1 woman, 1 North Carolina address, 5 congressional districts

A lot has changed since Linda Devore came to Cumberland County 40 years ago. She went from Ralph Nader Democrat to Ronald Reagan Republican. Her husband had a career in the Army, then retired. She practiced law, then retired. Her children grew up, moved away, got graduate degrees and had children of their own. In those four decades, Devore has lived in five congressional districts. And yet —  

“I’ve never moved,” she said at a Sept. 30 redistricting hearing.

After every U.S. Census, state houses have to redraw congressional voting maps to account for population changes. For well over a century, the region known as the Sandhills has been sliced, diced, fricasseed — and forgotten, residents say.

They're sick of it. White and Black, Republican and Democrat, speaker after speaker at the Sept. 30 hearing made the same demand as Devore: You’re adding a 14th congressional district. Make it ours.

“We are asking that this committee extend some congressional equity to the Sandhills region,” Cumberland County Democrats chair Sharon Johnson said. “The Sandhills region is the only area of North Carolina that does not have its own congressional district.”

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Devore, a member of the Cumberland County Board of Elections and one of those women who are the backbone of political activity, sat down at her kitchen table in the solid Fayetteville Tudor whose maps have shifted around her and dotted the home addresses of the state’s 13 members of Congress. One populous region of the state was glaringly empty: her own.

Physically pinning down the Sandhills is easier than running on sand, but not by much. Geographically, it’s a coastline dating back to the dinosaurs “encompassing portions of Anson, Cumberland, Harnett, Hoke, Lee, Moore, Richmond, Scotland, and Montgomery counties,” according to the state’s 2015 wildlife action plan. Politically, it’s for sure the five counties containing and just by Fort Bragg: Cumberland, Harnett, Hoke, Lee and Moore — plus some combination of Bladen, Columbus, Richmond, Robeson, Sampson and Scotland. A few people add Johnston and Montgomery counties.

At the moment, these counties are in three congressional districts. Even Cumberland County itself has been divided in the past, though Fayetteville is not only the sixth biggest city in North Carolina with a population of more than 208,000, but bigger than Little Rock, Ark.; Salt Lake City, Utah; Birmingham, Ala.; Providence, R.I.; or Hartford, Conn., according to the Census. 

No matter how cynical we think they are, we want our politicians to care about us and our communities. We want to feel represented. When Sandhills people look at the congressional map, it sends them a message: You're less important.

“We just don’t have someone sitting in our community who sees the struggles and who sees the opportunities and who sees the resources that we have,” Devore said.

Does that make a difference? And if state lawmakers did give the Sandhills a voice, what would the region have to say?

Fort Bragg a magnet

In sandy soil, roots grow deep. Fort Bragg is the region’s magnet, home to nearly 10 percent of the Army plus their families, many of whom stay after retirement. Fayetteville is the anchor, with commuters and shoppers coming in. The outskirts are quiet, especially east of Interstate 95, filled with people born and raised.

The Sandhills are demographically rich, with people from all over the world as well as the Lumbee Indians, the largest tribe east of the Mississippi. Four of the counties have no majority racial group. The region is traditional, though not always politically conservative: Hoke and Cumberland voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

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Locally, people work together on issues, Devore said. “We’re not enemies … We live next door to each other. We go to the same churches.”

Johnson agreed. When it comes to Sandhills concerns, “at the end of the day, I think we have more in common (than not),” she said.

Standing outside the Smith Recreation Center in Fayetteville Oct. 27, Kathy Greggs wore her passions on her clothes: a hat that said “Veteran” and a hoodie that said “Black Voters Matter.”

Greggs is currently focused on city council redistricting and efforts to dilute Black communities’ influence locally. Bundling Cumberland County with wealthier, whiter Harnett, Hoke or Moore would do just that on a larger scale, she said.

“All five maps garbage,” she said, referring to five proposed congressional maps. “Show me the map that shows that you’re helping with racial disparities.” 

But even Greggs thought a Sandhills district would be better than putting Cumberland in the same congressional district as greater Charlotte.

“I’m with you on that one voice for the Sandhills," she said. "But who’s going to be that voice?”

Economic hopes and fears

The Sandhills may have cultural wealth, but economically, less so, according to the Census. The region has lost many of the factories that once provided jobs to generations. It also has comparatively poor natural resources -- that’s why the military put a base here, on land that wasn’t good for farming, Devore said.

The region doesn’t have a research university or Charlotte’s banking community or the Piedmont’s industry, which also means it doesn’t have generations of wealthy families who invest, said Robert Van Geons, president and CEO of the Fayetteville Cumberland County Economic Development Corporation.

Robeson is the poorest county in the state, and in Bladen, Columbus and Scotland, the median household income pre-pandemic was less than $38,000, according to Census data. Cumberland County includes a concentrated core of poverty. Devore’s children haven’t moved back because they can’t find jobs in their fields, she said.

Those are challenges that unified congressional representation could help, Van Geons said. He sees the region as a secret hiding in plain sight, poised to capitalize on its strengths: a big potential workforce, “and space to grow.” The pandemic has brought new opportunities, he said, with people fleeing big cities and working from home.  

“If we were more aligned, perhaps we could build faster,” Van Geons said. As it is, “we speak to our congressional rep, they speak to theirs … How do we have a congregation singing off one hymn sheet?”

Half an hour south, in a different congressional district, in an office so new you can smell the finishes through a mask, Van Geons’ Robeson County counterpart Channing Jones said much the same thing.

First, he pulled up a map showing an industrial park in the works, 215 acres tucked behind the juncture of I-74 and I-95, with an anchor tenant lined up, Elkay Plumbing Products.

Though Robeson feels out-of-the-way, truckers can reach two thirds of the population of the U.S. “within an 18-hour drive,” Jones said, to say nothing of the easy access to seaports and airports. Since COVID-19 began, lots of international companies are looking for manufacturing sites in the U.S. to reduce supply-chain problems, he said.

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A big economic project like this requires a whole lot of new infrastructure and environmental work, which requires money, which requires collaboration among different levels of government. Jones is in contact with U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop’s office “pretty regularly,” he said.

There are federal funds for workforce education, rehabbing properties, expanding electrical and sewer grids, evaluating rivers for flood potential. The widening of I-95 is already underway, as are measures to prevent flooding of the sort that knocked the interstate out of service after Hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018.

Pragmatically, a single Sandhills district “could make life easier for those that represent us,” Van Geons said. Bishop and U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, both Republicans, have two district offices each — one in the Sandhills, one near Charlotte. It takes close to two hours to drive between Bishop’s and more than 2-1/2 to drive between Hudson’s, according to Google Maps.

Bishop’s office did not respond to a request for comment, and Hudson’s spokesman Greg Steele referred questions to the state general assembly.

That said, when people spoke about the practical difficulties of representing a drawn-out district, it seemed to be blanketing deeper feelings about belonging.

Jones grew up in Robeson County, left and came back because it’s home. And though he was careful not to bite the federal hand that feeds, he did say, “Any representative who believes that this is home will obviously represent the area in a passionate way.”

Getting people to care

It’s looking like a Sandhills district in its largest form won’t coalesce this time around either. State lawmakers motored to get new districts passed so candidates may decide and file. On Thursday Nov. 4, the GOP-led General Assembly passed a plan that gives the Sandhills four different congresspeople. The NAACP and Common Cause have already sued to block it, and advocates expect further legal pushback, according to the Associated Press.  

Numerically, you can’t keep all the Sandhills counties together, Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer said. Congressional districts are supposed to have roughly 746,000 residents each, and 11 of the Sandhills counties, not including Montgomery or Johnston, have more than 1 million. These counties haven’t been grouped together since 1872, before Hoke and Scotland counties even existed, Bitzer said.

Does it matter if the Sandhills ever get their own district?

It’s hard to say. And it’s hard — despite public hearings and news stories replete with colorful metaphors of bacon and monsters and snakes and paint splats, and lofty ideals like representation, democracy, fairness and civil rights — to get ordinary people to see the connection between congressional voting maps and their own lives, the Sandhills’ formal and informal leaders said.

For two years, Fayetteville PACT has been doing teach-ins and polls and walks and forums, Greggs said. They’ve talked to homeless people hanging out in Festival Park.

“They don’t understand the redistricting. What they understand is the economy and how they get out of poverty,”  she said.

Soldiers learn how to draw maps, but not this kind, Greggs added: only “the map to get out of battle.”

It doesn’t help when the legislature holds hearings without translation for non-English speakers, in Raleigh or in a local room without handicap accessibility, or via web video requiring broadband, she said.

"If a person's going to depend on the government ..."

Nor is it clear whether quality of representation or voter engagement improves when a House member lives close by, Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper said. He didn’t know any studies on the subject. Oklahoma University professor Michael Crespin said it might make it easier for constituents to trust their representatives. But members of Congress don’t even have to live in their districts.

If one of the proposed maps slicing up the Sandhills passes — well, mental health worker Daven McCall, interviewed Oct. 27, didn't expect anything better. He stood in his wife’s clothing boutique hung with stylishly torn jeans, sparkly earrings and inspirational slogans.

It’s been hard to keep the shop going through the pandemic. People used to complain about the homeless men hanging outside in the Lumberton town square, but they were harmless and kept an eye on the place, McCall said. They’ve disappeared lately. He doesn’t know where they’ve gone.

McCall is Black, his wife is Lumbee and he was her high school sweetheart. He votes in Back Swamp Township.

“Well, of course you would like the government to do more, assist more people,” McCall said. But he learned long ago not to rely on that. “I always was brought up, really, you don’t depend on another person but you take matters into your own hands and do what’s best for your family and your community,” he said.

In theory, “I know that people can unite and get policies changed and stuff like that.” He once went to Raleigh to picket some matter connected to his job. He doesn’t know if anything happened as a result. He tried to get a PPP loan last year for the store, but the agent nagged him about paperwork and made him feel like a criminal. The couple didn’t get the loan.

“If a person’s going to depend on the government it’s going to be a long day,” McCall said.

Even so, he said, it would be nice to have a representative nearby. “I think we need somebody representing us that’s from this area. Or can at least come down and talk to us.”

Danielle Dreilinger is a North Carolina storytelling reporter and author of the book The Secret History of Home Economics. Contact her at 919-236-3141 or ddreilinger@gannett.com.