Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Two down.

It's official. Per the U.S. Census, Ohio will lose two congressional seats.

Not only does that mean less clout in Congress, but also fewer electoral votes and lesser importance in the Presidential race.

Unfortunately for Ohio, people don't just vote in November. They also use their feet.

The state of the state can be just as well defined by whom it elects as by who stays and who leaves. If people like living here, they stay. If they don't, they leave. It sounds so simple, but it's very important.

People may move for weather, but Ohio's weather hasn't changed much since its founding in 1803, and yet it's over the past couple decades we've lost population to other states. That means other factors are coming into play.

Ohio isn't attractive anymore. We need to change the way we do business.

Ohio needs a reboot.

As for redistricting itself, we all know it's up to the Republicans in Ohio who will lose those seats.

Will it be two Democrats? Will they split it?

Who goes?

All kinds of theories are out there right now.

Nate Silver at the New York Times has some ideas...
Quite a few Ohio districts have lost population outright since 2000. The one that has lost the most is 11th district, which covers most of Cleveland, but it is so blue that a core of Democratic voters will remain to ensure Marcia Fudge’s re-election to Congress. Dennis Kucinich’s neighboring 10th district, however, has also lost ground, and he could be vulnerable. Some of Ohio’s Republican-leaning and swing areas, like the Appalachian 6th district that Republicans took over in November, have lost population as well. But the Republicans in control of the redistricting process will do their best to see that the two seats the state loses both come from the Democratic column.
So what do you think? Who goes? Who stays?

3 comments:

  1. Cutting out 2 Dem districts won't be easy, and it'll be interesting if they try it, but maybe it goes something like this:

    Kucinich's district (10) gets eliminated:

    Fudge's (11) is shifted westward to cover more of Cleveland, which just puts more deep blue territory in Fudge's district. Take those eastern Cuyahoga suburbs and throw them into the red 14th.

    Now, get rid of the 13th (Sutton).

    Put the northern part of the 13th into the deep blue 9th. That adds a lot of people, so cut southern Lorain County (red) out of the 9th and dump it in the 5th (deep red).

    For the middle part of the 13th, most of that will need to go into the 16th.

    For the southern part of the 13th, take the blue Akron areas and pack them into Ryan's 17th. The remainder can also go into the 16th.

    This is the current map:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oh_districts_map.PNG

    So maybe something like this: http://s752.photobucket.com/albums/xx162/nmascari/?action=view&current=ohdist.jpg

    Of course it isn't that simple. Other districts will have to change to maintain equal populations, but that could be a starting point.

    And yes, its very self-serving as it removes me from Kaptur's district and puts me in Latta's. Ha.

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  2. Options:

    --Eliminate the Kucinich district.

    --Combine the Ryan and Sutton districts.

    --Combine the Kaptur and Kucinich districts.

    --Combine the Kucinich and Sutton districts.

    If you are grasping at straws:

    --Put Toledo in Latta's district and have Kaptur try to beat him, which she won't. With this option you move the Kucinich district along the Lake Erie shoreline into Lucas County. I know, that would be tough. It's an idea though.

    I've heard some of the "lobbyist types" say that part of the deal is the combining of Gibbs and Johnson's district. That should be dead on arrival.

    Republicans have to do a better job than they did in 2000. Householder screwing up. Taft cowering in fear of Sherrod Brown. Big mistake was drawing Strickland into NE Ohio media markets.

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  3. Those five dem districts each had 630,730 people ten yes ago. Doubt any have that many now but I'd guess they have a combined population of around 2.75-2.85 million today. New CD's will have around 720,000 people each. In theory you could draw three CD's where these five curently sit but you would still have around 700,000 people left over. Most of these five districts are pretty heavily democratic so the legislature will try to pull out as many GOP precincts as possible and put them into the other districts. It will be tough to do without weakening current GOP districts(let alone shoring up the 6th)

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