Posted on 02/16/2003 9:28:21 PM PST by LdSentinal
ATLANTA (AP) -- The new Republican leaders of the Georgia Senate debuted their plan Friday for redistricting the chamber, revealing a map of compact, neatly drawn districts that eliminates the strange shapes and meandering lines drawn two years ago by Democrats.
It likely would ensure that Republicans continue to control the chamber, Senate Republican Leader Tom Price of Roswell acknowledged in a briefing for reporters.
"A fair map results in a more favorable outcome for Republicans simply because, at the state Senate level, there are more individuals who vote Republican than Democrat," he said.
Republicans control the Senate 30-26 as a result of four Democrats who switched parties in the aftermath of the November election that gave Georgia its first Republican governor since 1872, Sonny Perdue.
In the campaign last year, Perdue and many GOP legislative candidates railed against the redistricting map drawn two years before when Democrats were in control of the governor's office and both houses of the Legislature.
The Democrats admitted their plan was drawn to maximize their party's gains at the expense of Republicans, but the map was widely criticized by voters for splitting counties and voting precincts and for creating odd, twisting districts that sometimes snaked halfway across the state to combine groups of voters into various districts.
The plan revealed Friday could easily pass the GOP-led Senate but would need House approval to become law. The House remains in the hands of Democrats who are unlikely to approve a map designed to cement Republican gains.
Price said he is optimistic that House Democrats will hear from voters who objected to the way the last plans were drawn and eventually allow a new map to pass.
Among the new plan's features:
Sen. Dan Lee of LaGrange, whose former district was so mangled by fellow Democrats two years ago that he became one of the four party switchers, would get a much more compact west Georgia district with Troup County intact. In the current map, it is split between two Senate districts.
Sen. Joey Brush, R-Martinez, would no longer have to drive from east Georgia to middle Georgia to visit his new, more compact east Georgia district.
Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson, who was given an elongated coastal district, would see his district shrink to Chatham and several neighboring counties.
Sen. Bill Stephens, R-Canton, the governor's floor leader, would lose a horseshoe-shaped district whose two halves are connected by a narrow band near the Tennessee line, and gain, instead, a smaller, more compact district north Georgia district.
Price said the plan meets the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, which bars states like Georgia from taking steps that diminish black voting strength. Under the new plan, the voting-age population in 14 districts would be at least 50 percent black, compared with 12 now.
Further, he said the plan is drawn to a standard in which no district's population varies more than 2.5 percent, up or down, from any other district. The current map's standard is 5 percent.
Also, he said the proposal splits only 33 counties compared with 88 now, and divides just 41 precincts compared with 241 under the current map.
"This picture is a picture that puts Georgia back together," he said.
Republicans plan to take the proposal to their redistricting committee on Monday and then allow a period of public comment before sending it to the Senate floor.
They said they planned to make the map available on their Internet site.
Most lawmakers were en route home when the map was unveiled. The few Democrats reachable by telephone said they had not yet seen the proposal.
Well, let's just say I trust the voters to do the right thing more than I trust the Democrats. Was there any backlash in Tennessee? Or was the gerrymandering more subtle?
Yes and no. Gerrymandering is a time-honored tradition in the liberal TN 'Rat media and the "uproar" only occurred when the initial plan tried to shrink our members (in the House) down to a little over 1/3rd of the seats (despite the fact we've been getting either a plurality or majority of the vote throughout the '90s into this decade). They decided after a mild amount of pressure (the RINO Governor SUPPORTED the gerrymander because it targeted anti-Income Tax GOPers) to just keep the status quo (which is STILL a gerrymander). Consider it like the bully at school who demands the lunch money from his victim for both today and tomorrow and then after some folks around him say, "Oh, c'mon, aincha bein' a little rough on the fella ?" He says, "Aw, OK, I'll be generous -- just give me today's lunch money, then." I'd have to go into more detail about the "racket" as to how other statewide offices are "selected" in this state (all thoroughly designed to prevent Republicans from ever attaining said offices, indeed, no Republican has held a statewide office below Governor since Reconstruction). It's disgusting.
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