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

DATE: SUNDAY, June 18, 1995                   TAG: 9506170015
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GERRYMANDERED

A 23-year veteran legislator, Ball is the influential chairman of a committee - House Appropriations - that, even more than the governor, determines how and where the state's money is spent. Ball was defeated by a fellow Henrico Democrat, 33-year-old attorney A. Donald McEachin.

Maybe Ball, 78, is too old. Maybe he came off too smug about his vaunted seniority and clout in the legislature. Perhaps he overplayed his pork-barrel card, never ceasing to remind voters of the bacon he'd delivered - including $150 million in capital projects for Richmond alone.

Probably, too, the electorate's anti-incumbency, anti-``insider'' mood helped bring him down. Ball, whose nickname is ``Boss,'' relished his role as the ultimate insider. It didn't help that other legislative insiders, notably the Richmond area's two black state senators, endorsed Ball, and even seemed to pooh-pooh the idea that black voters would swap the goodies Ball can deliver for representation by one of their own. (McEachin is black.)

Voter turnout for the primary was low. Word on the street was that if Ball won, he faced likely defeat in the general election by Republican Gordon Prior, who came close to beating him two years ago. No breaks for Ball there.

But, perhaps more than anything else, Ball's defeat may have resulted from racial gerrymandering in the 1991 legislative redistricting - a gerrymandering ordered by the U.S. Justice Department.

Like legislatures in other states falling under the 1965 Voting Rights Act because of past discrimination, the Virginia General Assembly is under mandate to carve out black-majority districts whenever possible to guarantee, as much as possible, the election of black representatives.

In 1991, Ball, who is white, was placed in a district with a 56 percent black majority, and one in which he is relatively unknown.

The current political buzz is that McEachin's nomination may put Democrats in a better position to hold on to Ball's seat in November. It's speculated that blacks would not have turned out for Ball, ceding the election to the Republican, but that they'll turn out in force for McEachin.

We'll see. Meanwhile, Ball's upset has a message and a reminder. The message, for other veteran assembly leaders, is that they best not depend on seniority's shield or rest on pork barrels. The reminder is for all those contemplating the results of immoderate racial gerrymandering: Martin Luther King's ``dream'' is deferred when votes are determined by a candidate's skin color.

The practice of gerrymandering blacks into ``special'' districts to polarize and contain their votes has gotten out of hand. One obvious effect is more lily-white districts elsewhere, reducing the number of representatives who must give consideration to blacks' concerns.

Absent Supreme Court relief, the pernicious impact of such redistricting will prove more enduring than the aftershocks of a senior legislator's defeat.