US House Redistricting: Tennessee

[memphis]

There's going to be an ugly primary fight if TN-8 is redrawn to include Memphis burbs. Granted, it's mostly a matter of style and not substance, but people out there are not going to want to be represented by some hillybilly farmer. Blackburn's a vaguely snooty country club type and that's how people in East Shelby County imagine themselves to be.

[memphis]

I don't think this is a great map, but I am relieved that Cooper is safe. 6th and 8th are moved out of reach, but may have been already (esp. 6th).

Tanner would I think have won the 8th due to the Memphis blacks being cracked in two. 2000 and 2004 results show this district to have about an even PVI.

They're not. The old TN-8 has about 30,000 Memphis blacks. TN-9 has about about 350,000. And Tanner never had a competitive race. Even in 1994.

[memphis]

Hmm. Cohen gets a blacker district and he loses most of his Jewish constituents.

It's hard to tell exactly where the lines are, but it appears he's losing most of his white constituents, Jewish or otherwise. There aren't that many Jews in metro Memphis anyway, and half of them live in Germantown, and so, are already not in Steve's district. At most, the old TN-9 is 2% Jewish. The GOP is obviously trying to pack the blacks as tight as possible to keep TN-8 GOP. It was a very safe Dem district (at the House level, anyway) until 2010. And Fincher's a really bad candidate. If this map passes, half the new 8th will be metro Memphis, which will mean that Fincher will be toast. We'll get somebody more like Marsha, who knows how to speak to a suburban constituency. I really want to see the new lines. I'll be pissed if Cohen isn't my Rep anymore.

[memphis]

I don't think this is a great map, but I am relieved that Cooper is safe. 6th and 8th are moved out of reach, but may have been already (esp. 6th).

Tanner would I think have won the 8th due to the Memphis blacks being cracked in two. 2000 and 2004 results show this district to have about an even PVI.

They're not. The old TN-8 has about 30,000 Memphis blacks. TN-9 has about about 350,000. And Tanner never had a competitive race. Even in 1994.

That would precisely constitute 2 pieces. It is quite telling that the Democrats 10 years ago chose to split Memphis like so while pushing the existing TN-9 into the suburbs.

Fincher certainly would not be interested in campaigning in that 89% Obama territory.

The SE suburbs of the old TN-9 are the black flight suburbs. It's our version of Clayton, GA or Prince William, MD. And as one would expect, they're uber Democratic. If you want to read a 350,000 to 30,000 split as a "crack", that's your excessive hyperbole. Pardon the Dems for creating a logical district instead of packing as many blacks in as possible. If you want to talk about who represents whom, at the moment, Marsha almost certainly has more Shelby blacks than Fincher, but whatever. You're not interested in facts. You're interested in creating a paranoid narrative.

[memphis]

I don't think this is a great map, but I am relieved that Cooper is safe. 6th and 8th are moved out of reach, but may have been already (esp. 6th).

Tanner would I think have won the 8th due to the Memphis blacks being cracked in two. 2000 and 2004 results show this district to have about an even PVI.

They're not. The old TN-8 has about 30,000 Memphis blacks. TN-9 has about about 350,000. And Tanner never had a competitive race. Even in 1994.

That would precisely constitute 2 pieces. It is quite telling that the Democrats 10 years ago chose to split Memphis like so while pushing the existing TN-9 into the suburbs.

Fincher certainly would not be interested in campaigning in that 89% Obama territory.

The SE suburbs of the old TN-9 are the black flight suburbs. It's our version of Clayton, GA or Prince William, MD. And as one would expect, they're uber Democratic. If you want to read a 350,000 to 30,000 split as a "crack", that's your excessive hyperbole. Pardon the Dems for creating a logical district instead of packing as many blacks in as possible. If you want to talk about who represents whom, at the moment, Marsha almost certainly has more Shelby blacks than Fincher, but whatever. You're not interested in facts. You're interested in creating a paranoid narrative.

What is the logic in excluding 1 heavily Democratic area inside a city for 1 heavily Democratic area outside a city?

And while you are at it, what is the logic in splitting Davidson County and connecting a section with Germantown, and, as you put it, putting Shelby blacks in a Williamson County district?

Because the suburban blacks in the SE are much more integrated into the city than the poor souls stuck in Frayser, who de facto live in their own Dirty South small town. There's very little tying Frayser to Memphis other than a municipal boundary. You certainly don't feel like you're in the city should you have the misfortune to drive down Thomas Street all the way up there. It's a marshy slum down by the river several miles from anywhere. The SE suburbs have commerce and a lot more interaction with the "real" parts of the city. In any case, I believe Cohen ended up with the SE simply because Marsha didn't want them. Not that she's be endangered, but it's just not her interest.
Giving Cohen Millington, while denying him, East Memphis is an even bigger crime. Millington may as well be in Kentucky. There's no community of interest under the new plan at all. The old map made a lot more sense. You had an urban district, #9, a suburban district #7, and a rural district, #8. The new map is just a partisan mess.

[memphis]

LOL I just looked up the Wikipedia article on Frayser. LOL at the pic they have. Doesn't look very urban to say the least.

I'm surprised though that the suburbs and exurbs supposedly haven't reached northwest Shelby County like Millington when they've grown so much to the eastern areas.

Outside of Downtown, Memphis doesn't have an urban feel. We're all about front yards and big oak trees. Frayser was built as a white flight suburb in the 1950s. People didn't want an urban landscape. They wanted "the country." Half of people in Memphis, black and white, are rural folks from Mississippi and Arkansas, who were displaced when agriculture was mechanized in the mid 20th century. And even back then, Frayser wasn't a fancy suburb. It has always had a reputation for being what I'll politely call blue collar. Well, by now it's more "black slum" than "blue collar," but whatever. It's just a bunch of little crackerbox houses out away from the big bad city. In any case, it's half-rural by design.
As far as our suburban growth goes, nobody with the means to choose where they live is going to be selecting Frayser or Millington. They're just not desirable areas to say the least. Same story for West Memphis, over in Arkansas. I'm sure there are comparable areas on the fringe on any major city. There has been pretty good growth, by percent, lately in Tipton County for those same people who really want "the country" and are willing to drive an hour into town, but it's still extremely rural out there. It's not even on the radar of most people.
If you take a look at a map, you'll see that Highway 72 runs east to west right through the middle of town. All the nice neighborhoods in Memphis, and I do mean ALL of them, are within a few miles north or south of 72. And it doesn't really matter too much if you're downtown or all the way out by the Fayette County line. You want to live off of 72. Out in East Memphis, where I live (near the eastern 240 loop) is the primary business district for Memphis. Commerce got scared and moved out here from Downtown after MLK was shot and the riots and so forth several decades back. 72 has the big office buildings and the nice neighborhoods with easy 5 minute commutes are just off it.
Of course, there are suburban areas with white people not off 72. And they're much cheaper per sqaure foot, so they have that going for them. But they are ticking timebombs. They have a shelf life of about 20 years before the neighborhood "changes" and all the white people have to sell in a panic. Which, of course, sends property values in those areas into the gutter. DeSoto County is going to be such a nightmare in the 2020s.