CQ WEEKLY - IN FOCUS
Sept. 19, 2005 - Page 2470

By Gregory L. Giroux, CQ Staff

Most of the discussion about the political impact of Hurricane Katrina has so far been focused on the fortunes of a handful of prominent politicians and their parties: President Bush and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour among the Republicans, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin among the Democrats.

But there also is a longer-range consequence for the national body politic: The storm may already have influenced the apportionment of congressional seats for the next decade. Thousands of the people who evacuated from New Orleans and have been relocated to other states are unlikely to take up residence again in Louisiana, probably guaranteeing that after the 2010 census its number of House seats will be reduced to six from the current seven.

Four months before the hurricane, the Census Bureau estimated that Louisiana's population would grow just 3 percent this decade - while the national population is projected to grow 10 percent. That disparity meant the state was already on the cusp of losing a House seat, according to an analysis by Election Data Services Inc., a nonpartisan consulting firm that is a leading authority on political demographics.

The fact that these sorts of analyses were being done in the summer of 2005 - more than five years before the reapportionment that will kick off the next nationwide redistricting - underscores a point even broader than the effects wrought by a single, albeit historic, storm.

"It's definitely never too early" to prepare for redistricting, says Kimball W. Brace, the president of Election Data Services. "It may seem like it's a long time until redistricting, but it goes very quickly."

While party strategists are more immediately focused on candidate recruiting, fundraising and message development for the midterm congressional races - and beyond that on the early stages of the next presidential contest - they already have an eye on the gubernatorial and state legislative contests in 2010, because it's those winners who will get to redraw the political maps. And the 2006 election will set the stage for those battles. With 36 governorships on next year's ballots, and the Republicans and Democrats at near-parity in state legislative seats, the parties are angling for any electoral advantage they might sustain through the redistricting process early in the next decade.

Many states are already "battlegrounds." In 20 of the 36 state capitals where legislatures, not the courts or commissions, oversee congressional redistricting, at least one chamber is within four seats of changing party control.

Throw in campaigns in California and Ohio to transfer redistricting power from legislators to commissions - which, if successful, could mean redrawn House districts before the end of this decade - and it becomes clear that redistricting is an ongoing battle, not an end-of-the-decade afterthought.

The Art of Redistricting

While redistricting futures are an imperative investment for both parties, they are more so for the Democrats, who have been in the House minority since 1995. Republican state legislative takeovers and gubernatorial victories in the mid-1990s gave the party the upper hand in several big states - including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Ohio - and the GOP largely maintained those gains through the redistrictings that occurred in 2001 and 2002.

Texas Republicans' hardball tactics in implementing a rare mid-decade congressional remap in 2003 may also have jolted Democrats into thinking ahead. The GOP poured huge sums into the 2002 legislative elections and won control of the Texas House; the party, which already held the state Senate and governor's office, then enacted a map that netted them a gain of five congressional seats in 2004.

Even Democrats charged with getting their party better positioned for the next redistricting concede that their Republican rivals have for years outperformed them at recruiting and fielding state legislative candidates, analyzing local voting and demographic trends and pinpointing the best districts to target for a well-funded and well-coordinated campaign.

"They do a much better job historically of watching both the little picture and the big picture, the macro level and the micro level, and putting those together, and I think that is our challenge on the Democratic side," says Michael Davies, who runs the Democratic Party's effort to win more state legislative seats. He described his task as "putting together the long-term plan for the most critical seats in the most critical states" to give the party maximum redistricting power after 2010.

"The advantage is, if you get elected now, then you can try to figure out how to hold on," said Martin Frost, a former House Democrat from Texas and a redistricting expert.

That is why next year's elections could be so consequential for the new congressional map. In Florida, for example, the governor elected next year to succeed term-limited Republican Jeb Bush presumably will stand for re-election in 2010. If victorious then, he will sign or veto a new congressional map. If the Census Bureau's population estimates hold up, Florida will tie New York for the third-biggest congressional delegation in the next decade: 27 members, two more than Florida now has.

The national parties will play an outsized role in working to elect state legislators and governors. The Republican and Democratic national committees will continue to transfer millions of dollars to state parties. The Republican Governors Association and the Democratic Governors Association will pitch in on next year's gubernatorial races. Davies' Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee will be active and well-funded, as will the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee, run by Alex Johnson.

Some of the larger states holding elections next year that have potentially significant redistricting implications include:

* New York. The successor to retiring Republican Gov. George E. Pataki would be able to run for re-election in 2010. Democrats dominate the Assembly and are within striking range of taking over the Senate after a long GOP reign. The state's delegation could be cut by two seats, to 27.

* Michigan. The Republicans controlled the 2001 redistricting and carved out a reliable 9-6 GOP advantage in the House delegation. But the state has voted Democratic for president in the past four elections and in the 2002 contest for governor won by Jennifer M. Granholm (who is seeking re-election next year but would be prevented by a term limit from running in 2010). The GOP presently controls the state House, 58-52, and the Senate, 22-16.

* Illinois. Democrats are trying to maintain a position that has strengthened since the 2001 remap. Then, Republicans held the governor's office and the state Senate. Now Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and both chambers of the General Assembly are Democratic. Party leaders argue that this trend entitles them to more than the slim 10-9 House edge they hold under the map drawn at the decade's start to avoid controversy. The state stands to lose one of its seats.

* Colorado. The successor to term-limited Republican Bill Owens would be able to stand for re-election in 2010. Pitched battles are expected for control of the General Assembly, where Democrats control the state House, 35-30, and the state Senate, 18-17.

What's the Motivation?

As the parties position themselves for electoral gains that could aid redistricting, other groups hope to wrest redistricting from the legislatures - who, they argue, are too motivated by partisanship and personal self-interest. The most developed campaigns are in California and Ohio, both of which will vote Nov. 8 on whether to take the job away from elected officials.

The initiative in California - where by far the biggest congressional delegation could grow by one, to 54 seats, after reapportionment - would require a panel of three retired judges, selected by legislative leaders, to draw a new congressional map in time for 2006. The proposal in Ohio, which could see its delegation shrink to 16, from the current 18, after a high of 24 in the 1960s, would establish a five-member commission and require it to draw a new map for the 2008 elections.

Florida voters are expected to vote next year on whether to create an independent panel that would redraw lines in time for 2008.

There are far-ranging consequences to these initiatives: Now and in the next decade, those three states alone will be assigned 22 percent of all the House seats, so the parties and advocates on both sides can be expected to spend lavishly to affect the outcomes.

In California, the effort to change the process is most visibly spearheaded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican with a populist streak. He has denounced his state's current incumbent-friendly redistricting plans, which failed to produce a single partisan turnover in any of the 153 congressional and state legislative contests last year.

But the initiative, known as Proposition 77, has failed to gain public support: A California Field Poll in late August found 32 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed and the rest without an opinion. Democrats in particular "look at it in a negative light," says the poll's director, Mark DiCamillo , because the measure is so identified with Schwarzenegger, who has had an increasingly combative relationship with Democrats of late.

Most members of the California delegation are opposed to the plan. Republican John T. Doolittle and Democrat Howard L. Berman last month were granted permission by the Federal Election Commission to form a special campaign group together to raise unlimited funds to combat the initiative.

In Ohio, the GOP now dominates all legislative offices, controlling 61 of 99 state House seats, 22 of 33 state Senate seats and 12 of the 18 congressional seats. But overall the state is much more politically competitive than those numbers suggest, as underscored by Bush's pivotal 2 percentage point margin of victory in the state last year. And a series of ethics scandals - including the recent convictions of outgoing Gov. Bob Taft on misdemeanor charges involving his failure to report numerous golf outings paid for by outside interests - have battered the GOP as it prepares for the 2006 election.

It's in this atmosphere that a collection of liberal groups gained a place on the ballot this November for a proposed constitutional amendment, State Issue 4, to establish a commission format for redistricting. Doing so "will maximize the number of competitive districts in Ohio and enhance the influence of all voters in the electoral process," argues Reform Ohio Now.

But GOP detractors denounce the effort as a back-door attempt by power-thirsty Democrats to thwart the longstanding advantage Republicans have enjoyed in state politics. They argue that the commissioners would not be required to meet any minimum level of qualifications and would not be accountable to voters.

Source: CQ Weekly
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