In Louisiana, it's a redistricting map!...sort of...

April 12, 2011

By Eileen McGuire-Mahony

Baton Rouge, LOUISIANA: Not even 48 hours away from the immovable adjournment of the 2011 extraordinary session for redistricting, Louisiana's General Assembly has jointly approved maps for the state legislature.

As Louisiana is holding legislative elections in the fall and must allow time for the U.S. Justice Department to clear its maps, the timing was frighteningly close and the fate of either map is still not definite.

The bills that survived a bloody redistricting process, Senator Joel Chaisson's SB 1 (dead link) (passed the House 71-28) and House Speaker Jim Tuckers HB 1 (passed the Senate 30-9), are now on their way to the desk of Governor Jindal. Jindal initially stated he would stay out of redistricting but more recently injected himself into the issue. The Governor's stated concern was preserving two vertical Congressional seats in the state's north, publicly promising to veto any bill that failed that criteria.

That, of course, is an issue of the Congressional maps. Louisiana’s sluggish population growth cost her a seat in the U.S. House, and the Pelican State will only send six members to the next Congress. The lone seat held by a Democratic is also the state's legally required minority seat, meaning it is protected under the Voting Rights Act. It's occupant, freshman Cedric Richmond, has been largely quiet about the entire process.

With six GOP-held seats to choose from, the Republican-controlled state legislature had to select which one to dismantle, though not without overt pressure from sitting Congressmen. The push for two north-south seats in northern Louisiana, which would maintain the status quo, is a concession to senior Congressmen Rodney Alexander. Yet, demographics will require the two districts in the state's north to run far into the south, risking fracturing the coastal region, including Acadiana.

Early in the special session, when the targeted southern seat was likely Jeff Landry's seat based in the adjoining parishes of Terrebonne and Lafourche, Landry was the odd man out. A freshman elected with strong Tea Party support, his junior status looked to be his undoing. But, as redistricting wore on, the state's other southern Congressman, four-term Charles Boustany, became unhappy with plans to cut up his seat and ultimately reversed himself on supporting the unequivocal preference for preserving the northern alignment.

Since then, the barely-contained squabbling over Congressional seats has broken down along regional lines, the Republican's show of unity a fading, hollow memory. In the south, Boustany and Landry both owe their political careers to the common culture of the Bayou. Opposing them are Alexander, who is comfortable with his district as it is now, and the other northern Congressman, John Fleming. Fleming's harrowingly close re-election has left him wary of changes to his seat that would mean a very difficult race in 2012.

Specifically, while Louisiana must give up that one Congressional seat, it is still possible to keep the state's shore intact. However, the would realistically require flipping the two seats in the north of their side, making them run east-west, a potential re-election catastrophe for Fleming. The winner of such a scenario could be a black Democratic candidate. An east-west seat combining the cities of Monroe and Shreveport would have enough black voters to make the district a bit of a swing seat.

And that has made left leaning Democrats hoping to elect more minorities into the allies of conservative Republicans with Cajun political bases – if only for a moment.

Since the session commenced 23 days ago, the fight over state maps has come down to minority-majority districts. The Legislative Black Caucus' members in both chambers consistently pushed for creation of as many minority dominated seats as possible. In the end, the Senate plan adds one such seat and the House adds two, for respective numbers of 29 and 30.

Those numbers clearly did not satisfy the LBC, who made up most of the 'nays' voting against both bills yesterday afternoon. Over their objections, and last minute attempts at amending, the bills passed. The Caucus Chair, Patricia Smith, has already registered her group's rancor over the maps. "You will be going to court. That is an assurance" was her comment when the Senate first refused to draw 33 minority seats, the number she wanted.

Whatever comes of the legislative maps, the congressional districts remain unresolved. Only days ago, five of the seven current Congressmen signed an open letter to Governor Jindal asking that redistricting U.S. House seats be laid over until January 2012, when a new legislature will convene. Boustany and Richmond were the lone holdouts, and they had allies in the legislature. However, the Senate President Pro Tem, Joel Robideaux publicly supported the idea.

A second redistricting session to handle the changes of a single Census would be either the best possible outcome from a messy situation or a black eye, depending on the point of view. Deliberately setting aside drawing the Congressional maps would be a step up from admitting defeat and sending the entire thing off to the courts. However, given that Louisiana’s loss of a Congressional seat was predictable by 2004 and utterly obvious after Katrina, the lack of an agreement as the redistricting session ends is damning.

Despite the pressure of five Congressmen and the Governor, legislators spent Tuesday, the 12th, trying to get a handle on the federal level map, but with no luck. SB 3, sponsored by Lydia Jackson, was voted down for the second time by the House, effectively killing it off for good.

A single bill addressing Congressional maps remains alive, Erich Ponti's HB 6. It was the favorite of the bills the House Redistricting Committee passed and accomplished a tricky feat by maintaining two vertical districts in northern Louisiana while keeping Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes together. Ponti's bill may clear the Senate, but that victory could well come with substantial amendments.

A Senate bill, Neil Riser's SB 24, lasted quite a while and earned Bobby Jindal's open support but still died 10-9 in the Senate Redistricting Committee.

Other elected district seats in the special session's portfolio, such as state Appellate Court districts that have been unchanged since 1980 and a Supreme Court configuration that was last altered in 1997, have been quietly set aside in a concession to reality and time constraints.

However, for now, Louisianans have gotten something from the saga of redistricting 2011.

See also

• State Legislative and Congressional Redistricting after the 2010 Census
• Redistricting in Louisiana
• Louisiana State Senate
• Louisiana House of Representatives