The Real Victims of Gerrymandering: Republicans

"To the victor, goes the spoils" is how legislative re-districting has always worked; if your political party is in the majority, then that party has a say in how our legislative districts are drawn. The term "Gerrymandering" has been used to describe a process where legislative districts are formed strictly to favor one party.

If you look back at the history of the PA legislative bodies, it tends to change parties every time there is a major economic depression or recession. This tells me that voters ultimately decide who stays and who goes and gerrymandering is not a hopeless condition.

Nevertheless, Pennsylvania has been in the news recently because the State Supreme Court has ruled that the current legislative maps have been drawn to extreme distortions, which violates the State Constitution that calls for some continuity in the districts. The maps are scheduled to be re-drawn by mid-February.

This has me wondering about the true victims of gerrymandering--Republican voters living in districts that have been disproportionately loaded with Democrats in order to protect Republican seats in other parts of the State. For example, Pennsylvania House Legislative District #153 has Abington and an unusual slice of Upper Dublin, which captures the more Democratic portions of that Township along the Eastern border that touches the PA Turnpike and Abington Township. By doing this, the District is 2 to 1, Democratic to Republican and has all but guaranteed Democratic control of this seat.

Now, if you are a Democratic voter in Abington or Upper Dublin, this is no concern to you because you are assured representation by someone with your political beliefs. If you are Republican, which in our area, tends to be much more moderate voters than Republicans in other parts of the state, then you are disenfranchised. If you are non-partisan, then you have literally no choice because the nature of being non-partisan is to evaluate the candidates regardless of political affiliation of the candidate.

When you are living in a gerrymandered district, and you are in the minority party, it is very difficult to get good candidates to run for office because their chance of winning is roughly 3%, as incumbents generally win 97% of the time according to documentation filed with the Supreme Court when hearing the gerrymandering case.

Another very important point to understand, and this is the most important, is that when our gerrymandered districts favoring Democratic candidates send a Democratic legislature to Harrisburg, they are guaranteed to achieve nothing! This is not a partisan statement; it is simply true that the Republican majority party in Harrisburg rarely will work with Democratic legislators. State Representative Madeleine Dean talked about this at a League of Women Voters candidate forum in the Summer of 2016. That year, she actually had an opponent in Anthony Scalfaro, a Republican trying to take on an entrenched incumbent in a 2 to 1 district. He was motivated to run because he was fed up with politics as usual, which resulted in an 11-month delay of the State budget being approved.

The same goes for our U.S. Congressional district. After Representative Alyson Schwartz gave up her Congressional seat to run for Governor, then State Representative Brendan Boyle won a competitive campaign in 2014, which started with a primary battle in his party and then he ran against a local pool supply business owner named Dee Adcock. Mr. Adcock had slightly better odds of winning a competitive race without an incumbent in office; however, the end results were right down the party lines. Although voters make the final decisions on our candidates, gerrymandering has a big part because of our own tendencies to vote our party.

Congressman Boyle ran un-opposed in 2016. Was it because he was a terrific representative? No, it was because to run against him you would need to raise at least $1 million. There are roughly 300,000 voters in Congressional district 13, so to send just 3 pieces of mail, which get promptly thrown in the trash or recycling bins, would cost $900,000. The remaining $100,000 goes for campaign signs, website, credit card processing, and fundraisers. All, to lose a seat that gerrymandering has made unwinnable.

Will Representative Boyle have an opponent in 2018? He should. If you read his newsletters, they sort of make me cringe. I am reading about how Mr. Boyle is "fighting for (fill in the blank case)"; meanwhile, he is powerless in office. Unless the Democratic Party wins back Congress in 2018, which is possible, then as a member of the minority party his "fighting" is really "shadow-boxing" empty seats in CSPAN speeches.

Now all Abington residents should be upset about the fact that resources will not come our way. I was visiting a friend outside of Altoona, PA and we were walking through a park, where out of nowhere I noticed this enormous, steel bridge, which crossed a stream that was about as wide as Tookany Creek. I asked "what the heck is that bridge there for and it looks new?" My friend's response was "pork barrel spending... this town is Republican, always has been, so we get projects like this all the time... the old bridge was in great shape, but they make up projects to spend money around here."

Off the top of my head, I can think of 10 to 20 capital projects for Abington that Representative Dean should be bringing back funding to our Township. Instead, she is grandstanding about limiting the illegal trade of elephant tusks... is that even an issue in Pennsylvania?

I look forward to seeing the new legislative maps. Will Republican Rockledge Borough be brought into PA 153 and make Madeleine Dean's seat more competitive? Will Brendan Boyle's District #13 be expanded out to Blue Bell (to the West) and the Delaware River (to the East) and reduce their 2 to 1 margins? Competitive Districts would benefit everyone and force more accountability on our elected officials. If they have no opponents, or no serious opponents, then they can be ineffective. Making the Districts more competitive would benefit us all.

Finally, if we as voters were not so partisan ourselves, then none of this would matter and we would have more options and better government. Redrawing District maps is not a panacea for the long-run, just short-term tinkering.