Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling had an immediate reaction after he saw a federal judge’s order upholding the state’s new congressional and legislative maps: “We have a clear path for the ‘24 election.”

Millions of Georgia voters — and dozens of officeholders and aspiring candidates — had been in limbo since U.S. District Judge Steve Jones’ ruled in October that the state’s political boundaries illegally diluted Black voting strength and ordered sweeping revisions.

That triggered a whirlwind special legislative session where the Republican-led Legislature appeared to follow the judge’s order to create a majority-Black U.S. House district and seven majority-Black legislative districts by carving up other majority-minority seats.

It looked like state Republicans were keen to test the limits of Jones’ order while preparing for a longer-term legal battle over the federal Voting Rights Act. Even some Republicans privately expected Jones to strike down their maps.

But their gamble appeared to pay off Thursday when Jones approved the new maps. His ruling that lawmakers “fully complied” with his order may be appealed, but experts predict the current maps will take hold in 2024.

That means that Republicans are likely to maintain their 9-5 majority in the U.S. House delegation and 10-seat edge in the 56-member Georgia Senate. The GOP could lose a few seats in the state House but will still command a solid majority in the chamber.

Here’s a closer look at what the order means:

Lucy McBath plans to run in a new U.S. House district in three consecutive elections

Twice in the past two years, Republican legislators have drawn Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath out of her suburban House district. And for the second time in the past two years, McBath plans to compete in new territory to keep her seat in Congress.

A longtime gun control advocate, McBath won a district that stretched across Atlanta’s close-in suburbs in 2018 and 2020. After GOP leaders drafted a new map that favored Republicans in 2021, she jumped to a Gwinnett County-based district and ousted a Democratic incumbent.

Now she intends to run in the newly created 6th District in west metro Atlanta that includes parts of Cobb, Douglas, Fayette and Fulton counties. Her campaign calls it the latest in a “never-ending and unsuccessful saga” to kick her out of Congress.

“I hope that the judicial system will not allow the state Legislature to suppress the will of Georgia voters,” she said but added that if the maps stand, she’ll run for the new seat because “too much is at stake to stand down.”

It’s not all bad news for McBath. She’s unlikely to face a challenge from a fellow Democratic incumbent, since U.S. Reps. Hank Johnson, David Scott and Nikema Williams are likely to divvy up the other left-leaning metro Atlanta seats.

(Williams indicated late Thursday that she would seek another term in the 5th District, which remains heavily Democratic but no longer covers all of Atlanta. Scott, meanwhile, will compete in the 13th, which now spans parts of Atlanta’s eastern fringe.)

Credit: NATRICE MILLER

Credit: NATRICE MILLER

And several up-and-coming Democrats angling to run for a new seat have made clear they won’t go toe to toe against McBath. Among them is Cobb Commissioner Jerica Richardson, who announced a bid for Congress before the lines were redrawn.

In the long run, the GOP tinkering with McBath’s seat could wind up bolstering her reputation as she prepares for a potential 2026 run for statewide office.

McBath can tell donors and activists she’s so feared by Republican leaders they’ve repeatedly tried to carve her out of her district. And if she’s successful in 2024, she will have represented millions of voters in three distinct parts of metro Atlanta, the state’s most important Democratic bastion.

Credit: NYT

For now, though, McBath is bracing for another vote in another new territory.

“I won’t sugarcoat it,” she wrote to donors late Thursday. “This is a disastrous outcome for voting rights and democracy.”

GOP leaders feel vindicated after a fresh redistricting battle

While many Republicans issued valedictory statements celebrating the ruling, there was an undercurrent of frustration from some of the key players in the latest saga.

State Sen. Bo Hatchett, an influential Republican at the center of the fight, said he had “mixed feelings” about Jones’ decision.

“I’m happy that the judge ruled in favor of our compliance with his order, but it doesn’t change the reason why we were there,” he said. “We didn’t want to be in this situation. We didn’t want to redraw the maps. And we believed the 2021 maps were fair.”

Hatchett expressed frustration at some of the rhetoric hurled toward GOP leaders accusing them of racism and other grievous acts, saying the seven-day special legislative session was “even more intense than I had anticipated.”

“I believe that regardless of the map we presented, the criticism would have remained unchanged,” he added. “If there’s any lesson to be learned from this process, it should be that political games must cease.”

Georgia GOP chair Josh McKoon added that “Republicans are grateful that this charade is finally at an end so that candidates and campaigns can move forward knowing what the political landscape will be in the 2024 election.”

Aggrieved Democrats lamented that Jones didn’t take on the broader question of whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act not only protected majority-Black districts, but also majority-minority districts where no ethnic group dominates.

State Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler said the GOP-drawn maps are “an ongoing Voting Rights Action violation — period.”

“We must end the cycle of partisan gerrymandering that allows the politicians to choose their voters — and prevents voters from choosing their politicians,” Butler said.

In three separate rulings, Jones explained why he steered clear of that fight. He said he wouldn’t “intrude upon the domain of the General Assembly” and crown the plaintiffs’ alternatives the winners because he wasn’t convinced their objections merited another round of maps.

The Georgia House is poised for infighting

While Republicans avoided drawing incumbents together in the state Senate, three sets of Democrats and a tandem of GOP lawmakers were drawn into the same districts in the new maps. Now the incumbents are readying for fierce intraparty fighting.

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Democrats stand to gain a seat or two in the Georgia House by November, but it will come at a steep price. The three pairs of Democrats battling each other are some of the party’s rising stars, including an Asian American caucus leader and a voting rights expert who won Stacey Abrams’ former district.

The two Republicans who were drawn together — state Reps. Beth Camp and David Knight — may avoid a GOP primary if there’s a timely retirement or political appointment.

It’s too late for any to move, since Georgia law requires state lawmakers to live in their districts a year before an election.

State Rep. Scott Holcomb, a DeKalb County Democrat, avoided a primary fight against a fellow incumbent this cycle. But he still has bitter memories of what happened in 2011, when he was drawn into the same district as then-state Rep. Elena Parent, now a Senate leader.

“It’s grueling, and in many cases the pairings include friends. That makes it even more challenging,” he said. “Georgia is a competitive state, but these maps don’t promote competitive districts. Candidly, the die has already been cast for the vast majority of races.”

Rich McCormick heaves a sigh of relief

Not long ago, it seemed that U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick might be the odd man out in a court-ordered overhaul of congressional maps. Now the first-term Republican appears to be in a stronger position than ever.

McCormick lost to Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux in 2020 in one of the nation’s closest U.S. House races, and he captured the suburban Atlanta seat once held by McBath two years later after it was drawn for an easy GOP win.

As a rookie legislator lacking the deep ties to state legislative leaders that other GOP incumbents enjoy, his allies feared he would be particularly vulnerable if his district were carved up to create a new Democratic-leaning seat.

Instead, it was McBath’s seat that was sliced and diced. McCormick is expected to run in the 7th Congressional District, a solidly conservative swath of Atlanta’s northern suburbs and exurbs that includes most of his current congressional territory.