Redistricting immune from politics? Don't bet on it

It was at precisely the same moment that I realized two things: The state’s redistricting commission is not a nonpartisan process, and I’d lost a bet.

It was 1991, and covering the five-member commission meant spending a lot of time sitting around while the commissioners were behind closed doors. Not the same closed door. The two Republican commissioners went behind one door, and the two Democratic commissioners went behind another.

Anyway, there was lots of time to talk with the other newsies and the various hangers-on, nearly all of them highly partisan players.

Playing amateur cartographer, I theorized that with the addition of a new congressional district – the 9th District – there was no way U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks could maintain both Tacoma and his home turf in the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas.

I was so sure, I told one of Dicks’ aides that I had made a bet about the outcome with the congressman himself. I felt comfortable with my prediction that Dicks would have to choose between a Tacoma district and a Bremerton district. The new 9th District would be in the Puget Sound area, and that would surely force surrounding districts to retreat. Given the geography of the state, it seemed Dicks’ 6th District would no longer be able to cross the Narrows Bridge.

After hearing of the bet, the aide smiled, got up and walked into the secret meeting of the Democratic commissioners. It was then I realized that I had made a bet on the outcome of the redistricting process with someone who got to directly influence that process.

While the state constitution might have been amended in 1983 to create a bipartisan redistricting process, it remains a highly partisan process. It created a balance of power between the parties that has usually meant both parties’ partisan needs are met, including the care of their incumbent members of Congress.

That ill-fated bet came to mind last week when the four partisan members of the current redistricting commission released their drafts of how they think the state’s congressional and legislative districts should look for the next decade. As in 1991, the process is complicated by the addition of a new district, this time the 10th.

These are starting positions, and the final deal will look much different. But the partisan maneuvering was evident, and Dicks saw it in the lines for the 6th District drawn by Republican commissioner Tom Huff of Gig Harbor.

Huff’s plan removed Tacoma and Gig Harbor from the 6th and placed both in U.S. Rep. Adam Smith’s 9th District. Dicks said he wants to keep Tacoma, which he has represented since he was first elected in 1976.

That makes sense for Dicks. Tacoma has been pretty good to him, and he, in turn, has been pretty good to Tacoma.

It didn’t start that way. Dicks was a Bremerton native who was portrayed in that first election as the outsider by the six Pierce County Democrats who entered the primary with him. Dicks let them split up the county, which constituted two-thirds of the 6th District at the time, and won the primary by dominating Kitsap County and the small piece of King County then in the district.

But Dicks was vulnerable to a future challenge from Pierce County, so he went to work proving to its voters that he was one of them. He jumped into military issues to the benefit of both the Bremerton naval operations and the Army and Air Force bases outside Tacoma. And regardless of what you think of pork barrel politics, Dicks has played them skillfully on behalf of Pierce County for 35 years.

His attention to Tacoma has insulated Dicks from serious campaign challenges ever since. No wonder he isn’t happy with Huff’s proposal to carve off that well-worked territory and hand it to Smith.

Will he succeed in keeping both when the final map is drawn? Take my advice and don’t make any bets that he won’t.

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657 peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/politics Twitter: @CallaghanPeter