THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 1, 1995 TAG: 9507290007
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By JOHN GOOLRICK
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
Now hold on just a minute. Are some Republicans actually talking about challenging Virginia's congressional and legislative redistricting?
Are they actually thinking of spending money to go to court to fight the Virginia General Assembly Reapportionment Act of 1991, which should also be known as the Virginia Republican Party Relief Act of 1991?
If anybody should be going to court to challenge that act, it would be the Virginia Democratic Party; but fat chance of that happening.
Yes, a court challenge is not only feasible, but there is a pretty good chance that whoever took the matter to court would eventually emerge victorious.
That's because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that a particular congressional district in Georgia, created to include a substantial black majority in order to elect a black member of Congress from that district, does not meet its standards.
Kicking sand in the face of the U.S. Department of Justice and its interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court said congressional and legislative districts created solely for racial purposes do not meet constitutional standards.
And though the particular case applied only to the Georgia district, it opened the door to challenges of hundreds of black and Hispanic majority congressional and legislative districts created across the country in the early 1990s.
In Virginia, the 1991 reapportionment done by a legislature controlled by Democrats resulted in one black majority congressional district and the subsequent election of Bobby Scott, a black Democrat, as Virginia's first black member of Congress.
It also provided black majorities in many more House of Delegates and state Senate districts and dramatic increases in black representation in the General Assembly.
Since Scott and all black members of the state legislature are Democrats, the Virginia Democratic Party is not about to go to court to challenge its own redistricting plan. And the ACLU, which supported the plan, won't be taking the matter to court either.
This leaves the curious matter of why one official of the Virginia Republican Party appeared eager in print to help direct a GOP court challenge.
Perhaps the remarks were merely for public consumption and not meant to be taken seriously by the party faithful. For the fact is that the Democratic redistricting that resulted in significantly increased minority representation in the legislature weakened the Virginia Democratic Party in general and helped make possible dramatic GOP legislative gains in 1991 and 1993.
Leaving aside the philosophical implications of the Supreme Court ruling (since most Republicans would inherently deplore districts set up solely to help elect minorities), we have here an Alice in Wonderland-type situation where things are not at all what they seem.
Blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic, and by clustering them in districts which are sometimes oddly shaped, more of them get elected to office.
But at the same time it removes from other districts a powerful Democratic bloc vote. The redistricting act of 1991 boosted the number of white voters in dozens of districts and resulted in many more districts that were Republican leaning at both the congressional and legislative levels.
There are numerous old-line Democratic conservatives who now occupy state congressional and legislative districts who will likely be succeeded by Republicans. Indeed, it can be fairly said that the 1991 redistricting and its creation of minority districts gave impetus to the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994 and may help state Republicans gain control of one or more General Assembly chambers this year.
If the minority districts were overturned on a wholesale basis, there would be fewer minorities in office but much larger groups of black Democrats in predominantly white districts. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure that out. MEMO: Mr. Goolrick, a former news reporter, is now an aide to 1st District
Rep. Herbert Bateman. Opinions expressed are his own.
KEYWORDS: OPINION by CNB