The Supreme Court, Texas, and the end of ‘a unilateral surrender’

June 28, 2006

A couple of years ago, [tag]Tom DeLay[/tag] orchestrated a massive re-[tag]redistricting[/tag] scheme in Texas in which state Republican lawmakers, doing DeLay’s bidding, redrew congressional boundaries. The scheme worked and six new [tag]Republicans[/tag] were elected.

Today, the [tag]Supreme Court[/tag] approved nearly the entire thing. Justices agreed that one of the newly-drawn districts, District 23, was illegal because it failed to protect minority voting rights, but as for re-[tag]redistricting[/tag], the high court gave its stamp of approval.

The court ruled 7-2 that state legislators may draw new maps as often as they like — not just once a decade as Texas Democrats claimed. That means Democratic and Republican state lawmakers can push through new maps anytime there is a power shift at a state capital.

The Constitution says states must adjust their congressional district lines every 10 years to account for population shifts. In Texas the boundaries were redrawn twice after the 2000 census, first by a court, then by state lawmakers in a second round promoted by DeLay after Republicans took control. That was acceptable, the justices said.

“We reject the statewide challenge to Texas redistricting as an unconstitutional political gerrymander,” Kennedy wrote.

This very well may turn out to be one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for moments for the Republican Party.

In recent years, [tag]Democrats[/tag] in DC and at the state level, have played it straight and agreed to abide by approved district lines, even if state power control had shifted since the lines were drawn. Republicans, true to form, have played by different rules, and redrawn district boundaries in Texas and [tag]Georgia[/tag] (they also tried in [tag]Colorado[/tag], though the plan was ultimately rejected in court).

Dems were waiting to see what the Supreme Court said about this practice — and now that the justices have approved mid-decade re-redistricting, the gloves may very well come off.

“If the Supreme Court decides that it’s legal, not doing it would constitute a unilateral surrender,” says Howard Wolfson, a former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Democrats see the necessity of fighting fire with fire.”

If so, expect fires to break out all over the place. In states in which there’s a Dem governor and Dem majorities in the state legislature, districts can conceivably be re-drawn to make it much harder on GOP incumbents. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman [tag]Rahm Emanuel[/tag] told Roll Call, “There’s going to be places all over the country where people are going to look at it.”

Besides Illinois, Democrats now enjoy executive and legislative control in seven states: [tag]Maine[/tag], [tag]New Mexico[/tag], [tag]New Jersey[/tag], [tag]North Carolina[/tag], [tag]Louisiana[/tag], [tag]Washington[/tag] and [tag]West Virginia[/tag]. The party is poised for similar dominance — with either very winnable gubernatorial races or a few stubborn state legislative seats standing in the way — in [tag]Maryland[/tag], [tag]Massachusetts[/tag], [tag]Rhode Island[/tag], [tag]New York[/tag], and possibly even [tag]Tennessee[/tag] and [tag]Montana[/tag].

Republicans have really left Dems with no other choice. Dems didn’t want a re-redistricting [tag]war[/tag], but there’s simply no way the party can just stand back and watch Republicans gain seats in “red” states without considering the same tactic in “blue” states.

Remember, Republicans, you started this.

I can only HOPE at this point that this will be exactly that. Although with their luck I am sure it will pay off again like it always seems to.

  • Declaring the Republican Party illegal in California would be the next best thing after outright secession. And after November, Arnie may not be around to save the day

  • Declaring the Republican Party illegal in California would be the next best thing after outright secession.

    I really hope this was sarcasm. Nothing like little flairs of left-wing fascism to turn the stomachs of progressives who still think the founding ideals of the nation are more important than short-term partisan advantage. Talk about becoming what you hate.

  • Illinois typifies a national problem with districts. The cities are overwhelmingly Democratic and Democratic representatives there typically win overwhelmingly or with no opposition. (and my vote rarely matters.) Rural areas tend to be majority Republican and Republicans there often win with small margins. Thus a state that is overewhelmingly Democratic has a state delegation that is almost evenly split.

    There is no constitutional reason to have districts at all. Each seat could be elected by all the voters of the State. That would lead to a delegation that is overwhlmingly Democratic. Or we could have a proportional representation system that would elect some Republicans and some of every significant ethnic or political group that votes largely as a block.

    Here is my choice for what to do in Illinois. There are 19 House seats. We could start from a point in downtown Chicago (arguably the “center” of the State) and draw 19 straight lines to divide the state into 19 districts, each with the same population. A part of Chicago would be a large part of each district. This seems quite objective. The Illinois delegation would probably go from 10-9 Dem to nearly 19-0 Dem.

    In fact, almost the only system that is likely to lead to an evenly split delegation is the current one. It is time to scrap it.

  • Not to go all “concern troll” or anything, but I have no interest in the national Democratic party holding the state districts for ransom in a war against the national Republicans. The districts should make sense. They should reflect geography and population. They should be the business of state reps and state voters.

    I wouldn’t accept living in a logic-twisting district, just on the rationale that it was a response to what Jerkoff – R in Texas did with the Texas districts. And “moderate” voters wouldn’t accept it, either. It’s way too abstract.

    Now, threatening to redistrict, maybe I could see the point of that…

  • Dan, the problem with simple schemes to draw compact districts is precisely the concentration of Democrats in the cities you mention. You’ll end up with some districts that are 70-80% Democratic and a bunch more that are 55% Republican, and Republicans will be overrepresented in the resulting congressional delegation.

  • I hate to see the Democrats sinking to the Republicans’ level, but I suppose now that the Court has opened the door to this there isn’t much choice, other than an act of Congress or a constitutional amendment reinstating the old once per decade rule. I can’t see that happening, as whichever party currently enjoys the benefit of the current rule would be unwilling to give it up.

    Yet another chip away from truly representative government.

  • Having lived in Rhode Island for most of my life, though not now, I can tell you that although RI has a Republican governor, the state Consititution gives him little power. I don’t know the specifics of redistricting as far as Constitutional power is concerned, but being that there are only 2 districts, I doubt it would help much. Plus, our only Republican (Lincoln Chaffee) is barely a Republican, who only wins because his father (John Chaffee) was about as good a senator as they come, even if he was a Republican.

    BTW, I have always been happy that in the 50 state polls Rhode Island almost always ranks as the state that hates Bush the most.

  • You ignore, of course, that the federal court that drew the lines in 2001 stated in its decision that the Texas legislature needed to draw its own lines after the 2002 election. Most folks ignore that detail — along with the fact that the state was voting nearly 60% GOP in elections but receiving less than half the seats in Congress due to the 1990 Dem gerrymander (actually, all the Dem gerrymanders dating back to Reconstruction) upon which the court had based its temporary map in 2001.

  • Tennessee is already gerrymander for Dems. Of 9 representatives, 5 are democrats. This is as good as we are going to get there.

    Montana only has one seat.

    Washington has 9 seats – 7 of which votes for Gore and Kerry. There are 6 dems with Reichert’s seat the odd one out.

    I vote for Illinios. There is a guy named Hastert there. I heard he just bought a vacation home in Wisconsin. We should send him there in 08.

  • I think the Dem approach should be this:

    1) First, IMMEDIATELY gerrymander the hell out of every state we control. No holds barred.

    2) When the Republicans cry foul, use that moment to force them to agree to a reasonably fair solution. WE should be the ones to design a system that can be fair in the long run to everyone. Tell the R’s to take it or leave it.

    But if Dems don’t do #1, the dumbass Republicans won’t agree to a compromise. They’re that stupid.

  • Ain’t going to happen in Washington, we already have a bipartisan Redistricting Commission which does the work. The commission was established in 1983 when voters approved a constitutional amendment.

  • while I really sympathize with Lame Man (#6), if the unprincipled Rethugs take this opening and Dems never do, Rove really will have created a permanent Rethug majority — D’s will never control the House again.

    Racerx may have the best solution: use our present momentum to maximize the value of this awful SCt decision, then having shown how painful this can be, appeal to the Rethugs and the people to make it stop. Who wants to change what district they are in and who represents them every 2 years? What a fiasco.

    Districting is, for the most part, something an impersonal computer can and should do. Feed in all of the demographics and population figures, tell the machine to create disctricts as similar in numerical and geographic size, reflection of the state’s ethnic (and other demographic) compositions, and party break down as possible, following existing city and county lines and forning a shape with the fewest corners as possible. Let the machine spit out the 3 best fit solutions, have a bi-partisanly selected panel of retired judges pick one, and have the legislature and governor approve or disapprove in an up or down, no amendments vote. If the first two get voted down, teh third — which has been kept blind until then – is automatically activated.

    takes all of the games out.

  • I hate to say it, but two wrongs don’t make a right. As a lifelong Californian, I would love to see the weightlifter dumped and a real governor take over. And, if that happens, and I hope it will be so, I would love to see some favorable re-districting and some of these relics from the so-called “Contract on America” spend more time with their families. But there may be a terrible price to pay for pay-back. It is probably better for our republic if we follow some more sane rules. Maybe that lazy congress could pass a law to correct abuse that is fair for both sides. (I like to dream) Or maybe we just need some new form of government that gives the politicians on the state level a great deal more power. If nothing is done, that new form is what we will get.

  • from #15: Districting is, for the most part, something an impersonal computer can and should do.

    Using computers in no way implies impartiality. Computers can’t do jack without data and rules. It very much matters *who* gets to decide which data and rules are used.

  • *shrug*

    I suppose so, and maybe i am just spoiled from living in a (relatively speaking) clean, good government state, but Iowa has used something similar to my description in #15 (without the bi-partisan panel intermediate review) for decades and is widely considered one of the least political states in terms of redistricting issue. Common Cause and LWV have held up Iowa as a shining example.

    The rules i described are pretty basic and easy to check how they are coded; while there may be disputes about census methodology and resulting racial or income undercounts, most people can agree that is the best large-scale data we have to work with.

    We’ve never had any real problems; it surely is better than the way most states do it.

  • Are you all insane? Talking about Democrats “stooping to Republican levels?” How do you think the Democrats controlled the majority of house seats in Texas (19 to 15) in a state that was a good 55% Republican? In 1990, Texas Democrats engaged in the most ridiculous bout of gerrymandering ever. They openly bragged about how they had used computer analysis to suck every single congressional seat out of the state they possibly could. Then they insisted that when it was time to redistrict in 2000, after the state had solidly turned Republican, there was something unethical or illegal about Republicans doing the same thing. Because of Democratic obstruction, a court had to issue a temporary map, which of course the democrats loved because it kept everything the same, and they had the gall to demand it just stay that way for the next decade, despite it never having been intended as more than a short term measure. Republicans didn’t leave the state in 1990 to deny the democrats a quorum, like the Democrats did when it was the Republican’s turn. They didn’t obstruct redistricting simply because the other party was in power. But, of course, when Republicans do the same thing, it’s unconscionable and some example of shamelessness. I don’t remember any Democrats giving a rat’s ass about it in 1990, except to applaud. You liberals are incredible.

  • Hank, gerrymandering has of course been going on since the time of Elbridge Gerry. It’s a bad thing, and I’d like to see every state adopt some nonpartisan redistricting method like Iowa’s, but it’s hardly reasonable to pretend the Texas Democrats invented it in 1990. Also, I want the nonpartisan redistricting to be adopted nationwide, not just by the states whose legislatures are controlled by Democrats. I’m not in favor of unilateral disarmament.

    The Texas Republicans, however, did add a new wrinkle: the idea that you could redistrict whenever you want, even when there hadn’t been a new census to trigger the redistricting. Understandably, Democrats resisted this change to the rules, but now the Supreme Court has embraced it and we find ourselves in the current mess, in which redistricting will take place every census plus every time the legislature changes hands.

  • KCinDC

    I appreciate your civil response, and I don’t think gerrymandering is a good thing. But your key premise is just plain wrong. There WAS a new census. The Democrats simply succeeded in obstructing redistricting right after that census and a temporary court-approved map was put in place until it could be accomplished. A TEMPORARYmap that the Democrats loved because it didn’t change anything (because it was never meant as anything but a temporary fix). It kept the Democrats hold on Texas congressional seats in place based upon their egregious 1990 gerrymandering, one that the Republicans did not obstruct. Then, when the Republican-controlled state house revisited the issue in the next session as had always been intended, the Democrats went spastic and eventually fled the state to deny the Republicans a quorum, insisting that they should get to keep their 1990 gerrymandered boondoggle of a map in place for the rest of the decade where they controlled the majority of the congressional seats despite more than a 55%-45% Republican voter majority in the state. That was absolutely shameful and ridiciulous. The only “new wrinkle” was that the Democrats thought they should be allowed to obstruct redistricting and only have to be successful once and by doing so get to keep their own gerrymandering in place for another decade. THAT was the real “power grab.”

    The problem I have is that you only hear the outrage over gerrymandering when it’s Republicans doing it. I don’t like it either, but to somehow act like it was the Republicans doing something underhanded here is ludicrous. The Democrats had the nerve to believe they were entitled to maintain a majority of congressional seats in a solidly Republican state just by obstructing redistricting. It was pathetic to watch.

    • Comments are closed.