Month: April 2011

After tweaking this district all evening, I am stumped.  Are there any obvious batch of Democrats I am missing?  I want to save southern Montgomery and Macoupin Counties for bolstering the 12th.  I suppose I could always go into Fulton County, but then I would have to replace those Democrats with other voters for my new 17th.  Coles County with Mattoon and Charleston might be another possibility, but if you are going mainly by Kerry 2004 results (which I am – the 2008 Obama results are just too rosy everywhere in the state although not as bad in the central and southern part of the state as in the Chicago metro area), Kerry lost that county quite handily in 2004.  Either way you look at it, because both Springfield and Bloomington-Normal in a neutral year (like 2004) are lean-GOP cities, even with the powerhouses of Urbana-Champaign, Decatur, and the lean-Democratic cities of Peoria and Dansville, you still end up no better than 51.41% Kerry (at least at my valiant attempt at it).

Any thoughts of how I should try to bolster this district to 52-53% Kerry.  That is my goal for creating 3 downstate lean-Democratic seats.  I got Jerry Costello’s district up to 53-46 simply by axing out Williamson, Union, Pulaski, and Alexander and adding in the town of Edwardsville in Madison County and bits of southern Macoupin and Montgomeryt counties.  Likewise it is easy to make the 17th into a 53-47 Kerry district by going into Rockford.

This district for what it’s worth, voted 59-40 for Obama in 2008 but only 51-48 for Kerry 4 years prior.  I suspect the reason has largely to do with turnout issues among minorities and college students.  We won’t have those worries in 2012 but I worry about the remaining 4 election cycles.

I would still advocate drawing this map, even if it is not possible to go higher than 51-48.  Other than Dick Durbin (who represented Springfield and Decatur when he was in the House), these cities as far as I know have never been a) brought together; or b) represented by a Democrat.  Instead Illinois suffers from decades’ worth of GOP gerrymanders with the result that these cities are always split up.

Still, if Democrats get a bit skittish, I would not be entirely surprised if they sought to bolster the 17th a bit more as well as the 12th at the expense of a new district.

I welcome your thoughts.

A special redistricting-only afternoon edition of the digest:

• Alaska: Alaska’s redistricting board released two plans for remapping the state legislature, which you can see here.

• Arkansas: It’s official: Gov. Mike Beebe signed Arkansas’s new congressional maps into law last Thursday. Note that Arkansas is not subject to DoJ pre-clearance under the Voting Rights Act. And while citizen map-makers have shown it’s possible to draw a majority-minority district in the state, I think a suing to force the creation of such a seat would be a very difficult challenge. So I think these maps are what we’ll get.

• Colorado: Diarist larimercodem takes a detailed look at the new redistricting plans submitted by Democrats and Republicans in Colorado. There are half a dozen plans from each side, but all six from each party are pretty similar, so the diarist examines two representative plans. You can find images of all the maps here.

• Iowa: Gov. Terry Branstad said on Friday that he’ll sign Iowa’s new maps (passed by both houses of the state lege) into law. Any other decision would have been quite the shocker, though it’s not clear on exactly when he’ll make it official. Also of interest, the Des Moines Register takes a look at the legislative shuffle, where Republicans seemed to mostly get the shaft in terms of what their new districts look like (i.e., more GOPers have to face blue districts than vice versa).

• Indiana: A state Senate committee approved new congressional and Senate maps, while a House committee approved the same congressional map as well as a House map.

• Maryland: Rep. Steny Hoyer confirms that his buddies in the Maryland legislature are looking to take out freshman GOPer Andy Harris. I feel like these guys could save a lot of money on consultants just by looking at all the MD maps that people on SSP have drawn over the last year! Anyhow, the same article also mentions as an aside that Republican Roscoe Bartlett could be targeted, but it’s just newspaper speculation-there are unfortunately no quotes. It would be a real shame if Maryland Dems didn’t at least think about going for an 8-0 map.

• Missouri: It’s definitely been weird to see all these redistricting battles erupt between upper and lower houses of various state legislatures, despite both chambers being controlled by the same party. We saw this in GOP-held Louisiana, we saw it in Dem-controlled Arkansas, and now we’re seeing it in Missouri, where the lege is run entirely by Republicans. The state House and Senate are working on very similar congressional maps but apparently can’t reach agreement, with the Senate refusing to consider the House’s map and, in response, the House taking an adjournment. Republicans are eager to finish work soon, because Dem Gov. Jay Nixon may veto their work, and they want a chance to over-ride it before the current session ends on May 13th.

In any event, here’s a cool link you’ll enjoy: The Columbia Missourian has an interactive map which lets you scroll back in time all the way to 1845 to see how the state’s districts looked after each round of redistricting.

• Virginia: I’m really not sure what the next step is for Dems here. Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, as you know, cannily vetoed the legislature’s plan for remapping both the House and the Senate, decrying the supposedly outrageous Senate gerrymander which would have protected Dem incumbents. The House map was no better when it came to Republicans, but Dems in that chamber stupidly gave the GOP cover by voting for that map.

In any event, the General Assembly has returned to work, but Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, a Dem, says that his body will simply adopt the same plan again and dare McDonnell to veto it a second time. Of course, that would require House Republicans to pass the Senate plan again, which they may be unwilling to do. (For their part, the House GOP will also reconvene and plans to tweak their own map.) If no agreement can be reached, McDonnell risks forcing the courts to draw a new set of maps-something he may well desire, since it would probably give Republicans a better chance of recapturing the Senate. Further delays could also possibly cause issues with DoJ pre-clearance and potentially lead to two sets of elections: One this year with the old maps, and a new round next year with new maps.

• Victims: Aaron Blake has a roundup of what he calls the “most likely redistricting victims.” Pretty much all of these names will be familiar to regular readers, and of course, who the hell knows what will happen in California or Florida, but it’s worth a look.

It seemed more a question of when, rather than if, one of the deep bench of Democrats in OR-01 would step forward to launch a primary against the badly damaged David Wu. The answer is: today… and the “who” may be the one of the most high-profile elected officials from the district, state Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian.

Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian is expected at 10 a.m. Monday to step into the Democratic primary against Wu in Oregon’s 1st Congressional District.  Wu issued his own press release early Monday morning announcing he would later this month hold his first open town hall meetings since he ran into a buzzsaw of controversy regarding his personal problems.

Avakian’s new website can be seen here. The battle-within-the-battle at this stage in the game will be for fundraising; for Avakian, the challenge will be to consolidate enough early support that he’s the only top-tier challenger, as a split non-Wu vote would probably let Wu slip through the primary (a la the many escapes of Indiana’s Dan Burton). For Wu, it’s retaining the sense of continued viability; to that end, he just announced a pretty viable $219K raised for the first quarter. While contributions from K Street and other Beltway pros seem to have dwindled, he’s still getting continued strong support from Asian-American donors.

SurveyUSA for the Louisville Courier-Journal & WHAS11 (4/8-13, likely voters, no trendlines):

David Williams (R): 49

Phil Moffet (R): 14

Bobbie Holsclaw (R): 12

Undecided: 25

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Steve Beshear (D-inc): 51

David Williams (R): 39

Undecided: 10

Steve Beshear (D-inc): 54

Phil Moffet (R): 34

Undecided: 13

Steve Beshear (D-inc): 53

Bobbie Holsclaw (R): 34

Undecided: 13

(MoE: ±2.5%)

The Republican primary is just a month away – May 17th – and it’s hard to imagine state Senate President David Williams losing. But despite Kentucky’s dark red turn of late, the general election numbers show that incumbency and candidate quality really do matter. SUSA paints the most optimistic picture for Steve Beshear so far, but his 12-point lead is in line with what we’ve seen previously (PPP +9, Braun +10).

While I’d expect this race to tighten as we approach election day, it’s also worth noting that Williams went on the air with his first TV ad a couple of weeks ago, before this poll went into the field. I’m guessing the buy was fairly small and probably had a limited impact on his numbers, but the fact that he’s still in the 30s isn’t a good sign for Republicans. You never want to get too comfortable in a race like this, but Beshear is looking pretty good.

Senate:

• AZ-Sen: Board of Regents member Fred Du Val, who I don’t think we’d discussed before, said he won’t seek the Democratic nomination to replace Jon Kyl. The article also mentions another possible Dem name that I hadn’t previously seen, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke.

• FL-Sen: This article makes George LeMieux’s candidacy appear exactly as lame as you’d expect. Not only is he lamely courting teabaggers, but a recent “Tax Day” rally drew “less than 100.” Sounds like a lot less.

• MA-Sen: Apologies for the paywalled-link-not something I’d ordinarily do, but this story isn’t available elsewhere. Anyhow, bigwigs constantly talking about him to the media has just got to be frustrating for Newton Mayor Setti Warren. First it was Gov. Deval Patrick, blabbing to the press that he was sure Warren was going to run. (Warren had to publicly back away from Patrick’s remarks.) Now, it’s the opposite: Rep. Barney Frank for some reason thought it would be a good idea to tell the National Journal: “I think it’s a mistake for him to run, I’ve told him that.” Well, if Frank’s told Warren this, then why the fuck does he also have to tell the NJ and turn it into a public spectacle? And it’s not just one off-hand remark – Frank made multiple statements talking down Warren’s chances. Sheesh, just let Warren do what he wants to do. Jeez.

• ME-Sen: Dem House Minority Leader Emily Cain says she won’t challenge Olympia Snowe next year. (Cain, just 30 years old, can certainly bide her time.) The same piece mentions another possible Democratic name, businessman Donato Tramuto, who may also be interested in a 2014 gubernatorial bid.

• MO-Sen: As Eli Yokley of PoliticMo observes, Todd Akin’s visit with a bunch of teabaggers in Joplin, Missouri took him three hundred miles outside of his congressional district, as sure a sign as any that he’s interested in taking on Sen. Claire McCaskill. Akin says he’ll decide “in the near future.” Interestingly, at the end of this article, he also whined about Democrats “beating up” Republicans over wanting to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it. That kvetching means our attacks are already working-and when you have to start explaining yourself in full-length paragraphs (as Akin tries to do), you’re on the defensive and flailing.

• NM-Sen: Auditor Hector Balderas said on Friday that he’ll decide whether to seek the Dem nod to replace the retiring Jeff Bingaman “within the next two weeks.”

• TX-Sen: It appears that Democrats may have landed an interesting recruit in this race: Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top military commander in Iraq. Sanchez said he wouldn’t “confirm or deny” the reports, but former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, a Dem, decided to crack out of turn, saying he spoke with Sanchez and that it sounded “like he’s close to being a candidate.” One black mark: Sanchez was in command of US forces during the Abu Ghraib scandal, and he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram it was “pretty fair” to say the event ended his military career (though of course neither he nor any high-ranking officers were ever held responsible).

In other TX-Sen news, another one of Ron Paul’s offspring, Fort Worth physician Robert Paul, says he has “thought about running” for Senate… but that’s pretty much all he’s said.

Gubernatorial:

• NH-Gov: Mark Connolly is an interesting figure in New Hampshire politics: He’s the former director of the state’s Bureau of Securities Regulation, until he resigned last year to publicly blow the whistle on the state’s mishandling of an investigation into a ponzi scheme run by an entity called Financial Resource Management. (You may recall that this scandal also tainted Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who had been NH AG at the time, but not enough to derail her Senate bid.) In any event, Connolly says he thinks Gov. John Lynch should seek a fifth-term and he’d support him if he does-but if Lynch declined to run, Connolly “would consider” doing so himself. (Note that Connolly also briefly considered a Senate run himself last cycle, but was wise enough to stand aside.)

• WA-Gov: I’m not really understanding Rob McKenna’s path to victory. He’s spent most of his career trying to convince people he’s a “moderate,” non-insane Republican, but then he signed on to the multi-state suit by mostly red-state Republican AGs to try to have the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional. He’s since continued in that surprising vein: He just attended a teabagger “Tax Day” rally and seems to think he needs to court the wingnuts in order to be successful. Is he worried about a primary? Or is he concerned he can’t win without teabaggers pushing for him at full throttle? Either way, it seems like he’s screwing himself.

House:

• FL-22: Kinda interesting: Former Gov. Charlie Crist just gave $1000 to Democrat “no not that” Patrick Murphy’s campaign to oust Allen West. (They share a consultant in common.) Really, I can’t believe Crist just didn’t switch parties when he had the chance.

• OR-01: Carla Axtman, writing at the you-should-bookmark-`em-if-you-haven’t-yet Blue Oregon, goes as far down into the weeds as it’s possible to go without spontaneously commencing photosynthesis. In a look at the possible Dem field shaping up to primary Rep. David Wu, she mentions a couple of candidates we hadn’t previously seen named before: state Rep. Brad Witt and Clatsop County Commissioner Dirk Rohne, a recent R-to-D switcher.

Other Races:

• NYC-Mayor: Kill me now: Dick Grasso, the d-bag ex-director of the New York Stock Exchange, says that if Eliot Spitzer runs for mayor, so will he. I just pray Spitzer isn’t stupid enough to actually run, but if anything, this challenge from Grasso probably has Eliot’s blood flowing and makes him more likely to do it. God.

Grab Bag:

• WATN?: Alan Hevesi, who had once served as NYC Comptroller and later comptroller for the whole state, was sentenced to one to four years in prison, after pleading guilty last fall to one count of official misconduct. Hevesi took bribes from financial firms (politely called “pay-to-play”) in exchange for steering the state to invest its considerable pension funds with those firms. What a piece of shit. Anyhow, he could be out of jail in less than a year.

Another ex-pol who has very much landed on his feet is former PA Gov. Ed Rendell. Of course, you’d expect nothing less from Fast Eddie, and if you really are curious as to what he’s up to, you’re going to have to click the link, because it’s way more than I can summarize.

This is my first foray into the redistricting game, so I decided to use my adoptive home state of Wisconsin. I tried to create the most Democratic map possible while maintaining reasonably compact districts and for the most part respecting communities of interest. The result was a map that should go 5-3 democratic in all but the very worst of years.

Madison / Milwaukee Close-Up:

Detailed analysis of the districts below the fold

1st (Blue, Ryan): Okay, so I know the smartass way to nuke Paul Ryan is to draw Janesville into Tammy’s district and give the new first district a huge chuck of Milwaukee proper so he can’t move, but I felt that that didn’t really respect communities of interest, so this is the next best option. What I did was get rid of Waukesha and the annoying parts of Racine, and gave him Whitewater, the rest of Rock County, Green, some of the less annoying (although still probably mildly Republican) parts of Jefferson, and southern Dane county. With a strong Dem candidate, this district should boot Paul Ryan, and continue electing that Democrat for the foreseeable future.

2nd (Green, Baldwin): To some extent, Tammy’s district got cannibalized to make some of the other districts more democratic. I had her eat half of Jefferson County, all of Dodge, Half of Fond du Lac County, and even gave her corners of Waukesha and Washington. I took some steps to avoid weakening her district too much, though. She still has all of Madison proper, over half of her votes are still in Dane, and I gave her Oshkosh in addition to some of the more heavily Republican stuff.

3rd (Purple, Kind): Ron Kind’s district is perhaps a smidgin more Republican, but if so, not by much, and he probably still would have beaten Kapanke last year in it. It drops Eau Claire and Dunn Counties, but picks up Columbia and a corner of Dane from Tammy and Adams and most of Marquette from Petri. All of that is light blue turf except for Marquette County, which doesn’t have a terribly huge population.

4th (Red, Duffy): Duffy will have an extremely hard time hanging on in this district. I left him with the already Democratic parts of his district (Sevens Point and the Superior stuff) while throwing in the heavily democratic Eau Claire and Dunn and hollowing out a lot of the reddish rural stuff that he had. Any competent democrat should be able to win this district.

5th (Yellow, Moore): Not much to see here. Milwaukee is a huge Democratic vote sink, but there’s not much I can do about that if I want to respect compactness and communities of interest.

6th (Teal, Sennsenbrenner): Basically, Sennsenbrenner’s district moves south a bit to eat up the parts of Ryan’s district I wanted to get rid of. Still solidly Republican.

7th (Grey, Petri): This was the most frustrating district for me. I struggled a lot with the decision to give Petri Appleton, but if I hadn’t, I would have had to give him a lot of Rural turf up north, which would have been a bit snake-like for the sort of map I was trying to draw. I also probably could have made this district a bit cleaner (and forced Petri to move) by giving Tammy Fond du Lac city and some more of Washington or Waukesha instead of Oshkosh, but I thought that might be pushing it. Despite the addition of Appleton, probably still pretty safely republican.

8th (Slate Blue, Ribble): Alas, while Ribble would be forced to move, getting rid of Appleton makes this district far more safe for Ribble, although a Democrat could probably still win in a really good year. Not much else to say here, besides that Ribble also ate a lot of Duffy’s reddish rural turf.

Public Policy Polling (PDF) (4/7-10, Pennsylvania voters, 1/3-5 in parens):

Bob Casey, Jr. (D-inc): 51 (51)

Charlie Dent (R): 31 (31)

Undecided: 18 (18)

Bob Casey, Jr. (D-inc): 50 (49)

Jim Gerlach (R): 32 (33)

Undecided: 19 (18)

Bob Casey, Jr. (D-inc): 49 (48)

Rick Santorum (R): 37 (41)

Undecided: 13 (10)

Bob Casey, Jr. (D-inc): 51 (50)

Marc Scaringi (R): 28 (27)

Undecided: 21 (22)

Bob Casey, Jr. (D-inc): 51

Jake Corman (R): 35

Undecided: 14

Bob Casey, Jr. (D-inc): 51

Laureen Cummings (R): 32

Undecided: 17

Bob Casey, Jr. (D-inc): 50

Kim Ward (R): 29

Undecided: 21

(MoE: ±4.0%)

What to say here? As you can see, Casey’s numbers are little changed from January, when PPP first tested the race. He’s at almost exactly 50% against everyone he faces, and no one does better than 37%. But that figure is misleadingly high: If the universally-known Rick Santorum is only at 37 right now, how can he expect to go much higher? His favorable rating (you’ll need to check PPP’s presidential poll, since they tested him there) is just 37-47, which is pretty ugly. In any event, Santorum seems pretty committed to a pointless presidential run; I’d be surprised to see him go for a rematch.

Every other potential candidate is entirely unknown, with anywhere from 75 to 84% of respondents expressing no opinion on this batch of Republicans (and among those who do know this crowd, all have negative ratings). Of course, that means someone like state Sen. Jake Corman has proverbial “room to grow,” but with Casey already at 50, he’d need to pull away people who are already willing to support the incumbent.

So my money is on Casey, despite his relatively soft job approval numbers. I think Tom Jensen has it right:

On one hand, he has weak approval numbers-only 39% of voters approve of the job he’s doing to 35% who disapprove-you can certainly get defeated with those kinds of numbers. On the other hand he leads seven potential opponents for next year that we tested against him by anywhere from 12 to 23 points-you’ll pretty much never get defeated with those kinds of numbers.

My sense is that Casey is not terribly vulnerable. Here’s the thing about his low approval numbers-Democrats aren’t in love with him. Just 55% approve of him and 22% disapprove. Generally you’ll see a Senator closer to the 70% or 80% mark within his own party so his lack of approval from the party base is what’s keeping Casey’s approval number under 40%. But even though they don’t necessarily like Casey, Democrats are still perfectly willing to vote for him-he gets 78-80% of the Democratic vote in head to head match ups against the seven Republicans we tested. And his 19% approval number with Republicans, although it may not sound like much, is actually a pretty decent amount of crossover support in this highly polarized political climate.

The GOP has had a hard time recruiting any big names, and these numbers help explain why. The biggest note of caution, I think, is the very Dem lean of this sample: 51 D, 38 R, 11 I. It was 44-37-18 in 2008. It’s hard to imagine Democrats having such a big advantage on election day next year. Nonetheless, even if you reallocated those “extra” Ds to the independent column, Casey would still out ahead, since he holds sizeable leads with indies against every candidate (except, oddly, Santorum). This is a race where you’d simply rather be Team Blue than Team Red.

Yesterday afternoon the 12 maps were released by the Joint Committee on Redistricting.  The committee has also been tagged as the “Kumbaya Committee” for it’s attempt to bring bipartisanshippyness to the most partisan issue possible.

Of the 12 maps, 6 were brought forward by the Democrats on the Committee and 6 from the Republicans.  All 6 Democratic maps followed a similar pattern of keeping whole cities intact as well as entire rural counties and were appropriately named “city integrity”.  The Republican maps all stayed close to the current map, probably realizing that’s the best deal they could get at this point.  

Several of the changes from both maps incorporated the wishes of different constituencies in the hearings the committee held all over the state.  The biggest wish “Keep us separate from Boulder.”  Other major wishes included putting Grand and Chaffee counties in the 3rd (or at least not in their current 2nd and 5th CDs) and keeping the city and county of Denver whole (which is a shame).  

I’ve only included 1 map from each side as the other 5 on both sides are similar to them and change only a county or city here and there.  

City Integrity 1

First, the Democrats map, known as “City Integrity 1.”  This is my personal favorite of all the Democratic maps and it’s also the “cleanest map” according to Sen. Rollie Heath (D-Boulder), co-chair of the committee.  All of the “City Integrity” maps strived to follow transportation corridors as well as striving for competitiveness.  The 1st, 2nd and 7th CDs are consistent throughout all the Democratic maps.

1st CD:  The 1st CD probably has the fewest changes.  It contains all of Denver County, Englewood, Cherry Hills Village, and Sheridan as before.  It adds Littleton, Greenwood Village, Bowmar, Cherry Creek Reservoir and some surrounding unincorporated areas of Arapahoe County.  The additions to the district are more Republican than the district as a whole, but the changes should be minimal, just making the district somewhat whiter than before.

2nd CD: The 2nd CD has some radical changes, going from it’s base in Boulder County (minus Longmont and Erie) west to take in all the north-west corner of the state.  The biggest new addition is Mesa County, one of the most Republican counties in the state and now the 2nd largest county in the district.  Chaffee, Lake and Park were taken from the 5th (as requested by the residents of Lake and Chaffee.  The district now includes all the major ski towns, Aspen, the oil and gas counties and the foothills towns in western Jefferson County.  If nothing else the district is now much more diverse in it’s interests and much more Republican.  The party break down is now 31 D, 31 R and 26 U, much more similar to the 7th CD when it was drawn a decade ago to be the most competitive.  We should be thankful Polis has more money than God and can probably hold this district in a non-2010 year.

3rd CD: The biggest disappointment of this map (especially to House Minority Leader Sal Pace of Pueblo) is the new 3rd CD.  It does a great job of keeping together the communities of interest in southern Colorado (despite what Republicans say, the south has more in common than the western slope and eastern plains as a whole).  It still contains all of Pueblo, but also adds Fremont, the rest of Otero, all the rural plains counties south of I-70 and the non-Colorado Springs portions of El Paso county, as well Parker and rural parts of Douglas county.  Overall this makes for a much more Republican district, probably out of reach for Democrats, but if you had to cut one loose, this was probably the district to do it with as several of the blue areas are shifting more and more R every year (San Luis Valley, Pueblo, Las Animas, Huerfano).  It still keeps Rep. Tipton’s home in Montrose so he can’t be too disappointed.

4th CD: The 4th CD needed to lose population and it did it with the most Republican parts of the district, now ending at Arapahoe/Washington/Yuma rather than taking in all the eastern plains down to the New Mexico Border.  It also loses the western half of Larimer County to the 2nd.  Most of the population lives in eastern Larimer so not much change other than shedding many republican precincts.  It then adds Erie and the eastern portions of Adams and Arapahoe counties, which are republican but not nearly as much as the counties given up.  These changes probably produce a district Obama and McCain were even in, if not a slight Obama win.  It becomes more winnable for Democrats, but still very competitive.  Sen. President Brandon Shaffer (D-Longmont) has to be pleased with this map as it keeps him in the district for a potential run.  Rep. Cory Gardner would not be happy at all with this district, but definitely still won it in it’s new configuration and the district keeps his home in Yuma.

5th CD:  Officially the southern I-25 corridor district, the 5th probably becomes even more Republican, adding most of Douglas, while shedding the swingier Chaffee and the blue Lake County.  Maintaining the home of Rep. Lamborn and also maintaing the districts center of gravity in Colorado Springs, the district will be to his liking (except for the absence of Fort Carson, which is now in the 3rd).  This is the beginning of the screwing-over of Rep. Coffman by taking out his best area in Douglas.  

6th CD:  The best change this map makes is the changing of the 6th from a suburban-Republican stronghold to a swingy eastern-suburban district.  While it keeps Coffman’s home in Aurora, he’s basically screwed in this district.  The extent to which this district takes in parts of Douglas and/or Weld changes between maps, but the heart of the district is the Arapahoe suburbs not in the 1st and most of the Adams Co. suburbs, including all the most hispanic areas.  Obama certainly won this district and in any normal year it would elect a solid Dem candidate.  This is probably the biggest reason this map will never be acceptable to the Republican House (while they have no love for Coffman I can’t see them being this willing to give up a safe seat).

7th CD: Another great change is in the 7th CD.  Keeping it’s base in Jefferson County, it sheds most of it’s Adams Co. areas and all of Aurora.  It then adds all of Arvada, Westminster, Northglenn and Broomfield (formerly in the 2nd).  It also takes in the Ken Caryl and unincorporated Jeffco (sometimes referred to as part of Littleton).  The district probably doesn’t change much in it’s tilt (maybe a very slight shift to the right), but it does remove the possibility of a Ryan Frasier challenge as he lives in Aurora.  This district makes more sense, while also maintaining it’s competitiveness.

Balmer Map 1

The first Republican Map, known as “Balmer Map 1” for it’s author Rep. Balmer (R-Foxfield).  It is typical of all the Republican maps, keeping to the current boundaries as much as possible.  The biggest changes are the removal of Chaffee county from the 5th, the rest of Otero county in the 4th and more of Weld into the 2nd and southern Aurora into the 7th.  

The map below has helpful green lines where the current districts are so you can track the changes.

1st CD: Few changes here, but to add population the lines were moved from the county line between Denver to Jefferson (Sheridan Blvd.) to Wadsworth Blvd., all the precincts in between include parts Wheat Ridge and Lakewood and are probably some of the most Democratic precincts in Jefferson county.  The district remains as Democratic as before.

2nd CD: Biggest changes here were putting south-west Eagle County into the 3rd, a sliver of summit into the 5th to balance population there and the addition of Fort Lupton in Weld County.  The meter will be moved very little here either.  

3rd CD: The addition of Chaffee county is the biggest change along with the removal of the rest of Otero.  Little change here, but maybe a smidge in the Democratic direction.  

4th CD: Only the addition of the rest of Otero and the removal of Fort Lupton, doubtful to have much impact on the partisan make up.

5th CD: Removal of Chaffee county and the addition of the rest of Park and the Summit County Sliver, making it just a point or 2 more Republican.

6th CD: While appearing to have little change, the 6th actually has the most radical change in that it removed Rep. Coffman’s home in southern Aurora and puts it in the 7th!  Coffman has already reacted to the maps, lashing out at the Democratic maps for not including his home in his current district, when in fact they do…  But he plans to move to Greenwood Village, so he is actually angry at his future home being removed from the district and isn’t mad at the Republicans at all for screwing out of a district in their maps.  Gotta love that!

7th CD: Almost no change, except now being the home to Rep. Coffman!  

Likely result

Unless the “Kumbaya Committee” suddenly has a desire to actually work together, looks like neither of these maps or any of the other 10 maps will make it.  The rural Republicans are already screaming about the dividing of the eastern plains and western slope, which they consider to be “communities of interest.”  So we’re more likely than not to have the issue before the courts.  Lucky for Dems the Colorado Supreme Court is packed with Democratic-appointed Justices and in 2000 they chose the current map, which was proposed by Democrats.