The Candidate of Their Choice

Before it was butchered by the Roberts Court, a key purpose of the Voting Rights Act was to ensure that, where cohesive minority communities exist, they would have a reasonable opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.For Black communities, this often understandably meant electing a Black representative. But not necessarily.For example, the Tennessee congressional district that until recently was anchored around Memphis is a majority-Black district represented by a White man, Steve Cohen. Why does Cohen represent that district? The same reason anyone represents any district: the majority of voters in his district like him, he's earned their trust, so they keep reelecting him. Periodically during his tenure he would draw an African-American challenger, often to much fretting and teeth-gnashing from the national media, and each time he would absolutely flatten them, because again, Steve Cohen was well-liked and trusted by the voters in his district. That he kept winning, and…