GOP Seeking Remap Gains by Wooing Blacks, Latinos

“What’s a yuppie Republican like me doing in a church filled with blacks?” Marty Connors mused one recent Saturday morning on his way to the New Jerusalem Baptist Church in this central Alabama town.

Actually, he knew exactly what he was doing. As one of the rising stars of the Alabama GOP, the 33-year-old Connors intends to run for Congress from this area in 1992, after the state Legislature draws new congressional district lines based on this year’s census.

By speaking at a church forum on educational reform, Connors was striving to build goodwill with black Democratic leaders against the day when they will be involved in making life-and-death political decisions about Alabama’s new congressional districts.

Such odd bedfellows are likely to become increasingly common all across the national political landscape. The reason is the paradoxical politics of reapportionment, 1990s style, which is creating opportunities for minority gains in the Congress that could hurt Democrats and help Republicans.

Underlying the paradox is the 1982 Voting Rights Act, which governs the way state legislatures reshape congressional districts every 10 years according to the latest census.

That law will require many states to scrap old legislative districts before the 1992 elections and create new ones in which members of minority groups constitute a voting majority. In many cases, Republicans believe, the districts that the minority members leave behind can be converted from Democratic strongholds to competitive battlegrounds where GOP candidates are likely to prevail.

The potential outcome--substantial gains in the House of Representatives for both minority groups and Republicans--could influence federal policy and the balance of political power throughout the century’s last decade.

“If I were a black congressman, I would hope to see the number of blacks in the House doubled from 24 to 48,” said Benjamin L. Ginsberg, chief counsel of the Republican National Committee. Ginsberg contends also that the number of Latinos in the House could increase to about 15 from 8.

Chance for Gains

Other reapportionment specialists argue that those forecasts are too high. But, whatever the final tally, reapportionment clearly offers minorities the chance to make significant gains. And Democrats could suffer a net loss of congressional seats in the process.

This prospect gives blacks, Latinos and, in some cases, Asians common reapportionment goals with Republicans, their erstwhile political enemies. To overcome lingering resentments, Republicans are depicting themselves as another form of minority, victims of the Democratic majorities that control many state legislatures, particularly here in the South.

“We’re saying to minorities: ‘This process is not fair to you and not fair to us,’ ” said Norman Cummings, political director of the Republican National Committee. “ ‘There may be opportunities for us to work together to make it fair.’ ”

Although it is still very early in the game--new census figures may not be available until next spring--Cummings says he has already discussed reapportionment strategy with leaders of black and Latino organizations. He refused to identify the groups.

Strategy Meetings

“An understanding of the problem has not been difficult to agree on,” he said. “I’m encouraged by their willingness to talk.”

Similarly, in Texas, Norman Newton, executive director of the Associated Republicans of Texas, a political action committee devoted to increasing Republican strength in the Legislature, said he has met in recent weeks with leaders of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in Houston and the League of United Latin American Citizens in San Antonio.

“They were enthusiastic” about the possibility of receiving Republican help in next year’s reapportionment struggles, Newton said.

The still-emerging Republican strategy has provoked charges of hypocrisy from Democrats and veterans of the civil rights struggle.

“The real Republican priority is electing more Republicans, not helping minorities get elected to office,” said Tim Dickson, director of Project 500, created by Democratic Party leaders specifically to wage the fight over reapportionment.

“It’s very ironic that Republicans who have fought us every step of the way now declare themselves to be the champion of minorities,’ said Frank Parker, director of the voting rights project of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law.

Nevertheless, some minority leaders appear willing to at least consider a reapportionment partnership with Republicans, even if it means temporarily deserting their traditional Democratic Party base.

“As African-Americans, we have to decide do we come down on the side of color or on the side of party,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Polly Williams, chairman of the reapportionment committee of the National Black Legislators Caucus. “The most important thing to me is my race.”

Minorities and Republicans worked together on reapportionment after the 1980 census, but only on a limited basis. Events since then have driven them closer together.

The 1982 Voting Rights Act made it no longer necessary for minority-group victims of discrimination in political districting to prove that the discrimination was deliberate. They could rely solely on the results.

Big Majorities Decreed

In interpreting that statute in a 1986 ruling called Thornburg vs. Gingles, the Supreme Court held that, wherever there is evidence that racial groups vote as blocs, states must strive to create legislative districts in which minority groups constitute a majority.

Making this ruling even more stringent, other federal courts have held that, where voting rights violations have been proven, minorities must make up “a super-majority”--60% to 65% of the population--in such districts. This is to offset the lower voter turnout rates typical of minorities.

Republicans cite the Dallas area as an example of the potential partisan impact of the new rules. They view two adjacent districts now held by white Democrats--the 5th and the 24th, which between them split up a black neighborhood--as likely targets for change. Republicans foresee one new district that would elect a black Democrat and another, heavily white, that would choose a Republican.

Rep. Martin Frost represents the 24th District, which was 29% black in the 1980 census. He says he supports the creation of a new minority district.

“Beyond that,” he added, “it’s all speculation about what the shape of the district would be.”

Haggling Over Plans

Although the law appears to give minorities a potent weapon in reapportionment, they still must overcome the intransigence of incumbent congressmen, who are understandably reluctant to step aside. This will mean bitter haggling over redistricting plans, followed by prolonged and costly court fights.

Republicans think they can offer minorities aid and comfort on several fronts in this struggle.

In the state legislatures, even where they are greatly outnumbered, GOP leaders talk of constructing coalitions with black Democrats and perhaps a few sympathetic white Democrats. Those alliances, it is argued, would be strong enough to force the Democratic majority to include a minority district in its reapportionment plan.

In North Carolina, for example, the paradoxical affinity of Republicans and traditionally Democratic blacks could lead to a joint effort in the Legislature to carve out a black district in the eastern part of the state.

“The black caucus will take the best offer it can get,” said Vernon Robinson, a black college teacher who is a Republican candidate for the state Senate.

Robinson, who says he has established contacts with black Democratic legislators, said: “If I can get elected to the Senate, I can broker a deal on redistricting between black Democrats and Republicans.”

In addition, Republicans have more tangible assets to offer minorities. “They have the financial resources and the legal expertise that we need,” said Richard Santillan, a Latino activist on the reapportionment issue who is chairman of the department of ethnic and women’s studies at Cal Poly Pomona.

Santillan said that Latinos have a chance to gain as many as four new congressional seats after 1990: in Orange, Santa Clara, San Diego and Alameda counties. Latinos, he said, have “a growing sophistication” about the value of GOP help. This, too, is a factor in the growing paradoxical political relationships in 1990.

Technological Tools

Another new factor in the reapportionment wars is the advancement of computer technology.

“In the past, only the majority party in the legislature drew the reapportionment maps, because no one else had the resources,” said Republican counsel Ginsberg. “Now, anyone with a home computer will be able to draw district lines and calculate the racial and ethnic population.”

For the 1990s redistricting, the Republican National Committee, with a nonpartisan group called Lawyers for the Republic, is developing what Ginsberg called “space age” computer software, containing the latest census data.

Bill Crump of Lawyers for the Republic says his organization, which is spending more than $2.5 million on data collection, intends to distribute these programs, valued at about $250,000 each, to minority groups and other organizations at nominal cost.

All such strategy must still be highly tentative because its execution depends heavily on circumstances not yet known--the outcome of the 1990 state legislative and gubernatorial elections and the tabulation of the data from this year’s census. Adding to the uncertainity is the volatile nature of the reapportionment process, which more than anything else directly affects state legislators themselves.

Nowhere are the complexities more evident than here in Alabama, where Republican Marty Connors is seeking common cause with black Democrats.

“When they carve up the old districts and start thinking about a Republican they can talk to, I want to be on their list,” said Connors, a former executive director of the state GOP and a legislative lobbyist for Jefferson County, where Birmingham is situated.

One black state legislator, Rep. Bobbie McDowell, was on hand at the New Jerusalem Baptist Church for the educational forum at which Connors spoke. McDowell had helped arrange the forum as leader of the Alabama Assn. of Women’s Clubs, an organization whose first president was Mrs. Booker T. Washington.

“Contrary to popular belief, in the Deep South, black Democrats and white Republicans don’t always bite each other’s heads off,” McDowell told a reporter. As for redistricting, she said, “I think there will be some accommodation made for Republicans. If they help us get what we want, we can help them get what they want.”

Republican strength in the state Legislature is negligible--22 out of 105 in the House, 8 out of the 35 in the Senate. Nevertheless, the GOP could play a role in redistricting because Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt, who has veto power over reapportionment plans, is a Republican.

Black Democrats are divided on where to locate a black congressional seat. One faction wants the seat in the southern part of the state, around Tuskegee. Another group, which includes McDowell, prefers the Birmingham area, where two adjacent Democratic districts are both about 30% black in population.

Potential for Strength

Republicans favor this course because they believe they could elect one of their own in the new non-minority district. Moreover, two Republican incumbents would be vulnerable if new districts were drawn in southern Alabama.

White Democrats in the Legislature are expected to be divided, based on the region of the state they represent and their relationships with the incumbent Democratic congressmen who would be affected by redistricting. It is those divisions among the majority that give the Republican minority the potential for strength.

“In a fragmented situation like this,” Connors said, “we Republicans could hold the balance of power.”

Added McDowell, the black state legislator: “If we can get those 22 Republican votes, we can probably get what we want.”

RIPE FOR REDISTRICTING Alabama’s 6th and 7th Congressional Districts are now represented by Democrats: Ben Erdreich in the 6th, which consists of Birmingham and its suburbs; Claude Harris Jr. in the 7th, which includes some of the outer suburbs and a large rural area.

Both congressmen are white, and both won election by 2-1 margins in 1988. Blacks made up about 30% of each district in the 1980 census. To increase the chances that a black would be elected, the two districts could be redrawn so that one of them included most of the black population.

That would very possibly leave Republicans in control of the other.