New PA Maps In Effect

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Meehan is going to be sacrificed.

That's not nearly enough.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

There is apparently now an effort by Pennsylvania Republicans in the state legislature to impeach the 5 justices that ruled against the gerrymandered maps. Requires a majority in the state house and 2/3 in the state senate, which Republicans have if they all voted together.

The North Carolina Republican Party says hi

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Here is the new map:

They're not even trying LOL

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

It will take creative mapping for the Democrat party to maintain districts where 2 whites from Philadelphia have a solid chance to win Congressional districts. This is a great map to achieve that objective.

One need only glance at your posts on RRH to see that you don't even believe any of this garbage yourself. 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Some other thoughts about the GOP map:

- PA-1: This wouldn't have flown even if Brady was sticking around as you can easily draw him a clean, non-gerrymandered, sufficiently white (for his purposes), and safely Democratic 100% of DelCo + some parts of Philly district while still keeping three Philly Dems in office (assuming Boyle doesn't retire before 2022).  Last time, Brady's calculus was "the choice is either the crumbs of a Republican gerrymander [a shot at electing three Philly Dems] or literally nothing," but that wouldn't have been true this time around.  More to the point, Brady is out and the guy who seems to be next in line as boss of the Philly machine (forget his name) is also under FBI investigation IIRC and should be gone soon.  The Philly machine ain't gonna save the PA Republican Party and no amount of Republican wishful thinking will change that.  The arm into DelCo is a deal-breaker and I haven't even covered more than one district LOL.

PA-6: Another obvious deal-breaker.  There's not much to say except that this is an obvious gerrymander by Pubs attempting to give Costello a safe seat.  One really wonders sometimes whether the legislature is delusional enough to think this map would ever fly with the PASC even ignoring the fact that Wolf will obviously veto it (although he may wait a day or two to do so just so he can pretend to have given it consideration).  I mean, who was the genius who thought give Costello a safe seat would fly?  And there's no reason to slice-and-dice MontCo or even Chester County the way they do aside from partisan gerrymandering.  Plus, the idea that you'd have almost everything in Berks County except Reading is ridiculous.  Virginia's right, these people are like dope fiends who've just been told to stop shooting up.

- PA-7: This is almost comically greedy, they couldn't even bring themselves to accept that this district is gone.  I said a while back that the Pubs don't get anything for ceding this district, whether they like it or not, it's a freebee for Democrats and I'm pretty sure the PA Democrats know it. And yet the Pubs are still desperately trying to keep this competitive while satisfying all the parochial interests within the DelCo Republican Party by slicing-and-dicing the county with that ridiculous arm from one of the Philly districts.  This seat is gonna be 100% of DelCo and with a little bit of Philly tacked on, but the Pubs were too greedy to give that up and try to draw a less gerrymandered, right-leaning map that could be good for PR purposes/make Wolf look like a partisan hack if/when he vetoed it.  The current map is almost as bad as the old one and is obviously nothing more than a crudely drawn middle-finger to the idea of fair redistricting in general and the PASC in particular.  

- PA-10: It draws Tom Marino's primary challenger (who could very well upset him) and current GE opponent out of the district.  It also draws out Chris Carney whom I've heard is leaning towards running against Marino if the new map is even remotely favorable and he [Carney] isn't moved to Cartwright's district, but has been trying to keep a low profile until the maps are finalized.  I honestly think Carney could *potentially* give Marino a real run for his money and possibly even flip the seat in a big wave year.  Marino has been really badly damaged by the scandal that sunk his Trump administration nomination and while his current district is a very Republican area, I think folks are underestimating how much that hurt him locally tbh.  

- PA-11: PA-10 may be a mess, but I get why they drew it that way from a strictly partisan PoV; this monstrosity doesn't even make sense politically.  The rest of Luzerne County has no business being in this seat and the Dauphin split is weird, but ignoring that this district has serious dummymander potential given the likely political climate in 2018.  Barletta is running for Senate and if they're not gonna give Cartwright a significantly more Republican district, you'd think they'd just go the Monroe + Luzerne + Lackawanna route and try to use that to pretend they're gerrymandering acting in good-faith.  Okay, PA-11 is a gerrymandered monstrosity, but how is it a dummymander?  Well, as someone on RRH noted, let's just say Tim Holden hasn't exactly retired from PA state politics since losing his primary to Cartwright (nor did he go off to become a lobbyist the way folks like Bayh did after they left Congress)...

- PA-12: You could easily make this, as others on Atlas have shown, a very clean district with no county splits consisting entirely of Pittsburgh + almost everything north of it in Allegheny County (still safely Democratic, btw).  The PA-12 on the GOP map also has a completely pointless chop in WashCo.  This is a deal-breaker.

- PA-13: This district doesn't need nearly this much of Philly (or even very much period, tbh) in order to keep Boyle safe.  This district is simply being drawn this way to allow PA-1 to snake into DelCo (which would never happen in anything other than a blatant Republican gerrymander).

- PA-14: Putting Saccone and Reschenthaler's homes in PA-18 while sticking Lamb's home in here is an obvious deal-breaker.  See comments on PA-12 for what this district should look like.

- PA-15: Obviously, PA-15 will look this way on any map, so this isn't a concession either (it's a freebee).  Next...

- PA-16: See PA-6 comments, this district is a deal-breaking and only drawn this way to drown Reading and give Costello a safe seat.

- PA-17: No excuse for making Cartwright's district anything other than a Monroe + Luzerne + Lackawanna seat.  See PA-10 comments for details on the gerrymandering at play here.

- PA-18: This one is a deal-breaker (see comments on PA-14).  In addition to the Allegheny County nonsense, it has two more weird chops (the WashCo one in particular is quite odd and sticks out like a sore thumb).  This district should have the boundaries Oryxslayer drew on his page nine map and that'd make it both competitive and make Lamb pretty likely to win it in November even if he loses the special to Saccone (Oryxslayer really drew the ideal map on page nine and it is essentially what I expect the PASC to draw, sure Republicans will complain that it is much more Democratic-friendly than the current map, but guess what?  PA is a Democratic-leaning state and the current map is one of the worst gerrymanders in the country, no remotely acceptable map is gonna preserve the current status quo).  Btw, the PA-18 on the Pub map leads me to think that the Republicans see Lamb as having at least a 50-50 of winning the special.  They're clearly very worried about him, to say the least.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

According to DKE, the PA supreme court is accepting submissions until tomorrow...anyone have any idea where that is?

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/8/1739648/-Pennsylvania-will-soon-redraw-its-House-map-to-end-GOP-gerrymandering-How-would-you-draw-the-lines

Tweet it to the special master

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Numbers from the Democratic Map:

Yeah I don't like this map one bit. too many cuts, and obvious mischief with PA-11.

Interestingly, they also throw Cartwright under the bus.

Oh, and Politicswolf is defending this map...somehow.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Do we know where though? I sent my plan to the master at the public email last night (though I bet it went straight into the trash, even though I pulled out some Stanford references), and I don't see any place to submit it at the court site. Hell, this tweet read more like the legislature/governor knowing it is the deadline, so we will see a whole lot of maps being created.

Yeah, this is a bad map

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Map presented by Senate Democrats:

This even worse than the house Democratic map

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Stack's map sucks

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Lt. Governor's map.

Of all the proposed maps I’ve seen from both Republicans and Democrats, this is the only one I think the court should approve. It’s fair, compact, and would probably result in Democrats gaining anywhere from 1-4 seats (PA-07 will definitely flip, while PA-06, PA-08, and PA-15 would flip as well if Democrats are having a good year).

PA-18 would probably flip in 2018.  And if Holden runs in PA-11, he'd probably have a pretty good shot of winning too.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

John O'Neill, who drew Florida's current congressional and state senate maps, made a 9D-9R PA (7 safe seats for both sides and 4 that lean one way or the other, but could be won by either side) map that does better on the neutral criteria on the whole than every other plan that's been released.



He splits less counties and municipalities than any other map and ties the Senate Democrats for the fewest precinct splits. His compactness score is also better or tied than any other map in 2 of the 3 compactness score and only 0.1 off on the third. What allows his map to be more competative is he splits the City of Pittsburgh as one of his 14 municipality splits, splits Philadelphia 4 times, and Bucks as one of his county splits.  

Source

Here is the PVI data

I would not be shocked if we got a map that looked like this.

I like this one a lot.

Of course you do. Your avatar claims you’re a Democrat. I hate this map because I”m a Republican, and this map gives Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Democrats far more power than they deserve. Geography matters.

That’s one of many reasons why if I were writing the rules, cities would not be chopped more often than necessary as a first order, except to comply with the VRA.

Sure, and I happen to think that Republicans shouldn't get more representation because of a geographic quirk. But you are a Republican, so of course you think that people living in cities should be underrepresented.

*snip* Don’t like the way your legislature drew the map? Vote them out of office in the redistricting cycle.

Because that's a thing that can realistically happen with a gerrymandered map

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Many a Gerrymander has turned into a Dummymander after 10 years.

Gerrymandering is an American tradition that is even older than the person for whom it is named.

Do you keep a straight face when you make the argument that rigging elections via crafty map making is OK because ...tradition?

Jesus

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Many a Gerrymander has turned into a Dummymander after 10 years.

Gerrymandering is an American tradition that is even older than the person for whom it is named.

Do you keep a straight face when you make the argument that rigging elections via crafty map making is OK because ...tradition?

Jesus

Tradition matters. If the Framers were using their state legislatures to Gerrymander to try to keep Thomas Jefferson out of office, how is it unconstitutional for a state legislature to do the same thing today? The wording of constitution hasn’t changed, if I’m not mistaken.

And what is rigging elections via crafty map? Can I argue that my Congressional election is rigged because I wasn’t put in a district with enough Republicans to elect a Republican? I will never have a Republican congressman in my current district, period.

We don’t live in a proportional democracy. If Democrats aren’t able to broaden their appeal outside of the cities, that is their fault. No “crafty” map should be enacted by judicial fiat to try to create a proportional system when that’s not what we have by splitting up cities. If the state legislature wants to do that (like in Maryland and Illinois), I’m fine with it. But no court should impose such a thing by dictat in the name of “fairness”.

And let me guess, Virginia, you prefer the recent map aptly labeled Democratic Gerrymander, too, because you, like me are a partisan who wants their party to win.

Neither of us knows what the framers would've thought about gerrymandering if they saw how broken and dysfunctional Congress has become, so you can get off your pseudo-high horse.  Anyway, there's really no reason the courts shouldn't impose criteria for a fair map.  Gerrymandering has gotten out of control and we've reached the point where the courts need to intervene because our democratic institutions are not functioning properly.  If you get diagnosed with liver cancer, you don't refuse all medical treatment just because your parents didn't intend for you to get liver cancer when you were born.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Many a Gerrymander has turned into a Dummymander after 10 years.

Gerrymandering is an American tradition that is even older than the person for whom it is named.

Do you keep a straight face when you make the argument that rigging elections via crafty map making is OK because ...tradition?

Jesus

Tradition matters. If the Framers were using their state legislatures to Gerrymander to try to keep Thomas Jefferson out of office, how is it unconstitutional for a state legislature to do the same thing today? The wording of constitution hasn’t changed, if I’m not mistaken.

And what is rigging elections via crafty map? Can I argue that my Congressional election is rigged because I wasn’t put in a district with enough Republicans to elect a Republican? I will never have a Republican congressman in my current district, period.

We don’t live in a proportional democracy. If Democrats aren’t able to broaden their appeal outside of the cities, that is their fault. No “crafty” map should be enacted by judicial fiat to try to create a proportional system when that’s not what we have by splitting up cities. If the state legislature wants to do that (like in Maryland and Illinois), I’m fine with it. But no court should impose such a thing by dictat in the name of “fairness”.

And let me guess, Virginia, you prefer the recent map aptly labeled Democratic Gerrymander, too, because you, like me are a partisan who wants their party to win.

The last map posted is the most fair based on the principles put forward by the PA Supreme Court.

Regardless of whether or not what you said is true, it's still a dumb map.

And?

The standard isn’t “what does tim turner think is and isn’t ‘dumb,’” it’s what best satisfies the criteria given by the PASC in its ruling.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

It's a shame that this beautiful, flawless map won't be chosen by the court.

That thing is an abomination

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I wonder if Holden could win PA-9, it seems like it has quite a bit of his old territory.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Now why didn't a Democratic Supreme Court draw a Democratic-favored map here? What a wasted opportunity.

How about, they were trying to draw a fairer map that's more in the interest of the people of the state as a whole?  You know, what courts are supposed to do?

But...but...but Cynic told me all anyone cares about is maximizing partisan advantage in redistricting regardless of who they had to screw over in order to do so.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I wonder if Holden could win PA-9, it seems like it has quite a bit of his old territory.

It's looking dicey, though. It doesn't have Dauphin , and it has the Trumpiest parts of Luzerne and Carbon added to it.

Didn’t Holden also used to represent Northern Berks?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I'm most interested to see who wins the new 17th. It's a narrow Trump district but ancestrally Dem.

I think we’ll pick it up, honestly.  Curious to see if anyone (Costello?) will retire in light of the new map.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Any chance of a Critz or Jason Altmire comeback in the new 17th? I assume the addition of more of the Pittsburgh Metro could bode well for them...

Critz lives in and has his base in Johnston which is either in PA-13 or PA-15.  Altmire moved to Florida

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Has anyone checked on Krazen?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I'm happy with the map but I'm sad for Jess King.

Same. Hope Greg Edwards wins the primary for PA-07 (Formerly PA-15) now.

Need to hope he becomes the anti-Morganelli candidate, honestly.

John Callahan could run.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

So John Morganelli won 59% of the two-party vote in his 2008 AG race in the new PA-7 against the popular incumbent Tom Corbett (who won statewide by 7% as an R despite getting shellacked in Lehigh Valley). Meanwhile, then-Senator Obama “only” won 57% of the two-party vote against McCain, a guy who was losing statewide by over 10 points. It’s also worth noting Corbett wasn’t historically weak in the Lehigh Valley area: he won all three counties of the new PA-7 in both his initial 2004 statewide win and his first gubernatorial race. So that indicates that Morganelli’s 59% of the 2-party vote against Corbett is that much more impressive.

 I’m convinced that Morganelli makes the general election a likely D affair if he wins the nomination. Probably bordering on Safe D. Or more like “when” he wins the nomination. In the 2016 AG primary he won Northampton with 74% of the vote, Lehigh with 63% and Monroe with 47% even as he was getting crushed statewide. I just don’t see how a progressive candidate can stop him on his roll to the nomination. These are almost Tomblin-grad-like following numbers.

Edwards has outraised Morganelli 2-1 (IIRC) and isn't alt-right scum like JM so if there's any justice in this world, he'll win the primary in a rout.

I don’t know anything about Edwards, but as much as I dislike Morganelli, he’s pretty much a lock in the primary and the GE under these lines unless someone really strong gets in the Democratic primary and a bunch of the non-Morganelli folks drop out.  I can’t really think of such a candidate atm, so we’re probably stuck with Morganelli.  On the bright side he’s probably gonna make this an easy pickup, so there’s that

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I don’t know anything about Edwards, but as much as I dislike Morganelli, he’s pretty much a lock in the primary and the GE under these lines unless someone really strong gets in the Democratic primary and a bunch of the non-Morganelli folks drop out.  I can’t really think of such a candidate atm, so we’re probably stuck with Morganelli.  On the bright side he’s probably gonna make this an easy pickup, so there’s that

As someone unfamiliar with this person - what did he do (or not do)?

He's a perennial statewide candidate who campaigned for Pat Toomey in 2016 after losing the primary for Attorney General. He's also apparently quite a fan of alt-right Gamergate garbage Ian Miles Cheong.

He’s also insanely popular in Northampton County.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Wait. Since a case needs the support of four justices to be brought up at SCOTUS, and since Alito presented it meaning that he supported the appeal, who joined Roberts and the liberals in making it six NOs and shooting the request down? Thomas or Gorsuch? They are the two most conservative members on the court.

Kennedy?