- State Republican legislators officially redraw North Carolina's U.S.

House districts.

And the governor says DMV operations are now running more smoothly with new funding and new policies in place.

This is State Lines.

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(upbeat orchestral music) ♪ - Welcome to State Lines.

I'm David Hurst, filling in for Kelly McCullen.

A big week in Raleigh this week.

Joining me to break it all down, political analyst Joe Stewart, representative Allison Dahle of Wake County, Senator Benton Sawrey of Johnston County, and North Carolina Forward Party Chair Patrick Newton.

Gentlemen, lady, thank you all for joining us today.

We appreciate it.

- Thanks for having us.

- Let's talk about redistricting, the big story of the week.

We talk about redistricting, the Republican-led legislator, they approved new congressional districts this week.

The plan reshapes Eastern North Carolina's District 1, moving Democratic Representative Don Davis into District 3.

Republican Representative Greg Murphy's third district is now a bit less GOP-leaning as a result.

Statistically, North Carolina will have a pretty good chance of increasing its 10 to four Republican majority in the U.S.

House to an 11 to three Republican majority.

Here's a clip from the House Committee just this week.

- The new congressional map improves Republican political strength in Eastern North Carolina.

It moves NC1 from a district where President Trump earned 51% of the vote in 2024 to a district that would have produced 55% of the vote, an increase of four points.

To balance the strength, NC3 would lose the same amount that NC1 gains, four points, moving it from a district which Trump performed at 60% of the vote in the previous map to 56% in the new map.

- So we've got the first redrawn congressional district, mid-decadal in North Carolina history that wasn't at the request of the courts.

So there's another record for us.

There is no competitiveness.

We no longer have a district that is competitive.

- A lot of debate this week, a lot of shakeup in District 1 and 3.

Joe, what are the implications of all this?

- Well, you know, the interesting thing is for the legislature, the requirement is taking the census data, and that's performed on April 1st of every, first of the decade, the years that end in zero, and then apportioning the population across all of the districts so that more or less the population within a district is equal.

The state constitution limits the legislature to doing that once a decade for state legislative districts, but there's no limitation on congressional districts.

I think the implication here is, and people often ask the question, what does this mean to say that a particular map leans one way or the other?

It's really a statistical calculation based on the historical voting patterns.

Who do the people that live in that part of the state tend to vote for, Democrat or Republican, by comparison to how well the candidates for those parties do statewide?

So these districts now reflect, more or less, the fact that people that live in those parts of the state have a tendency to vote for one party's candidates versus the other.

I think to some extent, that there is oftentimes used this expression, gerrymandering, to give the impression that all of the consideration is based on clustering like-minded voters, but one of the significant phenomenas, not just in North Carolina, but across the country, is people, Americans, have consistently over the last couple of decades chosen more frequently to live in proximity to people that they agree with.

Of the 2,700 or so precincts in North Carolina, the building block of a legislative or congressional district, only a few dozen of them are competitive.

It's just a phenomena that people are living more in proximity to people they agree with politically, and so that's probably as much as anything else.

A reflection of what these district lines represent is just that reality.

Now, the movement out of one district into another, and in this regard, the third district now, a little less Republican-leaning, so the peril that Republicans might face is if there is a midterm election or a presidential election that is a big blue wave, a lot of Democratic enthusiasm for one reason or another, it makes a district that might not otherwise have been more competitive for Democrats more competitive.

But I think as far as that goes, this is a midterm election.

The turnout will be lower.

We may see some interesting phenomenas based on the fact that Don Davis, the incumbent and the first, no longer lives in that district.

He may have to move, although he's not required to, but generally speaking, politically, you want a candidate to live in the district that they're gonna represent.

But at the end of the day, I think the legislature's done what they feel like they needed to do to answer the question of what does the state need to reflect in terms of the congressional districts given the realities of the 2026 midterms.

Other states are doing these kinds of things as well now.

It is, to some extent, a little unprecedented, but we'll see.

Sometimes the thing that we have to remember is the districts are drawn on the census data, but the state has grown by over 500,000 people since April 1st of 2020, which is when the census data that was used to draw these maps was compiled.

- Representative Dahle, the Democrats have called this a partisan power grab.

How do you see it?

What are some of your concerns with the way these maps have been drawn?

- Well, you know, when I ran on one map, came in on another map, and I've been on different maps each and every time, and it makes it confusing for the people of the state to learn what their new district is, and I think that's the part that really frustrates me is it's not the leaders.

We have maps in front of us that tell us where our district is.

It's the public that they have to keep on, and this will be the third change, and so those people don't get to know their, if they get to know their representative and they work with them, now their representative could or could not have changed, and I think it's unfair to the people.

I think the people need to be allowed to have a secure, just at least one secure thing right now.

We don't have a lot of security right now, or I don't feel like we do, and I feel like in times past, we've done it every 10 years, and I just, unless the courts order it, I just didn't think it was needed.

- Senator Sawrey, your response to voters who might be concerned about representation?

- I think certainty is, with knowing what district you're gonna be in, I mean, that's a fair point, and I don't think the General Assembly has been responsible for that.

I think if you look at the maps we've had, there have been seven redraws maybe in the past 14 years or so, and I think five of them have been court ordered, and at the end of the day, the maps have held up, and I think we've been vindicated as a Republican majority in the General Assembly with respect to how things are supposed to operate.

I think Joe's point earlier about people self-sorting is really interesting.

If you go back and you look at Mike Easley's victories as Attorney General and as Governor, you look at Roy Cooper's victories even as Attorney General versus his time as Governor, you see the number of competitive counties where Democrats had a majority is consistently getting fewer and fewer.

I mean, they used to win a majority of the counties, and now they're barely winning double-digit counties at the end of the day.

So a point that's been made is, several years ago we had a 7-7 map that was drawn as a result of a court order, I think by Bob Orr, former Supreme Court Justice.

In that map, I would argue, and I think several non-partisan election observers did, that it was actually a gerrymander in and of itself because it split Raleigh and it split Charlotte in several different congressional districts.

Had Republicans done that, people would have been screaming about it because of the way that we went into cities and municipalities and divided them up in order to weight certain other districts in a particular way.

So, you know, we are not a parliamentary system where there's a proportional representation that if a party gets 51% of the vote, they should be allocated 51% of the seats.

We're based on where people live and geographic representation.

And even in some of the prior cases challenging the General Assembly's own maps and the congressional maps, the plaintiffs' experts in those cases found that at a base level, because of the way that North Carolina's population is distributed, the Republicans have a structural advantage with respect to the number of congressional seats, Senate seats, and House seats under our maps.

Until the Democrats start appealing to rural voters again, they're going to have this issue.

And the party needs to come to the voters rather than asking the maps to be drawn to chase the policies they want to see implemented.

- Patrick, where do you see things going from here?

The governor can't veto redistricting.

So is a court challenge inevitable, you think?

- I think there'll definitely be court challenges, but, you know, I'd like to look at the numbers that we're talking about.

We have more registered voters in the state of North Carolina.

There's more unaffiliated voters than are Democrats or Republicans, but at the moment, we don't have any representation in the current two-party system.

So if you look at the two primary parties and the maps, and I totally understand your point that we are not proportional, but I feel that it should be a factor.

The fact that we're debating whether or not for a total of 14 congressional seats is 10-4 or 11-3 the appropriate mix.

If the Democrats and registered Republicans in the state are about even, then I think the maps should fall somewhere around 7-7 or maybe 8-6 for, you know, a party that has a little more geographic strength.

But when it gets to the point where it's 10-4 or now possibly even 11-3, and as was mentioned in the tape that we watched, we don't really have competitive races, and I think that's a bit of a travesty.

I think voters, you know, I hear a lot of voters that come to us and say, "I feel like my vote doesn't matter."

I think the thing is with our current political system and the elections, the way we conduct them, they can make a strong argument that that's accurate, that depending on where you live, and both sides are disenfranchised, right?

The way the maps are drawn, there's Republicans that are trapped in districts where their voice is never going to be heard.

It just happens to be more Democrats at this moment in history, but it's a problem for all of us.

- Can I respond?

Just something on the competitive seat piece.

So, you know, the top-line number that I think people talk about, and you saw Senator Hines' reference, is President Trump's numbers in those particular districts.

If you look down at the stat packs, as we call them, you can actually see Michelle Morrow's race and Moe Green's race for superintendent of public instruction, and you see the gubernatorial race, and those actually reflected competitive races.

So I think we're doing a disservice to the voters, assuming that they can't take a look at the candidates, take a look at the policies that they're proposing, and assume that they can make a decision.

Putting them in a box or a single silo and saying, "You're a Republican or you're a Democrat, "and you're going to vote this way," irrespective of what somebody believes and what quality candidate they are, I think that's an unfortunate thing that's lost in some of this discussion.

So, yes, Senator Hines was very clear on the reasons that this was done at the end of the day, but I don't think that it is going to have the dramatic impact that some people assume that it will.

- Agreed.

I was referring more so to the 14 congressional races, but yeah, we want to see more, just more representation.

We want people to have the choices they need to pick elected officials that represent them.

So whether that's Republican, Democrat, or other, I think that's what we need to be moving.

- So, and this is maybe just a rhetorical question out there, but should the maps chase the policy that the parties are pushing, or should the parties go and attempt to appeal to the individual voters in these districts?

Because if you look, some of these Northeastern North Carolina districts and Southeastern North Carolina districts are traditional Democrat strongholds, right?

And they have changed over time.

They still have significant groups of Democrats that are registered there.

They have just moved on from the Democrat party because some of the policies that they have adopted.

So I think that there's a question of which follows the other, right?

Do the maps follow the policy, or should the parties go seek out the voters in these particular areas and make them more appealing?

- I have one question.

- I thought I was supposed to be the one.

- You are, I know, you are.

But I thought that part of representation was listening to all the voters in your district.

Now, if I'm wrong, let me go back and do something different because I value voices that don't agree with me just as much as I value those that agree with me because I don't wanna live in an echo chamber, which is why I spend a lot of time over on the other side of the aisle because I know this stuff.

I know what it's like to sit on the Democratic side.

I wanna know what, you know, because I do have Republicans in my district and I do have to take that into effect.

And I don't, I think the party system, I'm running under it, I'm happy with it, I don't wanna change it right now, but on the flip side, I don't think we take into consideration what the voters actually want.

And with the congressional maps, when we looked through, and this is just going on hearsay, when we looked through what the comments were, there were not very many, "Yay, team, go redo our districts."

There were a whole lot of, "We don't want these districts redrawn."

So I think we should have taken more time.

I don't think we gave the opportunity to listen to the people of North Carolina and what they wanted.

And those voices of the unaffiliated, I mean, the unaffiliated is huge in my district.

- I would say every elected official knows this, there's not Republican trash and Democratic trash, your constituents want their trash picked up.

So there's certainly some functions of government that everybody wants to have provided for them.

The truth is, the thing that we should probably be focusing on in North Carolina is restructuring the way that we elect our officials so that good quality people of both parties can comfortably serve their constituents in office, either in the General Assembly or in Congress.

Probably we need to look at how the primary system works because it's very difficult for someone who is well-intended and would be a great member of Congress or a great member of the General Assembly to get through the treacherous shark-infested waters of party politics that is a primary.

The fact that our primary is so far away from our general election is probably problematic.

And the fact that there are more parties than Democrat and Republican now, and so general ticket ballots are gonna have more names on them, there probably are other things, including the restructuring of the legislative branch so that we're not asking you to make such a significant sacrifice of your personal time and finances to just serve this very large thing we call the state of North, this $40 billion a year enterprise that you're expected to be on the board of directors for.

So the districts notwithstanding and the phenomena of people clumping together based on ideology notwithstanding, it's probably time for us to do more to make sure good quality people are not discouraged from participating in the process.

- Let's zoom out a little bit because we'll continue to unpack this, but as you, Joe, alluded to earlier, there are nationwide redistricting trends.

And we've seen the Democrats say North Carolina Republicans are putting President Trump's agenda ahead of state interests with this redistricting effort.

Republicans counter though that they're only responding to a national redistricting push.

Senator Ralph Hise was asked whether President Trump personally called North Carolina lawmakers to request this redistricting.

- I will say that I received no direct communication from the president, from the White House staff, or directives to draw a map.

This is something I very much support doing individually.

And improving the direction of this map, what I have seen is there are social media posts and other things out there that are publicly available.

The president recalling on all states, Republican controlled states across the nation to undo the challenges we've seen from so many other states, California being the most recent, but New York, New Mexico, Connecticut, Massachusetts, to maximize their maps in order to put Democrats into Congress and it's necessary for the state of North Carolina to respond.

- We're doing it again to curry favor with the administration, but what we're really doing is consolidating power.

So the warning I would give the folks is this, it's all well and good as long as you stay in favor.

It's not about the person who's at top, it's about what ultimately helps all of the people we're supposed to be serving.

I will give it to you.

There's been no pretense of doing something to make things better for North Carolinians.

- Patrick, let's continue that conversation.

We're seeing nationwide redistricting efforts.

It's not just North Carolina, Texas, California, the list goes on.

Is this the new normal for American politics?

- Let's hope not.

I think there was a book, Everything You Need to Know You Learn, in kindergarten or something to that extent.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

I've heard the argument that, well, it's okay if North Carolina does it because California did it.

And California says, well, we're doing it because Texas did it.

The bottom line is if it's not appropriate for the citizens, I don't think any of us should be doing it.

So you mentioned several of the court cases that we've had and Supreme Court Justice Orr and Morgan, and I've spoken to both of them on this topic.

And I believe in one of those cases, Justice Morgan specifically asked, do the citizens of North Carolina have a constitutional right to fair elections?

And I honestly, I don't know, I don't feel like the court has clearly answered that.

And I don't mean to dump that on the General Assembly, but I think that's a really important, fundamental question that we all need to be on the same page.

Frankly, I don't fault the Republicans of North Carolina for drawing maps with political motivation any more or less than I do Democrats in Illinois.

This has been deemed as being legal.

So in any competition, politics or otherwise, you play sports, if it's legal, you're gonna go ahead and do it to advance your team and try to win the game.

So I don't fault anyone for that.

I think the question is, should it be legal?

Can we say to the courts, whether North Carolina or in DC, can we get a decision to say that drawing maps for political gain is something that shouldn't be tolerated?

And I don't care what state it's in, I think it's unfair.

And I think you could argue it's a violation of the voting rights of the citizens.

When 80% of our elections are either uncontested in many cases because of the way the maps are drawn or deemed uncompetitive.

But ironically, as you mentioned, the primaries where you can have an impact, but over 80% of us don't bother to vote in the primary.

So I don't think the average voter really understands how all this works.

And that's a bit of a travesty.

So I know everyone at this table wants to educate and engage voters.

And one thing we could all agree on is how can we get people to learn with this current system, how could you be more involved and how could you have a real impact?

And I would challenge every voter in North Carolina and across the country, as you said, right?

Look at the candidates for who they are.

I honestly don't care about party, right?

But if you think this person represents you best, then go vote for them, but get involved in the primary.

'Cause often once the primary closes, everybody in the room knows who's gonna win the general election.

And it's back to, does my vote really have an impact?

Am I wasting my vote?

And I think we need to change that.

- I mean, so I represent Johnston County.

Johnston County is, looking at the top level presidential results, it's a 60/40 county, right?

So a lot of the primary does determine what happens in our county.

It's incumbent on Representative Dahle and I to go out there and really educate the voters about what the process looks like, why we think that we're the best candidates.

And I mean, it's difficult and challenging and it's an interesting lesson in civics.

But to your point about this, the Supreme Court has opined and said that redistricting is inherently a political task, right?

I mean, so it would become a political question at the congressional level and the state level about whether to move to a system that you talked about, some type of proportional representation system.

I think probably history in a 30,000 foot view is important here.

I mean, everybody talks about it, but North Carolina Republicans did not invent the concept of partisan redistricting.

- Absolutely not.

(laughing) - The textbook example in civics classes and political science courses is a district that was drawn by the Democrats in North Carolina in the middle of the state.

I mean, Democrats in North Carolina weren't even drawing contiguous congressional districts.

They're using something called touchpoint continuity in order to have districts snaking all over eastern North Carolina, central North Carolina to preserve certain things that they wanted to accomplish in their drawing.

You know, I had a lady from New Jersey, of all places, email me this week and how dare you redistrict?

And I was just curious, I looked.

New Jersey has 12 members of their congressional delegation, three of which are Republicans.

You know, 20 something percent, I guess, was that one quarter of them, so 25% of them.

Well, they gave Donald Trump 46% of their vote in this last presidential election, so I flipped the question back to her.

You know, sometimes I respond to emails like that.

(laughing) - I can't help you with that.

- Well, I mean, you know, it's tempting.

You know, isn't this, you know, I mean, isn't your own state doing the same thing that you're accusing North Carolina of?

And her response was, no, we didn't do it by gerrymandering.

Because of course not, you know.

You know, so there's a certain tribal nature to this and everybody wants to think that their own side is doing it and you can go around the nation and find similar examples and each state's unique, right?

Each state's unique in how their populations disperse, how their local politics are conducted.

It's, I think that's what makes it special and that's why I would hesitate to try and force a solution on us.

But I do think the parties need to do a better job communicating their policy.

I think they need to do a better job educating voters about what the process looks like.

And I think the candidates also need to do a better job communicating what it is they intend to do when they're running for office.

- And I would love to see us quit fear-mongering.

I would love to see us talk about the issues actually.

I mean, you know, during, when I first ran, I was not as tuned in as I am right now.

And I really didn't have any idea that the primary was where the race was.

And I went through the primary and then all of a sudden everybody was like, "Oh, you're fine."

And I was like, "What do you mean I'm fine?"

They're like, "What are you talking about I'm fine?"

- So you're not in November, I gotta worry?

- Yeah.

I was like, "That's the big one."

And it was like, "No, you're okay."

And it was as if I had fallen off the face of the earth and my name.

And so I don't know that I, I mean, I agree with you.

I would like to see, I mean, I think that's why people don't have any interest is 'cause they're like, "Oh, well, the Democrat's gonna win or the Republican's gonna win."

I don't know though.

- Can I follow on up?

So, no, but to your point, and I've looked at the map, you're in a Republican district.

- Sure.

- It actually has, you know, kind of fair lines and shape to it.

So the majority of the people in that district are gonna want a Republican.

And I think that's great.

And that's where the primary comes in, right?

So would you agree though, that, you know, that's, you know, all of us need to help educate people.

Because I think the voters say exactly what you just said to themselves.

Well, why would I care about the primary?

I'll let the parties figure it out.

And in your case, let's say, and then when it comes to general election, I'll go vote for the Republican.

They don't realize, well, then you don't know which Republican you're getting.

- And not all Republicans are the same.

And not all Democrats are the same.

And not all people are the same, newsflash, right?

So if we could get more people to understand and engage in the primary, even in districts that are, you know, heavily weighted to one side, that's okay.

As Joe said, people tend to congregate with like-minded people.

That's, you know, there's nothing wrong with that.

- Well, I think primaries are healthy, right?

I mean, you know, I-- - I think they should be.

I don't think they are at the moment.

- Well, I think they can be.

And I think it's the responsibility of the candidate to make it so, right?

I think the candidates that are running in that primary need to do a really great job getting their message out, telling voters, you know, why they feel that they're the best particular candidate, that circumstance.

You know, it's interesting, you talk about Johnston County being a Republican county and that you've talked to Justice Orr.

So North Carolina is unique in that we have one of the strongest constitutional anti-gerrymandering positions or provisions in the nation.

We have the Stevenson decision, the whole county provision in North Carolina.

So Johnston County is a Republican county, single county district because you take the population of North Carolina, you divide it by 50.

And if your county is that population within plus or minus a certain percentage, you have to be a whole county district.

Think about the possibilities if we didn't have that from a gerrymandering perspective, right?

You could go up and you could splice Johnston County four ways, wade in Wake County and create four more Wake County seats.

I mean, so we don't have that.

And that was actually a decision, I believe by Justice Orr back in the early 2000s that put that protection into place.

And so that has gone a long way towards making sure that you have contiguous districts that protect communities of interest and really reflect people.

I mean, we have county clusters beyond that and districts within county clusters that do it.

So, I mean, there are very strong guardrails that other states look to around the nation and how we draw our legislative maps.

And I think even with these maps on the congressional level that we looked at, if you look at communities of interest and preservation of like-minded people, the Inner Banks and the Outer Banks here are now finally within one single district together.

I mean, it makes sense that the Outer Banks should be together as part of one congressional district.

Right?

- Great.

- A concluding thought, Senator-- - You got 10 seconds.

- Sorry, part of the problem is the county maps.

- Sure.

- They don't really reflect the way the state's demographically.

So I think the two of you should co-author a bill to completely redraw the state's county maps.

That wouldn't be controversial at all.

- And something else in 100, if you don't mind.

- I look forward to it.

Thank you for watching.

We'll see you next time.

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