Despite Redistricting Dispute, Black Lawmakers Win Reelection

Contrary to the dire predictions of prominent civil rights leaders, all of the African American lawmakers who were pushed into majority white districts by a Supreme Court ruling easily won reelection this week.

In Georgia, Democratic Reps. Cynthia McKinney and Sanford Bishop won their reelection races even though they ran in newly drawn districts where only one in three voters was black.

Similarly in Texas, Democratic Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas won their races in crowded fields in mostly white, urban districts.

In North Carolina, Democratic Reps. Melvin Watt and Eva Clayton also won reelection, though their districts were not redrawn this year.

The Congressional Black Caucus gained one seat when Julia M. Carson, a Democrat, won a seat in an overwhelmingly white district in Indianapolis.

“We’re happily surprised,” said Penda Hair, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The results are a far cry from what civil rights leaders predicted earlier this year when the Supreme Court ordered the dismantling of “racially gerrymandered” districts. The justices said officials in Georgia, North Carolina and Texas had gone too far when they drew odd-shaped districts along racial lines in hopes of electing more blacks.

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The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, lambasted the rulings as mandating “a kind of ethnic cleansing.” Elaine Jones, head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said the rulings were “closing the noose” on black lawmakers, while an attorney for the legal group forecast that the Black Caucus would be able to “meet in the back seat of a taxicab.”

Tuesday’s voting saw one reelection casualty among African American members of Congress, but he was not from the disputed Southern districts. Rep. Gary Franks of Connecticut, a Republican, suffered an upset defeat. Democrat James H. Maloney, a former state senator, attacked Frank as a slum lord in TV ads and succeeded in defeating the three-term incumbent.

A frequent critic of the civil rights leaders said this week’s results show that the significance of a candidate’s race has been exaggerated.

“This is not 1960 in Mississippi. White America has changed, and whites have been and will vote for blacks,” said Abigail Thernstrom, a voting-rights expert affiliated with the Institute for Justice.

She has repeatedly faulted lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Clinton administration’s Justice Department for arguing that black candidates are doomed to defeat, except in districts where blacks are a majority.

“They have said over and over again [that] a black candidate cannot win in a majority-white district. It is simply not true,” Thernstrom said.

Hair, who handled the Texas case in the Supreme Court, agreed that this week’s results show that “racially polarized voting is dropping in the South.”

She pointed out, however, that the results also show the power of incumbency.

“If Cynthia McKinney were to retire, I’m not confident another African American could win in that district,” she said.

Despite the embarrassment of her father denouncing her opponent as a “racist Jew,” McKinney nonetheless won 58% of the vote in her new district, where 65% of the voters are white.

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The court’s ruling did cost one black lawmaker his seat, she added. Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) chose not to run for reelection after the court ordered his majority-black district redrawn.

“You can’t win if you don’t run,” Thernstrom said. “There is no reason to believe he could not have won if he had run.”

Even though the black incumbents prevailed Tuesday, civil rights groups and the Clinton administration are continuing to fight for more “majority-black” districts in the Supreme Court.

The federal court order that reduced Georgia from having three majority-black districts to only one will be challenged in a case to be heard by the high court on Dec. 9.

In written briefs, the Justice Department said “racially polarized” voting in Georgia would make it nearly impossible for blacks to win in the newly drawn districts.