The North Carolina General Assembly passed new House, Senate and congressional maps last week, but if the lawsuits — some existing, some perhaps forthcoming — can’t stop them, Western North Carolina’s voters will be on the receiving end of something old, something new, something borrowed and nothing blue. 

After more than a dozen public hearings and substantial study by the North Carolina General Assembly, the decennial redistricting process in North Carolina is more or less complete. 

Republican voters in seven western counties have again decided that a candidate from Franklin, in Macon County, should be their voice in the N.C. Senate.

When five-term N.C. Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, announced his surprise retirement at the Macon County GOP headquarters last fall, it wasn’t much of a surprise that he’d asked two-term House Rep. Kevin Corbin, a Republican also of Franklin, to succeed him in the Senate.