Posts published in “Year: 2010”

Washington House districts/Washington Secretary of State

As we start to look at reapportionment, which will be a recurring topic here in the year ahead, a piece today in Crosscut by Dick Morrill, a geographer emeritus from the University of Washington, was an immediate grabber. It started in a logical spot: Working through some of the necessary changes that would occur if Washington gets, as it may, a tenth congressional district for this decade.

What he didn't follow through on was, what might the political import be? Herewith ...

You start an analysis like this at the edges, where population is thinnest and where the choices to add or subtract territory and people are the fewest. In Washington that means the east, the 5th district centered around Spokane. Morrill figures that because of population gains, the 5th will have to shed territory, most logically Okanogan and maybe Adams counties, both very strongly Republican areas. Since Spokane itself is politically split (the city itself is mostly Democratic now), and there are a couple of smaller Democratic centers there, the effect would be to make the 5th a little more competitive. That may not matter in the shorter run, since Cathy McMorris-Rodgers seems to have a very solid lock here, and would even with these kinds of changes. But in the case of an open seat or a close race, in a different climate, it could matter. Still, overall a continuing Republican district.

As would be for the near term the neighboring fourth, which has centered around the Yakima-Tri-Cities area. Its configuration may change a little, adding more territory to the north and maybe losing (Morrill estimates) about half of growing Yakima County; presumably, that slice would have to be meshed with the population base to the southwest in Clark County. (The fourth, like the fifth, would continue as a strongly Republican district, probably the strongest Republican in the state, an easy continued hold in future as in the recent past for Republican Doc Hastings.) There are other ways to make this work, really creative ways of stringing counties, but Morrill is probably right if you're interested in creating realistically compact districts.

So in that case, you'd combine part of Yakima with Klickitat County, southwest to Skamania county and into Clark, and probably somewhat beyond. Clark is a close-split county, but the combination of it with the Republican base at Yakima County would result in a clear Republican tilt in this newly-configured district. New Republican Representative Jaime Herrera presumably would have little trouble holding this one.

From there, Morrill's speculation - which matches with what's been in the air elsewhere - is that the pieces of a new, tenth, district probably would center around the Olympia area, around Thurston County - which has been joined with Clark County to its south to form the current third. In this projection, those two areas break apart. The new Olympia-based district would include mostly Democratic territory (Thurston itself is strongly Democratic, though countered by the much smaller Lewis and moderated by Mason), and probably would be a Democratic district.

To the north, in district 2 (running from the Everett area to the Canadian border), Morrill figures a large chunk of Snohomish County will have to be expelled, probably to District 1 (though there are options). Depending on which precincts are shifted, this may make District 2 even more closely competitive. Or not.

That's five districts. And what of the other five?

And here's where we start to reach the end of geographic necessity and start to enter the question of sheer political calculation. A whole lot of Washington's population lies in that area west of the Cascades, from Olympia to Everett. Most of it is Democratic, except for some large suburban pieces, mainly in eastern King and Pierce counties and in scattered parts of Kitsap. How do you choose to arrange them? It may be possible to develop as many as two genuinely competitive districts out of this material; it could also be possible to slice the pie so as to make them all Democratic-tilted.

The odds favor creation of at least one district with enough of the Republican suburban areas to make it competitive or slightly Republican. Hence the formula: In a 10-district Washington, the most likely outcome from here looks like six generally Democratic districts, three generally Republican, and one up for grabs with probably some Republican edge.

But it could be difference. The reapportionment commission meetings could be notably interesting next year.

Richard Sanders

Only scattered Washington state writers about politics are taking note of this one, but it's of some significance: A Washington state Supreme Court justice, Richard Sanders.

Sanders, who got to the court in 1995 after defeating an incumbent appointed by the liberal Governor Mike Lowry, has been a mostly consistent libertarian on the court. He could find common cause with the left on some social issues, but allied with the right on less visible but more frequent and often more crucial regulatory and economic matters.

Sanders had seemed to be headed toward another win, but his opponent this year, Charlie Wiggins, drew fairly close on election day, gained ground steadily since, now has taken the lead and seems likely to prevail. That has happened in large part because Wiggins, whose support came mostly from Democratic quarters, has done so well in King County, where many of the later votes have been counted.

This may be the first successful challenge to a state supreme court justice from the left in the Northwest in a very long time.

The best piece of detailed writing on this so far may be a longish analysis in the Slog. It is worth a read.

For Republicans in Washington state, this was their best election since at least 2004, and probably a few cycles before that. They made progress: They picked up a U.S. House seat (they had not flipped a single Democratic House seat in the state since 1994, when they flipped six), and seats in both the Senate and House, albeit falling short of control of either. But with visions of 1994 dancing about, they'd hope for a lot more.

And some other voter indicators, notably the passage of a couple of anti-tax measures, gave hope that there would be more.

So, useful reading today in a post in Red County, by Byron Myrick, mulling over why the red tide last week did - as some Democratic politicians said - crash and recede against the left coast.

There's no one single or simple answer for that, and Myrick isn't offering a lot here. But several of the points he does make have a common theme.

He has a specific and logical point in one strategic area: The sending of lots of resources to two Republican congressional candidates, incumbent Dave Reichert and newcomer Jaime Herrera, both of whom wound up winning with substantial leads, while other options were less-funded. The notable case was in the 2nd district, where Democrat Rick Larsen evidently has been re-elected but by only a tiny margin; more money to Republican John Koster might have made the difference there. (Myrick's suggestion that another race, in the 1st district, might similarly have been turned seems less likely.)

His other major complaint concerns Republican state Chair Luke Esser, where he focuses not on what was said before the election but after it:

On Friday morning, Esser broke the calm and spoke with radio talk show host Bryan Suits on KVI 570 AM. His explanation to Suits for why Washington had not followed the national trends for Republican gains: Washington State’s economy was just not quite as bad as the rest of the country. According to Esser, a serious but comparatively mild recession in the Northwest was to blame for dashed Republican hopes. Esser’s rationalization was as hopeless, demoralizing and misplaced as if Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll had blamed the team’s monumental loss this past Sunday on better-than-average weather.

The same day, Esser repeated the analysis to David Boze on KTTH 770 AM, confirming amazingly low expectations for the Republican message and implying that GOP wins in Washington can only come against Democrats who have been handicapped by desperately poor economic conditions.

Here Myrick gets at something of real possible significance: The underlying idea that Washington Republicans are simply doomed unless a perfect storm comes along to rescue them - a storm that would have to be even more perfect than the one in 2010, which might not happen for a long time. Myrick: "Having predicted failure – as Esser implies by defining such narrow conditions for GOP victories – it is not only permissible but rational to avoid risks, play defense, and celebrate holding ground as if one were gaining it."

Keep coming up short over and over, and it does make sense to rethink what you're doing. (That applies as well to Idaho Democrats and Oregon Republicans.) But the concern Myrick seems to be getting at (whether or not Esser is properly guilty of it, an assessment we'll not make here) is also legitimate: Presume you're a loser, and you probably will be one; spend your time in risk-avoidance, and you shouldn't be surprised if you're not putting a lot of numbers up on the board.