Fayette, judge at odds on voting setup

Percentage of whom are black: 19.5

Source: Judge Timothy Batten’s court ruling

Fayette County commissioners could decide as early as Thursday whether to appeal a federal judge’s decision aimed at giving black residents a better shot at getting elected to public office.

County officials have said it’s not possible to create a voting district where most voters would be minorities. U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten differs. He ordered the county last week to establish district voting and to create one such majority-minority district.

Batten agreed with the NAACP’s contention in a two-year-old lawsuit that at-large elections diluted black voting strength. County officials have until June 25 to create a plan in response to his ruling.

County officials have repeatedly said their experts were only able to draw a map that could get, at best, less than 50 percent minority voters.

Batten, who was appointed to the federal court bench by President George W. Bush, used 2010 census data in his ruling. He found:

- 20.1 percent of Fayette’s population is black, with most black residents in the northern half. Fayetteville, in the northeast, is 24 percent black while Tyrone, on the northwest border, is a third black.

- Of the 180 school districts in the state, Fayette is one of only 20 with at-large elections for all board members. “Significantly, no African-American has ever been elected to the [board of education ]or [board of commissioners],” Batten said. “This weighs heavily in favor of vote dilution.”

Charles Rousseau wants the change. He moved his family to Fayette County 19 years ago for its highly rated schools and low crime. Its proximity to the airport and downtown Atlanta made it the ideal commute to Rousseau’s executive job with Fulton County government and his wife’s job at Delta Air Lines.

He quickly immersed himself in the community, volunteering on the local library board and putting his public policy background to work on other community boards including a school board construction committee that oversaw SPLOST spending.

But when Rousseau sought election to office, it was a different story. He ran for the county commission in 2006 and lost, joining about a dozen other black residents who’ve tried over the past 30 years to break through the at-large voting system.

“I lost by a large margin,” said Rousseau, who worked for Fulton 17 years before retiring as assistant director of administration in the general services department.

“It’s a great day and, equally, a sad day,” said Rousseau, now semi-retired, as is his wife. “It’s sad that it took the court to force compliance on our governmental body, despite efforts to reach amicable compromises on our own.”

The court mandate doesn’t sit well with some opponents of district voting. Robert Horgan, a former county commissioner, said at-large allows Fayette voters to have a say-so in selecting all of their officials, not just those in a particular district. With just about 110,000 residents, Horgan said Fayette is “not big enough” to support district voting.“There’s nothing wrong with what we have (now). It works great,” he said.

He said the NAACP “really had to gerrymanader the lines” of its proposed voting map to create a mostly black district, pulling in Tyrone in the northwestern part of the county and Fayetteville in the northeast. “It doesn’t follow a logical pattern,” he said.

Rousseau said, “Everybody has the same desire to live in a safe community (with viable) commercial districts and tax base and balanced growth. We all want those things and as a county we have worked collectively to achieve and maintain those things. For 191 years, this county has seen fit to elect people of one ethnic persuasion to represent their interest on the local level. That’s a travesty. How do you justify and explain that to today’s young people that only people of a certain persuasion can represent their interest?”

Batten also wrote in his ruling:

- In 2010, Laura Burgess, an African-American Democrat, and Sam Tolbert, a white Republican, ran for the same school board seat. Tolbert won with 68.4 percent of the vote even though Burgess was the clear choice among black voters.

- Seven black candidates have run unsuccessfully for county commission seats even though black votes also are politically cohesive in commission races. In 2006, Rod Mack, a black Democrat, ran against Jack Smith, a white Republican, for the District 4 seat. Although Mack got 99 percent of the black vote, Smith won with 69.4 percent of the overall vote.

That same year, during a special election, two black and one white Republican candidates ran for a vacant seat, Batten wrote. One of the black candidates was attorney Emory Wilkerson, then vice-chairman of the Fayette County Republican party. The other, Malcolm Hughes, was a certified public accountant. The white Republican, Horgan, was a mechanic. Two black Democratic candidates also ran: Wendi Felton, a small business owner, and Rousseau.

Rousseau got 29.3 percent of the black vote, but only 2 percent support from non-African-American voters, the ruling said. Horgan was elected with 51.7 percent of the overall vote.

No African-American candidate has run for the commission since 2006.

The only one black person elected in Fayette was Magistrate Judge Charles Floyd. But he was elected as an incumbent after being appointed to the bench, Batten noted.

Fayette County has prided itself on keeping a low-profile and maintaining a slow-growth, laid-back atmosphere. Besides the high-achieving school system, there’s Peachtree City, the golf-cart town that was one of the South’s first planned communities. Its large-acreage lots, expansive homes and rural setting have lured companies from British film producer Pinewood Studios to This Is It, a black-owned restaurant chain.

Its population has more than tripled from 30 years ago when it was about 29,000. As the population grew, black residents, who now account for one in five, repeatedly urged county officials to change the 191-year-old election method. Rep. Virgil Floyd, a Tyrone resident, introduced two bills during the past eight years hoping to resolve the matter but state lawmakers rejected them.

Batten’s ruling surprised county officials who’ve spent more than $300,000 fighting the lawsuit.

But some voting rights experts had predicted Fayette would find itself in its current predicament.

“This is a pretty cookie-cutter case that you saw a lot of in the late 80’s and early 90’s,” said Emory University law professor Michael Kang, an election law expert.

“Ten or 15 years ago, it wouldn’t have made sense to appeal,” Kang said. However, “Over the last 10 years, there’s a lot less consensus supporting the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act.”

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Fayette County: AT A GLANCE

Source: U.S. Census