5 Ways to Tilt an Election

C M Y K NYxx,2010-09-26,WK,003,Bs-4C,E1 THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2010 WK 3 The Nation 5 Ways to Tilt an Election Eliminate the Competition ILLINOIS 1ST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT By MICHAEL COOPER T was a gerrymander too am- In 2000, a little-known Illinois state senator bitious for its own good. named Barack Obama mounted a primary When Pennsylvania lost challenge against Representative Bobby L. two seats in Congress to the Rush, a Chicago Democrat. Mr. Obama took a booming Sun Belt in 2000, the Colorado River HOPI drubbing, getting a mere 30 percent of the IRepublicans who controlled state Congressional District 2 INDIAN vote. Still, someone took notice. The next year, government redrew the map of RESERVATION Congressional districts to pack under a bipartisan deal, the state’s Congres- Republican voters into as many sional districts were redrawn to protect most districts as possible. of the state’s incumbents — which meant that At first, the strategy worked. In Tribalism Mr. Obama’s block was cut out of Mr. Rush’s the next election, the state’s dele- district (see below). As it turned out, Mr. gation shifted to 12 Republicans Kingman ARIZONA 2ND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT Obama was not planning a rematch. But at and 7 Democrats, from 11 Repub- least three other potential challengers were licans and 10 Democrats. Furious The use of racial gerrymandering district: most of the Second drawn out of their Illinois districts that year. Democrats challenged the new to dilute the voting power of Congressional District hugs the map but the Supreme Court up- minorities is illegal. But California border, but it then held it. mapmakers, and the courts, snakes east through the bottom Congressional District 1 Instead of drawing, say, 11 Re- often take race and ethnicity into of the Grand Canyon along the publican districts with comfort- account to make sure that Colorado River in order to take in Obama’s residence able margins of Republican vot- Lake Havasu City members of minority groups are a Hopi reservation. The Hopi Lake ILLINOIS ers, party strategists had tried to fairly represented. In western argued that they should not be Michigan draw 12 or 13 Republican districts, Arizona, that led to an interesting placed in the same district as Evergreen Park but with slimmer margins. As it turned out, those margins were a their frequent, more numerous rivals, the Navajo. The Blue Island bit too narrow, and, by 2006, Dem- Oak Forest ocrats had won those districts. independent commission that The state now has 12 Democratic drew the district agreed — over Tinley Park 10 MILES and just 7 Republican districts, the the objections of the Navajos. reverse of what the Republican gerrymander originally accom- Surprise plished. “They took a risk, and it ARIZONA Peoria backfired,’’ said Edward G. Ren- dell, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor. Goodyear Phoenix Now, with the 2010 census com- 40 MILES Moline plete, Democrats and Republicans ILLINOIS across the country are preparing 17 for another once-a-decade exer- Kewanee cise in creative cartography. To gain the upper hand in the next re- Cracking: Dilute the Opposition districting, Pennsylvania Repub- Galesburg licans are fighting to win back the OHIO 15TH, 12TH AND 7TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS governor’s mansion and the OHIO state’s House of Representatives. Congressional Franklin County, Ohio, home to the state’s capital, District 15 Independent analysts say a Re- Columbus, was growing, and becoming more publican surge in statehouses Canton Democratic. So in the last redistricting, Republi- Macomb around the nation could leave cans divided the county into three Congressional them with the power to redraw as districts, splitting up the Democratic stronghold in many as 25 Congressional seats in their favor. the center of the county and adding Republican Delaware So what are the tricks of the areas to each district. The result? In 2006, The Marysville trade? Why do so many districts Columbus Dispatch reported Quincy Congressional District 17 end up as misshapen Rorschach that Franklin County’s voters Decatur inkblots with nicknames like “the cast 10,000 more votes for Congressional Springfield District 12 Earmuff,” “the Flying Giraffe,” or, Democratic Congressional Hilliard in the case of a State Senate dis- candidates than for Republi- Columbus trict in upstate New York, “Abra- cans — but Republicans still Springfield Reynoldsburg ham Lincoln Riding on a Vacuum won all three seats. In 2008, Cleaner”? Mary Jo Kilroy, a Democrat, Grove City Both parties rely on sophisticat- won in the 15th District, ed computer programs, savvy po- Beavercreek Lancaster litical operatives and election law- which contains much of Columbus. But she faces a yers to push their maps through Circleville the frequent court challenges. But tough re-election campaign. the basic principles of gerryman- 40 MILES dering — known to the pros as Congressional 20 MILES District 7 “packing” and “cracking” — are Packing: To Keep Your Voters simple, and used often. ILLINOIS 17TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT There is a reason this district resembles a rabbit, speeding westward on a skateboard. 20 MILES To enhance the Democratic incumbent’s One for You, One for Me fight it out, and two Democratic incum- re-election prospects, officials redrew this NEW YORK 28TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT bents were assigned to a new Democratic Quad Cities district to remove some Republi- district. The Democratic district, the 28th, can areas while stretching it along a narrow Congressional District 28 States losing Congressional seats must was a bit of a stretch, literally, extending band to include Democratic neighborhoods Niagara Rochester Falls decide which incumbent gets left without from Rochester, a Democratic city, across in the cities of Springfield and Decatur, 40 a chair. When New York lost two of its 31 a thin sliver of the shore of Lake Ontario, miles to the east. Since the district was Tonawanda House seats after the 2000 census, the to Democratic areas in Niagara Falls and NEW YORK drawn in a bipartisan deal to protect most state’s government agreed on a compro- parts of Buffalo. In this case, one of the incumbents, the Republicans drawn out of mise to protect an incumbent from each two Democrats crammed into the district this district made neighboring districts safer party. Two Republican lawmakers were retired, paving the way for Representative Buffalo for Republicans. put in a new Republican district and left to Louise Slaughter to win. THE NEW YORK TIMES Asia Three Faces of the New China imperatives and great-power interests collide. From Page 1 If America’s No. 1 goal is a stripping North Ko- they begin to manage their many constituencies, rea of its nuclear weapons, China’s is keeping their politics is looking more like ours.” North Korea stable. Should it collapse, the Chi- Here’s a scouting report so far on China’s nese suspect, South Korea (and its American al- style of muscle-flexing: lies) will move in, perhaps up to China’s border. THE NEIGHBORHOOD: TIME FOR THE BIG STICK As one American intelligence official put it re- For decades countries around Asia have been cently, “if the choice is between living with a wary of China’s resurgence — tracking how half-crazed nuclear North or with us on top of many ships and missiles it was acquiring, and them, the Chinese are choosing the first option.’’ how it was using its influence as an investor. A That doesn’t mean they are happy about it. decade ago, as President Bush took power, a James Church, pen name of the author of “The number of neoconservatives urged him to “con- Man With the Baltic Stare,” his latest spy novel tain’’ China’s presumed ambitions. about North Korea, learned about the country as But containment would have probably been an intelligence officer. He said in an interview: impossible and it proved, at least in the past dec- “The Chinese may not like the North Koreans ade, unnecessary. So far Beijing has not pressed much. But there is too much geography, history new territorial claims; it has simply begun to de- and emotion tying them together and shaping fend old ones in sparsely inhabited places. Chinese thinking’’ for Beijing to jettison its long- The Japanese stepped into one of those when time client, particularly if it means North Ko- rea’s absorption by America’s ally, the South. they arrested the captain of a Chinese trawler KYODO/REUTERS near a group of islands in the East China Sea, So in 2009, after the North’s second nuclear called the Senkaku by the Japanese and the Power Play Japan was forced to rescind the arrest of a trawler captain. test, it suited China’s interests to join sanctions Diaoyu by China. The Japanese said the trawler against Pyongyang. This year, when the United rammed a Japanese coast guard vessel. A few States again tried sanctions over the North’s years ago this might have been sorted out qui- presumed role in sinking a South Korean war- etly as a consular issue. Not this time. ship, the situation had changed: Kim Jong Il, the The Chinese — perhaps driven by the People’s WASHINGTON: THE ART OF DEFLECTION So far China’s strategy appears to be to main- North’s dictator, was ill, and China needed to Liberation Army, perhaps eager to begin to de- If China’s strategy with Asia is all sharp el- tain the trappings of routine diplomacy while gain influence over his son and presumed heir, clare their equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine — bows, with the United States it is largely po- dragging its feet. Prime Minister Wen used the Kim Jong Un, to keep the lid on the North.

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