Welcome to this week’s edition of REDMAP Rundown, a synopsis of redistricting news brought to you by the RSLC’s REDistricting MAjority Project (REDMAP). This weekly email gives you the latest on what those in the Beltway, and across the country, are saying about the impending reapportionment and redistricting process.
In this week’s REDMAP Rundown: Cook sobers up the Dems, Legislatures at play, Minnesota takeover “pretty amazing,” Amendment 7 is 86’d, Arizona’s goals, New York in the balance, PA is thankful and Texas’ grown-up table.
Ranking guru, Charlie Cook wants you to “imagine sitting in Washington’s Verizon Center, listening blissfully to Carole King and James Taylor, thanks to a fast-thinking friend who managed to score four floor seats. For 50-somethings, it’s a nice place to be. Then, as the concert is winding down, four pages of poll tables of a just-released survey pop up in your BlackBerry. They are jaw-dropping numbers, not inconsistent with what you had been thinking — if anything more a confirmation of it. But the dramatic nature of the numbers brings the real world of politics crashing through what had been a most mellow evening.” The numbers were from the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showing Republicans with a 2-point lead on the generic congressional ballot. “That drop-off should be enough to sober Democrats up … the recent numbers confirm that trends first spotted late last summer have fully developed into at least a Category 3 or 4 hurricane. … Given how many House seats were newly won by Democrats in 2008 in GOP districts, and given that this election is leading into an all-important redistricting year, this reversal of fortune couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Democrats.”
Lou Jacobson takes it a step further, examining the upcoming legislative elections for Governing Magazine, writing that the elections — “the last before the start of a new once-every-decade redistricting process — are unique for two reasons. According to this author’s estimates, more chambers are in play this year than in any cycle since at least 2002. Even more strikingly, the Democrats have vastly more at risk than the Republicans do. ‘This is going to be an extremely challenging year for Democrats for a variety of reasons,’ says Tim Storey, who analyzes elections for the National Conference of State Legislatures. ‘History is not on their side. Since 1900, the party in the White House loses seats in the legislature in every midterm except for 1934 and 2002. That’s a 2-25 losing streak for the party in the White House — a tough trend to break. Add to that the fact that Democrats are riding high right now at over 55 percent of all seats, and it shapes up to be possibly the worst election for Democrats since 1994.’”
Noting Jacobson’s report, MinnPost.com’s Eric Black writes, “It would be pretty amazing, and further testimony to the deep problems Democrats are having at all levels of politics, if they lost control of either body in Minnesota, considering that they start out with massive majorities in both houses … The Repubs would need a net 21 pickups out of 134 races to gain control. And Governing says that’s not far-fetched.”
In the Florida battle over multiple redistricting ballot amendments, “A Leon County circuit judge today struck from the ballot Amendment 7, the Legislature’s redistricting amendment aimed at undermining the Fair Districts proposals to create standards in drawing legislative and congressional lines. … The Fair Districts amendments say legislative and congressional districts can’t be drawn to benefit an incumbent or political party or to deny access to minorities, and that districts must be contiguous and, where possible, compact and drawn along existing municipal or geographic boundaries. A separate court hearing is scheduled this afternoon in Tallahassee on Amendments 5 and 6 — more legal wrangling to get those thrown off the ballot.”
“A new approach to redrawing the map of Arizona’s political districts [which was introduced after the 2000 census and moved the map-drawing task from the Legislature and governor to a five-member commission] after each census has failed to meet a primary goal of making legislative elections more competitive, an analysis by The Arizona Republic indicates. That lack of competitiveness between Republicans and Democrats and between incumbents and challengers is likely to persist over the next decade after the legislative map again is redrawn following the 2010 census, redistricting experts say.”
The FrumForum’s John Vecchione blogs, “Albany is entirely Democratic-controlled and is loathed by the electorate. New York is experiencing record deficits and population drain, all under unified Democratic control. The New York Senate hangs in the balance in a year when redistricting will take place. Retaking the Senate could prevent the worst kind of gerrymandering.”
Pennsylvania Republicans “should thank Theresa Kane,” reports the Times Tribune. “In the May 18 primary election, Ms. Kane earned 345 write-in votes, enough to get on the Republican ballot for the 115th House District seat held since 1984 by Democratic state Rep. Ed Staback of Archbald. In the process, the 53-year-old Olyphant real estate agent helped her party achieve something it had not in a long time. For the first time since 1978, Republican candidates are on the November ballot for every state House and Senate seat in both Lackawanna and Luzerne counties.” Even Democrat Sid Michaels Kavulich recognizes the gravity of the political situation. “‘I would think they (Republicans) would go after any seat that’s open right now because the (Democratic) majority is so razor-thin in the House,’ Mr. Kavulich said.”
“There are times when it pays to have a seat at the grownups’ table – such as when lawmakers begin redrawing the state into state legislative and congressional districts. The Texas Panhandle has just landed a major seat at that table with the appointment this week of state Sen. Kel Seliger as chairman of a select committee on redistricting. The appointment comes from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the Senate’s presiding officer. Texas is likely to gain at least three congressional seats once the next census is completed. Seliger understands the task ahead of him. It is to do what’s right by the state, but also what’s right by the region that sends him to the Legislature.”
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