04/21/11: Powerless in a partisan game

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

A FARCE. That’s what The Washington Post called Virginia’s redistricting plan. “When electoral districts are engineered to favor one party, the political system becomes a farce,” wrote the editorial board. Of course, this is not the first time Virginia’s legislative lines have been drawn to protect the party in control.

Citing partisanship, Gov. Bob McDonnell vetoed the redistricting bill passed by the General Assembly. In his letter explaining the veto, the governor took pains to “applaud the House for its bipartisan approach” while finding “significant issues with the Senate reapportionment plan.” I can’t believe the governor wrote those words with a straight face.

An independent review of the maps approved by the General Assembly reported that legislative districts will be “less compact, split more counties and cities and separate common-sense communities of interest even more.” Their conclusion holds true for both the House and Senate maps.

The governor’s claim that the House maps are the result of a bipartisan approach and the Senate ones are not is based almost completely on the votes in the respective chambers. In the House, where the Republicans enjoy a 61-39 majority, the vote was 85-9 in favor of the Republican-drawn plan. Of the nine Democrats who voted against the plan, three — Robin Abbott, Paula Miller and Ward Armstrong — no longer reside in the districts they currently represent, and two others will not be returning to the House next year.

The Democratic majority in the Senate is much narrower, at 22 seats to the Republicans’ 18. The vote on the redistricting bill crafted by the Democrats mirrored the partisan breakdown, with not a single Republican voting in favor.

Let’s be clear: Both plans are the result of partisan gerrymandering . We have better plans, both those that emerged from the toothless independent commission appointed by the governor and those from the college redistricting competition. Those plans are superior in every way to the ones the legislators devised, primarily because there was no politics involved in their creation. Within the confines of the principles of redistricting, the maps better serve the people of Virginia.

It is no surprise to me that no Republicans voted for the Democratic Senate plan. Likewise, I would not have been surprised if no Democrats had voted for the Republican House plan. Yet some did — and in doing so, did us all a disfavor. Every single one of them could have voted against the plan and it still would have passed. But then the governor couldn’t have claimed bipartisan support and trained his — and everyone else’s — sights on the Senate plan.

Why did the Democrats, save for those nine brave souls, vote in favor of the plan? One reason I’ve heard is that they want to curry favor with those in the majority. Another reason was that their particular seat was not among those targeted for elimination. Never mind, I guess, that the seat belongs to the people and not to the representative.

The one group whose vote the House Republicans were easily able to count on was that of the Black Caucus. The phenomenon of black elected leaders colluding with Republicans to protect majority-minority districts is not new. In his book “Whistling Past Dixie,” Thomas Schaller calls this an “unholy alliance,” the result being fewer districts that any Democrat can win.

“For southern Republicans, redistricting strategy hinges upon the same, powerful premise on which most every other element of the southern strategy turns: Whenever and however possible, make Democrats pay for their support of racial minorities,” Schaller wrote.

The numbers tell the story: The most Democratic districts in the House plan are almost all majority-minority districts. Of the four seats targeted for elimination by the House Republican plan, all are represented by white Democrats.

And not a single vote against the Republican House plan was from a black Democrat.

In a recent column, Michael Gerson wrote of how President Barack Obama has gained a “strong political position” on the budget by exploiting “a major division within the Republican coalition.” McDonnell has been able to do the same. The division between House Democrats and Senate Democrats leaves those in the Senate to fend off attacks on their plan by themselves. The division between white and black Democrats leaves the whites having to fend for themselves.

And the voters? We’re just pawns in this game of redistricting.