Nov8 |
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Did Mike Fitpatrick’s Own Party Do Him In?
Let’s take you back to April 2000. Yes, that’s a ways back, but remember: People threw money at Internet businesses without even asking how they would make money, Arlen Specter was a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and John Street was bumbling around as mayor of Philadelphia. Okay, maybe things weren’t all that different, but April 1, 2000 was when the census was taken. Said census reduced Pennsylvania’s representatives to 19 (down two) and the Republican legislature went around to re-drawing districts. And, naturally, the districts were drawn so the Republicans could pick up some seats. Democratic voters filed a lawsuit; the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the legislature.
The biggest strangely-drawn district is District 6, which the plaintiffs said “looms like a dragon descending on Philadelphia from the west, splitting up towns and communities throughout Montgomery and Berks Counties.” But District 8 was interesting, too: It encompassed all of Bucks County, but also snaked over into two wards in Philadelphia and a few sections of Montgomery County. Fast forward to yesterday, when Mike Fitzpatrick is running for re-election in the 8th District. Of course, this is how the results ended up (please note: mathematical errors committed by me):
Had the district just been Bucks County, it appears Fitzpatrick would have made his mom even prouder and won the race. But in part due to the state GOP’s redistricting plan… it appears he’ll be headed home after just one term. (PA-08 did have to add population from somewhere — see comments — to keep the districts equal, so whoever was added to Buxco’s district could have swung the election anyway.) Some would say this is just desserts for the GOP. (Although, really, it’s not Fitzpatrick’s fault; he was a Chair of the Buxco Board of Commissioners — a good one! — at the time.) It is good to see that the state legislature does as good of a job at gerrymandering than it does at passing non-pay raise laws. Thanks, guys. |
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Nice thinking, but one problem — the Constitution requires that the districts are equal in population, so PA-08 had to add more voters from *somewhere* outside of Bucks — and, remember that the important thing from the GOP perspective was combining the Northeast and eastern MontCo into one district, forcing Hoeffel and Borski against each other (Borski retired) and making PA-13 into what was supposed to be a tight district. Then Allyson Schwartz made it not-so-tight.
Good point. (I’m gonna change the tone in a spot or two.) I’d guess the state legislature felt PA-08 was pretty safe — it was Greenwood back then, although he said he was going to retire after [x] terms — and didn’t think adding NE Philly and Montco would hurt the seat.
Also: Bob Borski! I hadn’t thought of him since… uhh, since he retired, I guess.
What you said about PA-08 is equally true of PA-07 — they figured they could afford to throw some more Democrats into Congressman-For-Life Curt Weldon’s district to make it easier for Jim Gerlach to win in PA-06.