One unanticipated legacy of the Voting Rights Act and the creation of majority and minority districts has been the rise of the Republican Party in the South.
crat Gov. Jerry Brown in 1981, the “Burton Plan” had a profound impact. Democrats gained five House seats
and Republicans lost three. Looking at his map of the new dis-
trict lines, Burton chortled: “It’s my contribution to modern art.” Years later, House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, the present holder of Burton’s San Francisco seat, told me: “We didn’t have many computers back then, so God gave us Phil’s brain.” Burton may be dead, but his map-
drawing skills are very much alive among Democrats — and Republi- cans. In Tennessee, the Republican supermajority in the state legislature developed a map for the nine U.S. House districts that — for the first time in Volunteer State history — divides Nashville into three Republican-lean- ing districts and eviscerated what had been a safely Democratic, Nashville- based district for Democrat Rep. Jim Cooper since 2003. “There’s no way, at least for me in
this election cycle,” said Cooper, who announced his retirement on Jan. 25 shortly after the new map was finalized. In Illinois, where Democrats have
a firm grip on both houses of the state legislature, the new district lines yielded 13 Democratic-leaning seats compared to three Republican- leaning seats, and only one truly com- petitive seat. The new map was a pivotal factor in the decision of Republican Rep. Adam
PLAYING POLITICS Despite the fact that House districts should not be drawn on the basis of race or ethnicity, New York Democrats have strengthened Rep. Jerry Nadler’s seat to connect his Jewish supporters in Brooklyn with those on the west side of Manhattan. Meanwhile a liberal area has been added to Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ district, endangering the conservative freshman.
New York’s Democrat ‘Jerrymander’ H
Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, the neighboring GOP 11th District, anchored in Staten Island, will now sweep north to include liberal Park Slope, endangering freshman Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis. In 2020, Donald Trump won
this district by 11 points, while Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis beat incumbent Democrat Max Rose 53% to 47%. Rose is running this year to
retake his old seat, and the new progressive Park Slope voters could be enough to flip that margin.
The Chelsea News proclaimed the Nadler map a case of ‘Jerrymandering,’ rifing on the congressman’s first name. The Journal said the map
was drawn with partisan malice aforethought. New York is losing a House seat, so it will have 26 districts next year. Today Republicans hold eight. Under the lines Democrats are
proposing, the GOP would have the advantage in only four seats, or 15%. New York is a blue state, but not that blue: Trump won 38% of the vote in 2020.
MAY 2022 | NEWSMAX 41
ere’s the snake-shaped district map that was drawn up by the Democratic- controlled state legislature in New York for veteran Democrat Rep. Jerrold
Nadler (pictured above). Your first instinct might be to grab the cartographer and do a field sobriety test,
observed The Wall Street Journal. The new district will connect Nadler’s Jewish supporters in Manhattan and
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