Although the events of January 6th, 2021, were eventually subdued- after blood was shed and much of the country was horrified – Republican state legislators nationwide persisted in a concerted effort to subvert the will of voters in their own backyards. 

Georgia, the battleground state in the 2020 Presidential elections and 2021 primaries, were not exempt from the ensuing backlash from an all-white GOP, to whom the news was delivered in late 2021 that Georgia, in step with the rest of the country, was only growing more diverse.  

Following the release of census data, the Georgia State Legislature, whose current controlling majority is an all-white Republican party, responded by gerrymandering firstly congressional and state maps, during a special redistricting session in November 2021, as well as local maps during the regular session in 2022.

While states without an independent redistricting commission, like Georgia, allow for the creation of state and congressional maps largely behind closed doors, and at the majority party’s discreti, local maps are typically drafted by a county’s commissioners and Board of Education members. They are created with ample public input, following rules that have been outlined by and for their local delegation, as state legislators from a particular county are collectively known.  

In order for local legislation to be passed through its designated House and Senate committees, House and Senate rules, corresponding to those of the local delegation, require the legislation to be supported by the majority of that particular delegation.

As for the rules of the special redistricting session, Governor Kemp issued a proclamation stating that the session would be exclusive to state and congressional maps, and that local legislation would only be considered if its potential delay would cause “unreasonable hardship” or “undue impairment of public functions.”

With such established guidelines, many legislators were shocked that the Governor’s own floor leader, Clint Dixon, would flout his proclamation in order to introduce prohibited legislation during the special session. It was also unexpected that such a high-ranking official would become the first of many Republicans to disregard the process of local legislation altogether by excluding the elected officials it would most affect.

Senator Dixon was visibly indifferent in a Senate Committee hearing, while informing Senator Michelle Au that he had consulted neither Gwinett’s county commissioners, nor school board members, nor his own Democratic colleagues comprising the majority of Gwinnett’s representation in the Assembly, before presenting two bills which, apart from also redistricting Gwinett’s county and school board maps, would also reconstitute the Board of Commissioners, and reorganize the school board to be non-partisan.  

When Senator Au alluded to the rules of local legislation, and inquired whether Senator Dixon had considered the “undue hardship” his bills and method of presenting them would bring to local officials and the local legislation process, Senator Dixon evaded the question, and cited instead his constituents’ concerns about the current school board and CRT, without acknowledging that his constituents made up only a small minority of the most diverse county in the state, or that over 80% of the Gwinnett delegation is Democratic. 

With the exception of one Republican in the Gwinnett delegation, all of the Republican delegation members supported Dixon’s bills- including former State Representative Bonnie Rich, who at the time also served as Chairman of the House Legislative and Congressional Reapportionment Committee, and Chuck Efstration, House Chair of the Judiciary Committee, two of the highest ranking officials involved in the creation of House maps for the state of Georgia. 

The Chair of the Gwinnett Delegation, Senator Sam Park, referred to Representatives Rich and Efstration’s support of Dixon’s bills as “prima facie” evidence that the House maps were, by proxy, “legally and constitutionally suspect,” and went on to ask in committee, “Are there any Georgia Republican elected officials here who will act with integrity and respect the rule of law?”

In the committee hearing involving the exchange between Senators Dixon and Au, the Republicans favorably reported both of Senator Dixon’s bills and their respective maps, despite protests from Senator Emmanuel Jones that no maps had materialized at the hearing, and overwhelming testimony from members of the Gwinnett delegation as well as at least one Commissioner expressing opposition to the changes and hypothetical maps. 

Facing unanimous opposition from Republican and Democratic Gwinnett County officials, the majority of the Gwinnett Delegation, and the public, Senator Dixon withdrew his bills from consideration in mid-November of 2021. 

Between November and December, Gwinnett County commissioners held five town halls to enlist feedback from residents, and school board officials had residents choose one of two proposed maps via public survey, to be included in the maps presentation to the legislature.

In his capacity as Chair of the Gwinnett Delegation, Representative Sam Park acted as a bridge between the county and the state- informing legislators of the town hall meetings schedule, as well as forwarding to them the finalized maps created by the BOC and BOE, and their supporting data. During this time, no legislators offered any criticism of the maps.

On the first day of legislative session in January 2022, Representative Park, according to customary process, introduced Gwinnett’s BOC and BOE maps, along with their supporting input from the public, to the legislature. Representative Park then convened two joint public committee meetings on the maps, during the last of which Republican state legislators began to grumble about them. Still, none offered any written amendments or or alternate proposals, so after one final request to the delegation to submit any remaining critique, in order to comply with the deadline assigned by Speaker Ralston, Representative Park stated his intent to proceed with what has been the protocol of local legislation for decades. 

The protocol is straightforward- local maps are placed on the consent calendar of the Intergovernmental Coordination Committee, which, if the maps are supported by a requisite majority of the local delegation, would pass them as a matter of course. 

Instead, the Chair of the Governmental Affairs committee made a motion to move the legislation out of Intergovernmental Coordination, which effectively re-entered the maps as general legislation, for which there is no process, other than to exist or not at the mercy of the state’s majority party, currently the GOP.  

In an effort to firmly establish some semblance of GOP control in Gwinnett county, via partisan overreach at the state level, then Representative Bonnie Rich announced in a press release, a Republican-drawn map, to replace the local commissioner’s map, effectively erasing the months of public engagement attached to it. 

Representative Rich’s map also carved out a district in the northern, conservative part of the county, where a district had not existed for over a decade, at the expense of splitting up communities of color across the county, according to Gwinnett County Commissioner Kirkland Carden, who as a result of the Republican map, will spend the second part of his term serving a district in which he does not live. 

Less than 24 hours later, Rich’s map was passed through committee, and after being rushed through the Senate and House Chambers, it was signed into law by Kemp less than a month later.

This method of stripping away local participation from the democratic process was subsequently replicated by Republican legislators in diversifying counties statewide, largely affecting the representation of voters of color, and in the case of two counties, forcing a sitting Black official out of their seat. 

While Republicans also succeeded in making the Gwinnett School Board non-partisan, thereby moving their elections from November to May, extremist right wing candidates were still defeated, due in large part to the efforts of grassroots organizations such as Georgia Youth Justice Coalition and Gwinnett SToPP. 

Even in the less-diverse Cherokee County, two school board candidates, responsible for a particularly vicious disinformation campaign- forcing Cecelia Lewis, a Black educator who relocated to Georgia, to return to her home state of Maryland- were soundly defeated in their elections.

Whether voters can continue to succeed in keeping partisan interference at bay, at least at the school board level, will remain to be seen in upcoming November elections.