Today the federal government actually met one of its own self imposed deadlines. The numbers for total state populations for the 2010 census, the data that will shape the Congress for the next ten years, is here. The results are basically what everyone expected: traditionally Democrat states are losing seats and traditionally Republican states are gaining. According to the Associated Press,
Texas will gain four new House seats, and Florida will gain two. Gaining one each are Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington.
Ohio and New York will lose two House seats each. Losing one House seat are Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Florida will now have as many U.S. House members as New York: 27. California will still have 53 seats, and Texas will climb to 36.
For the first time in its history, Democratic-leaning California will not gain a House seat after a census.
In light of the fact that the mid term elections brought in a slew of new GOP Governors and Republican controlled state houses, the news couldn’t be better. The states are the ones who control redistricting, and unlike our state, sometimes the power falls on the executive or the legislature to draw the map. In New Jersey we have a committee comprised of 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans with the eleventh member chosen by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
Well here is the current map:
Something on this map has to change, and that change should come from the North. I know I know, some of you will scream about my bias as a southerner from Camden County, but lets look at this logically, counties like Ocean, Burlington, and Atlantic are all gaining in population, and while we do not have the numbers to show that specifically yet (we will in February) Mercer, Middlesex, Hudson and Essex are all standing to lose residents. The local trends are not unlike the national ones. People who want to stay in New Jersey are moving to the more Republican areas of the state seeking lower taxation and an arguably higher quality of life in suburbia.
So the question then becomes “who do we cut?” One House member needs to go, and it will need to be done in a compromise. Seeing as the GOP has a tremendous amount of momentum behind them, and a pledge to not simply lay down and take whatever the Democrats decide as they have done in the past, I would say that they have the upper hand in this process.
The north of our state has some famously mangled congressional districts. Take NJ13 for example. Albio Sires district snakes its way through Hudson, Essex, Middlesex, and Union Counties; even taking a little piece of Newark. Or how about NJ6? Frank Pallone’s sinking ship. This year he came closer than ever before to losing his job of representing this horribly gerrymandered district. Losing over 20 percentage points from his previous election shows that not even some Democrats are likely to come to Pallone’s aid, maybe they’d be glad to see him go? And then of course there is NJ12, home to Rush Holt, another narrow victory this year by historical standards. Holt’s district is sure to lose population as residents flee south into NJ4 and west to greener tax pastures in Pennsylvania. This district could easily be swallowed by districts 4, 6, and 7. I, and many New Jerseyans I am sure, would be more than happy to see any of these Congressmen be forced into early retirement.
The bottom line is, the GOP needs to make a Democrat seat disappear off this map. The redistricting commission has a constitutional responsibility to create a fair and representative map. In the 2010 elections, GOP candidates (despite only picking up one seat of thirteen) received 31,000 more votes across the state than their Democrat counterparts. This in conjunction with the coming news of a southward migration, the only fair and representative option can be to take a northern seat and to take it from the Democrats.
