OPSB at odds over ‘majority’ versus’ super majority’ districts

5th March 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

Super-packing is a term that has taken on a meaning outside the grocery store. Redistricting of political seats, and the U.S. Justice Department’s oversight of the process, has focused not only on the preservation of minority-majority seats, but basically how much is too much in a political district.

The Orleans Parish School Board engaged in this very discussion last week, as a battle over territory and how many minority voters would be put in the post-Katrina redrawn districts, erupted between Brett Bonin, the Republican member for the Lakefront, and Thomas Robichaux, the Democrat from the Ninth Ward.

The School Board discussion centered around the future composition of Robichaux’s district. Devastated by floodwaters and consequently decimated in population from before the storm, School Board District 7 had to expand the most in comparison to the other seats. Particularly at question was the composition of Caucasian majority District 3..

A heated meeting held last week at McDonogh 35 High School centered around which candidate would get what parts of the relatively storm undamaged—and therefore proportionately overpopulated—Districts 4 and 6. Bonin and Robichaux each sought to claim the majority of the increasingly white Faubourg St. John.

It was a debate, that the previous week, had put Black activist Sandra Wheeler Hester on the same side of GOP Brahmin Peppi Bruneau, and African-American political leaders in partnership with the Republican grassroots.

Should the area around the Fairgrounds Racetrack and the precincts of the Esplanade Ridge go to Bonin’s District 3 (as he proposed in his Amended Plan “A“). Robichaux noted that the Repub­lican was sure to earn a more proportionately Caucasian seat, and therefore one more easy for a Republican to win. African-American registration would fall below 40 percent in that seat.

That Bonin received such strong support for his plan from Black civil rights activists had to do with the fact that Robichaux wanted the same area. Sandra Wheeler Hester was heard to call her unusual partnership with her normal ideological opponents, “eerie,” but she nevertheless backed Bonin’s favored redistricting plan over Robichaux’s. She complained that the Democrat’s proposal would make District 7, the traditionally Black seat, “whiter” and therefore more capable for a Caucasian Democrat—like Robichaux—to win. (That Bonin’s seat would also be less minority in composition was not a central issue to Hester.)

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, District 7 was 80 percent African-American. Robichaux ran for the Ninth Ward-based seat after the storm. While his Holy Cross neighborhood had started to recover, most other precincts in that district remained moribund. As such, post-K, the dynamics of the seat had already changed racially to something akin to the 69 percent Black majority that he sought in his proposed expanded seat.

Robichaux’s plan would expand his seat not only into Algiers but latterly towards Esplanade Ave. It was designed to keep a geographic compactness to the seat, according to the School Board member. Brett Bonin, however, had a far different argument.

In a blast email to his supporters, the District 3 Board member wrote, “Over 50 of you packed the School Board Headquarters meeting room last Thursday [Feb. 23] to voice opposition to Robichaux’s Plan “D” Amended, and to support Plan “A” Amended. …[M}any publicly spoke out against it as an attempt to radically alter District 3 and to dilute District 7 of its historic minority make-up at the expense of District 3.”

“If allowed to pass, Robichaux’s Plan “D” as amended would transfer the former St. Bernard Housing area and Dillard University area from his District 6 (where they are currently located) into School Board District 3.”

“Since District 3 did not need to be redrawn to satisfy population shift, the only intended purpose appears to be to lower Robichaux’s District 7 minority count from approximately 80 percent to 69 percent at the expense of drastically redrawing the District 3…Stop Robichaux from radically altering District 3 and diluting District 7’s minority majority make-up by attempting to transfer the Dillard University Area and former St. Bernard Housing Area from his District 7 into District 3!”

In an interview prior to the vote with The Louisiana Weekly, Robichaux called Bonin’s statements “ridiculous,” noting, “Under my proposal, District 7 will be well over 65 percent African-American. That’s a minority-majority seat by any measurement.” It certainly meets the threshold set out under the rules and regulation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Of course, Bonin’s proposed Amended Plan “A” did not only solidify a Caucasian majority, in an already “white“ seat admittedly, but it also lowered the African-American voting percentage in District 4, represented by School Board Vice President Lourdes Moran.

Currently, that seat runs along the Mississippi River, including the French Quarter and the Central Business District, as well as all of Algiers. The “sliver by the river,” emerged from Hurricane Katrina relatively unscathed, with its share of the population climbing in comparison with other parts of the city. Roughly 66,700 residents live in District 4 compared with just 38,000 in Cynthia Cade’s District 2, which includes parts of eastern New Orleans, Gentilly and the Upper 9th Ward.

To equalize the populations between the School Board districts, which is required under state redistricting law, essentially, Robichaux and Bonin were arguing how to shrink 4th District’s east bank footprint, while pulling another district in to share Algiers.

Both agreed that Robichaux‘s District 7 would expand from Central City to take over most of the Central Business and Warehouse Districts and then jump across the river for part of Algiers.

Meanwhile, the other severely damaged District 2 would have to also expand. In both proposals, Cade’s district will shift west, absorbing a greater portion of Gentilly and the Upper 9th Ward, while District 1, represented by Ira Thomas, would encompass more of eastern New Orleans and retain the entire Lower 9th Ward.

Robichaux’s closest ally on the Board, Woody Koppel would see his Uptown based seat along Carrolton Avenue and Broadway Street, shrink away from Central City. That area of Koppel’s District 6 need to go Robichaux’s District 7 or Brett Bonin’s District 3 in some division. (Seth Bloom’s District 5 essentially remains the same under all proposals, taking up parts of Uptown, the Garden District and Central City.)

As Precincts shifted between the members, the fight came down to moving the Bayou St. John neighborhood from the 3rd District.

Bonin wanted to keep it. He made the compelling argument that it was his to begin with, so moving the precincts out of District 3 was unfair. Robichaux countered that that parts of the Fabourg St. John actually touched more closely on the geography of his seat than the area around Dillard University, which extended like a 7th District finger into Bonin’s 3rd. Better to trade neighborhoods.

Bonin’s Republican ally and longtime former state lawmaker Emile “Peppi” Bruneau, disagreed with Robichaux arguing that the plan favored by Bonin would preserve certain “communities of interest,” a more “conservative” one centered in Bonin’s Lakeview district and a “minority” one toward the eastern portion of the city. Sandra Hester endorsed Bonin’s plan, because the trade for Dillard and the St. Bernard housing project would lower the racial breakdown of the electorate in District 7 to 69 percent.

The subtext was Black electoral anxiety. Could Black candidates compete at a lower majortarian margin? Hester and her supporters private worried that less than seventy percent African-American electorates allow white Democrats to win Black-majority districts. The argument rests in the idea that African-Americans turn out the polls in far lower numbers than whites, so majority-minority districts must be proportionately more African-American to insure equal abilities for Black candidates to compete in Louisiana elections.

Robichaux countered noting that the threshold mandated by the Justice Department to insure Black participation is 65 percent. He might be a white candidate, but, at 69 percent, his district would be strongly African-American already by any measurement. Moreover, Lourdes Moran is Black, and represented a seat that after redistricting would only be 53 percent African-American under Bonin’s plan.

The board was up against a March 1 redistricting deadline. In the end, Bonin and Robichaux compromised. Robichaux gained a few precincts in the Fabourg St. John, while Bonin kept most of the area, and Dillard remained in District 7, and a couple of its neighborhood precincts shifted. Robichaux‘s seat hovers above 70 percent in African-American registration, but below the nearly 80 percent threshold of seven years ago. And, Bonin‘s seat becomes more Caucasian, and therefore more GOP-leaning, but not quite to the degree that the Board member had wished.

The compromise was a cleaner one that occurs in most of these racial redistricting fights. The threshold of Black voters is actually an issue that divides African-Americans as much as it divides elements of the Democratic and Republican party leaderships.

If the threshold of Black voters in a seat is 65 percent rather than 80 percent, one can create more minority districts, or seats that contain a higher percentage of African-American voters. Demo­cratic Party leaders like that because, typically, that means more Democratic seats. It just does not always mean more Black majority seats.

Republicans make common cause with Black Caucus and African-American Democrats, because the stronger the Black representation, the greater the chances the GOP will pick up the remaining white-majority seats.

Democratic critics of this practice call it “Superpacking” of minorities. But, it is popular in areas of the Black community, particularly in New Orleans, who have worried that whites are being elected to nearly all municipal offices in a Black-majority city. “Super­packing” insures a greater viability for a Black candidate. Yet critics contend that it also minimalizes the overall political power of the African-American community.

A wider distribution of Black voters means that politicians must court African-American political opinion more actively. Black issues play a larger roll in elections.

As such, the fight within the Black Community deals with what is more important, African-American issues driving a wide variety of races, or Black elected officials winning a smaller pool of seats—but fighting for those issues once in office.

In a strange way, much of the emotion in the Bonin-Robichaux battle was a proxy fight. It mirrored the City Council redistricting insofar as several Lakefront Caucasian communities were put into the minority-majority seat of Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell. District “D” became a less Black focused seat, though above the Voting Rights Act threshold.

Hedge-Morrell reportedly was as equally unenthusiastic about taking the GOP-leaning precincts as the voters were from being transferred from the white-majority District “A” seat. She voted against the plan, but was over ruled 5-3.

District “A” Councilwoman Susan Guidry strongly supported the measure. The loss of the conservative voters made her seat safe for a Democrat, and warded off the Republicans who were previously favored to win a white-majority seat. Now it is safe for the Democrats.

Another vote for the plan was from District “B” Councilwoman Stacy Head, and that decision may play a role in the March 24th Council At-Large Special election. Head is attempting to win the election in the first primary. She is the odds-on favorite on a day that will see proportionately higher GOP turnout for the Republican Presidential Preference Primary.

A conservative Democrat like Head would normally be the beneficiaries of the Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul voters heading to the polls on the same day in Orleans Parish. And with normally Democratic African-Americans having only the Council race as a reason to go vote, Head could be confident under most models of not having to face a runoff.

However, Republican leaders in Orleans remain angry that Head voted for Guidry’s redistricting proposal, permanently guaranteeing a Democrat in District “A.” A lot of that support has made its way to State Rep. Austin Badon, another contender for the Council At-Large post.

A GOP favorite already because of his anti-crime and pro-voucher stands, Badon has condemned watering down African-American representation in seats in general, and in both Robichaux’s and Guidry’s cases.

That could play well with GOP voters in just under three weeks.

This article was originally published in the March 5, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper