Democrat says maps that ‘take a sledgehammer to Wake County’ may force her to move
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North Carolina Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a first-term Democrat, says she’s considering moving out of the newly drawn district where Republicans have placed her home, to run for another term.
Grafstein lives in and represents Senate District 13, which stretches from Northwest Raleigh to Northeast Raleigh, but under the new map Senate Republicans filed on Wednesday, her home would fall under Senate District 15. That district is currently represented by Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, a high-ranking Democrat who serves as whip.
In a statement Thursday, Grafstein said the new maps would “take a sledgehammer to Wake County, dramatically altering our community’s districts with the goal of dividing our delegation.” She said she believed she was being drawn out of her current district to silence her voice and the voices of her constituents.
Grafstein told The News & Observer that even though the maps Republicans released on Wednesday haven’t yet been finalized, she was considering moving to the new Senate District 13, an open seat without an incumbent that covers southern Wake County, in order to run for another term.
“I’ve been learning a lot and working on trying to develop the ability to help my constituents, and develop my role as a legislator, and I think I have a lot more to do,” Grafstein said in an interview.
Grafstein is also the only LGBTQ+ member of the Senate, and has been an outspoken critic of bills Republicans have passed this year banning transgender girls and women from competing on female sports teams, making gender-transition surgery for transgender children illegal, and prohibiting doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or hormones to minors.
It’s important the LGBTQ+ community continues to have representation in the Senate, Grafstein said, and that’s one more factor weighing into her thinking as she decides what to do next.
Moving homes would be a disruption for her and her family, but Grafstein said she’s lived in many different parts of Wake in the 33 years she’s lived in the county, and noted that she has ties to the new southern Wake district she’s thinking about running in, which is where her synagogue is located.
Grafstein said she’ll make the decision before lawmakers hold final votes on the maps next week. It’s not a decision she’ll make lightly, she said, but it’s important to her to “not let this kind of power manipulation dictate who gets to represent the citizens of the county.”
If Grafstein runs for reelection from the new District 13, it will likely be a tight race.
The district, which covers all of southern Wake, is almost evenly split, leaning Republican by a margin of 49% to 48% for Democrats, according to the website Dave’s Redistricting, which analyzes data from previous elections.
The new Senate map that “double-bunks” Grafstein and Chaudhuri does the same to another pair of lawmakers, placing Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus, who represents a district west of Charlotte, in the same district as Republican Sen. Vickie Sawyer, who represents the northern tip of Mecklenburg County, and all of Iredell County.
That new district Marcus and Sawyer are drawn into leans Republican by a margin of 62% to 35% for Democrats, according to the analysis by Dave’s Redistricting.
During a meeting of the Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee on Thursday, Marcus pressed GOP lawmakers about the changes they had made, including why the town of Davidson she lives in was being split in half. She also noted that Republican map-drawers had previously tried to double-bunk her with Sawyer in 2021.
After the committee, Marcus told The N&O of her future plans: “I’ve just got to see where this all ends.”
In a statement released Friday afternoon, Marcus called the new map the “most blatantly rigged scheme I’ve ever seen” and said she was exploring “several options,” including moving to the new Senate District 41 in Charlotte, another district, or running for another elected office.
This story was originally published October 19, 2023 at 5:38 PM.
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