By Joseph Ax
May 20 (Reuters) – South Carolina’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a new congressional map early on Wednesday aimed at ousting longtime Democratic U.S. Representative Jim Clyburn in November’s midterm elections.
The map still needs approval from the state Senate, where Republicans hold a 34-12 advantage. The legislation would also postpone the state’s primary elections for the U.S. House of Representatives from June 9 to August 18 to allow time for candidates to file again and run campaigns in the redrawn districts.
The state legislature is meeting in a special session called by Republican Governor Henry McMaster, following pressure from President Donald Trump to redraw the state’s map. Republicans already hold six of the state’s seven U.S. House seats.
South Carolina is among several Southern states that have rushed to take advantage of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that severely weakened protections for U.S. House of Representatives districts that are largely comprised of Black or Latino voters. Those voters typically support Democrats.
Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee have all moved to dismantle Democratic-held seats while postponing their U.S. House primary elections to accommodate the new maps, in some cases invalidating thousands of absentee ballots that had already been returned by mail.
The South Carolina legislation passed largely along party lines at 12:39 a.m. on Wednesday, following two marathon days of floor debate that each lasted more than 10 hours. Late on Monday, Republicans imposed new rules limiting the number of amendments that lawmakers could introduce, after Democrats had offered hundreds in an effort to slow down the process.
Democratic lawmakers decried the map as an effort to deny political power for Black voters. John King, a Black Democratic legislator, said on the chamber floor that the bill delivered a message to young Black boys and girls: “We don’t want your voice in our democracy.”
Republicans denied that the redistricting effort was motivated by race.
“President Trump decisively won in South Carolina, not once, not twice, but three times,” said Republican state Representative Luke Rankin, the lead sponsor of the map. “It’s completely reasonable for the people that elected us here to expect that we send a full 7-0 Republican congressional delegation to Washington, D.C.”
Clyburn, 85, a Black Democrat and a party power broker, has represented South Carolina’s sixth congressional district since 1993.
Republicans are seeking to hold their slim majority in the U.S. House in November, when all 435 seats will be on the ballot.
The court decision opened a new front in a national redistricting war that began last summer, when Trump pushed Texas Republicans to draw a new map targeting five Democratic incumbents.
While Republicans have built a clear redistricting advantage, Democrats remain well positioned to win a House majority, given Trump’s sagging approval ratings and the unpopular Iran war.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax, Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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