Naming the districts

[Verily]

Good luck naming some of the ridiculously gerrymandered districts.

NJ-01: Camden
NJ-02: Atlantic City and Vineland
NJ-03: Long Beach Island and some random Philly suburbs that don't belong in this district.
NJ-04: Hi, I'm a gerrymandered district.
NJ-05: Piedmont and Bergen North
NJ-06: New Brunswick and Sandy Hook
NJ-07: Hi, I'm an even more gerrymandered district.
NJ-08: Paterson
NJ-09: Bergen South
NJ-10: Newark
NJ-11: Morristown
NJ-12: Trenton, Princeton and a ton of random places that don't belong in this district.
NJ-13: Jersey City


What really bug me about NJ are the horizontal districts that slice across the state without any regard to where people actually live and what areas "belong" together. I've griped about the four really bad ones (NJ-03, NJ-04, NJ-07 and NJ-12) above, although NJ-06 is pretty bad, too. NJ-10 and NJ-13 are a stupid racial gerrymander.

[Verily]

Oh, I'm sure there are worse than New Jersey's.

Incidentally, I'm redrawing borders for New Jersey on my own right now, and I created a majority black district and a plurality Hispanic district without the need for ridiculous shapes and districts contiguous only over water.

[Verily]

NJ-04 doesn't look that bad. What's so gerrymandered about it?

There's absolutely nothing in the central part of the district. Nothing. It combines Trenton suburbs with the coast for no reason at all. You could very easily create a district containing Trenton and its suburbs extending down into Burlington County a bit and another containing most of Ocean County (and a third containing Monmouth County and the rest of Ocean County). The districts would be compact and would work well in terms of containing areas that belong together. But, no, they decided to stretch a district all the way across the state, combining areas with nothing in common.

Although, to be fair, New Jersey isn't really gerrymandered (although its map slightly favors the Republicans; under any map with reasonable districts, the delegation would be 8-5 instead of 7-6). It just has ridiculously shaped districts, which in my mind amounts to the same thing. By dividing like-minded communities with similar interests, you dilute the power of localities and localized campaigns in favor of incumbents and parties.

[Verily]

It largely just meanders through obnoxiously wealthy exurbs in Hunterdon like my parents' home town, obnoxiously wealthy exurbs (transitioning to suburbs) in Somerset like Bridgewater, and obnoxiously wealthy suburbs (they're too well located to be exurbs) in Union like Westfield.

It's funny that you mentioned Bridgewater, where my sister lives, and Westfield, where her husband grew up. While they're pretty nice, I don't think of either one as "obnoxiously wealthy" although Bridgewater has its McMansion areas alongside the older homes. Anything I'd call by that term is in the 11th district, like Harding Twp., Millburn, Chatham, and the places where Steve Forbes lives.

My aunt used to live in Bridgewater, and she was obnoxiously wealthy, so I have at least anecdotal evidence that the area is obnoxiously wealthy. She lived in the McMansion area, though her own house was not a McMansion (some sort of miniature-castle-looking thing built in the 1940s).

My problem with NJ-07 is that, while the district as a whole does a good job of representing wealthy people (as does NJ-05), it doesn't represent any sort of coherent community. Sure, the people of Hunterdon County and the people of Westfield are both very wealthy, but otherwise they have little in common. The Hunterdon-ites fit better with Warren County while Westfield would connect better with places like Plainfield and Millburn.

If I ever finish my remapping project, I'll post my own suggestion, though actually I had quite a bit of trouble with this area myself. It's really Sussex, Warren and Hunterdon that are a pain to fit in anywhere else; I ended up with those three combined with most of Somerset and the wealthy north end of Mercer. (Poor Princeton got stuck in that district, too.)

[Verily]

If I ever finish my remapping project, I'll post my own suggestion, though actually I had quite a bit of trouble with this area myself. It's really Sussex, Warren and Hunterdon that are a pain to fit in anywhere else; I ended up with those three combined with most of Somerset and the wealthy north end of Mercer. (Poor Princeton got stuck in that district, too.)

I'd love to see it. Did you take into account incumbents or just draw the best maps? Incumbency is going to be the biggest obstacle to drawing sane maps in 2012, unless Pallone and Chris Smith decide to swap homes.

No incumbency, although I don't know exactly where everyone lives. It could, coincidentally, place each congressman in his own district. (I'm pretty sure I put Rothman and Garrett in the same district, though, a district that Rothman would win handily.) I didn't take race into account, either, but I had the good fortune of creating a majority black and a plurality Hispanic district anyway.

I still have South Jersey left to do; most of Mercer, all of Monmouth, and all of the counties southwards. But the hard part is probably over (other than compiling all of the irritatingly small coastal towns).

Edit: Wait, no, I forgot I moved Fair Lawn into the Passaic County district. So actually Rothman is separated from his district and put in with Pascrell while the bulk of Rothman's district has Garrett in it, but Garrett could never win it.

[Verily]

Being from Hunterdon, and formerly working in Warren, I know that while parts of Warren are trending in the exurb direction (like Greenwich Township), most of it has more in common with Sussex County to the north than Hunterdon County.  Besides, Hunterdon really doesn't have any towns in it quite like Phillipsburg, which is quite run down with a growing number of Section 8 residents and a growing low-income minority community.

Warren and Sussex have to go somewhere, and we can't just shove them into Pennsylvania.

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Sorry, meant Scotch Plains. I always get them confused.