MONROE – U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican from a nearby rural county has represented Monroe County in Congress since 2012, and presumably would like to keep doing so after next year’s national election.
However, he has no idea if the county will be in his district. Not only that — he has no idea if he will even have a district in which he could run and win. Neither does TC Clements, the newly elected state representative from Temperance. Nor do any of the other 12 members of Congress or 147 legislators who represent Michigan voters.
Not only do they not know what any of the new districts will look like, or if they will still live in the one they do now — they aren’t even sure when they will know. Depending on what the courts decide, the boundaries may not be final till January.
That not only means quick decisions may have to be made about where or whether to run, this late start means some candidates may face an enormous handicap in terms of fundraising, in an era where winning even a state legislative seat can cost a million dollars.
This potential political ‘train wreck,’ as some are calling it, is looming because of three major factors: Michigan will lose a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, meaning that somebody now there is going to be left without a seat. Michigan also now has an untested new system in which a panel of citizens will draw the new district lines, not the legislature, which had always done it before.
Finally, the U.S. Census data needed to draw new boundaries has been delayed, partly because of a lack of funding and partly because the nationwide pandemic delayed gathering data.
It is so delayed, in fact, that the state and the new Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission don’t expect to get the detailed official population data needed until Sept. 30 — well after the legal Sept. 17 deadline for getting the new districts drawn!
On top of that, the Michigan Constitution requires that there be a 45-day period for citizens to comment on the proposed new districts before they are formally adopted. With that in mind, the Commission, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson filed a lawsuit asking the Michigan Supreme Court to rule that the deadline can be extended.
The redistricting commission wants to have until Dec. 11 to present the new maps to the public, which would mean they wouldn’t become official till almost the end of January, barely nine months before the next general election. Attorneys argued for a delay “for transparency and good will” before the high court late last month.
Though the two most conservative justices seemed skeptical, the court has a 4-3 Democratic majority, and was expected to approve the extension. But whenever the commission does do the redistricting, the lines they draw are expected to radically revamp representation in Michigan at both the state and federal level.
That’s because the current districts are heavily gerrymandered to favor Republicans. Starting in 1990, Republican legislators and governors worked to create districts designed to, as one congressional staffer wrote in a 2011 email, “cram ALL the Dem garbage into … only four (Detroit-area congressional) districts.”
The legislature was even more gerrymandered; though Democrats have frequently gotten overall majorities of total votes cast, Republicans have had unbroken control of the state senate since 1983. This has also meant grotesquely shaped maps and deeply divided communities. Finally, in 2018, an authentic grass-roots movement called Voters Not Politicians collected signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
The people approved their plan in a 61 percent landslide. Now, a panel consisting of four Democrats, four Republicans and five independents will draw the boundaries, with the instruction only to keep communities of interest together as much as possible.
But to do that legally, they need precise census data. Every congressional district has to have precisely the same number of people, and legislative ones can differ by only a tiny margin.
The states are expected to get some partial data in August, but not in a form easy to analyze. Experts say that if they were to draw districts based on partial or erroneous data, their entire map may be ruled unconstitutional, which could throw things into chaos.
Meanwhile, there will be a lot of anxious politicians, especially perhaps in congressional races. Walberg, a former Bible salesman who ousted the more moderate U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz in a 2006 GOP primary may well be one.
Walberg himself was ousted from Congress in 2008 by Democrat Mark Schauer of Battle Creek. He then retook the seat, and Republicans in the legislature then removed Calhoun County, which includes Battle Creek, from the district and replaced it with Monroe County.
What will happen this time is anyone’s guess. When states lose seats in Congress, legislators traditionally throw two incumbents in the same district and let them fight it out in the primary.
This time, it is entirely possible that multiple incumbents may be thrown together and some entirely new districts created. It is also likely that Michigan will have many more competitive districts, both at the national and state level. We simply don’t yet know.
But it would be nice for everyone to know when the redistricting commission will get the data it needs to decide.
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