Talk Elections

Is redistricting controlled by the Republicans?

Not exactly, the gov is a Dem but the Republicans have a veto-proof majority in the State Senate and almost that in the House.  African-Americans will want to make sure Clay keeps his district (MO-01) majority black, and the only way that happens is if Carnahan's district gets chopped up.  His house will be put in MO-01, for sure, and given that white Dems have little leverage (given that black legislators can join in the veto override) and that MO-01 needs to pack as many blacks as it possibly can in order to get to 50% (I've tried drawing it; you can barely get to 50%) it probably won't be a fair fight in his new district.  

It's not majority black right now.

But at the same time, it's at least 3-1 Dem in bad years. So I'm pretty freaking sure that it doesn't have to be majority black to be won by Clay.

Of course, there are some Dems who got treats from the Republican leadership and might vote to move the plan, but are they willing to override a veto too?

49.8%, close enough; that's about as high as I can get the new and expanded MO-01 without getting too crazy with the boundaries.  I doubt that the black pols are eager to see that number dip too much, not because they're afraid the seat will go to a Republican, but because they want to guarantee that an African-American wins the Dem primary, particularly when the seat becomes open.  This is the same racial politics that happen pretty much everywhere; is there any particular reason that Missouri is different?  

Re: the veto threat, I think the trick for the Republicans is to make a map that will get black votes (keep Clay and Cleaver safe, with black pluralities if not majorities), but not be so blatantly partisan as to back Nixon into a corner wherein he would be forced to veto it.  In that situation he might decide that it's not worth fighting an override battle just for an extra percentage point or two.  

6-2 or 5-3 is not a fight over a percentage point or two.

6-2 is not proportional for Missouri, even if it was red.

It's not proportional as it stands, and that's not a Republican map.  It will never be proportional as long as blacks demand to have 'their' districts, and as long as Dems continue to pack themselves into urban areas.  Sorry to burst your bubble.  

Since I'm in MO for Christmas, I took a stab at a map. The districts are equal within 25 based on the DRA estimates, and CD 1 stays majority black. CD 5 stays solidly Dem, the cores of CD 3 and 9 are combined with roughly equal parts from each old district. Other incumbents should have secure GOP districts. Perhaps, if there is a compromise between the legislature and governor, it might be along these lines.

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Why not just put all of the city into one district?

Based on the estimates, that would drop the black percentage below 50%. With the big increase in size due to the loss of a district, it just barely exceeds 50% as I drew it.

Put it in the 2nd district then. That 3rd is disgusting.

That would probably make Akin very vulnerable (though no goner), ie, be a compromise rather than an R drawn "compromise".
Which means we might just get lucky and see it put in the first where it belongs.

MO-01 as drawn in 2000 is just below 50% black, so I don't think it's protected by VRA.

Not this again.

Well, I'm getting tired of people clutching their pearls about "it must be majority-black!!!!".

It is protected by the VRA because it can be safely expected to be represented by the candidate of choice of its Black residents. That means it needs to remain that way. 50% has nothing to do with anything.

True, but that also means that drawing it to be 45% black probably works fine.

I doubt the Republicans would put Carnahan's portion of St. Louis County into the former MO-09; it would be safer for them to put it into MO-08, since the district is more Republican and Emerson is extremely well-liked for whatever reason.

Here's what I came up with:

State:

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St. Louis area:

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- MO-01 is 49% black, takes in all of St. Louis now.
- MO-02 takes in some parts of St. Louis County from MO-01 and MO-03, and adds a few of the heavily-Republican counties to the west to compensate.
- MO-03 is parts of the former MO-09, MO-08, and MO-03. Luetkemeyer would go here.
- MO-04 adds Columbia and some counties to the northeast and southeast; probably makes it somewhat more Democratic, but the Democrats aren't getting that district back.
- MO-05 is all of Jackson County and a bit of the suburbs north of Kansas City.
- MO-06 stretches across the north third of the state now. MO-07
- MO-07 is pretty much the same.
- MO-08 takes in the St. Louis County part of MO-03, but should remain pretty Republican.

At a guess, I'd say MO-01 is about 75-25 Dem, MO-05 about 60-40 Dem, and the remaining districts about 60-40 Republican.

Edit: Did a rough calculation of MO-04, it would be 57-43 McCain.

The problem is with challenges, and who drew the map. A map drawn by Dems to favor them would be less likely to be challenged if a district is only 45% black, especially if the reason was to help improve the performance of a neighboring district. Also, before Bartlett last year, minority districts less than 50% were OK. Now they are permitted, but don't qualify as a section 2 district.

If the map is drawn by the GOP to favor them, a challenge from the Dems could easily be based on a failure to create a majority-minority district when such a district could exist. That's a key to a challenge under Gingles, and the GOP is more likely to avoid that challenge by scrupulously making the districts over 50%. Since the GOP legislature is drawing the map to send to the Gov, I assume they would want to avoid a subsequent challenge in federal court from an external group.

I don't think the legislature would do that. I put together the 2008 presidential vote for St Louis County. That plus st Louis city make up just under 2 CDs in the remap. Without St Charles to offset the Dem vote, I don't see the legislature putting out a new CD 2 that's basically just St Louis County with part of the city and only a bit outside the county.

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It's an interesting alternative to my version combining CDs 3 and 9. It looks like you've put more heavily Dem areas (70% D) from St Louis county than the city wards (60% D) that I kept out of CD 1. My rough estimate is that your CD 2 would be 52% R in 2008 and CD 8 would be 54% R. I had my CD 2 up to 55% and CD 3 at 54% R.

Yeah, I drew it just right now too. It's incredibly hard to get CD-1 over 50%, but it's possible.

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50.18%, and yeah, that southwestern spike ends in two Black-majority precincts. The next nearest one is in Jefferson City.

I see that Johnny gave Luetkemeyer a basically completely new district. That may well be what it takes to dislodge Carnahan; I had that intention but didn't have that much imagination, and now suppose that I've really eliminated Akin, not Carnahan, so i won't bother posting the whole thing.

This is what I came up with:


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Basically Akin gets Maryland Heights, Clayton, and Creve Coeuer.

Emerson gets Jefferson thru Lumay, and the red counties down the Mississippi river.

University City and all of St. Louis goes to Clay.

Yes, but the GOP has a readily available argument that a 50% black VAP district simply isn't possible. Which it isn't. So the point is moot. (Lewis above drew a 50% black seat, but it presumably does not meet 50% VAP, and no seat could.)

Can't Nixon just veto any map that eliminates a Democratic seat?

The Republicans are 3 votes shy of a veto-proof majority in the House, and have one in the Senate. All they need to do is peel off a few Democrats, which they're expected to do by placating the African-Americans through keeping Cleaver safe and maintaining the black population in Clay's district.

One bizarre factoid is that bumping up CD1's Black share as high as it can go helps Carnahan, as you have to forfeit White, strongly Democratic areas on the South Side of the city in favour of solid-lean-Democrat, white-majority-but-Black-presence areas in the western inner suburbs.

By moving MO-05 up north a tad bit I think it could be picked off. Then tried a combo of packing the dem vote into St. Louis with some spilling out into St. Louis county, the rest of which is divided up.

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You've probably made MO-05 more Democratic, not less. Certainly it's at least D+7 or so on that map.

Yeah, you'd have to split up Kansas City proper; the non-KC part of Jackson County basically votes in line with the statewide totals (according to their crappy elections website, it went 50-49 McCain and 54-41 Blunt; yes, apparently they report their results separately from KC's results).

Either way, it won't happen; the best case scenario for the Dems is a 5-2 map with one swing district.

I took another stab at a 6-2 map:

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I think (I did this a week or two ago, never bothered to post it) I calculated MO-03 and MO-08 as being over 60% McCain without the parts of St. Louis and Jefferson, so putting those in there shouldn't affect the districts too much. Either way, all of the districts except for MO-01 and MO-05 should be at least mid-50s McCain districts.

being an evil genius, i wanted to take Cass County where the person who unseated Skelton lives, and glue it next to a bunch of heavily black precincts in KC.

First look at a potential map

http://ozarksfirst.com/fulltext?nxd_id=431676

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Any reason you can think of for why the 5th stretches out that far?  I Assume it's intended to prevent Ike Skelton from running again (as he lives in Lafayette county), but it draws the 6th dangerously far into Jackson county.

Either way, this is almost certainly going to be vetoed by Nixon.  It eliminates Carnahan's district, and I'm pretty sure all the other Republicans are safe in their districts.

I would imagine they had Skelton in mind when they put this together, even though it's doubtful he'd run again. Republicans can override the veto in enough black legislators vote for the bill and it's not clear if they will get those votes.

imagine what a Skelton-Cleaver primary would be like.

Anybody have a map that shows what exactly they did around St Louis? I wonder how they're protecting Todd Akin with this thing.

The Senate should be considering its version of a map tomorrow.

Here's a better version of the map.  Carnahan's district seems to get chopped up between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th.

http://www.house.mo.gov/largemap.aspx (http://www.house.mo.gov/largemap.aspx)

Surely Nixon will veto this.

Well, if the Republicans can get two Democrats in the House to vote for it, they can override his veto...

Why are they doing this to Kansas City?

i know the new map is almost set in stone, but does anyone see my districts? I remember someone telling me that if Ike Skelton had survived 2010, they would have drawn this map to dismember the district.

Statewide View

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Kansas City
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St Louis
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Under this map; Emerson, Long, Graves, and Cleaver get to keep 100% of their old districts. They merely expand in size. To gain adequate population, they add in territory from the current 4th district. The remaining parts of the 4th district are added to the northern and western areas of the current 9th district and renamed the 4th. The southern and eastern areas of the old 9th take in the northern and western areas of the 2nd and the remaining parts of the 2nd take in the St. Louis County portion of the 1st plus a small amount of northern St. Louis City. The rest of old CD 1 is attached to the current CD 3, so Canrahan actually keeps 100% of the district and probably gets safer by adding more of the city of St. Louis.

1st District
Incumbent: Todd Akin
Race % 60.4 White, 32.2 Black
This is a district that takes in some republican suburbs from old CD 2 but it is outvoted by black precincts from old CD 1. Obama probably got in the high 50s or low 60s. Akin barely lives in this district, so he may very well run in the new 2nd district. If he does that, a democrat from the legislature may run here.

2nd District
OPEN
Race % 90.7% White
See Above

3rd District
Race 73.5% White, 19.5% Black
Incumbent: Bill Clay Jr vs. Russ Carnahan
This district takes in almost all of St Louis County and the remaining parts of the old CD 3. Clay and Carnahan would face off in a primary here. Carnahan would love this district, because a lot of Clay’s black constituency is gone, giving him the opportunity to win the primary and become even more entrenched. Obama probably got 65-70 percent here.

4th District
Race % 87.5 White
Incumbent: Blaine Luetkemeyer
This is probably somewhere between an R+8 and R+12 district. Safe Republican

5th District.
Race % 66.6 White, 21.5 Black
Incumbent: Emmanuel Cleaver vs. Vicky Hartzler
This would be a fun matchup to watch. Can Hartzler establish herself as a giant killer by defeating another entrenched incumbent? In this race, she takes on Emmanuel Cleaver (chairman of the black caucus). In her favor, this district is probably only a D+5 as opposed to the D+10 it used to be. However, I still think Cleaver would probably win this district as many of the urban voters from Kansas City would be turned off by the antiquated views of Hartzler on certain issues.

6th District
Race % 88.3 White
Incumbent: Sam Graves
As said before, this district stays the same only it takes in territory from old CD 4.

7th District
Race % 89.8 White
Incumbent: Billy Long
See 6th District

8th District
Race % 91.3 White
Incumbent: Jo Ann Emerson
See 6th District

I don't think Kansas City itself is split, is it?

On another note, its amazing how quickly MO has done redistricting. Well oiled machine I guess.

House plan to eliminate Carnahan just passed by a 10-1 committee vote. I don't think any of them give a damn about him at all.

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2011/04/05/house-committee-passes-redistricting-plan/

They were one of the first ones up in 2001, too, I recall. I can't believe it's been ten years already.

All three black Democrats on the committee are for this plan.  If Nixon vetoes it will get overridden. 

Looking closer at the map, it looks like they left nearly all of the existing part of Jackson County in and added the little sliver from MO-04. I don't think this will change the district's partisan lean all that much. My guess is it's still about 60-61% Obama.

There's apparently a split between the House and the Senate over the maps. (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/political-fix/article_3e24a162-66ec-11e0-b5ac-001a4bcf6878.html) These are the two proposals:

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Yes, they're arguing over what would seem to be incredibly minor differences.

Silly, but I expect them to get it done in time. I don't know if Nixon will even bother vetoing.


Politico has a nice article about Carnahan dropping f bombs on Cleaver/Clay after they threw him under the bus.

I drew a nonpartisan/court map of Missouri:

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It would still be 5-2-1, and even then, the one swing district (green) would have been at best around 50/50 in 2008.

Seriously? I doubt that portion of St. Louis County is significantly more Republican than Jefferson county. Looks like an about 54% Obama district.

Check out this post on SSP:

http://swingstateproject.com/showComment.do?commentId=257428

Western St. Louis County is pretty Republican.

Do you know if the bit about Cleaver's district is true? There must be a reason that they're excluding large sections of Jackson County and adding rural counties instead.

The only source I keep hearing from is that notpjorourke guy with his super-leet insider information, but I can believe that it was drawn to protect Cleaver from a primary challenge. I do think his "Cleaver would lose a general election in a Jackson County district" thing is BS, though.

They might be more Republican.  The rural territory it adds is only ~53% McCain, and it takes in Ike Skelton's home (which is probably the biggest reason).  Also, i'm willing to bet the suburban area of Jackson county in the district is more reliably Republican than the rural areas that kept skelton in office.

Could be. That's partially what leads me to believe that Nixon might actually sign the map, especially if Clay/Cleaver want him to.

Now that we're past the veto-override deadline, the GOP has another 2 weeks or so to get something passed.

Yeah the area around Town and Country is but you can find some smaller suburbs that are more swing.

LOL, are they seriously worried about a Skelton comeback? The guy is like 5000 years old.

Well, i think they were planning this map before they beat him in 2010, but either way its a safe move.  No sense wasting republican votes in MO-5 when they can be used elsewhere.

That's probably it.

It seems kind of silly to ever be concerned with him, just let him retire (it wouldn't have been long) and the seat would've been almost an automatic pickup.

why did Skelton never run for higher office? He probably would have been a good candidate for Senate to replace Eagleton back in 86.

These idiots finally come to agreement.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/apr/27/redistricting-talks-resume-night-session/



Wonder if Nixon signs it with pressure from Cleaver.

Ze map:

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MO-02 wouldn't be out of reach for a Democrat, I don't think (though it almost certainly voted McCain), but Carnahan is not the man to win that seat.

Yep. You could get an ironclad 6-2 map by sticking either CD-3 or CD-8 into St. Louis County to pick up ~100k swing voters, and giving CD-2 all of St. Charles, but the Republican rurals would throw a fit.

I can't tell which district I'm in (I'm on the borderline of two)!!

VETO (http://www.politico.com/blogs/davidcatanese/0411/Nixon_will_veto_Missouri_map.html?showall)

Article also says they were 13 votes short of a veto-proof vote in the House. :)

Good; he's leaving time for an override. At least 1 St. Louis black Democrat has already committed to doing so.

First 4 to step up to the plate get to draw their own House district.

If they draw their own district, it's not a veto override. It's a new map. I don't think there's time for that.

Yeah, the article seems to imply that they either override the veto or it goes to the courts.

Wow, none of the Pubbies noticed that Nixon is from Jefferson County before they carved it up into three pieces?! What did they expect?

This is why I love redistricting.

There were nine members absent on the final vote, and the plan got nine fewer votes than there are Republicans. Even though three Democrats voted for it. So there must be some Republicans opposed to the thing?

A few, in the random rural counties that got dumped into MO-05. They can probably wrangle those back, then you just need 1 or 2 more Democrats.


The 3 way Jefferson split though is quite stupid. You might as well remove MO-02 from it entirely.

Partisan move by Nixon.  Of course the map favors Republicans-- Missouri is a Republican state.  We earned our 6-3 majority in the house delegation, and our huge majorities in the state legislature in Democrat drawn districts.  It's not the legislative Republicans' fault that 48% of the states Democrat voters are packed into just 3 jurisdictions. 

but why do democrats like to segregate themselves into districts. Are they intolerant of opposing viewpoints?

Minorities tend to live with other minorities, college kids and academia all have to live in close proximity to a university, and low income people can't afford expensive suburban real estate.

The Democrats don't have anyone else in the South.

The map is a mess, it connects areas that have no business being connected and unnecessarily splits counties. At least one of the seats shouldn't be a rock solid guarantee for either party.

Krazen makes a good point. However, Missouri is not necessarily a southern state. We've been over this before in another forum and the conclusion is that Missouri has parts of the state that are both southern/ozark and areas that are plains state/midwestern.

When ultra-partisan idiocy reaches a certain frequency it turns into a sort of delightful - and almost post-modern - display of a very special kind of stupidity. There's something glorious about its sheer denseness; it's like those people who, every four years, are utterly convinced that England will win the World Cup, who festoon their cars, hours and (ultimately) faces in the St George's Cross, and who suspect anyone who's just a little sceptical of being borderline traitors. I love it!

I don't see why they didn't just attach all of Jefferson county to MO-8.  It would be easy to do, and It's not like Cape Girardeau is running short on Republican voters.  Jefferson county isn't even really Democratic territory; it voted less than 51% for Obama and Bush won it in 2004.

The scuttlebutt is (at least from one guy and his super-leet insider sources) that Jo Ann Emerson didn't want her district to take in too much territory in the St. Louis media market.

It's not her; its some dumba$$ southeastern Missouri legislators who think having 80-100k people in Jefferson County, compared to 600k people out of it, will turn MO-08 into a St. Louis based district and not a SE Missouri district.

Emerson I believe endorsed both the House and Senate maps. Doubt she cares.

She probably cared, somewhat, but preferred to hide behind Luetkemeyer because he cared more.

That's surprising seeing as how she lives in St. Louis with her husband who's a Democratic union member. :P ..and some of the district is a part of the St. Louis media market (St. Francois, Washington and Iron counties), and Ste. Genevieve County is as well.

As for Jefferson County, why don't they just carve it into two districts: have the cities/suburban Jefferson County moved into one of the St. Louis districts (pretty much everything from Crystal City north to Arnold) and then everything south of Crystal City (rural/podunk parts of the county) into MO-08? Seems like that would be less controversial.

Because that would mean a seat for Russ Carnahan to run in?

Well, what better time to add some levity than to present my own Missouri maps! I'm sure all the 'experts' will have fun with this. :)

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Notice the big difference here? Yes, I decided that it was high time my kin in central Missouri got their own district instead of being chopped up all the time! Naturally both Columbia and Jefferson City had to anchor it, stretching over to Sedalia as well. Once I had the cluster I wanted in the center, I moved to do other districts to get a better idea of where this new CD 04 was going to have to go. I think it turned out pretty well, honestly. But anyway, let's get the two insets for the big cities!

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Now with all of this in mind, a few notes:
- I knew a district had to go and figured the old CD 03 had to bite it, although all the districts got moved at least a little bit. That actually worked out the easiest for me.
- I had only a vague idea of where the existing districts were (I did make sure the numbers matched up though) so I didn't have the option on showing me where the old boundaries were. I didn't want to be biased by that. :)
- No, I was not trying to get rid of either Carnahan or Akin. I paid no attention whatsoever to where the Congresscritters were located. Yes, that makes my maps DOA no matter what other flaws they have, but hell, I've never cared about keeping Congresscritters happy before, why start now?
- I was trying to create a black-majority CD 01. I came pretty close. There just aren't quite enough of them.
- I was trying to create a KC district. I pretty much got that.
- Corner districts were maintained.
- Where possible, I was trying not to split communities of interest and used geography as much as I could to keep them together. Since my knowledge here is not as great as for NM, I relied on the city/town lines somewhat.

District details:

CD 01: Blue St. Louis district. 748,655 pop, Deviation +39, 49.5% Black, 42.3% White, 3.1% Hispanic, 2.6% Asian, 2.2% Other, 0.2% Native. Minority-Majority, although the VAP is skewed toward the Whites. *shrug* Boundaries get a bit jagged because, as I said, I was trying to grab all the Blacks. For the record, the residential segregation in this area is hilarious. :D

CD 02: Green St. Louis+ district. 748,579 pop, Deviation -37, 89% White, 3.7% Asian, 3.2% Black, 2.4% Hispanic, 1.5% Other, 0.2% Native. I was just wrapping this district around CD 01. Also for the record, there are some odd precincts in the whole St. Louis area. Boundaries with CD 01 jagged for reasons as stated previously. Other county splits caused by population and community of interest concerns.

CD 03: Dark Magenta NE and EC Missouri district. 748,608 pop, Deviation -8, 92.7% White, 2.7% Black, 2.0% Hispanic, 1.4% Other, 1.0% Asian, 0.2% Native. Started in the NE of course, ended up having to shoot southwards to pickup people. County splits caused by population and community of interest concerns (get used to seeing me copy and paste that, because it is true...). CD 09 basically turned into this, but with significant changes in the St. Louis area.

CD 04: Red Central Missouri district. I'm rather proud of this one, even though I'm sure the political powers-that-be would pitch a fit. ^_^ 748,679 pop, Deviation +63, 87.8% White, 5.1% Black, 3.1% Hispanic, 2.0% Other, 1.6% Asian, 0.4% Native. Continuing from my explanation above, as the other districts took form it became clear that I would need to move CD 04 directly south to vacuum up people. County splits caused by population and community of interest concerns. CD 04 pretty much just moved half a district to the east.

CD 05: The Gold Kansas City district. 748,596 pop, Deviation -20, 65.7% White, 21.7% Black, 8.0% Hispanic, 2.5% Other, 1.7% Asian, 0.4% Native. I had no exact idea of the prior CD 05 boundaries, but I think I just about nailed this one. The city/town lines made me go south instead of across the river, but I'm content with how this turned out. County splits caused by population and community of interest concerns, especially that one weird precinct in CD 06 that crossed the Missouri with 109 people that was vital in getting everything under 100 Deviation.

CD 06: Teal NW and WC Missouri district. 748,568 pop, Deviation -48, 88.9% White, 3.8% Hispanic, 3.7% Black, 1.8% Other, 1.4% Asian, 0.4% Native. Started in the NW, found there wasn't nearly enough population there, gave up some eastern rural counties and swung quite a ways south, wrapping around Kansas City to pick up a lot of the old CD 04 territory down there. County splits caused by population and community of interest concerns.

CD 07: Dark Gray SW Missouri district. 748,624 pop, Deviation +8, 89.8% White, 4.3% Hispanic, 2.2% Other, 1.6% Black, 1.3% Asian, 0.9% Native. Pretty straightforward, the SW district anchored on Springfield, Joplin, and Branson. Overall grew a little bit. County splits caused by population and community of interest concerns.

CD 08: Slate Blue SE and SC Missouri district. 748,618 pop, Deviation +2, 91.8% White, 4.3% Black, 1.6% Hispanic, 1.4% Other, 0.5% Asian, 0.4% Native. Started in the SE, expanded almost to its old boundaries, but lost a few counties to three other districts. The major news, of course, is its move up the Missouri River into a lot of the old CD 03's territory. This had to do with population, honestly - it had to expand, and something needed to sweep up the old southern parts of CD 03. And yes, the county splits were caused by population and community of interest concerns.

I have no idea about the political leanings of this and that other than the obvious bits about the two urban districts voting Democrat and the corner districts voting Republican (I think...) and all that. If anyone wants to figure out the new CD 04's leanings, please post. ^_^

Enjoy this while the politicals argue...

WMS, isn't it against forum rules for you to provide insight on the other 49 states? :p

opebo should draw the maps for Missouri. The law should be that he draws a map and it automatically is adopted.

http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2011/05/nixon-has-his-c.php


A veto on a later date would have put much more pressure on state House Republicans, who sources say are just one vote shy of being able to override the veto. Instead, Nixon made sure they would have ample time to pressure members.

Democrats close to the process say that the two Democrats who survive the Republican gerrymander, Reps. William Lacy Clay of St. Louis and Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, are both pleased with the map and are likely to push their allies in the statehouse who originally voted against the map to vote for the veto override. The few Republicans who opposed the map because it splits up St. Louis's suburbs are expected to come back to the Republican fold.

Why wouldn't these Clay/Cleaver allies have voted for the map in the first place?

In what universe is a map drawn that doesn't make Clay and Cleaver comfortable?

The theory is that Cleaver doesn't want east Jackson County, which is why all the maps proposed (including the Democrats ones) keep the odd 5th district. Most plausible explanation I suppose.

As to your first question, well, 4 of them did. Have to go through the motions for the donors if National Journal is correct. Nixon could have sat on the map; instead he sent it back to be overridden.

Overridden.

http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/mo-house-overrides-governors-redistricting-veto

The Missouri House has voted to override Gov. Jay Nixon's veto on a proposal to redraw the state's congressional districts.

The House overrode the veto Wednesday by a vote of 109-44.




Clay and Cleaver come through in the clutch to clean out Carnahan.

Ok, wow, I didn't believe you, but here we are.

It must be a very painful day to be a Democrat. Your own members sold out your side. That must really suck!

Nah, just a painful day to be a Carnahan. Pretty sure everyone else knew the fix was in.

Shrinking cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and St. Louis need to stop population flight from their cities or shut up. Sorry, you shouldn't get 2 Congressional seats when you don't even have the population for 1....

http://midwestdemocracyproject.org/blogs/entries/breaking-house-overrides-nixon-veto-redistricting-map/


That final “yes” vote turned out to be Rep. Jonas Hughes, the Kansas City Democrat who has had perhaps the wildest legislative session in recent memory.

He cast the deciding vote on Wednesday morning despite an intense lobbying effort on the House floor by fellow Democrats. Afterward, with tears streaming down his face and staining the shoulder of his suitcoat, he retreated to the members-only lounge behind the chamber, refusing to meet with reporters.

In a brief exchange, he said only that he voted yes “Because my congressman asked me to.”




The new fantastic four. Looks like the GOP is going to be giving them nice offices on the 3rd floor.


Edit: Senate just overrode 28-6.

i hate this map. Is there some excuse someone can find in it to take it to the DOJ?

Probably not, it doesn't violate the VRA (that Black-pluralty district is already as black as it could realistically be anyway and the 5th is a black-opportunity district at least), and "Being a partisan dick" isn't DOJ worthy.

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2011/05/04/lawmakers-override-governors-veto-congressional-redistricting-map-date-may-4-2011/

Rep. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis City, said the four Democratic votes, all of which came from black members of the caucus, should come as a sign that black Democrats deserve more recognition from their party. Nasheed's district is represented by the other African-American Democratic U.S. representative, William Lacy Clay.

"For years, African-Americans have been taken for granted within the Democratic party, and at some point African-Americans should understand that their vote counts and they deserve more from the Democratic party," Nasheed said. "At the end of the day we are in lock step with them, we vote 99.9 percent Democrat, but there is no return on the vote."





Zing!

And how many Black representatives from the city voted against the override? ::)

Seriously. Are there recall petitions in Missouri?

Well, to be honest this is not a new occurrence.  Black Democrats favoring a map that benefits Black Democrats over White Democrats is actually relatively common in the South.

Yeah, it's exactly the minimum number required though (if I understood that right), and it's obvious there were massive pressures either way. In Saint Louis at least, it doesn't sound as if their constituents are going to be particularly happy.
It's over as far as the map is concerned, evidently.

Reminds me of the guy in Texas who supported Tom DeLay's redraw because it would create another black seat. Next election he lost the primary. I suspect a similar fate is coming here...

Yep.

Clay and Cleaver delivered 4 votes because they only had to deliver 4 votes.......if more were required you would have seen more Black Democrats voting in favor of the override.

Who would that be?

When the federal district court drew the map in 2001 they apologized to Morris Overstreet by name for not drawing another black district in Houston, but explained that a federal court is not a state legislature, and they were restricted in making the minimal changes in order to hold an election with 32 districts.

The Texas legislature then drew the district.

After the Supreme Court turned down the Austin-McAllen district, the NAACP provided a brief in the remedial phase.

It basically said:

(1) DFW: Don't like what happened to Martin Frost, grumble grumble.

(2) Harris County: Happy Dance.

(3) South Texas: What do we care.

Cool little factoid on this.

In 1990 a white liberal happened to win MO-02 by 54 votes. At redistricting (controlled by Democrats) promptly moved all the marginally Democratic areas out of MO-02 into the St. Louis City based MO-01 and MO-03. Clay and Gephardt of course were not successfully primaried until Clay Jr. and Carnahan took the seats.

Jim Talent won MO-02 in 1992.

According to wikipedia, the new map had been drawn before the 1990 elections.

Somehow though, given that this is 1990 we're talking about and not 80 or 70 or whatever, that doesn't sound right. Anyhow, she didn't lose by much in '92. But did lose by a lot when she ran again in '96.