INDIANAPOLIS – Legislators across Indiana may be spending their next campaign season traveling to parts unknown to them, due to big shifts in political districts proposed by Statehouse Republicans.
The proposed new maps for state legislative and federal congressional districts unveiled Monday significantly reconfigure the boundary lines for almost every legislative and congressional district in the state.
Within moments after their release, Democrats and Republicans were pitching opposing views on the fairness of the maps. But there was concurrence on one thing: The redrawn lines mean many incumbents will be stumping for votes in communities where they’ve never had to campaign before.
“That means a lot more fish fries and pancake breakfasts and a lot more miles to travel,” said state Sen. Randy Head, a Logansport Republican whose Senate district will grow in geographic size to accommodate its big drop in population over the last decade.
The U.S. Constitution mandates that every legislative and congressional district be redrawn every 10 years, following the decennial census, to guarantee an equal number of people reside in each district.
But how those lines are redrawn are often the subject of bitter debate.
Some examples of how the GOP-backed redistricting plan would impact Indiana:
• The 2nd Congressional District, now represented by U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, would be redrawn to exclude some traditional Democrat strongholds, including Kokomo.
• The 9th Congressional District, represented by Republican Todd Young, would be stretched so that it would run from the southern suburbs of Indianapolis to the Ohio River counties that make up the northern suburbs of Louisville.
• The new maps would eliminate a state House seat in a traditionally Democratic area of Indianapolis that has lost population and add a state House seat in Zionsville, an area of booming growth over the decade that is also heavily Republican.
There is almost no area of the state not impacted in some way. The district represented by state Sen. Tim Skinner, a Democrat from Terre Haute in west-central Indiana, would be compacted significantly. Meanwhile, on the other side of the state in east-central Indiana, state Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican from Oldenburg, would see her district expand to include another county. That’s because her district has about 9,000 fewer people now than it did 10 years ago.
Anderson, north of Indianapolis, would also see a big change. It would drop from two state House seats to one, and its current state senator, Tim Lanane, would see his district shift to include neighboring Muncie. Lanane, after seeing the maps, noted that he may be spending more time splitting his weekends among high school sporting events. “Anderson and Muncie have a big sports rivalry,” Lanane said.
Few lawmakers had seen the GOP-drawn maps until they were unveiled Monday and later posted online.
Among the surprises: Eight of the 100 newly proposed state House districts have no incumbent living there and 10 districts have two incumbents in their borders; three districts have two current Republican legislators together; three districts have two Democrat incumbents, and four districts have a Republican and a Democrat incumbent within their borders.
Rep. Scott Reske, a Democrat from Pendleton, is in the last category. His district now includes a portion of Anderson, but under the proposed maps, it would shift geographically to the southwest. The new district would include the hometown of Republican Rep. Bob Cherry of Greenfield.
That left Reske unhappy. “They spent about million dollars over the last two elections trying to defeat me,” Reske said of the state Republicans. “They couldn’t beat me, so now they’re just going to redistrict me.”
But Senate President Pro Tem David Long, a Republican from Fort Wayne, and House Speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican from Indianapolis, said partisan politics didn’t enter the re-mapping process.
Both said that the GOP mapmakers focused on making the new districts compact and keeping “communities of interest” together.
They cited as evidence newly mapped districts that lump incumbents together. Among them is the influential House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jeff Espich of Uniondale, whose new district would include an incumbent House Republican.
Bosma said Republicans had vowed to produce new maps free of partisan gerrymandering of the past that aims to favor incumbents and the party in power. He acknowledged, though, that new maps may favor Republicans because of the makeup of Indiana voters and the population shifts that have occurred in traditional Democrat and Republican strongholds.
An analysis done by Brian Howey, a longtime observer of Statehouse politics and publisher of The Howey Report political newsletter, found that of the 30 House districts that lost population over the last decade, 21 of them are represented now by Democrats. Meanwhile, many of House districts held by Republicans in suburban districts saw significant growth in population.
Julia Vaughn, policy director of Common Cause/Indiana, helped lead an effort to solicit more citizen participation and input into the map-making. She saw the GOP-proposed maps for the first time on Monday, so hadn’t had much time to study them.
She noted that they appeared more compact geographically than some of the meandering districts drawn by Democrats 10 years ago.
“But compactness isn’t the only criteria,” she said. “Again and again what we heard in the public meetings we held across the state was that people wanted two things: compactness and political competition. Voters want the maps to result in more competitive districts, not fewer.”
That debate is still to come. Committee hearings on the maps are slated for Wednesday in the House and the Senate. Any changes and a vote on the maps have to come before the Legislature ends the session on April 29.
In a statement released Monday, Republican Party State Chairman Eric Holcomb praised the proposed maps, saying they got done despite the five-week walkout by House Democrats.
“As Hoosiers inspect the maps over the coming days, they will see Republicans’ stated commitment to respect communities of interests in fair and compact districts translated to paper ...” he said. “These newly proposed lines are fair, equitable and will result in better representation for Hoosiers in the Statehouse and our nation’s capital.”
But Indiana Democratic Party Chair Dan Parker took a different view. In a statement he released after the maps were posted, Parker said the maps fall short.
“From the Congressional maps to the ones at the Statehouse, Republicans have tossed counties, communities and current lawmakers together in a way that just doesn’t make any sense for voters.”