Lawmakers now bargaining chips in redistricting battle

With their opening positions staked out, the men in charge of drawing Washington’s political lines can get down to horse-trading.

One thing all four of the Redistricting Commission’s voting members have that they can trade: legislators eager to stay in their districts.

Maps the commissioners proposed last week leave a few lawmakers on the outside of their districts looking in.

But the unofficial goal of the once-a-decade redistricting process is to protect incumbents, so count on the 49 legislative districts to look quite different once commissioners – appointed by the partisan caucuses of the Legislature, with a vested interest in protecting their members – reach a deal.

“It’s a partisan negotiating position in the negotiations. Everybody knows none of these are going to be the final map,” said Republican Sen. Mark Schoesler, whose southeastern Washington district would shift out from under his Ritzville home under Democrats’ plans.

He could end up running against either Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt of Walla Walla or Sen. Janea Holmquist Newbry of Moses Lake, the top Republican on the labor and commerce committee. Schoesler has represented the 9th Legislative District since 1992.

“They chose to negotiate with the use of putting key members in each others’ districts,” Schoesler said.

He’s talking about Democrats, but his take also could describe some of the Republicans’ ideas. GOP commissioner Slade Gorton called for inching the 30th District south into Pierce County and leaving behind Sen. Tracey Eide’s Redondo home. Eide would wind up in the 33rd District, setting up a potential race against another Senate Democrat from the Des Moines area, Karen Keiser.

Such a scenario – Senate Democrats’ floor leader, Eide, going up against the chairwoman of the health care committee – is unlikely.

To be approved, a map needs three votes on a commission that has two Democrats and two Republicans. Maps for Congress also need three votes, and commissioners are considering widely different plans for a new 10th Congressional District, with two maps putting it in the Tacoma-Olympia area, one placing it in South King County and one along the Canadian border.

“We were not surprised in the least that they had put me outside my district,” Eide said. She noted that she lives on the northern end of the 30th and called redistricting “a very difficult job.”

“It’s like a puzzle to put together.”

Tacoma Rep. Troy Kelley is in a similar position. The Democrat lives on the northern end of a district, the 28th, that was bound to change no matter who drew it. The district that now runs from DuPont to Tacoma’s West End is underpopulated compared with others.

The 28th could turn into a flash point in South Sound redistricting as commissioners from the two parties would make major changes in opposite directions.

Republicans hope to push it down into Roy and Spanaway and, in one proposal, carve out a rural swath of area stretching to Eatonville. Democrats want to make it a more urban district that would extend to Point Defiance and, in one proposal, all of Lakewood.

Kelley said he expects the final maps to be very different. So does Republican Rep. Gary Alexander of Thurston County, who said commissioners should keep together Lewis County and his rural part of Thurston that he says is similar to Lewis.

The 20th would leave Alexander behind under the map drawn by Democratic commissioner Tim Ceis, placing the lawmaker in the 2nd District straddling Pierce and Thurston counties. The map would give Alexander an open seat to run for, by bumping Rep. Jim McCune of Graham from the 2nd into a reformulated 31st that would stretch to the Pierce-Thurston county line.

The legislative maps have other ramifications for the South Sound:

 • Pierce County, which already is divided between seven legislative districts, would get a piece of an eighth in all of the proposals. In the two Democrats’ conception, it would be the Mason County-centered 35th district, which would pick up the Key Peninsula. The two Republicans would extend the Federal Way-centered 30th into Pierce County.

 • Minorities would outnumber whites in the 29th District under the Republicans’ proposals for the South Tacoma-Lakewood district. The minority population is shy of 50 percent under current lines and in Democrats’ plans.

 • The proposed shift of the 31st by Ceis would cede Orting and Sumner to the Puyallup-centered 25th District.

In all of the plans, the 25th loses Fife, which would go to the urban 27th. The 25th probably becomes more Republican-leaning under all the proposals – not that its GOP incumbents are taking anything for granted.

“It will remain, in my mind, a swing district,” said freshman Rep. Hans Zeiger, who won by just 30 votes last year.

Edgewood drops off from the 25th in three of the plans – but luckily for Zeiger, he moved this spring from his rented house there. The Republican now rents a house in South Hill.

CONGRESSIONAL MAPS

Unlike the maps for the Legislature, the commissioners’ maps for Congress don’t boot any sitting lawmakers out of their districts except for Jay Inslee, who is running for governor and leaving D.C. behind.

Still, some have major changes in store for the areas members of Congress represent. Republican commissioner Tom Huff’s map would slice Tacoma off of U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks’ district.

Huff would put Olympia and Lacey into Dicks’ 6th Congressional District and move Gig Harbor and more of Tacoma into Rep. Adam Smith’s 9th District.

Dicks said Huff “made a serious mistake.”

“Taking me out of Tacoma is very hard to understand,” said the Belfair Democrat, who noted he has represented Tacoma since his first election to Congress in 1976 and said there’s an important tie between Tacoma and Bremerton in that both areas are home to military bases. Dicks is the top Democrat on the defense budget subcommittee.

Huff told reporters his move of Inslee’s 1st District into a more rural orientation required changes on the Kitsap Peninsula. “It fit perfectly well for the Gig Harbor area to move into the 9th District,” he said.

Tacoma Democrat Smith is taking a wait-and-see approach to redistricting, saying he would be glad to represent whoever ends up in his district.

Jordan Schrader: 360-786-1826
jordan.schrader@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics