What's In A Number?

What's in a number? That which we count four
By any other number's not a score.

Today marked the start of the filing period in Missouri, the culmination of a colossal fustercluck in preparing the maps for the 2012 election. A process which still isn't done, as the map for state senate was only initially approved for public review Feb. 23.

Already one major concern has cropped up, the inexplicable renumbering of some districts, which has left Chesterfield Republican Jane Cunningham scrambling for a new constituency and Kansas City Democrat Jolie Justus representing six counties in the eastern half of the state. What makes the renumbering even more inexplicable is how clustered odds and evens are around our major metropolitan areas.

(Firstly, it needs clarified for those that require it that senators serve staggered terms; odd-numbered districts are elected in years when the governor is elected, even-numbered two years later.)

Starting with the Kansas City area:
Among the four counties which contain portions of the city, there are five odd-numbered districts, including the District formerly known as 10. If you count Ray and Lafayette counties to the east, there would be six districts being contested in the metropolitan out of eight. The only even districts present are eight in eastern Jackson and 12 in rural Clay, which is now appended to the rest of the Northwest.

Now to St. Louis:
Of the districts depicted in St. Louis, St. Charles, Jefferson and Lincoln, seven are even numbered and six are odd-numbered. Luckily, this works out within St. Louis. However, among rural districts, four of the five northernmost are even-numbered (the entirety of the border with Iowa and Nebraska), and Arkansas is bordered exclusively by odd-numbered districts, as are Kentucky and Tennessee.

And then there's Springfield:
District 20 for the city, District 30 for the surrounding area. Might help stave off the persistent sideshow candidates, but again it's a lopsided approach.

We're left with this shortcoming in this map because the previous map ran roughshod over a provision in the state constitution which requires counties be kept whole unless a county can wholly contain another district. Unfortunately, this gives us wonky-looking districts which has Shannon County attached to the Bootheel, Sedalia and Lebanon in the same district anchored by Highway 65, and Boone County's Kurt Schaefer again switching his second county (now Cooper rather than Randolph or Howard). Compact and contiguous, which provides better proportional representation, is incompatible with this requirement.

The maps are marked tentative, and the commission is expected to meet March 9 to formally adopt the proposals. Although any changes would be just as chaotic as outright rejecting the map, at least switching 10 & 7 back would alleviate some headaches. After all, someone's going to have to move to Warrenton soon.

This situation also has me thinking outside the box, and I'm tempted to jabber about single transferable vote or party-list proportional representation. However, I'll save that rumination for a future post.

Lant To Pursue Vacant Seat In McDonald County

If it hasn't run already, portions of my interview with first-term Rep. Bill Lant will air later today, where Lant announces that he will pursue the new 159th District in McDonald County.

Lant, who currently lives outside Joplin and operates a feed store north of Seneca, was drawn into the same district as another first-term Republican, Bill Reiboldt of Neosho. Reiboldt, currently the vice-chairman of the agriculture committee, lives on his family's farm just outside Neosho, and the 160th district is centered on Neosho. Lant says that he owns land in McDonald County and has been planning to build a home there for some time.

The 159th will contain all of McDonald County as well as the Newton County communities of Seneca and Stella. (In fact, the new boundary between the two districts runs along Iris Road, just south of the feed store.) Previously, Neosho was grouped into the 130th district also containing Anderson, Goodman and South West City, wholly surrounded by the 131st district and the state boundary.

Under Missouri law, a representative is allowed to run for office in another district if he or she is forced out by redistricting. If elected, the representative would have one year to relocate. Already Andrew Koenig (R-Wincester), Jason Holsman (D-Kansas City) and now Jamilah Nasheed (D-St. Louis) have announced plans to run for vacant districts as a result of being grouped into new districts with other incumbents.

Additionally, Charlie Davis (R-Webb City) is said to be moving to a different part of Webb City as as a result of his placement in a district with Tom Loehner (R-Carthage). The line between the 162nd & 163rd districts is four blocks from Davis' house.

Brian Williams Chill Pill Needed

Brian Williams, who was once anchor at Joplin's KOAM-TV, displayed a most admirable sense of cool and collected composure when fire alarms blared during his live broadcast of NBC Nightly News this week, and likewise when he did spot reporting from his one-time home in the aftermath of last May's tornado.

If only I had that amount of cool this evening when I saw the new maps of the Missouri House and Senate districts. Fortunately, the Senate maps (outside St. Louis) allowed me to regain some composure and stop my neighbors from asking what the heck I was screaming about. Well, when something odd happens close to home, you're inclined to freak out:

This is the House district line between districts 16 (south) and 38 (north & east). In the northwestern corner is District 12, which will stretch from Platte City to Kearney.

You'd expect to see such sawtooth boundaries in urban districts, but we're not talking about two suburban districts. Because of the population distribution between the growing suburbs of Kansas City and the greying breadbasket of Northern Missouri, District 16 will consist of subdivisions ranging from Gashland and New Mark to Shoal Creek Valley and parts of North Brook, while District 38 will stretch from this area east to Excelsior Springs and Missouri City. However, the population of Liberty (the oldest municipality in the Kansas City area), is in for a shock.

After I gave up on using the state administration office's GIS tool, I downloaded the KML files for display in Google Earth, and the results were damning through Liberty.


This is Exit 17, the junction between Interstate 35 and Highway 291. At this point (OK, a few yards away owing to pre-Interstate road alignments) is the confluence of districts 16 (southwest), 17 (southeast) and 38 (northeast). This is where the boundary for 38 really gets screwy. A small subdivision across from Lewis & Clark Elementary is split along its lone, winding street. It then follows Gallatin down toward Ridgeway Road, heads south toward Fairview and then onto the Junior High.


This is downtown Liberty and one of its historic neighborhoods to the west. The red line decides to jog around, going east a block on Kansas, then south on Moss until it hits Liberty Drive, then east onto Mill until it becomes Richfield Drive at William Jewell. The square and college are in District 38; the Junior High and Franklin Elementary, District 17. Again, William Jewell is in a rural district with Excelsior Springs and Franklin Elementary is in a suburban district with Claycomo and Pleasant Valley.

From Richfield Road, the boundary goes south on Claywoods Parkway, the main north-south road through the Claywoods subdivisions. Until it hits this group of houses:


The district boundary breaks away to group the first two houses on Silverleaf Lane, then goes along the backyards of several houses until it reaches a home that has its back against the cul-de-sac on Crimson Lane. The boundary goes along the property lines, through the cul-de-sac, and then makes a due-south dash for the water treatment plant. Yes, that means two houses on Crimson Lane are in one suburban district, whilst the rest of the street is in the neighboring rural district.

I'm hearing stories of how as many as three incumbents could be pitted against each other for one seat (the new District 5 between Shelby, Marion and northern Monroe counties is coming to mind), but this meticulous buzzsaw through Liberty really got my blood boiling. And this could have been prevented had nine Republicans and nine Democrats been able to actually agree to something workable rather than stick with their own political endeavours.

Now, folks going door to door campaigning through Claywoods and Brooke Meadows will wind up cherry-picking doors as a result of oddly drawn lines.

Get the sheers out, folks. Just don't use them when you're on chill pills soon to be named for Brian Williams.

Fayetteville Finger, Meet Nolte's Notch

Being situated in Missouri's unofficial 118th County, naturally I've been keeping an eye on the redistricting efforts in the Natural State. Today, Arkansas's House approved a measure that would draw Fayetteville and southeastern Washington County into the Democrat-leaning Fourth Congressional District and out of the third, which currently is centered on the I-540 corridor. The vote went 52-46, with only one of Fayetteville's reps voting for the proposal.

So the talk of gerrymandering down here has giving me a sharpened set of eyes to review the proposed map that Missouri's House Redistricting Committee has placed on its Web site and discussed in earnest today. Naturally, the presumed "odd man out" Russ Carnahan joined with likely primary opponent William Clay in opposing the proposal to split St. Louis City and County among two districts. And with Missouri having to redraw to account for one less district, there will be plenty of fighting in the six weeks remaining in the General Assembly's session.

And while most of the state's focus will be on St. Louis (again, because a member of the Carnahan dynasty is pretty much the "odd man out"), lines have shifted considerably in the Western half of the state.

Consider the current setup of Kansas City and, by extension, the Athenian corridor better known as Highway 63: (derived from The National Atlas' map of Missouri's current delegations)

After the 2000 Census, Jackson County was split between three congressional districts, the bulk containing Kansas City in the Democrat-leaning fifth, a sliver in the stalwart fourth, and an increasingly conservative suburban region added to the expansive sixth. Columbia anchored the ninth district that covered Northeast Missouri and added counties along the northernmost reaches of the Ozarks.

Now, under the House's initial plan, we have this:

Lafayette, Ray, and Saline counties would be added to the fifth, and in exchange for losing Ike Skelton's stomping grounds, the fourth would receive Howard and Cooper counties from the sixth, plus Columbia in Boone County and the southern half of Randolph County, including all of Moberly. The remainder of the ninth would go to the sixth in the north and a new third district in the south. Miller County, which was originally at the edge of the district and jutting between the fourth and sixth, now becomes a critical retention point as the home county of incumbent Blaine Leuktemeyer. To that effect, Cole and most of Camden are added to this re-designated district.

The wonkiest drawings here, though, take place along the major byways of Kansas City's suburbs. With Jackson County's overall population showing little growth, adding Ike's core counties (traditionally Democrat) didn't do enough to bring the district's population up to snuff. Especially after the current portion in Cass County was moved to the fourth, as to ensure that incumbent Vicky Hartzler had the entirety of her home county. And with Eastern Jackson County solidly leaning Republican, placing them in the fifth would cause displeasure in their ranks, despite Sam Graves having to cross through the fifth to get there by car. So enter Clay County, a decent mix of suburbs to the south and west, farmland points north and east:


The line in red denotes the county line not marking the boundary between the two districts. Note that with Jackson to the south and Ray to the east, the fifth district would claim two significant population areas: Excelsior Springs and Lawson in the northeast corner, and several gentrified suburbs in the southwest. While these areas have historically leaned Democratic, this (as well as every other district being redrawn or not being redrawn for lack of enough population to warrant multiple districts in a state) guarantees nothing come November 2012.

Hence, labeling this convenient drawing of the line meandering through Jackson and Clay counties "Nolte's Notch", so named for State Representative and former Gladstone mayor Jerry Nolte. Nolte has generated plenty of attention with proposed this legislation this year, particularly his bills pegging the state's minimum wage to the federal minimum wage, requiring drivers tests to be administered in English, and eliminating the franchise tax over the next five years. Nolte, who is term-limited from the House after 2012, piqued the pundits' attention when he created an exploratory committee to look at a run for Congress when Graves was flirting at the prospect of challenging Claire McCaskill for the Senate.

Less than 24 hours after Nolte filed exploratory paperwork, Graves announced he would prefer staying in the House as chairman of the Committee on Small Businesses. When interviewed by Roll Call's Tricia Miller later that week, Nolte indicated that he would still consider a run for Congress if he happened to be going up against Emmanuel Cleaver, current representative from the fifth.

Cleaver, the AME preacher who was mayor of Kansas City from 1991 to 1999, received a scare from perennial Republican challenger Jacob Turk in 2010. Cleaver won re-election with only 53 percent of the vote, and now serves as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

So lo and behold: Nolte's Notch, encompassing North Kansas City, Gladstone, Claycomo, Gracemor and Birmingham. A chance for him or any Republican who didn't want to challenge Graves or Hartzler to take their aim on Cleaver, and by extension anything remotely to the left of them.

Of course, the Senate has yet to release their proposal, and both are subject to changes large and small as the next six weeks play out. And it's not yet known how the Blue Dog counties of Ray, Lafayette, and Saline would react to being represented by either a minority Democrat from the urban core or a suburbanite Republican from a county that backed Proposition B by a two-to-one margin. But if the House's plan were to hold firm, Missouri could end up with one Democrat out of eight in their House delegation. Presuming, rather prematurely, the chips fall the same way in 2012 the way they did in 2010.