US House Redistricting: Missouri

[krazen1211]

This is what I came up with:




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.

[krazen1211]

Why are they doing this to Kansas City?

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.

[krazen1211]

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

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/

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

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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.

[krazen1211]

Ze map:




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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

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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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

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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....

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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.

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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!

[krazen1211]

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.

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.

[krazen1211]

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...

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.