Pfeifer accuses Frady of redrawing map to aid reelection; Demo chair says, ‘It is about race, pure and simple

In an explosive debate that featured references to the Jim Crow South, the Fayette County Commission voted Monday morning to send new voting district maps to the state reapportionment office.

One commissioner, Peter Pfeifer, charged another, Herb Frady, with gerrymandering Frady’s district to protect against a future challenge from a former opponent.

And a Democratic Party official charged the all-Republican board with trying to keep a black from being elected to the all-white county commission.

The debate also featured Commissioner Eric Maxwell calling out Pfeifer on his reluctance to support the new maps.

“This is not a do-nothing board. If you can’t handle it, you need to step aside,” said Maxwell.

What inspired the fiery rhetoric was a series of new maps drawn for the county’s three commission districts. Currently, three commissioners must live within their districts, but the entire county gets to vote on them. Two of the commission seats are at-large voting, with no requirement to live within a specific boundary.

“We’re trying to equalize the voting population. We’re now down to a difference of about 1,200 in each district,” Frady said.

Executive Assistant Carol Chandler told the board Aug. 9 the first district, represented by Robert Horgan, has 21,491 voters, while Commissioner Herb Frady’s district has 27,655 voters and Peter Pfeifer’s third district has 14,538 voters.

The county submitted new districts to the state’s reapportionment department, but received a new set of maps from the department.

“The state has to go on population from the last Census, which was 91,000,” she said.

The new districts contain populations of 31,115 in the first district, 29,799 in the second and 30,000 in the third.

But Pfeifer was not convinced.

“Why is this change so necessary at this time? We’ve had these lines for decades, if not for over a century. Fayette’s citizens are not having any real problems that are caused by the existing district lines, even if it would be ‘nice’ to have them redrawn and rebalanced. But perhaps some politicians do have their problems,” said Pfeifer.

Pfeifer also noted the idea was initially floated at the Callaway Gardens retreat and spearheaded by Frady.

“Why was a commissioner, who is up for re-election next year, permitted to re-draw the district lines for an entire county of over 100,000 people in a manner that perhaps could be a direct benefit to his reelection campaign?” Pfeifer asked.

But the residents who were present at Monday’s meeting were suspect of the County Commission’s motivations.

Judith Moore, who is the chair of the county’s Democratic Party, blasted the board.

“You hope that this initiative on your part will seduce the United States Department of Justice to overlook your failure to address the issue which has dogged the old South since the Civil Rights era. You hope that the agents of justice will forget about the past when Jim Crow ruled the South and will not look closely at the motivations behind your continued commitment to at-large voting for every member of the Fayette County Board of Commissioners.”

”You will say that you are not motivated by race or racism, but that is hard to believe when you read our local newspapers. ‘Don’t let us become like Clayton County,’ they say. We know what that means. It means that if you let one African-American get elected to the Board of Commissioners, you will ruin this county,” she said.

Moore said the issue boiled down to race.

“It is about what happened in the 1960s. It is about a Democratic president and a Democratic Party who finally had the courage to stand up and say that Jim Crow was wrong and to do something about it.”

“Then Southern Democrats started running like rats from a sinking ship to jump on the Republican bandwagon. Fayette County was once totally Democratic. Now it is totally Republican. We know how this happened. It is about race, pure and simple.”

Chairman Jack Smith said the issue was not about race.

“You have the possibility of the Department of Justice doing something that could dramatically change how we vote, if we don’t do anything. There has never been a comment made about race. I understand that you want district voting, but there is no information showing that anyone has been disenfranchised,” he said.

The board voted to send the maps to the reapportionment office by a 4-1 vote with Pfeifer opposing the measure.

Another issue that drew Pfeifer’s ire was the lack of legal advice on the issue.

“Before the rash decision to fire the county attorney, we could have received some advice regarding the Department of Justice. His advice had been that the county would be opening itself to district voting if we did this. Is this one of the reasons he was fired? Did he give advice that didn’t fit someone’s plans?” Pfeifer wondered.

Maxwell denied the board fired attorney Bill McNally and said that was something Pfeifer and his buddies were spreading.

“It’s a realignment for numbers,” he said.

Maxwell also disputed submitting the maps could “open a can of worms.”

“If we don’t do something, a decision will be forced upon us,” he said.

Frady was also upset about Pfeifer’s assertions.

“Anybody in this county should be able to damn run,” he said.

Moore closed her presentation by urging the county to go to district voting.

“I challenge you to prove me a liar. If you are not afraid of a face a bit darker than your own sitting beside you on the Board of Commissioners, then tell the Georgia General Assembly and the United States Department of Justice that district voting in Fayette County is long overdue. Go on record that you believe a Republican Board of Commissioners should do everything possible to ensure that every voice is heard within the hallowed walls of these chambers.”

Moore was not the only resident in favor of district voting. Alice Jones, who represents the North Fayette Community Association, presented the County Commission calling with a resolution calling for district voting.

“I need someone to truly represent me. We need true representation and and we should have five districts and two at large representatives,” she said.

North Fayette resident Angela Hinton also said the time had come to change the voting procedures.

“At-large voting is mob rule. This is taxation without representation and we need to end the colonial era,” she said.