NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — U.S. Rep. Steve Womack isn’t happy about losing 100,000 constituents, but he knows it’s going to happen.
More than 100,000 people who live in Arkansas’ 3rd Congressional District will be moved into other districts when the state Legislature redraws those boundaries this year.
The 3rd District will have to shrink geographically to meet the population target. In one scenario, the 12-county district would lose as many as four counties.
“It’s a terrible political situation to be in, to be opining as to what you do, what you will give up,” said Womack, a Republican who took office Jan. 3.
“I’m overweight by 100,000 people, and those people are going to have to come from somewhere,” Womack said. “So it’s kind of a lose-lose deal for me,politically speaking.”
The General Assembly redraws the congressional district lines after each decennial Census. Normally, the process is completed before the Legislature adjourns in the spring.
The rapidly growing 3rdDistrict - home to the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan area and Fort Smith - will have to lose more than a tenth of its population to get it close to the ideal size of about 731,557 residents. That’s based on a statewide population estimate of 2,926,229 divided by four congressional districts, said A.J. Kelly, deputy secretary of state.
The Legislature will try to get the numbers as close as possible to avoid litigation. In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision in a Georgia case, Cox v. Larios, indicating there was no longer a “safe harbor” variance of 10 percent from district to district.
“What really happened in that case is open to interpretation,” Kelly said.
Computer software will allow the Arkansas Legislature to look at several options precinct by precinct. Arkansas’ congressional districts now adhere to county lines.
This year, the Legislature must split counties to get congressional districts that are as equal in size as possible, said state Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway, vicechairman of the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, where redistricting work begins in the Legislature. The committee consists of four Democrats and four Republicans.
“We have got to have oneperson, one-vote,” said Baker, referring to districts that are equal in size. “That is the preeminent principle. We didn’t have that 10 years ago. ... In my view, if you hold fast to county lines, you’re going to find yourself in court, and you don’t want to go there.”
Kelly said the Legislature will likely stick to precinct lines while redrawing the districts.
The U.S. Census Bureau plans to roll out Arkansas population and demographic data by March 31, Kelly said. This week, the Census Bureau is scheduled to release population data for cities and counties in Arkansas. Putting the data in a usable format, so precinct lines match up with census blocks, could take about 10 days, he said.
The new data, with accurate county populations, should help clarify several different redistricting scenarios, Kelly said. Until then, most of it is speculation based on 2009 population estimates.
Three scenarios would have the 3rd District losing Sebastian, Boone or Pope counties.
Moving Sebastian County would result in the least amount of real estate going to another district. With an estimated 2009 population of 121,325, Sebastian County could go to the 4th Congressional District, shedding the 3rd District of all its excess population, and then some.
But people in Fort Smith in Sebastian County consider themselves aligned with Northwest Arkansas, ideologically and by Interstate 540, the 100-mile-long freeway that connects the region to Bentonville and will eventually be a vital link in Interstate 49 from Lafayette, La., to Kansas City, Mo.
The 4th District includes 29 counties stretching from Logan County south to Louisiana and east to Mississippi. It encompasses the timberlands of southwest Arkansas and the Delta of southeast Arkansas.
“I think we are much more closely aligned to Northwest Arkansas,” Fort Smith Mayor Sandy Sanders said. “We share a lot of the same challenges and same opportunities, such as the completion of Interstate 49. I think just the distance involved from Fort Smith to Pine Bluff and areas in the existing 4th Congressional District would not make good geographic or political sense.”
State Sen. Jake Files, R-Fort Smith, agreed.
“People look at it and think, ‘We can get 100,000 right there.’ It’s easy for people to get their minds around,” he said. “Beyond that, it doesn’t make a lot of practical sense. I have not talked to one person in Fort Smith who thinks it’s a good idea.”
State Rep. Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, said Fort Smith legislators would lobby for keeping Sebastian County in the 3rd District.
“One of the key rules of redistricting is to keep communities of like interest in the same district,” he said in an e-mail. “I think we are of like interest and mind with Northwest Arkansas and not so much with south Arkansas.”
Womack said he understood why people in FortSmith don’t want to leave the 3rd District.
“There’s not an area of my district that I don’t value and appreciate on a daily basis. But 100,000 people is a big number. You can’t do it by just shaving off portions,” he said.
Another plan would have Boone and Marion counties going from the 3rd Congressional District to the 1st District. Also, Franklin and Johnson counties would move to the 4th District.
“If you look at the numbers and what has to be done and take the politics out of it, that probably makes the most sense,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, a Democrat from the 4th District.
“I don’t know what the final map will look like,” he said. “That will be up to the state Legislature. I hope they would break up as few counties as possible and they will do it in a way that we don’t make wholesale change.”
Besides the 3rd District needing to lose population, Ross said the 2nd District in central Arkansas will need to lose about 15,000 residents while the 1st District needs to gain 47,000 and the 4th District needs to gain 70,000.
Womack said a scenario removing either Pope or Boone counties from the 3rd District doesn’t appeal to him.
Womack was born in Russellville, attended high school there and graduated from Arkansas Tech University, so he would like to keep Pope County in the 3rd District. That county had an estimated population of 58,963 last year.
“Boone County is John Paul Hammerschmidt territory. I don’t think there’s anybody around who would have imagined the 3rd District without John Paul Hammerschmidt’s county,” Womack said. “That’s a culture shock.”
Hammerschmidt, who served as the 3rd District congressman from 1967-93, said he doesn’t like the idea of Boone County moving to another district, but that kind of thing happens in redistricting.
“Of course I’d hate to see that happen,” he said, “but under the realities of redistricting, that may be the only way they could put it together.”
Alice Stewart, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said Boone County has been in the 3rd District since redistricting in 1960.
Hammerschmidt said when he was elected in 1966, the district was twice as large as it is today, with 24 counties stretching to Little River County to the north of Texarkana.
In 1980, Garland County was removed from the 3rd District, and residents of Hot Springs sued over the issue, Hammerschmidt said. They won initially, but the decision was overturned.
Hammerschmidt said there is a “disparity of different cultures” from the Ozark Mountains to the Delta.
When a county moves intoanother congressional district, people have to get used to a new congressman they may not know. One way such dramatic shifts in redistricting affect politicians is that they must travel the new areas to meet constituents.
State Rep. Kelley Linck, R-Flippin, said it was ironic that Hammerschmidt’s success in Congress contributed to the population increase in Northwest Arkansas that “may ultimately” push his home county out of the district he represented.
Linck’s district includes all of Marion and parts of Boone, Searcy, Stone and Baxter counties.
If a large part of state House District 86 is moved from the 3rd Congressional District to the 1st District, “there would be differences,” he said in an e-mail.
“We are accustomed to working with national politicians who live in the Ozarks and share with us many of the same problems and successes of our daily lives,” Linck said. “Due to the majority of the land in the 1st Congressional District not falling into the Ozark Mountains, and the economics of much of the existing 1st Congressional area based more on crop farming, I suspect there will be at least some learning curve for our new congressional staff, and those of us trying to work with that staff and congressman while we adjust to each other.
“Simply put, yes, the culture of the 1st Congressional District and the existing 3rd District are different, but we will adjust.”
Baxter County Circuit Judge Shawn Womack of Mountain Home, who worked on redistricting a decade ago as a state representative, said moving Baxter County from the 3rd District to the 1st took some getting used to, but it worked out fine.
“I think initially it was a little bit of a struggle for some folks because we’re a mountain area, a lake and river tourism area that was moving into a district that had always been dominated by agriculture and farming issues,” said Womack, who is no relation to the congressman.
A decade later, people are more acclimated to being in the district, he said. Baxter County has more influence in the 1st District than it did in the 3rd District because of the size of the 3rd District’s Washington and Benton counties, he said.
Besides the congressional districts, Arkansas’ 100 House of Representative districts and 35 Senate districts also will have to be redrawn. That process takes much longer and should be completed by October, Kelly said. The Board of Apportionment, established in 1936, redraws the state House and Senate districts. The board consists of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 02/06/2011