Stimpson’s redistricting plan questioned

The co-founder of a local voting rights organization shared concerns over the dilution of Black voting power represented in Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s recently released redistricting plan. 

Beverly Cooper, co-founder of Stand Up Mobile and a District 2 resident, told members of the Mobile City Council on Tuesday, Jan. 18, she had two concerns as it relates to Stimpson’s proposal. First, she said, the proposal doesn’t actually result in a solid four Black-majority districts when voting age is taken into account.

“While it’s important that Mobile has four Black-majority districts as part of the plan, when you take the Black voting age population into consideration, we didn’t feel it stood up,” Cooper told councilors. 

Initially, Stimpson’s plan, which the administration has called a “first draft,” would result in Districts 1,2,3 and 7 having a Black majority. While District 7’s Black majority drops from 55 percent to 51 percent when voting age is taken into account, Black voters still have a clear majority, according to numbers released to Lagniappe by the administration. However, those numbers changed almost immediately. 

Updated plan numbers shrink the Black voting age majority below 50 percent to about 47 percent. These numbers were released to the public through Stimpson’s nightly email newsletter.

Cooper also mentioned issues with the dilution of Black voting power in her district. District 2 will drop from around a current population of 62 percent Black to about 59 percent under Stimpson’s plan. However, this accounts for a dramatic drop in Black population in the district and an overall shift in population to the west. District 2 lost more than 3,000 residents over the last decade and the vast majority of those leaving were Black. The Black majority of District 2 drops even more when voting age is factored in. 

Councilman William Carroll blamed this shift on what he called “deconcentration,” which coincides with the movement of Black residents out of a number of housing complexes in District 2 that have since been torn down. 

“After deconcentration, you have gentrification,” he said. “It happens all over the country.” 

While Carroll put some of the blame on the city and the Mobile Housing Authority for not offering vouchers for those displaced residents to remain east of Interstate 65, part of the issue can be blamed on a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The court’s ruling several years ago to prevent moving low-income housing residents back into impoverished neighborhoods resulted in the Alabama Housing Finance Authority giving more weight and more points to low-income housing projects located to the city’s west, or in the county. This resulted in more low-income housing being placed outside of the more traditional locations. 

District 6 Councilman Scott Jones defended Stimpson’s plan and said the proposed map represented a population shift to the west and a move of residents away from the traditional Black-majority districts. 

“If the population leaves a district it’s not easy to solve,” Jones said. “I’m going to lose [residents]. I can’t move [my district] west. Everyone else’s [districts are] moving west.” 

Jones said “relationships” are why two districts [5 and 7] were represented by White councilors when neither has a majority of white residents. 

“We had free and fair elections in August and October,” he said. “There are two representatives sitting up here with more Blacks than Whites in their districts and they’re both represented by White candidates. Relationships matter; let’s throw race out the window.” 

Jones also criticized low voter turnout in the most recent municipal elections. The turnout during those elections was 24 percent, or 34,102 of the more than 141,631 registered voters in the city. 

“People are not voting,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how you draw the lines, it won’t make people vote.”