Wednesday, March 12, 2004
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Wednesday, March 12, 2004 |
| Fayette gains its own House seat in final redistricting maps By J. FRANK LYNCH Fayette is guaranteed representation in the State Legislature by one of its own starting in 2005, thanks to the final version of House redistricting maps issued by a trio of federal judges on Monday. The justices gave Fayette County a solely contained, brand new House seat called 85B that cuts a narrow swath right across the middle of the county, including most all of Peachtree City, as well as western and southern portions of Fayetteville to just below Harp’s Crossing. The district is more than 90 percent white and heavily Republican, having elected George W. Bush president in 2000 by a 71 percent margin. The rest of the county was carved up into shares of four other districts, through two others — like 85B — are brand new and will have no incumbents challenging for the seats come November. • District 83 is open and includes north and eastern Fayetteville and follows a line right up Ga. Highway 85 through Riverdale; the district, 58 percent black, includes 39,175 Clayton voters and just 6,162 Fayette voters. • District 48D is open and covers northwest Fayette including Tyrone and a small portion of Peachtree City, as well as all of South Fulton County south of I-85. African-American voters makeup 60 percent of the district, with 32,436 residents in the Fulton portion, and just 13,272 living in Fayette. Rep. Virgil Fludd, meanwhile, is expected to seek reelection in a new House District 81, which covers his neighborhood in north Fayette and stretches north up Ga. Highway 314 into Clayton County, ending at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. At 57.2 percent black, the new 81st includes 29,735 Clayton residents and 16,000 Fayette residents. In an interview last month, Fludd declared that he intended to run for a second term in the General Assembly no matter what state House district he found himself living in. Fludd, currently the lone Fayette County resident among the seven House representatives whose districts occupy a piece of the county, shared the 48th District with three other legislators, but the judges dismantled all multimember districts, as expected. And Rep. John Yates, who currently serves just a tiny slice of south Fayette County, will hold on to that constituency in a newly configured House District 85A that counts 10,064 Fayette voters in its ranks. The bulk of Yates’ new district, 26,479 voters, live in Spalding, while 9,270 Henry County residents, primarily in the Hampton area, round out the district. On the Senate side, Sen. Valencia Seay’s 34th District that covers most of northeast Fayette remains virtually unchanged. But the rest of Fayette makes up the largest single voting block of a new 16th Senate Seat, that covers all of Tyrone, Peachtree City and South Fayette, and stretches through Spalding, Pike and Lamar counties into Monroe County, where it includes the entire city of Forsyth.
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