Nancy Mace helped Oust McCarthy

The Supreme Court Decision to Reconstruct the Voting Rights of the South Carolina Democratic Party from a White House District to the Supreme Court: Mace’s Case

The U.S. Supreme Court hears another redistricting case Wednesday, one that could well end up giving Democrats at least a shot at winning a second congressional seat in South Carolina.

Now, you might think that the natural solution would be to move the excess voters from CD 1 to CD 6, but that’s not what the map-makers did. The anchor for the district, Charleston County, was removed and most of the city of Charleston stripped from CD-1 as a result of the GOP plan.

The state of South Carolina, however, maintains that its gerrymander wasn’t racial; it was partisan. It makes a difference because partisan gerrymanders, which are mostly based on race, are considered violations of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law.

In the South, where voting is still largely white and Democratic, it’s difficult to figure out the difference. As a result, these cases are very much determined by the factual findings of the lower courts.

The NAACP’s argument is the same one it used in the affirmative action decision that the Supreme Court embraced last term. In that case, the court said that colleges discriminated against students based on their race. In this instance, the NAACP says the GOP state legislature is unconstitutional because it sort voters by race.

In this case, the justices of the court could side with civil rights groups. Both sides asked the Supreme Court to act quickly so that a new election map is in place by January.

Democrats believe that similar redistricting wins are possible in Louisiana and Georgia and that, combined with a recent win in Alabama, could conceivably be enough for the Democrats to recapture control of the House of Representatives. It’s not crazy, but it is a stretch.

Though Ms. Mace’s turn to the MAGA wing of the G.O.P. has been ongoing, the increasingly red nature of her district may help explain her latest move. She was challenged in the Republican primary by a candidate endorsed by DonaldJ. Trump and learned that even though she is a republican she is not immune to criticism and opprobrium.

“Nancy has always been and will always be a maverick,” said Josh Whitley, a Berkeley County commissioner and a Mace ally. “But she has also always been very mindful of her constituents.”