Tagged: gerrymandering

Less than two years ago, Congressman Gary Peters and his supporters spent nearly $2 million to win a congressional seat different from the one he already held, and one in which he did not live. That wasn’t really his fault.

Michigan lost a seat in Congress. Redistricting had largely eliminated his old district, and Peters had to run somewhere. In this case, he ended up running against another Democratic incumbent, Hansen Clarke, in the oddest shaped district in our history.

The current 14th looks like an old man sitting in a chair with his legs tucked under. His head is Pontiac, his neck, Keego Harbor, His body takes in a wide swath of Oakland County suburbs, from West Bloomfield through Farmington Hills and Southfield, before expanding to include many poor neighborhoods in Detroit. Finally, the legs take in the Grosse Pointes, and the feet end up in a Hispanic neighborhood near the coming new Detroit River Bridge.

This doesn’t exactly fit the ideal standard for a district composed of communities with common interests, but it did fit the needs of the Republican legislature, which wanted to pack as many Democrats into as few districts as possible. Plus, they felt that the Voting Rights Act required them to create two districts that had a majority of African-American residents.

Here’s something to think about: Michigan is pretty clearly a moderate to liberal state. We haven’t voted Republican for President for a quarter-century. Democrats won 12 out of the last 13 contests for the U.S. Senate. More people voted for Democratic than Republican candidates for Congress and the legislature last fall.

Yet guess what. We sent only five Democratic congressmen to Washington compared to nine Republicans. And the GOP still has a solid majority in the state House of Representatives. That’s because of outrageous gerrymandering two years ago by the previous legislature, which was also Republican.