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AMONG DELEGATES returning
Elections are popularly thought to be political contests, A versus B. But partisan redistricting, whereby politicians herd sympathetic voters into corrals of bizarre dimensions, tries to preclude such vulgarity. Thus, an analysis of this month's state House "races" reveals that in 33 of 100 districts, the winners were the only horses in the field: Dels. Ingram, Dance, Massie, and 30 others, including Mark Cole (R-Spotsylvania) and Bobby Orrock (R-Caroline), competed solely against Write In.
But the shoo-ins don't stop with the matchless 33. Thirteen other winners, including House Speaker Bill Howell (R-Stafford), faced only third-party opposition--Greens, Constitutionalists, and so on, who, lacking serious party resources, were never really in the fray.
And to the unopposed and scarcely opposed, one might add a third category of runaway victors--those who live in such safe districts that, even against a major-party foe, they racked up 70 percent or more of the popular vote. Of such fortunates, there were seven.
Arguably, then, 53 of 100 House winners were lead-pipe cinches to go to Richmond as long as they avoided the kind of lurid pratfall that did in Del. Phil Hamilton (R-Newport News), who helped secure special funds for a college with which he was angling for a job in what smelled like a rancid quid pro quo.
Do all these noncompetitive elections suggest anything like healthy self-government in the commonwealth? Does this stacked-deck system partake more of Jefferson and Madison or of Papa Doc Duvalier and Nicolae Ceausescu?
GOP HARVEST
Republicans fared especially well in this caper, and not only because it was a big GOP year. For example, 21 Republicans--plus one R-caucusing Independent--ran unopposed, in districts tailor-made for the party, versus only 11 Democrats. This is because in 2001, when Richmond drew the boundaries of Virginia's legislative and congressional districts based on population figures from the 2000 Census, Republicans, who controlled both legislative houses and the governorship, were the solitary drawers. Using computer programs, they configured these districts to cluster conservative voters and maximize the GOP advantage for the next decade, following a path well trod by Democrats, who had held power in Richmond since Reconstruction.
Now, in 2009, the GOP position is a bit weaker: Democrats run the state Senate, and will have some voice in redistricting. Even so, the stage is set for another GOP power play, except for this: Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell, a Republican, pledged during the campaign to "ensure bipartisan citizen involvement" in a redistricting process that reflects "commonsense geographic boundaries and a strong community of interests." This would preclude the weirdly shaped political zones that, say, lump the congressional voters of Fredericksburg with those of Hampton. About the only "community of interest" there is Rob Wittman.
Mr. Howell's House Republicans are liable to buck reform, but hold the rotten cabbages. Federal Civil Rights law frowns upon the "dilution" of "majority-minority" voting districts, with the result that several House districts have been, are now, and for a long spell to come will be very heavily African-American, i.e., very heavily Democratic. Perversely, these districts are legally "immune" to reformist revamps, meaning that, in the House, Republicans start off with an immutable disadvantage of about 10 seats. How protected are the delegates who represent these majority-black areas? Of the 11 uncontested Democrats, fully seven were African-American. The average victory percentage of the 11 elected black delegates (all Democrats) was 87 percent.
Nonpartisan, "scientific" redistricting is a laudable goal. Alas, the federal Voting Rights Act in Virginia makes it next to impossible politically--unless Republicans are allowed some districts custom-drawn to offset the permanent Afro-Democratic ones. It will indeed take a Pericles to make this idealism work.
