On Oct 28, 2005, at 4:03 AM, David Strand wrote:
Great article on the redistricting power game by G.R.
Anderson-- as if any of us need reminding in the
current context.
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2005/10/redistricting_m.asp
GR's take is quite interesting, and I found one part especially
noteworthy:
...Meanwhile, Republicans haven't been represented at city hall for a
generation. And nobody is eager to wear the moniker in a town where
Nader could run for president tomorrow and get 20 percent of the
population excited.
So what happened, according to the source, was a great effort to find
a "Republican opportunity ward."
That ward is the Seventh, which is currently run by incumbent Lisa
Goodman, and she echoes the scenario brought up by the source.
Goodman's ward picked up major chunks of downtown from the Fifth Ward
on the north side. Most of the new area in her ward is along the
valuable riverfront on the west side of the Mississippi--where a new
conservative constituency has cropped up thanks to high-end housing
that has boomed in recent years.
— end excerpt
I don't think the riverfront folks are necessarily conservative
(don't assume upper-class folks coming back to the city are
reflexively opposed to tax-and-spend), but a look at the recent past
may help us judge the present and perhaps future.
I use the 2002 Gov's race as a partisan benchmark, because it
included four major-party candidates (DFLer Roger Moe, GOP's Tim
Pawlenty, Independence's Tim Penny and Green Ken Pentel.) Mpls votes
were cast in the redistricted wards/precincts.
Ward 7 ranked fifth of the city's 13 wards, at 25 percent GOP. Now
perhaps with a pro-choice Republican, you can do something, but you'd
have a big hill to climb. By the way, the 7th ranks 4 of 13 on the
"Center-Right" index (GOP + Independence) — 38 percent. (I think the
C-R index is a way to pick up fiscal conservatives/social liberals
since the Independence Party is reliably pro-choice.)
I suppose condo growth could raise the GOP and C-R index; that's a
good point the story makes.
Ward 11 was and is the true GOP opportunity ward — one reason why
more of Kingfield wasn't put in it. It had the highest GOP vote in
'02 (28 percent) and the highest C-R index of 42.2 percent — 4 points
more than Ward 7. Scott Benson's keeping this a "safe" DFL ward
(following Dore Mead) is a partisan accomplishment.
While 2002's redistricting must be looked at in a partisan context
(because that's how redistricting commissioners were picked), I still
feel many commissioners were pursuing a less partisan but more
realistic goal: maximizing the number of "fiscal conservatives"
possibilities on the Council. That's why it was, for example, so
important to get Kingfield in the 8th - to preserve conservative
strength in 11 and tilt ward 8 a bit toward the fiscally conservative
orbit. That war was fought on the margins of higher-profile debates.
The top GOP wards, based on 2002:
Ward 11, 28.1 percent
Ward 13, 27.3 percent
Ward 1, 26.7 percent
Ward 4, 26.1 percent
Ward 7, 25.7 percent
Ward 3, 21.1 percent
The top C-R wards, based on 2002:
Ward 11, 42.2 percent
Ward 13, 42 percent
Ward 1, 39.8 percent
Ward 7, 38.1 percent
Ward 4, 36.7 percent
I think the folks most likely to fiscally revolt aren't rich
arrivistes but longtime residents upset about rising property taxes
and crime. That would describe 11, 12 and 4 more than the "new"
component of 7.
David Brauer
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