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by WILL FOLKS
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For the past year, we’ve been drawning attention to the issue of re-drawing South Carolina’s political boundaries – a move favored by conservative Republicans but opposed by the state’s left-of-center uni-party leaders.
This battle is coming to a head after the U.S. supreme court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais (.pdf) that drawing congressional districts on the basis of race is unconstitutional. Writing for a 6–3 majority, justice Samuel Alito opined that a Louisiana map drawn on racial grounds was “an unconstitutional gerrymander.”
Does South Carolina have such a “racially drawn” district? Yes… it does.
As FITSNews has meticulously documented over the years, South Carolina’s sixth congressional district – represented since its inception in 1992 by former majority whip Jim Clyburn – was deliberately drawn to ensure representation by a black Democrat. Not only that, Clyburn has worked cooperatively for decades with GOP leaders to ensure the sixth district’s black, voting age population never fell below a certain level – guaranteeing his election in perpetuity.
Five years ago, FITSNews penned a lengthy story discussing the extent to which Clyburn was manipulating the state’s decennial redistricting process to his advantage – working in secret with GOP leaders to protect his fiefdom. More recently, Clyburn’s self-serving role in this process was exposed for all to see by ProPublica.
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Despite this, Clyburn has hypocritically assailed his GOP co-conspirators for allegedly drawing “racist” districts.
Funny how that race card works, isn’t it?
With the highest court in the land now expressly striking down the creation of “majority-minority” districts, pressure is mounting on Republican leaders in the Palmetto State – including House speaker Murrell Smith and Senate majority leader Shane Massey – to draw Clyburn off the map, something they have steadfastly refused to do.
Meanwhile, current and former leaders of the conservative S.C. Freedom Caucus – and 2026 gubernatorial candidate Ralph Norman – have spent months calling for the passage of legislation (H. 4717) that would redraw districts in such a way as to supposedly give South Carolina a 7–0 Republican advantage. That redistricting bill – introduced by state representative Jordan Pace – has yet to receive a vote.
“I’ve been clear: South Carolina’s maps need to change,” Norman said this week. “No more guaranteed seats! We need competition!”
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Congresswoman Nancy Mace is also calling on the maps to be redrawn, saying if she were governor she would call a special session of the S.C. General Assembly to accomplish the task.
“It takes a remarkable lack of will to watch the opposition gerrymander the entire country, yet politely refuse to redraw Jim Clyburn’s district here at home,” Mace said in a statement issued by her campaign on Monday (May 4, 2026). “Our governor and lieutenant governor seem to have misplaced theirs entirely. Loyalty to President Trump is measured in bold resolve, not bending the knee to the racial gerrymandering of the left.”
Four-term attorney general Alan Wilson – the frontrunner in the governor’s race – has also announced his support for redrawing congressional lines.
“I fully support president Donald Trump’s call to redraw South Carolina’s lines,” Wilson said. “The General Assembly has the legal authority to do so. I was part of the fight in Louisiana, and there’s a clear path here.”
Wilson is correct… but is this a path the Palmetto State should trod?
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A veteran Republican operative in Washington, D.C. warned us over the weekend that South Carolina’s partisan political calculus has been shifting to the ideological center far faster than many might realize. As evidence, the operative cited plunging presidential poll numbers from across the country that he insists have begun seeping into the ‘First-in-the-South’ GOP bellwether.
“Trump’s trending lower in South Carolina right now,” the operative told us, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s part self-inflicted – Epstein, Iran, et cetera – part demographic shifts, including transplants from other states, but to be honest a big part of it is the fact he’s joined at the hip with a very unpopular U.S. senator.”
Trump’s steadfast support for Lindsey Graham – and for Graham’s costly, “neoconservative” warmongering – has eroded the president’s standing among fiscal conservatives and some ‘America First’ Republicans in the Palmetto State, the operative warned.
It’s also costing him with independents and Democrats.
“Trump remains tremendously popular among GOP primary voters in South Carolina but his support has seen a marked decline from previous levels,” the operative said. “His South Carolina numbers are also down relative to where he is with GOP primary voters in other southern states.”
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The operative also insisted recent Partisan Voting Index (PVI) data from the Cook Political Report – published last April – bears “no resemblance whatsoever to what current congressional leanings look like.”
“There’s been a quantum shift,” he said.
If accurate, that would make it much harder for ruling “Republicans” in South Carolina to redraw the sixth congressional district to be more competitive without risking other GOP seats in the process.
Per the 2025 Cook ratings, South Carolina’s seven congressional districts purportedly identified as follows:
SC-1 -> R+6
SC-2 -> R+7
SC-3 -> R+21
SC-4 -> R+11
SC-5 -> R+11
SC-6 -> D+13
SC-7 -> R+12
Republican candidates also dramatically exceeded these spreads the last time voters went to the polls in November 2024 – with no Democrat challengers even coming within fifteen (15) percentage points of a Republican incumbent in the state’s six GOP-held districts. The closest Democrat challenger – Michael Moore – fell to incumbent first district congresswoman Nancy Mace by a 16.62% margin.
How dramatically can things shift in just sixteen months?
“Republicans are about to find out if they aren’t careful,” the operative warned.
In the meantime, though, GOP lawmakers who oppose the redistricting push could find themselves out of work following next month’s partisan primary elections – as the movement Norman and his allies began months ago has suddenly become a conservative cause célèbre.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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