Brian’s Utah Weblog

The Democratic House caucus is holding an open meeting discussion of redistricting process and the new legislature. Sentiment in favor of a bipartisan redistricting commission is as universal with Litvack (D-SLC) and Biskupski (D-SLC) telling the story today.

Republican caucuses are expected to be more divisive but also closed to the public.

Biskupski is telling us about what is probably happening in the Republican caucus with pieces of West Valley switching from the Map L plan into district 2 while more of Taylorsville moves into district 4. Part of the idea may be to put Senator Mayne (D-West Valley) into district 2 to prevent him from winning in 4, as he and Rep. Matheson (D-UT2) are the only Democrats expected to be able to win in 4. (My map shows that Mayne is already in 2 under Map L, but just barely.)

Much scoffing is done toward the idea shared by Republicans and the Democratic HQ staff that the reason Mark Walker or Greg Curtis were in close races was Matheson coattails. There was much angst over losing Matheson coattails among Democratic leaders last week and now Republicans are trying hard to push Matheson out of their legislative districts.

Rep. Shurtliff (D-Ogden) observes that the current map trimming is about political prospects but that in hearings the Republicans emphasized that political data should not be considered in the map drawing.

Rep Clark (R-Dixie) has come to visit the Dem caucus and offered either to bring to the floor the public map L or a modified map L with various adjustments favored by Republican legislators who don’t want Matheson campaigning in their districts.

It is suggested that with Democrats in the majority maybe we should draw a new map that could send two Democrats to Washington. Biskupski says there is no such map presented. Rep. Becker (D-SLC) suggests maybe I could draw such a map. I’ve drawn it up just for fun, Rep. Becker, but it’s even uglier than any map we’ve seen yet.

Rep. King (D-Price) is reluctant to support the bill since the Carbon County folks really want to keep Jim Matheson. He proposes that if he votes for it he’ll need to claim temporary insanity.

Democrats are now speculating whether voting aye or voting no on any bill here will result in a stronger position before the public to advocate for a bipartisan commission bill before 2011.

The decision is that map L will come to the floor. But no one knows yet what the Senate will do.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 1:29 pm and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.