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Cut and dried
The State Senate redistricting plans coming out of Richmond keep getting stranger and stranger, and the latest one cuts Rappahannock in two, leaving us hanging out to dry for another decade.
Everyone acknowledged that the first plan, which put all of Rappahannock County into Democrat Sen. Thomas Michie’s 25th Senatorial District, was “dead on arrival” at the governor’s office since it did not create enough majority black districts. Sure enough, Gov. Douglas Wilder vetoed the proposal.
The next plan barely squeaked through the senate. It put Rappahannock back into Republican Sen. Kevin Miller’s 26th Senatorial District. It also provided for five majority black districts. However, it did not give Northern Virginia its expected 10 senate seats, and it was widely viewed as favoring the Republican minority.
The governor is preparing to put before the General Assembly next week a series of amendments to that plan whicfy are to be voted on as a whole.
From Rappahannock’s point of view, this is the worst plan so far. Not only does it split Rappahannock between two senSite seats, when there is no need to split a county of only 6,622 people, but it also gives us the choice of redoing the local redistricting process or leaving the voting process a hash in 1991, 1995, and again in 1999 when the members of the state senate are up for reelection.
We hope these amendments will be defeated and that the state senators will go back to the drawing board.
We would prefer to be in Sen. Michie’s district. As a member of the majority party, he stands a greater chance of having his views considered. Over the years he has also shown a willingness to listen to the views of local governments.
During the past eight years Sen. Miller has shown a cavalier disregard for the views of his constituents east of the Blue Ridge. That’s a consequence of his power base being in the valley.
But any plan that does not dilute Rappahannock’s already-limited influence by splitting its vote between two senate districts would be better than the one we’re getting.
If federal law requires that the General Assembly redistrict before the election that follows the national Census, then the Census data needs to get to the localities in time for them to complete their redistricting, including the U.S. Department qf Justice’s review process, before the assembly begins its own redistricting. Then the legislature would be using current local district lines.
Since census was supposed to show who was living where on April 1, 1990, the data should surely have been available for local redistricting before the spring of 1991.
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