Month: April 2009

Here is Episode 7 in my redistricting series. Episode 7 was meant to be Arizona & New York, but with NY-20 undecided and likely to be for a time, I thought it was time to press ahead with other states I’ve drawn. So here we have it: the Land of Lincoln and the founding state of the Confederacy, wrapped together at last in one diary!

Previously covered:

Diary 1: Massachusetts and Texas

Diary 2: Michigan and Nevada

Diary 3: Iowa and Ohio

Diary 4: Georgia and New Jersey

Diary 5: Florida and Louisiana

Diary 6: Pennsylvania and Utah

Jump below to read what I was doing at 3:00 AM last night!

Illinois

First, the basics about Illinois: the Democrats control the redistricting trifecta and, I believe, still will after 2010. The state should lose a seat for a total House delegation of 18; though the current slowdown in migration may just save the state its 19th spot, most number-crunchers believe Illinois will just miss out on holding steady.

With Democrats in control of the process, I got to draw my first bona fide hypothetical Democratic gerrymander for 2011. The first key was to ensure that the lost seat was a Republican one, and since this decade, it looks like Chicago will suffer the loss rather than downstate, I chose the ever-frustrating Mark Kirk of Highland Park. His district is cracked in this map between the new seats of Melissa Bean (D-Barrington) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston), both of which would decidedly favor Democratic incumbents. Kirk’s home would be in Schakowsky’s district, FWIW.

Knowing the dangers of overreaching or “getting too greedy” in gerrymandering, I don’t believe Democrats will or should go after every last GOP seat in metro Chicago, particularly with the need to protect Bean, Bill Foster (D-Geneva), and Debbie Halvorson (D-Crete). So I pushed Foster and Halvorson into Cook County and made their districts more compact/urban/suburban and less sprawling. While Obama’s popularity in his home state makes it very easy to put GOP incumbents in “Obama districts”, that kind of thinking all too easily leads to spreading Dem votes thinly and often backfires.

From this map, Democrats can expect a 12-6 majority, with an outside shot at 13-5. Which district did I soften up? Actually, Aaron Schock’s downstate…making his district more competitive was fairly easy compared to the tortuous work that would be required to dislodge Peter Roskam while protecting Foster, Halvorson, and Bean.

Voilà:

By the way, don’t pay too much attention to my boundaries in the urban Chicago districts; the granularity at this level is absurd, and I drew these boundaries crudely, since I’m using Paint and a calculator rather than any real redistricting technology.

District 1 – Bobby Rush (D-Chicago) — VRA black-majority, South Side.

District 2 – Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Chicago) — VRA black-majority, South Side.

District 3 – Dan Lipinski (D-Western Springs) — entirely within Cook County, working- and middle-class close-in Chicago suburbs.

District 4 – Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago) — VRA Hispanic-majority, takes in the heavily Latino areas of Chicago, Cicero, etc.

District 5 – Vacant — the North Side seat should be rock-solid for Quigley or any other Democrat.

District 6 – Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton) — entirely within DuPage County, Obama-supporting but traditionally Republican. Believe me, as one of Tammy Duckworth’s most active volunteers in 2006, I would have loved to draw Roskam a district he can’t win, but couldn’t find a way to do so without endangering Foster and Halvorson, and in partisan gerrymanders, safety comes first.

District 7 – Danny Davis (D-Chicago) — VRA black-majority seat: downtown Chicago, Oak Park, Maywood, etc.

District 8 – Melissa Bean (D-Barrington) — dominated by its 64% portion of Lake County, but takes in 5% of Cook to help Bean a bit.

District 9 – Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston) vs. Mark Kirk (R-Highland Park) — the remaining 36% of Lake (including Kirk’s home base) and 9% of Cook (which dominates population-wise). With Schakowsky’s North Shore base intact and stronger numerically than Kirk’s turf in southern Lake County, I’d feel good about our chances in a match-up.

District 10 – Debbie Halvorson (D-Crete) — all of Will and a tiny, heavily black South Side portion of Cook is meant to protect Halvorson by allowing her to shed all that GOP-leaning exurban country to the west.

District 11 – Jerry Costello (D-Belleville) — the most Democratic downstate district, centered on metropolitan St. Louis and other traditionally Democratic areas like Carbondale. I caused a little mischief by putting John Shimkus’ home in this district, though I think he’d do well to move to the 18th since Costello would be a solid fit here.

District 12 – Judy Biggert (R-Hinsdale) — this monster reminds me of Lamar Smith’s 1990s district in Texas, designed to grab every possible Republican voter for the sake of Democratic incumbents in the area. This comprises the southern 23% of DuPage, 6% of Kane, 62% of Kankakee, and exurban counties DeKalb, Grundy, Kendall, LaSalle, and Lee, dramatically reshaping the district to remove GOP areas that would otherwise be represented by Foster and Halvorson. In a way, having one sprawling seat like this makes more sense than the previous incarnation that had Foster and Halvorson writhing all over the place in positively serpentine fashion.

District 13 – Bill Foster (D-Geneva) — 94% of Kane (Foster’s base) and 5% of Cook (to push his district bluer) = the likelihood of holding this seat when Foster retires.

District 14 – Timothy Johnson (R-Urbana) — other than Johnson’s native Champaign County, this could be the state’s most Republican district; if not, it’s nearly as much so as Shimkus’. Why make Johnson so overwhelmingly safe? Well, I was interested in weakening Schock a bit (or a lot), and it seemed logical to pack Republicans into Johnson’s district due to pure geography. Also, if I was going to help solidify a GOP seat, why not reward Johnson’s relative sanity compared to people like Schock?

District 15 – Donald Manzullo (R-Egan) — due to growth up there, Manzullo’s district becomes more compact and probably remains Obama-supporting, though I suspect it tilts quite Republican in most years.

District 16 – Phil Hare (D-Rock Island) — I’ve always disliked the current 17th and its embarrassingly gerrymandered lines, so sought to clean it up without hurting Hare. By losing its southern “Springfield leg”, it took in some normally GOP-leaning counties in the northwest, though the Obama numbers are probably better than before due to Obama’s superb performance in even exurban and rural northern Illinois. This is now something of a north-south Mississippi River seat, but should still favor a Moline-area Democrat.

District 17 – Aaron Schock (R-Peoria) — To hurt one GOP incumbent without rendering the must-protect Chicago-area Democrats, Schock was an obvious choice: he’s young, new, and rather obnoxious. This district still leans Republican, but is a heck of a lot more moderate, anchored by the Peoria area, Springfield, and Bloomington-Normal, with a small sliver of Champaign County. This district would have voted for Obama, and Schock would be vulnerable to a strong challenge from a conservative Democrat. Without hurting Hare and Costello, that’s the best I could do.

District 18 – John Shimkus (R-Collinsville) would run here — As I said, his home would be represented by Costello, but he’d choose to run here, a very strong GOP seat with only traces of moderation (Springfield and Decatur, mostly).

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this map. I think I handled the Chicago area fairly well (and after all, I did live there for four years), not overextending Democratic strength by getting greedy about Roskam or Biggert. I’m decently happy with my downstate reconfiguration, but am curious if Hare would still be safe enough. Obviously no Democratic gerrymander would result in a much-weakened seat for Hare, so perhaps I should have preserved Springfield and Decatur for him (then again, northwest Illinois needs to go somewhere!).

Anyway, an average year would result in a 12-6 split under this map, and a good year could see 13-5 should Schock fall. What about a bad year? Do you think Hare, Foster, Bean, and Halvorson would all be fine in a difficult year? Input needed!

South Carolina

And now for something completely different: this Deep Southern state experienced the highest domestic migration rate in the nation between 2007 and 2008. Monopolized by Republicans, I sought to draw a GOP gerrymander here that would protect the four current Republican seats and add a new one, while weakening John Spratt (D-York) if at all possible.

Knowing how Republicans love to pack minority votes, I drew Majority Whip Jim Clyburn the most heavily African-American district imaginable. It looks like a crab, actually, and yes, it’s exactly the kind of racial gerrymander Republicans would draw (interesting that we saw so many Democratic maps in the South that aimed for maximizing black representation thrown out by the courts as “racial gerrymanders” in the 1990s, but recent Republican racial packing in states like Florida and Texas has gone unnoticed).

One nit: with the state’s black population around 30%, the Justice Department might want a map that creates two VRA black-majority seats (two seats out of seven = 29%). That would involve diluting Clyburn’s seat a little and trading some turf with Spratt, rendering Spratt’s district a lot safer.

But I presumed only one VRA seat, so with that in mind:

District 1 – Henry Brown (R-Hanahan) — More compact and less coastal than Brown’s current district, it loses Charleston to aid him and prevent a future close call like he faced in 2008 from Linda Ketner.

District 2 – Joe Wilson (R-Springdale) — Heavily Republican, takes the white areas around Columbia from Clyburn, acting as a sort of Alabama 4th to Clyburn’s Alabama 7th.

District 3 – Gresham Barrett (R-Westminster) — also heavily Republican, with the cleanest lines I could possibly draw.

District 4 – Bob Inglis (R-Travelers Rest) — due to growth in the Greenville/Spartanburg area, this district is getting positively small!

District 5 – John Spratt (D-York) — while carving out GOP turf for Brown, Inglis, and Barrett, I tried my best to keep Spratt’s seat potentially GOP-friendly should he retire. But if the Justice Department demands two VRA seats, this could turn out very differently, with Spratt getting a solid Dem district for the first time in recent memory.

District 6 – Jim Clyburn (D-Columbia) — dominated by Columbia, taking every possible black-majority county. Truly a lawsuit-worthy gerrymander, but Republicans seem to get away with those (look at how the courts have reacted to Corrine Brown’s FL-03 versus their decisions in the 1990s about Cynthia McKinney’s GA-11, Cleo Fields’ LA-04, and Mel Watt’s NC-12).

The new District 7 – Designed for a Charleston/Beaufort County Republican due to growth along the coast. This seat would be GOP-friendly but trending Dem long-term and might need to be reconfigured in 2021 to stave off Democratic gains.

Overall, Republicans could hope for a 6-1 majority when Spratt retires, but in the mean time would have to settle for 5-2. When Spratt does go, the coast may be blue enough for a Democrat to win either District 1 or District 7. And if the state creates a new VRA seat, Republicans will make it Spratt’s to avoid ceding more territory. I do wonder how that map would look…

EDIT: It was brought to my attention that the current 5th is as heavily Democratic as any VRA district, and is essentially wasting votes. So I adjusted the lines a bit based on someone’s suggestion to create two skinny DuPage-Cook mix districts; the 5th would be Quigley land, and the 6th would be a more Democratic seat for Roskam. Thus this map could easily produce 13-5, not counting Schock.

Someone else suggested softening up Lipinski, but since that district is already somewhat socially conservative, and doesn’t link easily with Roskam’s, I chose to leave it alone. The 5th is needlessly packed in the current map, while the 3rd is significantly less solid. Here’s the adjusted map:

Which one do you folks like better? In this version, Roskam’s district has about 415K from DuPage and 301K from Cook, while Quigley’s district has precisely reversed numbers.

From the Daily News:

As of yesterday evening, the board had canvassed the 10 counties in the 20th and discovered that 10,055 absentee ballots had been issued by seven counties and 5,906 had been returned.

That number could go up, as three counties haven’t provided their numbers. Absentee ballots must be received by April 7, but the ballots sent in by overseas/federal/military voters (recall that there was a fight over those) can arrive by April 13 and still be counted.

Of the 10,055 absentees, the Repubicans have a roughly 600-ballot edge, according to the board. But of the 5,906 received to date, 798 more came from Republicans.

These numbers might be good news for Scott Murphy. Accord to the NYS BoE (PDF, p. 9), enrollment in the 20th is 42R-26D-24I. If those percentages had held among the 5,906 absentee ballots returned so far, there would have been 2,468 GOP ballots vs. 1,547 Dem ballots – a margin of 921. But we know that the GOP only has a 798-ballot edge.

Still, as the quoted material makes plain, there’s a lot of time for more absentees to come in, and thus plenty of room for these numbers to wiggle. Hang on to your hats.

(Hat-tip: Shinigami)

610 of 610 Precincts Reporting

Candidate	Party	Votes	Percent
Scott Murphy	(D)	77,344	50.02%
Jim Tedisco	(R)	77,279	49.98%

RESULTS: Associated Press | PostStar.com | Albany Times-Union

10:46PM: I’d just like to remind folks that there were 5907 absentee ballots in the kitty as of March 30th, and more will follow. This race is far from being decided.

10:40PM (David): Actually, our sources were misinformed – it was folks at the AP taking a ganja break. Saratoga County has posted all 188 precincts here – Tedisco picked up 16 votes, leaving a final margin of 65 in Murphy’s favor. Overtime!

10:33PM: SSP sources at the NYSBoE inform us that the counting of the ballots for the lone outstanding precinct will not be finalized until Saratoga County officials finish their ganja break.

10:24PM: One piddly precinct left, and Murph leads by 81 votes. Lordy.

10:18PM: With three fonkin’ precincts outstanding in Saratoga, Murphy leads by 250 votes. It’s entirely possible that Murphy could “win” tonight, but lose once the 6000 absentee votes are tallied up in the coming days.

10:14PM (David): Holy smokes, Batman! Scott Murphy is now just 30 votes behind.

10:12PM: Tedisco is up by about 100 votes now, with outstanding precincts in Columbia (Murph-friendly) and Saratoga (‘Disco-inclined).

9:57PM: Time for a fresh new thread. Tedisco now leads by about 1100 votes with 505 precincts in.

436 of 610 Precincts Reporting

Candidate	Party	Votes	Percent
Scott Murphy	(D)	53,250	50%
Jim Tedisco	(R)	54,201	50%

RESULTS: Associated Press | PostStar.com | Albany Times-Union

9:59PM: Let’s move this discussion over here.

9:51PM (David): Sorry about the site slowness – I guess we’re popular tonight. Our back-of-the-envelope shows that (like the results so far), things are shaping up to be super-tight. Given the number of absentee ballots outstanding, this one might not get decided tonight.

9:38PM: 312 precincts in, and Tedisco! pulls back ahead by 800 votes.

9:35PM: 280 precincts in, and Murphy pulls ahead by just over 200 votes.

9:33PM: 206 precincts in, and Tedisco has grown his lead to about 2500 votes.

9:28PM: 168 precincts in, and Tedisco leads by 1300 votes. Starting to narrow ever so slightly in Saratoga.

9:23PM: 52-48 Tedisco! with 90 precincts in.

9:20PM: With just 50 precincts reporting, Tedisco holds a narrow 51-49 lead (about 350 votes), but leads big in the early-reporting Saratoga precincts.

9:03PM Eastern: Polls are now closed in New York. It’s time to rock ‘n’ roll.

I favor Democrats working to field the best possible candidate in every Congressional district and to mount the strongest possible campaign in each.  Hand-in-glove with that effort, Democrats also need to think ahead to and visualize success next election day and in future elections and to plan backwards in time from those successes to assure that all that needs to happen to assure those successes does happen.

So I am thinking about less than a handful of Congressional districts where Democrats should make exceptional efforts to take out Republican incumbents in 2010, both because a challenger could imaginably win and because the districts consist of territory that is important to a Democratic future.  These are the Iowa Fourth, the Nebraska Second, and the Ohio Twelfth.  These districts are respectively represented by Republicans Tom Latham of Ames, Lee Terry of Omaha, and Pat Tiberi of Columbus.  Barack Obama carried all three districts, and each district played a constructive role in his Electoral College margin.

And Latham, Terry, and Tiberi need to go.  

Today I looked at how interest groups evaluated the three, and (while, because of my haste in checking, I acknowledge certain limitations vis a vis timeliness as well as some potential for mistake) I believe I have identified several broad themes that tie the three men to each other.

Abortion.

On abortion Latham, Terry, and Tiberi support Planned Parenthood (http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/) zero percent of the time and the National Right to Life Committee (http://www.nrlc.org/) one hundred percent of the time.

Czars of Financial Institutions.

On financial institutions Latham, Terry, and Tiberi have been one hundred percent for Financial Executives International (http://www.financialexecutives.org/eweb/startpage.aspx?site=_fei).

Energy and the Environment.

Latham, Terry, and Tiberi have at best very spotty records on energy and the environment.  Those records are perhaps best illustrated by zero percent scores on energy legislation supported by the Campaign for America’s Future (http://www.ourfuture.org/) and for supporting continuing dependence on fossil fuels as evidenced by 100 percent scores from the American Coalition for Ethanol (http://www.ethanol.org/).

Families and Children.

On family and children’s issues Latham, Terry, and Tiberi scored 100 percent with the American Family Association (http://www.afa.net/), but zero percent with American Family Voices (http://www.americanfamilyvoices.org/).

Guns.

On gun issues Latham, Terry, and Tiberi are rated “A” by the National Rifle Association (http://www.nrapvf.org/), but all get zeros from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (http://www.csgv.org/site/c.pmL5JnO7KzE/b.3509205/k.BDBC/Home.htm).

Health Care.

On health care Latham, Terry, and Tiberi get zeros from organizations like the American Public Health Association (http://www.apha.org/), the AIDS Action Council (http://www.aidsaction.org/), the American Nurses Association (http://www.nursingworld.org/), and the National Rural Health Association (http://www.ruralhealthweb.org/).

Justice.

On justice and the entire question of what kind of country we want to be, Latham, Terry, and Tiberi have scored zero with the ACLU (http://www.aclu.org/) and the Human Rights Campaign (http://www.hrc.org/), although I acknowledge that Latham recently moved up and delivered (for him) a very good year for peoples’ rights with eighteen percent from the ACLU and five percent from the Human Rights Campaign.

People Who Work for a Living.

As to labor, Latham, Terry, and Tiberi have received scores of one hundred percent from the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (http://www.bipac.org/page.asp?g=bipac_new&content=startpage) and of zero percent from organizations like the Communications Workers of America (http://www.cwa-union.org/), the United Food and Commercial Workers (http://www.ufcw.org/), and Workplace Fairness (http://www.workplacefairness.org/).  

Us v. Them.

On matters of us v. them Latham, Terry, and Tiberi scored zero with Citizens for Tax Justice (http://www.ctj.org/).

Conclusion.

I nominate the Iowa Fourth, the Nebraska Second, and the Ohio Twelfth for very early consideration by bloggers and internet activists thinking about 2010.

Be sure to join us after polls close at 9pm Eastern time tonight as we liveblog the results of the NY-20 special election featuring Dem Scott Murphy vs. Republican Jim Tedisco. In case you missed it, earlier today, Crisitunity posted a table of “county benchmarks” to indicate how well Murphy would need to do in each jurisdiction within the 20th in order to pull off a win. Also, if you still want to get in a prediction, pop into this thread and tell us what your crystal ball says.

Results will be available from the AP here. If you know of any other good local sites for results, please let us know in comments.

Awesome news:

In a potentially decisive ruling, a panel of three judges today ordered up to 400 new absentee ballots opened and counted, far fewer than Republican Norm Coleman had sought in his effort to overcome a lead held by DFLer Al Franken.

The ballots appear to include many that Franken had identified as wrongly rejected as well as ballots that Coleman wanted opened. About half come from Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis counties, places Franken won by significant margins. …

Coleman had asked the panel early in the trial to consider counting 4,800 rejected absentee ballots. But rulings by the judges effectively narrowed the field to less than 3,000, and Coleman ended up asking the panel to count 1,369 and consider roughly another 400 rejected by him and Franken during the recount.

Norm Coleman’s hopeless zombie attempts to overturn the results of this election are dealt a mortal blow – though that won’t, apparently, stop him from appealing.

Memo to Harry Reid: Seat Al Franken now. Love, Swing State.