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One thing all four of the Redistricting Commission’s voting members have that they can trade: legislators eager to stay in their districts.
Maps the commissioners proposed last week leave a few lawmakers on the outside of their districts looking in. But the unofficial goal of the once-a-decade redistricting process is to protect incumbents, so count on the 49 legislative districts to look quite different once commissioners – appointed by the partisan caucuses of the Legislature, with a vested interest in protecting their members – reach a deal.
“It’s a partisan negotiating position in the negotiations. Everybody knows none of these are going to be the final map,” said Republican Sen. Mark Schoesler, whose southeastern Washington district would shift out from under his Ritzville home under Democrats’ plans.
He could end up running against either Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt of Walla Walla or Sen. Janea Holmquist Newbry of Moses Lake, the top Republican on the labor and commerce committee. Schoesler has represented the 9th Legislative District since 1992.
“They chose to negotiate with the use of putting key members in each others’ districts,” Schoesler said.
He’s talking about Democrats, but his take also could describe some of the Republicans’ ideas. GOP commissioner Slade Gorton called for inching the 30th district south into Pierce County and leaving behind Sen. Tracey Eide’s Redondo home. Eide would wind up in the 33rd district, setting up a potential race against another Senate Democrat from the Des Moines area, Karen Keiser.
Such a scenario – Senate Democrats’ floor leader, Eide, going up against the chairwoman of the health care committee – is unlikely.
To be approved, a map needs three votes on a commission that has two Democrats and two Republicans. Maps for Congress also need three votes, and commissioners are considering widely different plans for a new 10th Congressional District, with two maps putting it in the Tacoma-Olympia area, one placing it in South King County and one along the Canadian border.
“We were not surprised in the least that they had put me outside my district,” Eide said. She noted that she lives on the northern end of the 30th and called redistricting “a very difficult job.”
“It’s like a puzzle to put together.”
Tacoma Rep. Troy Kelley is in a similar position. The Democrat lives on the northern end of a district, the 28th, that was bound to change no matter who drew it. The district that now runs from DuPont to Tacoma’s West End is underpopulated compared to others.
The 28th could turn into a flash point in South Sound redistricting as commissioners from the two parties would make major changes in opposite directions.
Republicans hope to push it down into Roy and Spanaway and, in one proposal, carve out a rural swath of area stretching to Eatonville. Democrats want to make it a more urban district that would extend to Point Defiance and, in one proposal, all of Lakewood.
Kelley said he expects the final maps to be very different. So does Republican Rep. Gary Alexander of Thurston County, who said commissioners should keep together Lewis County and his rural part of Thurston that he says is similar to Lewis.
The 20th would leave Alexander behind under the map drawn by Democratic commissioner Tim Ceis, placing the lawmaker in the 2nd district straddling Pierce and Thurston. The map would give Alexander an open seat to run for, by bumping Rep. Jim McCune of Graham from the 2nd into a reformulated 31st that would stretch to the Pierce-Thurston county line.
The legislative maps have other impacts for the South Sound:
• Democrat Dean Foster’s plan keeps Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater in the 22nd, along with Cooper Point peninsula. He extends the 35th district from Bremerton, Shelton and rural Mason County to include the south edge of the 22nd. He also keeps an arm of the 20th touching the outskirts of Lacey, while also extending the 20th south to include Cowlitz County.
• Ceis’ plan follows similar lines and retains Cooper Point in the 22nd. He pushes the 20th south to include Cowlitz County and shifts much of southeast Thurston County, including the outskirts of Lacey, into the 2nd. And he wraps the 35th district around the south side of the 22nd. He also reconfigures the 2nd to run north from the Yelm area to include Nisqually Valley, DuPont, Steilacoom and parts of south Pierce County around Roy.
• Ceis’ plan also would push Republican Sen. Dan Swecker of Rochester out of the 20th district and into the 35th, where maverick Democratic Sen. Tim Sheldon of Potlatch is the incumbent.
• Republican Tom Huff’s plan retains Olympia and most of Tumwater and Lacey in the 22nd district; it also pushes the 22nd east to the Nisqually Delta and west to include Steamboat Island peninsula and areas around lower Oyster Bay. He keeps Yelm in the 2nd, but extends the 28th from Lakewood to include the military bases, Roy, DuPont, Steilacoom, and Fircrest.
• Gorton’s plan extends the 22nd to the west to the Mason County line, including the Steamboat Island Peninsula. Gorton pulls the 2nd toward Pierce County, leaving portions southeast of Lacey and Yelm in the 2nd. But he pulls the 28th south from Lakewood to include the military bases and Roy. He also would keep the 20th district intact, covering all of Lewis County, and let it wrap the south side of the urban 22nd.
CONGRESSIONAL MAPS
Unlike the maps for the Legislature, the commissioners’ maps for Congress don’t boot any sitting lawmakers out of their districts, except for Jay Inslee, who is running for governor and leaving D.C. behind.
Still, some have major changes in store for the areas members of Congress represent. Republican commissioner Tom Huff’s map would slice Tacoma off of U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks’s district.
Huff would put Olympia and Lacey into Dicks’s 6th Congressional District and move Gig Harbor and more of Tacoma into Rep. Adam Smith’s 9th district.
Dicks said Huff “made a serious mistake.”
“Taking me out of Tacoma is very hard to understand,” said the Belfair Democrat, who noted he has represented Tacoma since his first election to Congress in 1976 and said there’s an important tie between Tacoma and Bremerton in that both areas are home to military bases. Dicks is the top Democrat on the defense budget subcommittee.
Huff told reporters his move of Inslee’s 1st district into a more rural orientation required changes on the Kitsap Peninsula. “It fit perfectly well for the Gig Harbor area to move into the 9th district,” he said.
Tacoma Democrat Smith is taking a wait-and-see approach to redistricting, saying he would be glad to represent whoever ends up in his district.
Staff writer Brad Shannon contributed to this story.
Jordan Schrader: 360-786-1826
jordan.schrader@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
