New Black congressional district bows to politics, not race, backers say

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    Politics and race are both factors in a pending court challenge of Louisiana’s new congressional maps. How much weight each carries is a major question before three federal judges whose ruling could affect the balance of power in the next Congress.

    At issue is a congressional map that was approved this year with the backing of the state’s new governor, Jeff Landry—to the consternation of at least some of his fellow Republicans.

    The map creates a new mostly Black congressional district in Louisiana, at the expense of a white Republican incumbent, Rep. Garret Graves, who backed another Republican in the governor’s election last fall. Given voting patterns in Louisiana, a mostly Black district would be more likely to send a Democrat to Congress.

    Twelve self-described non-African American voters argued in a lawsuit that the new mostly Black district constitutes illegal “textbook racial gerrymandering.”

    Not so, argue the new map’s backers. Politics, they argue, was the major influence in drawing the new district boundary lines. They say the new map protects most incumbents and draws together Black populations in a way that will comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, giving Louisiana, which is roughly one-third Black, a second majority Black district among six.

    They also pointed to Republican backers of the plan, who said during legislative debates in January that they wanted to safeguard four GOP-held House districts, including those of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

    That the new map put Graves in political peril by placing him in the new mostly Black district is further evidence race wasn’t the sole motivating factor, the map’s backers said in briefs and in testimony last week at a hearing in Shreveport.

    “We all know that one of the main reasons it was drawn the way it was, was because Gov. Jeff Landry wants to get rid of Congressman Graves,” state Rep. Mandie Landry, a New Orleans Democrat who testified at the hearing, said in a social media post. Landry is not related to the governor.