Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening to The Takeaway, I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. On February 7th, the Supreme Court ruled five-to-four to provisionally stay a federal court order which required Alabama state legislators to redraw the state's congressional maps. The current map divides Alabama into seven congressional districts, and Black residents make up a majority of voters in just one of those districts.
The federal judges ruled that Alabama lawmakers needed to create a second district in which Black voters could achieve more accurate electoral representation. Justice Brett Kavanaugh justified his vote by arguing that the lower courts should not have ruled to redistrict so close to an election. Joining me now is Representative Chris England, chair of the Alabama Democratic Party. Welcome to The Takeaway, Representative England.
Representative Chris England: Thank you for having me.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's talk about what it means to be a Democrat in the state legislature in Alabama. Do you all feel like you're basically a permanent minority party?
Representative Chris England: I won't say permanent, but days in the session when we go in are somewhat bleak, I guess. You feel like you are playing defense and doing more to try to put lipstick on a bunch of pigs through trying to fix bad legislation that negatively impacts the communities we represent more often than not. I mean, it's a difficult challenge. There's no other way to put it, especially considering that we are in a democratic, we're in a super minority, meaning that at times, they can just vote cloture and stop debate altogether, and we don't have a way to stop it, it's a struggle.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I so appreciate you being transparent about that, and I was asking because I feel like in so many ways, we miss that clearly you are elected by a group of people who are sending you to the State House in part because there are things they need or they want or they're asking for or they're just hoping to hold the line on in their communities. When the power imbalance is perhaps not permanent but certainly a substantial imbalance as you're talking about dealing with a supermajority there, it can make it more difficult for you to actually be a representative, is that part of what I hear you saying?
Representative Chris England: Oh, absolutely. As you said, we represent a substantial portion of the population, and oftentimes, policy is sacrifice for politics, meaning it's an old saying that good politics rarely makes a good policy. If you see some of the tone and the tenor of the commercials that a lot of Republicans are coming up with, it's as far-right, red meat rhetoric as you can come up with that is designed to get people to vote but not really offer them any real solutions. You wake up in a morning or an afternoon in Alabama and you're liable to see a commercial that outright says the election was stolen from Donald Trump, or you're likely to hear a commercial that comes on several times a day that says we're getting CRT out of our classrooms, or as another commercial that just was recently produced that send me to the US Senate so I could stop ninth-month abortions.
You're not necessarily getting solutions, you're getting just red meat political rhetoric that is designed specifically to deal with the population that they think that votes but ultimately ignores a large percentage of the population that literally needs help, so it's interesting. They will hear them talk about keeping CRT out of the classroom, which you certainly won't hear them talk about keeping COVID out of the classroom, which is. It's just things like that that you hear constantly as a Democrat and a super minority, and it's very hard to come up with real-life solutions in a political environment like that.
Melissa Harris-Perry: With congressional maps drawn in seven districts where only one would be clearly where African American residents in Alabama could actually elect a person of their choice right now that that seat is held by representative Terri Sewell of the 7th Congressional District of Alabama. Is this also then what would happen not only at the state level but at the federal level in terms of the voices of Alabama's folk and particularly of the Black folk?
Representative Chris England: Yes. All you get on that front from our congressional candidates are commercials that talk about Trump's choice, and again, no offering of how I'll help you get healthcare, no offering of how I'll help get Alabama out of 50th and 49th ranked in most educational categories, none of that. What you get is Trump likes me but he doesn't like my opponents. Then you get the other rhetoric like I'll build the wall, the other rhetoric like getting rid of the secular left, and many other things like that. The fact that we don't have competitive maps or districts that are more competitive that diversify the representation means that a substantial portion of Alabama's population just gets ignored.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Were you surprised that the Supreme Court stepped in not to make a full decision but to override the lower court's ruling about these maps?
Representative Chris England: I was and simply because part of the reasoning was basically the state would be inconvenienced by having to change a few small things because of the court's order making us go we draw the congressional map. Generally speaking, if we talk about a courtroom, we're talking about balancing the equities and whether or not an order itself stopping something that's illegal is worth the inconvenience to whoever has to stop it, essentially.
I've always thought about that in terms of you've got constitutional rights. The Voting Rights Act requires legislatures and other map drawers to protect to me that sacrosanct, and it goes beyond some superficial concern about a couple of deadlines that the state may need to meet in order to have the election and put that in context. The congressional map that we're operating under was passed in less than five days, so it isn't like we don't have a direct history of being able to do this relatively quickly versus requiring a substantial portion of the population to vote on a map that does not adequately represent their interest
Melissa Harris-Perry: Representative Chris England, chair of the Alabama Democratic Party, thank you so much.
Representative Chris England: Thank you for having me.
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