Category: redistricting

State senator wants ‘people who are a little more apolitical’

By Jon Meoli, jmeoli@tribune.com

January 19, 2012 | 6:37 p.m.

State Sen. Jim Brochin introduced legislation in Annapolis on Thursday that he says would reform Maryland’s legislative and Congressional redistricting processes by making them less partisan and more objective.

“Politicians shouldn’t be making legislative redistricting maps,” said Brochin, a Democrat from Towson who represents the 42nd District. “They just shouldn’t.”

Brochin said the state’s redistricting process, conducted every 10 years to reflect changes in the U.S. Census, has, “become such a grotesquely partisan exercise that it just would make more sense if people who make maps for a living, and people who are a little more apolitical, did this.”

Senate Bill 160, one of three bills in the package introduced Jan. 19, calls for creation of a new eight-member redistricting commission, which would be directed by the executive director of the non-partisan Department of Legislative Services.

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by Stacy Mathew, Staff Writer

Maryland Democrats plan to redraw the state’s Congressional District map in order to include most of Rockville and part of Germantown in District 6. District 6 currently extends from Garrett County to Hartford County and only includes a small portion of Montgomery County. Democrats hope that this redistricting will be beneficial in April’s primary elections.

Courtesy of http://www.mdp.state.md.us
Maryland Democrats are in favor of redrawing District 6 as part of the 2012 Congressional Redistricting.
The potential map would draw parts of Montgomery County, known for being majority Democrat, into District 6, causing the number of voters to increase from 20,000 to 35,000. The potential map of District 6 would contain Frederick and Gaithersburg counties as well as Garrett, Allegany and Washington counties. “District 6 would be 51 percent or 53 percent Democratic,” said Elizabeth Paul, chairwoman of the Washington County Democratic Central Committee. “Certainly, we would be thrilled to have some good, strong Democratic candidates in the race and have a little bit better shot at actually winning the race than the current District 6 allows us,” she said.

Andrew Harris, Maryland’s other Republican representative, will also have to deal with changes made to his Eastern Shore district. The changes would add much of Hartford County and parts of Northern Carroll and Baltimore counties into the Eastern Shore district; the district will no longer include the residents of Anne Arundel County. Other minor changes will also be made to the rest of the districts.

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Farms mix with suburbs, cities with small towns
By John Fritze, The Baltimore Sun

11:33 p.m. EDT, October 15, 2011

Jim Schillinger, a fourth-generation farmer from Severn, has occasionally tussled with politicians who don’t understand the first thing about crop yields or the rising cost of fertilizer. When he tries to explain his concerns, it’s as if they don’t speak his language.

So when Schillinger studies the proposed boundaries for Maryland’s eight congressional districts and sees that his 136-acre farm in Anne Arundel County would be lumped with densely populated Prince George’s, it doesn’t inspire confidence that his voice would be heard in Washington.

“These people have different opinions than what these people have up here,” Schillinger says, pointing to a map of the redrawn 4th District. “They’re going to have different ideas — the city people — versus what we have.”

As a byproduct of their effort to bolster political advantage through the once-in-a-decade redistricting process, Maryland Democrats have created some odd pairings: farms mixed with suburbs, city centers combined with small towns and — most important from a political perspective — deeply conservative areas tied to staunchly liberal enclaves.

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Sen. E.J. Pipkin Cumberland Times-News

The congressional redistricting map for which Gov. O’Malley is seeking legislative approval ignores standards of continuity and compactness and puts together far-flung communities that do not share common interests or anything else in common.

And adding insult to injury, the governor has either forgotten or brazenly ignored Maryland’s ethnic and racial diversity in the process of redistricting.

The map is nothing but a political instrument which seeks to gain the ruling democrats a Republican congressional seat in Western Maryland and keep the seats of incumbent Democrats safe and sound. Redistricting continues to make a mockery of “one-man-one-vote.”

Redistricting has become and continues to be a vehicle for building partisan power in Congress.

On the plus side, the map keeps the Eastern Shore in the First Congressional District. However, the new map of the First District drops Anne Arundel County and goes west to include a large part of Carroll County, Baltimore and Harford County.

Certainly, the Eastern Shore has more in common with Anne Arundel County than Carroll County which is located in Western Maryland.

The heavy Republican Sixth District used to stretch across the northern border of the state.

The new map keeps rural Western Maryland in the district, but dumps one-third of Montgomery County residents (330,000 people) into the Sixth District, threatening Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett’s seat and making it possible for a Democrat to win the seat and difficult for a Republican to keep it.

Montgomery County is heavily Democratic, liberal, rich, college educated and racially and ethnically diverse. By contrast, Garrett County residents are overwhelmingly Republican, conservative, modestly educated and white. Montgomery and Garrett County could not be further apart.

If there is a community of interest between Garrett and Montgomery County I wish someone would tell me what it is.

Those who drew the map wanted to dilute both the First and Sixth District with Democrat populations to capture the two congressional seats.

Although the map drawers possessed awesome agility, they found that task beyond their talents. So, they contented themselves with destroying only the conservative Sixth District.

The map has several weird configurations where lines become loops to allow Congressman Steny Hoyer to have the University of Maryland, College Park in his district and to assure that Congressman Dutch Ruppersburger’s home is in the Second District, as are Fort Meade and Aberdeen, which he requested.

The Second District is made up of parts of Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County and Harford County. Baltimore city Congressman John Sarbanes, who represents the Third Congressional District wanted the city of Annapolis in his district, and the new map gives it to him.

When the special session convenes, I will submit a redistricted map that that is geographically, racially and culturally compact and cohesive.

This map will have rural Maryland represented by three districts:

The First District includes the Eastern Shore, Harford County and portions of Baltimore County.

The Sixth District includes the five Western Maryland counties of Garrett, Allegany, Washington, Frederick and Carroll, plus portions of Northern Baltimore County.

The Third District will be composed mainly of the historically tobacco producing rural counties of Anne Arundel, Calvert and St. Mary’s.

This map’s three Majority-Minority districts: Districts 4, 5 and 7 contains African-American populations of 52 percent, 56 percent and 57 percent, respectively. Their total minority population represents 74 percent, 68 percent and 64 percent, respectively.

The Fourth District is a DC Beltway District. The Fifth District is a Suburban Washington, DC/I-95 District. The Seventh District is the Baltimore City District. The remaining Districts, the Second and Eighth, are both geographically suburban.

If the goal of redistricting is to be fair and accurate representation, the governor’s plan misses by a country mile. My plan meets these goals and fully represents the citizens of Maryland.

Sen. E.J. Pipkin

District 36

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Maryland’s congressional districts are about to be redrawn, based on results of the 2010 census. This process takes place every 10 years following the census. It is always political. The dominant political party tries to draw the districts to protect their incumbents and if possible, to take seats away from the opposition. This year is no exception. In much of the country, based on a Republican sweep in 2010, it’s the GOP playing the game. In Maryland, however, it’s Democrats in the majority.

Maryland has eight congressional districts; of those, six are currently held by Democrats and two by Republicans; our 1st District is one of the two. Both Republican-held districts could have been targeted for tweaking to make them more Democrat-friendly. But with a proposed map released by the redistricting committee last week, it’s clear the primary target was the 6th District, held by Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett. The 1st District remains Republican-friendly.

Important to Shore residents is the fact that our nine Eastern Shore counties remain united in one district. The change involves moving Anne Arundel County out of our district and replacing it with Harford County and portions of rural, northern Baltimore and Carroll counties, thus skirting the more densely populated urban areas around Baltimore City and Annapolis. The district is also now contiguous, no longer divided by the Chesapeake Bay.

Districts 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8, however, are a mess, connected by pipestems that reflect both population density and, more likely, political machinations. District 6, the other Republican stronghold, is contiguous and does not contain pipestem connections. It stretches from Garrett County, the westernmost county, to Washington County, then southward into Montgomery County, with a relatively wealthy, suburban population that has little in common, politically speaking, with more rural western counties.

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The GOP controls the process of drawing Congressional maps in most of the nation, but not here

Thomas F. Schaller

12:36 p.m. EDT, October 4, 2011
Times are tough right now for national Democrats.

The Republicans recaptured the U.S. House in 2010 after just four years of Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Next year, Democrats will have to defend their huge 2006 Senate class. And, with approval ratings south of the critical 50 percent threshold, President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012 is no sure bet.

As if the Democrats needed more reason to be glum, the 2010 election results gave the Republicans the upper hand in the decennial redistricting process in most states.

U.S. Senate Against this rather dark backdrop for Democrats, Maryland is a sunny exception. Democrats control every statewide elected office, solid majorities in both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly, both U.S. Senate seats and six of the state’s eight U.S. House seats — and now they’re looking to make it seven.

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Dan Rupli
Cumberland Times-News The Cumberland Times-News Wed Jul 27, 2011, 05:53 PM EDT

— Every 10 years a census is conducted across our nation to determine the total population and population movement among the states. It is required by our U.S. Constitution, and this year each state must reapportion its state legislative and congressional districts as a result of the census.

The governor has appointed five members to a Redistricting Advisory Committee, including the president of the State Senate and the speaker of the House of Delegates, and they are currently holding hearings in 12 different locations all across the State between now and Sept. 10.

They are moving from east to west, and the first two hearings occurred in Hancock and Frederick last Saturday. I signed up to testify on the suggested change in the makeup of the 6th Congressional District at the Frederick meeting, which is a subject that is dear to me as a former candidate for Congress in 1976 and 1978.

Basically, the 6th District, which currently extends along the Mason-Dixon Line from Garrett County to the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay in Harford County, would be reconfigured.

Under the new proposal the district would go from Garrett County no further east than Carroll County, but not include it, and would turn south and east into Montgomery County, picking up Gaithersburg and other heavily populated sections of northern Montgomery County.

It would profoundly change the nature of the 6th Congressional District, and arguably make it a far more competitive district between the two major political parties.

I actually support the basic idea behind the suggested change, but my purpose here is not to argue the merits of the plan, but to strongly protest the absence of public hearings west of Sideling Hill in the two western most counties.

This is the latest chapter in a long history of our state failing to pay proper respect and deference to citizens of the true “Western Maryland” region. I have lived in Frederick County for a very long time.

I have always been referred to as “Dan Rupli of Western Maryland” and I have also heard citizens of Carroll County referred to as “Western Marylanders” as well.

We all know that these two counties are really Central Maryland, but if you are careless in your geographic references, you can conclude that Western Maryland has now participated fully in the very important redistricting discussion as a result of Saturday’s hearings.

That is simply not true. How the 6th Congressional District is ultimately configured directly impacts the welfare and interests of the citizens of Cumberland and Oakland and our two westernmost counties.

I believe that before these hearings are concluded a public hearing ought to be held west of Sideling Hill regarding the makeup of our congressional district. I suggest Frostburg University as a proper venue for such a hearing.

I call upon the citizens, the media, and the elected leaders of Western Maryland to demand that they be consulted regarding this most important issue before it is decided by providing them the full opportunity to be heard at a public hearing before the Governor’s Redistricting Advisory Committee. Fairness and due process demand it.

Dan Rupli

Frederick County

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