Posted on 04/14/2011 9:19:48 AM PDT by Galactic Overlord-In-Chief
After three weeks of wrangling, lawmakers in the final hours of a special redistricting special session finally agreed on a plan to shrink Louisiana's seven congressional districts to six and sent the measure to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who said he will sign it into law.
The plan also needs the approval of the U.S. Justice Department to ensure that it does not dilute minority voting strength.
Senators revised House Bill 6 by Rep. Erich Ponti, R-Baton Rouge, after three hours of debate and gave it 25-13 approval. The House went along with the Senate changes, 64-35.
The vote on the bill came shortly before 4 p.m. but lawmakers did not go home until the mandatory 6 p.m. deadline, but failed to approve a compromise committee report on the boundaries of the eight districts for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Several lawmakers left the session after the congressional plan was approved and were not around to vote on the final version of the BESE measure.
BESE members are up for election this fall, so a bill will have to be filed for the regular session starting April 25 to try to make another stab at drawing those lines.
Lawmakers earlier Wednesday approved a plan to redraw the five Public Service Commission districts; on Monday they gave final approval to a plan to redraw legislative districts for the fall elections.
After promising to stay out of the redistricting fray, Jindal threatened to veto any congressional bill that did not include two north Louisiana districts: one based in Monroe, the other in Shreveport, as provided in the current congressional alignment.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
The new map can be found here: http://www.legis.state.la.us/billdata/streamdocument.asp?did=736361
Anyway, this is a lot better than what we feared might happen. One of the debated maps would have stretched Fleming’s district across the northern part of the state and increased its black percentage, making it a more marginal seat for us. As it is, LA-04 will only swap out a parish or two and add a few more.
LA-05 is mostly the same, but now it extends into the Florida parishes, taking out some of LA-06 and extending right to the border of Tangipahoa Parish. It also dips down into St. Martin Parish and gives up Iberville Parish to LA-06. In all, Rodney Alexander keeps a safe seat. Though I imagine some St. Helena Parish residents may find it weird to be represented by a district that extends all the way to the Arkansas border.
As for the New ‘awlins district, it now extends up the Mississippi and takes out about 102,000 residents from East Baton Rouge Parish. It also takes in St. James and St. John parishes, which have significant black populations. With that big slice out of EBRP, it probably vacuumed out almost all of the city proper from Cassidy’s LA-06. Speaking of LA-06, it now extends into Tangipahoa and Washington Parishes, taking them out of my LA-01, and also into northern St. Charles and St. John. What likely remains from the old district is the Baton Rouge suburbs from EBRP, Livingston, and Ascension parishes. In short, Cassidy has an uber safe seat. It was 59%-41% for McCain, but with these changes it may go past 70%.
As for LA-01, it looks we grab all of the Gulf Coast up to the border of St. Landry parish and keep a slice of Tangipahoa. Still heavily Republican.
The new LA-03 is what LA-07 mostly was, except it grabs some of the old LA-03, but stops where it takes a chunk of northern Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes. Unfortunately for Landry, his district has been carved out by four other districts, so I don’t see how he could mount a successful primary challenge to Boustany if he wanted to.
In all, I’m a little surprised by how many parishes get split in this map. It’s pretty jagged. Politically, it’s good for us, better than what might have come out of the legislature a week ago.
The big news is the upcoming primary between Charles Boustany and Jeff Landry. I hope that conservatives rally around Landry, although he’s the underdog.
Halloway is age 67, Alexander is 64, Fleming is 59. Those 3 are the oldest and they are being preserved to eliminate the 40-year-old Landry.
Dats the way the system works.
It is also a possibillity that Landry could MOVE his residence to another part of his current district and primary THERE. ( I am assuming all 6 GOPers are running again.)
I am sure Landry has made it clear that he is challenging Charles B, but I am speculating. Re-districting is great fun when seats are lost. Keep an eye on NY-23 (Doug Hoffman) and NY-19, NY-20.
I think it was dumb of them to keep Lake Charles in the LA-07/03 combo instead of going to the LA-04; it forced the Florida Parishes to be attached to the NW LA 5th, and the LA-06 and even the LA-01 going into Arcadiana.
I also question whether they packed as many blacks and Democrats (but I repeat myself) into the LA-02 as they could have.
Still, this should result in 5 relatively (but not completely) safe Republicans and 1 ultrasafe Democrat for the entire decade.
Horribly embarrassing typo . . . .
Kool. You can play ‘find the minority district.’
Clyde Holloway isn’t in Congress anymore (not since 1993), but he is a member of the PSC (since 2009). Alexander is the oldest member of the House delegation (64). The youngest is Cedric Richmond (37). One Republican was going to have to get axed regardless, and unfortunately Landry drew the short straw.
Question for you. How far under in population did LA fall short in keeping a 7th seat ? I’m wondering if growth/recovery could get it back for them in 2022. We had a similar situation in TN in 1972 when we dropped from 9 seats to 8 because of slow growth, but made up for it with excellent growth in the ‘70s to recover our 9th seat again by 1982 (one of the swiftest recoveries of a lost seat due to reapportionment in the past century).
I don’t know sh!t from shinola about the geography there but the 2nd district is likely a gerrymandered black district. Why does America still pander to this racial quota anachronism? Next, illegal Mexicans will scream for ‘their’ districts. Oh wait! They’re every friggin-where!
By my count, LA needed 421,000 more population to have deserved exactly 7 CDs; with their population, they deserve 6.4 CDs. I guess that if the state reversed its recent net migration habits over the next 10 years that it can regain its 7th CD, but I think that it is extremely unlikely to happen. (BTW, I think that TN is the only state over the past 40 years to lose a seat and recover it the next time.)
Blame the racist Voting Rights Act. However, even if the VRA didn’t exist, from a party standpoint, in order to preserve a safe 5R-1D majority, we’d have to draw a district not too dissimilar from the 2nd.
Wow, that’s more than I thought. It looks like that even absent Katrina, LA still probably would’ve shed a 7th seat. It would probably have to add upwards of 500,000+ in 10 years to get it back, and that’s highly unlikely.
As for TN, I think you’re right that it’s the only one. It had done it not long before. We had 10 seats from 1873 until 1933, dropped to 9 for 1932 and recovered the 10th seat again in 1942, but lost it for good in 1952. I don’t know if we’ll ever get 10 seats again, despite booming growth in many areas. We seem to roughly match the national growth.
You make a good point, but a win by Jeff Landry is possible.
here I try to be thorough, and I publicly state that Halloway is a congressman. Our field marshall saves me from the error.
New York would be a good place to find a congressman who moves to keep the part of his district that he wants to be in. That is an option that gerrymandered candidates always have. Move back to the part of the district that you want.
Well, remember, you only need live in the state, but not district, you want to run in for Congress. You could live in Montauk, NY and run to be the member from Buffalo if you so chose. Does it make sense ? No, but it’s legal. State legislatures are a different story. In any event, Landry learned the downside to running and winning as a freshman for Congress in a year ending in zero. Reapportionment can be a bitch, and the n00bs often get the short end (as for Holloway, he wasn’t even the junior GOP member in 1992 holding the 8th seat, and he got the short end that year).
I think Tedisco and Doug Hoffman both lost because of the “don’t live in the district” problem. It is so much easier to just move your residence. NY will be interesting. Western Mass also. At least the bastards can’t move the lines for another 10 years.
In CT, we won’t know the districts until October. Possibly longer.
I’m inclined to back Landry because of Boustany’s myopic shenanigans in backing a plan that would have endangered a GOP seat just so he could have a slightly better district for himself. And if he cares so much about that then perhaps he intends to set a spell and has no intention of running for the Senate in 2014, in which case, why back him over Landry?
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