Despite party-line opposition from Democrats, the Republican majority in the General Assembly passed all three of their proposed maps for U.S. House, State Senate and State House with very little dissenters. Notable controversies:

• the de-facto ousting of Lucy McBath from GA-06 (she has since announced a primary challenge in GA-07, currently held by Carolyn Bordeaux who has also announced her own re-election bid)
• the cracking of Cobb County into four congressional districts, with a largely-Democratic area in West Cobb being placed into Marjorie Taylor Green’s GA-14 (to her objection)
• the packing of Democratic voters in Gwinnett et al into GA-07
• the postponing of a Republican attempt to shoehorn electoral reforms for Gwinnett’s County Commission and Board of Education into the next session, for which outgoing Lt. Governor Greg Duncan has helped organize a bid to make all county boards of education nonpartisan
• The redrawing of Democratic State Senator Michelle Au’s Gwinnett-based SD48 into a Republican-leaning district, which is notable because Au is Georgia’s first and only Asian American woman state senator
• The splitting of Coweta County into five State House districts, combining a northern portion with Democratic districts extending into South Fulton County.

State House

In Columbus, the current legislative partisan makeup of the county will likely be retained, with Reps. Carolyn Hugley’s HD136 (now renamed HD141) and the retiring Calvin Smyre’s HD134 (renamed HD140).

Rep. Hugley’s district will undergo one key change: the entirety of Gentian/Elizabeth Bradley Turner precinct will move into her district from Richard Smith’s HD134 (renamed HD139), including the main campus of Columbus State University. Under the outgoing map, this precinct was split between the two districts.

Rep. Debbie Buckner’s HD136 will undergo the biggest map change: her district, currently stretching from east Columbus-Muscogee into eastern Harris, southern Meriwether, and all of Talbot, will now consist of eastern Columbus-Muscogee, all of Talbot County, a smaller portion of Meriwether County (cutting out Greenville, Gay and Woodbury), and southeastern Troup County stretching into African-American majority parts of southern LaGrange, completely excluding Harris County. This results in an odd hook shape for the district.

Under this rewrite, Harris County loses a House district while Troup County gains a district. Buckner’s former portion of Harris (Waverly Hall precinct) goes to Richard Smith’s district. Vance Smith’s HD133 (renamed to HD138) as well as David Jenkins’ HD132 (renamed to HD136) both lose chunks of southern Troup to Buckner’s district.

State Senate

Sen. Ed Harbison’s SD15 has undergone minor changes, with the Salvation Army precinct (formerly Blackmon precinct), Gentian/Elizabeth Bradley Turner precinct (formerly Gentian/Reese precinct) and Epworth precinct all being shifted to SD15 from Randy Robertson’s SD29.

Congress

With those maps passed, the General Assembly Republicans introduced on Wednesday Nov 18 a congressional map which, besides notably nuking Lucy McBath’s re-election chances in GA06 and making the GA07 much more Democratic, also shifts Sanford Bishop’s GA02 into a more interesting position: moving a bit more of northern Columbus-Muscogee into GA02 from Drew Ferguson’s GA03, but also shifting Warner Robins, northern Houston County and Thomas County into GA02 from Austin Scott’s GA08. While the addition of Thomas County would shift the African-American share of the population to under 50% and increase the Republican presence in the district, the addition of the strongly-blue precincts of Warner Robins would likely help keep Bishop in office and the district blue.

As far as Columbus is concerned, the new GA02 would pick up Moon/Morningside precinct as well as most of Cornerstone precinct north of J.R. Allen Freeway, while splitting a northern bit of the Columbus Tech precinct into GA03, cutting through the streets of the Crescent Ride neighborhood.

Aftermath

The entire process of redistricting by Republicans in the General Assembly was centered around protecting incumbents through anti-competitive measures such as packing and cracking while taking out a few Democratic casualties. New York Magazine notes that the Republicans’ treatment of voters in GA-06, among other plans, may invite a new round of litigation under the Voting Rights Act to combat instances of racial gerrymandering, although any of the challenges under the VRA face a high threshold to succeed in federal court, with nearly 2/3s of 11th circuit district judges being appointed by the last three Republican presidents (the largest share being appointed by Trump).

On the “bright side” for Democrats, this year’s redistricting process was not as brutal as in the 2011 cycle, which further sunk Democrats to such a historic nadir from 2013 to 2017 that Republicans enjoyed a supermajority of 38 seats in the State Senate, was one seat shy of a 120-seat supermajority in the State House, and held 10 congressional seats. Under the General Assembly-approved map for next year, Republicans are clearly favored for 9 seats in Congress, 33 Senate seats (with Au’s SD48 being the most competitive) and 85-97 House seats. Even though historic levels of public scrutiny and partisan intrigue were ignored by the legislative majority, they could not ignore the massive growth in population by over a million new Georgians, largely moving to the Atlanta region.

Meanwhile, redistricting for Columbus City Council and Muscogee County School District may continue into next year, as will other local redistricting processes across the state, due to the delays of the 2020 Census by the COVID-19 pandemic. This will either 1) push primaries and nonpartisan local elections later by a month or 2) force local elections across the state to be held under the current map and delay implementation of the new maps into the 2023 and 2024 elections.