Redistricting Plan Changes Everything (And Nothing)

By DON ROLLINS

Pity the off-year Republican political strategists here in Pennsylvania. After more than a decade spent freely mapping and remapping the region’s federal congressional districts to favor GOP candidates, not even emergency assistance from some of the Republican National Committee’s most seasoned strategists and financial procurers could extend their roll for 2018.

The trouble began last summer, as fair-district progressives began to organize, fundraise, and recruit more local and state Democratic officials to the anti-gerrymandering cause. After years of false starts, tepid backing and seemingly insurmountable odds, liberal critical mass was finally a reality.

This populist amalgamation was no doubt a factor in getting the Democratic-majority Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s attention, but so too was the national embarrassment brought upon the commonwealth by years of runaway gerrymandering: once the standard by which other red states measured the effectiveness of their redistricting efforts, Pennsylvania’s GOP House leaders’ ruthlessness and arrogance had become a liability among independents, libertarians and moderates in both major parties.

After a very public and partisan process, the Court temporarily assumed sole power in delineating voting districts. A new and more politically balanced map was issued forthwith — a boon to Democrats across several regions of the commonwealth.

Livid at the changes, House Republicans filed two emergency applications to set aside the ruling, attempted to triangulate Democratic governor Tom Wolf, and put out feelers for the US Supreme Court to take up the matter. All to no avail.

Ever the realists, congressional Republicans made their best political hay of the situation, then did what parties in power do: move on to the next agenda item, and get ’em next time around.

Unfortunately for all Pennsylvanians that time is coming, because the fix in place expires in 2021, at which point mapping reverts to the same lopsided process as before: the majority party determines each district’s boundaries; both houses vote, and; the governor signs off.

Content to play the short game, Keystone State Democrats are fairly rejoicing at the polling numbers rendered by a more level playing field. And there’s cause for their revelry. Take for instance the high-profile case of Connor Lamb.

Lamb, the centrist Democrat who last March surprised the nation by winning the remainder of a vacated House term in a scarlet red district, declared for a new full term soon after the victory. Prior to the Court’s intervention, Lamb would’ve faced the fury of a seasoned GOP apparatus that delivered the old district to Trump by 20 points in 2016; yet under the rebalanced map, Lamb leads the Trump-aligned incumbent, Keith Rothfus, by double digits.

But while Democrats in Harrisburg and D.C. are watching Lamb and other party front runners with great anticipation, to simply trade places with an admittedly toxic GOP does little more than perpetuate the same inherently unfair system.

As a counter to this cycle, forward thinking organizations, such as Fair Districts PA, have proposed alternative methods for drawing Pennsylvania’s US congressional districts - some but not all requiring amendments to the commonwealth’s constitution. What they have in common is citizen input and oversight, transparency, and enforceable rules - common sense components for a more democratic electoral process.

Alas, given the fiercely binary politics of our times, should a blue wave materialize in Pennsylvania this November, chances are Dems will be equally eager to exploit to their fullest any loopholes in the temporary process now in place. To do otherwise would be seen as an insane, naive waste of opportunity.

But if the Party of FDR is serious about creating substantial differences between itself and the Party of Trump, it’s hard to imagine a better place to start.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister and substance abuse counselor living in Pittsburgh, Pa. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2018

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