The Great Gerrymandering War of 2026: South Carolina edition | Hour 1

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 and 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 thepeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. The great jerrymandering war continues apace. We have a couple of developments with all these states that have been scrambling to draw new district lines for the US House of Representatives in the wake of a couple of court rulings Calais being one, and the. Voting Rights Act Section two interpretation. So we saw what happened when Indiana refused to redistrict a few months ago, and a couple of weeks prior to now they had a primary election, and five of the seven Republicans that blocked the redistricting. Got blown out, just blown out by. Challengers, Republican challengers that were backed by the White House. So I suspect we may see something similar maybe at some point in South Carolina. Now I've talked about this, We talked about this at the WBT News and Brews event. This is you know, when it comes to strategy, Republicans conservatives that vote in the primaries have to think realistically, they have to think strategically, and I know a lot of shade gets thrown at you know, Republican from blue states that are more moderate. They're running in districts that are flippable. You know, it's maybe an R plus one district or an R plus two district, or maybe it's even or something, and so they don't have the flexibility to vote with the party every single time. And a lot of people in conservative circles will point to those Republicans and call them rhinos and how dare you and everything else. However, that's not really where the fire should be trained. The fire should be trained on the Republicans who are coming from R plus forty districts or states right solid red districts, solid red states where Republicans have no fear of losing to a Democrat. And South Carolina for the most part, fits that bill. A lot of these districts that elect Republicans to the state legislature they fit the bill. They are heavy Republican districts. South Carolina is a heavy Republican state. And so when the governor said they were going to be looking at doing redistricting, the intent was clear, they're going to redraw the lines. And state representative or a US representative, Jim Clyburn was going to be out of luck and out of his seat because you cannot use race to draw lines in order to put a bunch of people into one district based on their race. That is a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Now, liberals on the Supreme Court have interpreted quote unquote the Section two of the Voting Rights Act to say that, oh no, no, you can not even can you must you shall draw a district based on race to ensure that that racial group gets to elect somebody of their race. And what the US Supreme Court recently ruled is no, you cannot. That's actually the exact opposite of what the law says. And because the law says this thing, the Supreme Court says, that's what the law is. I know, this is a pretty radical interpretation. This is a radical judicial philosophy that if the law says something, then that's what the law is, then something is the law right. But for liberals, they prefer the living, breathing. Document, judicial philosophy, or activism, where they will conjure up new rights or new interpretations, new meaning to things that are not written down and were never discussed as part of the legislative debate when the law got passed. But a couple of lawyers decades later, with the wardrobe change, they will be able to suss it out and say, oh no, no. When the Founders instituted the right to privacy, that also meant that you can have abortions up until like the baby has completely exited the birth canal. Like that's the kind of quote interpretation the left prefers see. Always keep in mind that there really is no standard except the one that helps them win the current argument. And admittedly this sometimes makes things difficult for conservatives because if you adhere to the rule of law, if you adhere to originalism, textualism, that kind of judicial philosophy, then yeah, you're going to be handcuffed on some of this stuff because the law may say something. And this is a good example of this is the birthright citizenship issue. The Supreme Court heard the case on that, and I see a lot of conservative, like Rock Ribbed, conservative legal analysts who are saying this doesn't look good just because the way that the law is written. Now. I don't know, we shall see. I don't predict judicial outcomes, jury trials, or elections because they can go anyway, and I'm not very good at those predictions. So I don't know. We'll see what the Supreme Court rules on that. But like I said, a lot of experts are disagreeing about how they could how the Court could come down on that. So when it comes to the redistricting fight, the Great gerrymandering War of twenty twenty six, you're running out of time. States are running out of time, and so the window is basically, if it's not closed already, it is about to close within like a week. Right, You're on a very compressed timeline. Why well, primaries, You've got primary elections in a lot of these states for the November general election. And if you start redrawing maps, then you put the squeeze on the board of elections. And there's a thing called the Percel principle, which is like, once an election is is approaching, you shouldn't be making massive changes to the election structure because you know, voters get confused it it puts pressure on the boards of elections. They can't comply with whatever the new ruling is, depending on what the ruling is, and so the states are running out of time. And so people thought South Carolina was on the ball on this and they were going to be doing a redistricting new map, but apparently not. Apparently not. And what's most egregious about the actions and you can and this is aside from whether or not you think they should or shouldn't redistrict and whatever. The most egregious thing in my mind that happened down in South Carolina is that the Senate majority leader a Republican. He's the leader of the Senate, he's the leader of the Republican caucus or conference in the Senate, and he blocked this. It failed by one vote, and he, along with four other Republicans, broke ranks and voted against the maps. The Senate majority leader is named Shane Massey, no relation to Thomas as I understand it spelled differently too. Here's what Massey said in the well of the Senate. To believe that our state is stronger with vibrant parties. I think we as a whole are stronger when we have a clash of ideas. I think that's true at the national level. I think it's true at the state level. We are stronger when we have a clash of ideas and we can discuss those policy goals. I will tell my Republican friends, Republicans are stronger when the Democrat Party is vibrant and viable. We are. Competition makes you better, y'all. We know it in the economic sector. It also happens in the political sector. Yeah, do you know who you're competing with at this moment? Read the room, dude. You're not competing with the Democrat Party of the nineteen eighties. Okay. The Democrat Party nowadays is a lot different than it used to be. And while you may view it as political competition much like economic competition, they don't see it like that. They see this as power. They need to get back into power so they can then blow up the US Constitution. They have said this, I mean not in those words, but they've said it. I will bring you the evidence of this in a moment. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process them of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and min Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. The Hill reporting South Carolina. Governor Henry McMaster, Republican, is planning to call state law makers back for a special session next week to take up a new Congressional map that would wholly favor Republicans. This according to multiple local media reports. Now, the Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who believes that the state is stronger with vibrant and viable parties. A Democrat party that is vibrant and viable, that makes the state stronger, you see, He said that legislative leadership is in the process of informing its members to return two sessions to debate the new maps. The move comes after five GOP state senators joined all Democrats yes or Tuesday to block a measure extending South Carolina's legislative calendar to consider mid decade redistricting. Okay, so that's what the vote was over, was whether or not to extend the legislative calendar that would have required a two thirds vote, and they fell one vote shy of it because these five were Republicans, joined the Democrats in not extending the calendar in order to kill the maps, the Senate Majority leader being one of them. So the governor is calling them back into a special session. The GOP controlled legislature is under pressure from President Trump to redraw its congressional lines ahead of the midterms to favor Republicans in all seven US House districts. Right now, it's a six to one map favoring Republicans. The idea here is to redraw the map in order to eliminate the majority minority district because you cannot use race in order to redistrict to draw those lines. And South Carolina has been South Carolina has been forced to do that, along with a whole bunch of Southern states. Right, they were under what was called preclearance from the federal government because of the legacy of Jim Crow and racism and how Democrats used to draw districts in order to minimize Democrat or sorry, black voters. They didn't want blacks to vote. They did everything they could to keep them as second class citizens. The Democrat Party did, and so the FEDS came in and said, you can't keep doing this, and they then the Congress passes the Voting Rights Act, and the court interprets it to mean, well, you got to draw these districts that are majority minority, so a black person can always win that race. And of course Democrats then see, okay, well that's a guaranteed vote now, right, it's a guaranteed vote for Democrats because black voters vote like ninety percent for Democrats. So over the decades, right, they have used that ruling, that interpretation, they've used the Voting Rights Act in order to secure themselves more seats as a party, right, they would draw majority minority districts knowing that a Democrat will win it. It would be a black Democrat generally speaking, unless it's in Memphis where you've got a white guyst Cohen representing that district there, which is apparently racist if you draw Steve Cohen out of his district, I'm told, but no, you can use partisanship. You can use that unless your state bans it. But you can use partisan makeup to do that. And that's what Republicans are going to do and Democrats are not happy. Now, keep in mind that is just one tool that Democrats have used in order to secure themselves, you know, majorities in the US House and even the presidency another tool because again, the way you draw the district lines, that's and how many people you have in your districts. It's all based on population, and that's due to what the census, right, and we've talked about this before. When your state is losing population like California did I got more population data on that they lost, Like, was it twelve thousand people last year? So what do you have to do. You've got to bring in more people. And what are the best kind of people to bring in? People who can't vote you out because they are not allowed to vote, so illegal immigrants, right, Bring in as many as you can so this way you can keep your population numbers up, but they can't vote you out. Democrats have been doing this for a while. And what else. The census in twenty twenty undercounted a bunch of states, overcounted a bunch of other states, and I think it was twelve states total, six undercounted, six overcounted, and like five of the six that were undercounted were Republican states, thereby losing some House seats. Five of the six states I believe that were overcounted were Democrat states, so they got extra seats. Say how that works? So this is a tearing. Down of the infrastructure that has helped to produce Democrat majority representation in the US House. That a lot of people on the right and Democrats you could disagree with this, but a lot of people on the right believe that you have not actually earned those seats. You don't deserve those seats. And we look at areas like the northeast New England, where Republicans vote anywhere, depending on the state, thirty to forty percent of the presidential ballots go for the Republicans, and yet there are zero members of Congress from New England. They look at states like Illinois, where you have gerrymandered the Republican areas so it maximizes Democrat seats. They look at states like California where you claim to have an independent redistricting commission, but for some reason, it never produces anything other than this massively lopsided map for Democrats where they take like forty five of the fifty four seats they're up to I think they've got forty nine. I think they're at the forty nine of the fifty four. Seats, which is nuts because again, anywhere from thirty to forty percent of the vote actually goes to Republicans, but they don't get any representation. And you guys have been doing this for twenty years, and so here is the Republicans playing the same game you guys have been playing, but now it's a threat to the democracy. As I always say when you hear democrats say the Democracy, what they really mean is the Democrat Party. The Hill reports McMaster's Governor McMaster in South Carolina. His reported decision to call a special session for next week to tick up the maps marks a reversal for the governor, who previously signaled he would not call lawmakers back to Colombia, preferring to leave the issue in the legislature's hands. But then they fumbled. They did not do the thing that everybody expected them to do. I do not know the actual reason why these Republican senators block this, notably Shane Massey, the Senate leader. I don't really. Believe this idea that, oh, we're a more vibrant state if we have a viable, vibrant Democrat party or something like. I sorry, I'm not buying that. I feel like that's just the excuse you are using. The happy talk. The state is reliably a republican state. But here's part of the problem is when you have a reliably republican state controlled, just like with any governing body that's controlled by one party, you end up with a lot of stuff that is masked from the public because the fights are not happening out in the public where you've got, you know, one guy saying, you know, my opponent is a jerk, and the other one's like, my opponent is the jerk. No, no, because you're rolling the same party. So that stuff happens behind closed doors. It happens inside the party infrastructure, and people don't see it. So, you know, I'm kind of curious as to what's actually going on. Is it Does it have something to do with, you know, getting votes whipped up for certain things and making sure certain people have their I don't want I'm not alleging any kind of money changing hands, except for like taxpayer funding towards you know, pet projects, that sort of thing. But so I'm not really sure what's going on. But I'm not buying this idea that Massey is pitching that the state is stronger with with vibrant, viable parties because competition makes us all better Again, the Democrat Party is not The modern form of the Democrat Party is not what it used to be. Okay, we are we are. Now fighting an ideology that has gone so far to the left that it is Marxist and it is radical. Recognize where we are what time it is as the the kids say the jockeying comes as military and absentee ballots for the state's June ninth primaries have already started going out, thousands of which would need to be discarded if maps are redrawn, according to the Post and Courier. So okay, now that's a problem. Okay. If Massey says that that's a problem, if you've already started mailing out the ballots, then it does seem to me then Lokay, you missed the clock. You ran it out. And maybe that's why McMaster is like gonna call him back in as punishment, because maybe the Senate did this intentionally. Meanwhile, in Mississippi, the GOP governor there has dropped the election a pledge that he made. This guy's name is Tate Reeves, and he indicated he will not seek immediately to pursue redistricting following a critical Supreme Court ruling. Following the Supreme Court's Calais ruling on how race can or cannot factor into redistricting, several Republican led states have moved to redraw their districts. Mississippi lawmakers were primed to convene a special session next week to redraw state Supreme Court and potentially congressional districts, but Reeves canceled the session after the judge who ruled the court district maps inhibited black candidates got overruled, sparking a now in limbo effort to oust entrenched former J six Committee chairman Benny Thompson. Reeves went on a talk radio show and he said, understand something that maybe while it may be in the best interest of some individual politicians in Mississippi to talk about congressional redistricting, what happens in Mississippi doesn't happen in a vacuum. I'm going to do what's in the best interest of Mississippi, and I'm going to do what's in the best interest of America. And I'm going to work very closely with the Trump administration to accomplish both of those goals. He pushed back on claims that he flipped flopped on congressional redistricting, saying that the March tenth primary has already passed. Okay, that actually makes sense to if you already had a primary under district lines, then going in and redrawing the districts would mean you would have to redo the entire primary. So this. This actually makes sense to because again I'm trying to hold to a principle of you know, following the law, the rule of law, and that like, you've already had people casting votes. And that's the same position I took in Virginia. Right when the Virginia Legislature when they changed their stuff after forty days of the forty five day early voting, I said, you can't do that. You've had forty days where people have been casting votes, and now you're going to change You're going to implement new maps or something that's just nuts. So that's a consistent standard. Meanwhile, and by the way, if you think this is bad right now with the redistricting, wait until next year. I anticipate like all of the states starting to do this stuff, those that haven't already redrawn, they're going to come at it next year and redraw to try to secure more seats. That's why everybody's trying to get their maps drawn before the various state deadlines and primaries and all of that. Not a lot of states left out there. House Democrats though, say they are oh sorry, no, hang on a second, this is politico, So they're not quoting democrats. They are adopting the Democrats assumption their talking point, which is that they tried playing nice, but now they're going to have to take the gloves off or put them on, depending on which sport you're talking about. House Democrats say they tried playing nice, Now the gloves are off. After spending more than a decade pushing for anti jerry mandering measures and other good government initiatives, Democratic lawmakers said this week that they are gearing up to play political hardball in the wake of stunning court losses. Shouldn't be stunning on redistricting potentially for years to come. Okay again, note the adoption of the Democrat talking points here that they have been the ones doing good government stuff right well, and anti jerry mandering measures why because they have been doing them in states where they want to make sure that they don't lose control. And one of the methods that they have used quite effectively are the quote unquote independent redistricting commissions. California did it twenty years ago, and then Democrats rigged it. Literally. Pro Publica did an entire deep dive on how Democrats gained that system. They created fake organizations to represent communities of interest. They would set up fake websites for these fake organizations. They would have one person go down and speak in front of the commission saying, you need to make sure that this area in this area are part of the same app and their commission put people in charge of drawing the maps that had no political expertise whatsoever. So they got steamrolled. That's their good government model in California. We'll jump over in chat with Jeff. Hello, Jeff, welcome to the show. To see Yeah, thanks for taking my call. Sure, not trying to get you off subject dreamy thing though, Oh no. In comparison to the national issues that are going on with resistricting, compare that to what we have local. We have a city council and a county commission that are dominated by Democrats. But that doesn't seem to be. A problem, is that right, correct? Not for democrats? No? Well, you know it used to be that the courts would, by virtue of the inequity, that they would strike those kinds of things down and say that the districts had to be redone. Well, why is that not happening for the local races. It's not illegal to draw districts based on partisan gain and data, So no, I mean I've gone over these numbers. You know, the entire Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners, it's complete Democrat and the you know, if you're looking at a you know what the Democrats have referred to in North Carolina. And this is all. See, they make different arguments depending on which states they're in, and they make different arguments at a state level versus a local level. So the Democratic Party in North Carolina has been arguing at the state level that there should be as many congressional seats as is proportionate to either Democrat voter registration numbers or by the number of votes cast for a Democrat president presidential candidate. Right, So they'll. Say, look, you know, our state went fifty one percent for Trump and forty eight percent to Harris, and so out of our fourteen congressional seats, it should be an even split, like seven to seven or maybe an eight to six Republican advantage. But that's it. That's a quote fair map. But then when you come down to Mecklimburg County, all nine seats are Democrats, all six districts, all three at large. You look at the city council, same thing, you got one Republican left in one district. But if you look at the turnout numbers and you look at the way people actually vote, Republicans should have more seats. They should have at least one on County Commission. But they do not see so they don't apply a consistent standard to the different levels or the different maps that they're doing. The only thing that matters when the Democrat says their maps, they mean maps that advantage them in some way, not that they automatically get to be the majority, but that they get more seats than they would otherwise have. That's it. That's the standard. And so Republicans are now adopting that standard. Okay, well, yeah, that's fine. We have a we have a local NAACP leader, yeah, demanding that the next mayor or theanorum mayor be black. I went over these numbers Tuesday, I think it was, yeah, Tuesday. I went over these numbers on Tuesday because courn Mac had made this statement on Tuesday and we covered it then, which was, you know, I pulled up the racial breakdown on representation versus population, and if you were to do a you know, a proportionate representation based on the population, well then Blacks are overrepresented by two to one. Right, they account for like sixty six percent of the city council represent representation, but they only they're only about thirty percent of the total population in Charlotte. Whites represent forty percent and they have two representatives on council. Any efforts to the local Republicans are doing to fix that, or they just don't let it explain. I mean, what are you going to do? What can you do? Take it the court based on what grounds? Well, again that the districts need to be redone to make it equal. But that's not what the law allows to make what equal equal to a proportional model. Well, no, just do like what the Democrats are saying to do is put districts redo the district so that you have some presentation on. Their Well, part of the problem on the city level is that you've got four at large seats. And I've railed against this for years that the at large model was designed to suppress minority representation. When Democrats first started doing this, it was to suppress black representation, but now it has turned into a suppression of Republican representation. So the at large seats guarantee four Democrats get elected every election cycle, and then you've got seven districts and Democrats have and they draw the maps, and so they keep six of the seven districts. So that's how you end up with that model. I would say you need to go to a completely district model, and then if you're trying to draw a quote fair map, would you would make sure that the numbers allow for two or three Republicans to actually win regularly in Republican leaning areas. But I mean, look, you're dealing with the demographics, and the demographics are such that republic Pilicans are way out numbered by Democrats in Charlotte. That's the reality. Republicans began fleeing Charlotte twenty years ago and it has not stopped. So I don't see it getting any better. At least we have a Republican legislature that can act as a governor on the abuses or excesses of these Democrat run cities. So at least we have that. So, Jeff, I appreciate the call, sir, thank you from the text line here. Let me see if I get through some of these. If the people are tired of Democrats, why are Republicans redistricting. Let the people vote. You show what you are afraid of by redistricting this. By the way, this is an argument. I will not be gas lit on this. This is an argument that you're only making seven h four anonymous number. You're making because you're trying to appeal to my standard, not yours. See again, if I didn't know what I know about all of the states that Democrats gerrymander in in order to give themselves the most amount of seats in the House, then your argument would would carry some weight. But I know they don't see I know what those states look like. I know what those maps look like. So your argument here is not persuasive because you're trying to You're trying to get me to abide a standard that you do not hold, and you not holding that standard gives you political advantage to then rule over me. I'm I'm not gonna play that game. See twenty years ago, I would have been persuaded by that. I used to think that. Not anymore. I've seen the way you guys operate. 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 dpetecallanarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.