State lawmakers have approved a replacement map for North Carolina's congressional districts that will significantly shift Triad politics.
Democratic strongholds in the Triad cities are currently all represented by Republicans in Congress. But that could change.
Republicans created maps that put two of their own congressmen in new districts that favor Democrats. One of them is Mark Walker of the 6th District, which runs across the northeastern part of Guilford and into most of the surrounding counties.
The new 6th District is drastically different. It contains all of Guilford and the southeastern part of Forsyth County together. That would put all of Greensboro and most of High Point's voters as well as Winston-Salem's urban core in the same district.
Walker — the former chairman of the Republican Study Committee — said late Friday in a release that while “there is little assurance the districts passed” will hold up in court, he suggested he could still win in the reconfigured district, as he did after the 2016 remap.
The 5th District, currently represented by Virginia Foxx, would still include the High Country, but would be narrower and would run all the way to the South Carolina border.
And the 13th, where Ted Budd is the incumbent, would run south of Forsyth and Guilford and up into Caswell and Person counties along the Virginia border.