State demographer Tom Gillaspy said, as it stands now, Minnesota’s “last seat” has fallen off the bottom of the Congressional roster, below Washington state’s 9th and California’s 53rd.
Here’s the upshot: Congress has been fixed at 435 seats for almost 100 years. Each state gets one Representative, and the other 385 are doled out proportionately. But the population - and the makeup of Congress - have been moving to the Sun Belt. Texas is likely to get four new seats, for example, and those seats have to come from somewhere else.
Minnesota’s “last district” (it could be any of the current eight) now stands 387th on the probable ranking that Gillaspy has drawn up.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that Minnesota is only about 1,800 people from making the list. That’s about two weeks of population growth in Minnesota. “It’s close,” Gillaspy told the legislators and political wonks who turned out for the discussion. “It’s closer than the Senate recount right now.”
And with exactly 16 months before Census Day (April 1, 2010), there’s still time to close the gap. Heck, there’s still time to even “grow your own,” if you were of a procreational mind about Congressional representation.
I think we’ve actually got a shot at this. Its supposed to be a cold winter this year (gotta stay warm somehow), and maybe the Vikings will make a playoff run. Now we just need slackers like Sean (you’ve been married for a while there Broom, time to get to work) to pull their weight. With a little luck, we’ll hold 8 seats for another decade.
If Minnesota should lose a seat, would anyone care to speculate as to the incumbent most likely to get the boot?
My vote would be for Ms. Bachman.
In the meantime, I will tell two of my recently married sons to get to work!
I would like to offer up the 6th District to Texas, Michelle would fit in well with the folks of the Republic of Texas. We would be better off without a seat, and Michelle. In fact, they can take her now.
Probably Oberstar. You’d basically see Peterson/Oberstar and Walz’s districts be merged into 2 congressional districts. My guess is that Oberstar is probably going to retire in 2012 anyways, so it shouldn’t make much of a difference.
Kline is from Texas, they are more than welcome to have him back, please!!!
They need to combine 2 and 6 as best as possible and put all the Republicans into one district. Put as much of the moderate part of CD2 into 1 with Walz, Dakota county on down. Take out as much as needed from CD1 on the west side of the state, give it to cd7. washington county in cd8.
Voila, 7 districts, 5-2 ratio with cd3 still a swing suburban district we can win in the future, giving us a 6-1 ratio with us having zero hope of winning that one cd as it’ll be R+10ish probably, if not more and centered around carver, scott, wright, sherburne, stearns and the other low population counties in the center of the state.
I know my parents will be happy to know that we’re doing our part to keep our seats!
Obviously both sides will want to gerrymander the lines in their favor.
Districts should be designed to represent the interests of the people they represent. There are approximately 5.2M people in Minnesota. Divided by 7 districts leaves around 740k in each. To truly represent the core people it’s obvious that Minneapolis and St Paul should be combined into 1 district. That would be around 650k which leaves only a couple inner ring suburbs with the core. You can then have 3 suburban districts and 3 outstate districts. If you try and leave Mpls & St Paul separate you’d have to combine them with a big chunck of outer suburbs.
Have Betty move to challenge Michelle - that would be an interesting race that Betty would have a good chance winning.
Those of us that are GLBTI, too old, etc.. can help out also- adopted kids count as much as “homegrown” ones. And we can adopt ‘em faster than we can grow ‘em- with only 16 months to go before the census we’ve only time for one “crop” of homegrown newborns. Better yet, if we adopt ‘em from a red state they may count twice!
Here are the Census Bureau’s population estimates for the state and each congressional district as of 2007:
State 5,197,621
MN-01 631,129
MN-02 718,904
MN-03 664,769
MN-04 604,862
MN-05 583,679
MN-06 733,283
MN-07 614,198
MN-08 646,797
The bad news is the fastest growing Districts in the state are also the most Republican and the slowest growing Districts are the most Democratic.
If Minnesota does lose a seat I think the 2 scenario’s that would make the most sense are;
- Carve up the 6th District. It borders 6 of the 7 other Districts (all but the 1st) so it would be relatively easy. Bachmann (who lives in Woodbury) could either be thrown in the 2nd with Kline or in the 4th vs McCullom. Either way she would be toast. Downside is it would make all the other Districts a little more Republican. No big deal in the 4th, 5th or 7th (as long is Peterson does not retire). It would make the 2nd and 3rd CD’s tougher for the Dems though.
- Combine Minneapolis and St Paul into one Cong District. This was part of the Republican plan in 2000 and I am sure they will be pushing for it again. From a purely non partisan point of view it does make some sense, with the declining populations of the urban areas it would make sense to cut a District there. Downside the Dems would lose a safe CD. Upside, the 2nd, 3rd and 6th CD’s would become more Dem with the addition of the inner ring suburbs.
Rural populations are declining at a more rapid rate than urban populations. And inner ring burbs have similar issues as the urban core. Keep 2 mostly urban districts - but make them more competitive - which would mean more attention to constituent service from the rep. As it is now, constituents get poor service in the urban area because there’s not enough competition.
Putting the cities together could be challenged as “packing”.
The gerrymandered sixth district is the one that needs to get chopped up.
“Rural populations are declining at a more rapid rate than urban populations”
According to Census Bureau the 4th and 5th CD’s are Minnesota’s least populated, not the rural Districts.
We’ll start making babies if Sean and Steph Broom start making babies!
I say split the 6th into two halves and each half goes with the 5th and 4th districts. There are enough liberals in the 4th and 5th to allow for a DFL win every time.
Simply because the two urban districts are the least populated does not mean that they have lost population faster than the rural districts have.
It just means that 10 years ago those districts were created with fewer residents than the rural ones — maybe in the expectation that they would have gained population (as Minneapolis has). Sean
Perhaps this discussion would also be well served by all of working to see that we get good census return numbers. In other words, get the people counted who are traditionally under-counted: immigrant populations, lower income folks, mobile home park denizens, and yes, rural residents.
If we think the congressional district seats could get bigger, don’t forget the state legislative districts. There are already two state house seats that are bigger than other states (20A & 6A in case you were wondering).
Agreed. Sean, why do you want us to lose a congressional seat? Why do you hate Minnesota?
Regardless, my understanding is that redistricting has to be passed by both state houses and then T-Paw has to sign it. All of these pipe dreams are crazy if you think T-Paw will sign them. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the majority party is going to have to create something fair and palatable to both parties, otherwise it will be decided by the courts. Minnpost.com has a good article on this.
The most interesting, reasonable, and seemingly palatable to all would be the idea that the 6th touches every single district except the 1st. How stupid is that. So, the 1st could get the southern sliver of the 2nd, and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th 7th and 8th could all absorb an equal share of the 6th. Seems fair enough. Both parties say incumbent address should have no bearing on redistricting. We’ll see.
I agree that the 6th needs to be carved up. Of the ideas here, I like MinnesotaMike’s 1st option in post #8 the best.
Here’s a thought. Carve new districts like you would a pie. The narrow part of the slice would be the inner cities, moving out to the burbs and rural MN as it gets wider. Then our congressional delegates can truly represent a cross section of the state. Betty McCollum would be forced to travel outside of St. Paul, Keith Ellison would have to campaign in areas that don’t look like North Minneapolis, Kline would have to talk to the poor, Peterson would have to talk to someone other than the Cargill Governmental Relations staff, Bachmann would have to talk to the mother of an incarcerated man, Paulson would have to ask people with only one Mercedes to vote for him, and Oberstar would have to put up a campaign sign. Everyone’s a winner because everyone would have to represent the state, not their district. However, I am under the influence of cold medicine, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
If you combine Minneapolis/St. Paul then you completely marginalize the minority voice. Right now, in general, white Minnesota has 6 people representing their interests, and people of color have two. Proportionally that may be about right. Cutting that down to one representative for minorities seems pretty wrong. Someone really has to think of those who have no political voice or privilege.
Thanks, Alec
If we lose a seat, it won’t result in two current districts being combined - that would result in one very large district and 6 small ones. The likely effect is that most district lines would be redrawn resulting in 7 districts all growing and one district would be absorbed. I would much rather have this happen when Democrats are in control of the line drawing.
The fun way to Gerrymander this would be to run a little line from downtown Minneapolis out to Michele Bachmann’s house - let’s see how long she can keep her seat in the 5th District!
leave the 1st CD alone!!! We finally have as great Rep. in Tim Walz who works for the people!
Get rid of the 6th!! Bachmann is useless anyway!!
#18 has a nice idea, but I doubt it will happen. Redistricting is a heck of a lot harder than most people think. Check out this game to get a better sense of how it works…It’s addicting. http://www.redistrictinggame.com/
MY wife and our 6 children are doing our best. If anyone wants swap a 7 bedroom 3 bath house for a 5 bedroom 2 bath house let me know, Insulating the treehouse is out of the question,