Winding its way through the state Senate is a bill (SB38), authored by Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, that would turn the job of redistricting over to an independent, bipartisan commission. A bill that wins the support of Democrats Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and former Gov. Mark R. Warner as well as Republicans Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and former Gov. George Allen must have something to recommend it.
The legislation, it is hoped, would reduce the practice of gerrymandering. Rather than create legislative districts to protect incumbents and handicap their rivals, an impartial redistricting process would create districts around geographic community of interest. That would mean more competitive districts and fewer safe seats for incumbents.
To most citizens, that sounds like a good thing. Once upon a time long ago, as in the mid-1990s during the days of the Gingrich revolution, Republicans supported incumbent-dislodging ideas such as term limits. But to Republican members of Virginia’s House of Delegates, terrified of seeing their majority whittled down in the next redistricting, an impartial commission apparently sounds like a bad thing. Writes Tyler Whitley with the Times-Dispatch:
“The vast majority of Virginians are much more concerned about the redistricting that determines where their children go to school,” said Jeff Ryer, who is an aide to House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem. It would produce less accountability, not more, because the commissioners would not be elected, according to Ryer.
Now, that’s logical. Not. Voters care more how their school districts are drawn, therefore, we are to conclude what, exactly? That they don’t care at all about the shape of their legislative districts? That they’re just fine with gerrymanders that obliterate natural communities of interest? I don’t think so.
This is the same Republican caucus, I might remind you, that squelched, in a party line vote, a bill to record sub-committee votes. That proposal was offered as an antidote to a practice in which a handful of delegates in sparsely attended meetings can anonymously kill bills they don’t like.
Republicans favor transparency and accountability when it comes to government budgets and spending (rightly so), but they apparently don’t want to be held accountable themselves. They’re going against the grain of the electorate, including independents such as myself. They’re coming across as an aloof, unaccountable, self-perpetuating clique. That’s not a formula for retaining majority status. It’s also an attitude the Elephants may come to regret if the Donkey Clan regains power in the House and gerrymander them out of office.