Will someone please tell Sacred Heart University political science professor Gary Rose that Stamford is doing just fine? (Oh, I just did.) Governor Malloy, Congressman Jim Himes and many other officials gathered this morning to announce a $10.5 million federal grant for Stamford’s transportation center. Good for Stamford. Rose, in an article below that appeared in the Stamford Advocate, says Stamford would do even better shifting Bridgeport into Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional District because it flies under the radar. What! Stamford’s former mayor is now the governor of the state. Stamford has one of the highest proportional grand lists on the planet. Stamford is blessed by location. It was just awarded $10.5 million. Flying under the radar? Don’t think so.
Legislators have until Wednesday to redraw the state’s congressional districts to reflect population changes revealed in the latest census.
But legislators from both parties seem more interested in redrawing the districts to reflect politics.
To improve their chances of winning races in the 4th Congressional District, Republicans want to take out Bridgeport, the state’s largest city and a Democratic enclave, and move it to the 3rd Congressional District.
That might not be good for Bridgeport, which would share the 3rd District–and federal funding–with New Haven, the state’s second-largest city and another Democratic enclave, said Professor Gary Rose, chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at Sacred Heart University and author of a new book, “Connecticut Government and Politics: An Introduction.”
“You can bring only so much bacon back to the district, and if you have to spread it between Bridgeport and New Haven, that would be spreading it thin,” Rose said.
But it could be good for Stamford, which might get more attention from Washington, D.C., with Bridgeport out of the 4th. Need in Bridgeport, one of the poorest cities in the United States, is more pervasive than in Stamford, which has many poor and working poor but also a concentration of wealth.
“If Bridgeport moves, Stamford will be a little more on the radar screen as a city that has many needs, whereas now it is kind of under the radar compared with Bridgeport,” Rose said. “When legislators bring pork back to the 4th District, Stamford would not be sharing it with Bridgeport. Stamford would become the largest urban enclave in the 4th District.”
It would be welcome news for Stamford residents, who have long complained that the needs of the city are disguised by a small but very wealthy percentage of the population and the high cost of living, driven by the exorbitant cost of real estate.
But the Republican plan probably won’t survive, Rose said.
“It’s quite radical to take a big city and move it,” he said. “Besides that, the Republicans want to extend part of the 4th District into the 5th District to bring more Republican voters into the 4th. It’s such a bold attempt at gerrymandering. I mean, gerrymandering is supposed to be subtle.”
Little has been subtle about the work of the Reapportionment Commission. The four Democrats and four Republicans on the commission agreed on redrawing the 187 state House and Senate districts pretty quickly but are wrangling over the five U.S. Congressional districts.
Democrats, happy with the Congressional map of Connecticut, a historically blue state, made few changes, saying the census showed that the population changed little. But Republicans saw an opportunity to create a district, the 4th, that would elect GOP candidates.
To help reach a compromise, the commission added a ninth member as arbitrator. So far it hasn’t helped. The state Supreme Court extended the commission’s deadline to Wednesday, and if members don’t agree by then, the court will draw the new Congressional map.
It might not end there. If legislators don’t like the state court’s map, they can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Anticipating a fight, Democrats and Republicans retained lawyers.
But there’s a movement among Connecticut voters that could minimize the Republican effort to redraw the map, Rose said.
The district’s Republican havens–Greenwich, Darien, New Canaan, Wilton, Redding and others–are watering down, he said.
“I’ve been monitoring this. The suburbs are in transition,” Rose said. “Republicans can still do well in them, but not as well as they once did. It’s been incremental–nothing that’s been glaringly apparent from one election to the next–but the suburbs are moving into the Independent column and the Democratic column.”
Information from the secretary of the state shows that, in 2001, 29 percent of voters in the 4th District were registered as Republicans, Rose said. By 2008 it had dropped to 25 percent. At the same time, the number of registered Democrats increased from 33 percent to 35 percent, he said.
“If you break down voter registrations in the 17 communities of the 4th District, it’s even more telling,” Rose said.
The number of registered Republicans in Greenwich, for example, dropped from 43 percent in 2001 to 38 percent in 2008, he said. During that time the number of Democrats increased 5 percentage points.
The drop in the number of registered Republicans in Darien was more pronounced–from 57 percent in 2001 to 49 percent in 2008, he said. The number of Democrats increased 3 percentage points and the number of unaffiliated voters rose slightly more.
In the GOP bastion of New Canaan, the number of registered Republicans fell from 54 percent in 2001 to 49 percent in 2008, and the number of Democrats increased 4 percentage points, Rose said.
“It has to do with the fact that moderate, white wealthy Republicans are looking at the party and having a difficult time identifying with the people running for president, and with the theme of the party,” Rose said. “It’s the so-called ‘Southernization’ of the party that started in the 1960s and was accelerated by Ronald Reagan. It means that the evangelical Christians and social and moral issues are becoming paramount. But in this district, people are saying, ‘I feel closer to a moderate Democrat than to that Republican.'”
So all the wrangling over the Congressional map may be moot if voters are in the middle of what Rose calls “a very quiet realignment.”
Professor Rose said “gerrymandering is supposed to be subtle.”
Political sodomy is rarely subtle.
The word “gerrymander” is a reflection of that.
A state senatorial district in Massachusetts was drawn to benefit the political party of Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812. Someone said it looked like a salamander. Some other wiseacre said it was a “Gerry-mander.” Hence the word.
Doesn’t sound very subtle.
The gerrymander of the proposed Fourth Congressional District comes down to this: Do you want competitive congressional elections or not? In the current Fourth, you have a competitive seat. The current Third is Democratic but could swing. With Bridgeport in the Third it will not swing.
Organized political parties do not like competitive elections. If Dems have to throw over the Fourth CD in Connecticut to the Repubs, it may be a fair trade to secure the First, Second, Third, and Fifth.
As bad as the Connecticut situation looks, it is almost subtle compared to what has happened in other places. Compared to what Vinnie Roberti did to the state representative map in Bridgeport in the 1980s, the new lines in the Fourth ARE subtle.
Re: Steal Point. Interesting op-ed piece one day last week in the Hartford Courant by Tom Condon. He was commenting on what a fine development Harbor Point is in Stamford. Fairway Market anchoring one portion with other mixed commercial and residential coming to fruition. Must be nice to have elected officials who actually serve their community.
Asking Marcie Patton, who took over Dr. John Orman’s position as head of the political science department at Fairfield U wouldn’t work with the press. You know, her being a woman and all.
*** This is OIB not OIS, okay! ***