Mississippi House minority leader calls GOP redistricting push 'strange' given 2022 map drawing
Rep. Robert Johnson, the minority leader in Mississippi’s House of Representatives, believes many Republicans’ recent interest in redrawing the state’s congressional lines is “kind of strange” considering the way lawmakers handled redistricting just a few years ago.
Johnson, appearing on MidDays with Gerard Gibert, said Republicans “got what they wanted” when lawmakers passed a new congressional map in 2022 based on the 2020 Census. At the time Democratic lawmakers proposed moving more Democratic and Black voters out of the 2nd District represented by Congressman Bennie Thompson and adding more Republican-heavy areas, including the southern part of Madison County. The move would have made Thompson’s district more compact and less Black with the Democratic hope being that the neighboring 3rd District would become easier to win.
“I find it kind of strange,” Johnson said. “In 2022, when we redistricted, we actually advocated for taking more Democrats and African Americans out of Bennie Th…