S.C. GOP divided over risks of redrawing congressional districts

With just three business days left in the legislative session, Republicans in the South Carolina Senate tapped the brakes Thursday on a last-minute plan to gerrymander 17-term Democratic U.S. Rep. James Clyburn out of his congressional seat.

The plan, which would have to begin with a special session to redraw the lines after the legislature formally adjourns for the year on May 14, appeared to be dead as recently as Tuesday, when Gov. Henry McMaster announced that he wouldn’t call lawmakers back into session on the issue.

In his announcement, McMaster noted statewide primary elections are set for June 9, with candidates actively running in districts that were redrawn in 2022. What’s more, military and overseas ballots for those races have already been sent — and some have been returned.

But in the face of intense personal and public lobbying by President Donald Trump and grassroots GOP activists across the state, S.C. House Republicans revived the redistricting push on Wednesday, passing a resolution to authorize the special session in an 87-25 party-line vote.

Now what?

So what slowed the plan’s momentum in the Senate? Concerns among GOP officials that carving up the state’s only Democratic congressional district could wind up endangering the six safe U.S. House seats Republicans currently enjoy.

Or as Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey put it earlier in the week: “I think if you try to get 7-0, you’re more likely to get 5-2. Trying to get cute with this is more likely to cause a problem than be beneficial.”

Massey reiterated those concerns Thursday, telling reporters that the proposed map he’s seen, which members said originated in the White House, could put several GOP seats in play — and hurt Republican candidates at every level.

“If you’re making three or four seats competitive, you’re going to get better Democratic candidates, and you’re going to get more money for those candidates,” Massey said. “And when more money gets spent on the Democratic side, you’re going to affect down-ballot races.”

He added, “If we’re going to spill all the blood that’s necessary to do something like this, we can’t stay in the same position, and we surely can’t go backwards.”

Nevertheless, with the president pushing for the plan — Massey said he’s spoken with Trump twice on the issue — the resolution to allow the special session could still reach the Senate floor as early as Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the powerful Democratic congressman at the center of the redistricting effort pushed back hard in a Thursday social media post, noting that it’s “not happening because voters demanded it, but because Donald Trump requested it.”

“This fight is bigger than one district,” Clyburn said. “It’s about whether our democracy belongs to the people, or to politicians who change the rules when they don’t like the results. We cannot let them succeed.”

A Supreme Court decision … and Indiana

The S.C. redistricting fight isn’t taking place in a vacuum, experts note.

In fact, they say, it’s just the latest round in a state-level tit-for-tat gerrymandering contest that’s been playing out between the two parties since Texas Republicans redistricted in 2025 and California Democrats answered in kind earlier this year.

So far, eight states have redrawn their lines in what political observers say has mostly been a draw, with each party picking up 10-12 seats.

That appeared to be where the fight would end until an April 29 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court struck down two majority-minority districts in Louisiana as illegal racial gerrymanders — opening the door for Trump to argue that GOP lawmakers across the South had a duty to eliminate all minority-majority districts.

“We should demand that state legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done,” Trump said in a May 3 social media post. “The byproduct is that the Republicans will receive more than 20 House Seats in the upcoming midterms!”

And while the same Supreme Court upheld S.C.’s congressional map as a legal “partisan gerrymander” in 2024, Trump has nonetheless included it in his push to eradicate all the heavily Democratic districts created a generation ago to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Still, most S.C. GOP leaders appeared to be politely resisting the president’s entreaties – until the returns started coming in from Indiana’s Republican primaries Tuesday night where Trump allies knocked off five of the seven GOP legislators who refused his demand to redistrict earlier this year.

All 124 S.C. House seats are on the ballot in 2026. Senators won’t face voters again until 2028.

“There’s certainly been talk about it,” Massey reportedly said of the Indiana results. “Probably primarily on the House side.”

Gerrymandering or ‘dummymandering’?

Democratic political operatives in S.C. say they see opportunities opening up that would have been inconceivable under the existing map, which piles Democrats into the 6th district to create double-digit Republican advantages in the other six.

Specifically, they say, the 1st, 2nd and 6th districts would be competitive under the so-called White House map, with the GOP advantage in each district dropping to three to six points.

“This is an extreme overreach by the Republicans,” said Charleston-based Democratic consultant Lachlan McIntosh. “They’re heading into the worst political environment they’ve seen in a generation, and this map would create three very, very competitive districts.”

He added, “They know this is a bad plan for them. But they’re willing to sacrifice their political power just so Daddy Trump won’t yell at them.”

That’s a concern would-be gerrymanderers would do well to take seriously, according to Winthrop political scientist Scott Huffmon, who said that parties have been known to shoot themselves in the foot with unwise redistricting in the past.

“It’s not my term, but when you attempt a gerrymander that backfires, it’s called ‘dummymandering,’” Huffmon said. “And not denigrate anyone, but there’s a darn good chance that one or more of those new Texas districts wind up being dummymanders.”

In the 2025 redistricting, Texas Republicans expected to pick up five new congressional seats. But based on the latest polling, experts say they might be lucky to pick up two.

As for S.C. Democrats’ view that they could be more, rather than less, competitive under a new map, Huffmon is cautious, noting that it would take a Blue wave of Democratic turnout, including independents and soft-leaners.

“If all the Democrats vote, and Republicans don’t have a massive turnout because they think they’re dominant anyway and maybe they’re not so thrilled with the way things are going, then yeah, competitive districts are realistic,” he said.

But regardless of any political outcomes either way, S.C. League of Women Voters Vice President Lynn Teague said her group opposes the proposed redistricting.

“Convincing people to vote when they’ve seen conscious, obvious, blatant attempts to rig the maps is just very hard,” Teague said. “The constitutional purpose is to see to it that all the people of South Carolina are represented in Washington. And this would send exactly the wrong message.”

A House Judiciary subcommittee will meet today to begin discussing a new map, along with a proposal to move the congressional primaries to Aug. 11.

Jack O’Toole is Statehouse bureau chief for Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper.
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