South Carolina and Georgia have more in common than peaches

The month before the special session began here in Georgia, South Carolina’s legislature convened with the same mission: to redraw the state’s congressional map in line with the U.S. Supreme Court barring the consideration of race. What happened there was an accurate indicator of what would happen here.

Since the high court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais on April 29, a string of states, including Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina and Alabama, redrew their maps in line with President Donald Trump’s drive to maximize the opportunities the decision presents before the midterm elections.

Starting with the calendar, there are a number of reasons why first South Carolina, then Georgia, decided not to follow suit. South Carolinians were already early voting in that state’s primaries when the legislative session began there. Georgia met the day after its primary was over. Changing the map this late would have caused enormous disruption to the voting process in both states, as it has in the states that changed their maps.

“South Carolina citizens are going to the polls today. And neither my conscience or common sense is going to let me stop an election that is already underway,” Republican state Sen. Richard Cash said after the legislature there resisted lobbying from Trump and rejected a proposed new map. The same could have been said in Georgia a month later.

There’s no force more powerful in the redistricting process than self-preservation, and for Republican state legislators, Trump’s aggressive campaign creates a dilemma. The defeat of five Indiana state senators who bucked Trump showed the dangers of resisting the president.

On the other hand, there’s a risk in creating districts that spread Republican majorities too thin. The math involved in calculating that risk changed significantly when Trump’s map-drawing campaign got to South Carolina, and even more so in Georgia.

African-American voters make up 13 percent of the electorate in Florida, 17 percent in Tennessee and 20 percent in Tennessee. While relatively high by national standards, these percentages were still low enough to convince Republican legislators they could eliminate majority African-American districts with no significant impact on their own districts.

In South Carolina, the percentage rises to 24 percent, and in Georgia to 33 percent. It gets a lot harder for Republican legislators to protect the majorities in their own districts when there are that many Democratic, African-American voters to move out of the way.

When you’re talking about changing the map to replace sitting members of Congress, there’s also the very relevant question of which members you’re talking about.

American politics has become unusually nationalized in our time, but at some point, regional interests still matter. South Carolina had already passed a map earlier in the decade, which reduced the number of winnable Democratic districts from two to one. That district, which the proposed new map targeted, is represented by U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress.

You might not get a Republican legislator to say this out loud, but from a regional perspective, it makes no sense to dump Clyburn just to pick up another Republican seat that might go away in another cycle or two, when he could be of benefit to the state if the political tide turns at the national level. That’s the kind of thinking that used to be common in congressional politics.

U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, who would have been a target in a Georgia redraw, doesn’t have Clyburn’s national prominence, but in a region where much hangs on the price of peanuts, his name carries a lot of weight. For that reason alone, you’ll sometimes spot a Bishop sign among a yard full of Republican candidates’ signs in South Georgia. He’s been on the House Agriculture Committee for decades and knows the fine points of price supports as well as anyone in either party, which makes it very inconvenient to blow out his district.

“President Trump needs a Republican Congress to continue pursuing conservative policies that make our nation stronger. I am confident that one day South Carolina’s congressional delegation will be completely Republican. I am disappointed that day has not yet come,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who probably knew he was about to get a withering call from the president, said after his legislature passed on a redraw.

A month later Georgia took the same option without even pretending anybody was disappointed. The General Assembly at some point will have to redraw the map, but it’s in no hurry to do so.