Moe Lane

A much better gift than a tie or set of dishes, by the way.

Cook Political Report has more or less formalized their 2012 redistricting scorecard; their final score is a gain of one Republican seat, based solely on redistricting.  Cook notes that this total actually represents about 10 to 15 seats being fortified for the GOP, given that the majority of legislators who benefited from redistricting were Republicans.  This will no doubt infuriate Democrats, but then: elections matter.

In particular, state legislature elections matter. (more…)

Assertion (March 20th, 2012):
Texas Redistricting Costing Republicans & Romney

 As the Texas redistricting fiasco continues, Reuters reports that Republicans are losing the opportunity to capture the state’s Latino vote.

Reality:
Disillusioned by the Democrats, a Texas Latino Lawmaker Joins GOP

José Manuel Lozano, who represents District 43, started the month of March as a Democrat. Now the Mexican-American business owner is a Republican.

“I didn’t leave the party…the party left me,” Lozano said, echoing Ronald Reagan’s famous line, in a recent interview with Fox News Latino.

(more…)

I dunno.  They’re certainly scurrying around like… things that scurry… in Albany tonight.  This report suggests that the fix is in for the state legislature, and that Governor Cuomo is going to cave on his promise to support reform today, in exchange for promises of reform tomorrow; but it also suggests that the NY legislature has decided to let the courts design the Congressional maps, after all.

Which means… OK. Current breakdown is 21 Democrats, 8 Republicans.  After this election, we’re looking at… OK, Hinchey is retiring and Turner is running for Senate, and their districts were erased.  20 Democrats, 7 Republicans.  Assume that Hochul and Buerkle cancel each other out*.  Still 20/7.  Of the remaining Members of Congress, the two most vulnerable are Bishop and Owens, and I think that at least one of them is going to be tossed.  So it’s reasonable to think that a 19/8 D/R result is very possible… and that even an 18/9 D/R one is not outside the realm of possibility.  Which is to say, one where the NY Republican delegation somehow increases in size in the face of a two-seat CD loss, or at least stands pat. (more…)

I say “threatened” because if the NY state legislature doesn’t come to a deal by Wednesday, this is the map that is very likely going to be the one to get used:

…and there’s going to be several Members of Congress who will be very unhappy if that happens.  Including Steve Israel of the DCCC. (more…)

Almost.

Some background, for those who need it: Texas, thanks to explosive growth over the last ten years, picked up four Congressional Districts after the last Census.  The Democrats, who are (naturally enough, I suppose) angry that this growth has been at the expense of their own caucus (the 2010 Census generally demonstrated that a lot of people have been voting with their feet on this entire Red State/Blue State paradigm), immediately threw the entire thing into the courts for alleged Voting Rights Act violations.  A San Antonio court threw out the old maps, and put in redrawn ones that just happened to heavily favor the Democrats; and then the Supreme Court reached down from DC and mightily spanked the San Antonio court for that (although a 9-0 reversal is perversely impressive).

So, suitably chastened, the San Antonio court followed the Supreme Court’s instruction to draw interim election maps that actually paid attention to what the duly-elected Texas legislature came up with.  The end result is that on the Congressional level… OK, it’s kind of complicated. (more…)

OK, here’s the background: NY is losing two seats in Congress, thanks to the 2010 Census. Well, more accurately, thanks to the urban blue model of governance that has had folks fleeing those urban areas in droves – but never mind that now. As has been noted previously, the New York legislature is having a devil of a time coming up with a map that backstabs the right people and groups, which is why the courts have stepped in and may take over the process of drawing the actual maps.  Given that the Republican Senate and the Democratic Assembly and  whatever-gets-me-a-Presidential-nomination Governor Andrew Cuomo are currently engaged in a three-sided brawl on the subject, this may actually even happen.

What makes this interesting is a report from earlier in the month that one potential plan to handle the downstate/upstate bloodletting – OK, let me explain that.  The upstate districts in NY are where the GOP is strongest; the downstate districts are dominated by Democrats.  The Democrats aren’t really in a position to eliminate two Republican-held seats, so the general assumption has been that one upstate GOP legislator and one downstate Democratic one will get worked over by this deal.

How that would work is complicated by New York’s convoluted recent electoral history.  Right now there are eight Republicans and twenty-one Democrats in the NY delegation.  Of the Republicans, only one – Bob Turner, in Anthony Weiner’s old seat – is a really good pickup opportunity; the rest are either freshmen who took back established Republican seats, or Pete King (and thus probably invulnerable).  Diluting Hinchley – which is what the courts may want to do – probably won’t kill the re-election chances of anybody on the GOP side.  On the other hand, Democrats William Owens and Kathy Hochul are in trouble in the general election: the first one is in office because the Republicans/Conservatives decided to split their strength for two consecutive contests; and the second one is in office because Chris Lee tried to cheat on his wife using Craigslist.   Shorter version: Hinchley’s retirement makes keeping Turner’s downstate seat intact a good thing for the Democratic party, because the GOP probably won’t sit still for eliminating two Republican-held seats AND NY Democrats will need something to offset two possible (and plausible) losses this fall.

Believe me, trying to keep this stuff straight in my own head is difficult; I’m probably getting at least four critical details quite wrong.

(more…)

So, we’re having ourselves a situation in New York with redistricting.  The basics: New York, like many blue states that have been blue states for a while, has seen its population ratio to the rest of the country drop sufficiently that it’s losing two Congressional Districts this cycle.  So they’re all trying to figure out how to redraw the map for an optimal destroy-your-enemies approach:

• New York Democrats want to mess over New York Republicans.  The New York GOP is defending several federal Congressional seats (six of the seven GOP-held seats are effectively freshmen) and its Senate majority; and New York Democrats are eager to try to winnow those numbers down.  If they can figure out how to do it without eliminating a downstate district.  Or two, frankly.
• New York Republicans, on the other hand, are digging in their heels until they get at least their state Senate majority preserved (note that there is precious little loyalty, on either side, between the state and national parties).
• And then there’s Governor Andrew Cuomo.  He’s a Democrat… which means that he’s usually at war slightly more often with the Republican-controlled Senate than he is with the Democratic-controlled Assembly.  He’s also currently stuck with a veto threat that, if not followed, will hurt his chances for later higher office.  But if Cuomo does veto whatever devil’s bargain the New York legislature comes up with, then… Bad Things Happen.

(more…)

Ted Ctuz is an old friend of RedState, of course: so we made sure to spend a couple of minutes talking about the race, how the ongoing redistricting dispute in Texas is making everybody’s elections difficult, and about CPAC generally.  And if you’re wondering why a Texas federal Senate race would be affected by redistricting, it’s because nobody really wants to have three primary dates this year.  Anyway, we chatted for a bit:

Ted’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

And it sounds like it’s not to run for Governor of North Carolina, either.  The relevant text:

This was not an easy decision. However, I am confident that it is the right decision. It is a decision I have weighed heavily over the past few months. I have always said family comes first, and I never intended to be a career politician. I am ready to refocus my priorities and spend more time at home with my wife Nikol and two young children.

Translation: redistricting had doomed Heath Shuler, anyway, and it’s a bad year to be a Democrat in North Carolina.  Just ask Bev Perdue.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Man, Charlotte’s going to be all kinds of fun during the Democrats’ convention this year, huh?  Whose idea was that, anyway?  Joe Biden’s?  It kind of feels like a Joe Biden kind of decision.

I got my new election card in the mail… and on the notice, there it was: an indication that my district has been changed, thanks to Maryland’s horrifically gerrymandered new maps.  WHICH IS GREAT.  I have no idea what Dutch Ruppersberger’s district’s new partisan numbers are, but they were D+7 last time; and Elijah Cummings’ (my pre-redistricting Congressman) was D+25.  There’s no chance at all that Ruppersberger did that well out of the process.

So: while the Democrats may have screwed over most of their constituents – particularly minority ones, who really should haven’t have had Montgomery County sliced up the way that it was* – at least I’m doing better out of the deal.

Moe Lane

*The question is, does the Supreme Court agree with me? Well, we’ll find out.

And I wish that I had been there to see both the Democrats and the three-person judicial panel bug their eyes out at Texas’s lawyer when he calmly pointed out that any hypothetical screwing over of minority Democrats when it came to redistricting took place not because they were minorities, but because they were Democrats. I don’t know if that argument’s going to actually fly with the courts, but it must have at least rocked them back on their heels to have somebody simply admit that, yes, the Republicans dominate Texas right now, the Democrats don’t, and these facts have consequences.

As to how this will all play out… well, the USSC’s instruction to the San Antonio court trying to come up with interim maps still holds: show more deference to the state legislature’s maps.  Despite the fact that they’re probably going to be rejected anyway; and the deadline for new maps is going to be February 6th, on pain of delaying the primaries yet again.  I’m starting to understand why Michael Williams is assuming that there won’t be a primary in April…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Sorry about the sound quality: we’re in the middle of a solar storm today, remember?  At any rate, I talked this afternoon with Michael Williams, who is running in TX-25, assuming of course that the courts d0n’t decide to fold up the new Congressional maps for Texas into a variety of paper airplanes and fly them out of the window.  The short version is: the maps are being contested, a lower court stepped in to get something up and running, the Supreme Court stepped in to smack down said lower court, and now people are kind of worried that the primaries are going to be delayed yet again.  As you might have guessed, we talked a bit on the redistricting controversy down there; Michael even took the time to gently correct me on a couple of things that I was getting wrong…

Michael’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)