Featured photo from Sidelines Archive by Samantha Hearn
Story by Noah McLane
Tuesday is Election Day, and Rutherford County has three state House District (HD) seats up for grabs: HD13, HD37 and HD49. The current district maps were challenged in court, with the plaintiffs citing racial gerrymandering, but a 2019 Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for judges to block the suits.
Republican legislators in Nashville redrew Tennessee’s General Assembly districts due to population growth following the 2020 census but scored an F on the Coalition Hub for Advancing Redistricting & Grassroots Engagement’s (CHARGE) report for redistricting.
The Community Redistricting Report Card rates each state’s redistricting process based on community feedback from hundreds of interviews and surveys conducted by CHARGE.
The new maps immediately drew the scorn of groups like the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, the African American Clergy Collective of Tennessee, the Equity Alliance and the League of Women Voters of Tennessee, who claimed in lawsuits that the new lines split up and diluted the voting power of communities of color.
While none of the lawsuits named Rutherford County specifically, Sekou Franklin, an MTSU professor in the Department of Political and Global Affairs who was involved in bringing the lawsuits, told Sidelines something similar is happening in Rutherford County but with college students.
“In Rutherford County, it seems lawmakers have diluted the student vote in state legislative redistricting,” said Franklin. “It’s difficult to tell because the issue has not been effectively raised in the legislative committees…but anecdotal evidence suggests that MTSU’s power – and the power of students – [has] been reduced in the last two redistricting cycles.”
This dilution is evident when looking at the county’s demographic changes in recent years.
Despite increases in Rutherford County’s Latino and Black populations from 2010-2020, the new map lowers non-white representation by an average of 3.5% per district, according to U.S. census data and the Tennessean.
Map created by MTSU journalism professor Ken Blake, Ph.D.
District 37
This lack of representation is an issue for Cheri Brown, who is hoping to unseat Rep. Charlie Baum for Tennessee House seat 37.
“I believe that all House districts throughout the state were drawn to the advantage of GOP candidates,” Brown said. “I have been told by a former candidate that HD 37 lost 2,000 Democratic voters during this redrawing, a shocking amount.”
In 2022, just under 5000 people voted for the Democratic candidate in HD 37.
However, Baum believes “communities of lower income and college students will [still] have the opportunity to vote, whether in my district or in a neighboring representative’s district”.
District 13
HD13 was cobbled together from bits of districts 34, 49 and 37 in 2022 and runs the entire length of the county. It encompasses Eagleville, Overall Creek, LaVergne and Smyrna and is the most diverse in the county, with a 38% non-white population.
“This [District 13] used to be Gloria Johnson’s seat, but [legislative Republicans] redistricted her to try to weaken her seat and because she started becoming pretty guaranteed,” said Democratic challenger Jonathan Yancey.
However, incumbent Rep. Robert Stevens refused to speculate causation for the addition of HD13 to Rutherford County.
“I was not in the legislature when the districts were redrawn, so I do not believe it is fair to speculate,” said Stevens.
The “goose district,” as referred to by MTSU data journalism professor Ken Blake because of its odd shape, may seem like a campaigning nightmare, but Stevens said it did not affect his campaign strategy. Yancey believed the awkward shape could be useful.
“I think it’s actually to my benefit,” said Yancey, who believes that the diversity in HD13 will ultimately help his campaign. “You got two contrasting cities…the working class, blue collar, right next to Nashville [and then] you have very rural on the west side,” said Yancey. “Even though the population sizes are not the same, they balance each other out politically.”
However, he still believes redistricting should not be in the hands of a partisan legislature.
“We need to get to a place where we remove the party redistricting aspect of it all because both parties redistrict, right? They’re gonna redistrict for their benefit —and I have a problem with that,” said Yancey. “Obviously, I’m a strong Democrat, but I also feel like we need to make sure that these positions, these elected officials, are representative of their districts. And so we need to remove the party aspect of it all.”
District 49
Democrat Luis Mata challenges incumbent Republican Mike Sparks in District 49, which shrunk following redistricting in 2022 and lost almost 10,000 voters, 54% of whom are a part of a minority group.
How did we get here?
In 2019, the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause gave state legislatures control over redistricting within the state, including immunity to politically gerrymander maps.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political challenges beyond the reach of the federal courts.”
When Tennessee’s new maps were challenged in court, alleging unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, a federal judge dismissed the suit, saying it was indistinguishable from political gerrymandering.
Racial gerrymandering remains illegal under the 14th Amendment.
Noah McLane is the Lead News Reporter for MTSU Sidelines.
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