Fair maps aren't enough

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You have to like the Democrats’ aggressive strategy on redistricting. 

Last Friday, the day after the Census Bureau finally got around to giving states the basic data they need to begin drawing new Congressional and legislative maps, the Democrats’ lawyers were in court. They were there to demand that the current maps be thrown out, so that they can’t serve as the flawed basis for the new ones. 

This may not have been so much about the actual legal arguments made as the venue in which they were being offered. Marc Elias, the Washington attorney who is the party’s lead national strategist on redistricting legal fights, filed the suit in federal court. That strikes me — no legal expert but someone who has watched lawyer shows going back to the eponymous Judd for the Defense — as an effort to get this case before a federal court from the start. 

This matters because who decides the case will almost certainly determine which way it goes. If it ends up in a federal court, then the Democrats have some chance of getting fair maps. If it gets decided in the state Supreme Court, it comes down to Justice Brian Hagedorn. While Hagedorn has shown an inclination toward independence, I wouldn’t count on him in this case. Chances are that a case decided by Wisconsin’s top court would go 4-3 in favor of whatever maps Speaker Robin Vos dreams up. 

It will end up in court, almost certainly, because Republicans led by Vos will do what they did 10 years ago. They’ll draw maps that all but guarantee them huge majorities no matter how many votes they get statewide. Gov. Tony Evers will veto those maps, a stalemate will ensue, and then everybody is off to court. 

The uncertainty of the courts is why I’ve argued that Evers should have vetoed one or both of the last two state budgets and insisted on a fair redistricting process being included before he would sign them. But he didn’t, and so here we are, a place where one expert involved on the Democrats’ side told me the odds of success are less than one in three. 

But those odds are still much better in a federal court and that, I think, explains why Elias wasted no time in getting before a federal judge just as soon as he could. 

Having said all that, another headline out of the census data both heartens me as a former Madison mayor and concerns me as a Democrat. Dane County is growing fast. That speaks to the quality of life here and the good jobs available here, most spurred on by ideas coming out of the university. Those who want to argue that liberal policies destroy business are going to have to explain these census numbers. If low taxes and less regulation are the answer, then why is a place so famous for embracing just the opposite doing so well? 

But while the numbers might swell my civic pride, they are cause for caution on the political side. That’s because Dane County is becoming such a deep mine of Democratic votes (now far outpacing even Milwaukee) that the party is at risk of being totally defined, as if it weren’t enough already, by Dane County’s liberal politics. 

And a place where jail inmates are now “residents” is not exactly in tune with rural, small town or even suburban Wisconsin. The result is that statewide candidates can eke out victories by loading up on votes in these parts, but it makes it almost impossible to win legislative majorities, even with fair maps. 

So, the Democrats are being smart and aggressive right out of the box as the redistricting battle begins. But even if they win more fair maps they’ve got a lot of work to do before they can reclaim majorities in the Legislature.