Arizona Court Blocks GOP Attempt to Usurp Redistricting

DLCC Applauds Return of Independence to the Process

Washington, DC - Today Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Executive Director Michael Sargeant applauded the Arizona Supreme Court’s rapid reinstatement of Independent Redistricting Commission Chair Colleen Mathis.

“Gov. Jan Brewer and her GOP accomplices in the state Senate attempted to usurp the redistricting process by illegally removing the Independent redistricting Chairwoman,” said Sargeant. “Thankfully, this naked power grab ultimately met with failure as the Supreme Court overrode the Republicans’ actions.

“Last night’s ruling is only the latest rebuke to a lengthy series of extreme partisan overreaches not only by Republicans in Arizona, but also by GOP lawmakers in statehouses across the country,” Sargeant continued. “Events like the defeat of Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, the repeal of SB5 in Ohio, the reinstatement of same-day voter registration in Maine, and an ever-growing list of special election wins should give Republicans everywhere pause. Americans are tired of right-wing extremism and partisan power plays.”

Arizona’s Democratic House Leader and DLCC Board member Chad Campbell also was pleased with the state Supreme Court’s decision on the illegal removal of the Independent Redistricting Commission Chair. He sees the ruling as “a message to the Governor and partisan incumbents who want to strong-arm the redistricting process to protect their own interests” and is pleased that the court “looked beyond the Governor’s baseless claims and restored the independence to the redistricting process that the voters wanted.”

Coup in Arizona

DLCC Condemns GOP Usurpation of Redistricting

Washington, DC – Today Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Executive Director Michael Sargeant condemned Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and state Senate Republicans for flagrantly undermining the state’s redistricting process. 

“Gov. Brewer and the state GOP have demonstrated they are absolutely without shame when it comes to promoting partisan interests,” said Sargeant. “Arizona voters chose to take redistricting out of the hands of politicians over a decade ago, but Republicans have wrenched control away from their own constituents and citizens with this naked power play. By removing the nonpartisan member of a bipartisan redistricting commission for failing to deliver an extreme partisan gerrymander, Arizona Republicans have brazenly usurped the redistricting process.” 

Last night, Gov. Brewer’s GOP cronies in the state Senate voted as a bloc to remove Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) nonpartisan chair Colleen Mathis based on unsubstantiated charges of impropriety. Gov. Brewer abused her authority to call a taxpayer-funded “special session” for this removal because the new congressional and legislative maps drawn by the IRC contained too few GOP-friendly districts and too many competitive districts. Arizona Republicans, unsatisfied with maps that virtually guarantee GOP control of the congressional delegation and legislature, executed what may be the most extreme power-grab in the state’s history. 

Democratic leaders in Arizona were livid. 

"The Governor and Legislature have sunk to a new low with this special session,” said House Minority Leader Chad Campbell. “The blatant bullying, intimidation and partisanship they have inflicted on the citizen members of the Independent Redistricting Commission is abhorrent. They should be ashamed of themselves.” 

“There was no basis for the removal of Chairwoman Mathis except pure partisan politics,” added Senate Minority Leader David Schapira. “We have a witch hunt coordinated by a Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Republican Congressional delegation and Republican legislators with a predetermined outcome. It’s a disgrace.”

Whatever masks or costumes Wisconsin Republicans opt to don this Halloween, they won’t be able to conceal their naked desperation. 

Desperation is clearly behind the state GOP’s latest antics. In a brazen power play, Wisconsin Republican state senators are attempting to rig the rules in their favor for the next round of Senate recall elections, likely to occur next spring. 

Early Friday evening, Republicans sneakily posted a notice for public hearing for a series of bills for Monday afternoon—today. Included in this list are two bills designed to directly affect any recalls that may occur before the next general election. 

One bill will require those who circulate petitions gathering the signatures required to trigger recalls to have their own signatures notarized, so as to verify their own identities. This measure will add a burdensome procedural hurdle to the process of circulator certification of petition signatures. Additionally, since circulators are already punishable under existing Wisconsin law for falsifying their required circulator certifications, this bill seems unnecessary and redundant. 

The more troubling of the two bills receiving abrupt hearings this afternoon is the one that seems specifically designed to undermine a recent decision of Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board that didn’t work out in the GOP’s favor. 

Kevin Kennedy, director of the Government Accountability Board and the state's top election official, has determined lawmakers now represent the new districts but that any recalls before November 2012 would be conducted in the old districts. He said it was clear from the way GOP lawmakers wrote the legislation enacting the maps that they were not to take effect for elections until next fall. 

But the Wisconsin GOP, apparently fearful of more Democratic wins, seem desperate to hold any further recall elections in the hyper-gerrymandered districts they drew for themselves (and rammed through the legislature with unprecedented speed prior to last summer’s recall elections). Only a few days after the GAB rendered their decision, a Senate Republican produced a new bill effectively “changing the rules of the game a few days before the game starts,” as a Milwaukee attorney described it. The bill applies the new, GOP-friendly map only to state senators, effectively setting up different recall rules for each legislative chamber. 

This bill is so outrageous that Senate Republicans already seem to have lost a key vote on the bill. The AP reports that GOP state Sen. Dale Schultz plans to vote against the measure, which likely spells the bill’s death in a chamber narrowly divided between seventeen Republicans and sixteen Democrats. 

Wisconsin GOPers know their razor-thin Senate majority cannot survive another round of Democratic victories in recall elections. Unconcerned about the state Assembly, Republicans senators are flailing frantically for ways to protect themselves. Their tricks reek of desperation, and we expect Wisconsinites to see right through their flimsy disguises.

Even as the Pennsylvania GOP pushes its proposal to gerrymander the Electoral College by allocating electoral votes according to gerrymandered congressional districts, Nebraska Republicans are demonstrating the naked partisanship of this measure by pushing for just the opposite. 

The GOP in Nebraska is trying to return to a winner-take-all system after President Obama became the first Democrat in 44 years to take one of the state’s electoral votes. Nebraska currently allocates its five electoral votes in the manner Pennsylvania Republicans are proposing, three by congressional district and two to the winner of the state’s popular vote. 

Nebraska Republicans attempted to make the switch earlier this year, but the bill stalled in committee after one GOP legislator opposed it, resulting in a tie vote. Now the state GOP leadership is trying to pressure him—and any other opponents—by threatening to withhold support in the next election. 

The Nebraska Republican Party is showing a startling new level of desperation in its efforts to force the Nebraska Legislature to change the state's [E]lectoral [C]ollege vote during the 2012 legislative session.  At the September meeting of its State Central Committee, a resolution is being proposed that would block any support for State Senators who vote against changing the casting of Nebraska's electoral college votes to "winner-take-all." 

Objective Conservative recently published the language of this resolution:  

Whereas Nebraska is one of only two states that award electoral votes based on the presidential winner of congressional districts,.... 

Whereas it is of the highest priority and interest to the Nebraska Republican Party and the citizens of Nebraska that the state returns to a "winner-takes-all" electoral vote plan, 

Whereas the Nebraska Republican Party supports legislation that returns the state to the "winner-takes-all" basis, 

And, whereas the Nebraska Republican Party believes that the "winner-takes-all" issue is a litmus test for those who would claim to be Republicans and seek the support of the Nebraska Republican Party, 

Be it resolved that the Nebraska Republican Party will not support in any manner, financial or otherwise, any state senator who opposes the return of the state to the "winner-takes-all" electoral vote plan either by failing to vote for such in committee or on the floor of the legislature. 

The measure will be presented and voted on at the State Central Committee meeting this Saturday, September 17. 

Pennsylvania Republicans are tossing around claims of “fairness” and “reform” as they attempt to deliver electoral votes to a Republican in a state that’s given them to Democrats since 1992. But the Nebraska GOP’s visceral reaction to giving just one of their electoral votes to a Democrat in 2008 reveals Republicans’ true motives: to funnel as many electoral votes the GOP presidential candidate as they possibly can, by any means necessary. 

The Pennsylvania GOP’s proposal to allocate its electoral votes by congressional district may sound outrageous, even absurd. 

Splitting Pennsylvania’s electoral votes flies in the face of more than 200 years of political history. It’s an obvious and desperate attempt by the state GOP to deliver some of the state’s electoral votes to the Republican nominee for the first time since 1988, even if President Obama wins a majority of the state’s popular vote. 

And it may very well come to pass. 

Despite some shouts of Republican discontent, the GOP leaders of the state House, the state Senate, and Republican Governor Tom Corbett are all publicly endorsing the measure. 

Legislation is forthcoming. GOP Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi has already sent a memo to his fellow senators requesting co-sponsorship of the bill. 

A simple majority vote in each chamber would pass the measure on to the Governor’s desk for signature. A law allocating electoral votes by congressional district could be on the books by Halloween. 

A haunting prospect, indeed. Nick Baumann explains. 

The GOP controls both houses of the state legislature plus the governor's mansion—the so-called "redistricting trifecta"—in Pennsylvania. Congressional district maps are adjusted after every census, and the last one just finished up. That means Pennsylvania Republicans get to draw the boundaries of the state's congressional districts without any input from Democrats. Some of the early maps have leaked to the press, and Democrats expect that the Pennsylvania congressional map for the 2012 elections will have 12 safe GOP seats compared to just 6 safe Democratic seats. 

Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight—six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state's two senators) for winning the state. 

So even if President Obama wins the popular vote in Pennsylvania, because of 12 gerrymandered GOP congressional districts, he could easily receive fewer than half of the state’s electoral votes. 

For the first time, Republicans are trying to extend the effect of gerrymandering beyond congressional races and into presidential elections. Unsatisfied with gerrymandering the state legislature and their congressional delegation, the Pennsylvania GOP is trying to gerrymander the Electoral College. 

And why couldn’t such a plan be executed in other states with Republican-controlled legislatures and governors’ mansions that tend to give their electoral votes to Democratic presidential candidates? Wisconsin and Michigan come to mind instantly. Wisconsin’s electoral votes haven’t gone to a Republican since 1984, and the last time Michigan electors went GOP was 1988. 

With a razor-thin majority in the state Senate (16D/17R) and the memory of the recalls triggered by previous political overreach fresh in their minds, the Wisconsin GOP seems unlikely to push a proposal as extreme as allocating their electoral votes by congressional district. 

But what’s to stop Michigan? 

Republicans have double-digit majorities in the state House and Senate and control of the governor’s mansion. The new GOP-drawn congressional district map creates as many as nine districts favorable to Republicans. If a Pennsylvania-style electoral vote allocation bill passed in Michigan, President Obama could win a majority of the popular vote, but because of GOP gerrymandering, could only receive seven electoral votes. 

The Michigan situation is purely hypothetical. There’s been no noise from the GOP there to suggest they’re interested in such a proposal—yet. 

But in a close presidential election, the 12-8 electoral vote split in Pennsylvania alone could be enough to sway results. 

And unable to earn it the way candidates of all parties have seen fit for more than two centuries, the Republicans could gerrymander their way into the presidency. 

The Republican leaders of Pennsylvania’s legislature want to change how the state allocates its electoral votes. 

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi wants to allocate the 20 electoral votes Pennsylvania will have in the next election according to who wins each of 18 congressional districts, plus two more for whoever wins the statewide popular vote, rather than the winner-take-all system the state now uses.

…

Asked whether Pileggi's proposal would change Pennsylvania's status as one of the country's biggest swing states, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai said, "There's no doubt about it." 

Still, he's a fan. 

"We think it has a lot of positive merit," said Turzai, R-Bradford Woods. "It's going to be carefully vetted (in the Senate). I myself am very positive." 

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review examined how such an arrangement would have affected the 2008 presidential election. 

In 2008, for instance, when Pennsylvania had 21 electoral votes, Sen. John McCain won 10 congressional districts to then-Sen. Barack Obama's 9, but Obama won the state by 620,000 votes. Under Pileggi's proposal, Obama would've gotten the two statewide electors, for a net win over McCain of one electoral vote.

Currently Maine and Nebraska are the only states that allocate their electoral votes by congressional district. 

Electoral vote proposals like this one have cropped up in states before – and went nowhere. What makes this worth watching is that the majority leaders of both legislative chambers have gone on the record in support of it. 

Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled legislature is currently in the process of redrawing the state’s 18 congressional districts. The outcome is expected to favor Republicans to the tune of at least 12 GOP-leaning seats, and perhaps going as far as producing 13 or 14 Republican congressional districts. 

So even if President Obama wins a majority of the Pennsylvania popular vote next year, about a dozen electoral votes could still go to his Republican opponent—more than enough to flip an election. 

The potential effect of the Pennsylvania GOP’s electoral vote proposal on the outcome of 2012 is staggering, to say the least.

In one of the GOP’s most blatantly personal gerrymandering moves so far, Virginia Republicans dismantled DLCC Treasurer and state House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong’s Martinsville-based 10th District, splitting it into several new districts with a GOP incumbent in each of them.

But Leader Armstrong announced yesterday that rather than taking the path of least resistance, he will be challenging Republican Charles Poindexter in the 9th District, where Leader Armstrong’s family roots go back over 160 years:

Anyone who wants to run for the House of Delegates should be able to state why. There are many challenges facing Franklin, Henry and Patrick counties. I believe I have the experience, the leadership and the energy to help find solutions to our problems. And I will continue to fight til the cows come home for a fair shake for hard-working families in our area.

So in announcing my bid for reelection I've come back to my roots. To a place that meant so much to me as a boy. No one has to tell me how to find the 77 Restaurant. Or Callaway or Snow Creek or Penhook or Boone's Mill. Quite a few people in my old district have urged me to continue to represent them..that they don't want to lose my voice in Richmond. I have listened.

Much of the newly constituted 9th house district is the old 10th house district. It contains western Henry, which I have represented for 20 years and Patrick County, which I have represented for 10 years. Moreover I represented southern Franklin County in my first 10 years in the House which included Ferrum and Henry. So despite what anyone might say over the coming months, this area is home. I was born here and raised here, and my family's roots in this area go back over 160 years.

How gutsy a call is this? Very. The 9th District is one of the most conservative of the districts which gained parts of the old 10th.

But Del. Poindexter has big reasons to worry about this upcoming race, starting with his own weak performance in previous elections. Poindexter dramatically underperformed the last time he faced major-party opposition, winning with just 46% of the vote in 2007 (John McCain dominated that district 62%-38% just a year later).

Leader Armstrong also begins the race with a pocket of strength in Patrick and Henry Counties, which he already represents in the old 10th District. Armstrong outperformed his district-wide total in both counties in 2009, winning them with nearly 58% of the vote in a challenging election year. And the northern half of the new 9th District, Franklin County, was the Democratic nominee’s strongest county in that 2007 race, as he nearly matched Poindexter’s 46%.

Together, these results suggest that Republicans will need more than the stroke of a pen to keep Ward Armstrong down.

In his most recent column in Campaigns & Elections, Noah Rothman highlights some of the difficulties Republicans are facing as both parties prepare for redistricting across the country.

 …[A]s the process gets underway ina series of first-round states, including New Jersey, Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana, some party insiders are concerned that Republicans have failed to amass the funding necessary to capitalize on their advantages.

…

“The DLCC has been working with the Foundation for the Future and NCEC [The National Committee for an EffectiveCongress] for almost five years to make sure Democratic state legislators haveas much and as high-quality data as possible when they draw district lines and evaluate Republican gerrymanders,” [DLCC Executive Director Michael] Sargeant told C&E. However, he agrees that the failure of the MAPS project is a negative for Republicans. “By letting the MAPS project languish, the GOP isn't in as good of a position for redistricting as most think,” Sargeant said.

…

Roll Call’s Gonzalez reports that donors to MAPS lost faith in the group when they discovered that its “vision was too broad.” Underscoring the importance of MAPS to the Republican redistricting strategy, former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie told Hotline last week that, while there was still time to recover from the loss, the failure of MAPS has left Republicans at a distinct disadvantage in the first states to redistrict.

The notion that Republicans aren’t well-prepared for redistricting is nothing new. Politico picked up on this in June of last year, and the parties’ relative preparedness is discussed in “GOP lags in early redistricting race.”

Last Wednesday, a Hotline On Call post (Republicans Looking For Leadership On Redistricting) highlighted some anxieties from prominent GOPers.

"I've been surprised that I didn't see the party yearning for some sort of outside effort to get the map-making up and going," [former NRCC chair Tom] Reynolds told Hotline On Call. "Normally instead of having the party pay for that, someone on the outside would take that initiative and I haven't seen that leadership."

…

Another Republican deeply involved in redistricting at the state level described the GOP's organization toward redistricting in one word: "Chaos."

Did Republicans not realize redistricting was getting underway this soon? Maybe next time they should set themselves an Outlook (Google?) calendar reminder.