Redistricting Ruined by Rhode Island Politics
Friday, December 09, 2011
In states like California and Arizona, redistricting is done by a completely non-political committee selected on a non-partisan basis. That is not the case in Rhode Island.
The process is supposed to take into consideration factors such as (after population) respecting communities’ boundaries, making sure racial minorities are being treated fairly, and competitiveness. In the Ocean State, critics say the first two factors are taking a backseat to politics and competitiveness, in some cases, is seen as a bad thing.
For example, during a redistricting commission hearing last month, Representative Joseph Trillo (D-Warwick) told Kimball Brace, the consultant in charge of advising the state on how to redraw its legislative maps, that he wanted him to make sure no two current incumbents would be forced to face one another.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTTrillo asked: “Is every effort being made to insure that—let’s say there’s a situation where there’s a rep on one street and one on the next street over, there’s another representative with an entirely different district—to keep those individual reps in separate districts?”
Brace said he was doing his best at following orders—making sure politics played a role in the process of redistricting—but said that given the realities of population shifts, there may be situations in which, two sitting representatives would be forced to challenge one another.
“We did attempt to prevent that occurrence,” said Brace.
And Independent Commission Needed
One day later, at another scheduled meeting, Trillo took his questioning a step further. After being presented with the first round of redistricting maps, he realized that he had been drawn into a district with another incumbent. The problem, he reasoned, was that the consultant used his business address to draw the maps, as opposed to his home address. Trillo made it known that he was none too happy with the result.
“I made it very clear to you when we met downstairs which was my home address and which was my business address,” said Trillo.
Brace responded saying he would “make whatever corrections are necessary”.
According to John Marion, executive director o Common Cause, the exchanges, which took place over a two-day period, are emblematic of what not to do during the redistricting process. And while Trillo was overt about his concerns, he said those types of overtures—blatant attempts to redraw the maps to favor incumbents—seem to be a common sentiment among legislators.
“When you have a truly independent commission, the process works completely differently,” said Marion.
In California, over 25,000 people came forward and applied to be a part of that state’s non-partisan redistricting commission earlier this year. Independent, non-political individuals narrowed the list down to 120 people, and the final version was then put before the legislature for approval. That means none of the people on the commission were legislators and none of them were directly appointed by the legislature either. In Rhode Island, legislators are allowed on the commission and other members are appointed by lawmakers.
“People have just become completely desensitized to that kind of stuff in Rhode Island,” said Marion “It’s frustrating”.
Focus on 1st District
This year, the most attention with respect to redistricting has focused on the political issue of the day, the prospective 1st Congressional District race in 2012. The race will most likely feature a Republican primary between former State Representative and 2010 challenger John Loughlin and Brendan Doherty, the former head of the state police. The winner will take on the winner of what could be a crowded Democratic primary, which will include incumbent David Cicilline or a host of potential challengers, including Anthony Gemma, Merrill Sherman, the BankRI CEO, or former State Representative David Segal.
One way or another, the 1st Congressional District needs to gain 7,000 seats from the state’s 2nd District. In one of the prospective maps, both Loughlin and Doherty would be drawn out of the district. In another, Gemma would be eliminated. Other plans have involved giving the whole city of Providence to the 1st District, which would make it more heavily concentrated with Democrats—a move that Democratic Congressman James Langevin recently came out in opposition to.
Former state representative Ray Rickman serves as one of the “citizen” representatives on the commission also opposes the move—saying that it would weaken Providence’s pull on the national stage to only have one representative from the city.
Rickman said Rhode Island is at a disadvantage because it only has two House Seats and two relatively new members with limited power in those seats. In fact, Rickman sees it as a “horrible disadvantage” to make Providence one district.
He said the worst case scenario would be having only one Representative for Providence who has little seniority in Congress.
"You [would] have to put all your eggs in one basket," he said. "I believe we should leave Providence to divide the two districts."
Still, like so many other in the state, Rickman says it comes down to politics.
"I'm a Democrat and we can't do our part to take back the House if Rhode Island doesn't keep [the seats Democratic.]”
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