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The redistricting reboot button
Op-Ed by Brian Kirwin, Daily Press – 4/13/2011
I'd be tempted to veto the whole thing and start all over.
I imagine most chief executives occasionally have the same thought.
Probably not Barack Obama. The only thing he vetoes is vacations to Williamsburg, and I'm not convinced he controlled that decision, either.
But I bet Gov. Bob McDonnell is looking at redistricting plans and feeling a pretty strong urge to hit the legislative reboot button.
It would be easy to do and easy to sustain. Both plans take a fair amount of shots at the party that's in the minority in each, but the Senate's plan is gerrymandering in the extreme. Some of these Senate districts look they were drawn with a paintball gun.
Senate Democrats were so fixated on their enemies list that when they accidently drew Sen. Frank Wagner into the district of Sen. Harry Blevins' (whom they like) instead of Sen. Jeff McWaters' (whom they don't), they apologized and quickly redrew Wagner and McWaters together as they intended.
Senate Democratic Leader Dick Saslaw, the legislative equivalent of Mr. Vernon from "The Breakfast Club," said he wanted to make Dem districts "better" with "the lines I draw." I? Saslaw?
Good thing Barry Manilow doesn't know he raids his wardrobe.
These plans deserve a veto, but I'm not holding my breath. If the Lord was willing to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if 10 righteous folks were found, McDonnell will probably tolerate the Senate for the sake of the House.
After all, a veto could spiral this dispute right into a courtroom, and if there's one thing worse than legislators, it's a judge.
Any McDonnell amendments would head to the same 22 lockstep Senate Democrats who sent him this plan.
In the House, at least there was a decent amount of aisle-crossing and some pretty strong consensus. The Senate was as partisan as a convention.
How's that for role-swapping?
For all the talk Senate Democrats (Hi, John Miller) spouted against partisan redistricting, they sure loved doing it. They drew lines to help Democrats and hurt Republicans.
Twenty-two Democrats earned visceral scorn at public hearings that are usually quaint and peaceful. After convincing themselves "no one cares about redistricting," they dropped the partisan hammer and earned no votes from anyone but themselves.
By contrast, the House of Delegates was singing Kumbaya.
The House plan passed with only eight "no" votes. Eight out of 100! Supporting it was Legislative Black Caucus and a whole lot of Democrats.
Del. David Englin, about as liberal as Democrats come, called it "the fairest plan we could have hoped for."
Englin, so liberal that he wrote a bill to lower penalties for prisoners who do drugs while in prison, voted for and praised the House redistricting bill: "We both know that they treated us way better than we would have treated them under a partisan process."
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats patted themselves on their 44 shoulders and went home, ignoring every citizen who crowded the few public hearings that were wasted on Senators who were long past listening.
Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling thinks that plans by the governor's bipartisan redistricting commission should replace the ones that didn't garner broad support. Only the Senate's fits that bill.
To do so, McDonnell will have to convince two Senate Democrats who talk about bipartisan redistricting to actually vote that way.
If not, there's always that veto!
Contact Kirwin at brian@rourkpr.com; read more at BearingDrift.com.
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