CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING IN WISCONSIN PHILIP J. MCDADE isconsin has Wisconsin seat that's long been had a nearly uninter- Wknown for rupted string of its competitive con- Republicans repre- gressional races. Since senting it since pre- 1990, for instance, four World War II days incumbents have lost was redrawn to their bids for re-elec- include even more tion.1 Two seats Republican voters. switched party hands Wisconsin is not after an incumbent 2 alone in protecting retired. Beyond that, its incumbent con- a number of congres- gressional members. sional elections have In state after state, been closely contested congressional redis- in recent years, decid- tricting efforts have ed by just a few per- resulted in brokered centage points. deals that protect Few states with a incumbent lawmak- congressional delegation as small as ers and create safer districts for members of Wisconsin's — just nine total seats in the U.S. each party. Charlie Cook, author of the widely House of Representatives since 1970 — have read (in political circles, at least) Cook Political experienced such electoral volatility and com- Report, suggests congressional redistricting petitiveness in their House elections. efforts have been weighted so heavily toward incumbents and creating safe seats that this But those elections will soon become far fall's elections will see only about two dozen less competitive, thanks to a deal struck by truly competitive races. Those are the races Wisconsin's Republican and Democratic con- that draw national media attention, national gressional leaders and approved by state law- party money, and targeted spending by makers. Under a map drawn up by the state's national interest groups. This year, those twen- two senior members of Congress, two political- ty-four or so races will decide which party con- ly balanced districts will become much safer trols the House of Representatives — and a for the young incumbents holding them. One good share of the national political agenda. new seat — based almost entirely in the city of Two dozen out of 435 House districts — that's Milwaukee and a few surrounding working- not many. class suburbs — is tailor-made for electing Democrats year after year. And a central Philip J. McDade is a Madison-based writer and former reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal. Wisconsin Interest 21 The 435 seats in the U.S. House of raw political advantage.4 If one party can cre- Representatives are redrawn every ten years to ate more safe seats than the opposition, it can account for population shifts throughout the lock in its political advantage for years and country. The once-a-decade count by the U.S. even decades. Census Bureau drives the process, as it pro- "Reapportionment has always been chock vides the most detailed accounting of where full of political motivations," according to Don people live and how populations have shifted. Kettl, a UW-Madison political science profes- Each state is guaranteed one seat in the House, sor and a close observer of the once-a-decade and the rest are distributed based on popula- redistricting effort. "The gerrymandering tion. States with growing populations gain process has rich and historic roots that go back seats at the expense of those with declining, or a very, very long way, and politicians have modestly increasing, populations. In the case always drawn the boundaries to pursue differ- of Wisconsin this year, that means going from ent political objectives." nine to eight seats (it lost a tenth seat after the 1970 Census), even though the state's popula- The accumulation of political power tion has grown in the past decade.3 Moreover, through redistricting took on particular congressional districts in each state are urgency this time around, mainly because of redrawn, to account for population shifts with- the extraordinarily close nature of the national in the state. political divide. GOP President George W. Bush was elected in 2000 with the narrowest While it may seem arcane to most voters, mandate in U.S. history — an Electoral College the task of redrawing congressional bound- winner based on a disputed Florida election, aries plays a crucial role in the political make- and the loser in the popular vote. Meanwhile, up and agenda of the country. In part, that's Democrats control the Senate by one seat (that because it occurs only once a decade. Tax and of GOP turncoat Senator Jim Jeffords of spending decisions can be revisited year after Vermont), while Republicans control the year (and usually are), to take into account House chamber by a mere six seats. shifting priorities and economic changes. But congressional boundaries can only be redrawn Should Republicans maintain control of every ten years, thus raising the stakes in the the House in the fall elections, and switch just debate over where the lines should go. one seat in the Senate, they would control all of the policy levers in Washington, D.C. That More importantly, congressional redistrict- would give Bush a huge boost in dominating ing can determine the distribution of political the political agenda in the two years leading power for years at a time. Part of this occurs as up to his expected re-election campaign in a natural outgrowth of proportional represen- 2004. But should Democrats maintain control tation. Ever-growing California, with its 53 of the Senate this fall, and regain control of the congressional seats (nearly one-eighth of the House — hardly an unprecedented feat — entire House), exerts far more sway in policy Bush would almost certainly be put on the debates than one-seat North Dakota. But lately, defensive leading up to the 2004 elections.5 the chief aim of those who draw congressional boundaries is to pack them with as many vot- In short, because the stakes are so high and ers of their own kind as possible. The creation political power so evenly divided, each party of "safe" seats — districts weighted with so has sought to maximize its advantages in the many voters of one party that the opposition congressional redistricting contest. has no realistic chance in the House election And that has meant protecting incum- — often becomes the overriding priority of the bents. After all, the surest way to keep a House boundary-drawing titans. In its most egregious seat in your political column is to have an form, redrawn districts are "gerrymandered" incumbent seek re-election. In House elections, — drawn with lines so irregular that they bear incumbents rarely get beat; their re-election little logical reason for existing, other than for 22 Spring 2002 rate runs around 97 percent. (In that regard, played out most obviously this year in Wisconsin's "competitiveness" in congressional Wisconsin in two of the state's most politically races is a relative term. Between 1990 and 1998, volatile seats — the 1st and 2nd Congressional four incumbent House members from Districts. Wisconsin lost. During the same time period, Two incumbent-protecting districts Wisconsin House incumbents seeking re-elec- tion won 37 times. Thus, Wisconsin House In the politics of boundary drawing, two incumbents stand a better chance than the scenarios usually play out — protect vulnera- national average of getting toppled — about ble incumbents, and protect vulnerable dis- one time in ten races. Still, it's an uncommon tricts. The latter strategy played a key role in occurrence.) the newly drawn lines of the 1st Congressional District, now held by GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of One way to insure that incumbents get re- Janesville. elected is to pack their districts with voters of the same ilk as the incumbent. This is actually The 1st, which runs along Wisconsin's pretty easy to do. As noted by political writer southern border, has always been one of Michael Barone, co- Wisconsin's most volatile author of the biennially congressional districts. published Almanac of Since World War II, four American Politics, voting In the politics of Democrats and four trends by region tend to Republicans have held be historically rooted. boundary drawing, two the district — unusual Regions that favor one turnover and balance for party over the other do so scenarios usually play any congressional district. generation after genera- It’s home to industrial tion. This is true for out — protect towns like Janesville, Wisconsin, not just in the vulnerable incumbents, Racine and Kenosha. In obvious places Beloit resides the state's ( D e m o c r a t - d o m i n a t e d and protect vulnerable single largest concentra- Dane and Milwaukee tion of black voters out- counties, Republican- districts. side of Milwaukee. Not dominated Waukesha surprisingly, it trends County), but in others as Democratic in presiden- well. Portage County, set- tial election years. Al tled by Polish immigrants, heavily Catholic, Gore took the district in 2000, while former with blue-collar paper mill workers and a President Bill Clinton won it in both 1996 and vibrant university campus in Stevens Point, 1992. has long been a reliable source of Democratic But in-between the industrial cities that votes in central Wisconsin. Southern bracket the district sits some of the most fertile Wisconsin's Walworth County, not quite sub- Republican territory in Wisconsin. The por- urban, boxed in on all sides by Democrat-lean- tions of Racine and Kenosha counties that lie ing cities large and small, but full of old- outside their namesake cities are filled with money immigrants from the Chicago area, pro- growing suburbs that strongly trend duces solid GOP majorities for any Republican Republican. Walworth County, filled with on a ballot. quaint resort towns such as Lake Geneva and Knowing where these pockets are can spell Delavan, has been solidly Republican for the difference between drawing safe seats and decades.