Jordan Pace and MAGA’s SC 6th Congressional Debate
- Javar Juarez
- Feb 25
- 8 min read
Updated: Feb 25
By Javar Juarez | CUBNSC
Columbia, S.C. — House Bill 4717, a mid-decade congressional redistricting proposal filed by Representative Jordan Pace (R–Berkeley County), resurfaced today in a South Carolina State House subcommittee.
The bill, co-sponsored by Freedom Caucus Republicans Jay Kilmartin (R–Lexington County), Sarita L. Edgerton (R–Spartanburg County), and Joe White (R–Newberry County), proposes redrawing congressional district lines outside the normal census cycle.
Supporters describe the effort as creating “competition.”
The real debate, however, centered on power.
The Article That Sparked It: Jordan Pace and MAGA’s SC 6th Congressional Debate
Representative Jordan Pace told the House Constitutional Laws Subcommittee the “impetus” for H4717, stemmed from two things: ongoing Supreme Court litigation in Louisiana and a ProPublica investigation into South Carolina’s last redistricting cycle.
He specifically referenced the reporting as the catalyst.
The ProPublica article examined allegations that Congressman James E. Clyburn’s office had input during the prior redistricting process. The reporting suggested that individuals associated with Clyburn may have communicated preferences regarding district lines.
That reporting created political tremors inside Republican circles.
But when pressed during the hearing, Pace acknowledged something critical.
He was not present during that redistricting cycle.
He was not elected at the time.
He had no direct knowledge of what actually occurred.
Instead, he relied on what he described as a “perception.”
When Chairman Wallace H. “Jay” Jordan pressed him to clarify what he meant about the Sixth District being drawn with “tremendous influence” from its current office holder, the exchange grew more pointed.
Pace initially referenced the ProPublica reporting and suggested that the district had been shaped with significant input from Congressman James E. Clyburn’s office.
Chairman Jordan pushed back, noting that he had chaired the redistricting process and had spent “hours upon hours” in the building during that cycle without having a single conversation with the holder of the Sixth District.
At that point, Pace softened his framing.
He acknowledged he had not been elected at the time and was not personally involved in those discussions. Instead, he said the belief that there had been undue influence was based on what had been shared with him by others and on the perception created by the article.
In other words, the justification for reopening South Carolina’s congressional map mid-decade rested not on a judicial finding of misconduct, but on a reported perception of influence.
That distinction is not minor.
It is foundational.
Because the Supreme Court ultimately upheld South Carolina’s existing congressional map after years of litigation.
There has been no judicial finding that Congressman Clyburn illegally manipulated the Sixth District.
There has been no official determination that the map was unlawfully drawn due to his involvement.
The Washington Conversations
Pace told the committee that the proposed map was drawn in a way that was “totally racially agnostic.”
He emphasized that the instructions to mapmakers were not to consider “the racial content of anybody, any voter’s skin.”
In his telling, the goal was not to engineer an outcome based on race, but to reshape the Sixth District into something more “competitive” without regard to the racial makeup of its voters.
That framing is significant in a district where Black voters have historically constituted a decisive share of the electorate.
He described consulting individuals in Washington, initially referring to them simply as “staffers.” When pressed by Representative Justin Bamberg, he confirmed the conversations were with staff at the White House. He declined to identify them by name.
The exchange was deliberate. Not heated, but pointed.
Because this was a mid-decade redistricting proposal.
There had been no census.
No court order requiring immediate action.
In fact, during an earlier back-and-forth with Chairman Jay Jordan, Pace acknowledged that the state would be required to redraw districts again after the next census.
His posture was forward-looking. If the state must redraw in a few years anyway, why not begin now?
That is a strategic argument. Not a reactive one.
Bamberg’s questioning clarified something essential. The proposal was not being driven by population shifts or a judicial mandate. It was being advanced in anticipation of possible legal developments and after consultation with White House staff.
That distinction matters.
Because when a legislature chooses to reopen congressional lines before it is required to do so, timing becomes part of the story.
And timing is rarely accidental.
The Map
Under the current map, the Sixth District heavily favors Democrats. Under Pace’s proposal, it would shift to what demographer John Morgan described as “D plus one,” meaning it would lean Democratic by only about one percentage point instead of by a wide margin.
On paper, that sounds competitive.
Morgan, who has drawn maps in twenty states, made something clear.
Competitive does not mean neutral. It means strategic.
He explained that this proposal would split eleven counties, one more than the current map.
It would split Richland County into three districts instead of two.
It stretches districts across vast distances that are hard to justify as shared communities.
Morgan also acknowledged something Republicans attempted to soften during the hearing: redrawing the map carries political risk.
South Carolina currently sends six Republicans and one Democrat to Congress.
While supporters of H4717 argued the proposal would likely preserve that balance, Morgan confirmed there is no guarantee. If political conditions shift, if voter turnout changes, or if a court intervenes and redraws the lines, the delegation could theoretically move from a 6–1 split to 5 Republicans and 2 Democrats instead.
Mid-decade redistricting does not come with certainty. Once lines are reopened, outcomes are no longer fully controllable.
When the Mask Slipped
When Mr. Brad Capshaw stepped to the podium, the language of policy gave way to something more direct.
A veteran. No demographic charts. No legal citations.
“I ain’t got diddly squat out of Clyburn,” he said.
He said he wanted someone who confessed Jesus Christ. Pro gun. Pro life.
In that moment, the debate shifted.
It was no longer about compactness.
No longer about continuity.
No longer about jurisprudence.
It was about identity.
Dorchester Republican Party Chairman CJ Westfall widened the lens moments later. He spoke of national stakes. He warned about impeachment trials involving President Trump. He invoked the need for boldness and congressional control.
When Chairman Jordan asked whether a seven-to-zero Republican congressional delegation would be a good thing — meaning no Democratic representation from South Carolina in the U.S. House — Westfall responded plainly: “Well, sure.”
The language of “competition” was still present. But the stakes were no longer local.
They were federal.
Control the delegation.
Protect the majority.
Influence the next decade.
Westfall suggested that voters in South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District could decide whether to continue “the same leadership that has kept it as the corridor of shame.”
That line drew Representative Justin Bamberg (D–Bamberg, Colleton, Dorchester & Orangeburg Counties) in.
Because the “Corridor of Shame” is not a partisan slogan. It is the shorthand for a state education funding crisis that produced the Abbeville lawsuit and exposed deep structural inequities along the I-95 corridor.
When Bamberg raised that history, Westfall acknowledged he was not familiar with the Abbeville case.
What followed was not political theater. It was a history lesson.
Bamberg traced the arc from desegregation resistance to segregation academies, from the 1895 Constitution to chronic underfunding of public education.
He reminded the room that economic placement decisions were state decisions.
The state determines incentive structures.
Redrawing a congressional district does not change those facts.
It does not build schools.
It does not fund classrooms.
It does not reverse decades of uneven investment.
It alters political representation.
Westfall, who has lived in Dorchester County for approximately twelve years and is originally from Central Florida, acknowledged that background during questioning.
The critique of the Sixth District was forceful. The historical grounding was thinner.
That tension defined the exchange.
The Machinery and the Memory
Jordan Pace does not stand alone.
He is a member of the Berkeley County Republican Party. The same political apparatus helped flip his State House seat from blue to red after district lines were redrawn.
Without those changes, he had previously been unable to defeat former Representative Krystle Matthews.
Lines matter.
Maps create opportunity.
Now that same county party structure publicly backs H4717.
John McGrath, Chairman of the Berkeley County Republican Party, testified in support of the bill, framing it as “representation and accountability.”
These county chairs are not symbolic figures. They recruit candidates. They mobilize voters. They build the ground game. They are the machinery that turns redistricting into electoral reality.
That machinery has already reshaped state-level power.
Now it seeks to reshape congressional power.
And that is where Berkeley’s history becomes unavoidable.
Berkeley County was founded in 1682 under the Lords Proprietors. Rice wealth there was built through enslaved African labor.
It witnessed Reconstruction violence, including the 1876 Cainhoy conflict. It operated under the 1895 Constitution engineered to disenfranchise Black voters. In the twentieth century, the Santee Cooper project flooded Black communities and cemeteries to create Lake Moultrie.
Berkeley County knows what state power looks like when it redraws lines.
It has lived through versions of it.
Today, Berkeley benefits from industrial placement such as Volvo. Meanwhile, many communities along the I-95 corridor continue to struggle with poverty rates that mirror those in parts of Pace’s own district.
That is not accidental geography.
It is the cumulative effect of policy decisions.
So when county leadership frames redistricting as a simple matter of “competition,” history complicates that claim.
In South Carolina, lines have never merely reflected the population.
They have shaped who votes.
Who governs.
Who receives resources.
Who does not.
The mid-decade redraw of the Sixth District does not happen in a vacuum. It happens in a state where mapmaking has long been intertwined with power consolidation.
Berkeley should know that.
Its history demands it.
Bamberg’s Reminder
Representative Bamberg pushed back hard.
“The state has failed to invest in the corridor of shame.”
BMW did not land in Bamberg. Instead, the plant was built in the district of Republican Representative Sarita Edgerton, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, in Spartanburg.
Volvo did not land in Allendale. It was built in Berkeley County, in Representative Jordan Pace’s own district in Berkeley.
“Corporate corridors were state decisions.”
That intervention changed the frame.
This was not about Congressman Clyburn’s seniority.
It was about a century of resource placement.
The Real Question
Jordan Pace insists this map is racially neutral.
Yet it reduces the Black voting-age population in the Sixth District from roughly 47 percent to the mid-30s, according to testimony presented at the hearing.
It fractures Richland County.
It was discussed with White House staff before being discussed with the people of the district.
And it arrives four years before the constitutionally required census redraw.
Why now?
Because control of Congress is narrow.
Because impeachment is a live word.
Because mid-decade maps are easier to attempt when you already hold power.
This was not dry.
This was a signal.
South Carolina Republicans are not waiting for 2030.
They are moving now.
And in a state with a long memory of who draws lines and who lives inside them, that matters.
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