Dan Haar on the Tradition of Gerrymandering

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Go ask a 7th grader to carve Connecticut into five regions, each with exactly the same population. Tell her the idea is to keep cities and towns together that belong together because people tend to go to stores, cultural and sports events and jobs in their respective regions, and tend to have relatives living in the same parts of the state.

She would come back with a map showing Fairfield County along the Stamford-Norwalk-Bridgeport corridor; greater New Haven; and greater Hartford. All of that follows the main highways, I-91, I-95 and the Merritt/Wilbur Cross parkways.

That’s what the U.S. Census and other federal agencies use to determine “standard metropolitan statistical areas.”

For the other two regions, she would lump together the large number of towns in the northwestern part of the state, cris-crossed by the Route 8 corridor though Torrington up to Winsted and I-84 from Danbury through Waterbury and Southington. Then she’d be left with the vast eastern half of the state as her fifth region.

All of that describes the natural order of things in Connecticut. It’s also the way Connecticut Republicans propose to draw the lines for congressional districts, which makes a lot of sense.

Ben Proto, the GOP state chairman, showed me the party’s suggested map and it has the added advantage of not breaking up Waterbury and Torrington into different districts.

But it’s not going to happen. With one day left before the Dec. 21 deadline to redraw the map, the bipartisan Redistricting Commission appears to be deadlocked.

Democrats insist on keeping the “lobster claw” shape of the 1st District, which has New Britain and the Farmington Valley in the 5th and Winsted, Bristol and most of Torrington in the 1st.

The reason: It’s a combination of history and good, old-fashioned political gerrymandering of the sort we love to hate when we see Republicans doing it in places like Texas and North Carolina.

The history part of it stems from 2001, when Connecticut lost a seat in Congress. Then-Rep. Nancy Johnson, a New Britain Republican, wanted to keep her job in the old 6th District, so the two parties agreed to include New Britain and Meriden in the new 5th, which set in motion the lobster claw shape of the 1st.

The political part of it is this: The current configuration gives Rep. Jahana Hayes, the Democrat elected to the 5th District in 2018, an advantage over Republicans, compared with doing away with the claw.

How big a benefit? It’s significant. Figures Proto provided, based on the GOP suggested map, show the current 5th District has a “partisan voter index” of 52 percent Democrat compared with 45.5 percent Republican. That’s based on how people actually voted in recent elections, not voter registration.

The new map, as the GOP proposed it, gives the GOP an edge, just under 50 percent Republican to just under 48 percent Democrat. And the population of racial minority or Hispanic residents in the 5th would fall from 32.5 percent to 27 percent.

The district lines need to change somewhat, to meet the new Census numbers and rebalance the state. Democrats want to keep things more or less where they are, with just enough tweaks to balance thee numbers.

A big change in the 5th District would be an enormous ask for Democrats at precisely the worst time. As it stands now, Hayes is the only one of the five incumbents, all Democrats, who could lose her seat in November, in a likely race against former state Sen. George Logan, a Republican. The rest are safe seats for the Dems.

And making matters more dire, Republicans are more than likely to take control of the U.S. House, which would elevate Rep. Kevin McCarthy, now the Republican leader, as House Speaker. This is the same Kevin McCarthy who is so beholden to former President Donald Trump that he led the charge in the shameful Jan. 6 attack on the Electoral College — actually voting to reject legitimate election results hours after a Trump mob stormed the Capitol.

Democrats could be excused for doing everything in their power to avoid giving McCarthy another member. In some ways the nation is counting on it, as McCarthy and his gang of fake “patriots” represent a threat to free elections. To be clear, Logan is not in that gang but he’d be in their caucus as a conservative vote.

Still, The Dems need to do the right thing, now, when it comes to redistricting. The lobster claw is just plain wrong and over the next decade and beyond, voting patterns will evolve. If a Democratic incumbent can’t beat a challenger in Connecticut in a closely divided district, she shouldn’t be in Congress.

What we’re talking about is a blockbuster trade: New Britain, Farmington, Plainville, Avon, Simsbury and Canton from the 5th to the 1st. The bulk of Torrington, along with five low-population towns up that way (including th borough or Winsted) would move from the 1st to the 5th.

The 3rd District, greater New Haven, would gain most of Meriden, which is now in the 5th. Oxford, now in the 4th, would move to the 5th. The 1st would become less Democratic-leaning, but it’s already so far that way that a Dem would have to be indicted to lose.

“The current map, the claw, the leg, whatever you want to call it, is designed to achieve a political outcome,” Proto said. “The Democrats want everything as is usually the case, even if it means that the people in these districts are not properly served by communities of interest.”

I spoke briefly with Sen. Martin Looney, D-New Haven, the Senate president pro-tempore and a member of the commission. He confirmed that the political implications make it unlikely the Dems will budge on the whole enchilada.

Democrats say it’s not clear-cut. “Just because it’s clean does not mean it’s not a gerrymander,” said one Dem operative, who added that Danbury, Waterbury, Meriden and New Britain give the 5th a large Hispanic population — a community of interest.

Rep. Vin. Candelora, R-North Branford, the GOP House leader, holds out hope for a compromise. The map provided by Proto is not the same as the version he and other Republicans gave Dems a few days ago.

“If we stand our ground on moving New Britain into the 1st then obviously that’s not going to be acceptable to them,” Candelora said “The question is, what change is acceptable?”

Everyone knows if the commission remains deadlocked and the map-making reverts to the state Supreme Court, the changes will be minor — as the court itself said in an opinion ten years ago.

Painful as it may be, Democrats, who are fighting against gerrymandering in Congress with a proposed law and lawsuits, must set an example in Connecticut by doing the right thing — then fight like hell to keep the seats they hold.

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The current CT congressional map is on the left, the CTGOP proposed map is on the right.

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