Democrats look to 2020 Census to gain ground

North Carolina Democrats will take stock of state and national party successes and failures in their annual pep rally dinner program next weekend.

Their keynote speaker will be former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is leading a new nationwide effort to reclaim a Democratic Party advantage in congressional and legislative redistricting after the 2020 U.S. Census.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, launched in January, will focus on states like North Carolina, where the party thinks it can gain ground through targeting specific elections, filing lawsuits or promoting ballot initiatives to establish independent commissions to draw new maps.

Holder has been spreading that message around the country, as well as stepping out as a Democratic torch-bearer to rally the party in places like Raleigh, where the state party’s Unity Dinner (formerly the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner) will be held on July 15 at N.C. State University.

Gov. Roy Cooper will also speak at the event, which is a major fundraiser for the state party. Adult tickets start at $150 and quickly step up to $10,000.

The theme of the night will be reclaiming the state following victories in last year’s gubernatorial and attorney general races, but with little progress in denting the Republican supermajorities in the General Assembly. Cooper was elected after his call for a return to the progressive policies that preceded the 2011 GOP takeover of the legislature. The 2011 switch led to legal disputes over redistricting that are still playing out.

The GOP’s national redistricting strategy has hobbled Democrats for years in what they contend were gerrymandered districts.

“Our goal is not to gerrymander for Democrats,” Holder told The Washington Post in an interview after the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Richmond, Virginia, last month. “Our focus is really on making sure that throughout this country we have fair districts and a contest between parties on their philosophies, as opposed to their line-drawing capabilities.”

Wayne Goodwin, chairman of the N.C. Democratic Party, issued a statement saying the dinner will set the stage to fight for more favorable redistricting.

“North Carolina is ground zero in the fight against gerrymandering and has suffered for five years under an unconstitutionally elected Republican legislature that has blocked progress at every turn and undermined our executive and judiciary branches,” Goodwin said.

The U.S. Supreme Court this year upheld a ruling that some state legislative districts were racially drawn gerrymanders and should be thrown out. But the justices rejected a lower court order for a special election this year, sending the case back to the court for reconsideration.

Republican legislative leaders oppose a special election, saying they plan to draw new maps by November to be used in the regular 2018 election.

The Democratic committee has a political fundraising entity that can raise and spend an unlimited amount of money and must publicly disclose its spending and donors.

The N.C. Republican Party on Friday released a statement calling it a “partisan, dark money group” and criticizing Cooper for aligning himself with Holder and the Democratic redistricting effort.

The GOP also noted that among the groups connected with the committee is America Votes, a nonprofit organization that promotes liberal positions on issues. In 2013, the North Carolina director of America Votes wrote a memo calling for efforts to “eviscerate” the Republican leadership in the state, which conservative groups pounced on as unacceptable rhetoric.

This story was originally published July 8, 2017 at 3:25 PM with the headline "Democrats look to 2020 Census to gain ground."