Oklahoma Legislature convenes redistricting special session
November 14, 2021
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma Legislature convened a special session on Monday to approve new maps for the state's legislative and congressional districts, while hundreds of protesters descended on the Capitol to express their opposition to vaccine mandates.
The House and Senate met briefly for procedural votes on bills containing the maps that will be in effect for the next 10 years. Lawmakers are expected to wrap up their work by the end of the week. The new maps typically are approved during the regular session, which ends in May, but a special session was required this year because of a delay in the release of the latest U.S. Census data.
Democrats have criticized the new congressional maps as a clear example of gerrymandering, particularly the proposed new 5th District, which Democrat Kendra Horn won in an upset in 2018. Republican Stephanie Bice won the seat back in 2020, and GOP lawmakers have redrawn the map to make it more Republican.
The proposed new map carves out a large portions of Democratic precincts on the south side and central core of Oklahoma City and places them in the heavily Republican 3rd District that stretches across northwest Oklahoma into the Panhandle. The new map also adds more rural voters in Logan and Lincoln counties.
"If you look at Oklahoma County, it looks like they took a big ol' bite out of the southwest corner," said Rep. Forrest Bennett, a Democrat from south Oklahoma City.
About 181,000 residents of Oklahoma County, many of them Hispanic from the city's south side, are moved into the 3rd District under the GOP plan.
Democrats have introduced proposals to have congressional district maps they drew and a proposal to create a new bipartisan redistricting committee considered, but they're unlikely to get much traction in the GOP-controlled Legislature.
Republicans said one of their top priorities was to ensure that military installations and communities surrounding Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City and Fort Sill near Lawton remain in the 4th Congressional District.
"We are proud the Oklahoma map is more compact overall, protects military bases and incorporates widespread public input that the Democrat map ignores," House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, said in a statement.
While lawmakers met, hundreds of people flooded the Capitol to protest vaccine mandates for workers. Holding signs that read "I Have Natural Immunity" and "Welcome to the Next Civil Rights Movement," the protesters chanted and urged lawmakers to pass bills prohibiting vaccine mandates.
Oklahoma's newly appointed Republican Attorney General John O'Connor, who has filed federal lawsuits challenging the Biden administration's vaccine mandates for federal contractors and businesses with more than 100 employees, spoke to the raucous crowd.
"I've had a vaccine. I don't oppose vaccines. What I oppose are mandates," he said.
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