ATLANTA — Partisan divides were on display at the Cobb County Legislative Delegation meeting Monday morning, where legislators wrangled over the redrawing of the Cobb Board of Education electoral maps just before the annual session of the Georgia General Assembly convened.
State Rep. Teri Anulewicz, D-Smyrna, and state Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, presented their respective map proposals at the meeting, but disagreements over procedure stymied any decision on the legislators’ first day back.
The delegation plans to meet again on Tuesday to continue discussions.
Dueling maps
Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Eleanor Ross, an appointee of President Barack Obama, threw out the existing Cobb school board map in a lawsuit filed by a group of Cobb residents and organizations such as GALEO and the New Georgia Project.
The school district has appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Following the 2020 U.S. Census, a law firm hired by the school board’s Republican majority drew that map as part of the reapportionment process necessitated by each census.
In December 2021, the school board voted 4-3 along party lines to recommend the General Assembly adopt the map.
State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, R-west Cobb, sponsored the map in the legislature. It was passed over the objections of Democrats and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022.
Anulewicz noted that, while she and the rest of the delegation are neither plaintiffs nor defendants in the case, it falls on them to draw a map that will pass muster in court.
Not only that, but Ross ordered the new map be passed by Jan. 10.
Both Anulewicz and Setzler say that deadline is impossible to meet based on the rules for legislation, though they are interested in moving forward quickly to install the new map.
Each say their maps preserve incumbents’ districts while also maintaining the…
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