OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
UPDATE: 11:00 AM – North Carolina Republican lawmakers have approved new congressional district maps in both the state Senate and House, adding an additional GOP seat.
On Tuesday, the state Senate approved Senate Bill 249, reworking District 1 and District 3. The House followed suit on Wednesday, officially passing the new map.
North Carolina is the only state where the governor cannot veto electoral maps, making North Carolina’s governorship one of the weakest in the nation. This is due to a bill passed in 1995 that first allowed the governor veto power, but severely restricted the scope of the veto, including congressional maps. Democrat Governor Josh Stein (D-N.C.) is explicitly barred from overturning the new legislature.
The Old North State, which has long elected Democrat governors with Republican Legislatures, is now expected to have an 11-3 GOP majority in congressional representation.
8:48 AM – North Carolina Republican lawmakers are prepared to rework part of the state’s congressional map in an attempt to secure an additional GOP seat.
The state’s proposed district maps passed their final hurdle in the North Carolina Senate on Tuesday with a vote of 26 to 20 in favor.
“Across the country, Democrat-run states have spent decades ensuring that Republicans would be drawn out of Congress,” said GOP Senate Leader Phil Berger of Rockingham. “North Carolina Republicans will not sit quietly and watch Democrats continue to ignore the will of the people in an attempt to force their liberal agenda on our citizens. This new map respects the will of the North Carolina voters who sent President Trump to the White House three times.”
Last week, Republicans publicly released Senate Bill 249, which makes changes to District 1 and District 3, leaving the other 12 districts as they are.
Based on 2024 voter data, the proposed map for District 1 would move from an area that voted for Donald Trump at 51% to one that voted for Trump at 55%.
Senate Deputy President Pro Tempore Republican Ralph Hice addressed comments made on the Senate floor before the vote, including accusations that race may have played a factor in how the congressional map was drawn.
“I will again completely state that there was no racial data used in these maps, and in fact, that is a verifiable fact. The computer can produce what the data said,” said Hice. “The purpose of this map was to pick up a Republican seat. We’ve stated that over and over again. I think there’s been a real attempt to try to say, because that’s the only legal strategy left to say that it was done for other reasons.”
He said that the idea that the map was redrawn for racial reasons “simply doesn’t hold any water.”
Hice continued, stating, “We came up with these maps for the purpose of rebalancing this nation, rebalancing Congress, and making sure that North Carolina is as optimized as the other blue states were when they created their districts.”
“Republicans hold a razor-thin margin in the United States House of Representatives. If Democrats flip four seats in the upcoming midterm elections, they will take control of the House and torpedo President Trump’s agenda,” he added.
In 2022, North Carolina’s Congressional delegation consisted of seven Republicans and seven Democrats. When Republicans redrew the maps for the 2024 election cycle, three Democrats, Jeff Jackson, Kathy Manning, and Wiley Nickel, did not seek re-election. Republican leaders in the state believe that under the new map, 11 Republicans could represent the state in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Texas started the redistricting war in August when Republican state legislators approved new maps that are likely to grant the GOP five additional U.S. Senate seats.
This prompted California Governor Gavin Newsom to launch a special election campaign to redraw the Golden State’s maps to gain five Democrat seats to match Texas. Californians will vote on the measure, Prop 50, on November 4th. If passed, the bill will bypass the state’s independent committee that usually redraws Congressional maps to enact Newsom’s will.
“I’ve got bad news for Gavin Newsom and the radical left. North Carolina will not stand by while trying to be undermined the will of the voters and stack the deck in D.C.,” said Republican North Carolina Representative Brenden Jones.
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