2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Louisiana

[ProgressiveModerate]

My guess is they either draw a "compact" Baton-Rouge based seat that voted for Trump due to the hyper-R white suburbs, or a 45% black seat that selectively on takes in hyper-R rurals so it's functionally an R seat.

[Stuart98]

My guess is they either draw a "compact" Baton-Rouge based seat that voted for Trump due to the hyper-R white suburbs, or a 45% black seat that selectively on takes in hyper-R rurals so it's functionally an R seat.

I think there's good reason for them not to do this because the most efficient way to draw a compact perfoming black seat is to draw out Mike Johnson—and avoiding the chance of the court doing that is something they'd like to do. Not hard to draw maps that get rid of any of the non-Scalise Rs.

[Tekken_Guy]

My guess is they either draw a "compact" Baton-Rouge based seat that voted for Trump due to the hyper-R white suburbs, or a 45% black seat that selectively on takes in hyper-R rurals so it's functionally an R seat.

Or a 50.01% seat that voted for Biden by single digits.

[windjammer]

I truly Wonder which LA republican they will throw under the bus.

[Stuart98]

I truly Wonder which LA republican they will throw under the bus.

Theoretically anyone other than Scalise could get the axe, if they care about compactness though it's gotta be Johnson (lol) or Letlow though.

[patzer]

I truly Wonder which LA republican they will throw under the bus.

Theoretically anyone other than Scalise could get the axe, if they care about compactness though it's gotta be Johnson (lol) or Letlow though.

Doesn't it depend on Scalise's health? If he's privately intending to retire next year thanks to his health situation, that would be a reason to remove his seat and save the others. Which is easy enough to do, e.g.

[Oryxslayer]

I truly Wonder which LA republican they will throw under the bus.

Theoretically anyone other than Scalise could get the axe, if they care about compactness though it's gotta be Johnson (lol) or Letlow though.

Doesn't it depend on Scalise's health? If he's privately intending to retire next year thanks to his health situation, that would be a reason to remove his seat and save the others. Which is easy enough to do, e.g.

The GOP is never putting Metairie in a Dem seat, no matter how good it looks FYI.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/DemocracyDocket/status/1724190784981778889?t=qshxOwJNEF6KpHu...

So the plan looks like no drawing to comply with the 5ths PI order, and instead try to argue a dead point in the merits trial before judges who have already ruled against them. Yeah, there's gonna be a master map.

[Stuart98]

Hmm, I wonder how county parish split happy the court's going to be. If they're trying to draw two performing black districts with minimal parish splits either the Baton Rouge one is going to be extremely ugly or its performance is going to be tenuous.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/DemocracyDocket/status/1724190784981778889?t=qshxOwJNEF6KpHu...

So the plan looks like no drawing to comply with the 5ths PI order, and instead try to argue a dead point in the merits trial before judges who have already ruled against them. Yeah, there's gonna be a master map.

Could be really bad for Mike Johnson

[Stuart98]

The type of low parish split map I could see a court going for:


2 is Biden +35.5, 48.5% black, 46.4% BVAP. 4 is Biden +17.6, 56.1% black, 53.3% BVAP.

[Nyvin]

Republicans are once again banking on Kavanaugh declaring "Racism is Over in America!" to save their map.

It ain't happening.

[Oryxslayer]

Republicans are once again banking on Kavanaugh declaring "Racism is Over in America!" to save their map.

It ain't happening.

This is literally what happened in Alabama.  Despite every court telling them they needed to remap, the Alabama GOP huffed the copium. They said "Kav said he may be open to ruling against Sec 2 in the future, so this is really a 4.5 affirmative ruling, and let's just send that argument to him 2 months after we lost." And of course the court rejected them completely, not just on the merits but arguably cause this court likes finality of cases. It should be clear reading Kavanaughs opinion that what he meant was if given time the electoral situation improves in the South, like it has elsewhere, and minorities don't need access seats to get elected, then obviously Section 2 would have done it's job and is no longer needed.  But every state GOP sees that as their one out in Milligan,  so they are gonna keep huffing the copium, and keep falling on their face.

[Tintrlvr]

Republicans are once again banking on Kavanaugh declaring "Racism is Over in America!" to save their map.

It ain't happening.

This is literally what happened in Alabama.  Despite every court telling them they needed to remap, the Alabama GOP huffed the copium. They said "Kav said he may be open to ruling against Sec 2 in the future, so this is really a 4.5 affirmative ruling, and let's just send that argument to him 2 months after we lost." And of course the court rejected them completely, not just on the merits but arguably cause this court likes finality of cases. It should be clear reading Kavanaughs opinion that what he meant was if given time the electoral situation improves in the South, like it has elsewhere, and minorities don't need access seats to get elected, then obviously Section 2 would have done it's job and is no longer needed.  But every state GOP sees that as their one out in Milligan,  so they are gonna keep huffing the copium, and keep falling on their face.

This is misunderstanding what happened in Alabama. The state legislature just didn't want to be the ones responsible for ending a Republican Congressperson's career (and for choosing which one it would be). The same thing is probably playing out in Louisiana - especially because one of the real possibilities for getting the axe is the Speaker of the House.

[Oryxslayer]

Republicans are once again banking on Kavanaugh declaring "Racism is Over in America!" to save their map.

It ain't happening.

This is literally what happened in Alabama.  Despite every court telling them they needed to remap, the Alabama GOP huffed the copium. They said "Kav said he may be open to ruling against Sec 2 in the future, so this is really a 4.5 affirmative ruling, and let's just send that argument to him 2 months after we lost." And of course the court rejected them completely, not just on the merits but arguably cause this court likes finality of cases. It should be clear reading Kavanaughs opinion that what he meant was if given time the electoral situation improves in the South, like it has elsewhere, and minorities don't need access seats to get elected, then obviously Section 2 would have done it's job and is no longer needed.  But every state GOP sees that as their one out in Milligan,  so they are gonna keep huffing the copium, and keep falling on their face.

This is misunderstanding what happened in Alabama. The state legislature just didn't want to be the ones responsible for ending a Republican Congressperson's career (and for choosing which one it would be). The same thing is probably playing out in Louisiana - especially because one of the real possibilities for getting the axe is the Speaker of the House.

Thats the state GOP's perspective. What I described was the courts perspective. Legally, the GOP can't say that before the judge, so they have to put up a sh**ty defense and try to justify it.

[Atlas Force]

Wow they really want a court-drawn map:

https://twitter.com/DemocracyDocket/status/1725250519114134007

[MaxQue]

Wow they really want a court-drawn map:

https://twitter.com/DemocracyDocket/status/1725250519114134007

The problem is that they know that Bel Edwards will veto it, punting it to courts anyways.

[Oryxslayer]

Anyway, the path forward is obvious now. The State, having spent their attempt to comply likely doing nothing, has lost the presumption of goodwill from the courts. Either the 5th will order the trial court to look for other resolutions such as a master, or because they vacated the PI in their order, the loss of goodwill will be the resolution to that order. There will then be a quick merits trial before the district court that the state already lost in and will almost certainly lose in again. Depending upon what the 5th's panel did, either that de facto concludes the case with their resolution (master) map, or immediately leads to a master-drawn remap. It's in theory the state's last stand, since all the courts with authority above them told Louisiana to create a second access congressional district.


To that end, here's some of the maps I have had in my pocket. One diagonal, one L shaped, but both with two versions. One version using the current division between the 1st and 6th approximately along the media market lines. The other version divides the two seats between north and south of the 2nd and the Mississippi River, like Stuart's maps which I found rather compelling.

[Sol]

I like the north-south divide more on paper, but IIRC road contiguity is pretty questionable unless you put in the west side Jefferson parish areas.

[Stuart98]

I like the north-south divide more on paper, but IIRC road contiguity is pretty questionable unless you put in the west side Jefferson parish areas.

Yeah, I always put St. Bernard and Plaquemines (as well as Jean Lafitte in Jefferson Parish) in the NOLA seat just because if you're trying to maintain road contiguity there's basically no way around it. In fact even if you're only doing ferry contiguity, a lot of these river towns are so isolated that the only way to get from one to another is to go through NOLA/Jefferson.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1727050435687772565?t=lLhXskvnw3SyaDbDpTFYrw&am...

Scheduling in the trial court what comes next whether the state draws a map, or likely does not. Reminder this is an arena that has  already ruled against the state.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/RedistrictNet/status/1730263257712103872?t=JtgHy7QL9n4ti9uet...

State given time for the new legislature to sit. February will determine if they lose a quick merits case given they lost the PI (into a master map), get special mastered cause the map is bad, or actually comply and end the game.

[Atlas Force]

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1735672428733358454
https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1735674854756532235

[Atlas Force]

https://twitter.com/RedistrictNet/status/1737147999950627062

[Atlas Force]

Interesting: Graves might be the Republican who gets thrown under the bus

https://twitter.com/jmart/status/1738549825472221387

Graves now may wish he had run [for governor] because nobody’s political fortunes this side of Kevin McCarthy have changed so dramatically of late. After McCarthy convinced Graves to stay by making him the de facto deputy speaker — layering the actual second-in-command, Louisianan Steve Scalise — Graves helped negotiate the debt ceiling deal with the White House this spring.

He also pushed an ally at home, Stephen Waguespack, into the governor’s race in a failed attempt to block Landry. Well, now McCarthy has been ousted and is resigning from Congress at the end of the month, Landry is about to be sworn in as governor and, wouldn’t you know it, the federal courts are requiring Louisiana to redraw their congressional boundaries to add a second Black-majority district.

Landry has already called for a special session next month to craft the new district and, well, House Republicans should count on being minus-one in Louisiana after the next election because the new governor will be happy to use a court order to exact political revenge by drawing Graves out of his seat.