freepcrusher
YaBB God
Posts: 3,831
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« on: June 12, 2011, 10:18:54 PM » |
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on the new maps, is that they knew they could possibly end up 3-6 or 2-7 in a remotely bad year? IIRC, in 1971 they tried to put the black/democrat areas of Indianapolis in two districts, the old eleventh and the sixth. They tried to get rid of Jacobs and thought that William Bray would be fine because he was a sr incumbent. So in 1973 and 1974 they had a 7-4 delegation. However in the 1974 elections, both Indianapolis seats went democrat and Charlie Halleck's old seat went democratic (partly because the guy representing the seat was a fierce partisan) and the area in the current sixth (then called the tenth) went democratic as did the bloody eighth as the democrats now had a 9-2 delegation. Even after the 1980 elections they still had a 6-5 dem delegation.
In 1981, the legislature successfully eliminated Halleck's district by taking all the dem areas and stuffing it in the 1st district and the rest was combined in the 5th (one of only two districts that stayed republican all through the 70s). Fithian, not wanting to face off against Hillis, decided to run for the senate. They then avoided making the same mistake in Indianapolis by putting all the democrats into one district (a district that even voted for Walter Mondale) while making a new district for Senator Dan Burton (who tried running for congress in the early 70s). The problem was that although the new tenth district (the old tenth became the second) was a dem vote sink, the new sixth was also a gop vote sink that often gave republican candidates up to 75 percent of the vote. It hurt them elsewhere and by 1991 the democrats had a 8-2 delegation.
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