Redistricting Committee Tour Continues

I was in Fort Wayne last night to discuss redistricting with interested citizens. The turnout at IPFW was good and the discussion lively. There was some print & TV media coverage, and I was quoted in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:

Commission member Mike Kole, a Libertarian, said that incumbency trumped partisan politics in redistricting. He said Republicans would rather keep safe seats than increase their numbers if it meant incumbents running against one another in reconfigured districts.

“It’s not about party. It’s about self,” Kole said.

The quote came in response to discussion on the conventional wisdom of gerrymandering. After attending several such meetings, I got the impression that people tend to think that gerrymandering happens to protect or unfairly create political power for the party in power. Yes, that's part of it, but I believe it to be secondary.

Probably the most eye-opening revelation I have had thus far was in listening to former Indiana House member Bill Ruppel. Bill is a Republican, but he doesn't mind to tell the story of how the party in majority holds a special meeting of their caucus, whereby the members are given pushpins and directed to a large wall map. They place the pin where they live, and the districts are drawn to protect them as incumbents.

In my opinion, if a fair district map was drawn for the Indiana House, that did not take into account where incumbents live, the Republican Party would likely gain 6-10 seats in 2012. So, why wouldn't the Republicans be all over this? Because, again, in my humble opinion, you would see at least 30 incumbents from both parties gone in 2012, because the fair redistricting would result in some districts with two (or even three!) incumbents in them, and other districts with no incumbents in them at all.

That's why I said that self comes before party. If party was the primary concern, the Indiana GOP would be leading the crusade for fair redrawing of the maps. This explains why, when then-Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a Republican, called for fair redistricting in his 'Rethinking Redistricting' initiative, he was blasted by members of his own party. Sure, they didn't blast him directly on point. They just blasted him. Preservation of personal power is the underlying reason for whatever they actually said.

The Indiana Citizens Redistricting Committee will host two more public meetings:

Tuesday, March 29, in Terre Haute
Thursday, March 31, in Evansville

More info on these meetings via this link.

At last, the Indiana House & Senate is going around the state with meetings at incredible inconvenient dates & times: today and tomorrow. Do they really want public input? Putting meetings on a Friday during business hours? On a Saturday morning or afternoon?

If you go to one of the meetings the House & Senate is hosting, be sure to ask them why incumbent protection ranks higher than incumbent blind drawing of the district maps.

Obama's Inroads

I can tell that the Obama campaign is reaching people that the Democratic Party hasn't been reaching. I need look no further than my own neighbors, a firmly Republican stronghold. Look at the returns from my home precinct, Delaware #3, in 2004:

Bush = 65.7%
Kerry = 32.8%
Badnarik = 0.9%

Link to Presidential results for Delaware 3.

Daniels = 66.7%
Kernan = 32.5%
Gividen = 0.8%

Link to Gubernatorial results for Delaware 3.

Notice that the results were almost identical, as relating the presidential and gubernatorial results by each party's candidate. That's going to change.

Now, obviously no votes have been counted yet, but my visual clues are the yard signs. I like observing yard signs off the main drags, because the parties and campaigns fill the right-of-ways with the things. I prefer to look at the residences themselves, where the property owner paid the money to get the sign, and put it out there for the world to see.

I did a count of signs in my neighborhood today, because it seemed like I was seeing a lot more Obama signs than I saw of Kerry back in 2004. Here's the tally:

Obama sign only: 38
McCain sign only: 15
Thompson sign only: ZERO
Daniels sign only: 55
Obama & Thompson signs: ZERO
Daniels & McCain signs: 53
Obama & Daniels signs: 3
Barr signs: zero
Horning signs: zero
Weingarten: 1
Burton signs: 3

What to make of it? Certainly, the Jill Long Thompson campaign is completely moribund. Either nobody is supporting her, or her campaign hasn't gotten signs made or distributed yet. In any case, moribund.

But how about the Obama and Daniels signs together? In Fishers! I have to get some pictures of these.

I think this little survey shows that the Republican base is very satisfied with Mitch Daniels as governor, but I sense a lot of buyer's remorse on John McCain, or plain alienation by McCain. The man has no real ideology to speak of, just this 'maverick' thing, which seems to be on all non-military subjects little more than a panic button that screams, 'DO SOMETHING! ANYTHING!'. That doesn't inspire anything but uneasiness, even for regular Republican voters.

If this is going on in a precinct that reliably goes 65% Republican (It also did in the 2006 Secretary of State race, Rokita 65.7%, Pearson 29.2%, Kole 5.1%), I can only imagine how precincts across America that have greater Democratic leanings are going to tilt greatly towards Obama on November 4.

The lack of anything but Obama signs shows that the Democratic organization is still very thin here. Now, that stands to change significantly. As the Obama campaign inspires people to work in his Fishers office and to put up his yard sign, surely it will yield future candidates.

As for the Libertarians, the Barr signs are available. I'll be getting one soon enough, as the Indianapolis area coordinator for the Barr campaign just got them in. I wish I had seen some anyhow.