The left-leaning news site Slate got its hands on a leaked audio recording from a recent American Legislative Exchange Council meeting that includes very candid remarks from former congressman Lynn Westmoreland.
The Coweta County Republican was on hand to discuss redistricting, a topic he helped oversee for Republicans in the U.S. House with wild success in 2010. But the most volatile quotes came from his recounting of a tale from his years in the Georgia Legislature:
Westmoreland "told a story about giving black Democrats in his state mapmaking software and encouraging them to draw their "perfect district," knowing that districts filled with minority voters would make surrounding districts whiter and more Republican...
Westmoreland recalled inviting the members of the "black caucus" to his office, "off campus," to create their "perfect map." One incumbent, he said, "finally fell into the trap and came over there and drew his perfect district." To show the redistricting plan benefited black Democrats too, he "immediately got the local paper down there" to run an article on that lawmaker's perfect district. Westmoreland then included a district as close as possible to that overwhelmingly black and Democratic one in the state's official map. The legislator, he said, voted against the map and soon lost his seat.
"I promise you it'll be beneficial to you," he told the ALEC attendees. "They still want to be reelected. They still want to have the best district they can have."
Westmoreland’s comments quickly drew rebukes from Democrats on social media.
Theron Johnson, Georgia state director of the All On The Line, a campaign affiliated with Eric Holder's National Democratic Redistricting Committee, called the remarks "a perversion of democracy" and a "blatant example of a politician bragging about methodically and successfully conspiring to manipulate the state's electoral maps."
But here’s the context that’s missing: From the 1990s onward, redistricting in Georgia was a tool that Republicans in the state Capitol, then a struggling minority, used to fracture the black/white alliance that had long kept Democrats in power.
Many African-American state lawmakers were willing participants -- not the dupes that the Slate piece suggests.
In 1991, when the Legislature was drawing new maps, Georgia had only one majority black congressional district, covering the city of Atlanta and much of Fulton County. John Lewis, the soft-spoken veteran of Selma, had recently beaten Julian Bond for the Fifth District seat.
African-Americans in a Legislature dominated by white rural Democrats wanted to send two more black Georgians to Congress. And Republicans were out to protect an up-and-comer in their ranks: Newt Gingrich, the state's sole Republican in Congress.
It was an eyes-wide-open situation. On the Democratic side, the strategy even had a name: “Max black.”
Cynthia McKinney was one of the African-American members of the state House who formed an alliance with Republicans, eventually carrying the day. She won the new, serpentine 11th District in 1992. U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, first won his seat that year, too.
Lynn Westmoreland arrived at the state Capitol in 1993, and was House minority leader in 2001, when redistricting came up again. In the above Slate piece, the black lawmaker whom Westmoreland says he seduced with a computer program isn’t identified.
But one of Westmoreland’s African-American partners at the time was state Rep. Ben Allen, D-Augusta, who had congressional ambitions and his eye on a new 12th District. From a 2001 piece in the AJC that described the overthrow of a congressional map approved by then-House Speaker Tom Murphy:
In the House, a cadre of 17 black Democrats voted with Republicans to toss out Murphy's map and replace it with one drawn by Allen, an African-American who said he plans to run for Congress.
Oddly enough, Allen's map was similar to one presented by House Minority Leader Lynn Westmoreland (R-Sharpsburg), barring variations in North Georgia. Both seem designed to send nine Georgia Republicans to Congress in a delegation that will grow by two members, to 13, because of the state's population growth in the 1990s.
A stunned Murphy said he did not know what caused his proposal to fail. Speaking from the well of the House, the speaker said he had tried to build a district that suited Allen. Murphy said in the end he could not do it, because it would have robbed neighboring districts of likely Democratic voters.
Allen lost the Democratic primary in 2002. The 12th District congressional seat went Republican instead, won by Max Burns.
Westmoreland currently sits on the governing board of the state Department of Transportation.
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Our AJC colleague Ernie Suggs brings us the news that yet another presidential candidate is set to visit Atlanta soon.
Democrat Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge-fund executive who founded the Need to Impeach group, will sit down with Jesse Jackson on Oct. 11 during his annual Rainbow PUSH coalition forum.
Steyer has spent nearly $20 million on TV and radio ads promoting his message that Trump should be impeached, but it’s done little to help him in the polls. He’s polling around 1%, though it’s enough to qualify him to appear in the October debate.
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New digital ads from the House GOP's campaign arm are targeting freshman U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Marietta, for her stance on impeachment.
McBath has stopped short of endorsing impeachment outright but voted in the House Judiciary Committee last month to formalize the inquiry, saying she’s supportive of the “responsibility of this Congress to uncover the truth and defend the Constitution.”
Republicans also flooded McBath’s D.C. office with protesters on Thursday. They were eventually forced out by Capitol police.
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U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, is urging a federal judge to dismiss an attempt by House Democrats to obtain grand jury information from the Russia investigation. In a new 31-page "friend of the court" brief, Collins, who's the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said his Democratic counterparts have "not taken the necessary steps, consistent with past practice and the law, to meet the burden required to pierce the grand jury veil of secrecy."
Collins said Democrats have no legal basis for requesting such information until the entire House votes to authorize an impeachment inquiry.
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U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, by the way, will be the keynote speaker at the Northampton County, Pa., annual GOP fundraiser on Oct. 10. Northampton is one of the key counties that flipped to Donald Trump in 2016, handing him Pennsylvania's electoral votes. This bit of biography is worth noting:
"Collins is also being considered for an appointment to the US Senate where there is a vacancy to be filled by the Governor of Georgia. Rumor has it, Collins is at the top of the list for this appointment. Collins has been the face of the defense of our President against the frivolous clamoring for impeachment coming from the radical left."
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Former U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston's entrance into the U.S. Senate sweepstakes is already causing some heartburn among Republican women, in part because of his strong defense of President Donald Trump's sexist comments.
Conservative writer Karla Jacobs wrote on Twitter:
"Jack Kingston ran as quickly as his legs would carry him to CNN to get his mug on tv to rationalize Trump's 'grab em by the pussy' comments as nothing more than "locker room banter." He does not need to represent women of GA in any capacity."
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We have two county Republican operations that are drawing flak for the company they keep. The north Georgia website FetchYourNews reports that one of its reporters was booted from a meeting of the Towns County GOP last week that featured Chris Gaubatz, an anti-Islamic speaker. The reporter was allegedly told the gathering was an executive session.
Ahmed Mitchell, executive director of CAIR-Georgia, weighed in on Thursday:
"Sheriff Chris Clinton and the Towns County Republican Party must stop endangering Georgia residents by embracing far-right extremists. Hate speech leads to hate crimes. Just as no one should learn about Judaism from a neo-Nazi, no one should learn about Islam from an anti-Muslim bigot."
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Closer to home, the Anti-Defamation League and the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials are condemning the Gwinnett County GOP for issuing a Saturday speaking invitation D.A. King, whom they called "someone who vocally supports and spews irrational hatred against immigrants."
