Butch and Sundance
There’s two old sayings that start off our day today. The first: “Never take a knife to a gunfight”. That has a simple meaning: know what kind of “fight” you’re getting into, and make sure that you are appropriately armed. If your opponent has guns, your knife won’t do much good.
The second is that great line at the beginning of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Harvey, one of the “Hole in the Wall Gang”, challenges Butch for leadership. He demands a knife fight. Butch agrees, but says that they need to get the “rules straight” before the fight. Harvey answers “Rules? There are no rules…”, but doesn’t get to complete the sentence, as Butch drop kicks him squarely in the groin, then beats him into unconsciousness. There are no rules in a knife fight.
Ohio Gerrymandering
I am a Democrat. For almost all of my political life, I have opposed gerrymandering, the drawing of political districts to create a preordained electoral outcome. Here in Ohio, both parties gerrymandered Congressional Districts. For example, there were two configurations of the Cincinnati area. One was the “donut” district, with the central city of Cincinnati as a sure Democratic seat, the donut “hole”; and the ring of suburbs as a second, surely Republican district. That was the Democratic plan.
The Republican plan split the city of Cincinnati carefully down the middle (usually down Vine Street), with half the city combined with the western suburbs, and half with the eastern ones. That often produced two Republican districts.
But things changed around 2010, when the Republican Party (under the leadership of current MSNOW commentator Michael Steele) implemented the “Red Map” plan. This was a computer generated gerrymandering scheme, dividing boundaries down to the granular street level, to carve out the most Republican biased statewide districting plan possible. The outcome: here in Ohio, while Democrats are statewide at least 45% of the voting population, Republicans hold more than 67% of the state House and Senate seats. Of Ohio’s fifteen Congressional Districts, five are held by Democrats, and ten held by Republicans.
Ohio’s Eighth District stretches from the west side of Cincinnati on the Ohio River over one hundred miles north to rural Darke County on the Indiana border, carefully skirting the Democratic city of Dayton. Ohio’s Fifteenth winds from downtown Columbus one hundred miles west to the rural town of Greenville in Miami County. At one point that district is only ten miles wide north of Springfield, squeezed between the Fourth and the Tenth Districts.
Reform Democrats
The recent National Democratic Party has supported redistricting reforms. Big Democratic states like New York and California passed legislation taking redistricting out of the hands of politicians and the state legislatures, and putting the decision in the hands of less partisan Boards. Even here in Ohio, several state Constitutional amendments were made to control gerrymandering. But the Republican controlled government (including the State Supreme Court) ignored them and continued to re-district according to the “Red Map” plan.
Nationwide most Republican controlled states implemented “Red Map”. Some Democratic controlled states, notably Illinois and Maryland, used a similar process to gerrymander their states. But many Democratic states continued with reforming the process to make it “less partisan”. In fact, one of the driving forces against partisan gerrymandering was the National Democratic Redistricting Committee led by former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder.
No Rules
But this last year, President Trump essentially “ordered” Republican states to maximize the number of Republican Congressional Districts in a (desperate?) attempt to retain control of the US House of Representatives. The current house has a five seat majority of Republicans. In “normal times” the party not in the White House tends to win more swing House seats in the “off-year election”, so control of the House was definitely in question.
Texas, with a completely Republican controlled state government, led the way to further re-district in Republican favor. In their plan, five currently Democratic seats are redrawn to elect Republicans. I suppose National Republicans thought that Democrats would react by “crying foul”, demanding that Republicans weren’t “following the rules”.
Democrats weren’t even bringing a knife to a gunfight. They were playing by “rules”. And like Butch made so clear to Harvey, there are no “rules” in a knife fight. So Democratic states fought back. California, a Democratic controlled state, put a statewide ballot initiative up that would “suspend” their non-partisan redistricting process for the exact reason of creating five “Democratic Districts” to counter the Texas plan. That passed overwhelmingly.
Oh Virginia
And yesterday, Virginia did the same. Subject to state Court scrutiny, Virginia citizens passed a Constitutional amendment that will re-district to flip five more seats to Democrats. Other Democratic controlled states are considering the same.
Republicans miscalculated the National Democratic reaction. Republicans already used the “Red Mapping” strategy. But many Democratic states had not. Now, Democrats are beginning to bring “guns to a gunfight”. They no longer are playing by self-imposed rules that the Republicans don’t honor. “Blue Mapping” has begun.
Add that to the current Presidential approval rating, with Trump slipping to 37% in many polls, and it’s likely that Democrat Hakeem Jeffries will be the next Speaker of the House. And while the Senate isn’t subject to gerrymandering, current trends show that might flip as well.
All of that is dependent on “free and fair” elections in November. Democrats should keep in mind: there are few rules in the voting “knife fight” either.
