After SC Senate opted against redistricting, will McMaster call them back?
Now that the state Senate has declined to take up redistricting after the May 14 end of session, where do GOP lawmakers who have called for a congressional reapportionment go from here?
Gov. Henry McMaster is allowed to call lawmakers back for a special session with no sine die agreement in place.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey indicated that the governor is expected to call lawmakers back. But if McMaster does, he has no control over what they take up. He could suggest, but can’t require, them to take up redistricting. A decision could come as soon as 5:01 p.m. Thursday.
Besides redistricting, a spending plan for the 2026-27 fiscal year, which begins July 1 has yet to be finalized. Lawmakers are required to have a balanced spending plan for the next fiscal year.
If the McMaster formally calls lawmakers back, it would allow them to continue working on redistricting. The House Judiciary Committee already has approved maps to allow the 124-member House chamber to debate and vote on the new maps. Lawmakers now have access to a “map room” to review the proposed districts intended to lead to Republicans holding all seven of the state’s U.S. House seats.
Presuming the proposed congressional districts pass, the maps could still move to the state Senate for its consideration.
But the Senate likes to consider itself the deliberative body and if a redistricting bill comes to the upper chamber, it could take its time and run out the clock as in-person early voting begins May 26 for the June 9 primary elections
“Every day you have more absentee ballots being returned. They have now sent out not just the overseas ballots, but domestic ballots,” Massey said May 7. “I think there’s a question as to whether you’ve not already passed, what’s feasible to do there.”
Massey said if the redistricting bill comes over from the House, it’s a bill a senator can’t stop by objecting to it like with other pieces of legislation.
“If something comes over, nobody can block it,” Massey said.
However, it’s a bill that the state Senate could move slowly.
“It typically would go to committee,” Massey said. “It’s a redistricting bill. I can’t imagine that we wouldn’t have committee conversation on it, but granted, there’s a timeline that you’re dealing with.”
During Tuesday’s debate, Senate Judiciary Chairman Luke Rankin, who oversaw the redistricting process for the state Senate after the 2020 census, lamented on how quickly the House wanted to move on redrawing the lines after receiving a proposed map from the National Republican Redistricting Trust.
Usually the process includes traveling around the state to hear from voters and residents about how the lines should be drawn.
“There is something about (this) that is lacking right now, and that is the process of actually doing it and taking the time to do it, because it is required by law to do,” Rankin said Tuesday on the Senate floor.
Rankin added on the floor lawmakers just don’t have enough time to carry out redistricting.
“It is a laborious thing, with oodles and oodles and oodles and pages of testimony transcribed all to either sincerely listen to people or to check the box. The box that we don’t have here, folks, whether we decide that we insist upon it or not, is what is the process,” Rankin said,
Still, those against redistricting expect efforts to redraw maps to continue. Social media chatter continued after Tuesday’s vote, including from candidates for governor, calling for McMaster to call a special session.
“I don’t think they’re going to stop. I don’t think the advocates are going to stop,” Massey said. “I understand that. I mean there’s something that they want, and so I understand them trying to pursue it as much as they can.”
Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto said he wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another effort to redraw maps ahead of the 2028 election.
“Do I think it goes away? I think we’ll be right back on it in January,” Hutto said.
But Massey disagreed with that assessment.
“I don’t know whether the folks at the White House care about it happening next year,” Massey said. “If you don’t do it now, I don’t know why you need to do it before 2031, unless something else happens.”
McMaster did not take questions during a public appearance Wednesday.
After a groundbreaking ceremony for the Robert Smalls monument on the State House grounds Wednesday, McMaster met in his office with House Speaker Murrell Smith, House Judiciary Chairman Weston Newton, Senate President Thomas Alexander and Massey. As legislative leaders left the governor’s office, they did not take questions from news media members.
After Tuesday’s failed sine die vote in the Senate, McMaster didn’t initially signal whether he would call lawmakers back, but said the General Assembly had time to finish its work.
“I urge the General Assembly to finish its work according to the U.S. and South Carolina constitutions and the best interests of the people,” McMaster said in a statement Tuesday.
Reporter Lucy Valeski contributed to this article.
