The Zigzag Art of Politics

Mapping seats with crazy lines and partisan colors

As head of the Democratic congressional delegation in California, Phil Burton of San Francisco was in charge of drawing new boundaries for the state’s congressional districts. All last summer he and aides pored over computer printouts of voting patterns. When Congressman Burton finally unveiled his plan, it seemed a model of fairness: population figures for each of the 45 districts were remarkably equal, and few county and city lines were violated. The plan was quickly pushed through the Democratic-controlled state legislature, and Democratic Governor Jerry Brown promptly signed the bill into law.

Yet as Republicans scrutinized the maps closely, they began yelling like devotees of primal-scream therapy. Burton had carved the state into a patchwork of jags and jigs, all designed to create as many Democratic districts as possible. The 27th District, traditionally a Republican stronghold, once hugged the coastline; now dubbed the “anteater’s snout,” it turns inland at Santa Monica and travels along a Democratic corridor just a few blocks wide into the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Burton also proved to be his brother’s keeper: to preserve the seat of his sibling, Democratic Congressman John Burton, he designed a district that jumps across San Francisco Bay, then hooks below the city to take in a swath of Democratic voters in Daly City (see map). Right now the Democrats control 22 House seats and the Republicans 21. Burton created two additional seats to reflect California’s population gains. But he still managed to give the Republicans only about 18 safe districts, meaning that the Democrats could wind up with a nine-seat advantage this fall. “It resembles nothing so much as a jigsaw puzzle designed by an inmate of a mental institution,” wrote Dan Walters, a columnist for the Sacramento Union. Said Burton with a shrug: “It’s my contribution to modern art.”

Welcome to reapportionment, that decennial, highly partisan battle in state legislatures across the country to draw new boundaries to match the latest census counts. After more than a year of political swapping and swearing, 21 states still have not finished their redistricting chores. A panel of three federal judges in Texas just settled the nation’s messiest battle by redrawing six of 27 districts to reflect the growing number of blacks and Hispanics in Dallas and south Texas. In New Jersey last week federal judges declared the plan approved by the Democratic state legislature unconstitutional and demanded a new plan by March 22. The discarded maps, which had been signed into law last January by Democratic Governor Brendan Byrne just hours before Thomas Kean, a Republican, was sworn in as his successor, had been challenged in court by the state’s seven Republican Congressmen, who argued that the plan was drawn mainly to help elect Democrats. “Hurray!” said Kean, with a partisan cheer after hearing of the court’s decision. “That good-for-nothing plan was not good for the people of New Jersey.”

When the wrangling began last year, Republicans had high hopes of chipping away at the 243-to-192 Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Seventeen seats had to be transferred from ten states in the Northeast and Midwest to eleven fast-growing states in the West and the South. Moreover, population shifts within the states themselves—largely from Democratic cities to Republican suburbs—promised to threaten dozens of Democratic strongholds.

Yet G.O.P. dreams are fading quickly. Michigan Congressman Guy Vander Jagt, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, still predicts that up to ten seats will shift in the G.O.P.’s favor, but Congressman Tony Coelho of California, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sharply disagrees. “There’s no way they’re going to do that,” he says. “The most they’ll get is five seats, and it might even be a wash.”

Since the Democrats control twice as many statehouses as the Republicans, they enjoyed a larger say in drafting the new districts. Moreover, federal judges have proved scrupulous in protecting minority representatives, who tend to be Democrats. The U.S. Supreme Court, for example, upheld a plan drawn by Illinois Democrats that protected the seats of three black Democratic Congressmen, despite sharp population declines in their Chicago districts; two Republican incumbents, however, were dumped into the same new district. “The rest of the state suffered because of first having to take care of those three districts artificially,” complains G.O.P. Congressman Edward J. Derwinski, who was shifted into the district of a fellow Republican. In Missouri, a three-judge federal panel redrew the map to save the seat of Democrat William Clay, a black whose St. Louis district has lost 25% of its population since 1970. In preserving Clay’s seat, the judges combined two southeast Missouri districts—and pitted two Republican incumbents against one another.

The Republicans too can claim some successful gerrymandering. In Indiana, which will lose one seat, the G.O.P.-dominated legislature passed a plan that put three Democratic incumbents into the same district. The G.O.P. has also profited from internecine warfare among the Democrats. In Massachusetts, which must shed one seat, the Democratic legislature pushed Republican Congresswoman Margaret Heckler and Democratic Congressman Barney Frank into the same district. The new seat contains about 70% of Heckler’s old district, and the legislators stoutly refused to tack on the Democratic city of Framingham to bolster Frank’s chances. The abrasive Frank evidently made a lot of enemies in the Massachusetts house of representatives, where he served for eight years before winning a seat in Congress in 1980.

Among those states that have not finished redistricting, New York is the most notable laggard. The state must give up five seats, the largest loss in the nation, and the Democratic assembly surely will shoot down the plan passed last week by the Republican senate. In Pennsylvania, which will lose two seats, the Democrats joined with the Republicans to obliterate the district of Democratic Congressman Eugene Atkinson, who was unpopular in his own party. But then Atkinson switched parties last October, and so the Republicans went back to the drawing boards to protect their prized convert. In Texas, Republican Governor William Clements cajoled the Democratic-controlled state legislature last summer into adopting a plan that turned a pair of mostly white Democratic districts in Dallas into one largely black Democratic district and one overwhelmingly white Republican district. In February, however, a three-judge panel opposed the plan because it concentrated minority voters in one district. The judges redrew the Dallas map two weeks ago, but not before a political free-for-all, in which candidates campaigned in neighborhoods that ended up being out of their districts.

In California, the Republicans have managed to place a referendum on the June primary ballot challenging the Burton plan, but the California Supreme Court, by a vote of 4 to 3, has ruled that the disputed plan may be used this year, no matter what the outcome of the referendum vote. In an unlikely alliance, the state’s Republicans have teamed with Common Cause to place an initiative on the November ballot granting redistricting powers to a ten-member commission.

But voters can foil even the most determined attempts at fairness. After the 1970 census, the Iowa Supreme Court carefully created two districts in the east for the Democrats and two districts in the west for the Republicans. Guess what? The Democrats now hold both seats in the west, while the Republicans are safely ensconced in the east.

—By James Kelly.

Reported by Benjamin W. Cate/Los Angeles with other U.S. bureaus