Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 31, 1991 TAG: 9104010176
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Geoff Seamans/ Associate editor
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The result: a mess.
It took a day for one ink-stained scrivener - yes, yes, c'est moi - to devise a decent plan, using preliminary 1990 Census results and an El Cheapo hand-calculator.
No claims to perfection, you understand, just to a better product - better by the criteria established last month by the legislators themselves.
Granted, I did only Southwest Virginia, and only the Senate.
Nowhere, though, is the Senate's proposed remap more tortuous than west of Lynchburg. And once you have a decent Senate plan, you can redraw House lines by pairing Senate districts two by two and carving each pair into five House districts. Not, of course, that it's ever done so simply.
I'll admit to a big advantage: I'm not a Democratic incumbent. No worrying about partisan advantage, no giving first thought to protecting my own seat, so to speak.
Instead, as called for by resolutions in February of the relevant legislative committees, I considered:
Equality of population. My most populous district, the 39th (see map), is 3 percent bigger than my least populous, the 38th. That's so much within guidelines that if a small mistake or two has crept (I hope not) into my hand-calculated arithmetic, it wouldn't (I hope) matter.
Minority representation. Not a factor in this part of the state.
Compactness, contiguity and political fairness. Nothing in my map remotely resembles the bizarre-shaped 39th (the Madison Marye Incumbent-Preservation Zone) of the legislators' proposed redistricting (see other map). Nor do I have a horseshoe 40th (the Bill Wampler Jr. Endanger-a-Republican Act). Nor have I created a monstrous 22nd (the Let-Buzz-Save-Granger Ploy).
Integrity of political subdivisions. Under my plan, three Southwest Virginia counties (Tazewell, Roanoke and Bedford) would be divided, each into two districts. Under the latest revisions of the legislators' plan, one Southwest Virginia county (Bedford) would be fractured into three districts, and five others (Washington, Buchanan, Carroll, Pulaski and Roanoke) into two.
Communities of interest. These can't always be preserved, but you can try.
At the loss of some compactness, my Far Southwest 39th and 40th districts are divided so that coal counties are in one district, non-coal counties in another.
I chose Tazewell and Bedford counties to split in part because they already have natural divisions: coal vs. non-coal in Tazewell, Lynchburg suburbanites vs. Smith Mountain Lakies in Bedford.
The no-growth Roanoke metro area now merits less than a senator and a half. Senate Democrats marry the not-quite-half-a-district to rural acreage stretching from Alleghany to Pulaski counties. I wed the Roanoke Valley to Virginia Tech and the urbanizing Montgomery-Radford area.
Instead of attaching the Bath-Rockbridge area to the Lynchburg-based 23rd, as the legislators propose, I'd join them to the Alleghany Highlands for the southern half of a Shenandoah Valley district.
Shed of its trans-Blue Ridge territory, the 23rd then could include all the Lynchburg metro area. The Danville-based 19th, shorn of a portion of Bedford County, also would look east for land.
Incumbent protection. Southwest Virginia loses a Senate seat; incumbent Democrat John Buchanan is expected to retire. But Buchanan is from Virginia's southwestern tip; no respectable plan can keep all remaining incumbents in separate districts.
I didn't ignore incumbency, I just didn't make it be-all and end-all. Only in Southwest Virginia's urban center, the Roanoke Valley/Montgomery complex, would my plan force incumbents to face off: There'd be three senators - Marye, Buzz Emick and Granger Macfarlane of Roanoke - for two seats.
Geographic logic suggests Botetourt's Emick vs. Roanoke's Macfarlane in a 21st District consisting of Botetourt County, Roanoke city and part of Roanoke County. Marye's 22nd would have Montgomery-Radford, Salem and the majority of Roanoke County, with thinly settled Floyd and Craig counties as throw-ins to meet equal-population standards.
by CNB