Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 19, 1991                   TAG: 9103190309
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROB EURE POLITICAL WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Long

DISTRICTS PROPOSAL DRAWS FIRE/ PLAN AIMED AT PROTECTING SENATE DEMOCRATIC

The plan, aimed at protecting the 30 Democratic members of the 40-member Senate, drew immediate criticism from unhappy senators in every region of the state. The Senate Privileges and Elections Committee proposal will undergo some minor changes in the next several days as members haggle over details of their districts, but its key aim - protecting the 30 Democratic incumbents and most of the 10 Republicans - is likely to keep the plan largely intact.

"It's not so much a product of partisanship but a desire of the members to protect their seats," Sen. Mark Early, R-Chesapeake, said of the plan.

Besides the Western Virginia changes, the major points in the Senate panel's plan include preservation of the Senate's two majority black districts, one in Richmond and one in Norfolk. It does not create a third and potential fourth black district as civil-rights activists have urged.

The plan also creates two new districts in the fast-growing Northern Virginia area, one in Fairfax County and one in Prince William County.

The plan's map for Southwest Virginia's districts is based on plans to carve up the district of Sen. John Buchanan, D-Wise. Buchanan, 80, a senior member of the Senate who represents the coal-producing counties in the far Southwest, has missed most of his legislative duties this year because of cancer.

Essentially, Buchanan's district would be split between Sen. Daniel Bird, D-Wythe, and Sen. William Wampler, R-Bristol. The move at once solves the problem of declining population in the Southwest and places Wampler, the region's only Republican senator, in a dangerous district because he would likely pick up the strongly Democratic coal counties of Wise and Dickinson.

Although the region's senators are resigned to losing one member, the plan produced Monday drew immediate criticism from several Southwest senators.

Bird was given Dickinson County, a two-hour drive from Wytheville. And the committee's plan calls for Sen. Dudley "Buzz" Emick, D-Fincastle, to represent an area stretching from Alleghany County to Bland and part of Tazewell counties in the Southwest. It also gives Roanoke Sen. Granger Macfarlane a large chunk of Republican-leaning Southwest Roanoke County, an area Emick now represents.

But area senators met Sunday night at the home of Sen. Madison Marye, D-Shawsville, and agreed on districts that would keep within the boundaries of the Senate plan but shift counties around. Marye is the area's representative on the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee.

Monday, committee chairman Joe Gartlan, a Fairfax Democrat, signaled he was willing to negotiate with any area on district lines. He said the draft was the product of suggestions from groups of regional senators "knitted together like a quilt."

And it began unraveling almost immediately.

Emick said he would not end up representing Bland and Tazwell. Instead, his district may stretch as far as Giles and part of Pulaksi County, he said.

Macfarlane was lobbying to give up some of the Republican precincts in Roanoke County, such as Oak Grove, and gain instead a portion of Bedford County. That's an area where he is known for his opposition of the Explore Project, which straddles Roanoke and Bedford counties.

The two Republicans thrown together in the Northern Shenandoah Valley - Kevin Miller of Harrisonburg and William Truban of Woodstock - vowed to redraw that district.

"This is the most grotesque-looking gerrymandering I've ever seen," Miller said as he looked at the map that slices out a portion of Rockingham County with Harrisonburg to go with Truban's district to the north. "I believe I can improve on that.

"They think we in the valley might be dumb, but we ain't that dumb," said Truban, noting that he and Miller are the only members of their party on the Privileges and Elections panel.

The introduction of the Senate plan marks the start of what many legislators expect to be a contentious, bitter fight that could well end up in court. Redistricting 10 years ago was settled by federal judges.

Monday, a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union said he would probably draw his own map showing at least one more black-majority district and maybe two more.

"We expected to see a black-majority district come out of the Southside counties," said Kent Willis, Virginia director of the ACLU. Federal law prohibits legislators from diluting black voting strength by splitting a large concentration of blacks into more than one district.

Republicans are also likely to draw up an alternative plan to the one that the Democratic majorities in the both the House and Senate develop.

The House of Delegates' Privileges and Elections Committee is not expected to show the redistricting plan for its 100 seats until Thursday, but the same population shifts that cost Southwest Virginia a Senate seat are expected to cost the House two to three seats in the region and send as many as five new House seats to Northern Virginia.

Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY POLITICS