NC joins the national redistricting fight (10-14-2025--Hour1)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. Pete Calendar here and well, you know, overnight, well not overnight, late yesterday, the North Carolina General Assembly leaders, the Speaker of the House, and the President pro tempore or however that's pronounced. I still don't know. And I one time did ask Senator Phil Berger how he pronounces it, and he just said pro temp So I guess anyway, So Phil Berger and Destin Hall announced that they would be when the legislature comes back into session, they are going to draw a new map for the fourteen congressional seats, and by all indications, all the reporting seems to be that they're going to try to ring out one more Republican seat. Believe we've got there are what fourteen seats eleven of the noor No. Ten of them are held by Republicans, four held by Democrats, So this would if they are able to do it, they would draw eleven seats for Republicans and three for Democrats, and the likely target is District one, current Democrat incumbent Don Davis in that seat. Let me bring on, as we always do on Tuesdays at noon. It is Andrew Dunn. He is a contributing columnist over at the Charlotte Observer but also the publisher of long Leaf Politics. You can head on over there to longleafpol dot com read his work. Subscribe Andrew. How are you today, sir, Oh. I'm doing well. Always good to be with you. So you had a piece that hit the Observer on the redrawing of the maps. When did you have time to write this bad boy up? Yeah? That was my project this morning. I thought you had a really good summation of the situation just then. My view on this is when I look at something like this, I think about what's the upside here versus what's the downside here? You know, how good could this be versus how bad could it possibly be? I don't know about you. I'm a pretty conservative investor. I don't do the crypto or the DraftKings or anything like that. I like bets that have a lot of upside and just a little bit of downside, you know, low risk, high reward. So wait, the headline here is the headline is conservative? Is conservative? Is that the Is that the headline on that? Yeah? Yeah, there you go. But this, I think, I think redrawing these congressional maps are the opposite. I view this as a low upside, high potential downside bet to make here. You know, the upside is very limited, right, so we could potentially go from a ten to four map to an eleven to three map. You know, you get one more congressional Republican, which is a good thing. Does it move the needle a whole lot? No? And you know, you make President Donald Trump pathy, which I think is another good thing, but it can be sickle, and I don't know how tangible the benefits there are. On the downside, I think the best likelihood is that nothing really bad would happen. I think voters tend to not get too in the weeds and redistrict thing. They don't care all that much, So I think the most likely scenario is that everything's fine and nothing bad happened. But there is a small but not completely irrelevant, downside risk that this feeds into a broader narrative that makes it harder for Republicans in elections down the line, especially looking at the judicial race elections in twenty twenty eight. All right, so let me go over some of the upside. You said it was limited. What about the makeup of the US House of Representatives? Right, we got because all this started, Texas did its mid decade or a mid decade redistricting, drawing more districts for Republicans. They cite the use of non citizens counted in the last census. There were also a bunch of problems with the counting in the census that we found out afterwards, where red states. I think there were five of the six states that were undercounted were Republican and something like five of the six states were over counted were Democrats. So there is a belief that Democrats have about a dozen seats too many because of illegal immigrants and also the census problems from twenty twenty. So Texas started it. California is now going to a ballot referendum to ask its voters, Hey, can we abandon this constitutional method that we were using with this independent redistricting commission which I won't even get into that because I don't believe it to be independent, which has drawn Republicans basically out of existence in California as part of their delegation. So California is looking to retaliate Illinois looking to retaliate We had the Maryland maps, and so there is a power play going on across the country to try to secure more seats in the House, right, and so against that backdrop, and if Democrats are successful in out jerrymandering Republicans, then we end up with impeachments, subpoenas, investigations, the blocking of the Trump agenda for the final two years. Right, all of those could be pretty serious downsides if you end up losing the House by a single congressional seat, if North Carolina doesn't do it. So what do you say to that? Yeah, I mean you raise good points, and I don't have a problem with partisan jerry pandering per se. I think in North Carolina Republicans have done a pretty good job at drawing the maps. I think that they give Republicans an advantage, which is totally their prerogative to do. But we don't see any of those crazy, you know, really crazy districts that we had under Democrats in the two thousands. I'm thinking of District twelve, which looked like a snake. I mean, that was just absolutely insane. So what my concern is here is trying to kind of go that extra step. So I think we have pretty good maps. We finally reached equilibrium, most of the court cases have been settled. We're finally ready after two decades of never ending legal trouble to finally be in a spot where we have pretty good maps and no real risk to them. Is it worth going that extra step and trying to squeeze out one more And I just don't see it as worth It. Is the juice worth the squeeze, That's what I always ask myself. Is the juice worth the squeeze? And sounds like you're saying, no, it is not worth the squeeze for the legislature. But yeah, that's what I'm saying. And I also, I don't know, you know, I think that there could probably be a way to you know, take a little bit out of District three. Greg Murphy's district put it in district one kind of shift of voters around a little bit to accomplish that. But I also know that once you start moving lines, then a lot more lines start moving. You know, there's a lot of requirements around equal popular If I'm a sitting congress person, I certainly don't want these lines redrawn and not know what my district is going to be. Yeah, and Andy Jackson over at the John Locke Foundation was talking about he was quoted in a piece of Carolina Journal talking about the so called dummy mander, where you think you're doing like you think you're drawing this line in order to give yourself the upper hand. And then just what I try to tell people also on all these redistrict things is that populations change, you know, districts, the makeup of the district changes over time, and so the lines, if you keep fighting and keep suing over the lines, you keep giving them the chance to redraw them, they stay more current. But sometimes you draw the lines and you think you're drawing it to your benefit, and it turns out in one or two cycles, no, you've drawn yourself out of power basically, which I kind of think is what democrats did back in twenty ten. Yeah, probably so. And you know, I think this district district won the Don Davis district. It desperately wants to be a red district. Yeah, I was going back through some of the data of previous elections. I mean it. Voted for Ted Budd in twenty twenty two. I think, you know, with the right campaign, with the right candidate, with the right money investment, this district wants to be a Republican health seat as it is today. Yeah. Well, and the Speaker of the House I talked with him back in August about this and he said the same thing. He said, it looks like District one they have a pretty good shot to win anyway. So at that time he was like, we. Probably are happy with our maps, but he left the door open to doing this exact thing, so we shall see real quick. You had a piece also over at long Leaf Politics which I was very interested to read, and we can't go over all of it, but it's a very lengthy piece. The headline is why County GOP groups have so much drama, And this is one of the things, like I tend not to wade into these local part party fracases. Frack Eye frank Eye. I don't know what you'd call that, but I tend not to do it because I don't know the personalities. I don't know there's personal history, people have personal slights that you are not aware of as like a reporter or a talk host or whatever. But you make the point that this is sort of the nature of the party operations, and the key here is that if you show up, you can actually make a difference in the way a local party goes. No, yeah, that's exactly right. I try to generally stay out of these disputes as well, because they are very deeply personal and you have to know a lot of the backstory and the personalities involved to really get a handle on it. But I was thinking about it. You know, from time to time, some of these disputes will make the news, and that's what we had over in Cumberland County. There was kind of a dueling assault allegations, so it made the news, and so I wanted to weigh in at least a little bit. And you know what, on reflection, why I think county partisan groups and I focus on Republicans because that's my area of concern, But you see it with Democrats as well, is that these county party groups kind of fall right in the sweet spot for drama. They're local enough where everybody's in the same building talking with each other, so they're personal and they're unavoidable, but they're also important enough for them to have real repercussions. You know, these county parties do have actual power, they do actually matter. You know, if a General Assembly member leads in the middle of their term, it's a county party that gets to decide who's going to fill that seat. And it's the county party that's setting up door knocking campaigns, that's setting up pole observers all that sort of thing. So the confluence of those two factors makes this kind of unavoidable. Yeah, but there's this tension as well. You define it as pragmatism versus idealism, electability versus purity, and I've seen this play out as well. You end up, you know, they're not a real Republican, they're a rhino because they're two establishment and they're like, well, no, we're trying to win the general and well, no, you're not true to the you know, the the ideology of republicanism, and and that tension is I think always going to be there, and I would imagine it's probably more acute in areas that are more heavily dominated by the one party. You would think that. I actually think it's the opposite. Really think in areas that are heavily read, you get more the disputes are more on, you know, in group versus out group, like this is my thing, the county party is my thing. I don't want somebody else coming and taking over. Everybody kind of believes the same things. In those situations, I think it's actually more in more split counties where you have the more concern, you know, the grassroots versus the establishment, the people that want to win the elections and want to put forward electable candidates versus people who really want purity. No, that makes sense, Yeah, because if you got it would empower it would empower the electability argument if you're in a more divided county. That does make sense exactly. Andrew Dunn always appreciate your time, sir. Check him out long Leaf Politics, long leafpol dot com. He's got a piece up today as well at The Charlotte Observer, where he is a contributing columnist. Appreciate your time, as always, Andrew thanks. Sir, Yes, sir, thank you, all right, take care. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. 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Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Already, So the General Assembly press release from the leaders of the House and the Senate headlined General Assembly heeds President Trump's call to thwart blue state attempts to take Congress. Okay, that is the narrative that Republicans are using. Obviously, Democrats are rejecting this narrative because they don't jerrymander as we all know. That's that's not at all what Democrats do. They didn't do it in California, or Maryland, or Illinois, all of the states think or New York, and then they got smacked down by the courts in New York of all places. So, yes, the Republicans are responding to the efforts by California and Illinois to try to jerrymander. More. Maryland was never really a threat, although there was, you know, a couple members of the Maryland delegation and the governor and they were like, well, we're gonna look at Jerry manderin two and it's like, did you already drew every single Republican out of a district? There's none left in Maryland? Like what, how could you get more jerrymandered Illinois particularly egregious, one of the worst gerrymandered states in the country. But JB. Pritzker has this. Dream of being, you know, the second largest president ever after Taft, and so he's he's been trying to push this as well in his state. And what it comes down to is control of the Congress. Now, Republicans are making the argument that, yes, we are drawing new districts in Texas, and we're doing so because, as I mentioned, the counting of non citizens in the census and the fact that the twenty twenty census had problems with the counts, and I think, if memory serves, there were like four teen states that the Census Bureau recognized as as error ridden counts, and half of them were overcounts, half of them were undercounts, roughly, and virtually every single one of the over counted states were Democrat states, and virtually every single one of the undercounted states were Republican states, including Texas. So yeah, the Republicans actually do have a legitimate grievance when it comes to control of the House of Representatives. Based on the census count, they actually have a legitimate grievance. And so they are saying in Texas, well, we're going to take steps to address this because we should have more seats. The Republican Party should have more seats in the House. Democrats do not want to touch this argument, which is why they're arguing about democracy. I mean, to be fair, they argue. That in like literally every issue, So they don't want to touch this argument. So they're just saying, you're trying to disenfranchise and Jerry Mander and all. This. The problem that they are having, and I'm going to give you some examples, the problem they're having is that they're in the process of doing the very same thing. So how do you make an argument against this thing that you yourself are doing right now, aren't you then disenfranchising as well? Of course you are. I know it's different when Democrats do it. So when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's and before he died, my mom and my dad took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I participate in the annual Walk to end Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year, and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth, that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash walk and then you can search for my team name Pete's Pack. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash walk for all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me? For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments. This is why we walk. So In Andrew Dunn's piece his op ed at the Charlotte Observer, we talked a bit about it when we had him on. In the first segment, the target appears to be District one in North Carolina, and he writes that the Republican majority is not as sturdy as it looks. Again, there are fourteen congressional seats. These are allocated or apportioned based on population counts. The population counts are based on the census that's done every ten years, and basically you take the entire American population, which also includes the counting of non citizens. For some reason. Well, I know the argument there. The argument is that, well, they live in these areas, and so there are just like the district counts, the population counts they matter for the disbursement of federal money, and so if you're funding some sort I know they say that the illegal aliens aren't getting any kind of you know, public subsidies or any welfare or anything like that, although that's not true they are, but whatever like they That's the argument is that, you know, if you've got a certain population size, that should dictate the grants. I disagree with this argument. I do not find that to be persuasive. I find it to act as a magnet and an encouragement for the very kinds of scoff lawish behavior that we have seen from democrats in these states and cities where they say we are sanctuary jurisdictions, and so they use it to beef up their population counts. So you take the entire population and then you divide it by four hundred and thirty five, because that's how many seats are in the House, and there are arguments to expand the number of House seats in order to make the district smaller. But regardless, you have the total count of the population divided by four thirty five, and what you end up with is the target population for. Each district. And right now, that number, if memory serves, is somewhere around eight hundred thousand people per congressional district. Now there are some states that don't even have eight hundred thousand people. What of them, Well, you get one House member, you have two US Senators and one member of the House, like that's it. You get one congressional or one representative in the House because technically Senate is also congress So anyway, but in North Carolina, our population of now more than ten million people, we get fourteen seats, each district being the same size about eight hundred thousand people. Okay, so we have fourteen of these seats. Republicans drew the maps to give Republicans ten of the fourteen seats currently four Democrat seats. One of those district one is seen as the most flippable seat, and as Andrew Dunn outlines here, a bear Democratic majority in the state House is reachable by flipping twelve Republican held districts. This is the state legislature now, I should say, because what he's concerned is the impact it's going to have from a messaging standpoint on the legislative races. And he's saying that the Republican majorities are flippable twelve districts in the House with about eighteen thousand voters switching sides combined. That's all it would take. The Senate flips with roughly thirty one thousand votes across six seats. Okay. And then Andrew Jackson, not the President. Andy Jackson the director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation. He says regarding the first congressional district, currently occupied Democrat by Democrat Don Davis, the most he said, it would most likely make the first district more Republican at the expense of making District three less Republican. That's Greg Murphy's district. Andrew Dunn mentioned. That that would make both districts Republican leaning but competitive. Okay, so yes, Republicans would have a better shot, but not by much. This is what he calls dummymandering. When you like you can draw a seat that's so safe, think like Congressman Tim Moore seat. I think that's like a plus forty four Republican seat. Okay, like that is not that's not going Democrat anytime soon. But a Republican say plus four plus five something like that. Well, now that's flippable depending on turnout, the general move of the country, based on the candidates campaigns they run. That sort of thing. So third district becomes maybe more winnable. That would make both districts Republican leaning, but competitive. Since the president's party tends to suffer in the midterm elections, Democrats would have a shot. At winning both of those seats. So you may be trying to get that first congressional district from Don Davis and end up losing it to Don Davis and also losing the third district. He also points out that if you alter the district's racial composition, that could invite litigation, which we know Democrats love to do. They love suing North Carolina the Republican legislature over the maps. Right, we've been embroiled in lawsuits for the better part of fifteen years. Any change that significantly drops the number of minorities in and in the first district and maybe even the third, when you start redrawing these lines, you start messing with the demographic apportionment. And when you do that, now you open yourself up to litigation, especially if it also negatively affects the district's compactness and it splits more counties. That means it will be less likely to survive a lawsuit because you got to draw the districts. Compact and we'll know it when we see it. And you cannot split counties unless you absolutely have to. And by the way, this is because Democrats used to split counties just all over the place. They would gerrymander counties in order to get gerrymandered districts as they were, you know, clutching on to power over the congressional maps. So this is the risk. Is it worth it? You know? Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand aperiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life. And our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. 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And by the way, the governor does not get a veto of the maps due to a little power sharing agreement that was cobbled together years ago when North Carolina finally gave the governor the power to veto bills. That was in nineteen ninety seven. It was the last state in America to give its governor a veto. But they didn't want the governor to have a veto over everything. See, Republicans had taken control of the House for the first time in a century and wanted a comprehensive veto, but Democrats in the House did not want to seed any of the power that they had long enjoyed. The result a compromise that gave North Carolina's governor a veto, but still left the state's top leader with one of the weakest veto powers in America. The governor is not able to strike down parts of a bill so a line item veto, and has no say in redistricting bills, local bills, or constitutional amendments or General Assembly resolutions. And for matters that the governor can reject, the legislature can override with a three to fifths vote that is below the two thirds threshold of most states. The architect of this brilliant idea, this deal was Roy Cooper. Roy Cooper, state senator at the time. He is the reason why the veto is what it is. Democrats. Now, I did ask the Speaker of the House, Destin Hall, whether they would redraw the maps when I had him on the program back in August. Here's what you mentioned, the census and the counts. I've been covering that too. You're exactly right. Are you any appetite for doing a Texas style mid decade redistrict? I know you guys love doing the redistricting. It's so much fun and well, you. Know, I used to share redistricting, but yeah, I was the speaker, so I've got a lot of experience with that. I think we've redrawn the maps about five times in my five terms there. You know, this last time around when we redrew, I think we did the things that we needed to do in that map. We're watching the national picture right now, of course, seeing what Texas and some other states are doing. We have a lot of experience with redistrict in North Carolina that other states may not, So you know, I think that we have the maps that we need. But I think the injustice out there right now is states like California have more seats than they really should be entitled to. And so you see Texas and Florida and some of the other states who may have drawn maps that we're not as republican as they possibly could have been. And they're looking back now to say, well, we're going to right the wrong of illegal aliens being counted by redrawing our districts. And you know, in North Carolina, will we redraw again. We'll see. What I'll say is right now, there's a very competitive district in the first district in North Carolina. Don Davis, Democrat there, who votes with the Democrats in Washington, very vulnerable. I think we're going to beat him anyway under the current maps, and so we have I think the maps we need in order to the formalth Carolina is the vote on this time around. Okay, so he did leave the door open. He said, will we redraw again? We'll see, but he thinks we have the maps we need now. This has prompted outrage from Democrats. Here's the chair of the North Carolina Democrat Party, Anderson Clayton, who is breezy. I mean that's her Twitter handle. Big Daddy. Trump calls in Phil Berger and Destin Hall answer the call like the boot liquors that they are North Carolina voters ain't letting y'all get away with. This horsepoop or bullpoop. But she didn't say poop. Then she had another tweet saying truly said to see Destin lose the last independent brain cell he had and cave to Washington d C minority leader Robert Reeves says they are stealing a congressional district in order to shield themselves from accountability at the ballot box, which the same could be applied to California. See this is the problem. All of their arguments just swap out the name North Carolina for California, it's the same thing. So if you're going to accuse, as Josh Stein does, the Republicans of trying to quote take away your freedoms, then California is doing the exact same thing. Shameless politicians abusing their power to take away yours. That's what the governor said, same thing would apply to California. So that's a problem just from a messaging standpoint, and because we have such a bipartisan and unbiased media, I'm sure that will totally break through. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.