US House Redistricting: Louisiana

[minionofmidas]

A thread we need to see.

I'll start with a fantasy map. CDs 4, 5, and 6 essentially preserved (4 taking some parishes from 5, 5 and 6 expanding southward), 1 cleaned up with complete disregard to race but respect to political boundaries, 3 distributed between the cleaned-up 2 and 7, which is renumbered 3.
One half of it is actually sort of likely, the other half is utterly impossible - CD3 is 49% White and 41% Black.

[minionofmidas]

So I failed to draw a satisfactorily Black version of this CD2... I would at the very least have had to nudge into Baton Rouge. More reasonable to go the whole hog and do a completely racial split of BR. CD2 is 61% Black.
This required major counterclockwise shifts of territory. Lake Charles will probably have me hunted down & killed as a warning to real life redistricters.
Though this is actually a very clean map - except for the splits involving CD2, there are only three parish splits (Avoyelles and St Landry, and you could avoid one of those but it just looks buttt-ugly; and Jeff Davis). The western CD is composed wholly of entire parishes. Orleans is still a whole lot cleaner than the current map - but that's partly because it's a whole lot cleaner than Baton Rouge.
Populations are within 1000... and if you move that outermost Algiers precinct to the Cajun CD (it's white and just the right size, but it would be the only New Orleans precinct in there) you're within 400 and all but one district (yellow) within 150.

[minionofmidas]

It looks like Jeff Landry would be happy with that map; the new LA-03 would probably favor him over Charles Boustany.

It seems like the way to ensure Landry takes the hit is to wrap CD-1 down the coast so that CD-1 takes St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes.

I just don't know if they do that.

Here's the Jeff Landry hit map.





CD-1 took most of Lafourche as well because the only reasonable alternative to that was to split Lafayette. New Orleans not quite as cleaned as in the last go; Baton Rouge and the corridor (which is majority Black even in this incarnation) a little cleaner.

[minionofmidas]

Not sure what you mean. You certainly don't want to take CD2 to the north shore of Pontchartrain. That's lilywhite posh uberrepublican suburbia there. Also, there are some black suburban areas in southern (populated) Jefferson - south of that weird spike - that you won't want to let go.
Shedding Cassidy's CD6 and letting Landry and Boustany live is probably a workable idea, actually... but only if CD2 is taken into Baton Rouge, as that's pretty much starting the dismemberment already. Then you take CDs4 and 5 east, CD7 north, CD1 west, and CD3 wherever turns out to fit best. I may try that next.

[minionofmidas]

I'm calling it the Rape of Baton Rouge.





This incarnation of CD2 is 58% Black. I suppose combining the dismantle CD6 idea with the CD1 Eastern Prong idea (from the previous attempt and Jim's suggestion) and connecting New Orleans to St Helena via a string of precincts in western Tangipahoa rather than western Livingston may actually come out minimally less disgusting. Either way though, it has no chance of happening.

[minionofmidas]

Yes, definitely better. And yes, definitely still horrid. Also, back up to 61% Black -  western Tangipahoa (rural parts as well as Hammond) has surprising numbers of Black population. Well, surpising to me, anyhow.



Also, in the preceding map technically you couldn't drive from Baton Rouge to the southern parts of CD3 - in both versions the district has the only bridge between Baton Rouge and just above  Laplace - it's just below Donaldsonville, in heavily Afro-American territory. Those two westernmost St James Parish precincts face each other across it. But in the first map the precinct just north of it, which you'd also need to drive from a to b, was in CD2.

[minionofmidas]

So... seeing as dismantling CD6 is just plain ugly... two other ways to preserve two Cajun districts.

Version 1: Steve Scalise's district is packed with Republicans. Share the wealth!







The issue is that it is far from certain that the Cajun part of Landry's district can dominate it, especially as Landry is from New Iberia and Scalise also lives in the district. Worse, with Cajun registration patterns, they might lose the primary and then win the GE with a Melancon revenant as Democratic candidate.

Version 2: That leaves northern Louisiana. Randy Alexander was a Democrat once after all. Can he really be trusted?



The issue here is with district safety in a Democratic waveyear, rather than regionalism. The district at risk being... somewhat surprisingly... the northwestern one, which is down to just 59% White. Probably could be helped a little with more creative boundaries, though.

[minionofmidas]

Is there a legal requirement to keep county splits low? I'm mostly just avoiding them to a large extent as a matter of personal preference.

Yes, adding Iberville and Pointe Coupee - and Avoyelles, too - to a Cajun seat makes sense.  Splits the state in two, though, leaving too little territory for two seats and far too much for one to the north (considering Lake Charles as non-negotiable). Could probably tweak it by splitting Pointe Coupee. Might try such a map. Wouldn't be enough to get Landry out of North Jefferson and St Tammany though, and yes, given the nature of northern Jefferson I consider the Causeway link indispensable, and the Z clearly inferior and more disruptive - unnatural -  than the Mississippi river link.

[minionofmidas]

It's lovely, isn't it. Republicans have full control and still have to screw one of their own.

This is also why they're talking congressional before state house... it's the controversial part.

[minionofmidas]

It's lovely, isn't it. Republicans have full control and still have to screw one of their own.

This is also why they're talking congressional before state house... it's the controversial part.

Well, technically the same is true in Massachusetts. The difference is they have a senate race and a bunch of old people there who might retire.

I also don't think they're quite as keen on regional interests.

Yes. Democrats are also marginally more used to it... and of course, without the VRA, you might try to eliminate Richmond instead here. Heck, his district is drastically underpopulated.

[minionofmidas]

Yep, seems you read the two posts about where additional cajuns live. Saves me the bother of going back to the map one last time, since (except probably for a cleaner New Orleans) this is what it'd have come out as.

[minionofmidas]

Apart from not seeing why going into Lafayette should be preferrable to going into Baton Rouge... if such a map were to be drawn you certainly should shift a lot of territory counterclockwise around the 2nd.

[minionofmidas]

Couldn't the state of Louisiana just argue that the African American populations of Baton Rouge and New Orleans are two discrete and distinct population groups

At which the first judge they not picked specifically for the purpose by them laughs so hard that the state is blown right into Lake Maracaibo, right?

[minionofmidas]

This is the best I could do to keep everyone happy. Well, 5/6 of the state anyway.

The Republicans in Livingston might cry bloody murder at getting represented by Rodney Alexander, though.

But that's the problem with the 2 cajun/2 north configuration. By definition it means crunching the 6th, but someone has to take that territory.

The problem is that the sixth is actually majoritarian in that 4th. Meaning that Rodney Alexander won't be happy at all.

So, apart from amending for the changes between estimates and census results, this map attempts to rectify that and give the north a plurality vs suburban BR and suburban NOLA...

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, I know I have a lot of county splits that just looked prettier.

Putting Alexandria in teal (where it doesn't belong from a "regional" perspective) probably does make sense for the GOP - that red district is getting awfully black otherwise.

They're two centres of population in Vernon Parish, one right by Fort Polk, the other Leesville, and I ran the boundary between them. I suppose their economies are tied to each other and they're better off left together, though...

What's Cassidy going to do after his district is dismantled? If the 4th is really a majorly redrawn 6th, I don't see why he wouldn't run there.

[minionofmidas]

But alright. Cassidy Alexander fight set up again; minimal number of county splits not counting those with Richmond. Not three-way-cutting St Charles means wasting some perfectly good suburban Republicans on Richmond, though. Vermilion was transferred cause otherwise (with boundaries elsewhere as is) the St Landry split goes right through Eunice. I didn't actually keep Rapides in one piece, though - better that than Calcasieu, and if you use Allen you need almost (but not quite) the entire parish making Boustany's connection to Alexandria quite erose.





All districts within 100 of optimum.

The fourth is still just 59.9% White, but Fort Polk is bound to have more Republican Whites - and more Republican / nonvoting minorities - than Alexandria, so I suppose it'll be alright.

[minionofmidas]

Just noticed that I still technically have a three-way split of Orleans with that outermost Algiers precinct. Easily remedied, though - the precinct just west of those two easternmost Jefferson Landry precincts is almost exactly the same size and plurality White.

[minionofmidas]

So they screwed Landry and gave Scalise some nasty Cajuns to deal with. Which is pretty much what it takes to save Cassidy. They must like Cassidy.

[minionofmidas]

Wow, that's right. They really screwed over the eastern part of Cajun country.

[minionofmidas]

They could have forced another VRA seat....

I don't disagree, but the same census that La. is losing a seat, it would look bad and partisan for Obama and the DOJ to do so.

LA is about 33% black, so minorities should have another seat, IMO.

But yeah, I agree.

Are you aware of the Cleomander and the case law around it?

[minionofmidas]

That's what it took in the 90s. It was used for two elections, then struck down by the Supreme Court.