By Steve Vaughan
It’s redistricting time.
The General Assembly meets next month to draw the new lines for the state’s 11 Congressional districts, 100 House of Delegates district and 40 State Senate districts.
This year we’ve had an appetizer, since the governor’s commission on redistricting (which only has advisory status), college students participating in a redistricting contest, and the incumbent members of Congress have given us sneak peeks at maps they like.
To no one’s surprise, the plan the congressmen came up with protects all 11 incumbents, which requires at least two egregious gerrymanders: the continuation of the snake-like 3rd District which winds its way down I-64 in search of African-American voters, and a new “Gerry-mander” in the 11th to give Rep. Gerry Connolly a more Democratic district than the one he almost lost last November.
The other maps are more interesting because they try to create compact, contiguous districts without regard for politics and try to keep “communities of interest” intact. (That’s not something the congressmen care about, they created a 5th District that includes Danville and parts of Loudoun County).
That was one of the governor’s charges to his commission. It also echoes the major concern I’ve always heard expressed by local government leaders, and by voters, in the previous rounds of redistricting. “I just hope they don’t split up my city/county.”
That concern is very important to people.
But I’ve never understood why.
Perhaps they don’t understand democracy. In a democracy the side with the most votes wins.
So, why wouldn’t you want to maximize your number of votes?
If I were a county administrator or a city manager, why wouldn’t I want two congressmen looking after my locality’s interests rather than one?
It’s even more important in the General Assembly. Because Virginia is a Dillon rule state, local governments often have to ask for permission from the General Assembly to do even routine things. That means putting a bill in. Often, if it’s a bill that only affects that one community, it requires a supermajority to pass.
Why wouldn’t you want to go into that process with as many votes in your pocket as possible?
It seems to me that those localities that are represented by the most legislators have the best record of getting what they want.
Let’s take two examples: the state’s most populous locality, Fairfax County, and the capital city, Richmond.
Fairfax is split up between 17 (!) House of Delegates districts — represented by 12 Democrats and 5 Republicans — and nine Senate districts, all held by Democrats.
That’s right, nearly a quarter of the Senate represents part of Fairfax County. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got the extra seat to get them to 25% in this round of redistricting.
If Fairfax wants to pass a bill (assuming it’s not special legislation) and can get its delegation to agree (and state legislators, for the most part, are at least as loyal to their home localities as they are to their parties), they only need to find 34 votes out of the 83 delegates who don’t represent part of the county and 12 votes among the 31 out-of-Fairfax senators. Consequently, Fairfax has a pretty good record of getting what it wants.
Richmond doesn’t have the same size delegation, because it’s much smaller, only 200,000 people as opposed to more than a million. But Richmond has six votes in the House — four Democrats and two Republicans, and four in the Senate, split evenly between the parties.
That’s just the city itself, adding in the surrounding counties of Chesterfield and Henrico adds another seven delegates and two senators, mostly Republican.
So, if they all cooperate on an issue of regional concern — not a given in the Richmond area — they can exert a force similar to Fairfax.
That’s why an attempt by Gov Bob McDonnell this year to punish VCU for increasing tuition had no shot. VCU is too important to economic development in Richmond, which is important to economic development in the region. And the region has a lot of votes in the General Assembly.
What if McDonnell had tried the same thing with the College of William & Mary?
Williamsburg has one vote in the Senate and one in the House, both members of the minority caucus in their respective chambers. Assuming the legislators in surrounding counties stood solid with their Williamsburg colleagues, that’s three votes in the House, one vote in the Senate.
One of those votes is Sen. Tommy Norment (R-3rd), the Senate Minority Leader, who is as shrewd a horse trader as the General Assembly has seen since Dick Cranwell left. He might have been able to cut a deal with Senate Democrats to kill the proposal. But he’d have had to work at it.
It also helps to have friends on both sides of the aisle, as Richmond and — to a lesser extent — Fairfax do.
Seniority is a plus as well. Fairfax has the Senate Majority Leader and a number of committee chairmen. Richmond has the chair of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee and the House Majority Leader lives just down the road in Colonial Heights.
Aside from Norment, the Historic Triangle doesn’t have much seniority. When former Del. Phil Hamilton (R-93rd), the vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and chairman of the House Health, Welfare & Institutions Committee had to resign his seat due to a conflict of interest scandal it severely impacted the area’s clout.
So, if I lived in Williamsburg, I’d be hoping that the city’s two precincts got split, both in the House and the Senate. But it’s not likely to happen.
Cross posted at Virginia Pundit.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Now that makes sense.
I read somewhere, recently, but too old to remember if it was on this site or somewhere else, that it made sense for Virginia’s congressional representatives to be elected statewide. Each voter could vote for eleven people. My thought was that doesn’t make sense.
Maybe it does, after reading this. Not certain, but maybe.
Doug: I’m not sure that’s legal, to elect all the Congressmen at large. There are states where that’s the case, but they are states that have so few people they are only due one congressman. That would produced some drastic swings. Last year, Republicans would have captured all the seats under that plan and in 2008 Democrats would have.
that may point out another positive, toss the bums every two years. 🙂
Virginia has also had at-large districts in the past. Even the bill to add DC to the list of voting representatives would have created an at-large district in Utah.
The possible constitutional problems are only for single-representative at-large districts that result in racial discrimination.
Virginia has had at-large congressional districts? Don’t think so. Got a source for that?
We had multi-member General Assembly districts, but we got rid of them at the behest of the federal courts as I recall.
The court has looked hard even at at-large city council districts. Richmond was forced to go to a ward system by the courts.
“For the 73rd Congress (March 4, 1933 – January 3, 1935), Virginia elected all representatives all of its representatives at-large (i.e., statewide). The district format returned in the election the 74th Congress (January 3, 1935 – January 3, 1937) and has remained in effect ever since.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia%27s_At-large_congressional_district
I wish whoever wrote that article had seen fit to give some context as to why they’d changed how their House members were elected for a single election because that’s both fascinating and bizarre.
“Egregious gerrymanders?” Once again: Can a Democrat win against Forbes or Cantor? What exactly is the difference between the “gerrymandered” 3rd and the 4th and the 7th?
Lauren: Look at the 3rd versus the 4th or the 7th on a map. You’ll notice that one of them is very oddly shaped (the 3rd), the others less so.
While a Dem can’t win againt Forbes or Cantor, if those seats were open they would of course be more competitive than the 3rd.
Interestingly, in the redistricting contest that’s underway, the team from the W&M law school, managed to draw a much more compact and contigous minority-majority district by combining the eastern end of the 3rd with portions of the 4th. It’s sort of a crescent shaped district that goes from Newport News, Nofolk, Portsmouth, etc. That allowed them to draw a district centered on Richmond and its close suburbs (which they called the 5th), which, while not a minority-majority district, would certainly be a district where the minority population would have a significant impact on the vote.
At least in Hampton Roads, I’ve always preferred to have my city within a single Congressional district because it means that the citizens of my city are a proportionately larger segment of a legislative member’s constituency, as opposed to being an afterthought for multiple members who each have more voters living somewhere else. By the logic above, Hampton ought to be the best-represented city in Virginia at the Federal level since it’s been split for the last ten years between the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Congressional districts, but in practice I don’t know that I’ve ever met a single resident of Hampton who feels like that’s the case.
More often I hear them complain about how infrequently anyone bothers to show up and ask for their vote.
I agree with Silence. Having multiple representatives may work when the members work together, but that’s not always the case. About the only time I can think of the Congressional representatives in Hampton Roads working together is when something big – like the closure of JFCOM or the possible move of a carrier – happens. Otherwise, it seems it is every man for himself.
Vivian’s post brings to mind other issues, as far as “working together”. Makes me wonder if we were “one city” (the 7 seperate cities united as one) if it wouldn’t make elected officials work together. They (elected officials) can’t even agree on the Hampton Roads Bridge tunnel, its always an “Us against them” mentality for Peninsula vs Southside. I think we all know why the area was split up into 7 cities, but its now the 21st Century, time to move on. But I fear any call for the area to be one city is as futile as Vivian’s call for repealing the Dillon Rule.
One other point of annoyance with all of this talk of redistricting, who cares what a group of “students” draws? They barely pay taxes, they don’t have the life experiences, they are just on the cusp of grasping history and issues, why is this front page news in the Daily Press? May as well had a room full of monkeys with typewriters re-writing the Virginia Constitution! (there is your Dillon Rule repeal Vivian)
The last one to draw the lines with any sense of decency and fairness was Owen Pickett (The Professor) back in the 70’s! Politicians will draw the lines to benefit them, and them only. The voters/taxpayers be damned. And it doesn’t make any difference what party they belong to. They mouth differences, but once in office, they all do the same thing. Raise taxes, spend like they stole a credit card and don’t listen to voters. Its a never ending cycle of voter/taxpayer abuse.
At some point it has to change. The only question is when!
The purpose of the student-drawn maps was to show that the criteria of redistricting – except incumbent protection – can be done and what the districts would look like if they did. These maps reflect putting the people first, which is exactly what should be the case.
I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to see the process changed. Virginia is always the last to adopt anything that is even remotely considered progressive. If it weren’t for the Supreme Court in the mid-1960s, VA would still be drawing maps of unequal populations and the rural legislators would still be in the majority.
wow T.W. very negative on our politicians – so they are all crooks obviously according to you which means we all are like them since they were like us before they decided to run for office. I am a frim believer that it will end when people start to lookin their own mirrors and see the fault in themselves instead of making everyone else out to be the bad guys. I know for a fact that many of these politicians have a yearning to do good and many live up to what they have said. Many have given up loads of money to pursue their offices especially in the General Assembly where the make little. I admire the work our governments have done over our natins history – great thing shave been accomplished and exist today because these people decided to help. Easy to say the wrong in people and our politicians however if you want it to end and want more moral politicians please fell free to run in one of your local or statewide elections.