“Redistricting Louisiana”
Every ten years, state legislatures around the country go through the process of
redrawing congressional and legislative district maps to reflect population changes.
How these maps are drawn ultimately can affect what types of candidates are able to
win elections. The Louisiana Legislature has called a special session in March to
determine how to reconfigure congressional as well as state election districts to reflect
the state’s population changes since the last census. Which areas of Louisiana will be
most affected? And how will redrawn boundaries for both local and congressional
districts impact you and your representation?
2010 CENSUS
The United States Constitution mandates that a census be taken every ten years
for the purposes of reapportionment and redistricting. Reapportionment is the redistribution of congressional representatives among the states. Each state is guaranteed
two U.S. Senate seats and one U.S. House seat. The remaining 385 House seats are
reapportioned every 10 years based on each state’s population in proportion to the
nation overall. Redistricting is the redrawing of a state’s congressional and legislative
district maps to reflect population changes.
Our Unconstitutional Census
On February 3rd, the U.S. Census Bureau delivered
(Excerpts from an 8/09 Wall Street Journal opinion piece
by Elliott Stonecipher, Louisiana demographic analyst, and
Louisiana’s population totals from the 2010 Census. The
John Baker, LSU Constitutional Law professor.)
data showed that over the last ten years, the state’s
Because the census (since at least 1980) has not
population grew from 4,468,976 to 4,533,372 residents. This distinguished citizens and permanent, legal
residents from individuals here illegally, the
is roughly a 1.4% rate of growth. In contrast, the growth
basis for apportionment of House seats has
rate over the last decade for the South was 14.3% and for
been skewed….
According to the latest American
the country, 9.7%. In fact, Louisiana’s population growth
Community Survey, California has 5,622,422
over the past 30 years has been almost 2% less than the
noncitizens in its population of 36,264,467.
nation’s population growth over the past 10 years.
Based on our round-number projection of a
decade-end population in that state of
Louisiana had 8 U.S. House seats until the 1990
37,000,000 (including 5,750,000 noncitizens),
census. Due to the lackluster population growth reflected
California would have 57 members in the
by the 2010 census, Louisiana will again lose another
newly reapportioned U.S. House of
Representatives. However, with noncitizens
congressional seat, reducing the state’s number of U.S.
not included for purposes of reapportionment,
Representatives from 7 to 6.
SPECIAL SESSION
In December, for the first time in the state’s history,
the Louisiana Legislature agreed to call itself into special
session. The focus of the special session will be redrawing
congressional district boundaries and state district lines to
reflect changes due to the population shifts in the state.
Also included will be redrawing of Public Service
Commission, Board of Elementary and Secondary
Education (BESE), Courts of Appeals, and Supreme Court
districts.
California would have 48 House seats. Using a
similar projection, Texas would have 38 House
members with noncitizens included. With only
citizens counted, it would be entitled to 34
members.
Of course, other states lose out when
noncitizens are counted for reapportionment
But under a proper census enumeration
that excluded illegal residents, some of the
states projected to lose a representative—
including our own state of Louisiana—would
not do so.
Quick Turnaround
The session will begin March 20th and must end no later than
April 13th. An unusual combination of factors gives Louisiana one of the tightest
redistricting schedules in America.
The state's history of voting inequities for minorities means Louisiana must get
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) approval on its statewide plan to ensure compliance
with the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Louisiana is one of 16 states whose district maps must
be pre-approved by the DOJ. For as long as the VRA requirement has been in place, the
DOJ has yet to accept a plan from Louisiana on the first try. Once the plan has been
submitted to the DOJ, the Department has at least 60 days to either approve or reject the
plan. Justice approval must be received by Aug. 29 to meet fall election deadline
Additionally, Louisiana is one of the few states to be holding elections this
year. Qualifying for most offices affected by redistricting begins September 6th. In
recognition of the state's tight schedule, the U.S. Census Bureau put Louisiana at the front of its
schedule for distributing final data.
Elliott Stonecipher, a political and demographic analyst from Shreveport recently
told LPB, “We literally will have five months to have plans drawn and approved by the
Governor and legislature; get it off to the Justice Department in Washington; they have to
approve it, get it back; make changes they order; approve it again; and be ready for qualifying for
state representative and senate races as early as September.” Stonecipher notes “We’ve had
instances since 1970 where it took us 5 years, so I just don’t know how we do this.”
LEGISLATIVE IMPARTIALITY
In Louisiana, as in 27 other states, the state legislature is responsible for the redistricting
process. As the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana (PAR) points out, “Critics of the
legislative redistricting process assert that legislators have an inherent conflict of interest when choosing
district boundaries, as those boundaries will affect who is able to run and be elected.”
A recent article from the nonprofit political action organization, Louisiana Progress,
says, “…in states where the legislature has control of the redistricting process there are consistent efforts
made to gerrymander districts, thereby eliminating districts controlled by the minority political party.”
The article notes that after Republicans took control of Georgia’s state government in 2004 they
redrew the 2005 Democratic legislature redistricting plan, resulting in the loss of two more
Democratic seats in the 2006 midterm elections. And Democrats in Maryland used redistricting
to oust two Republicans in 2002.
Louisiana Democrats have already expressed concerns that the Republican
Speaker of the House, Jim Tucker, has appointed twice as many Republicans as
Democrats to the House and Governmental Affairs Committee – the body which
will take the lead in redrawing House district lines. Republicans contend that
since the Senate is Democratically-controlled and each chamber must
House Speaker
Jim
Tucker,
R-Terrytown
approve the other’s final plan, the process will be fair.
According to PAR there is a growing interest nationwide in removing
legislatures from the redistricting process. Since 2005, 18 of the 28 states that use their
legislatures for redistricting have tried to create independent redistricting commissions.
Opponents, however, argue that boards and commissions are no less political than
legislatures; that plans designed by such bodies have been no more successful in terms
of being upheld in courts.
U.S. Representative John Fleming (R) Shreveport, defending the state legislature’s
involvement in the redistricting process, told LPB, “The reality is you can never take politics out of
it and if you put a citizens group in there or any other kind of commission, there's going to be politics
involved and those making the decision will not be accountable to the voters.”
Starting February 17th, both the House and Senate Governmental Affairs
Committees will be holding joint public hearings to receive input from residents around
the state on redistricting.
LOUISIANA’S CURRENT 7 CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS
AND U.S. REPRESENTATIVES
District 5:
U.S. Rep. Rodney Alexander (R)
District 4:
U.S. Rep. John
Fleming (R)
District 6:
U.S. Rep. William Cassidy (R)
District 1:
U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R)
District 2:
U.S. Rep.
Cedric Richmond (D)
District 7:
U.S. Rep.
Charles Boustany (R)
District 3:
U.S. Rep.
Jeff Landry (R)
Louisiana Loses a Congressman Excerpts from the Advocate Capital News Bureau/ By Gerard Shields / December 21, 2010
The congressional loss will mean that Louisiana will lose one of its electoral votes, which are used to elect
the president. Each state receives a vote based on the number of members it has in Congress. With its two senators,
Louisiana will now have eight votes. The state has lost 119 years of seniority in the last six years, mostly due to the
retirements of long-time members. The last time Louisiana lost a congressional seat was in 1990.
Republican U.S. Rep. Rodney Alexander of Quitman said the loss will hurt Louisiana economically. A lost
vote is also a lost congressional committee assignment, said Alexander, the dean of the Louisiana’s House
delegation. As important, the state would lose out to other states with more growth in the distributing of federal
dollars, ($400 billion in federal aid) he said. “You not only lose that vote but you lose that money,” said Alexander, a
member of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee. “You lose in a double whammy.”
POTENTIAL AREAS OF CONTENTION
In the upcoming redistricting process, political analysts foresee the following areas of
debate:
How to protect the rights of minorities?
Congressional Districts
Louisiana's congressional district 2 contains nearly all of the city
of New Orleans (a small portion
being located in the neighboring
1st District), and some of its
suburbs, including the West Bank
portion of Jefferson Parish and
South Kenner. Louisiana’s 2nd
congressional district is a
“majority minority” district
created as a result of the Voting
Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, to
ensure minority voters have a
likely opportunity to elect
representatives in Congress and to
guard against adverse raciallymotivated gerrymandering.
SOURCE: nationalatlas.gov
Redistricting Glossary
Contiguity: Every point in a district must
be reachable from any other point in that
district, without having to cross district
lines—is a firmly established
redistricting principle.
Community of interest: A grouping of
people that has common political, social,
or economic interests.
Compactness: The degree to which the
geography assigned to a district is close
together Courts have held that
“reasonably compact districts” is a
traditional districting principle.
Gerrymander: Intentionally drawing a
district in such a way as to favor one or
more interest groups (including political
parties) over others.
Retrogression: A voting change that
leaves minority voters "worse off" than
they had been before the change with
respect to their opportunity to exercise
their right to vote.
The 2010 Census figures show that New
Orleans has lost 140,845 residents, a drop of 29%
from 2000. The percentage of black population fell
from 67.3% to 60.2%. To maintain the “Majority
Minority” status of District 2 may require a socalled "bar-bell" shaped district that would
encompass the densest concentrations of black
voters in Orleans and Baton Rouge parishes,
connected by a sliver of territory along the
interstate to meet the requirement for continuous
districts. This would create enough black voters to
call for a majority-minority district, but bar-bell
shaped districts have been previously rejected by
the U.S. Supreme Court.
State Legislative Districts
Speculation is that New Orleans will likely
lose three state House seats and one state Senate
seat. Because of the VRA, Louisiana cannot have
fewer minority districts than before the
redistricting process. Elliott Stonecipher asks,
“How do you cut out House of Representative and
Senate districts in a majority African-American area
and not retrogress. That’s real difficult to do.”
Sen. Elbert Guillory, D-Opelousas feels he may have the solution – at least for the
senate. His “Demographic Equity Plan” developed in conjunction with the Christian
advocacy group, Louisiana Family Forum, rights what he calls Louisiana’s current
“inharmonious” state. Keeping the current number of 39 state senators, his plan focuses
on returning “political power for those persons who have moved from New Orleans into
Southwest Louisiana” and redistributing what he sees has been an inordinate amount of
power centralized in the New Orleans area. “New Orleans for a long time,” says Guillory,
“has been the tail that wagged the dog.”
Guillory’s plan maintains the same number of “majority minority” districts that
exist presently in the state – 10 – but redistributes them across seven regions of the state:
Northeast, Northwest, Central, Acadiana,
Capital, Bayou/River and Metro New
Orleans.
Five new districts are created
including three majority Black districts and
two majority White districts. The three new
majority Black districts are in the Central,
Acadiana and the Bayou/River regions of
Louisiana. The two majority White districts
are anchored in East Baton Rouge Parish
and Tangipahoa Parish.
Guillory notes, “The number of
districts remain constant; and the number of
minority districts remain constant and there’s
no packing of districts, no attempting to heavily
concentrate minority or whites into a district.
It’s an extremely fair presentation from a racial
standpoint.”
But not everyone finds it fair. Rep.
Rick Gallot, D-Ruston and chairman of the
House and Governmental Affairs
Committee takes issue with the plan’s
division of Rapides Parish into four Senate
districts and says the "racial polarization"
inherent in the Family Forum's Senate plan
does the state "a disservice." Sen. Guillory,
an African-American, says of such
criticism, “Some people have only one card in
their deck and that’s the race card and they will
always play that. This plan for the first time in
the last 40 years distributes political voice;
political power throughout Louisiana; in a way
that any Louisianan can be proud of and can
benefit from.”
How to lose a Congressional district?
Population Change within
Louisiana’s Current
Congressional Districts
Based on 2010 Census
Data
SOURCE:
GCR and Associates Consulting ©2011
ONE NORTHERN DISTRICT
Governor Bobby Jindal has said that his administration will play a backseat role when
state legislators convene to redraw district maps. The Governor has asked the congressional
delegation to come up with its own plan and says, “We’ll let the Legislature handle the legislative
map.”
State Senator Robert Kostelka, R-Monroe, is head of the Senate and Governmental
Affairs Committee which will oversee the redistricting process in the legislature on the Senate
side. Kostelka has indicated he will do everything in his power to maintain Monroe in its own
congressional district, saying “We need our own representation for this part of the state.”
But this would amount to gerrymandering, according to Stonecipher. “The problem is that
(Northeast Louisiana) is the part of the state that in addition to the impacted Katrina area has lost the
most population.” Stonecipher says, “If Bob Kostelka keeps his word and the process nets Monroe a
continuation of having what is now the fifth district, then you’re upside down on doing things the way
the rules would, so that’s called gerrymandering.” Stonecipher predicts this move would result in
litigation.
Stonecipher supports an “I-20 District” instead. “I’m from Shreveport, but I promise you it
doesn’t matter where you’re from, this is the one that makes sense, when you’re losing a congressional
seat.” Stonecipher says, “It’ll stretch from Caddo Bossier over on the Northwest part of the state all the
way over to Mississippi on the Northeast. It would include Ouachita parish.” Stonecipher points out it
will also include a “commonality of interest” a redistricting principle. Congressman John
Fleming, who currently represents District 4, says merging the two vertically oriented districts 4
and 5 together presents apportionment problems for the state. Because most of the population
in north Louisiana is around I-20 and above, Fleming says, “What you end up with is a very
large sparsely populated area which is Central Louisiana.”
Proposed I-20 District
Image courtesy Evets Management, Inc.
Using the 2010 census figures, the new ideal number and size of Louisiana’s
districts by population is reflected in the table below. The federal civil rights office that
must approve Louisiana's maps historically has allowed a range of plus or minus 5%.
Body
Congress
State House of Reps.
State Senate
B.E.S.E.
Public Service Comm.
Supreme Court
Districts
6
105
39
8
5
7
Ideal Population
755,562
43,174
116,240
566,571
906,674
647,624
ONE COASTAL DISTRICT
State Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Houma, has proposed merging districts 7 and 3 into one
coastal congressional district that stretches from Cameron to St. Bernard parish. “Coastal issues
have become among the most important for our state and it’s time we speak with one voice,”
Harrison says. “We need a full-time spokesperson.” The proposal has gained support of the St.
Mary, Iberia, and St. Martin parish councils — all situated on the dividing line between the two
current districts — passing resolutions pledging their support for the plan. Terrebonne and
Lafourche parish officials also have endorsed the plan. The plan also carries the endorsement of
U. S. Rep. Jeff Landry, the freshman Republican who represents District 3. “I think there is a
tremendous amount of hunger on the coast for it,” Landry told the Politico online political site.
Approval of the plan would almost certainly open the door for a future contest between
Landry and District seven’s U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, who would suddenly find themselves
sharing the same territory. The proposal excludes Calcasieu parish which forces Lake Charles
into the same district as Shreveport - District 4. Boustany, whose district includes both
Lafayette and Lake Charles opposes the one coastal plan and has said “Southwest Louisiana’s
economy benefits by having these two metropolitan areas together.” Boustany also warns that
one coastal district could create the loss of badly needed clout in the House. “It would be better to
have two or three members fighting for the Louisiana coastline than just one,” Boustany told the
Politico. “If you have more than one member fighting for the coastline, you’re going to be more effective.”
Source: The Independent Weekly
The majority of the Louisiana Congressional delegation appears to be throwing its
support behind a plan based on a proposal developed by state Rep. Robert Kostelka, chair of the
Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee. It forms a new district is by merging District 7
with some of District 3 while keeping Calcasieu Parish within its boundaries.
CONCLUSION
As legislators prepare for the monumental task of redistricting that faces them,
they should be guided by the advice of Greg Rigamer, CEO of GCR and Associates a
Louisiana based consulting firm that has been tracking the state’s population data since
Hurricane Katrina. “As a real practical matter, it’s a mathematical exercise - the number of
people divided by the number of seats. Now there’s a phenomenal amount of political influence
that comes to bear at that point but at the end of the day, the test is the math.”
Watch “Redistricting Louisiana”
on “Louisiana Public Square” airing Wednesday,
February 23rd at 7 p.m. on LPB HD.
Tell us where you think the state should redraw district
boundaries by commenting at www.lpb.org/publicsquare.