Thursday, May 10, 2012

Better know the 46th Legislative District

In the first of many(?) posts in this series, I present pretty pictures and semi-informed analysis of the effects of redistricting on Washington’s 46th Legislative District.  You may be asking why I chose to start there, since I don’t live in the 46th.  My answer is in two parts:  1) there’s an open House seat to be won, and 2) the borders of the 46th are appreciably different from the previous version of the LD.

(Yes, of course the title is borrowed from Stephen Colbert)

Location -- North Seattle
   Senate: David Frockt (D), 2012 (special election for the remainder of the late Scott White’s term)
   House 1: Gerry Pollet (D)
   House 2: Phyllis Gutierrez-Kenney (D), retiring

Under the 2001 Legislative District map, the northern border of the 46th was the entire northern city line of Seattle, Puget Sound to Lake Washington.  It was one of three LDs completely contained within the city, joining the 36th and the 43rd.  Unlike those other Seattle-only LDs, which were also entirely within the 7th Congressional District, a small portion of the 46th was in the 2001 version of the 1st CD.  The 2001 borders of the 46th LD, at a 1:60,000 scale, are shown below:

For reference, the 2001 boundaries of LDs are the pink/purple region.  Major bodies of water are blue, major roads (state or federal highways, for the most part) are red lines, counties are named in ALL-CAPS ITALICS and delineated with heavy black lines, precincts are lighter black lines, and cities are displayed as blue “dot in square” symbols and name labels.  These color conventions will be used throughout this series, and additional conventions will be described as we display them on maps.

The 2001 version of the 46th LD, then, consisted of northern and northeastern Seattle.  In the new 2011 map, the 46th breaks out of Seattle, generally moving to the northeast of its previous location.  It loses its former western portion to the 36th and 32nd Districts; the latter LD regains some of the Seattle precincts it had had in 1991.  The 46th’s border with the 43rd is slightly changed, and it takes its new non-Seattle section largely from the old 32nd.  In the following map of the new 46th, the LD is shaded in green.  This map also shows the boundaries of the 2011 Congressional Districts, marked in thick dashed blue lines and labeled as “WA-x“. 

Note also that all maps in this post cover exactly the same area, at the same scale (1:60,000 for the 46th LD).  The only differences are in the “layers” placed on the map.

As in the 2001 map, the 46th is mostly in the 7th CD, with a portion in the 1st (though of course it’s an appreciably different CD than the old 1st Congressional District).  The 46th now extends up and around the northern end of Lake Washington.  The King-Snohomish county boundary now defines the northern border of the LD and the southern border of the 2nd CD.  None of the new 46th Legislative District is in the new 2nd Congressional District.

Now that we’ve seen the old and new borders of the 46th, let’s superimpose them on one another.  That will more clearly display where and how the boundaries of the LD have changed.  In the map below, the colors of the earlier maps are retained where there is no overlap.  Territory that is no longer in the 46th Legislative District remains pink/purple, and areas newly encompassed by the 46th remain green.  Areas within both the 2001 and 2011 versions of the LD are displayed as a brown region.

So how will these changes affect this year’s elections in the 46th?  Let’s make it clear from the start—there’s no chance whatsoever that a Republican will win any of the LD’s seats in the Legislature.  Lake Forest Park and Kenmore are just as Democratic as Broadview and the northwest corner of Seattle.  Although two of the three seats have incumbents, neither Frockt nor Pollet was elected to his current position.  Frockt did stand for election to the House 1 seat before being elevated to the Senate after Scott White’s untimely death, but Pollet is in the House based only on the votes of PCOs (in the old 46th).  The principal factor to be considered by the candidates, then, is making themselves known to their new non-Seattle constituents.  I would suggest that those candidates whose political bases are rooted primarily in the 46th District Democrats organization might be at something of a disadvantage against those who are better known “publicly”.

In the race for the open House 2 seat, the action will likely unfold in both the primary and the general election.  It’s possible, however, that the crowd of Democratic candidates might divide the primary vote so evenly that the Republican (yes, there is one) could sneak into one of the two November slots.  That would make it less bloody in the general, as the surviving Dem would be a sure thing if facing a Republican, but I doubt that any of the Democrats are working under that assumption.

What might have been a wildcard thrown into the mix—a candidate living in the new non-Seattle portion of the 46th—appears to have been circumvented.  The Lake Forest Park home of Representative Ruth Kagi (D-32) was redistricted into the 46th, but she has already stated that she will move into the reconfigured 32nd LD and run for re-election there.

The candidate filing deadline is coming up fast (May 18), and at the moment Senator Frockt is running unopposed.  Representative Pollet has drawn one well-funded Democratic opponent thus far, though the choice of which seat a candidate might run for is still fluid.  Also, there’s nominally still time for a non-Seattle candidate to throw his/her hat in the ring, though it doesn’t seem likely.

Open seats in Legislative Districts almost always draw large packs of aspiring candidates.  Significant alterations in district boundaries, as in the 46th (and the 11th, but not 36th), add even more spice to the competition.

Monday, April 30, 2012

State-level redistricting (a new series...)

Over the last few months, I’ve written at length—some might say ad nauseum—about Washington’s redistricting process based on the 2010 Census, here and/or at HorsesAss.org:

• A report on minority-majority Congressional Districts and why it’s absurd to try to construct one here.  (The Redistricting Commission didn’t listen to me.)
• On the mechanics and mathematics of Congressional reapportionment and how Washington earned its 10th Congressional District.
• A “breaking” story just before the release of the nearly-final CD maps.
• A few days after the last of those, upon further review of the newly-drawn map, a more reflective piece on the outcome of Congressional redistricting in Washington.

My conclusion in the last of those posts: Skeletor won the battle with Tim Ceis, and it wasn’t even close. 

Nearly everything in the above-referenced posts concerned Congressional redistricting.  Which makes sense, I suppose.  Changing the number of districts is always exciting, though of course it’s even more exciting (and much, much bloodier) in states that lose Congressional Districts.  You can check with Dennis Kucinich on that.  For the record, Washington has never experienced CD subtraction.

But redistricting affects far more than Congress.  Many other jurisdictional boundaries have to be changed to account for changing demographics, from school board districts to County Council and beyond.  If Seattle elected City Council by district (as it should, IMHO), those borders would have to be redrawn too.  With one exception, those lower-level maps are drawn by lower-level governments.

The exception, of course, is the map of Legislative Districts, also drawn by the Redistricting Commission.  While the number of LDs in Washington is constitutionally set at 49, their boundaries must be redrawn to take into account population trends over the 10 years since the last Census.  LDs that had nearly identical populations in 2000 are no longer equal, and the Commission is mandated to reconstruct the legislative map to reflect those demographic trends.

The Commission had to account for more than just the statewide 14.1% increase.  Had every LD added 16,948 residents (average LD population was 120,288 after the 2000 Census and would be 137,236 under this redistricting), we could have kept the old boundaries.  But of course, that isn’t what happened.  The population of the old 2nd LD increased by 43,337 (36.0%), while the 28th actually lost 754 residents (-0.6%).

I won’t go into the extended process by which the Commission eventually settled on the new map, except to note that it took them until 10:35pm (85 minutes before their deadline) on January 1, 2012 to convey their agreed-upon map to the Legislature.  Instead, I thought it might be interesting to examine the changes in LD boundaries.  Data geek, and map geek, that I am, I’ve done exactly that—creating maps showing each LD’s old boundaries, its new boundaries, and the two superimposed on each other.

The results of (some of?) my handiwork has already appeared on HA, and is being cross-posted here.  The questions I pose to myself—and to my colleagues at HA, and to the very few readers of Peace Tree Farm—are:

1. Do I report on the LDs one-by-one or in groups?
2. Can I report on every single one of the 49 LDs without boring y’all to death?
3. How ever we decide to do the reports, in what order should they be revealed?

I’ll answer a couple of those questions, at least to start, by writing individually on the Seattle-area LDs with open seats.  I plan to begin with the 46th, followed by the 36th and the 11th.  Why the 46th?  Simple—it has cooler maps than the others.  It’s the wow!! factor…

So, if you haven’t nodded off in boredom are drooling in breathless anticipation, stay tuned.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Winds for Hope

Yesterday marked the passage of exactly one year since the horrific earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  Billions of dollars of destruction, tens of thousands dead or vanished ... to say nothing of a slow-motion Chernobyl-esque nuclear disaster that remains unresolved.

The disaster was felt deeply here in Seattle.  Our Japanese community is large and active.  On top of that, we live in a region—the Cascadia subduction zone—that is highly susceptible to the same sort of devastating geological calamity that befell Japan.

To honor the anniversary, I attended last night’s Winds for Hope benefit at Benaroya Hall.  The primary purpose of the event was raising money to replace musical instruments lost, damaged, or destroyed on that day.  We were treated to well over three hours of exciting classical and jazz performances by a wide variety of local and national artists.

As part of the event, we were treated to the video of A Song for Japan, a composition for the trombone that has been recorded by virtuosos around the world.  The project is very much in the tradition of Playing for Change, which brought smiles to many a face with their multi-artist international recording of Ben E. King’s 1961 masterpiece Stand By Me. 

For your viewing pleasure, here’s a version of the video that I found on YouTube:

Last night’s concert was sponsored by the Japan-America Society of the State of WA.  Although the benefit concert is now in the past, the need for assistance in the wake of the disaster remains.  So I’m certain the JASSW would be more than happy to accept whatever you can contribute to their efforts.  I’ve made a donation myself, and so too can my readers by clicking here.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

In solidarity and celebration

This has been an incredible week!  On Tuesday a three judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional.  In the majority opinion, the court wrote,”Prop 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California”.

On Wednesday, the Washington State House of Representatives passed a same-sex marriage bill, and now the bill is headed to Governor Gregoire’s desk for her signature.  She promises to sign the bill before Valentine’s Day!

Please click here to thank Governor Gregoire.

Governor Gregoire’s leadership was instrumental to the success of passing a marriage bill in Washington State.  She not only supported the bill ... she introduced it.  This is as much her legislation as it is our community’s legislation.

Please join us during this blog swarm to thank Governor Gregoire for her leadership and her friendship.  There is little doubt our opponents will make their voices heard, but we know that together our voice for equality is so much stronger.

Please click here to sign the Washington United for Marriage’s and DailyKos’s joint petition thanking Governor Gregoire for making history.

When our friends speak up for us, we need to speak up for our friends, so join us in thanking Governor Gregoire today!

Supplementing the boilerplate from WashingtonUnited (i.e., everything except this paragraph), I’ll add my thanks to the sponsors of this landmark legislation, Senator Ed Murray and Representative Jamie Pedersen.  I’m proud to add that Ed and Jamie both represent me and the rest of the 43rd Legislative District.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

In opposition to SOPA and PIPA

Today, many of the most prominent websites (Wikipedia, Google, and many more) are symbolically “going black”, presenting arguments against SOPA (H.R.3261, the Stop Internet Piracy Act) and PIPA (S.968, the PROTECT Intellectual Property Act ... where PROTECT is actually an acronym for Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of).  I’d join them if I knew enough about the construction of websites to be confident that I could a) send readers to a page that explains what’s bad about SOPA and PIPA and also tells you how to write messages to your Congresscritters, and b) drop the page-forwarding and return to the usual site afterwards. 

Because I’m utterly clueless about what goes on under the hood of my website, instead I’ll just send you to any of HorsesAss or the Northwest Progressive Institute (locally) or Wikipedia, Reddit, or Google (nationally) for such actions.

Why are you being asked to oppose these bills?  Aren’t online piracy and theft of intellectual property important issues, worthy of powerful legislation? 

Yes, of course they are.  But these bills, even though they have bipartisan co-sponsorship—indeed, S.968’s author is the estimable Pat Leahy (D-VT)—aren’t really intended to do the right thing in combating piracy and IP theft.  No, they’re backed by the Hollywood business oligarchs and designed solely to protect their products and their property.  IOW, movies, TV shows, music, and the like.

What’s worse are the invasions of privacy and heavy-handed penalties that would be permitted under SOPA and PIPA.  Run afoul of Disney or Fox, and your website can be shut down or blocked, just like what China does to a wide variety of American sites (Google among them).  Even if you aren’t the thief.  Even if you aren’t the pirate.  It would lead to outright censorship, without in any way getting at the shady thieves and pirates, who (like spammers) would simply hop aboard other sites in other countries while the legitimate businesses would be the victims.  Below, I’ve embedded a video that lays out the whole story:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Thankfully, our own Senator Maria Cantwell is leading the fight against SOPA and PIPA.  My Congressman, Jim McDermott (D-WA-07) opposes the bills, as does Rick Larsen (D-WA-02).  As far as I can tell, though, Senator Patty Murray hasn’t taken a stand one way or the other (at least she isn’t one of PIPA’s 40 co-sponsors).  So she’s where you should concentrate your letters and email, along with the other seven Washington Representatives.  None of the latter group is a co-sponsor of H.R.3261.