A public hearing on West Tennessee redistricting at Mt. Olive Cathedral CME Church Tuesday night, co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the NAACP, yielded a good deal of concern about the General Assembly’s pending remapping of legislative and congressional districts.
The redistricting process will be accomplished in early January at the will and pleasure of the legislature, but is subject to input from a formally bipartisan legislative advisory committee and, theoretically, to public sentiment, like that voiced at Mt. Olive. The deadline for submitting citizen suggestions to the Assembly’s advisory committee is November 12.
Some of the commentary was fatalistic. Said Ian Randolph, chair of the Shelby County NAACP Political Action Committee and a member of several voting rights organizations: “While I appreciate the opportunity, this is a, you know, a futile exercise because we live in a state where there is a [Republican] supermajority. And no matter what we say, if the supermajority wants to do something, they’re pretty much going to do it. Here in Shelby County, I feel like when they do redistricting, it should be with the best interest of Shelby County in mind. But when I look over the last 20 years, what’s in the best interest of Shelby County is often not what’s in the best interest of those people who represent us in Nashville.”
With a mixture of resentment and resignation, several of the speakers noted the likelihood, noted by State Senator Raumesh Akbari, a Democratic member of the General Assembly’s advisory committee, that 2020 census data would cost Shelby County a legislative seat.
Some of the opinions voiced by audience members were studies in contrast. Venita Doggett, resident of an area just northeast of the Memphis municipal limits, maintained that her neighborhood had nothing in common with its current political domicile, the 8th Congressional District. Just as firmly, Willie Spencer, a member of the executive committee of the Hardeman County NAACP, spoke to his belief that Hardeman, by rights, should not continue to belong to the 7th Congressional District, which stretches into Middle Tennessee, but to the 8th, which extends into rural northwest Tennessee. “Our identity is more clearly aligned with the 8th Congressional District,” he averred.
Shelby Countians with long memories will recall a time when the sprawling Cordova area was regarded as something of a white-flight preserve. They might have been surprised at the testimony of Cordova resident Ruby Powell Dennis, a recent and future political aspirant who depicted her area as leaning blue and as a haven of diversity.
Said Dennis: “The reason I’m here to speak is because we are probably going to be one of the most impacted census tracts when it comes to redistricting. So Cordova, based on the most recent census data, we have a very diverse community … We have over 900 homes in our subdivision and 40 percent of the people who live there are renters, the rest of us homeowners, but you cannot tell the difference.
“And we’re really proud of that, because we are a community that is invested in one another and taking care of each other. I’m concerned about redistricting because 10 years ago, the Senate District in Hickory Hill was redistricted out, which is primarily African American and Democratic, and Cordova has increasingly become more Democratic and more blue the last 10 years. What I’m worried about is that a district will be drawn that includes Collierville, Eads, Germantown, which is predominantly white and conservative. And the Cordova voting bloc will be disenfranchised, which is now predominantly Democratic and people of color.”
Much of the commentary Tuesday night focused on the aforementioned Hardeman County, a majority-black county which, as was noted by Shelby County Election Commission member Kendra Lee and others, seemed to have been artificially separated from districts including counties on either side of it.
Lee said, “Fayette County and McNairy County are in the same state House District and there is an entire county that sits in between them. And that is textbook gerrymandering. And it’s like that because outside of Shelby County, they are the four most populous African American counties that we have in Tennessee, and they split Madison in half to connect the top half to Hardeman to pack it into one state House District outside of Shelby County. We can’t have that happening.”
University of Memphis law professor and former Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy made a powerful plea for a just and fair process but pointed out that there was little historical precedent for such.
“To be fair, there should be some rough proportionality between the percentage of voters in a state that are Democratic or Republican. And the percentage of districts that have Democratic or Republican majorities wouldn’t have to be precise, but it should be at least some rough proportionality. And if it deviates substantially from that rough proportionality, that’s a good sign that it’s a gerrymander. We live in a state that has 38 percent of the vote for Joe Biden. And if you said that roughly 38 percent of the districts ought to have a Democratic majority, that would be between three and four (U.S.) house districts, roughly 10 state senate districts, roughly 30 house districts. So by that measure, the current plan is already a serious gerrymander against Democrats.”
