Pundit: 20th or 23d House districts likely to be broken up
Maury Thompson has an excellent article in today’s Post-Star, looking at possible impacts of redistricting on the North Country.
New York state stands to lose two seats by the 2012 elections.
One of Thompson’s sources thinks the 20th district, represented by congressman Chris Gibson (R-Kinderhook) or the 23rd district, represented by Bill Owens (D-Plattsburgh) may be prime targets for dissolution
Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant from New York City, told the Post-Star the following:
Either the 20th District, represented by Gibson, or the 23rd District directly to the north, represented by Bill Owens, a Democrat from Plattsburgh, would be eliminated, he suggested.
Boundaries of the remaining districts would shift to the south and west.
Sheinkopf said Gibson and Owens are both new congressmen, while others in the western part of the state, particularly Rep. Louise Slaughter, a Democrat from Rochester, have built up long-standing political alliances.
“Seats that will be eliminated are probably seats that have less political capital to them,” he said.
Sheinkopf’s opinion seems to be something of an outlier, according to the Post-Star’s reporting. Other politics-watchers think the bigger impacts will come in western New York, where population loss has been greatest.
But others say much of the current 20th Congressional District will likely stay intact because of significant population growth in Saratoga County, at the heart of the district.
Tags: politics, redistricting
I would not be surprised but only time will tell.
That said, I do believe districts should cover all of a county. They should not split up counties, towns or cities.
I also dislike the sneaky – yes sneaky – efforts by both Democrats and Republicans to draw the lines to take in voters they think will vote for them and exclude voters they think might not vote for them.
I know some people vote for a party and not the candidate but all that tells me is they really don’t deserve to vote if their thinking ends at the party line.
What happened to the idea of having the districts drawn by a bi-partisan committee? Maybe we need a public referendum to go around the politicians if they don’t want to serve the public interest.
The Congressional districts drawn by partisan politicians are one of our problems. I’d like to see a computer used to draw the most contiguous, compact districts representing the correct population size.