Georgia gained one seat in the 1990 round of reapportionment. In creating the new district and altering the old districts to achieve population-equal congressional districts, the Democratic state legislature and Democratic governor pursued multiple objectives: protect the Democratic incumbents in the House, maximize the number of Democratic districts, to divide up the constituency of its lone Republican congressman (Newt Gingrich), and gain the Department of Justice's assent as mandated by the preclearance provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Although the state legislature passed and the governor signed various plans, the Department of Justice, under a directive from President George H.W. Bush, rejected them because they failed to maximize minority representation. Eventually the state legislature relented and created a third black district in the Atlanta suburbs.

The “bleaching” of the districts surrounding the black majority districts and a Republican wave in the wake of Clinton's first two years in the White House radically changed the state's congressional delegation. In the 102nd Congress, the last one using the 1980 district lines, Georgia voters sent one liberal African American Democrat, six moderate Democrats, two conservative Democrats, and one even more conservative Republican to the House. In the 107th Congress, the last election using the 1990 census data, Georgia sent two liberal African American Democrats, one moderate African American Democrat, and eight more or less conservative white Republicans to Congress (see panel A of figure 4.1). The Democratic legislature and governor's best-laid plans went seriously awry.