Otto responds to congressional map redraw and new primary date

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Yesterday the North Carolina Senate passed a redrawn congressional district map, and the House agreed to move the congressional primary from March 15 to June 7. Today the Senate will vote on the date change, while the House will decide on the new congressional map.

Among the impacts of the changes is which candidates would live in the districts where they are running for office.

“It’s rather confusing,” said Mark Otto, a Johnston County Republican running against incumbent Rep. David Rouzer in the 7th District. “I’m not sure if the election is going to take place. I’m not sure what district I’m going to be in.”

The new map has moved Otto out of the 7th District by just a few miles, even though Otto said he only lives about 15 minutes from Rouzer.

“An opponent is going to say, ‘He doesn’t even live in the district,'” Otto said. “And people won’t feel necessarily like they’re going to get representation from someone who doesn’t live in their district. Now that might not actually be true, but that might be the perception that people have. Whether it helps (Rouzer), I don’t know. Does it hurt me? Certainly. I mean all of a sudden I’m not even in the district that I filed to run in.”

There is a possibility that primaries would be held on both March 15 and June 7, but in that case, the congressional results from March would not count.

“From what I understand there’s going to be a whole new slate of candidates that are going to be able to run,”Otto said. “They’re just going to reopen the filing period and kind of start from scratch.”

Otto said he just doesn’t understand why things are playing out this way.

“I understand they have to resolve a problem that was created when they first did the district maps and the judges now struck that down, so they have to fix it. But it seems to me like the fix was almost intended to cause chaos, almost like a poke in the eye to the judges. Like, ‘OK. If you don’t like our maps, then we’re going to make life difficult for you now by making this whole process chaotic,'” Otto said.

We reached out to Rouzer as well, but he has not yet returned our calls. Yesterday a spokeswoman said his campaign would not comment until the courts were done with the state’s redistricting issues.