Holder says Bottoms victory could check Georgia redistricting efforts

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said electing Keisha Lance Bottoms as Georgia’s next governor could give Democrats a key means of blocking any Republican attempt to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative districts in a way that disadvantages Black voters.

Bottoms is seeking to become Georgia’s first Black governor and the first African-American woman elected governor in U.S. history. Holder told theGrio that the contest also carries broader implications for future redistricting in the state, where Republicans control the legislature.

“I can’t emphasize this enough…the election of Keisha Lance Bottoms is critical to preventing a whole range of things that Republicans want to do, and among them is racial gerrymandering,” Holder told theGrio. “If a Republican legislature decides they want to racially gerrymander Georgia and Keisha Lance Bottoms is the governor, guess what she can do? She can veto.”

Holder, who led the Justice Department during the Obama administration, has spent years campaigning against maps approved by Republican-led legislatures that he says have diluted the voting power of Black voters across the South.

He founded the National Democratic Redistricting Committee in 2017 with the help of former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The organization has opposed Republican-led redistricting efforts that Holder said have benefited the party while harming Black and brown voters.

“People’s consciousness has been raised as they saw their political power being diminished, and then seeing what that meant,” Holder told theGrio.

Concerns over another round of map changes

According to theGrio, President Donald Trump last year called on Republican lawmakers in several states to redraw their electoral maps before November’s midterm elections in an effort to preserve the party’s control of Congress. The report said the push came after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April decision weakening protections under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made it harder for Black voters to establish racial discrimination in voting.

Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee were among the states that undertook mid-decade redistricting, outside the usual 10-year cycle linked to the U.S. Census. Georgia did not make such a change, and Holder said the NDRC had lobbied Republican state lawmakers against following Trump’s request.

“[We explained] if they did what Trump asked them to do, that it was gonna be a political consequence for them,” Holder said. He added that Georgia Republicans could still seek to redraw maps before the 2028 presidential election.

Holder said a Bottoms administration could use the governor’s veto authority to stop attempts to reshape districts with large Black populations. He argued that a dispute between a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor could require a bipartisan compromise, producing what he described as maps that are “inherently more fair.”

“Having Keisha win in Georgia is really something that would be critical to making sure that not only the congressional map is fair, but the state legislative map is more fair,” Holder said.

Appeal for Black voter turnout

Holder said a Bottoms victory would depend on strong participation by Black voters in next week’s election. He appealed directly to African-American voters, linking turnout to the history of people who fought for voting rights.

“If you’re African American and not voting, you are dishonoring those people who committed themselves, who sacrificed, gave their lives so that we would have the ability to vote to an extent that they did not,” he told theGrio. “If you don’t wanna dishonor those folks, if you wanna control the present, and that is the gerrymandering that Republicans would otherwise try to do, and if you wanna make for a better future, people need to vote.”

He said he was encouraged by early voting in Georgia, where more than 2.2 million people had already cast ballots, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Holder described African-American turnout as “almost off the charts” and said a small margin could determine the outcome.

“A lot is going to be decided by one, two, three percentage points,” he said. “If our community comes out in substantial numbers, we can be the component of the victory that makes things inherently more fair.”

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution