Jackson Free Press

Gov. Haley Barbour's crusade for more Republican districts in the Mississippi House of Representatives is putting him at odds with the Mississippi NAACP, which wants the U.S. Department of Justice to approve a map with more black-majority districts.

This week, the civil-rights organization asked a federal court to convene a three-judge panel to restrict state legislators from running in their current districts in August, arguing that the districts no longer fairly represent black voters. NAACP President Derrick Johnson said his group sued Barbour and the state to impose better-proportioned districts after talks broke down between the Mississippi House of Representatives and the Senate on a House redistricting plan last week.

After the Senate voted down a House redistricting map for the second time this month, House Speaker Billy McCoy, D-Rienzi, said he would not bother to set up a conference with senators to hash out their differences because senators would likely accept nothing less than a House map creating fewer black-majority (and, therefore, fewer Democratic) districts.

McCoy instead sent the plan directly to the DOJ, in outrage.

"Nobody has ever meddled with the other (chamber's) plan. Neither body, not the Senate nor the House, has ever second-guessed the other. This is against all precedent," McCoy told the Jackson Free Press.

But the NAACP wants this legislative barrier removed before August elections.

"The old districts are mal-proportioned," said NAACP attorney Carroll Rhodes, who filed a complaint in U.S. District Court last Thursday and a motion to convene the panel on Monday. Rhodes said new Census 2010 figures show the population shifted in many parts of the state, creating some districts with thousands more people than other political districts. Federal law requires districts to contain equal population portions.

Marty Wiseman, director of Mississippi State University's John C. Stennis Institute of Government, said the NAACP suit will likely ramp up the pressure on the courts to deliver a federally acceptable plan in short order, but he added that Republicans in the House and Senate appear to think that a conservative court will deliver two district maps favorable to Republicans.

"Listening to the talk in the halls down there at the Capitol, the Republicans seem willing to roll the dice on getting a good Republican-appointed three-judge panel, because of all the judges appointed in the Bush administration," Wiseman said.

A similar situation arose from the Legislature's inability to agree on a redistricting plan after the 2000 Census, and a three-judge panel redrew the state's congressional districts in February 2002, almost in exact accord with Republican preferences, according to political author Jere Nash.

The issue pitting the NAACP against Barbour is that Mississippi voters tend to split their party preference along racial lines, with a majority of whites voting Republican and majority of blacks voting Democrat. Bryant and Barbour want more Republican districts in the House in hopes of getting a new conservative, or even a Republican, House-elected speaker within the next decade.

"This means not another Republican would get elected to the House of Representatives for the next decade--gerrymandered it so they made sure that that doesn't happen. We make sure we got a Democratic speaker for the next 10 years," Bryant said, while warning of the House-approved redistricting plan, at a March 8 Tea Party appearance at Eudora Welty Library in Jackson.

Gov. Barbour is not remaining neutral in the fray. He issued a statement this month praising Bryant's efforts to reject the original House plan: "Congratulations to Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant and the Senate for protecting the interests of all Mississippi voters. I hope the conference committee will craft a House plan that treats voters in every district the same."

McCoy has proved to be the only voice of opposition to some of Barbour's more controversial decisions, including draconian cut proposals in public education and Medicaid. The Senate majority, dominated by Republicans and conservative Democrats, votes lock-step with the governor's demands and has never managed to overturn a gubernatorial veto. The set-up, McCoy said, effectively merges the three branches of state government into two branches with the House being the lone voice of independence.

But the NAACP's interest and its majority-Democratic voting members hope the courts will deliver a plan creating more black districts if it follows the parameters of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which requires states to create minority-majority voting districts.

Rhodes added that the panel, containing one 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge and two federal judges, may be less prone to actively redraw state districts themselves and be more responsive to the NAACP maps.

"The difference is this time around we've prepared an alternative plan for the court. The last time they were fighting over the legislative plan. We're not going to ask the court to put the legislative plan forward," Rhodes said.

The NAACP maps, said the Hazlehurst attorney, are "still a work in progress," although Rhodes said their plan is less concerned with protecting incumbents and more about reflecting the state's 37 percent African American population.

The NAACP plan for House districts preserves a proposed black-majority district in Hattiesburg, for example, and creates a new black-majority district in southwest Mississippi and another in east Mississippi. Rhodes said the NAACP plan contains "44 or 45 majority-black districts in the House and 15 in the Senate." The current House plan has 39 majority-black districts; the current Senate plan has 12.

Rhodes criticized an alternative Senate and House redistricting plan favored by the Mississippi Republican Party and the governor as only containing 14 black-majority districts in the Senate and only 42 black-majority districts in the House. The Senate has 52 total districts; the House has 122.

New 2010 Census figures force the House and Senate to approve a new redistricting plan that evenly distributes the state's population among districts. Both chambers must approve the other's redistricting map. Mississippi has a painful history of folding black voters into white majority districts to decrease the chance of electing black legislators. For this reason, should the Senate and House reach an unlikely agreement prior to a court decision, both maps will still require review for minority vote dilution by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Wiseman said the NAACP suit may buttress the redistricting plan a majority approved in the House this month, if the NAACP redistricting plan bears enough of a resemblance to it.

The Mississippi House Apportionment and Elections Committee voted this week to join the NAACP suit as an intervenor. The committee hired Jackson attorney Rob McDuff to represent its interests.

"The main thing is to be involved in the process. The committee has a lot of information and expertise in the redistricting process," McDuff told the Jackson Free Press. He could not say if the committee preferred its own plan over the NAACP's plan.