Key East Atlanta Dem Drawn Into New District

House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams (D-Kirkwood) has been drawn into a new legislative district under a draft redistricting map released Friday.

A line that divides Abrams' current district from the neighboring one is shifted about a mile in the draft. That draws her out of a district that runs from Druid Hills to Gresham Park and puts her in an area that reaches down to the very southwest corner of DeKalb County. (UPDATE: Democratics say the change will not pit Abrams against another incumbent.)

The draft map is a product of the Georgia Legislative and Congressional Reapportionment Office. Once every ten years, Georgia state lawmakers must redraw district borders based on new U.S. Census numbers and population shifts. For the first time in decades, Republicans control Georgia's government and the redrawing process.

Just hours after she and the public got their first look at the map, Abrams had not even examined her own neighborhood. Instead, she and other Democrats were spending the afternoon calculating out statewide trends on a draft map Abrams said "isolates and segregates" whites from minority voters by shifting white Democrats into GOP-leaning districts. That would make the visible racial split between Democrats and Republicans even more stark.

Republicans deny any gerrymandering and point out that they will lose some south Georgia seats as the population thins there and some districts must be combined.

The full Georgia General Assembly starts debates on the maps in a special session starting Monday.

Earlier this year, Governing Magazine named Abrams as one of a dozen state Democratic lawmakers across the nation with a promising future.

As the state House's top ranking Democrat, she is expected to be front and center when the General Assembly discusses redistricting. Even before the proposed district maps were released Friday, she said she expected GOP lawmakers to look for ways to redraw district lines to decrease the number of Democratic seats.

Two other intown Democrats say they have also been targeted.

State Rep. Stephanie Stuckey-Benfield, whose current District 85 includes portions of Virginia Highland, Druid Hills and Decatur, has been drawn into a district along with another Democrat, state Rep. Howard Mosby, who repents South Dekalb in the 90th district.

And State Rep. Pat Gardner, D-Atlanta, whose district 57 includes most of Virginia Highland, has been drawn into a district with fellow Democrat state Rep. Rashad Taylor, whose current district 55 includes the historically black neighborhood of Washington Park in northwest Atlanta.

"That means some of these intown communites are going to lose their multiracial coalitions," Abrams said.

She said that in the metro Atlanta area, some draft districts narrow down to a single precinct in width, the statutory minimum.

The Legislature will also redraw U.S. House districts this summer. Georgia will get a fourteenth representative. Census numbers put that seat somewhere in the heavily-GOP counties just north of metro Atlanta.

The draft map for Congressional districts is not expected to be released until next week at the very earliest.

In January 2012, the Legislature will take up city, county and board of education districts, as well as the state's utility regulators, the Public Service Commission.

All maps must eventually be approved by the federal government, to make sure they do not disenfranchise minority voters under the terms of the Voting Rights Act.