US: House Redistricting Massachusetts

[Brittain33]

The legislature posted historical maps of the legislature and Congress.

http://www.malegislature.gov/District/Maps

[Brittain33]

It seems like they're 3 districts they want to avoid:

1. Anything substantially based in Worcester.

If they keep two districts in Western Mass., Worcester County remains sliced to ribbons because both the 1st and 2nd districts will have to expand past the city of Worcester on either side and into the next counties. If they eliminate one of those districts, than any district based in Worcester County includes the city of Worcester, which is a big D thumb on the scale.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

True, although there's a philosophical issue here. The 10th is already "based on Plymouth/Cape Cod", then extends further into Republican territory on the South Shore, and then further up into Democratic Quincy. I'd argue that you'd have to try hard to gerrymander that district to make it more Republican--strip out Quincy and Braintree and go hunting for some more Republican suburbs. But the logical conclusion for this district would be to include New Bedford, and that's not going to make it more Republican.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yes, what worries me is that if they abolish the 6th, you have a 5th which is more vulnerable to a Republican. Again, you have the same issue with the 10th; you run out of Republican territory early and then you have to choose which Democrats you want. You already have Lowell and Lawrence and have to hope they stay home, as in the Brown/Coakley race. But then you're dipping into Markey's district or gerrymandering way out to the west.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The numbers weren't there in 2001 when Finneran tried it, even stretching up to Lynn to barely make 50%. Boston has gotten more ethnically diverse since then, but I can't see a lawsuit happening nor are there minority legislators willing to sign off on it, and such a Republican move would be so transparently political that it is doomed to fail.

Also, any changes could be accommodated by changing the 8th's borders with the 7th district, I think. You're not going to see Quincy leave the 10th this way because Southie still has to link with its exurbs.

[Brittain33]

Possibly. I don't think such a lawsuit would be all that useful in Massachusetts. But it would be good to know, one way or another, if section 2 requires the creation of 'coalition' districts (as Boston + Chelsea probably is, and certainly much more 'compact' than anything in the South), or if those areas can be cracked, as some are proposing to do.

Almost all of the minority residents of Boston are already in MA-8; adding in the rest of the city won't change that, and you need to keep West Roxbury and Southie out of the district to do what you're setting out to do because they are so non-diverse. So then it becomes a choice of where you go north, and the numbers involved are pretty small. Chelsea and Everett together contribute about 70,000 people, which isn't a lot, and the best place to go after that is back to Cambridge and Somerville, so you're just shifting boundaries on the 8th.

[Brittain33]

Possibly. I don't think such a lawsuit would be all that useful in Massachusetts. But it would be good to know, one way or another, if section 2 requires the creation of 'coalition' districts (as Boston + Chelsea probably is, and certainly much more 'compact' than anything in the South), or if those areas can be cracked, as some are proposing to do.

Almost all of the minority residents of Boston are already in MA-8; adding in the rest of the city won't change that, and you need to keep West Roxbury and Southie out of the district to do what you're setting out to do because they are so non-diverse. So then it becomes a choice of where you go north, and the numbers involved are pretty small. Chelsea and Everett together contribute about 70,000 people, which isn't a lot, and the best place to go after that is back to Cambridge and Somerville, so you're just shifting boundaries on the 8th.

Well, yeah, but that still means the 8th is not abolished.

Right. I'm saying that a plan that involves creating a minority-majority district in eastern Mass. would result only in a reconfigured 8th that probably still elects someone like Michael Capuano, and also doesn't create Republican districts elsewhere in the state.

The only way to abolish the 8th without turning another district into a de facto 8th, in my view, would be to attach Somerville, Cambridge, and part of Boston to enough of Barney Frank's district to give him an edge among his current voters and supporters in new territory, while giving the 9th enough precincts of Boston to get vote totals up without hurting Lynch's incumbency.

[Brittain33]

The only way to abolish the 8th without turning another district into a de facto 8th, in my view, would be to attach Somerville, Cambridge, and part of Boston to enough of Barney Frank's district to give him an edge among his current voters and supporters in new territory, while giving the 9th enough precincts of Boston to get vote totals up without hurting Lynch's incumbency.

Feh, this isn't really true. You can put Somerville and possibly Cambridge in the 7th and the rest of Boston in the 4th and both Markey and Frank would be safe against a challenger from either place.

[Brittain33]

A new post on SSP had an intriguing idea: put Worcester in the 1st district, move northern Worcs county to the 5th, and keep minimum change in the rest of the state. I don't see Stanley Rosenberg embracing this idea, but giving the liberal areas of the Pioneer Valley and Williamstown one of the most liberal representatives in the delegation seems like a worthwhile solution in an ideal world. It does make the 5th a bit more marginal but that would happen with any solution that knocks out a western Mass. district. And perhaps Niki Tsongas doesn't deserve a seat for life if she can't hold it easily in bad years.

[Brittain33]

Is the drift here that it is not possible to create a 50% black VAP CD, but it is possible to create a 50% black + Hispanic + Asian CD, or some combo thereof, that arguably constitutes some kind of "community of interest" as defined by the Courts?

Short answer: no. Medium answer: not really, and no reason to contort the map to do so. See Washington state west of the Cascades for a similar situation.

As Lewis said, the 8th is as close as it gets to a minority district, and most of the white voters are liberal Dems so racial polarization beyond the primary is not a factor.

[Brittain33]

The 8th as currently configured already is such a district. I think. It's far too small, of course.

Yes, you could gerrymander some tendrils out to Quincy, Chelsea, and Lynn to create an erose 8th district with a marginally higher minority population, and it would still likely be represented by a liberal white Democrat, so why bother?

Boston doesn't have any African-American members of the state senate since Dianne Wilkerson left.

[Brittain33]

The immediate Boston suburbs of Newton, Quincy, and Brookline are very, very Democratic as well. You have to go all the way out to the Worcester suburbs before taking in any real GOP territory, and by that point, you've just got way too much population included in the district.

Tom Finneran's majority-minority district in 2001 took Lynn out of the 6th and put it in the 8th. A similar move here would make the 6th more Republican, unless it took Democratic areas from the 5th, which would then make the 5th more Republican. And both of those districts have weak Dem incumbents...

Also, moving chairs around in the Boston area could move Quincy out of the 10th, which has a similar effect. Brown probably doesn't know anything about moving Lynn, but he knows he did very, very well for a Republican in traditionally Democratic areas of the 9th district and would see opportunities there for an ally.

[Brittain33]

Oh, more obviously: a majority-minority seat based on the 8th would probably mean putting most of Cambridge and Somerville in the 4th with Barney Frank. That detaches Brown's home territory from a safe Democratic district and means one of his successors would have a congenial district to run in. In fact, that's exactly what Finneran's map did: create a Bristol County-based district that could go Republican. Brown is from that part of the state and so are the Republican men who succeeded him in the House and Senate.

[Brittain33]

Great piece on Massachusetts Congressional districts, and where the Republicans are, and how expertly they were split up. Credit is given where credit is due.


http://www.redracinghorses.com/diary/379/massachusetts-congressional-vote-2010

You're seeing the "wow, those trees vote Republican" problem we get with national county maps showing Democrats losing most of the acreage of the U.S. but winning national elections. Those red towns have a fraction of the population the blue cities have. You'd have to aggressively gerrymander and recruit strong Republican candidates to have even two Congressional districts Republicans could win.

[Brittain33]

Seems fair and reasonable to me. Anyone opposed to drawing this eminently logical district is little more than a Democrat Party hack.

LOL. You can tell how the current districts were cleverly drawn to dismantle this community of interest.

[Brittain33]

How Republican?

I'm guessing it gave Obama less than 53% of the vote, and Kerry slightly more.

[Brittain33]

That is a really good effort. Really good. I do think that particular solution for former MA-10 would incite thermonuclear war--it takes minority areas of Boston out of MA-8 and appends them to the most Irish-American district in the country in order to bolster Bill Keating. But you knew that. Very good.

[Brittain33]

Boston got chopped up like Austin there. I thought some redistricting chairman was from Boston?

The one rep. from Boston (Lynch) still represents as much of the city as before, and the same parts. Most of MA-8's Boston portion goes to Keating's district.

[Brittain33]

Bravo for doing more than just bitching about things on the web.

[Brittain33]

"well-serviced by the MBTA" LOLOLOLOL *crying*

[Brittain33]

"well-serviced by the MBTA" LOLOLOLOL *crying*

Well. You know what I meant there, anyway.

Sorry, I got bumped on the head by a big chunk of my property value falling off.

[Brittain33]

No, it just happened that way when you split Boston into a conservative Dem largely Irish-American district and then put everything else in with Cambridge and Somerville. There was nothing related to VRA in its mapping.

[Brittain33]

Lynch and Keating.

They talking about drawing Quincy into Lynch's district, which makes zero sense if your plan is to eliminate one of their districts. You still have the rest of the 10th. The only way to make this work is to divide up Lynch's district.

[Brittain33]

Hmm, that sounds like a Cape and Islands district. Seems to ruffle more incumbents than is  needed, though.

Would this mean attaching the Cape to New Bedford and expecting Barney Frank to run there? That seems like a tall order. Is this for Therese Murray to run in when he retires or something? Because the other part of it, attaching Quincy and other nearby Norfolk County towns, to the 9th does make a lot of sense from a COI point of view, as does putting Newton in with the 8th or 7th and Brookline with the 8th.

[Brittain33]

Is there even a slight chance that Democrats will just create a winnable district for the GOP (come on, just throw them a bone) in order to make their other districts even more safe?

Republicans are too few and too scattered to do this without gerrymandering. There's no need.

[Brittain33]

They only do that because most of the incumbents live near Boston.

The incumbents live near Boston because of the way the districts are drawn.

What does that mean?

Ed Markey and Barney Frank represented quite different districts when they were first elected before the 1982 redistricting. Frank's district looks the way it does because they were considering eliminating him, even though he lived close to Boston. Markey's district only later extended west.

The 10th district as drawn today, reaching up to Quincy, was represented by a Cape resident (Gerry Studds) until 1996 and the Dem primary that year was a very close contest between a Boston-area politician and a Cape politician.

I don't need to tell you where the last district eliminated in Massachusetts was, I believe.

[Brittain33]

Because politicians don't tend to like to live in areas where their constituents live, and their constituents are too busy with ordinary lives to run for office, districts divvy up the more politically active areas.  When reapportionment is done, rather than combining areas where the politicians live, the districts are extended like toothpaste.

Yes, but I think you'll find that (with some exceptions--MA-7's journey west being the main one) that this is not true of the history of Massachusetts's districts.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Residential growth patterns in Houston and the country in general are different than they are in Massachusetts. We don't have much suburban/exurban growth at all here. When it does happen, it's in established towns. This is due both to New England's history of town settlement and our anti-growth policies in most places.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Wasn't it Margaret Heckler's district?
[/quote]

No, that was in 1982. (Also, her merger with Frank's district was a fair fight; the old 4th stretched out northwest to Fitchburg.) Another district was eliminated in 1992. That district's representative decided to retire from office rather than compete in a primary. Guess where he lived?

[Brittain33]

BTW, of course the 4th district is ridiculous, it's just that people offended by it usually guess wrong as to why and how it came to be.