Dwight: Redistricting Follies Much Ado About Nothing

One of the most overused bits of conventional political wisdom is…..

That the decline in the number of seriously contested congressional races is a very bad thing. This is because overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic districts allow each party’s nominees to ignore moderate swing voters and only rely on their base to get elected. This drives both parties to the extremes and contributes to political polarization and division.

This sounds measured and thoughtful, but like so many other cliches is often used to conceal a hidden agenda. It’s usually illustrated by citing right wing Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert and Paul Gosar. The mirror image of this on the left, radical Democrats like Ilhan Omar, Sandy Cortez and Rashida Tlaib from overwhelmingly blue districts-is never mentioned.

This hypocrisy is employed predictably by the Kansas City Star and local Democratic activists (but I repeat myself!) regarding the current congressional redistricting process in Kansas.

Because of population shifts reflected in the 2020 census, maps have to be redrawn in Congress and state legislatures. If a U.S. House of Representative’s district in Kansas has more than 733,000 residents it will have to give up territory and population to get back to the target figure.

In response to this constitutional mandate, the Republican leadership in the Kansas legislature has come up with a plan that would, among other changes, move the northern two-thirds of Wyandotte County from Sharice Davids‘ 3^rd Congressional District to Jake LaTurner’s 2^ndCongressional District. It proposed a new boundary based on Interstate Highway 70, with the part of the county north of the highway added to the 2^ndDistrict and the part south of I-70 remaining in the 3^rd District.

From the wailing and the gnashing of teeth by Governor Kelly and other Democratic politicians this was a vicious racist act tantamount to reinstating the poll tax and literacy tests.

Their arguments are as follows:

1. It’s unjust that Wyandotte County and its residents be divided between two congressional districts. But where does it say in the U.S. Constitution that a county or a city or any other local political subdivision must be contained in a single congressional district?

The City of Kansas City, Missouri has territory in both the 5^th District of Democrat Emmanuel Cleaver and the 6^th District of Republican Sam Graves. Jackson County, Missouri was split for years between the urban 5^th District and the rural 4^th District which took in Independence and the rest of eastern Jackson County.

2.  You can’t gerrymander a minority community out of electing one of its own to represent it in any electoral district it is the majority in,  i.e. a “majority-minority” district. There is,however, no affirmative duty to concentrate all minority voters in a single electoral district in order to elect white Democrats. A big distinction but one that seems to have escaped the Star and other Democratic partisans. (By the way, the southern portion of WyCo that remains in the proposed 3^rd District has plenty of black and Hispanic residents. I was born in Wyandotte and have worked in Wyandotte County a lot of my adult life. I know!)

3. One man’s meat is another man’s poison, i.e. any perceived Democratic loss in the 3^rd District is offset by a Democratic gain in the 2^nd. Does anyone doubt that if Wyandotte County had been part of the 2^nd District in 2018 when Democratic Congressman Paul Davis lost there by only 2,000 votes he would have won?

4. Another argument the Star and other Democratic partisans make is the “cultural anomaly” ploy. The gist of this is that it is too jarring for the enlightened residents of college towns like Lawrence and Manhattan to be lumped in with conservative rural communities in the 1^st District stretching into western Kansas.

This reminds me of a mindset which I call Lawrence snobbery.

You know what I mean, the kind of people who are always bagging on JoCo suburban sprawl, who will only eat in restaurants with exposed brick walls. Back in the 70’s they complained about being lumped in with backwaters like Leavenworth and Atchison because Douglas County was part of the 2^nd District. They were even upset when they were moved out of the 913-telephone area code to the 785-area code, because that implied a cultural affinity with retro Topeka rather than, say a cosmopolitan, chic place like Lenexa.

5. The Democratic critics attacking the Republican plan didn’t say what would be fair.Would it be to cleave off a portion of southern Johnson County and Miami County but keep all of Wyandotte in?

This seems to be what the Star is hinting at. Whose party does that hurt? The Republicans obviously but that wouldn’t be partisan, would it? As Clinton brain trust member Paul Begala once said, “The only ones who are unfairly partisan are Republicans!” What happened, though, to the idea that it’s a crime against humanity to split a county between Congressional Districts?

The other ludicrous charge by Democrats is that Interstate Highway 70 is supposedly not a natural diving line between districts. Under their plan what would be a natural dividing line, splitting Johnson County as they seem to propose? I-435? 135^th Street? Why are these any less arbitrary or artificial than the current Republican plan? Wouldn’t those necessarily entail dividing not just Johnson County but cities like Overland Park and Olathe? What about the psychic injury to people like me, who will be separated from their family and friends in southern Johnson County?

6. This whole controversy is much ado about nothing.

The fact of the matter is that Johnson County has dramatically shifted to the Democratic fold, continuing a trend that began 20 years ago. Just between 2016 and 2018 the Democratic vote increased by 40% and Joe Biden was the first Democrat in over 100 years to win the county, i.e. since Woodrow Wilson in 1916. The bottom line is that the partisan make up of Johnson County has so changed it is difficult to imagine a Republican candidate winning any time soon in the 3^rd Congressional District, even without any of Wyandotte in the district.

And no, this isn’t just anti-Trump.

Wokeness created Trump. Trump did not create Wokeness.

Because of the brain washing in schools and colleges, Gen Z and millennials were steeped in political correctness long before Trump came down that escalator. That’s why you have BLM signs in front of five-million-dollar mansions in Mission Hills, not because of The Donald’s mean tweets.

It’s interesting to note that Governor Laura Kelly only jumped into the fight against the Republican plan after the ACLU filed suit to block it. This must be a Democrat flood the zone defense, i.e. challenge any Republican endorsed redistricting plan in order to divert GOP attention and resources from far more egregious gerrymandering going on now in blue states like New York, California, and Illinois.

Laura Kelly is, to quote Winston Churchill, the kind of politician who gives opportunism a bad name. Recall also her abandoning Covid mask mandates as soon as she got bad polling numbers, breaking with the Biden administration for that most noble of principles, self-preservation. The Kansas City Star, as her enabler and mouthpiece, is even more contemptible because they are supposed to be an independent voice speaking truth to power.

Nothing, in fact, is farther from “The Truth”.