GOP Memo: Gerrymandering Won Us The House Majority
A
recent memo by the Republican State Leadership Committee emphasizes the party's 2010 victories in state legislatures as central to the House GOP
retaining its majority in the 2012 elections.
The reason? Redistricting -- or more precisely,
gerrymandering.
In the memo -- titled "How a Strategy of Targeting State Legislative Races in 2010 Led to a Republican U.S. House Majority in 2013" -- RSLC boasts that it "raised more than $30 million in 2009-2010, and invested $18 million after Labor Day 2010 alone"
to ensure statehouse victories in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
"The rationale was straightforward," reads the memo.
"Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn. Drawing new district lines in states with the most redistricting activity presented the opportunity to solidify conservative policymaking at the state level and maintain a Republican stronghold in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade."
The plan worked: even as they took a beating in the races for Senate and the White House, House Republicans ended up with a 33-seat majority, thanks to friendly district maps drawn by their own state colleagues. As the RSLC memo admits, "
Democratic candidates for the U.S. House won 1.1 million more votes than their Republican opponents."
GOP Memo: Gerrymandering Won Us The House Majority
Hey, CUT'nPASTE Boy, both parties have gerrymandered and won. It is a practice that needs to stop. Why don't you Cut'n'Paste what is going on in Maryland.......your Democrat Masters don't want to give up gerrymandering. Looks like you back the Republican Governor of Maryland despite your cuttin' and pastin'. Think boy.
OK, Got it, the GOP Guv in ONE state wants it to stop? lol
States readjust their congressional districts each decade after the U.S. census is taken, to ensure that each one has the right number of residents. In several states,
including North Carolina and Ohio, Republicans have angered Democrats by creating fingery districts that make it more difficult for Democrats to gain or keep seats. Critics call the process “gerrymandering.”
In 2011, second-term Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) proved that Democrats could play the same game. With input from an advisory committee, public hearings and Maryland’s overwhelmingly Democratic congressional delegation, O’Malley proposed a map that made it easier for Democrats to gain a seat in the House of Representatives — taking a slice of rapidly growing, and heavily Democratic, Montgomery County, and adding it to the otherwise rural, conservative 6th Congressional District.
Is this how a Congressional district is supposed to look? Anti-gerrymandering activists say no.