I’ve been watching the whole Texas re-districting kerfuffle unfold with both concern and amusement.
While it appears that Texas does have the right to do so whenever it chooses to, at least under its state constitution, the response by Democrat legislators to deny a quorum feels more like what a spoiled child does when they don’t get their way, in this case fleeing the state. That Texas law also addresses this problem by allowing the governor to declare their seats in the Texas Legislature as abandoned, just adds to the drama.
That Democrats don’t like gerrymandering whenever it works against them, but are all for it when it works in their favor, shows they hypocrisy of the system. Not that Republicans are any less hypocritical, but at least they don’t act like the aforementioned spoiled child who throws a tantrum when denied something they want.
There is something to be said for redistricting to be handled by an independent non-partisan group to implement redrawing the lines of Congressional Districts when required. We certainly don’t want it to be handled by the courts because even judges can be partisan and biased as we’ve seen over the past few years.
One of the more clueless responses was that of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey when she threatened to gerrymander Massachusetts Congressional Districts in favor of Democrats. There’s only one problem with her threat.
There are no Republican Congressional Districts to do away with.
All nine House seats in Massachusetts are in the hands of the Democrats. Unless of course Healey is going to try to carve out a tenth Congressional District which is not within her power to do so. It must also be remembered that Healey fought against the Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline that would have brought more much needed natural gas into New England from Pennsylvania. The pipeline was canceled. Then a few years later she laments the shortage of natural gas during this past winter, conveniently ignoring the fact that she helped cause that shortage to begin with.
California is getting into the act as well, with Gavin Newsom stating he supports independent redistricting, then with his next breath saying he “wants to pick up 5 seats in Congress” by going around the Independent Redistricting Commission in violation of California’s constitution.
Even Washington, D.C. is getting into the act with President Trump asking for a new census to be performed, this time without counting illegal aliens which can seriously skew the number of Congressional Districts in various states.
If nothing else this whole thing will be interesting to watch as it unfolds.
