As you may know if you haven’t been under a rock, Washington State will be receiving ten districts next year, up from nine this past decade. this is my effort to read the minds of the 5 men responsible for drawing those districts.
In no particular order:
District 2 (green) All four northern counties along with most of Snohomish (Rick Larsen might not quite live here, if so, minor adjustments would resolve this)
District 8 (blue-gray) I could have sworn more people lived in eastern King and Pierce. Because they don’t, this district now extends all the way to the Pacific Ocean, not my best work. Lewis County should let Reichert sleep better on election nights.
District 3 (purple) Basically a dumbbell anchored by Vancouver and Yakima. I’d have liked to add a few more rural Central Washington counties so Rep Beutler could claim she represented Hispanics other than herself but this district is only 11%.
District 6 (pink) If you know the colors of Dave’s App, you’ll noticed that I screwed up. Apparently, though he’s long represented it, Rep Dicks does not live in Tacoma. He’ll be fine here though. I had the opposite problem to Dist. 8, more people live in the Olympic than I was aware of so I had to split Grays Harbor County, nonetheless, with all of Kitsap County and the Olympia area added, Rep Dicks should be quite content.
And now to some districts I’m not ashamed of.
District 1 (blue) North suburbs. This district loses its salient across the sound and gets beautifully compact and solidly Democratic. Inslee doesn’t live here but he’s running for governor. If he doesn’t, hey he already moved once, he can do it again.
District 7 (grey) Seattle, Vashon, Mercer. Nuff said. (I think this is limited to dead girl, live boy would still get McDermott re-elected).
District 9 (teal) South and west suburbs. Contained in King County. Mr. Smith stays in Washington, DC that is.
District 10 (dark greenish something) Tacoma apparently never had its own district. That’s changed. I’m sure locals will tell me which up-and-coming local pols will want it.
District 4 The southern portion of Eastern WA. Tri-Cities, rural Yakima County, some other counties that are no doubt very important to their residents. The Doc stays in the US House.
District 5 Spokane… and some other stuff (eastern Washingtonians will begin sending me hate mail) CMR is all set.
In summary, all the incumbents should be comfortable and the new district goes to Pierce County, the second largest in the state and to the Democrats. 6-4 is actually a little generous to the GOP but hey, Dems could have taken two more if they really wanted to. e.g. beating Reichert once in 3 tries and holding WA-3.