>>20989248 Clyburn to Cavuto: Black Support For Trump Won't Last, You Deal In Misrepresentations On This NetworkPNHow Corrupt is James Clyburn? Hugely!
How Rep. James Clyburn Protected His District at a Cost to Black Democrats
Marilyn W. Thompson;
May 5, 2023, 5 a.m. EDT
Facing the possibility of an unsafe district, South Carolina’s most powerful Democrat sent his aide to consult with the GOP on a redistricting plan that diluted Black voting strength and harmed his party’s chances of gaining seats in Congress.
The meeting was arranged in secret. On Nov. 19, 2021, the chief of staff for South Carolina’s Senate Judiciary Committee texted Dalton Tresvant, a key aide to Rep. Jim Clyburn, the state’s most powerful Democrat.
“Hey Dalton - Andy Fiffick here,” he said. “We wrapped up some morning things quicker than we thought, so if you want/can come earlier than 1:30 we’re available.”
The state Legislature had begun the crucial task of redrawing voting district lines after the 2020 census. Even small changes in the lines can mean the difference between who wins office, who loses and which party holds power. As the process commenced, Clyburn had a problem:
His once majority Black district had suffered a daunting exodus of residents since the last count. He wanted his seat to be made as safe as possible. Republicans understood the powerful Black Democrat could not be ignored, even though he came from the opposing party and had no official role in the state-level process. Fortunately for them,Clyburn, who is 82 and was recently reelected to his 16th term, had long ago made peace with the art of bartering.
Tresvant made his way to the grounds of the antebellum Statehouse, a relic still marked by cannon fire from Sherman’s army. The aide carried a hand-drawn map of Clyburn’s 6th District and presented it to Fiffick and the other Republican committee staffers who were working to reconfigure the state’s congressional boundaries. Some of Tresvant’s proposals appealed to Republicans.The sketch added Black voters to Clyburn’s district while moving out some predominantly white precincts that leaned toward the GOP.The Republicans kept Tresvant’s map confidential as they worked through the redistricting process for the following two months. They looped in Tresvant again near the end, according to public records obtained by ProPublica.The resulting map, finalized in January 2022, made Clyburn’s lock on power stronger than it might have been otherwise.
A House of Representatives seat that Democrats held as recently as 2018 would become even more solid for the incumbent Republican. This came at a cost:Democrats now have virtually no shot of winning any congressional seat in South Carolina other than Clyburn’s,state political leaders on both sides of the aisle say.
As others attacked the Republican redistricting as an illegal racial gerrymander, Clyburn said nothing publicly.His role throughout the redistricting process has remained out of the public view, and he has denied any involvementin state legislative decisions. And while it’s been clear that Clyburn has been a key participant in past state redistricting, the extent of his role in the 2021 negotiations has not been previously examined.
This account draws on public records, hundreds of pages of legal filings and interviews with dozens of South Carolina lawmakers and political experts from both sides of the aisle. While redistricting fights are usually depicted as exercises in raw partisan power, the records and legal filings provide an inside look that reveals they can often involve self-interested input from incumbents and backroom horse trading between the two parties. With the House so closely divided today, every seat takes on more value.
South Carolina’s 2021 redistricting is now being challenged in federal court by the NAACP. The organization contends that Republicans deliberately moved Black voters into Clyburn’s district to solidify their party’s hold on the neighboring swing district, the 1st. A three-judge federal panel ruled in January that aspects of the state’s map were an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that must be corrected before any more elections in the 1st District are held.
But Clyburn’s role already has complicated the NAACP’s case. The judges dismissed some of the group’s contentions partly because Clyburn’s early requests drove some of the mapping changes. The Republicans are now appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, which has yet to decide if it wants to hear oral arguments in the case.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-rep-james-clyburn-protected-his-district-at-a-cost-to-black-democrats