Gerry-Rigged Democracy
Fund, John H.
Gerry-Rigged Democracy BY JOHN H. FUND p oliticians say they care about policy, but they prove over and over again that protecting their own jobs and the jobs of their friends takes top priority....
...House races last year was preordained by devices such as gerrymandering, made easier than ever by computer mapping software that allows both parties to manipulate district lines until they have the perfect political DNA to ensure the re-election of incumbents...
...As things stand, the mess may not be resolved until a special session this summer...
...The outcome for almost all U.S...
...House for some time to come...
...Perhaps more of the twenty-four states with the initiative process will consider similar reforms...
...After a week's worth of consultations with leading politicians, the judge—a Democrat—suddenly changed his mind and released an incumbent-protection plan that left the state without a single competitive House race in last year's election...
...Majority Leader DeLay, still smarting from what he considered an outrageous flip-flop by the Democratic judge, plotted to have the new legislature—with both houses now controlled by Republicans—come back this year with a gerrymander largely designed by him...
...All of this is not only bad for democracy, but also bad for political compromise...
...The result in 2002 was that Republicans in Texas won 57 percent of the congressional vote, but woundup with less than half the seats—fifteen out of thirty-two...
...Districts with entrenched incumbents tend to elect members on the political extremes, with little incentive to modify their partisan positions...
...William Lipinski, the senior Democrat in the state, to make all of the state's nineteen districts safe for existing incumbents...
...Indeed, six of the twenty-eight incumbents seeking re-election last year in Texas had no major-party competition at all...
...Instead of a seeking a rematch, his former opponent dropped out as soon as the new lines were announced...
...If Democrats moan that they have little chance of taking back the House in the next election, they can in large part blame themselves for allowing their incumbents to greedily build political castles at the expense of more competitive districts that would have left control of the overall House more in doubt...
...Johnson, secure enough in his incumbency, announced that his own pledge to limit himself to three terms in office was no longer valid...
...Instead, it has become a House of Lords, insulated from competition and vigorous challenge...
...The only problem with all the deflation talk—and Greenspan's remarks have set off the predictable mini-tsunami thereof—is that, unlike Japan, deflation is no longer a worry in America and hasn't been for more than a year...
...The redistricting plan itself was the work of U.S...
...We have gone from voters choosing their representatives to representatives choosing their voters through the artful use of incumbent-protection software...
...You can bet such reforms won't be pushed by state legislators without: popular pressure...
...The most recent comments came after the May meeting of the Fed's Open Market Committee: "The probability of an unwelcome substantial fall in inflation, though minor, exceeds that of a pickup in inflation?' Arigato, Alan-san...
...Ikk H XII BY BRIAN S. WESBURY T o paraphrase the old disco hit: Alan Greenspan is turning Japanese...
...Nationwide, only thirty of the four hundred thirty-five seats in the House of Representatives were even remotely competitive last year...
...But in 2002, a bipartisan gerrymander turned his district into a bizarre, hundred-mile-long fishhook stretching along the Indiana border, connecting him with more Republican voters...
...And Rep...
...Senate races remain more competitive because no one has yet figured out a way to gerrymander a state's boundaries...
...In Illinois, House Speaker Dennis Hastert struck a deal with Rep...
...The result was that only one of the state's fifty-three seats was competitive in 2002, and that only because scandal-tarred Rep...
...After denying for five years that deflation existed in the U.S...
...incumbent match-ups mandatedby shifting populations...
...Such moves will surely increase voter apathy and cynicism, making low voter turnouts almost inevitable...
...The results were predictable...
...Unfortunately, the situation isn't likely to get better anytime soon...
...In Illinois, GOP Rep...
...That will make it harder to reach sensible common ground on Social Security or Medicare reform that everyone agrees is necessary...
...House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, still angry over a 1991 Democratic gerrymander of Texas congressional seats that has forestalled GOP gains in President George W. Bush's increasingly conservative home state...
...With the exception of states such as Texas, where unusual circumstances apply, the nation is stuck for the next decade with the gerrymandered districts now in place...
...The real problem with the economy is the high level of uncertainty...
...The result would be to increase GOP strength in the Texas delegation to at least twenty out of thirty-two seats, helping ensure continued GOP control of the U.S...
...Why vote if you already know who is going to win and there has been no effective campaign against the incumbent...
...Our democracy won't be fully vibrant until we figure out a way to stop incumbents from fixing the elections in advance...
...But the House—the body intended by the founders to be closest to the people—has become an elite preserve for incumbents who have walled themselves off from competition...
...There a state judge issued a competitive plan that discomfited incumbents and elicited howls of outrage from Rep...
...Take the ridiculous spat this spring in Texas, where fifty-three rebel Democrats in the state house, egged on by Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, secretly left the state in a bus to deprive the legislature of a quorum...
...When the next redistricting rolled around a decade later, Republicans and Democrats each controlled a house of the Texas legislature, and the whole process wound up in court...
...But this would be an overreaction...
...Martin Frost, former head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee...
...economy by looking in the rearview mirror...
...As has become its practice, the Fed is driving the U.S...
...Consider what happened in California where Democrats controlled the redistricting process but nonetheless cut a sweetheart deal John H. Fund is a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal...
...More incumbents lost in the House than in the Senate, but only because five districts featured incumbent vs...
...But that shouldn't stop people now from corning up with a better way...
...I really think so...
...State lawmakers are happy with their own incumbent gerrymanders...
...The Founding Fathers envisioned the House of Representatives as the people's chamber, the body most representative of popular concerns...
...Those bodies can have their own biases, but at least they can be forced to address considerations such as compactness and the need to keep communities together, which self-promoting legislatures routinely ignore...
...I know, I know, many good supply-siders out there are suggesting that the Fed should inject more liquidity into the economy—lots more...
...Incumbent-protection schemes are one of the most significant remaining barriers to voters' ability to express their preferences adequately in elections...
...Iowa and Arizona had some of the most competitive House races in the last election, in large part because they have turned over redistricting to nonpartisan commissions...
...Gary Condit had been defeated in a primary...
...Disenfranchising voters became a bipartisan exercise last year, when the new census mandated redistricting...
...Tim Johnson won his first election in 2000, with 53 percent of the vote...
...Only one race this year is competitive and that's only because the state is losing a seat in redistricting, and two incumbents have been thrown together in a musical chairs contest...
...The Republican House Speaker threatened to have them arrested and compelled to attend the legislative session...
...Terrorism, two wars, a regulatory climate that punishes risk taking, and now the hope that short-term interest rates might fall again have all conspired to keep decision...
...The effect of all the mutual back-scratching is a Congress whose members increasingly feel that they don't have to listen to the folks back home...
...Highly sensitive market indicators such as gold and the dollar suggest there is plenty of liquidity in the system, and certainly our banks are awash in cash...
...That was the only way that Anglo Democrats such as Howard Berman and Henry Waxman could protect their increasingly Hispanic districts from primary challenges...
...Their walkout, which stalled dozens of important bills, was to prevent voting on a new congressional redistricting plan that benefited Republicans...
...economy, the Federal Reserve's ageless chairman is worrying now...
...Outside those races, the incumbent re-election rate again hit 98 percent...
...14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • JUNE/JULY 2003 with Republican incumbents...
...Hence the Democratic bus ride to prevent a vote...
Vol. 36 • June 2003 • No. 3
