Fresh off a failed GOP effort to break up his South Carolina congressional district, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn had a simple message for the party he represents: Play to your base.
“Democrats seem to feel that they can convert voters. I don’t think conversion therapy ought to be placed on voters,” Clyburn said in an extended interview with MS NOW’s Eugene Daniels, days after the South Carolina Senate rejected a new congressional map that would have eliminated the state’s only majority Black district, which Clyburn has represented for 17 terms.
“What you got to do is energize voters, and we don’t, and motivate them, and I don’t think we spend enough time motivating and energizing people,” Clyburn said.
Clyburn, the state’s lone congressional Democrat, has built a reputation as a party power broker since he was first elected to his seat in 1992, making history as the first Black congressman to represent South Carolina in almost 100 years. A champion for civil rights, Clyburn’s endorsement of former President Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election cycle encouraged Black Democrats to rally around him, propelling Biden to his party’s nomination and ultimately the White House.
The party he has long represented, Clyburn said, has lost sight of its voter base. In a midterm election year in w Democrats are seeking to notch wins in newly gerrymandered districts across the country, focusing on Democratic voters has never been more important, he said.
“I think we ought not get sucked into playing another person’s game,” Clyburn said. “Politics is all about building relationships. If you are going to be successful in it, you can’t play the other person’s game.”
Republicans, Clyburn said, “play to their base much more effectively than we play to ours.”
Clyburn warned his party not to compete with Republicans’ messaging, but to lean into their own.
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The Trump-backed congressional map, which would have handed Republicans a clean sweep of all seven South Carolina districts, failed when a dozen Republican senators broke ranks and blocked it. Clyburn urged Democrats to worry less about whether the map will come back around for reconsideration, telling them to separate politics from “adverse racial stuff.”
“Look at all the tests that have been there over the years for redistricting, and show why it is a 45% African American district is much less egregious than a 75% white district, and that’s what you’ve got here,” Clyburn said. “And I think that if we show that the politics are one thing and the adverse racial stuff is another, we might be able to survive the test.”
Though Clyburn avoided the erasure of his district, minority districts across the country have been eliminated as part of the GOP-led redistricting race. Black lawmakers on Capitol Hill, led by Clyburn, have accused Republicans of stifling the voices of Black voters and undermining civil rights protections.
That concern intensified after the Supreme Court in April clawed back key Voting Rights Act provisions. The landmark decision effectively opened the door for racial gerrymandering across America and teed up the GOP to gain at least three to six seats through redistricting, most of which are held by Black Democrats in the southern state
Clyburn called the midcycle redistricting “a comprehensive approach to creating Jim Crow 2.0” during a news conference with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in May.
“I don’t think you’ll stop the map from coming back, and I don’t know that we should. I think we need to take the Supreme Court decision, make sure that we participate in this process,” Clyburn told Daniels.
Watch Clyburn’s full interview with Daniels on MSNOW’s “The Weekend” on Saturday, May 30, from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.