I think I made a mistake with PA so I’ll redo that one in the days ahead.
MA: It looks that Western Mass has enough for its 2 districts. The current 1st has a tiny piece of Middlesex, but there should be about 166K residents in Worcester County left over. The current 3rd stretches from Worcester to Fall River. That would be the logical direction to go.
Essex County in the northeast has enough to preserve the 6th; Suffolk (Boston) has enough for the 8th.
Middlesex has enough for the bulk of their two seats, the 5th and the 7th. I hadn’t realized Barney lives there as well at the northern tip of the 4th. He could challenge Markey or Tsongas, but it would be on their turf.
It does look to me that the southeast will have to lose a seat. I’m thinking the 3rd will stretch to Worcester, as it does now, with there being a district that looks like the 10th (possibly renumbered as the 4th), and then an expanded 9th.
There will be only about 12K residents left over after cutting out 5 CD’s from Philadelphia and its collar counties. The 15th and the 6th will most likely have to take a larger chunk of Berks.
Northeast Pennsylvania will still have enough for the core of 2 CD’s (10th and 11th); they will have to extend further east, into the 5th, or south (into the 17th). Both these districts are winnable by Democrats so the 5th may be the better option.
The 19th CD of York-Adams-Cumberland will be renumbered to something.
Tim Holden of the 17th won Dauphin and Schuykill — lost Berks, Lebanon, and Perry. Possibly the 16th or 19th could absorb some Democrat areas of Dauphin; then the 17th would have to extend further east into Republican territory. As I said in another thread, Holden was able to beat Gekas eight years ago.
The 12th is a definite candidate for elimination. Cambria could be placed into the 9th and a Republican could still win the district. I can see the 4th eliminated as well.
I thought the population loss was in Western Massachusetts but anecdotally, our many little s*!thole cities (New Bedford, Fall River, Brockton, Lynn, Lawrence, etc.) also seem to be in decline population wise. Also, in Pennsylvania, can’t the GOP focus in on the bad areas in Philly and Pitt to construct a few 70% Left areas, leaving the rest of Pennsylvania for the GOP?
Stan Rosenberg of Amherst is on the committee and is good friends with John Olver, the Berkshires' congressman, so he's going to try to maintain two seats in Western Mass.
Howie Carr keeps saying that there just aren't enough people out there to make that work. Olver's district extends from the New York border to the suburbs of Lowell -- an exaggeration, but not much of one.
The earlier talk was that Barney Frank might be the one to lose his district, with New Bedford thrown in with the Cape district and his Boston-Newton territory tossed in with one of the Boston area districts. Maybe the committee will go that way, though Frank must have a lot of clout in the party by now.