There’s an interesting slide show over at Slate of the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the country (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds). I only have knowledge of one of them, the Illinois 4th Congressional District. It’s been described as sort of barbell shaped with knobs at each end joined by a narrow strip, one block wide, in the middle. That’s the Congressional district of Luis Gutierrez, the only Hispanic congressman representing the Chicago area.
The gerrymandering follows living patterns of Hispanics in Chicago, joining the Pilsen neighborhood with Humboldt Park and Logan Square, picking up several other heavily Hispanic communities along the way. The rationale for the peculiar shape is that despite Chicago’s large Hispanic population since it’s distributed throughout Chicago there wouldn’t be a majority Hispanic Congressional district in Chicago without gerrymandering.
However, not only does the gerrymandering concentrate Hispanics to create a majority Hispanic district, it prevents Chicago’s Hispanics from having as much political influence as they might in several districts if the boundaries were drawn more naturally. From the standpoint of incumbent congressmen, it’s win-win.
My own view of this is that, if we want proportional representation, we should amend the Constitution to mandate it and, if we don’t, these monsters shouldn’t stand up to court challenges as they do. It’s another egregrious case of legislating from the bench.
Slate hardly choose the MOST gerrymandered districts, at least not in Florida’s case. Florida’s 3rd Congressional District is downright silly. (See map.) It’s even sillier than it looks, as that big chunk of land in the middle contains the bulk of Ocala National Forest and other large undeveloped areas. Basically the district is comprised of a few neighborhoods in Orlando, east Gainesville (which is to say the poor black neighborhoods), and some neighborhoods in Jacksonville.
The best part about this particular bit of gerrymandering is that it screwed the University of Florida professors out of their congresswoman. Most of them live in the part of town now represented by a Republican. Doh! The district came about because of a coalition of black Democrats and white Republicans sticking it to white Democrats.
Yes, that’s certainly as gerrymandered as most of the districts they list. However, the Illinois 4th really takes the cake. I’ve complained about it before here. It’s my nominee for the most gerrymandered district in the country.
I had a friend in school whose summer job in the early 1990s was to help carve out minority districts in the Florida panhandle. My friend, a staunch Democrat, described her job as making sure Florida stayed Republican. She said like she had just taken a bite of some off meat.
I think it was the late Mayor Daley who said that one map drawer is worth 1,000 precinct workers.
Hometown pride compels me to make the case for the Illinois 17th, which crosses the West Side (Republican) of Springfield at about the width of a road, capturing parking lots, parks and golf courses (but few votes) before widening on the city’s east side to include minorities and urban poor. Then it shrinks back down to the size of an interstate for about 50 miles until it reaches the factory town of Decatur.
The District was created for one man, Lane Evans, a white labor pol. His district reflects an attempt to join several medium and small sized industrial cities, with river rats, traditional coal mining communities, and rural farmers with Scandinavian ancestry. Lane Evans is gone, but this monstrosity lives on.
The geographic size of this gerrymander makes it IMHO the worst. It encompasses many different media markets so no politician can keep track of events of local concerns. The only institution that connects them is Lane Evans, so when he stepped down, he appointed his campaign aid to take his place.
Wow, and I thought the Utah 2nd Congressional District was a nasty example of gerrymandering. How often does a state legislature take a district that composes roughly the Salt Lake Valley and divide it up into thirds, attaching each part to a correspondingly large area of more-conservative-than-God rural and semi-rural voters? In the 2nd’s case, they attached the rump section of a liberal area to basically the bottom half of Utah.
I’m sorry, Dave, though. That Illinois 4th takes the cake, since at least our districts don’t look serpentine.
In any case, this is all a good argument for taking the re-districting decision process away from the State Legislatures. Where else would we allow public officials to basically and completely define the conditions upon which they will keep their jobs or not in their favor?
I still think Florida’s Third has you beat, Dave. At least the neighborhoods in Chicago are both in Chicago! The part of FL 3rd in Orlando is more spread out than the Illinois district. And then it goes on for another 130 miles or so! Orlando and Jacksonville are two hours apart by highway IF the traffic is good.
And Florida’s Third is only as wide as a street for one section – it only looks wider on the map because they include the St. Johns River. (I’m pretty sure the moccasins and turtles don’t have the franchise.) The equivalent would be if the Illinois barbell were connected by a couple of lanes of North Lake Shore Drive – and the 20 miles or so of Lake Michigan that belongs to Illinois. It’s one thing when such districts are draw because of bridges and islands (the Florida Keys, for example) but these districts are just silly.