During Thursday's episode of Mobile radio's FM Talk 106.5's "The Jeff Poor Show," U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) praised the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling against racially based congressional maps but cautioned against an immediate attempted transition to a conservative-dominated 7-0 layout in Alabama.
According to Tuberville, redistricting efforts in Republican-controlled states have been a direct response to continuous liberal gerrymandering.
"I think that it's great for the state of Alabama. This gerrymander nonsense really started in the Northeast," argued Tuberville. "If you look at the top nine or 10 states in the northeast, they're 35%-40% Republican, but they have zero representation in the House, and that's a disgrace. So if they're going to gerrymander, we're going to do the same thing."
He continued, "The thing that people don't understand is that race does not need to be involved when it comes to redistricting. This should be about politics, and that's exactly what the Supreme Court said. We'll go with our ruling. We'll get a map that's pretty much back to the same map we had. It puts a lot of people in play here when it comes to a short-time election, which will happen the first couple of weeks of August."
"Then you don't have to have 50%. If you get 30% and you got more than everybody else, you're the winner. There's no runoff, so it'll be a sprint to the finish. I think this is good for the state. It's good for the country," Tuberville continued.
The legislator was asked if he would work towards a 7-0 map if elected governor this coming November.
"A hundred percent," Tuberville responded. "The problem with 7-0 this time around was that there was not enough time. I went to the House last week, met with the leadership over there in Montgomery, and we talked about it. There have to be all kinds of public hearings. If you change a map that the public has really not looked at and has not vetted, you have no chance to get it done. The 6-1 map had been vetted. There have been public hearings. So this was really the only route we could go."
He added, "I hear a lot of people saying that we need 7-0. We really do. But you know we're going to end up with a 5-2 if we try that. We would have lost the 6-1 map."
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