Proposed Congressional map would redraw East Cobb lines

Two years after carving up East Cobb into two Congressional districts, the Georgia legislature could be dramatically tearing up those lines again.

During a special legislative session that got underway earlier this week, Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee Chairwoman Shelly Echols submitted a map that would put most of East Cobb in the 11th Congressional district.

Lawmakers were called to a special session after a decision by a federal judge in Atlanta to throw out the maps the legislature adopted in 2021, saying they diluted minority voting strength under the federal Voting Rights Act.

The legislature has until Dec. 8 to finish reapportionment work under the court order.

The 11th District been represented since 2016 by Cassville Republican Barry Loudermilk, and currently includes some of East Cobb.

The proposed 11th district would include some of Cherokee County and all of Bartow, Pickens and Gordon counties.

The map, proposed on Friday, would take the 6th District out of East Cobb completely. Some of the area is currently in the 6th and is represented by first-term Republican Rich McCormick.

Instead, the 7th District would include much of what is now in the 6th—North Fulton, Forsyth and Dawson c0unties, plus some of Hall and Lumpkin counties.

That would likely make the 11th an even stronger Republican district than the 6th. Cobb Democratic commissioner Jerica Richardson has announced her candidacy in the 6th, and she has appeared at events in more conservative reaches of the district.

Richardson was drawn out of her East Cobb home when the legislature reapportioned seats on the Cobb Board of Commissioners in 2021. Richardson and her two Democratic colleagues voted to invoke home rule and honor maps drawn by the Cobb delegation, an action that’s currently before a Cobb Superior Court judge.

In a social media message Friday, Richardson issued a statement saying that “these maps are an affront to the idea of fair representation and fly in the face of the judge’s order to the state.”

She referenced a similar action in Alabama, where Republican lawmakers under a court order created a second black-majority district in that state.

“My hope is they will see the error of their ways and fix these maps again before the judge’s Dec. 8 deadline,” Richardson said of the Georgia GOP lawmakers.

“If they do not, then I would support further legal challenges until the core message of the judge’s order is fulfilled.”

Nine of Georgia’s 14 Congressional districts are represented by Republicans, and eight seats are majority-white.

The judge ordered that a majority-black Congressional district in the western part of metro Atlanta be created. But the map proposed Friday would not do that.

Instead, it would add a minority-white district, keep the number of majority-black districts at four and leave one district that doesn’t have a racial majority.

That’s the current 7th District represented by Democrat Lucy McBath, who left the 6th District after 2021 reapportionment. It would have a strong Republican majority under the proposed map, and would take out all of Gwinnett County that she now represents.

The legislature also was ordered to create several majority-black legislative districts in the Atlanta and Macon areas.

The Georgia General Assembly has had Republican majorities since 2005. Currently the GOP has a 102-78 advantage in the House, and a 33-23 majority in the Senate.

The House on Friday voted out a House map along partisan lines proposed by Republican leaders in that chamber, and it will be sent to the Senate.

GOP State Reps. Sharon Cooper, John Carson and Don Parsons, who have East Cobb constituencies, voted in favor.

Voting against was State Rep. Solomon Adesanya, a first-term Democrat who represents District 43 in East Cobb.

Three redrawn districts in the House would pit Democratic incumbents against one another, including current Cobb delegation Chairwoman Teri Anulewicz and Doug Stoner.

Adesanya said in a social media message that “rather than doing the right thing, this time, they targeted our White Democrats, coupling members in three different House seats, which, essentially under their map, three Democrats will have to go, and three Democrats will remain. The Republicans in the Georgia House of Representatives must know their time as a majority is nearing the end. They are desperate to cling on to power.”

Senate Republicans on Friday also passed a map that would add two majority-black districts, and that will go on to the House.

Committee meetings are scheduled for Monday for the Congressional maps.

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