Politics
Kinzinger, one of his party’s two mem- bers on the Jan. 6 Commission and one of 10 GOP House members to sup- port Donald Trump’s impeachment, to retire rather than challenge fellow Republican Rep. Darin LaHood. Kinzinger found himself sharing the
new and heavily Republican 16th Dis- trict with LaHood, far more popular with their party’s conservative grass- roots.
“Both parties have abused their line-
drawing authority whenever possible since the early days of the Republic,” said Dan Schnur, professor at the Uni- versity of California, Berkeley’s Insti- tute of Governmental Studies and top aide to GOP former California Gov. Pete Wilson. “Advances in computer technology
have made those abuses somewhat eas- ier, but there is nothing new on either side — except possibly the hypocrisy of partisans on both sides who complain about the excesses of their opponents while managing to overlook their allies doing exactly the same thing.” Gerrymandering is here to stay. “In 2019, the Supreme Court held
in Rucho v. Common Cause that parti- san gerrymandering is not unconsti- tutional and the federal courts will not intervene,” said Hans von Spakovsky, initiative and senior law fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Political idealists and reformers have passionately believed for many years
“Both parties have abused their line-drawing authority whenever possible
since the early days of the Republic.” — Dan Schnur, professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of
that if redistricting is taken out of the hands of partisan legislators and given to judges or, more recently, to ostensibly independent commissions, the result will be more competitive districts and less rancor. This has been shown to be moon-
shine. Appointed commissions that include
citizens with no political allegiances have done little to satisfy skeptics of the redistricting process. In 2011, California for the first time experimented with a Citizens Redis- tricting Commission to redraw the lines for its 53 districts. The result: Democrats gained four
seats and Republicans lost four. This year, the 14-member indepen-
dent commission again redrew the lines, in accordance with the 2021 census. For the first time in history, the
nation’s largest state will lose one seat because its population declined. While two Democratic-leaning seats
in Southern California will merge into one new, safely Democratic constituen- cy — six of 11 seats in Republican hands will become more Democrat.
Friends to Bitter End I
Governmental Studies and top aide to GOP former California Gov. Pete Wilson Michigan, which also dropped one
U.S. House district (13, down from 14), had its lines drawn for the first time by the 13-member Michigan Independent Citizens Commission. At first glance, it would appear to
fulfill the vision of truly competitive districts: four Democratic-leaning, six Republican-leaning, and three highly competitive. Republicans charged that the con- gressional map was drawn against them, and others said it was biased toward the Republicans. Heritage’s von Spakovsky and
Michael Watson of the Capital Research Center concluded that “in moving redis- tricting away from legislative bodies to ‘independent’ commissions, we’ve seen that these commissions aren’t very independent.”
llinois Republicans still talk about the 1981 redistricting plan that placed GOP Reps. George O’Brien and Ed Derwinski into the same suburban Chicago district. Both had conservative voting records and were good friends
who commuted to the U.S. Capitol together from their homes in Northern Virginia.
The only thing that O’Brien and Derwinski differed on was who should be the congressman from the Prairie State’s newly drawn 4th District. Neither would defer to the other and a hard-fought primary battle ensued, which O’Brien won handily. “It’s frustrating,” 12-termer Derwinski said after conceding the
race, “to realize that after all these years you have reached a certain effectiveness and then not be allowed to stay because of the political whims of mapmaking.”
42 NEWSMAX | MAY 2022 DERWINSKI O’BRIEN
WHAT CAN BE DONE? Last year, when Virginia’s redis- tricting commission deadlocked on a finalized map, the state Supreme Court (which has a majority of Repub- lican jurists) selected experts from each party to finally draw the lines. Both sides seem satisfied. Since the 1960s, the number of competitive congressional districts has declined with each census and resultant redistricting. Whatever the method deployed, the gradual sojourn toward new district lines is, more often than not, prolonged and disputatious. For now, the best that can be said
is that the republic continues, and so does the process of updating the congressional districts, the process that was originally envisioned and executed by the Founding Fathers. But, as with everything, it can stand some improvement.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
