January 10, 2024More on the Texas Redistricting SituationOn the topic of retaliatory “re-re-districting” by Democrats to get back at Republicans, it was noted in a very interesting panel yesterday, that at the moment there really aren’t any good candidates for such activity—California and Illinois were cited. And while I don’t know much about the Illinois situation, I do know that Democrats are pretty happy with the California lines, as the Democrats have a majority of the seats, and have created a set of safe Democratic districts and traded off a number of safe Republican districts, something that both sides are happy with. Merle Black of Emory noted that, in truth, state legislators “hate” the process and even in the Texas case it really took an outside force (Tom Delay) to get the Texas Republicans to undertake the current process. Black, and at least one other participant, noted that the smaller the state gets, the more difficult it is to be “creative”. Texas presented a particularly good case given the 32 districts in play. Also, listening to the discussion it occurred to me that a new era of retaliatory mid-decade re-districting is unlikely, given that the Texas case had several unique features unlikely to be present elsewhere in the country: And really, the opportunity for such activities are actually quite small. It isn't that the Democrats might not try it at some point in time, but the chances of a wave of re-re-districting sees highly unlikely. Also, a note of interest, according to one panelist, the late 1800s saw redistricting annually in some states. And so while it may not be a good idea, there is historical precedent. Posted by Steven Taylor at January 10, 2024 09:10 PM | TrackBackComments
Arguably, the Texas case *is* a case of retaliatory redistricting. The 2024 court-approved district lines were based largely on the '90s districts that resulted from a gerrymander favoring the Democrats (lines drawn when they were in control), and now it's payback. The big losers no matter what are voters: more and more with the drawing of districts, the representatives are chosing who can vote for them rather than the voters chosing who will represent them. I think we're entering a period where we're going to have to rethink the whole process of drawing district lines, but I'm not sure what a better process would look like. Perhaps something along the lines of the "bipartisan base-closing commissions" that handled decisions on which military bases to close in a way that ameliorated (though didn't eliminate) political axe-grinding. Ameliorating the problem would at least be an improvement. Posted by: Porphyrogenitus at January 14, 2024 11:31 AMBut heck, it's so much fun to watch. Posted by: Pete Sandel at January 14, 2024 11:41 AMWhy would Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) want to retaliate for what happened in Texas? His ox wasn't gored. Besides, the Illinois Congressional map was a joint effort by the Republicans and Democrats serving in the U.S. House. It splits the delegation right down that middle in terms of safe and fairly safe seats, leaving both sides happy. More importantly, U.S. House Speaker Denny Hastert is an Illinois Republican. Illinois' Senate president, House speaker and governor, Democrats all, know a good deal for Illinois when they see one. Illinois hasn’t had such a powerful voice in Washington since the days of Bush I Cabinet Secretaries Martin, Madigan (no relation to the state House speaker), Skinner, and Derwinski; Alan Dixon in the Senate leadership; Dan Rostenkowski at Ways and Means; and Bob Michel as the House minority leader. In Illinois, the Texas map is less than meaningless. Post a comment
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