New districts are reason enough to vote 'em all out

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania are apparently not fans of the classic rock band, "Yes." If they were, they would have encountered the great line in the early 1970s song, "Your Move," which says, "Don't surround yourself with yourself."
The new redistricting maps for Pennsylvania congressional seats, drafted by state Republicans, appear to do everything they can to further separate traditionally Republican voting areas from those consisting mainly of Democrats.
These gerrymandered districts, while ridiculously shaped and spaced in the eastern part of the state, hit home last week in our area as we learned the new configurations for the 5th and 3rd districts, now represented by Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Howard) and Mike Kelly (R-Butler), respectively.
Thompson's 5th District has been hard-core Republican for many years, while Kelly's 3rd District has been much more evenly balanced between Republican and Democratic voters. That district is usually considered "winnable" by either party, with Kelly defeating Democrat Kathy Dahlkemper two years ago, after Dahlkemper bested Republican Phil English two years before that.
Now, with the new districts, the state Republican leaders tilted the 3rd District advantage to their own party, stripping away a portion of the more-Democrat Erie County and giving it to the 5th District, and adding the heavily Republican southern Clarion County to the 3rd District.
For the first time in recent memory, Clarion County will be split and represented by two congressmen in the U.S. House, thanks mainly to the desire to help Kelly fend off any Democrat challengers next year. The added portion of Erie County, also now split between two districts, won't impact Thompson's re-election chances much at all, as the Democrats that are added to the 5th District by the move are still not enough to offset the already huge Republican margins in the district.
On the state level, our area escaped major damage in the redrawn House and Senate districts - but Pennsylvanians in the Southeast have legitimate complaints, and those around Harrisburg should be yelling.
You would think that this intentional restructuring of districts based more on party politics than on what is best for those being represented would be kept quiet and denied by those in charge. But that's not the case. State Republicans have been very open that their desire in creating the new districts was to help Republican incumbents and to pit Democrat against Democrat to the south of us where the districts of current Congressmen Jason Altmire and Mark Critz have been merged.
As the Grand Old Party manufactures better odds in next year's election, residents of these districts, however, will suffer from the patchwork job that was done. The shapes of the districts have become more stretched out, snake-like, wrapping around portions of other districts, and in some cases, unnecessarily splitting individual communities in the name of party.
This fracturing based on how we identify ourselves at the polls has no winners other than those incumbents and career politicians who now find it easier to keep their jobs. And it's endemic of this nation's view right now that those who think differently from us should be shunned; that we should, in fact, surround ourselves with ourselves, forgoing any benefits that a diversity in ideas and beliefs can create.
This latest move is just one more reason in a long list of reasons why we are increasingly frustrated with state and national politics, and why we are more and more likely to endorse voting against any and all incumbents next year. Things must change; we must elect those who can find ways to work alongside, and represent, people who are different than themselves.
So the question becomes: Will we have new candidates in 2012 so that we can vote out the incumbents who boggled this fundamental task?