Based on the redistricting information revealed by Republicans in the General Assembly the past day or two, numerous voters in Tennessee’s two largest cities may experience disappointment ranging from the irksome to the extreme.
Under the GOP plan, negative reaction is most likely to be felt in the 5th Congressional District, which has consisted to this point of Nashville/Davidson, Dickson County, and part of Cheatham County. The city of Nashville, which is the site of the State Capital, is roughly the same size as Memphis, population-wise, and is profoundly Democratic in its voting habits, would be fragmented in a map backed by the Republican supermajority and spun off into three districts, all of which have had substantial Republican voting patterns. Gone will be the city’s unity, both politically and geographically.
No demographic data from Census 2020 made this necessary, as state Rep. Bob Clement (D-Nashville) and a surrogate for U.S. Representative Jim Cooper (D-Nashville) made obvious, in presenting two redistricting plans that kept Nashville whole while conforming to the requirements of the census data. The essentials of those two plans were contained in a new Democratic proposal to be made public on Thursday.
Clearly, the motive of the Republican majority on the redistricting committee was to gain the upper hand, politically, for the GOP in one of the few areas where its impact has been relatively minimal.
Despite complaints from Freeman and two Shelby County Democrats (Reps. Antonio Parkinson and Karen Camper) that for most members of the House, where the proposal was unveiled, there had been no advance transparency, the GOP majority eschewed extended discussion and voted the new map on to further committees and, in what is likely to be short order, to consideration on on the House and Senate floor.
As Parkinson and Camper made clear, the GOP plan will create discontent in Shelby County as well. On the proposed congressional map, the new 9th District is enlarged in size, as anticipated, to compensate for its stagnated population figures relative to the state as a whole. But the district keeps to its present dimensions in the county itself (the green line in illustration) while expanding northward to take in the whole of Tipton County, a rural and GOP-dominated area that was formerly in the 8th District.
In routing the 9th in that direction, the Republican framers of the map disdained the opportunity to extend the district’s borders eastward to regain parts of eastern Shelby County, including a large Poplar Corridor segment in East Memphis, which were gouged out of the 9th in the previous post-2010 redistricting. To do ask would have reunified the city of Memphis in a single district.
Two scenarios for legislative redistricting have now been made public by the GOP supermajority — those affecting the state House of Representatives and the state’s congressional districts. Plans for the state Senate will be unveiled on Thursday.
