It’s redistricting time in Louisiana, that special decennial treat that affords lawmakers with opportunities to literally draw their own fortunes.
Make no mistake, political livelihoods are officially on the line. This is a policy extravaganza during which the lines marking one elected office from another are redrawn, shifted or abolished altogether, based solely on the latest U.S. census numbers.
Congressional seats, for example, will dramatically be altered, starting with one that must be eliminated. Louisiana’s population grew by only 1.4% from 2000-10, one of the nation’s smallest increases. And the impact will trickle down to everything from the Public Service Commission to local judicial districts.
But first, legislators will have to constitute their own House and Senate districts. With 105 members, the House presents a tall order. The Senate has just 39 members, but its maneuverings promise to be just as spirited and eminently watchable.
The politics can become ugly; the Capital Region Legislative Delegation has avoided holding an official meeting on the subject. “It’s just too large an area. Everything you do creates a ripple effect that touches everyone else,” says Rep. Steve Carter, the Baton Rouge Republican who chairs the delegation.
Redistricting is a numbers-heavy process that could quickly become contentious. Consider Carter’s situation: Like other members of the House, his district must ideally have a population of 43,174 people, give or take 5%. Right now, his district is about 5.7% above the ideal threshold.
Carter’s district is next to the one held by Rep. Franklin Foil, a fellow Republican, whose district population is 24.6% above the ideal threshold. And that’s where things will become interesting during the special session, which began March 20.
“There’s actually a street in Kenilworth subdivision, just a street, where my district all of a sudden ends and Franklin’s begins,” Carter says. “We have to figure out a way to consolidate that.”
Aside from individual conflicts and arrangements in the making, there’s also big-picture debate building across the Baton Rouge area. Business interests are coalescing behind a spoke-and-hub approach that would redraw lines in a fashion where all roads lead back to the city.
Under such a scenario, the new House seat due to the Capital Region for its increased population would be placed in an outlying, possibly rural, area, an acknowledgment that the real growth is occurring in Ascension and Livingston parishes, not East Baton Rouge.
One conservative mover-and-shaker, upon being told of the supposed design, described it with a single word: “balderdash.”
Rep. Michael Jackson, a Baton Rouge independent, says he expects a new district will be added to the city to represent a new minority electorate. He adds that lawmakers in the regional delegation have been meeting informally on redistricting issues but aren’t collectively behind any plan.
“It’s all being worked out to the extent that Baton Rouge gets what it deserves,” Jackson says.
On the Senate side, some forces are pushing for a new white district in the Central area, a plank that is included in the new “Demographic Equity Plan” drafted by the Louisiana Family Forum, an influential Christian advocacy lobby, and Sen. Elbert Guillory, a black Democrat from Opelousas.
Dan Richey, a former Baton Rouge lawmaker and now a redistricting consultant to LFF, argues that Central now has the population to anchor its own Senate seat. That area currently is represented by Sen. Rob Marionneaux, a term-limited Democrat from Grosse Tete.
“The Central politicians may approve of such an arrangement, but the general public wants someone in their part of East Baton Rouge Parish to represent them in the Senate,” Richey says. “No taxpayer in Central wants to travel to Livonia to meet his senator.
LFF President Gene Mills, an ordained minister and part-time motivational speaker, says Marionneaux’s status, along with all the other lawmakers making a mandated exit this year, is among the reasons LFF and Guillory have been able to propose such dramatic changes.
“That’s really the only reason we can do this,” Mills says. “Term limits are taking people out.”
Of course, these are only the plans about which the public is hearing.
“I was told the Senate president is taking care of the Senate plan,” Guillory says. “I also suspect the public will never see this plan until the last minute. These are the kinds of plans put together by politicians wholly to protect their fiefdoms.”
While that explanation works on almost any level of local, state or national politics, Senate President Joel Chaisson, a Democrat from Destrehan, says he’ll absolutely make sure every plan receives a full hearing.
“There is certainly a Senate plan that has been worked on by senators with their preferences following all of the public meetings we’ve held recently,” he says. “There’s got to be a starting point.”
To be certain, everything has to start somewhere. But when it comes to redistricting, most folks are more intrigued by how it’s all going to end and what lawmakers will do to get there.
“It’s like being handed the keys to a car you’re going to be driving for the next 10 years,” Mills says. “I just hope they don’t drive it in a ditch before we get behind the wheel.”
WHO’S AFFECTED?
Members of these bodies are affected by Louisiana’s redistricting process:
State House of Representatives
State Senate
U.S. House of Representatives
U.S. Senate
Public Service Commission
State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
Courts
SOURCE: Louisiana House of Representatives
