Intimination: Tea Party Intimidation of Citizen Redistricting Commissions, Sequel to Health Care Reform Town Halls

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

There are 21 states that have some form of a Citizen Redistricting Commission that play a role in redistricting state legislative and congressional district lines. 2009 Redistricting Commissions Table (National Conference of State Legislatures).

This public participation in what used to be a behind-closed-doors process in the state legislature was intended by good government organizations to create more openness and transparency in the redistricting process. But it has also led to an unintended consequence. The spectacle of the Koch brothers corporate funded Tea Party front groups (Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks) engaged in organized disruption and intimidation of the Health Care Reform Town Halls has now moved to these Citizen Redistricting Commissions across the country.

Here in Arizona, organized Tea Party efforts to intimidate the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission have been underway since before the commission members were appointed. You will recall that Senate President Russell Pearce and House Speaker Kirk Adams challenged the judicial panel's selection of the pool of candidates from which they had to choose, and they successfully had a name added that they wanted.

Then GOP partisans howled over the Commission's selection of a law firm to represent the Commission when Lisa Hauser, a GOP partisan attorney who represented the previous commission, was not chosen. Hauser had a snit and actually filed an administrative complaint challenging the Commission's evaluation of her bid. The Commission evaluation of her bid was upheld this week.

Then GOP partisans, led by the secretive GOP partisan groups "Fair Trust" and Citizens for Common Sense Redistricting (if you Google them or check the Secretary of State records you will not find them) howled last week that the mapping firms which submitted an RFP to the Commission had done work for Democratic candidates and thus were suspect of being politically biased. They did not seem to have this problem with National Demographics Corporation, the firm that did the mapping for the previous Commission, which has done work for Republican candidates.

The Commission hired Washington, D.C.-based Strategic Telemetry as the commission's mapping consultant on Wednesday. Strategic Telemetry has done work for Democratic campaigns, as well as Mayor Michael Bloomberg. GOP partisans objected in public comments at the meeting on Wednesday. E-mails and telephone calls went out Wednesday night to Tea Party members to attend the Commission's meeting in Tucson on Thursday (this information from those in attendance). I do not know the group responsible for this organizing effort. But the Tea Party showed up in impressive numbers on Thursday.

The Tea Party was there for two purposes: first, to intimidate members of the Commission, and secondly, to delegitimize the work of the Commission through their public comments. This is all about working the refs to get what they want, and laying the groundwork for the legal challenges to the redistricting maps that are certain to follow the Commission's work.

As Steve Muratore posts at The Arizona Eagletarian: Redistricting — meeting in Tucson:

Today was brutal.

Not for me, but for all five members of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.  

Fifty-two people gave public comments.  The vast majority expressed angry indignation, primarily aimed at Chairwoman Colleen Coyle Mathis, about the decision made yesterday by the Commission to hire Strategic Telemetry, a D.C. based firm to serve as mapping consultant.

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Most certainly, the Tea Party related groups have every right to organize for political advocacy.  The commissioners ALL felt the pressure. It was apparent on their faces. During a recess after the nearly three hour comment period , one commissioner said that even though the comments were not aimed at him (or her), he (or she) could definitely feel it.

I wonder how many of those members of the public took the time to understand Wednesday's decision. How many learned anything about Strategic Telemetry other than that it had done work for Democrats?  And how many reviewed the interview and presentation the firm made last Friday?

It is irrelevant to them Steve. As I said, the Tea Party was there for two purposes: first, to intimidate members of the Commission, and secondly, to delegitimize the work of the Commission through their public comments. This is all about working the refs to get what they want, and laying the groundwork for the legal challenges to the redistricting maps that are certain to follow the Commission's work.

This same process has been playing out for several months now in California, which is using a Citizens Redistricting Commission for the first time, and it has been ugly. California Tea Partiers Revved Up by Redistricting Reform – New America Media:

Few ordinary Californians have been more intensely interested in the state’s new Citizens Redistricting Commission than Berkeley-based Tea Party activist David Salaverry.

Back in March, he realized that the fledgling panel, with its 14 citizen members drawing political districts instead of politicians and its commitment to openness and transparency instead of behind-the-scenes deal-making, offered a golden opportunity for conservative Californians to influence the redistricting process at a time when their political clout was waning in other ways.

The cabinet-maker and building contractor sent email blasts to “patriot” groups around the Bay Area, encouraging them to attend meetings and to write and call the commissioners. He ran small training sessions for local Tea Partiers explaining the redistricting process and outlining main talking points—especially the idea that the commission should be “colorblind” in drawing political maps.

Salaverry, dubbed the “redistricting Paul Revere,” by right-wing blogger Dell Hill, received an enthusiastic response and has helped Tea Partiers dominate public input at commission meetings far beyond the Bay Area. “It all happened very quickly,” Salaverry said by phone while waiting for his two-minute time slot to testify before the commissioners at a Culver City meeting last week.

Indeed, the activists have been such an overwhelming presence that the commission recently moved to limit the number of hearings for the rest of the summer, one commissioner said. Instead of continuing through July, the meetings will now end next Tuesday—to the dismay of civil rights advocates. "We have concerns that opportunities for input are going to be limited by not having additional hearings," says Eugene Lee of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC).

Given their successes in the 2010 elections, it should come as no shock that Tea Party activists across the country have seized on the redistricting process—the redrawing of political districts for Congress, state legislature, and local office, using the latest census data—as a way to consolidate their political gains for the next 10 years.

What is proving more surprising (and to some, alarming) is how astutely Tea Partiers in California have taken advantage of redistricting reforms that were intended to make the process less partisan and—groups like Common Cause had hoped—fairer to long-disenfranchised minorities.

Yet the goal of many of these conservatives seems to be to block Democratic-leaning Latinos, in particular, from making electoral gains at the expense of the state’s declining white population. “It’s simplistic to say we are colorblind and that race should never be taken into account,” Lee says. “There is still racially polarized voting, and sometimes it’s necessary to consider race to make sure everyone has a voice.”

You really want to read this entire post that goes into detail about the Tea Party intimidation of minority citizens who show up to testify at the public hearings in California. California Tea Partiers Revved Up by Redistricting Reform – New America Media. it is a template of what we can expect to see here in Arizona as the Commission moves into its public hearings phase.

There does not appear to be any response to this well-organized and coordinated Tea Party assault on Citizen Redistricting Commissions across the country from the Democratic National Committee, or locally from the Arizona Democratic Party. Where are the Democratic Party's Voter Protection attorneys? Why is the Democratic Party not sounding the alarm and making a big loud deal about this? Where is the organizing of its membership, particularly its minority caucuses, i.e., Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, etc., to attend the Commission hearings en masse to make it clear to the Commission (particularly in public comments on the record) that these Tea Party intimidators are only a small minority of the electorate? Sound the clarion call now!

Nor have the civil rights organizations representing minority communities, i.e., Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, etc., who are "communities of interest" under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, made an effort to attend these meetings with their membership in a well-organized and coordinated effort to counter what has been one-sided Tea Party intimidation of the Commission so far. It is minorities that the Tea Party wants to suppress. Where the hell are you? This is the principal function of a civil rights organization. Sound the clarion call now!

Finally, the mainstream media and even the big progressive blogs like Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, and the Huffington Post have not been reporting this well-organized and coordinated Tea Party intimidation of Citizens Redistricting Commissions across the country. Not a single news organization — not one — attended the Commission hearing in Tucson on Thursday. Only Steve Muratore of The Arizona Eagletarian blog attends these meetings regularly and reports on the activities of the Commission.

We cannot rely on the feckless mainstream media to report what is happening at Commission hearings and why. We have to be citizen reporters. The editors of Blog for Arizona all have jobs and can't attend all the Commission hearings. I will discuss with Mike about setting up a system where those of you attending the meetings can live blog what is happening at the hearing.

More importantly, it is past time for progressives, Democrats and independents concerned about this right-wing assault upon our democracy to step up to the mic and be heard. Get organized now! We need to turn out our troops en masse at these AIRC public hearings to counter these Tea Party thugs. They will not be permitted to intimidate commissioners and to hijack the redistricting process. Stand up and fight back against this Tea Party tyranny! Your voices need to be heard.