington County and the northeast portion of Craven County. | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    Beaufort and Washington County's black populations isolated in the 77% white district.

    The N. C. Senate Redistricting Committee has released its proposed plan. Beaufort County remains in the First Senatorial District without being split. In fact none of the counties in the proposed district are split. Included are Beaufort, Hyde, Dare, Currituck, Camden, Pasquotank, Perquimans and Gates.

    The proposed Senate district would contain 187,327 or a deviation of -1.77% (3,383) from the ideal of 190,710. It would be 76.56% white, 20.69% black and 3.77% Hispanic. There are 61,298 registered Democrats, for 47.25%, 34,153 or 26.33% Republicans and 34,066 or 26.26% unaffiliated and less than 1% Libertarian.

    The counties in that district voted 54.92% for Perdue in 2010 and 45.61% for Pat McCrory while Libertarian Mike Munger polled only 2.47%. Obama got only 44.65% of the vote, to McCain's 54.49%. Elizabeth Dole defeated Kay Hagan in these counties 52.15% to 45.41%.
NC Senate Redistricting Map as of July 12, 2011.
    The House Redistricting Committee has also released its latest proposal and Beaufort would be whole in District 6, as would Washington County. The northeastern portion of Craven County, generally between the Beaufort county lline and the Neuse River would be included in District 6 as would a small sliver of south New Bern on the south side of the Neuse River around the Craven airport.

    The district would contain 83,117 residents, 3,655 or 4.6% more than the ideal of 79,462. It would be 70.58% white and 27.21% black with 4.19% Hispanic. There are 28,706, or 51.33% registered Democrats, 16,129 or 28.84% Republican and 11,042 (19.74%) unaffiliated and less than 1% Libertarian.

    The most significant political implication, other than being a predominately Democrat district is that it would put current representatives Bill Cook, R-Beaufort in the same district with Rep. Tim Spear, D-Washington County. Some observers believe this is the driving force behind the construction of this district in that Spear had previously won reelection easily as a Democrat. This puts him in a competitive district and creates a dilemma for Arthur Williams, D-Beaufort , who, if he choses to run, would oppose Spear in a primary unless either decided to run as something other than as a Democrat.

    While Democrats make up 51.33% of the registered voters, Perdue carried these "Voting Tabulation Districts" (VTD) roughly comparable to precincts, by 57.23% to Pat McCroy's 40.55% in 2010. Craven is Perdue's home county.

    McCain carried the VTD's that would comprise District 6 by 56.54 while Obama polled only 42.86%. Then Dole squeezed by Hagan 49.39% to 47.76% while Burr defeated Marshall 60.32% to 37.70%.

    So once the Democrat nominee is selected, it will be an interesting District. It does appear that it would have to be classified as a true "swing" district depending on the candidates running. In theory, if Spear were the Democrat he would be geographically isolated from the more densely populated areas of the district (Washington and Craven County).

    The first version of the House Voting Rights Districts had portions of Beaufort County along U. S. 264 west of Washington and most of the City of Washington in a predominately minority district with Pitt County. That is now gone and the minority population in Beaufort County will have almost no possibility of electing a minority candidate in the newly comprised District 6.

    Some observers also expect the Republican establishment in Raleigh to pour significant assistance behind Bill Cook, who has established a strong conservative Republican voting record and has the support of the Republican leadership in both the House and Senate. A long-time observer of Eastern North Carolina politics said: "I would expect the Republican party to pull out all the stops to re-elect Bill Cook...because of his legislative record in his first term and because this district would be an important swing district to insure not only Republican control of the House but by knocking out Spier to help achieve a veto-proof majority in the House, like they currently have in the Senate."

    You can get all the numbers by clicking here.

    Click here to go to the House map.

    Click here to review the Senate map.