Buckhead Neighborhoods Would Join Cherokee, Bartow in Redrawn District

The northern neighborhoods of Buckhead would be included in a congressional district with Cherokee and Bartow counties under a draft map released Monday.

The proposed change would put those Buckhead neighborhoods into the 11th Congressional District now represented by Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey.

Today, Rep. John Lewis (D-Atlanta) represents virtually all of Buckhead and much of the city of Atlanta.  But his heavily Democrat 5th district would be redrawn so it would include only the southern neighborhoods in Buckhead.

Lewis called the proposal to split Atlanta into two congressional districts "an affront" to the Voting Rights Act.

The AJC quoted Lewis as saying, "The City of Atlanta should remain whole and attempts to split the City are nothing more than naked partisanship.”

The prospect of two congressmen representing Buckhead pleased some community leaders. 

"Personally I think its great," said Jim King, president of the Chastain Park Civic Association and chairman of the Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods, who stressed that he was giving his personal opinion.

"This gives us two senior congressman, one from each party to represent the city of Atlanta when now all we have is John Lewis. We just don’t get enough done for our community and our city. Having a Republican and Democrat in Congress will help Buckhead and help the city of Atlanta."

Political observers saw Republican Rep. Tom Price of the 6th District as a natural fit for Buckhead, since he represents Sandy Springs, seen as a community with similar interests. But the redrawn maps stop the 6th at the Chastain Park border and the city of Atlanta line.

Every decade, the state Legislature must redraw political district boundaries to match new U.S. Census numbers and population shifts. For the first time in living memory, the GOP has a majority in both the Georgia House and Senate during the redistricting so maps were chiefly the product of GOP members.

The proposal extends the 11th District, which now includes part of Smyrna, into Vinings with a dogleg reaching into Buckhead.

In Buckhead, the neighborhoods below the top end of Chastain Park would be in the 11th District and the south border of that district is sketched along Nancy Creek, part of Moore's Mill Road, curving through Tuxedo Park and Lenox before twisting toward the DeKalb County line.

Gordon Certain, president of the North Buckhead Civic Association and secretary of the Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods, has annotated the maps to show which neighborhoods would be covered by which district. 

It will take at least a few days for the new districts to work their way through the Georgia Legislature. If they receive the same treatment as draft maps for the state House and Senate, passage under the GOP majority will essentially be a formality, with no edits to the maps.

Next, the maps must be sent to Washington, DC for approval by federal officials. Georgia, like most of the South and other areas with a history of disenfranchising minority voters, must prove to the federal government that the new maps will not dilute minority voting power.

If the maps are found unfair, a federal judge can impose interim borders until the Legislature draws an improved plan. Otherwise, the maps will be in place for the 2012 election cycle.

Buckhead Patch editor Louis Mayeux contributed to this article.