Ihave poked my full share of fun at the so-called Pig Trail Gerrymander, now more commonly known as the “Fayetteville Finger” or merely, alas, “the Finger.”
It is entirely too conspicuous a little gerrymander - too abrupt a departure from what we have always done - to escape critical attention. The Democratic desperation to stay competitive through meandering mapping instead of policy persuasion is a ripe target for ridicule.
Slicing right up the gut of a Republican hotbed to take out the only Democratic boxes, then claiming you have no choice but to do it because the growing district must lose population - come on.
Do you think I can’t see that you actually are trying to add Baxter County on the eastern flank to try to get Republican votes out of the 1st District?
It’s the baloney that bugs me more than the map.
Still, I probably owe it to Democratic advocates to relay the case they make in seemingly serious tones for proposing to run the 4th Congressional District along a narrow swath right up that hill to gouge Fayetteville out of the 3rd District.
First, they argue - correctly - that congressional redistricting is inherently a partisan exercise. The political parties try to protect themselves.
The party with the state legislative advantage gets to protect it itself first.
Second, they argue - correctly - that this Fayetteville Finger is legal.
It is a contiguous district. It largely adheres to adjoining state legislative districting, which, of course, must soon change as well.
Courts have declined to throw out districts for simple partisan advantage.
I call the Fayetteville Finger a gerrymander because it is one by my Webster’s, but that is not to say it is actionable.
Third, Democrats contend - again, correctly - that districtwide commonality is not a requirement, especially when a rural area loses so much population that it requires extensive geographic expansion.
Little Rock and Searcy have nothing in common economically or culturally or politically, yet they are snugly in the same congressional district - for the moment.
Fourth, Democrats say that this Fayetteville-centered redistricting plan is less partisan than a plan of theirs might have been. This also is correct, if something of a straw-man argument.
If Democrats really wanted to go all-in with partisanship by leveraging their statelegislative advantage abusively and punitively, they could have drawn, they will point out, a district from Little Rock to Pine Bluff and into eastern Arkansas in a way that would have put two freshmen Republican congressman, Tim Griffin and Rick Crawford, into the same heavily African-American district.
They want us to accept the Fayetteville Finger because it is less than that. But that is a little like saying, hey, I broke into your house and stole your flat screen, yes, but look at that computer and all that jewelry I left.
Fifth, they assert that there is nothing that says our decennial congressional redistricting must be done in a way that disturbs the status quo as little as possible. We have done it that way in recent decades only because we were a one-party state with veteran congressmen and the prevailing objective was to shake things up as little as possible.
Sixth, they say a redistricting plan must be passed in the Legislature and that there is the potential for support for this plan in Fayetteville that does not exist in a more logical geographic area, such as Fort Smith and Sebastian County.
Indeed, I’m getting the idea that Sen. Sue Madison of Fayetteville, Democratic chairman of the Senate committee that will consider this issue, is angling to go with her party here instead of her chamber of commerce.
There are some Democrats in Fayetteville - I can’t quantify and there is certainly no consensus - who do not object so much to being shed of their surrounding and suffocating Republican dominance.
There are people at the University of Arkansas who don’t recoil at this notion, but who see potential advantages to having a separate congressman representing them while a second congressman resides a few miles just up the bypass.
So, yes, there are semiplausible arguments. One offered last week by state Rep. Clark Hall of Marvell - that folks in South Arkansas go up there for football games and support that economy already - may not be among them.
JOHN BRUMMETT IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU IN LITTLE ROCK.
Opinion, Pages 15 on 03/27/2011