Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal. The author of this post is Nick Craig.
North Carolina lawmakers met in Raleigh on Monday to review newly proposed congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
The process began last week when the Republican-led General Assembly proposed changes to North Carolina's 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts and opened a public comment period for citizens to share their feedback.
Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, chair of the Senate Elections Committee, didn't mince any words as he walked his colleagues through the proposed congressional map.
"The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular," said Hise.
"Draw a new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to the North Carolina Congressional delegation. Republicans hold a razor-thin margin in the United States House of Representatives, and if Democrats flip four seats in the upcoming midterm elections, they will take control of the House and torpedo President Trump's agenda."
He pointed to efforts in Democratic-run states like California as the reason for North Carolina's redraw.
"This is a political arms race that Republicans did not start. Democrat-controlled states across the country adopted far more aggressive gerrymanders that systematically diluted Republican votes," Hise told the committee.
"To take an example from last week alone, Barack Obama was featured in an ad campaign endorsing California Gov. Gavin Newsom's efforts to double down on California's already severe political gerrymander. President Trump has called on Republican-controlled states across the country to fight fire with fire. This map answers that call."
North Carolina's 14 US House seats are currently split 10-4 in favor of Republicans with just one of the districts being considered a
"toss-up." Under the new proposal, 11 districts would lean Republican, with just three leaning Democratic.
Sen. Sydney Batch, D-Wake, questioned whether lawmakers drawing the new map had been in contact with President Trump or the White House. Hise replied that he had
"no direct communication with the White House or others." However, he did acknowledge there has been a lot of public commentary including from Trump who endorsed the map on his Truth Social platform on Friday thanking Republican lawmakers in North Carolina.
Democratic Senators and members of the public during the public comment period pressed Hise on whether racial data was used in drawing the new map. Hise denied the claim, saying that using such data would likely make the map illegal.
"Absolutely no racial data was used in the creation of this map. I stood before this committee two years ago and talked about our decision not to include racial data in the congressional and legislative plans," Hise said.
"The predominant use of race to draw districts violates the US Constitution, unless doing so serves a compelling government interest. In other words, if the legislature draws districts predominantly based upon race without a compelling interest, those districts would be declared illegal racial gerrymanders. As for the Voting Rights Act, in order for the predominant use of race to be justified under Section 2, there must be a strong basis and evidence of three Gingles preconditions. Even assuming the presence of three Gingles preconditions, the use of race to draw districts must also be supported by the totality of circumstances. This was true then and is true now. In the absence of any evidence of the three Gingles preconditions, the chairs elected not to use race in the drawing of these proposed districts."
The Senate Elections Committee approved the new map Monday morning after nearly two hours of debate. Later that afternoon, the full North Carolina Senate voted 25-20 to adopt the plan, a third reading will take place on Tuesday. After the third reading, the map will move to the NC House for consideration. Unlike most legislation, redistricting maps cannot be vetoed or blocked by the governor.
After the Senate vote Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham said in a press release,
"The Democrats want to do everything they can to block President Trump's America First Agenda. North Carolinians support President Trump and it's incumbent on us to fight back against all attempts to defeat the will of the people of North Carolina as expressed in the 2024 presidential election."
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