This was a thought experiment in response to those in the previous diary who wanted a district from Eastern Mass eliminated. I stated that it would make map look super gerrymandered, because Western Mass really can only support 2 districts. You can see it here, as Olver’s district goes all the way east to Marlborough and the town of Harvard, and McGovern’s district goes east and south more heavily than before.
Olver (blue) takes in Amherst, the Berkshires, and goes east to get all the northern suburbs of Worcester and Fithburg.
Neal (green) loses Northampton (or else Olver would have to take even more territory in the east). Stays a Springfield centric district, and takes in the Southern Worcester Suburbs. Worcester gets split three ways because of this map.
Tsongas (red) gets Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill, Newburyport and goes further south than before towards Lexington.
Tierney (teal) keeps a district based around Salem, Revere, Lynn and Peabody. Takes in Charlestown too I believe, everything North of the city of Boston.
Markey (yellow) gets Medford, Malden, Somerville, Cambridge, Allston, Brighton, Waltham, Watertown and Natick.
Lynch (grey) gets most of the city of Boston proper, as well as Milton and Brockton. He loses most of his suburban areas such as Stoughton and Norwood. District is 50 % white. He would be vulnerable to a primary challenge.
Frank (green) gets Brookline, Needham, Newton, Dedham and then goes through Taunton to New Bedford.
McGovern (purple) district takes in Worcester proper, goes east to Framingham then through Holliston, Attleboro to Fall River.
Keating (light blue) takes in Quincy and goes down to Barnstable County. Also has Wareham, Plymouth and Weymouth.
I think I definately prefer the first map, this almost looks like a mini-bacon mander. I hope this proves that Olver has to be the one that goes, from a perspective of that is where the population just says a seat has to disappear. This way, instead of having two solidly W Mass seats, you have Neal as the only person truly in the W Mass area. McGovern and Olver both have huge chunks of population outside of W/C Mass, esp McGovern.
All the maps that people will post will be almost identical and right now it all depends on what congressman (if any) decide to retire either for good (in John Olver’s case) or to run for higher office (in Capuano or Lynch’s case). I think that the possibility of a Lynch-free House Delecgation is overlooked and for a good reason. I would hate to see him be the nominee for Senate but if no other strong candidate shows he may be inclined to run. It would be interesting to see what a Lynch-free map would look like. That would divide Boston up into slices or just force the districts of Keating, Capuano, Frank and maybe Markey inward. At this point I feel like no matter what in a Presidential Year… Mass will hold all of the house seats no matter what the maps look like. I cant imagine the maps being redrawn terribly due to the fact the Dems hold the Trifecta with supermajoritys in the house and senate.
This accomplishes every Dem map drawing goal I can think of. It’s not pretty from a communities of interest perspective but neither is the current map.
Of course there are sticking points along the way.
The Republicans are going to sue to try to force a minority majority district since there’s pretty much no way to make one without also making a district with a decent chance of going Republican. I can’t picture a Democratic DOJ taking that position since there’s not much precedent for forcing a state to make a district like MA-08 where no one non-white group has even 25% of the population.