The four-member partisan commission must find a single way to equalize the population in Washington’s 49 legislative districts and also make room for a new 10th congressional district – the state’s dividend for having faster than average growth since 2001 than most other states.
You’ll have to go here and follow links to the four legislative and four congressional maps themselves. But there are a few obvious impacts for South Sound worth making – beyond the fact three of four maps create a congressional district where racial minorities outnumber whites.
One is that some lawmakers across the state might be squeezed out of their existing districts. In South Sound, Republican Rep. Gary Alexander of Thurston County would be pushed out of the 20th district, which now includes all of Lewis County and part of south Thurston County, and into the 2nd, according to Democratic commissioner Tim Ceis’ proposed map.
Ceis’ proposal would also push Rep. Jim McCune, a Graham Republican, out of the 2nd and into the reconfigured 31st. And Ceis would push Republican Sen. Dan Swecker of Rochester out of the 20th district and into the 35th, where maverick Democratic Sen. Tim Sheldon is the incumbent.
Similarly, Democratic Rep. Troy Kelley of Tacoma, would move from the 28th to the neighboring 27th, in Republican commissioner Slade Gorton’s legislative proposal.
Those moves are part of a bid to shrink the geographical size of the 2nd, which had the fastest population growth in the state over the past 10 years and needs to share population with neighboring districts.
The new congressional maps, which must be merged into a single plan that three of four commissioners agree to by early November, have other implications for legislative and congressional politics in South Sound:
Foster shifts Rep. Adam Smith’s 9th district northward, running it from northeast Tacoma all the way to Tukwila, Renton, and Bellevue. And he concentrates Rep. Norm Dicks’ 6th district in Tacoma, cutting it loose from the Olympic Peninsula except for Port Townsend; Foster also has the 6th cover Kitsap County and extend to the Joint Base Lewis McChord, Lakewood, and Fircrest areas. ** Huff’s congressional plan splits Thurston County into three districts, giving Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater to Dicks’ district along with the Olympic Peninsula. He also runs Smith’s 9th district eastward to Eatonville, south to Tenino and Bucoda and north only as far as the King-Pierce line. ** Republican Slade Gorton’s congressional plan runs the new 10th district along the Canadian border from Puget Sound to Okanogan. He brings Smith’s 9th district further south to include all of Thurston County and portions of Pierce County along Interstate 5 up to Federal Way. Gorton also puts southeast Thurston County in the 3rd district and keeps Mason County and Grays Harbor in the 6th district along with a sliver of Tacoma. ** Democrat Tim Ceis’ congressional plan also splits Thurston County horizontally. Ceis puts the urban north county along with Shelton, DuPont, Lakewood, University Place, Fircrest, Puyallup, Sumner and Algona in the new 10th district. He puts the rural south Thurston County areas of Yelm, rainier, Tenino and Rochester in the 3rd, while peeling Pacific County off the 3rd to put with a new 6th district that spans the entire ocean coast.
