{"id":19917,"date":"2011-05-10T11:00:44","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T17:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19917"},"modified":"2011-10-20T10:29:46","modified_gmt":"2011-10-20T15:29:46","slug":"the-line-in-the-sod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19917","title":{"rendered":"The Line In The Sod"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Legislature &#8211; really the GOP majority &#8211; has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/politics\/blogs\/121495458.html\">released its take on Congressional redistricting<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/politics\/blogs\/121495458.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/htmlimg3.scribdassets.com\/1doplqce68yfu9h\/images\/1-aa3a40146f.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"527\" height=\"686\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Two points:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Elections Have Consequences<\/strong>: If adopted &#8211; more later &#8211; this map will have some pretty hefty consequences. \u00a0While it leaves the three &#8220;safest&#8221; districts in the state &#8211; the solid DFL 4th and 5th, and the very red 6th &#8211; pretty much as is (if anything, more solid), it makes some changes that could have impact on the 2012 House races.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It cuts Tim Walz&#8217; mushy-left stronghold Mankato out of the 1st CD, putting it into John Kline&#8217;s solidly-conservative 2nd District. \u00a0This means the 1st CD&#8217;s fundamentally conservative, rural nature can be maintained. \u00a0It&#8217;ll be interesting to see how the DFL rationalizes pushing back against this, while fighting to keep the 5th and 6th districts uncorruptedly institutional-blue.<\/li>\n<li>Other than adding Mankato, the 2nd CD stays pretty solid.<\/li>\n<li>The 3rd CD&#8217;s &#8220;purple&#8221; days would seem to be over, with the addition of a stretch of solid red to its southwest.<\/li>\n<li>The 4th and 5th CDs become brighter-blue than before, from the looks of it.<\/li>\n<li>The 6th appears to jettison most of St. Cloud &#8211; the one place where Michele Bachmann faces serious opposition &#8211; and consolidate solid-red Wright County<\/li>\n<li>The 7th morphs immensely, losing the Red River Valley (and, it&#8217;d seem, Colin Peterson) and picking up Saint Cloud (blueish) and the far-northern Twin Cities exurbs currently in the 8th CD.<\/li>\n<li>The 8th swoops west, covering the entire northern part of the state, diluting the solid-blue Duluth and Arrowhead areas with good conservative northwestern counties.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Gerrymandering?<\/strong> That&#8217;s the claim you&#8217;re seeing from some lefties. \u00a0I think it&#8217;s worthwhile to note that most of the changes &#8211; the First, Seventh and Eighth &#8211; actually <em>undo <\/em>some of the gerrymandering that took place on the DFL&#8217;s watch (the Ventura-era court-drawn settlement in 2000 favored the DFL; Arne Carlson completely caved to the DFL in 1990, court settlement notwithstanding. \u00a0 The DFL isn&#8217;t going to like it &#8211; but redistricting isn&#8217;t supposed to be predicated on the happiness of the party that loses the election.<\/p>\n<p>Dayton has said he won&#8217;t pass any redistricting plan that doesn&#8217;t have &#8220;bipartisan support&#8221; &#8211; and when DFLers say &#8220;bipartisan support&#8221;, what they mean is they want to nag the GOP into giving them a victory they didn&#8217;t earn at the polls. \u00a0There was no talk of &#8220;bipartisanship&#8221; when the DFL controlled the process with an iron fist; it&#8217;s disingenuous, and playing to the ignorant (but typical politics) that they demand it now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Legislature &#8211; really the GOP majority &#8211; has released its take on Congressional redistricting. Two points: Elections Have Consequences: If adopted &#8211; more later &#8211; this map will have some pretty hefty consequences. \u00a0While it leaves the three &#8220;safest&#8221; districts in the state &#8211; the solid DFL 4th and 5th, and the very red [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,2,155],"tags":[160,161],"class_list":["post-19917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-minnesota-politics","category-mn-congressional","tag-mn-cd1","tag-mn-cd2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19917"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23775,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19917\/revisions\/23775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}