Coutdown to Session - Redistricting
Decennial redistricting will be the first item on the agenda when the legislature meets in January.
At Issue
Every ten years following the national census, the Kentucky legislature must redraw districts for the state house of Representatives, the state Senate and the boundaries for Kentucky's delegation to the US House of Representatives. In 2001, the leadership of the Kentucky House drew the boundaries for the House, Senate leadership drew the boundaries for the Senate, and the houses worked in consultation with the federal delegation to create new boundaries for the six US House districts.
What must be resolved
This year, we can still expect the House and Senate to draw districts for themselves, but there is disagreement over the map for the federal delegation. House Speaker Greg Stumbo is trying hard to protect US Rep. Ben Chandler, a fellow Democrat who was reelected by the slimmest of margins in 2010. Ironically, Stumbo would make Northern Kentucky's 4th district, open since the retirement announcement of US Rep. Geoff Davis, more assuredly Republican. His map, which can bee seen in this piece from CN2's Ryan Alessi, eliminates the "tail" on Kentucky's 1st district, but adds ridiculous geographic tails to the 4th and 6th.
The chairman of the Senate State Government Committee, Damon Thayer, has proposed a map with minimal changes (also seen in the Alessi piece.)
Stumbo is digging in his heels to gerrymander a district for Chandler. In a recent analysis in the Courier-Journal, he practically resolves to throw it to the courts.
If the two chambers can't come to an agreement, Stumbo said the House could simply refuse to approve any plan and throw the issue into the courts.
"I'm not suggesting we should do it. I think we should enter into a compromise and make some sense out of all of that and move on," Stumbo said. "(But) if the Republicans and Sen. Thayer think they're going to gain some kind of advantage over, say, ... Rep. Chandler, and they're going to dictate the plan, I can tell them that's not going to happen."
Stumbo said one solution by the courts could be to order all six of the state's congressmen to run statewide, as they did in 1932 when nine Democrats swept the state's congressional delegation.
Our former Attorney General is wrong on that last point; US courts have ruled since 1932 that such statewide "districts" violate the "one person, one vote" principle.
He is also foolish to refuse to compromise and resolve to throw it to the courts. While keeping the current districts for another year is superior to his gerrymandered maps, it is certainly the sentiment of a spoil-sport. It's also a losing strategy for Stumbo. After all, the independent "redistricting expert" quoted in the article suggested that the consistency of Thayer's map is favored by the courts.
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who has expertise in redistricting, said that although only 25 states have completed redistricting this year, 111 lawsuits have been filed. Seventy of those suits are still active.
He said both Republicans and Democrats have been responsible for such suits -- "it's whichever parties find themselves aggrieved," he said -- but that Democrats have been more aggressive recently because the GOP controls redistricting for three times as many seats.
In cases in which the legislature can't agree on a redistricting plan, the courts are likely to draw the lines themselves.
"The courts deeply dislike having to draw district lines," Levitt said. "So the overwhelming trend is to change the districts as little as possible to make them constitutional."
Timing
Currently, the deadline to file for office is 4:00 PM Eastern, January 31, 2012. The objective would be to resolve the district boundaries well prior to the deadline so that aspirants will know the district they will run in prior to filing.
Fearless prediction
The Kentucky House, Senate and Judicial redistricting maps will pass in the first two weeks of session. The US House map will be some revision of Thayer's map and pass by the end of January.
