As you may have noticed in the last 10 months of Senate redistricting, the process of redistricting has been hard to figure out in regards to the Senate.
After the passage of a Tentative Map on February 23rd, the window for public comment opened. Every e-mail except a few were negative. Most hit the same general points pushed by Republicans like Jim Lembke and Jane Cunningham, and there were a lot of people in the New 10th who weren’t happy either.
Presenting 10 comments from the hundreds of e-mails which stood out for various reasons.
1. (2/27/2012) I heard a comment by one of the commissioners that he did not believe this would give an advantage to either of
the political parties. “Show Me Progress” thinks otherwise –
http://www.showmeprogress.com/…
Whoops, guess we should have kept quiet for longer.
2. (2/27/2012) This is a real bummer. I don’t want to be represented by someone living 150 miles away.
Yeah, but until they elect all the Senators in years ending in 2, you’re gonna get that somewhere in Missouri. The 7/10 split is a more public and well-known example of that. But the current 3rd district was represented for 2 years by a St. Louis area Senator from 2003 to 2005 and four counties went 6 years between electing Senators. In the 7/10 split, every county in the new 10th was in an even-numbered district and elected a Senator in 2010. In the 1990s, the 28th Senate district was split in two and dispersed between the 12th and 18th districts. Thus Steve Danner was the Senator representing the Southwest Missouri from 1993 to 1995.
So, you look at the history, and Missouri has done far worse if you look at just the Senatorial districts and disregard the Senators and de-facto Senators.
As to the reaction to Jolie Justus’ de-facto stint representing East-Central Missouri. I guess we could tally to see how many respondents correctly spelled her last name.
3. (3/4/2012) Senate District 7 (Cunningham Republican, Chesterfield) in St. Louis County which is up for election this year was arbitrarily moved across the state to a very urban, Democrat district in Kansas City that previously had an even number and was therefore not up for election.
This appears purposeful to increase the Democrat vote in a very liberal area for the upcoming
critical national and state elections not to mention provide an extra Democrat senator for
the next two legislative sessions.
Who knew that a likely to be unopposed (or minimally opposed) Democratic State Senate candidate in Kansas City was going to lead to a turnout spike in the city? The second part is technically correct, we get a free Senator for 2 years, which would be awesome if we got enough Senators to mount a filibuster. But our Senate caucus can field a baseball team in 2013.
4. (3/5/2012) The population numbers in St. Louis City and County were changed enough to yield only one Republican Senator from the area in the near future rather than the present four. Without having vigorous Republican senate campaigns in St. Louis County, the needed 150,000 votes needed to win statewide elections for Republicans is lost. This map is clearly a Democrat’s and a liberal’s dream map and unfortunately the Republicans on the Commission gave away the store.
(…)
The clear advantage given away to the Democrats for the national and statewide campaigns (Obama, McCaskill, Nixon) by transferring District 7 into downtown Kansas City to energize that liberal population not only for the Democrat primary but the general election. It is hard to imagine Republicans would vote to so benefit the Democrats in such a critical election year.
If you actually look at the St. Louis election results, you’ll be amused at the calls of how unfair it is that St. Louis County wouldn’t mostly be represented by Republicans. Oh no. An area that hasn’t been won by a statewide Republican since 2000 won’t have a majority of the Senate delegation.
Also, we covered the mass conspiracy to energize the liberals with an easy District 7 win.
5. (3/5/2012) Missouri’s proposed re-districting unfairly puts Republicans up for re-election in districts disproportionately populated by Democrats. State population migration to these newly enhanced Democratic districts further disadvantages Republican candidates with the additional potential of a loss of seats.
(plays a violin)
This is a deviation from the usual talking point that people are migrating to Republican areas.
“Oh no, we won’t be able to keep a 26-8 advantage in the Missouri Senate. How unfair!”
6. (3/6/2012) Please say “no” to the new State Senatorial map. Do not succumb to the governor. The map is heavily in favor of the Democratic party. It is unfair to St. Louis County residents by producing more Senators from urban areas with lower populations.
I would be very disappointed to think that my Republican Representatives are intentionally trying to push the election in favor of Obama cronies, who are bringing the demise of our country and our freedoms as we have known them since the beginning, to our country. Our children and grand-children’s futures are at stake in this next election.
Forget about infighting and do the right thing for Missouri residents and our country and say “yes” to the previous judicial map.
I can’t imagine how this line of debate didn’t succeed.
7. (3/7/2012) Please drop the uncontitutional map in Senate District 10. We do NOT want Senator Justus from Kansas City to be our senator. We did not vote for such a man!
Not sure if a subtle slur or total confusion.
The e-mails on the 7th, 8th, and 9th mainly involve people using the commission to just adopt the “2nd judicial commission map”, which is likely not constitutional anyways. Some of the e-mails advised a small fix in Springfield, which looks to have been acknowledged. One e-mailer suggested she would move to South America if Obama was re-elected.
8. (3/8/2012) Sir, I’ve been reading several article’s that are saying that the “New” redistricting maps will leave us Rural Missourians, basically, at the mercy of the Big City voters. Please do not think that us Rural People are just peons that do not know what is happening. In other words, we are not dummies that can’t read or write and/or know who we want to be our Representatives and Senators. I’ve been requested to ask you and your Commission to stay with the Second Judicial Commission Map, basically, so that we,as Rural Voters, do not have the Large City Voters telling us what to do. I thank you for your time.
“I’ve been requested to ask you” is probably not an ideal line to include in the e-mail when they’ve already gotten a variety of e-mails saying the exact same thing. Extra points for saying that, then saying that the big cities will tell us what to do. Yeah, they’re really dominating the Senate, aren’t they.
The whole Urban/Rural thing is a traditional redistricting problem which was handled in the 60s after the One-Man/One-Vote decisions. Once upon a time in Missouri, Worth County had a State Representative.
In the 2002 map, 12 districts were in Jackson County or St. Louis City/County. In the 2012 map, 11 districts were in Jackson County or St. Louis City/County. So if this map was a scheme to put down the Rural people, they sure did it subtlely.
Granted, judging by the addresses of the people bringing up the tyranny of urban districts crushing the suburbs, a lot of them are from Suburbs. The last quote was from a Rural Area though, from Bloomfield in Stoddard County, which was in the same district on the 2nd Judicial Map and the Tentative Map.
9. (3/8/2012) How can any responsible senate committee take a highly republican and
rural district like District 7 in Chesterfield and
move it to an urban, Democratic district 200 miles away?
Chesterfield? rural area? yeah, 70 years ago it was. Now? Not quite.
Barring more successful lawsuits, the Senate Redistricting Saga is over. And despite hundreds of e-mails saying the same thing, the vote went from 8-2 to 10-0. Amazing how trying to appeal to partisanship failed to swing the 4 pro-map Republicans away from their map. Amazing.
Now we live in a tyrannical state where Democrats have a shot at 10 of 34 Senate seats. Maybe 13 or 14 if the Republican partisans move to South America in 2013. Get your duct tape.
