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发帖数: 29846 | 1 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101219/ap_on_el_ge/us_census_redistricting
WASHINGTON – The 2010 census report coming out Tuesday will include a
boatload of good political news for Republicans and grim data for Democrats
hoping to re-elect President Barack Obama and rebound from last month's
devastating elections.
The population continues to shift from Democratic-leaning Rust Belt states
to Republican-leaning Sun Belt states, a trend the Census Bureau will detail
in its once-a-decade report to the president. Political clout shifts, too,
because the nation must reapportion the 435 House districts to make them
roughly equal in population, based on the latest census figures.
[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]
The biggest gainer will be Texas, a GOP-dominated state expected to gain up
to four new House seats, for a total of 36. The chief losers — New York and
Ohio, each projected by nongovernment analysts to lose two seats — were
carried by Obama in 2008 and are typical of states in the Northeast and
Midwest that are declining in political influence.
Democrats' problems don't end there.
November's elections put Republicans in control of dozens of state
legislatures and governorships, just as states prepare to redraw their
congressional and legislative district maps. It's often a brutally partisan
process, and Republicans' control in those states will enable them to create
new districts to their liking.
The combination of population shifts and the recent election results could
make Obama's re-election campaign more difficult. Each House seat represents
an electoral vote in the presidential election process, giving more weight
to states Obama probably will lose in 2012. The states he carried in 2008
are projected to lose, on balance, six electoral votes to states that his
GOP challenger, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, won. That sets a higher bar for
Obama before his re-election campaign even starts.
"The way the maps have shifted have made Obama's route to success much more
difficult," said Republican Party spokesman Doug Heye. He said the GOP
takeover of several state governments on the eve of redistricting efforts
was "a dramatic shift."
Republicans now control the governor's offices and both legislative chambers
in competitive presidential states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida,
Indiana, Maine and Wisconsin. They hold the governors' chairs in other
crucial states, including Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Iowa.
When Obama carried those states in 2008, most had Democratic governors happy
to lend their political operations to his cause. Now he will run where
governors can bend their powers against his administration's policies and
his campaign's strategies.
Democratic Party spokesman Brad Woodhouse said his colleagues are aware of
the challenges they face, "but we are putting a plan in place to maximize
our opportunities, minimize potential setbacks and ensure that the process
in each state is fair and done in accordance with the law."
The Democrats' few bright spots include California and Illinois, where they
control the legislatures and won hard-fought races for governor last month.
Of course, any number of things can happen before the 2012 elections, and
Obama and other Democrats may come roaring back. Republicans might help them
by pushing their luck and trying to draw more GOP-leaning House districts
than the elections of 2012, 2014 and beyond will support.
State politicians use detailed, computer-generated data on voting patterns
to carve neighborhoods in or out of newly drawn districts, tilting them more
to the left or right. Sometimes they play it safe, quietly agreeing to
protect Republican and Democratic incumbents alike. But sometimes the party
in control will gamble and aggressively try to reconfigure the map to dump
as many opponents as possible.
"The danger you run is trying to be too clever and cutting those margins too
thin," said Tim Storey, a redistricting authority for the nonpartisan
National Conference of State Legislatures.
That's what Pennsylvania Republicans did 10 years ago, when they controlled
the redistricting process after the 2000 census. Determined to turn the
Democrats' 11-10 House delegation advantage into a 13-6 GOP edge (after the
state lost two seats due to sluggish population growth), Republicans created
new districts that forced several Democratic incumbents to run against each
other. Democratic lawsuits in state and federal courts failed to overturn
the "grotesque district boundaries," as the Almanac of American Politics
called them.
Republicans initially won 12 of the state's newly drawn House districts. But
when Pennsylvania voters shifted more toward Democrats in the next few
years, thinly protected GOP lawmakers lost their seats. By 2009, Democrats
had a 12-7 advantage.
Pennsylvania's partisan warfare was mild compared with the Texas
redistricting imbroglio of 2003. Republicans, who had just taken over the
state government, refused to live eight more years with a political map that
had given 17 U.S. House seats to Democrats, and 15 to the GOP.
Prodded by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republicans took the
rare step of drawing a second statewide political map only three years after
the census — with boundaries certain to send more Republicans to
Washington.
More than 50 angry Texas House Democrats fled to an Oklahoma Holiday Inn to
keep the Legislature from having the quorum needed to pass the Republicans'
plan. The "Killer Ds" eventually returned to Texas capital in Austin, and
Republicans adopted their new congressional district map. It helped them win
21 House contests, compared with the Democrats' 11, in the next election.
The Texas plan survived a legal challenge filed under the U.S. Voting Rights
Act, a law meant to protect the rights of ethnic minorities. Although
critics say the law has outlived its purpose, it still covers virtually all
of nine states, mostly in the South, and portions of another half dozen
states.
The Voting Rights Act, plus a hodgepodge of court rulings on issues such as
one-person, one-vote guidelines, complicate the task of state officials who
draw district lines.
"There are so many competing criteria that it's a massive balancing act,"
Storey said. Partisan goals certainly play a role, he said, "but it's not
all about gerrymandering." |
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