Views
Opinion column
by Murrel Bland
The way Tom Burroughs sees it, the congressional redistricting map, approved by the Kansas Senate Friday, Jan. 21, soon will sail through the Republican-dominated House of Representatives.
Burroughs, is the Democratic state representative from the 33rd District, which includes southwestern Wyandotte County. He is upset that the map splits Wyandotte County into two congressional districts along I-70. The area south of I-70 would be in the 3rd District; the area north would be in the 2nd District.
Such a map would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for a Democrat to be elected to Congress from Kansas. It could mean that U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids would lose her seat. In an interview with MSNBC, Davids said of the Republican efforts, “If you can’t beat them, cheat them.”
Burroughs attended 14 hearings on redistricting throughout Kansas last summer. He said that overwhelmingly, most people at the hearings favored keeping Wyandotte County in one congressional district.
Burroughs predicted that Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, would veto map legislation. That would probably mean the lines then would be drawn by a federal judge as it was in 2012. That would mean that an unelected person would be doing the job that the Kansas Legislature should have done.
Dinah Sykes, the minority leader in the Kansas Senate, said the redistricting bill violated several redistricting guidelines agreed to by legislative leadership.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Wyandotte County was split into two Congressional Districts. Republican Larry Winn was from the 3rd District; Dr. Bill Roy and Martha Keys were both Democrats from the 2nd District. The advantage was having two people, one Republican and one Democrat, serving the same county.
There was an “alternative map” in the Kansas Senate proposed by Dennis Pyle, a senator from the 1st District, which is in far northeastern Kansas. Pyle proposed keeping Wyandotte County whole in the 2nd congressional district, which also includes Douglas, Shawnee and Riley counties.
State Sen. David Haley, who represents northeast and central Wyandotte County, said he voted for the Pyle map. He said Pyle, although a Republican, tends to be an independent thinker.
Murrel Bland is a former editor of The Wyandotte West and The Piper Press. He is an advisory director of Business West.
First of all, BOTH political parties have always used the reapportionment process every ten years to bolster their respective party’s electoral prospects. Secondly, according to a study by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report (no association with the Republican Party), Democrats stand to increase the number of Democrat-leaning U.S. House districts with this current cycle of reapportionment. If a number of those districts still elect a Republican this Fall, it has more to do with the atrocious job a certain resident at 1600 Pennsylvania is doing and not with how majority Republican state legislatures are drawing congressional maps. As for me, I’d like to see whoever is the 3rd District rep represent the interests of 3rd District constituents and not as a proxy vote for Nancy Pelosi and/or voting 90%+ of the time with The Squad and their ilk. Time for Democrats to stop clutching their pearls and feigning heart palpitations about “the death of democracy”.
As in many political issues of the day, most only know what they are told or read. They don’t look at the issue clear eyed without bias. I really don’t care to stay in the district that has always been up in the air as to who they would vote for. Now Wyandotte county has been a Democrat strong hold for as long as I have lived here. So that mean that I have no representative for my political stance in state government or local government. Johnson county has a lot of what I call republicrates they are not true Republicans and certainly not conservative in their thinking. So in this new map Wyandotte is broken up and Johnson county gets added to an enlarged 3rd district by area. I will be in the new 2nd district who I identify with more than Johnson county. Now if the Democrats who are screaming about this not being fair, would fix the unfair lines for the council and get me out of the district ruled by the NE part of town.