First cut of new NC House and Senate districts impacts North Mecklenburg

Saturday, the first cut of court ordered new proposed maps for NC House were released on the NCGA website.  Sunday, saw the release of the new NC Senate  districts.  As aShortChronicle told readers previously, these changes were likely to impact North Mecklenburg and now that the possible new maps are out, we can see that they do.

Below is the current set of districts followed by the proposed new districts for both chambers of the General Assembly.

Here are the proposed changes to the NC House.

Current Districts

New Districts

On the NC House side, the current District 92 is totally redrawn meaning those North Mecklenburg residents represented by Democrat Chaz Beasley no longer would be.  Instead, they will move to the new NC House 107 currently represented by Democrat Kelly Alexander.  While Alexander would still technically still be in the 107th, that district has been completely redrawn, and there are relatively few voters in the new 107 who were also in the old 107.   The new district may lean Democrat, but Alexander will still have to make the sale to a lot of new voters in 2018.  He ran unopposed in 2016.

The current District 98 represented by John Bradford appears to gave become a bit more Republican leaning.  It lost Democratic precincts on the south east portion of the old district in north Charlotte and gained Republican precincts on the southwest side of the old district that used to be in the old 98th.  These changes combine to solidify the Republican position in this district.

Here are the proposed changes to the NC Senate.

Current Districts

New Districts

The current NC Senate 41 is represented by Republican Jeff Tarte  of Cornelius and very likely will remain in Republican hands after the proposed redistricting (though it could be closer than the current setup).  However, the interesting thing here is that the district still runs from the north to south of the county but now runs down the west side of Mecklenburg rather than the east side.

Also of interest is that, the current NC Senate 38 seat holder Joel Ford is barely carved out of the district to remain in the new NC Senate 38.  Ford is currently running for Charlotte Mayor, but in the event he loses he would still be in good shape to run for the same Senate seat he currently holds.  If the new NC 41 had been drawn differently to put Ford and Tarte in the same district, that would have been a closer but still very hypothetical contest.

So, all in all, while there are impacts not too much actually changes for voters here in North Mecklenburg under the new maps.  You can see the whole set across the state check NCLEG.net.