The next major Virginia political event is redistricting. Officially, this will be done by the legislature next January, but in reality, incumbents are already measuring for the drapes. Although the governor talked a good game about bipartisan redistricting during the election, I’d bet dollars to donuts that he was lying. I see no way around it: we’re going to have the same lousy redistricting process we’ve long had.
So the Republican-led house will carve out better districts for themselves and worse districts for Democrats—just like they did a decade ago—and the Democratic-led senate will carve out better districts for themselves and worse districts for Republicans. Using advanced demography mapping software like Caliper’s Mapitude (which has the notable feature of calculating the district boundaries to exclude the incumbent), they’ll have Virginia carved up like a Christmas ham.
Of course, officially, it won’t be anything like that. House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith might, in a moment of candor on the floor, say that they’re just doing exactly what Democrats did in 1991, but the general story line will be that they’re just updating the district boundaries to reflect the 2010 census, and even if it does wind up benefitting Republicans, well, that’s only fair. Ditto for the senate.
And ye, here we are, a year out, and already Griffith has dropped that fig leaf. Griffith is running against Rep. Rick Boucher, despite that he doesn’t actually live in the 9th congressional district. Michael Sluss, in the Roanoke Times:
Griffith said he would not move from his Salem home to run, partly because Salem may well become part of the 9th District after the General Assembly reapportions districts next year. Griffith’s House of Delegates district includes part of Roanoke County and overlaps Boucher’s congressional district.
What Griffith is saying, implicitly, is that he can just redistrict himself into the 9th if he needs to. And he’s right, he can. And this exposes plainly the bullshit that is our redistricting process.
Legislators get to pick their constituents, rather than vice versa. Rather than getting competitive districts, compact districts, or geographically sensible districts, we’ll get districts tailor-made to be safe for incumbents, sprawling comically between unrelated areas like 3CD or the 25th senate district. Many legislators will be able to rest easy for the next few election cycles, knowing that their new supermajority of likeminded voters assure them reelection, and some others will be forced to retire or face impossible odds, their district redrawn around them to include a majority of voters from the opposing party to assure a challenger’s victory.
I guess the good news is that, thanks to Griffith, we can stop pretending that this might work in any other way than the worst possible way. The bad news is everything else.
Of course they Lie. The problem for them is that when we have miserable economic conditions, mass migration occurs. That will put more folks in cities, and less in the country.
http://www.redistrictinggame.org/
I wonder if someone could come up with something like this for Virginia and have people upload their results?
Great tool… unfortunately I’m not a Flash developer, otherwise I’d be heavily devoted to such a project.
The Ninth District has to expand somewhere. More expansion into the Danville area makes it more spread out than it already is.
Looking at a map of it, I see lots and lots of space for it to grow that doesn’t include Morgan Griffith’s house. :) You’re right that the Ninth will have to expand, and under a proper redistricting system, that might be cause for Griffith to quietly explore running in November 2012, just in case he finds himself in the Ninth between now and then. But having the balls to declare his candidacy for a race in which he would not be qualified to serve if elected shows an entirely different mindset.
What areas were added to the ninth after the 2000 redistricting? If Goodlatte lived north of Roanoke, Salem would probably already be in the 9th.
Great headline: “The fig leaf comes off”. And what, pray tell, does it expose?
Their …er…”shortcomings”….
Before finance reform, before changing the filibuster, before anything else, non-partisan (not bi-partisan) redistricting commissions/panels/whatever is the first thing that must be done to fix our broken government.
“But having the balls to declare his candidacy for a race in which he would not be qualified to serve if elected shows an entirely different mindset.”
Waldo
I’m stunned that you, of all people, don’t know the rules about eligibility for Congress (I’m mean that seriously, not sarcastically). Every single voting citizen of proper age in the Commonwealth of Virginia is eligible to serve as Congresman for any District in Virginia. Same goes for every state in the country since it’s in the US Constitution. Morgan could run for the 2nd District if he wanted to. I’m surprised how many people don’t know that.
To the original point, as someone who lives in Salem, it is taken as inevitable that we are going to the 9th, regardless of Morgan’s running. If Robert Hurt wins the 5th then it’s a guarantee.
Waldo, unless I’m missing some Virginia-specific oddity, you don’t have to live in a congressional district to be qualified to represent it. You only need to be a resident of the state. Living in the district is of course a great help in getting elected, though.
Well, no, it’d be more stunning if a congressman or congressional candidate didn’t know that. When I was writing that comment, some dim recess of my mind said can’t he serve anyway?, but I recalled from my political science classes that it’s England that allows people to serve in any district, regardless of their location, not the United States. Anyhow, I’m glad to be reminded of that.
But, really, this sort of thing is more trivia than anything else. As in fun fact: did you know that a human can digest up to a pound of glass? Erm…sure, OK, but who would be so foolish as to actually demonstrate that? What is one to do with this knowledge? Would Ninth District Republicans really be so foolish as to nominate a candidate who doesn’t actually live in their district? In fact, there’s a trivia question I’d love to get answered: Has anybody in the modern political era been elected to a congressional seat in a district in which they do not live?
Glenn Nye was.
He wasn’t ultimately elected but Hoffman did not live in NY-23 and his lack of residency was certainly not the reason he lost.
To answer your other question, I expect 9th Rs will nominate the best candidate and I expect that will be Morgan. If you think lack of residency is a killer, I think you’re gonna be very surprised at how close this race ends up being.
Apparently it’s not uncommon in Hawaii, which has two congressional districts, for representatives not to live in their districts. Perhaps it’s a carryover from the years between 1963 and 1971, during which Hawaii had no districts and elected two at-large representatives.
John Garamendi was elected to the House in November 2009 while living just outside his district, CA-10.
Really? Googling around, I find that some Republicans suspected that might be the case, but nothing more than rumors.
Back when I lived in Montgomery, I seem to recall being blanketed in TV ads and mailers for Kevin Triplett—remember that name?—and being assured by my Republican activist friends in the Ninth that it was all over for Rick Boucher. He got 39%. Remember Jay Katzen, before him? That carpetbagger got 34% of the vote. Oh, and Bill Carrico, in 2006, racking up 32%—also, incidentally, a member of the House of Delegates when he ran—managing to do even worse than Katzen, who moved down from northern VA just to run for the seat.
A big part of why I don’t make public political prognostications—who’s going to win, who’s going to lose, what the spread will be, etc.—is that any moron can just say “the incumbent congressman is going to win” and be right 98% of the time. :) Boucher’s been in this seat since I was in short pants, and to my knowledge, nobody’s gotten within twenty points of him.
That Garamendi election is interesting, KC, but the Hawaii thing is really interesting. That it’s a cultural norm there I find fascinating.
Or even 98.6%?
To Greg’s point; They don’t call this the “Fightin’Ninth” for nothin’. Don’t forget this is where “macaca” was born, and the Republican homeboys of Southwest thought it was pretty funny…until it wasn’t.
When you travel the hills of the 9th, you don’t hear much about the economic development, the protection of king coal, UVA Wise, Broadband, Tourism or the many other benefits wrought by their senior long-term Rep. Boucher; because his considerable base is being drowned out by catcalls from the Macacaists who want to tell you all about the “elitist, socialist, negro” president who wants their guns. Boucher is simply their most accessible target.
Reports of the Virginia GOP demise (mostly seen on this blog) are greatly exaggerated. Ahem.
Who said that Virginia Republicans were going to die? I recall some very specific discussions about their future, in which I said that I believed that they were going to lose a great deal of power, but explicitly said that they were not going to “die,” but just spend a long time in the minority. And, since I started writing about the topic, Republicans have lost both U.S. Senate seats, the U.S. House majority, and the state senate majority. They have retained the house of delegates when I really thought that they’d lose it this year, but that’s it. (Obviously, there’s governor, AG, and LG, but I’d never dare make any predictions about how that would trend over time; those positions are subject to very different forces than large masses of legislative seats.) Hell, Obama won Virginia. The RPV of today is a withered shadow of the RPV of 2003.