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Let’s get on with the redistricting court battle
Heath Haussamen
Redistricting was destined to end up in court, so maybe the Legislature should adjourn sine die today and stop spending taxpayer money to try to complete this futile exercise
In these uber-partisan times, was there ever much doubt that most or all pieces of the redistricting task currently before the New Mexico Legislature would end up being decided in court?
Those who hoped for compromise between Democrats and Republicans have seen their hopes dashed in the last couple of days as negotiations have failed (some would say they didn’t really exist to begin with) and Democratic bills have passed on largely party-line votes.
Both sides are accusing the other of partisan gerrymandering. Both say their plans protect redistricting values such as one person, one vote.
“It was painfully obvious today that Susana Martinez and her cronies in the Republican caucus aren’t interested in protecting every New Mexican’s vote or respecting minority voting rights,” Democratic Party of New Mexico Chairman Javier Gonzales said Wednesday. “They are playing partisan politics and creating as many safe Republican seats as possible.”
“Our maps were drawn with sound constitutional principles and the best interests of New Mexico at heart,” Gonzales said.
On the other hand, House Minority Leader Tom Taylor, R-Farmington, said on the floor Wednesday evening that the Democrats’ bill for redistricting the House amounted to gerrymandering. His primary problem was that, of the areas that lost the most people in the last decade, only a Republican-majority area lost a House seat.
Taylor complained that a legal battle would cost millions.
“It’s a lot of money for state government to spend on a bunch of arguments that we have the ability to solve in this room,” he said. “But instead we seem to think that we have to gerrymander this thing around.”
Taylor wasn’t the only one complaining about the cost of the coming court fight.
“A veto will throw us into court, costing the citizens of New Mexico millions of dollars in the process,” Gonzales said. “What’s it going to be, governor?”
No compromise
Rep. Conrad James, R-Albuquerque, complained to Capitol Report New Mexico that Democrats were playing politics. He pointed out that his district, which has been Republican leaning for 30 years, would be 50-50 in the Democrats’ plan.
“But don’t Republicans have bills just as gerrymandered to their advantage and to Democrats disadvantage?” Capitol Report asked. “There’s a Republican bill, for example, that would send Democrat stalwart Brian Egolf’s district all the way from Santa Fe into Mountainair.”
“We’ve been able to put together about four plans,” Capitol Report quoted James as saying. “That particular plan was our most aggressive plan. We also have a compromise plan, a ‘least-change’ plan…”
Taylor introduced a last-minute bill Wednesday that he said was “a good-faith effort to work across the aisle and send a plan to the governor which a significant majority can support.”
The compromise legislation was doomed even before Taylor introduced it, in part because it came after the Republicans’ more partisan proposals (and the Democrats’).
A stalemate
I’m not this pessimistic most of the time. But in the case of redistricting, I’ve seen no reason to be optimistic that enough members of both parties would do the hard work it would take to find compromise. That would require putting other considerations above protecting their own power and their incumbents.
It’s the nature of partisan politics. Elected officials generally seek to preserve their own seats, even when it no longer makes sense. Groups with power seek to protect it. To top it all off, we’re living in one of the more partisan times in American history. This fight was destined to end in a stalemate.
And that’s exactly where we are.
So maybe, since the Legislature doesn’t seem willing to consider much else that the governor put on the call for this session, the House and Senate should adjourn sine die today and stop spending taxpayer money to try to complete this futile exercise.
We’re already going to spend millions in legal fees. Let’s get on with it.
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That’s an adorable assertion, Ms. Johnson, but probably unlike you, I was actually involved in the session, and entirely aside from the fact that the GOP bills had population disparities that would never stand up in a court of law, they specifically gerrymandered districts to protect Republican incumbents and increase safe seats for their own party, taking away the Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of voters in those districts to choose their representatives.
No where in my statement did I say that the Democratic Party plans were something I approve of; you, of course, are the type of person who is convinced that all opposition to anything you believe is absolute and uniform (the moment when you called Mr. Digman a “liberal” the other day was particularly hysterical), so it’s no surprise that you have purposely made yourself incapable of understanding the most necessary aspect of effective governance: nuance. For that matter, berating the length of my reply to you shows that rather than attention-to-detail, you prefer sound bite solutions.
Two of the many proposed Congressional plans were actually quite fair, but they didn’t bother to finish their job before throwing up their hands in the face of the Governor’s apparent belief that the legislative branch should be subservient to her own office. Their passed House and Senate plans, incidentally, still increase the number of safe seats for Republicans, and while the Senate plan is a fairly good one, their House plan is, for lack of a better term, phoned-in.
Frankly, I object to the ever-increasing trend of the past thirty years or so of making every seat safe for one party or the other; I rather like competition. Indeed, electoral competition pays my bills. While both parties are guilty of this, both parties are not equally guilty of this. The Republican Party has pulled some amazing tricks over the years (the completely-random and almost-certainly-illegal 2004 attempt to redistrict Texas comes to mind, to say nothing of this year’s attempt – also in Texas – to gerrymander Republican districts into heavily-Hispanic areas). That they have just barely reached a level of influence in New Mexico to attempt them here does not mean these tricks are new. That being said, it doesn’t absolve my party of their own sins; Representative Cervantes’ Congressional plan was just as blatant an attempt at a party hegemony as the Rehm plan, after all.
However, if the Republican Party of New Mexico wants to accuse the Democratic Party of taking away the rights of New Mexico voters, they should probably first learn what those rights are, because I guarantee you, they have yet to produce a single plan that wouldn’t cover our majority-Democratic state with a bevy of ultra-right-wing anti-Citizen pseudo-Republicans holding viewpoints that, a mere fifteen years ago, were rather rightly exiled to the very rear echelons of the tin-foil hat brigade.
The Republicans introduced bills that reflect the partisan divide in the state, and allow for competition among fifteen seats in the House, and as many as ten in the Senate, letting the people decide who will be in the majority. Period. The Democrats introduced and passed bills that impose overwhelming majorities in both Houses, allowing no input in the process from the voters. All of this is objectively viewable on-line. So we don’t need 1,000-word essays from IcarusPhoenix (aka Democratic Party of New Mexico parrot) that blather on with nonsense. Just read the bills, and look at the maps. What I am writing will withstand scrutiny. What IP says will not.
Ms. Johnson:
You ability to parrot the Republican Party line is impressive, but with all due respect, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. The Republican Party was very clear about the reason that they objected to the plans for the state Senate and House as passed; specifically, they objected because the Senate plan didn’t guarantee (their word, not mine) them twenty out of the forty-two seats every time, because they “favored Albuquerque and Rio Rancho” (where all the population growth has been, and where, incidentally, the new Senate seat and two of the new House seats in the Democratic plan would probably be held by Republicans), and because it didn’t guarantee that current incumbents would be safe (several southern New Mexico senators and representatives in areas of low or negative population growth would now find themselves in the same district as another serving senator or representative). In other words, the ever anti-citizen Republican Party of New Mexico has been refreshingly honest about their motives in this situation; specifically, they care more about their incumbents than they do about equal representation for the people of New Mexico, and rather than giving citizens the opportunity to choose their representatives in competitive races, they want the right for their own party leaders to essentially appoint our representation for us.
Meanwhile, the Republicans in both houses were so busy howling at the wind that they almost forgot to participate in the session at all; while their increasingly-hysterical rants from the floor made for good theater, it is worth noting that the number of bills that they bothered to introduce at all was shockingly sparse. For the sessions legally-mandated purpose – redistricting – they introduced (in both houses) a grand total of ten bills out of the sixty-three proposals for redistricting the House, Senate, Congressional Districts, Public Regulations Commission, and Public Education Commission. Fully half of the Republican bills were over the PRC, and they didn’t make even one proposal for redistricting the PEC.
Their house proposals (all three) were all proposed by Representative Taylor and were all notable for the fact that they actually counted a single resident of mostly-rural (and coincidentally Republican) counties like Catron as equally important as (in one case) as many as two-and-one-third residents of certain (Democratic) portions of Sandoval County. Their two Senate proposals by Senator Ingle were better proportioned, but were impressive for some amusingly-shaped districts so that certain Republican incumbents houses were remarkably close to the border of their own district in little regions obviously set aside to protect them from primaries against other incumbents.
These, however, are nothing when compared to their single Congressional proposal; introduced by Representative Rehm, it was a laughably-transparent attempt to deny the citizens of this state any choice at all in who represents them. The proposal moved the western side of the second district’s border north and the eastern side south, while moving the entirety of Torrence County into the first district and eliminating from it much of the south valley, all the Pueblos save Sandia and Laguna, part of the West Side of Albuquerque and all of Rio Rancho into the second and third districts. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that these changes would make all three seats almost impossible for any Republican to lose.
You accuse the Democratic Party of gerrymandering when, in this case, the Republican objection wasn’t over the fact that districts were gerrymandered, but that they weren’t gerrymandered entirely in their favor. Quite frankly, I would have far less disdain for the Republican Party’s objections to the redistricting session if they had bothered to introduce any legislation that wasn’t a blatant attempt to railroad the majority of New Mexicans. Of course, if they had actually participated in the session, they’d have far less opportunity to feign injury.
Also, please learn how to use the English language; there is no such organization as the “Democrat Party”. The adjective is “Democratic“, and while I know that the conservative talking points say to use the noun to belittle the opposition party, in this particular case you only succeed in making yourself sound wildly uneducated.
The Democrats in both houses simply decided they would impose their will on the people of New Mexico. They would say to New Mexicans who vote about 47-48% Republican that for the next ten years we will have a state house composed of 40-42 Democrats and 28-30 Republicans. Likewise, they would gerrymander the senate so it would be 60% Democrat for the next decade. Take it or leave it. We don’t care what you think. Constituents will not get to choose their representatives and senators. We, the Democrat Party of Tim Jennings, Michael Sanchez and Ken Martinez will choose our own constituents. Too bad if you don’t like it. We’ll just go to court rather than compromise on any point. I guess we will all see how the courts view that approach.
“Don’t waste anymore tax money in a political sideshow” – Hemingway
Do you hear and get that Legislators? Javier, do you understand the situation the Democratic Party is in? AG King, how can you justify getting a paycheck from taxpayers?
The People want results not waste, fraud, and criminal acts that go unprosecuted.
It is sad the Legislature had to but was easily able to find $1,000,000,00 not to help the citizenry but to subsidize the New Mexico Attorney General Gary King’s partisan shortcomings. One thing for certain, that part of government activity is absolutely transparent.
JP, as I recall, Matt Chandler was the Republican candidate for attorney general in 2010, and he was picked by Martinez (while she was still a DA) to be the special prosecutor in the Murphy case. So they have a history.
I think the late New Mexican Don Meredith said it best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T6bXYp-R9Q&feature=related
The party is over, and it is time for the New Mexican legislators to head home and save us a buck or two.
wedum59
Explain to me why Matt Chandler is being brought into this discussion. Am I missing something?
I agree – let the courts decide. Don’t waste anymore tax money in a political sideshow. Governor Martinez will veto it anyhow.
JusticeP, the point is that, if Martinez signs the bills instead of vetoing them,
(1) the inevitable challenge will not cost the taxpayers as much because 10-20 different groups cannot submit their own plan for redistricting for the judge to painstakingly (and expensively) review, they can olny oppose the law; and
(2) Matt Chandler could use [less] taxpayers’ money to display his talents by critizing the law, but it would not make the governor look obstructionist.
That’s my interpretation of jUNNs’ comment. IMHO.
While I normally try not to be this pessimistic, I have enough experience with our legislators to know that between Republican obstructionism and whining and Democratic acts of futility in hunting for backbones, our redistricting fights are never a simple matter of just doing the job. However, Heath, I believe you didn’t think your suggestion out quite far enough; there is another step that you could have taken that would have been cheaper. Since ultimately, the court will do what they always do and hire Brian Sanderoff to draw the lines, wouldn’t it be a simpler for the legislature to pass a bill paying Sanderoff to do the job and just go home?
Heath, I think you said it with, “It’s the nature of partisan politics.”
Other shortsighted considerations will come into play even without the partisan piece, but I do think we are seeing again and again the downside to our “two party system.” It clearly is time to encourage more independence so that something can get done.
justaUNMstudent:
My suggestion, sign the bills and have your chosen son (Matt Chandler) make a show trial out of it. At least Chandler’s
circus is cheaper that legal payouts. Plus this is perfect resume building for 2014.
What are you trying to say by this comment? What does Chandler have to do with it? Whose chosen son?
A suggestion for the Gov. In 2000, when Johnson vetoed the bills and sent the State to court, the Judge adopted the Senate, House, and Congressional plans that passed the legislature. The only minor changes that the judge made was to the NW quad. He inserted the Navajo Nation Plan. Their plan shifted only a couple of precincts to help make their 3 senator districts and house districts to make their districts 65% Native instead of the 60% that passed the legislature. But since the Gov vetoed it every Tom, Dick, Harry, and their out of state cousins submitted their own plan to the judge. Cost taxpayers over 3million in court fees and legal fees.
There is a major difference in the cases from 1980 to 2000. In 1980, the state had to go to court because the legislature passed and the gov signed the bills, but since the bill was signed into law any legal challenges could only be made on the bill as law. This limited the law suits. Unlike in 2000, when the bill was not made law and therefore the legal challenges were not limited to scope of the law that was passed.
My suggestion, sign the bills and have your chosen son (Matt Chandler) make a show trial out of it. At least Chandler’s circus is cheaper that legal payouts. Plus this is perfect resume building for 2014.
Hey Javier, why don’t you start by cleaning up the Democratic’s house in New Mexico instead of adding to the stalemate that respected Haussamen writes about? After all, the Democrats are going to lose anyway if the Democrats continue on allowing criminals to run for and hold public office. Oh, and Javier, I am a Democrat.
Excellent blog Heath, I totally respect the evidence that you are unbaised.