As Texas becomes the flashpoint in a national redistricting war, where Republican legislators aim to redraw congressional districts mid‑decade and Democratic lawmakers flee the state to deny a quorum, the debate over North Carolina’s map deserves a sharper, more principled view. A recent commentary by a Democratic columnist blamed North Carolina’s own tangle with redistricting lawsuits, saying that our state served as the catalyst for the current chaos.
It actually began much earlier, when former President Barack Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder launched the National Democratic Redistricting Committee in 2017, ahead of the 2020 census. The goal was to organize aggressive, state‑by‑state efforts to redraw maps in Democrats’ favor. The frontline of that fight has been in courtrooms in places like North Carolina. The fight continues after, in 2023, the party called Obama back into action amid an emerging state-by-state battle for congressional seats.
NORTH CAROLINA’S MAP BATTLE
For a century, the Democrat-led state legislature drew North Carolina’s congressional and legislative maps with a well-documented history of gerrymandering, including the 1990s infamous “I-85 district,” which the US Supreme Court struck down in Shaw v. Reno (1993) as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
In 2010, Republicans won control of the state legislature using Democrat-drawn maps and in 2011 redrew the maps using 2010 census data. Democrats challenged the new maps in court, leading to a 2016 court-ordered redraw over alleged racial bias. Another challenge in 2021 led a Democrat-leaning court to order a gerrymandered map be drawn with a 7-7 split by three special masters, including “nonpartisan” member former judge Bob Orr. The final version only had two competitive districts. Jowei Chen, a witness for the plaintiffs in the 2021 redistricting case, found only a 5.3% chance of getting the 7-7 outcome forced by the courts.
THAT was a truly gerrymandered map. As explained by Andy Jackson, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Center for Public Integrity, it simply did not represent the actual geography of our state or where Republican and Democrat-affiliated folks actually live. According to expert testimony in the redistricting lawsuits, a truly unbiased map would be a 9-5 split favoring Republicans.
Now, as Texas and other states look to recalibrate their population distribution ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, this national map churn brings perspective to North Carolina’s map.
Where people live matters. If the US House was supposed to represent the composition of the entire state, it would be called the US Senate. This is the purpose of a bicameral legislature. The Senate seats represent the state, the House seats represent individual communities and districts.
TEXAS AND CALIFORNIA: THE BIGGER PICTURE
Since 2014, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina have had the largest number of new residents, according to data from realtor.com. Texas has added 3.9 million residents in that time, Florida added 2.9 million, and North Carolina has added around 960,000 residents. By comparison, California lost population for three years straight following the COVID pandemic and only recently saw a 1% uptick in growth.
The figures underscore the political arms races underway across the nation. In Texas, Republicans are seeking a mid‑decade remap that could net up to five more House seats. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers fled the state in protest, inciting national outrage over minority disenfranchisement and constitutional violations. This echoes a history of quorum‑breaking that Democratic lawmakers have used to block Republicans in 2003 and 2021. Now, the Texas GOP is invoking population shifts, an effort endorsed by President Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott but blasted by others as a partisan power grab.
Meantime in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is reportedly preparing retaliatory redistricting, possibly even bypassing the independent commission approved by voters in a constitutional amendment, to increase Democrats’ congressional advantage ahead of the 2026 election. This escalation suggests that Democrats no longer see district maps as regional, but rather part of their national strategy to centralize governmental power.
Amid this developing national news story, Democrats in North Carolina point to our state maps to argue that the version drawn in 2023 is part of a broader conservative gerrymandering campaign. But that interpretation misses the core of North Carolina’s redistricting battle that has unfolded over nearly two decades:
WHY NORTH CAROLINA IS DIFFERENT
- In contrast to the Texas redistricting, North Carolina’s 2021 map was a court‑ordered 7‑7 division with a clear Democratic tilt inconsistent with statewide voting patterns.
- Removing the court‑drawn distortion in 2023 restored a baseline map not skewed by political engineering. It more closely aligns with how urban Democrats cluster and rural/suburban Republicans disperse, respects county borders, and stays reasonably compact. That said, in raw geographic logic and legal constraints, the natural outcome is admittedly closer to a 9–5 Republican lean, rather than the 10–4 split in the current congressional delegation.
- Democrat critics complain of bias in North Carolina’s current maps but measure the new map only against the courtroom-engineered Democratic gerrymander.
THE BROADER CONSEQUENCE
In a moment when both major political parties are continuing to pour millions of dollars into lawfare to redraw state maps, North Carolina shouldn’t become a scapegoat in their national partisan arms race. If Democrats wish to condemn redistricting as inherently corrupt, they should first confront their own campaigns to codify partisan politics and ignore independent criteria.
North Carolina’s maps largely remove artificial imbalance and return to representation grounded in law and geography. That distinguishes this state dramatically from the Texas power play or California’s potential override of voter‑approved commissions. This should not be about national partisan warfare but map‑making that reflects how people actually vote.
