Today, I attended the virtual public hearing with the AZ Independent Redistricting Commission (AZ IRC), which is accepting public comment on the currently proposed draft maps.
I listened to all the speakers, and near the very end, got to share my view with the Commissioners.
UPDATE: Larry Bodine created a transcript of the meeting which can be viewed as a Google Doc for anyone interested.
I was very impressed with the quality of much of the feedback from the public, despite the very brief time given to each speaker. Many spoke specifically and knowledgeably about the constitutional criteria the AZIRC must consider and apply in drafting maps, and how they applied to various draft maps before the Commission currently.
But many did not impress me; especially, the obviously Republican partisans attending. Their talking points were full of stock phrases such as calling the current maps “gerrymandered” (I will get into why that’s just a partisan slur), speaking in support of a safe GOP district in Southern Arizona as a needed “check and balance” of the political influence of the large Democratic-leaning population of Metro Tucson, and repeated claims of a “community of interest” based primarily on party identification, and opposition or contrast to the “liberal values” and lifestyle of city dwellers.
Here are my brief comments to the Commission:
“Hello, commissioners, and thank for your attention. My name is Michael Bryan, I am an attorney residing in central Tucson for the past 20 years.
I would like to emphasize to the commissioners that the IRC was created by Arizona voters primarily to generate more competitive districts than would occur if the legislature continued to control the process. I quote the AZ Constitution regarding the IRC’s mission “TO OVERSEE THE MAPPING OF FAIR AND COMPETITIVE CONGRESSIONAL AND LEGISLATIVE DISTRICTS.” But far too many of the maps currently under consideration fail to provide the vast majority of Arizonans with competitive districts at either the federal or state level. I, therefore, urge the commission to reevaluate how they prioritize their mission: away from striving to provide some minimal number of competitive districts, and toward maximizing competitiveness in as many districts as mathematically and constitutionally possible.
I would also remind the commissioners that political party affiliation alone does not and cannot define a community of interest. Therefore, using party balance primarily and explicitly to ensure a GOP majority district in Pima County (and especially to provide an oft-quoted here “check and balance” of metro Tucson) is not a constitutionally-sound basis for mapping of districts in Southern Arizona. If your goal is to minimize the legal risk to your final maps, adopting maps that slight other criteria (especially ethnic and cultural minorities) to favor the creation of a safe Republican district in Pima County would certainly fail that goal.”
Gerrymander Slander
My first criticism of the partisan talking points – obviously sponsored and coordinated by the AZGOP – is calling our current maps, adopted in the 2010 round of redistricting “gerrymandered”. Nothing could be further from the truth, or a more obvious slur and attack on the very idea of the AZ IRC.
Arizona’s current maps are not, of course, perfect, but they are a national model for how more representative districts tend to emerge from a process insulated from the influence of the state legislature and current elected officials. Those current maps are much of the reason why Democrats have made steady progress in Arizona’s elections over the past decade due to a growing electorate of Democrats and Independents. An AP anaylsis found AZ’s current maps the fourth most accurately representational in the nation based on the match between partisan balance in the electorate and electoral outcomes.
This is exactly why the AZGOP hates those maps. The AZ GOP did its level best to destroy the AZ IRC and, failing that, to intimate and remove its Independent Chair. They failed. And they were furious about it.
There is a widely-shared and growing political and academic consensus that the results of redistricting by independent commissions are generally more fair and balanced (hate to use that phrase…) than those drawn by means more directly influenced by elected officials.
And the AZ GOP is really steamed about that, too. It’s the main reason why the AZGOP improvised a devious and dubiously-legal strategy to dominate the selection process for the AZ IRC this round through the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments (CACA), which Ducey abused to control the selection process.
Quoting from the article linked above:
“[State Senator] Quezada… pointed out that the governor has not appointed any Democrat and rarely ever appointed people of color to the commission.
The Arizona Constitution requires CACA to reflect the diversity of the state, and Quezada argues its current makeup does not. The commission is made up of seven Republicans and five independents, and only one person of color.
CACA is supposed to have 15 total members – five attorneys and 10 members of the public. Currently, it has three vacancies, and one term expired last month. But Democrats’ biggest complaint is that not one member is a Democrat.”
So, it is clear from the history and record of results of the IRC process that the AZ GOP hates it with the intensity of a thousand proverbial suns, and will do everything in its power to undermine the voters’ intent to create more fair and competitive maps. Calling the resultant 2010 districts “gerrymandered” is merely a peice of rank propaganda stemming from that effort.
Check Your Priviledge
Next, I would like to address this often quoted notion that a safe Republican majority district is needed in Pima County to “check and balance” metro Tucson.
First, and most obviously, use of this notion that liberal-leaning voters must be “balanced out” somehow by (using it fairly here) gerrymandering a GOP majority district into the area as a criterion would be explicitly unconsitutional.
Yet the GOP-sponsored commenters repeated used this notion over and over to support their case for a GOP majority state legislative district in Pima County. I think that even the Republican Comissioners of the AZ IRC realize just how reckless and legally unsound it would be to allow this consideration to influence them. I expect they will be clever enough to cloak thier intent behind some other criteria, despite their partisans lacking such guile. Which leads us to:
Community Abuse
The more clever among the partisan hacks recognize that an explicitly partisan appeal for packing and cracking to create a GOP majority district in Pima County isn’t going to fly, so they turn to one of the legally condoned criterion to smuggle in their illegal booty: communities of interest.
The definition of a community of interest is fairly open-textured:
Speaking broadly, a community of interest is a neighborhood, community, or group of people who have common policy concerns and would benefit from being maintained in a single district. Another way of understanding a community of interest is that it is simply a way for a community to tell its own story about what neighbors share in common, and what makes it unique when compared to surrounding communities. They are defined by the local community members.
There is, of course, much more legal analysis and precedent that could be brought to bear on the definition, but that’s not the point here. The point is that it is NOT simply partisan identification.
Defining a “community of interest” also includes balancing and respecting other constititonal criterion for redistricting such as contiguousness, compactness, and natural and political boundaries.
If you try to define a “community of interest” simply by saying ‘these areas are a community because they tend to vote for a single party” you run into trouble constitutionally, especially if you thereby ignore other criteria: and that’s exactly what Commissioner Mehl’s maps brewed up in secret by the SALC do. They are trying to cobble together a legislative district that blatantly flouts the other criteria by claiming that the areas they cobbled together to get a partisan advantage constitute a “community of interest” merely because they all tend to vote Republican.
It’s a too-clever-by-half strategy to import partisan advantage under the guise of protecting an imaginary “community of interest”, even though the only thing those areas share is a desire to own the libs. I believe that given the history of the maps, the other criteria that are being ignored, the discussions thus far among the Commissioners, and the media attention, any court would immediately see through this flimsy ruse. But, hey, it’s maybe the AZ GOP’s best shot (along with minimizing the role of competitiveness, relegating concerns for it to a minimal number of districts, and defining it in a very odd way) at skewing the maps in their favor this round. So, maybe they take their chances in court?
I’ll be frank: I’m suspicious of the loyalites of the IRC Chair this time around. I think that Chair Neuberg has demonstrated an unsettling deference to the GOP partisans on the commission, especially as regards the drawing of districts in Southern Arizona. Adopting wholesale a secretly and partisan-drafted map, which one of the Republican Commissioners was involved in creating, is more than troubling: it damned alarming. If Dr. Neuberg wants her intgrity and her legacy to be protected from legal challenges, she should really see this whole gambit for what it surely is: an attempt to skew the IRC process to favor Republican power over the public’s interest in fair and competitive elections over the next decade.
If Dr. Nueberg is truly independent, then she needs to nip this obviously partisan gambit in the bud and protect the intent of the voters of Arizona in creating the AZ IRC.
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Thanks for this article! I heard your comments ( conveniently saved for the very end and followed by the gop!) and was eager to hear more. The info about the aptly named CACA is very important. Tuesday nov. 16 at 4 there will be a demonstration by the Raging Grannies at the offices of SALC(3489 north campbell) to protest this gerrymandering. We will deliver a letter to SALC and Sing out! Stand out! We have signs or you can bring your own. You cant pull the wool over Granny’s eyes— we call BS.
Thank you for bringing in CACA. Brilliant. Here is a copy of my testimony:
I am asking you to create a legislative map that has more competitive districts.
Competitive districts assure that political parties advance their best and brightest.
They assure candidates run on solutions and positions not political affiliation.
And they assure that elected officials can be held accountable for their bad acts.
Safe districts, on the other hand, produce candidates like Paul Goser who thinks its fun to create a video showing him stabbing and killing a female colleague.
Safe districts like the one I am currently in produced a representative that follows Q, supported the fraudit, is an Oathkeeper and attend the insurrection.
Safe districts allow the safely elected to ignore the will of voters and close their competitors out of deliberations. How many times have 60 to 70% of voters been in favor of something only to see it never advanced because it challenges the power or inclinations of the party elected by a slim majority as currently is happening?
I submitted legislative map LD0028 for the sole purpose of keeping Pima County as intact as possible and assuring Marana and Oro Valley were not in Pinal County. I ended up with 8 competitive districts by accident. Surely you could do better on purpose.
If you must gerrymander, please gerrymander competitive districts not a district like LD17 as it appears in your map 10.0. Thank you.
I tuned into the hearing, but I was not chosen to speak. It is my understanding that the Pima County R Party asked its activists to call in favor of proposed district 17, which runs from Saddlebrooke to Vail along the Catalina and Rincon Mts.It was drawn by David Mehl as a safe R district.
People who live in Marana, Oro Valley, and Casas Adobes are not neighbors of those in Tanque Verde and Vail. As a matter of fact, if you live in Oro Valley and wanted to go to Vail, you’d take I-10, instead of snaking around the mountains. Neither is Saddlebrooke a community of interest with NW MetroTucson. (On a side note, there was a lot of Tucson bashing by the new pink house residents in the suburbs, which would not exist if not for Tucson.)
The chair of the commission indeed is partisan, evidenced by her campaign contributions to Doug Ducey and other Republicans. The Appellate Commission chaired by Jonathan Paton, R-Maricopa County, that selected the AIRC nominees had no Dems on it until after AIRC nominees were selected. It also says a lot that a developer, David Mehl, would be selected as a commissioner in a state with a diminishing supply of water.
Dems were just two seats away from a majority in the lege, before these new maps. Now I’m afraid the lege will be majority R for another 10 years. . Shameful partisan behavior from Doug Ducey all the way down to David Mehl.
I remember 10 years ago the IRC drew maps that gave Repugs more districts than Democrats and how the Repugs howled that it was so unfair. Guess the party of whiny little bitches are the same as they ever were.
All districts should be competitive. Nationwide, the lack of competitive districts has left us where right wing lunatics occupy safe gerrymandered seats, much to the detriment of our democracy & country.
As Bill Maher put it a few years ago: “The Democrats have moved to the right and the Republicans have moved into the insane asylum.”