Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

MA expected to lose one congressional seat after 2010 census. Discuss.

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Rut roh.

Who’s got the most (or the least) pull with Bob DeLeo and Terry Murray?  Who will have moved up or moved on by the time redistricting takes effect?  Who’s the odd one out?

Go to it.

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  1. Congressional Districts to form cohesive regions.  Regardless of whether MA loses a seat or not, (and I hope we do not) the gerrymandering is ridiculous.  Northampton and Bellingham are in the same Congressional district – even if the Congressperson were say, an accessible constituent-based public servant, who would actually get to see/meet with her with that geographic district?  Worcester and Fall River together?

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    p>If we have to drop one, move Jim McGovern to cover Worcester and all points in western MA.  Governor Patrick has already redefined western MA to include Worcester, so the precedent is set.  Welcome, Congressman McGovern!

    • I remember South Hadley and Granby lumped in with Easthampton, but not Holyoke.

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      p>The concern in Western Mass is that we’ll lose John Olver’s congressional seat and get lumped in with Richie Neal’s. Nothing against Neal.

    • The first redistricted election will be 2012, right?  Senator Kennedy’s term is up in 2012 — and I’d be willing to bet he doesn’t run again.

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      p>I wonder: if there are two Congressmen who are the top two challengers for Senator Kennedy’s senate seat, could they be redistricted together so that the winner of the primary gets to run against a GOP for the senate seat, and the loser keeps his (or her) House seat?  I don’t know the legalities of that… or if Beacon Hill could change the law to allow for that.  It would be a rather elegant solution for the current delegation.

      • It is sad and painful to say this but it does not seem to me that Senator Kennedy will be with us much longer.  One simply doesn’t just chose to miss one’s own Presidential Medal of Freedom award ceremony let along a sister’s funeral.

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        p>Senator Kennedy’s seat will be filled (either via special election or gubernatorial appointment – depending on whether the Legislature wants to mess with the law again) long before the redistricting process begins in 2011.

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        p>I doubt it will be an “elegant” process in any way.

        • One of the Congressman becomes Senator, and the remaining 9 each get their district.  There’ll be a temporary 10th Congressman, but he or she will likely be just that: temporary.  Unless, of course, we see a retirement.

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          p>Olver was born in 1936, Frank was born in 1940, and Delahunt was born in 1941.  As far as I know none of them have indicated intention to retire, but redistricting may help encourage one of them to do so, especially if 2010 and 2012 elections are particularly unfavorable to Democrats nationwide.  We’ve seen widespread GOP retirements now that they’re in the minority; I’d expect to see the same from Dem politicians if the pendulum swings quickly to the right.

    • I think that population is the biggest reason for the odd Western MA districts. If you define Western MA as Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire counties, there are too many people for a single representative. The county populations are like this:

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      p>Hampden: 459,116
      Hampshire: 153,399
      Berkshire: 133,462
      Franklin: 71,721 (not a typo)

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      p>I think a Congressional district was somewhere near 650,000 people in 2000. Probably this will increase to around 700,000 in 2010. “Western MA” has 817,690 people in it. So how do you shave 117,000 people from Western MA and lump them into Central MA?

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      p>You can’t just throw Franklin County to Central MA — they only have half the number you need. Plus, it has more in common with Berkshire and Hampshire County than with Hampden County and anything in the East Do you take one or two Springfield Metro cities like Holyoke and Chicopee and throw them into Central MA? That would be ludicrous.

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      p>When you dig a little deeper you’ll see even more how hard it is — most of Hampden County is concentrated in a handful of cities made up of Springfield and its ring — Springfield: 150,000; Chicopee: 55,000; Holyoke: 40,000. Westfield is further out geographically with 40,000. Smaller cities are West Springfield: 30,000 and Agawam: 30,000. That’s 75% of the county population.

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      p>Hampshire County is similarly concentrated: Northampton: 30,000; Amherst: 17,000; Easthampton: 16,000. South Hadley: 17,000. Belchertown: 13,000. Ware: 10,000. That’s 2/3 of the population in 6 cities/towns.

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      p>I think that a solution is going to involve combining Franklin County and half of Berkshire County with Central MA, and leaving Hampden, Hampshire, and part of Berkshire County as a district. That will be an odd district though, because it will be about half urban, half rural — two groups which have almost opposite needs and concerns.

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      p>I think that the House should be expanded. Probably doubled, maybe even tripled. How is one Representative supposed to well-represent 700,000 people? How can one Representative represent the interests of both Northampton and Bellingham? Instead of cutting representation, we should have stuck with the plan to add more representation. Why ration representation when we don’t need to?

      • A western MA district should at least include the Connecticut (Pioneer Valley) including greater Springfield.  East of that we can cut it off whereever is necessary to include the correct population figures, preferably with the line going as straight north-south as possible.

        • There isn’t enough population at the eastern edges to cut off 117,000+ people because the larger populated places in Western MA are on the eastern border.

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          p>The CT River goes through 3 counties — Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin.

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          p>In Hampden County, the easternmost places (with population) are:

          <

          p>1st Ring.
          Monson: 8,300
          Palmer: 12,500

          <

          p>2nd Ring
          Hampden (borders Springfield): 5,000
          Wilbraham (borders Springfield): 13,500
          Ludlow (borders Springfield): 21,200

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          p>Total: 60,500.

          <

          p>It makes little sense to put Wilbraham and Ludlow in Central MA, since they are immediate suburbs directly touching  Springfield. Without them, you only have 25,800.

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          p>In Hampshire County, the easternmost places are:

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          p>1st ring:
          Ware: 9,700
          Belchertown: 13,000
          Pelham: 1,400

          <

          p>2nd Ring:
          Amherst (west of Pelham): 34,900
          Granby (west of Belchertown): 6,132

          <

          p>Total: 65,132

          <

          p>It makes little sense to put Amherst and Granby in Central MA, since they are at least 1 town into Hampshire County, and Amherst is a very important place in the county. Without Amherst, you have just 30,232.

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          p>In Franklin County, the easternmost places are:

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          p>1st Ring:
          Orange: 7,500
          Warwick: 750
          New Salem: 929

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          p>2nd Ring:
          Shutesbury: 1,800
          Wendell: 986
          Erving: 1,467
          Northfield: 2,951

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          p>3rd Ring:
          Bernardston: 2,155
          Gill: 1,363
          Montague: 8,489
          Leverett: 1,663

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          p>Total: 30,053

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          p>The 3rd ring towns are towns that border Greenfield, the Franklin county seat. It makes no sense to put them in Central MA apart from Greenfield. That leaves just 16,383

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          p>Although taking the 1st and 2nd ring towns from the three counties (plus the 3rd ring towns from Franklin) gets a Western MA district down to the right size, it really peels too many communities away from where they ought to be. If you restrict to just 1st ring (i.e. towns bordering Central MA) you have just half of what you need.

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          p>The biggest town is Amherst at 35k people, and those from Western and even Central MA know that Amherst is not a Central MA town — just as Ludlow and Wilbraham have almost nothing in common with Central MA.

          <

          p>Unless you want to stress rectangular districts over everything else, I don’t see how this can be worked out without splitting communities whose interests are intertwined.

          • …is start at the NY border and move the line east until you have the right number of people west of the line to form a CD.  That should get you at least to the Quabbin Resevoir.  The line doesn’t have to be exactly straight, but it certainly makes no sense to divide the Pioneer Valley as is currently the case or have Pepperell in the CD that borders NY, also currently the case.  I drew a map like this once for my own edification and it worked pretty well I think.

        • since you can’t get to 700,000 without doing so.

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          p>An open question for Massachusetts is: should counties be considered at all when deciding districts?  I think we all agree that city and town lines should be considered, though of course a few cities and towns in each district will have to be split due to hit the population numbers correctly.  But what about counties?  Should they even be in the data?

          • I don’t think counties should matter so much — I think that shared interests should matter more.

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            p>Does it make sense to peel Gill and Bernardston away from Greenfield and put them in a district with Worcester?

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            p>It may make sense to put a town like Orange (Hampshire) into a district with Athol (Worcester) since those two communities are more closely tied together.

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            p>Does it make sense to split Amherst from Northampton and Hadley — breaking up what is the “five college area”?

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            p>Does it make sense to move Ludlow and Wilbraham from Springfield, even though quite a few of those towns residents were raised in Springfield (and quite a few city employees live there)?

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            p>I agree, right now it makes little sense for the town of Uxbridge to be represented by someone from Springfield. Or Blackstone. Or Bellingham. The 1st and 2nd districts aren’t that great right now.

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            p>State senate is quite a bit different from the US House of Representatives — though I think city/town lines should be respected there too. Springfield has 2 senators and 7 representatives touching it in the state, but neither of its senators are city residents and only 4 of 7 representatives are city residents — and only 2 house districts lie within the city completely, so the other 2 who just happen to be from Springfield now can’t argue too vociferously on behalf of the city in fear of alienating the remainder of their districts.

        • come into the decision at all when carving out congressional districts. Aside from political calculations (thank you very much Governor Gerry), they tend to try and stay within town lines, except for bizarre districts like Barney Frank’s.

      • …having communities with similar needs been a consideration in carving out any kinds of districts?  That point can be proven in the current make up of Olver and Neal’s current districts.  What does Springfield have in common with Mendon or Amherst have in common with Peru, MA?  

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        p>While it won’t happen, I’ll bet Worcester West could neatly handle two Congressional districts just fine.  

        • The current gerrymandered CDs do not have either similar needs or geography in common.  I think Christopher may be onto something above.  Start at the NY border and move east til one hits the 700,000 mark.

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          p>I was just funnin’ about Congressman McGovern taking Worcester and all of the west.  I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing someone with his passion and constituent services in western MA.  

        • Why should districts be geographically contiguous and compact? Why should North/South be respected more than East/West?

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          p>I do think that common interests are important to respect when it comes to representation. Your example is a little disingenuous, the fact that our districts will have nearly 750,000 people in them virtually guarantees that geographically divergent communities will be in the same district. Although Peru MA has little in common with Mendon, Peru does have shared interests with Pittsfield and North Adams, so I think it would be foolish to separate those communities, just as it would be foolish to separate Ludlow from Springfield or even Amherst from Northampton (the latter are currently separated).

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          p>I think that redistricting should sprout outward from economic centers to other communities that are affected by those centers. Then combine these economic groups as necessary. Use communities in-between to balance. I think it makes more sense to respect the fact that Gardner and Fitchburg are economically tied together than it does to say “hey, the map looks prettier if we split Gardner and Fitchburg”.

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          p>Just my opinion.

      • You seem to be confused as to the whole point of gerrymandering – the exact opposite is true. A ham sandwich could get re-elected in a safely gerrymandered district like that.  

        • Bill Bulger merged Barney’s Newton with Peg Heckler’s district in 1982 in an effort to screw Barney…Barney may have a solid lock on Fall River today, but he worked his butt off for years to have that lock.  

          • Frank beat Heckler 59-41 in 1982, and carried 61% in Fall River. Peg Heckler was from Wellesley – not exactly Fall River country.

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            p>So much for working his butt off. So much for your revisionist history.

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            p>And Billy Bulger screwing Barney Frank? Now there’s a picture.  

            • Either you weren’t around back then or you got a hair across the your ass about Frank.  Peg Heckler represented Fall River for 16 years and the fact that Barney beat her her 61/39 makes my point thank you.  

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              p>Speaking of revisionist history…are you claiming that Frank was not targeted by Bulger (and the rest of the Lege leadership) in the redistricting?  Next you’ll be claiming that the New Deal actually caused the depression.  I’m not sure if this link will work, it not go to the Boston Globe’s online archive and search for “frank heckler redistricting 1981” (and make sure you go back to 1979) and read the headlines from that period, it will prove you completely wrong.

              • link of old headlines…

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                p>Here is are some headlines and first couple of headlines…

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                p>

                HOUSE WON’T ALTER DISTRICT FOR FRANK
                Published on December 15, 1981
                Author(s):    Chris Black Globe Staff

                A fragile agreement to put the town of Framingham into the proposed new congressional district of US Reps. Margaret M. Heckler and Barney Frank collapsed yesterday after Senate President William M. Bulger refused to pledge his support for the change.
                After five hours of heated debate, the House followed the wishes of its leadership and rejected an amendment sought by Frank to shift Framingham into the new district on a 117-39 vote.
                The House then approved the redistricting

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                p>

                NEWS ANALYSIS\ REDISTRICTING: DID IT REPAY AN OLD SCORE?
                Published on December 17, 1981
                Author(s):    Chris Black Globe Staff

                While state representatives milled about the House floor Monday afternoon waiting to debate the congressional redistricting plan, Speaker Thomas W. McGee placed a crucial three-way telephone conference call.
                The conversation was between himself, Senate President William M. Bulger and US House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. in Washington, and when it was over Bulger had refused to endorse a plan to put the town of Framingham into the newly merged congressional district of

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                p>Note: Framingham was a district the Freshman Frank had represented, but Bulger and Speaker McGee let him go up against the 8 eight Heckler with a district that was mostly Heckler’s…and Frank worked his ass off and won in a landslide.

  4. There are always questions about his seeking reelection since he doesn’t have a warchest as big as others.  I would like the districts to be roughly thus (and I’m not running numbers at this point):

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    p>1) Western Mass
    2) Central Mass
    3) Metro West
    4) Merrimack Valley
    5) North Shore
    6) Boston
    7) South Shore
    8) Fall River/New Bedford
    9) Cape and Islands

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    p>These seem to make sense geographically.  I would also point out that some have expressed concern that we may lose two seats.

    • It would be pretty easy to finally kill off the 8th merging it with the 9th and the 5th. Its the smallest district geographically (though one of the largest population wise) and wouldn’t be too hard to merge.

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      p>Alternatively the 5th wouldn’t be too hard to merge into the 6th and the 7th. And since Nikki is a freshmen she’d be the easiest to lose in the statewide delegation.

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      p>Similarly merging Neal and Olver’s makes sense from a population perspective although geographically that district would be huge. I would suspect Olver would likely just retire and give the seat to Neal considering his age and poor fundraising.  

    • The population just doesn’t work out quite that way.  For example, the Cape has a year-round population of about 230,000 — congressional districts are roughly 650,000 people.

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      p>Losing two seats is incredibly unlikely at this point — the massive push south and southwest has been hampered by economic collapse in those regions: massive foreclosure rates, etc.

  5. I think any redistricting should be done in a manner that better reflects the geographic bases of different regions in the state and not to be gerrymandered to benefit incumbents (like Frank) or minorities (like Capuano’s theoretically)

    • …in getting needed funds for the state and redistrict them out of existence?  

    • of course, they’re programed by people who have agendas.  What should be the parameters of a district?  It’s not so simple, given physical, political, and cultural boundaries.  Should a district contain a “mix” of different things, or should we try to clump like things together?  Is Woburn more like North Reading (proximity) or like Quincy (both urban suburbs roughly the same distance from Boston)?  Should county lines be taken into consideration?  Should a transition to whichever criteria you think is best happen immediately, even if it results in clumping many incumbent Congressmen together, resulting in a relatively large number of new, inexperienced politicians representing the Commonwealth?

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      p>I’m not arguing that the current system for drawing districts is based on solid philosophical principles.  It isn’t.  But, creating those principles ain’t easy, and even once you’ve done that, drawing up districts to represent those principles and still respecting physical, political, and cultural barriers is certainly not easy.

        • No.  Not at all.  Using really amazing tools which combine physical census data with public records data and property tax data, combined with purchased listing data like magazine subscriptions, combined with historic election results, computers can create districts with an expected voting pattern incredibly precisely — far more precise than humans ever could.

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          p>It’s “just” an optimization problem.  For Dems, it looks like this.  For GOP, just substitute GOP for Dem.
          Maximize E[num Dem elected reps]
          subject to
          * Constitutional amendments
          * Size requirements (2010: roughly 700,000 each)
          * Land contiguity requirement
          with objective function penalties for
          * extreme non-compactness
          * re-districting sitting Dem Congressman out of their own district

          <

          p>

          <

          p>By “just” I don’t mean to imply that the actual programming is easy — in fact, it’s quite hard.  As an operations research guy working on mixed integer linear programming, I’m know enough about it to know it requires specialized knowledge and major computer hardware.

  8. Isn’t there a requirement that, unless the number of CDs goes up, every new CD has to include the place of residence of at least one of the current reps?  If that’s a requirement, then it makes it very hard to create coherent districts.  For example, the Cape and Islands, Fall River and New Bedford, and rest of SE Mass. has no current rep living anywhere near there — that’s how we end up with the strange districts we have now, with Delahunt (in Quincy), Frank (in Newton), Lynch (in South Boston), and McGovern (in Worcester) representing various pieces of that region.

  9. The last time we lost a seat was after the 1990 census. The congressman for the 11th District, Brian Donnelly, was made ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something similar happen in this case.

    • There was no arrangement in place as implied…Donnelly retired with HW Bush still Prez and running for reelection.  If Clinton did not win, Donnelly would not have been made Ambassador.

    • …without knowing the numbers, I suspect that much of that increase is caused by new Hispanic voters, which if the trend continues could be good news for the Dems.

      • the partisan split of each new district just so happens to be roughly 60-40 GOP-D.  When you draw the lines, you can split up those Hispanics into a number of precincts, resulting in three more districts which lean GOP.  Of course, go to far and you run the risk of big losses in a wave election, but with care an increase in Hispanic (or black or left handed or women or BMG Editors) can be parlayed into more Republican (or Democratic) Congressmen.

    • I’m not sure this is the best reason for keeping her, but I’ve heard there may be reluctance to shaft the only woman in our delegation.  Also she failed to attract a challenger in her first re-election bid so she’s politically strong.  Finally, if you mess with the 5th too much you’ll see a repeat of the activity that occurred at the last redraw when Finneran tried to divide greater Lowell into 4 CDs, claiming he thought Meehan would run for Governor.

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