Mar. 7, 2005
Mess in Texas Prompts N.C. Look at Redistricting
By J. Barlow Herget
RALEIGH - If you follow the money under discussion in a trial in Texas, you may end up in House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s office in Washington.
What Delay wrought in Texas is about to be repeated in Georgia. And it was tried and defeated in Colorado.
The trial in Texas is a civil suit against Delay, who has won the nickname “The Hammer” for good reason. Democrats in his home state are suing Delay over the use of corporate money in Texas legislative races. The money helped Republicans gain majorities in both houses of the legislature. (Three of Delay’s associates have been indicted in a related criminal investigation.)
After the GOP victory, what Delay and his allies in the Texas legislature achieved was an unprecedented, second congressional redistricting plan since the 2000 Census. Generally, state legislatures redistrict once a decade.
If Delay’s goal was to send more Texas Republicans to Congress, it worked. Republicans gained five new seats in Texas. The lesson was not lost on other state legislatures.
Colorado’s Republican-controlled legislature tried the same gambit, but was turned back by the state Supreme Court ruling that Colorado could redistrict only once a decade.
Georgia is attempting now to follow Texas’ lead after Republican gains in the 2004 election gave the GOP a majority in both houses for the first time in memory.
Charles Gay, an editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution believes the new map will be adopted. He notes that the Republican plan does make the state’s 13 districts more cohesive, but others predict that Georgia’s current 7-6 split of Republicans to Democrats will go to 9-4 in 2006.
Democrats are being encouraged to do the same in Illinois, New Mexico and Louisiana– states where they control both legislative houses and the governor’s seat, according to Jay Bookman, deputy editorial page editor of the Journal-Constitution.
Currently, there are 12 states where Republicans control the legislatures and governorship. Eight states are in Democratic hands.
In North Carolina Democrats prevail, but the state constitution suggests that such “re-redistricting”, at least for state legislative districts, is unlawful.
Election law attorney John Wallace of Raleigh points to Article II, Section 3 that states in part:
“When established, the Senate Districts and the apportionment of Senators shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census.” The same restriction applies to House districts.
Congressional districts, however, are federal offices and are not addressed.
North Carolina’s new Democratic Party Chair Jerry Meek says he has heard no voices asking for new congressional districts. He says he doesn’t like the idea anyway.
“Voters need to identify as a member of a particular congressional district for long enough period of time to form a relationship with their congressman,” he says. Changing districts every time one party gains the upper hand in the state legislature is, says Meek, “unhealthy for the democratic process.”
Noble sentiments, but why not put it in writing– and into law? Times change and so do political promises and the officials who make them. If there is consensus that the redistricting process must be improved, then why not act now, asks Chris Heagarty, executive director of the N.C. Center for Voter Education
“North Carolina is a competitive two-party state. Preventing an abuse before it happens, when both parties share power, makes sense,” says Heagarty. “If one side starts to dominate, then forget fairness– or reform.”
There are other states, according to Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures, that limit such power play redistricting.
In these times of bitter partisanship, the redistricting process in Iowa is refreshingly non-political; it should be used as an example in revising redistricting processes across the country. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed taking responsibility for congressional (and state legislative) redistricting away from California's state legislature and giving it to a panel of retired judges.
If North Carolina wanted to fix this process, we would have several models to choose from.
Why are non-competitive congressional elections unhealthy? Perhaps, some say, because there is no public accountability over government if the incumbents can’t lose. In the 2004 congressional elections, only 13 seats in the 435-member House were won by candidates of the opposite party. And only FOUR incumbents were ousted.
North Carolina had no change in its 13-member delegation’s party composition: seven Republicans, six Democrats. Thanks to new redistricting technology, critics say it is the candidates now who are choosing their voters, not the other way around.
It’s partly because of this trend and North Carolina’s long legal battles over state and congressional districts that Sen. Ham Horton (R-Winston-Salem), and Sen. Ellie Kinnaird (D-Chapel Hill), again will introduce a bill to establish an independent commission to handle redistricting.
Horton’s fellow Republican Tom Delay may have given him new arguments for adopting this proposal.
Barlow Herget is a former Raleigh city councilman and writes the Follow the Money column for the N.C. Center for Voter Education.
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