Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 28, 1991 TAG: 9103280432
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY L. GARLAND
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It is wonderful when a word enters the language that everyone sooner or later learns, and which describes perfectly and even suggests by its sound a complex process. In "gerrymander" we have such a word. It originated in 1812 in the commonwealth of Massachusetts when Gov. Elbridge Gerry rearranged election districts in a grotesque manner, suggesting to a contemporary cartoonist the shape of a salamander. It has stuck and we've never needed anything else.
If it would not please him so much to be immortalized, I would borrow from the editorial page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch the new word "Croshawed" - after Del. Glenn R. Croshaw, D-Virginia Beach, who is gleefully taking credit for devising the main elements of the House plan.
Croshaw, who possesses one of those pudgy, androgynous faces that we see on choirboys accused of burying a hatchet in the skulls of their elderly aunts, managed to place almost half of the 39 House Republicans in districts where two incumbents must face off or move, while avoiding that fate in the case of all but two of the 59 Democrats. Thus, the new expression: "I've been Croshawed."
To accomplish this feat, it was necessary to do such things as put parts of Pittsylvania County in six legislative districts.
The Senate plan, concocted under the inspiration of the Fairfax liberal and moralizer, Sen. Joseph Gartlan, is more an exercise in pure incumbent protection. But even here we see the city of Chesapeake, which has a freshman Republican senator, divided into three districts, and two Shenandoah Valley Republicans needlessly placed in the same district.
The question inevitably arises, "Will these plans stand?" The obvious answer is that there will be much tinkering and litigation between now and the November general election, and possibly beyond. As Gov. Douglas Wilder said, "Redistricting starts with Democrats vs. Republicans and ends with every man for himself."
One big problem is time. Having state elections in odd-numbered years puts Virginia under the gun to get the census data in a timely fashion and do the job quickly enough for candidates to qualify in new districts by late spring or early summer - all the while fighting off challenges in the courts that threaten to invalidate the whole scheme.
In 1981 the state spent almost $1 million defending the House plan, only to have it thrown out by the federal courts with a stipulation that a new plan be drafted and a special election be held for all 100 House seats. It is by no means impossible that a similar fate awaits the current plans.
The Virginia Constitution says that every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory. Contiguous has been taken to mean only that all parts of a district must join the rest. But that can be achieved by carving narrow corridors, and the courts have been reluctant to attack even the thinest reed of contiguity.
It is decidedly odd that the much clearer word "compact" has also proved a rubber crutch for those seeking a redress of grievances. You might think that the courts would take it to mean that those districts which are needlessly large and unwieldy can't be allowed, but you would think wrong.
You might also look to the courts of the commonwealth, acting under the Virginia Bill of Rights or the clear constitutional requirement for compact districts, to grant relief from the more outrageous examples of redistricting in the service of a particular party or incumbent. But you would likely look in vain. The state's courts, dominated as they are by the good-ol'-boy wing of the Democratic Party, have been notoriously reluctant to join the fray.
Those protesting such plans have customarily looked to the federal courts, but aside from the famous "one man, one vote" decisions of the early '60s, the federal courts have focused almost exclusively on the issue of minority representation.
And that attitude is somewhat easy to understand. "It all depends on whose ox is being gored," they say, and the ultimate power to make political changes if things get totally out of hand always resides with the people themselves.
The problem with that is districts can be drawn which terminate effective competition in all save the most extraordinary circumstances. The last election for the House of Delegates might be taken as a case in point. More than half the candidates were returned without opposition.
The most cynical game House Democrats have played has to do with the black vote, which is their party's crown jewel, and here is where they are most likely to have the federal courts looking over their shoulders and urging them to do more.
Whether ghettoizing the black vote helps or hurts the political aims of blacks is a question for another day. But one thing it undoubtedly does is entrench black incumbents who preach to the choir and generally exercise only a peripheral influence on the main body politic.
My experience is that the most successful and effective politicians of either party or race are those capable of winning and holding variegated districts. But such subjective considerations aren't likely to satisfy the dreams of zealots or judges reacting like a needle stuck in a phonograph record, endlessly intoning "quotas, quotas, quotas."
by CNB