A bipartisan compromise on the state’s 10 districts is due for public unveiling at 11 a.m. in Olympia. The state Redistricting Commission faces a Jan. 1 deadline to redraw the state’s political lines to reflect the latest census numbers.
Democratic commissioner Tim Ceis of Seattle and Republican commissioner Slade Gorton of King County reached their tentative deal on the congressional maps Tuesday. But both were refusing to say whether the new 10th lands in Olympia or ends up in south King County to create the state’s first district with a majority of racial and ethnic minorities.
“Hopefully the other commissioners will see it as we do: that it is a good, fair, equal plan,’’ Ceis said.
Ceis and Gorton reached their draft agreement during extended talks in Olympia on Tuesday morning and afternoon. Both insisted they have not shared results yet with the other two voting commissioners on the five-member panel. The commission needs a three-fourths supermajority to approve any final plan.
“We have kept them apprised. But they don’t know the details,” Gorton added of Republican Tom Huff of Gig Harbor and Democrat Dean Foster of Olympia.
On Tuesday, Cherry Cayabyab of the Win/Win Network and the Fair Representation Coalition urged the commission to place the state’s 10th District in the south King County area where a minority-majority district could be created without an incumbent.
Commissioners Huff and Foster are still working on the other half of the commission’s work – a 49-district legislative plan. Unlike Ceis and Gorton, Foster said he was not ready to promise maps for public review today.
But Huff and Foster said they are getting closer on the final piece dealing with Eastern Washington. The duo previously produced a plan for southwest Washington and the Olympic Peninsula that reworks some of the boundaries of South Sound. Ceis and Gorton also produced a legislative map for Western Washington areas north of the King-Pierce county line.
“We’re both exchanging maps, and we’re awfully close,” Foster said.
The bipartisan legislative agreements for Western Washington have fallout for South Sound. The pending legislative map bumps Thurston County-area Republican Rep. Gary Alexander from the 20th district and into the 2nd district, while bumping Republican Rep. Jim McCune of Graham out of the 2nd and into the 28th, which has two Democrats incumbents from the Tacoma-Lakewood area.
Redistricting is a once a decade national exercise to equalize populations in legislative and congressional districts after each federal census.
In Washington, a bipartisan commission with four voting members (two Republicans and two Democrats) and a non-voting chairman must reach agreement on plans supported by at least three voting members. Whatever plan is adopted can be amended slightly by a supermajority vote of the Legislature; missing the Jan. 1 deadline sends the job to the state Supreme Court.
The commission has details on earlier maps and redistricting procedures on its web site.
