My congressman, Ryan Costello, is well-respected in my community. He’s a local boy who did good. He knows he represents a district that voted for Obama once and for Hillary Clinton. He doesn’t throw bombs and keeps away from right-wing media. He casts an occasional dissenting vote. He tries to sound reasonable about immigration policy. He opted out of attending Trump’s convention in Cleveland because of concerns about his behavior and rhetoric. It’s all sensible behavior for someone who most definitely represents a swingy district. His predecessor, Jim Gerlach, survived some rough election cycles using the same basic playbook.
But Costello has been acting weird lately. He was supposed to be at the softball practice where his colleague Steve Scalise was shot and almost killed, but he missed his ride. After that, he became less accessible. He refused to attend a town hall meeting in Phoenixville, explaining implausibly that the sponsors’ inadequate security had created a death trap. Then he collapsed at the local gym when he read the headlines about it in the local newspaper.
Then in January, he totally freaked out when a couple of canvassers came to his house and talked to his wife. He accused his likely opponent in the next election, Democrat Chrissy Houlahan, of sending the canvassers to his house in order to intimidate his family.
During the weekend, Costello wrote on Facebook that a “disturbing” political incident had taken place at his house. He claimed that two “associates” of Houlahan had gone onto his property on Saturday, snapped pictures of his home, and intimidated his wife. “Families should always be off limits,” he said. “We were able to get some footage of the incident and hope these individuals will be apprehended.”
It turned out that they hadn’t taken any pictures or mistreated his wife. They were just out doing normal canvassing work for Planned Parenthood.
I’ve tried to be at least a little sympathetic to Costello, understanding that his near-death experience might be traumatizing him a bit. But he’s kind of gone around the bend now that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has redrawn his district to include two heavily Democratic cities (West Chester and Reading), which puts his political future very much in doubt. He’s actually calling on the Republican-controlled state legislature to impeach members of the Supreme Court:
“It was a politically corrupted process instituted by a highly partisan state Supreme Court which has now put itself squarely in line for a very valid impeachment,” said U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello, a Chester County Republican whose district suddenly includes Reading and some surrounding suburbs…
… Costello said the state Supreme Court’s Democratic majority acted in blatantly partisan fashion.
“They did this to elect more Democrats,” Costello said. “There is nothing fair or impartial about this. It was just ruthless politics.”
He encouraged the state legislators to impeach the Supreme Court.
“If they (overstep) now, they will do it on other matters,” Costello said.
In a piece I wrote on Valentine’s Day, I basically agreed with Costello that this was a blatantly partisan move that invented the idea that gerrymandered districts violate the state Constitution. But I also pointed out this is the type of thing the Republicans have been doing all over the country without the slightest conscience or remorse.
In the end, Pennsylvania elects its Supreme Court judges which has turned the Court into a kind of legislature. Even appointed judges act in a highly partisan way in this day and age. And the state’s Supreme Court gets to decide what is constitutional and what is not. I guess they thought that gerrymandering has gotten too proficient in the computer age, which is their right to conclude. I know they wouldn’t have concluded that if it would have benefitted the Republicans, which is why the Court just diminished itself and lost respect and deference from half the state. The U.S. Supreme Court decided the same trade-off was worth it in Bush v. Gore. But it’s not an impeachable offense to throw away your reputation for impartiality and invite people to deny you the deference they’ve given you in the past.
Costello already seemed to be coming unhinged, but this is the first time he’s really sounded flat-out crazy. And, while this case may be confined to Pennsylvania, the way the Republicans have pushed the envelope with gerrymandering has invited a massive backlash nationwide which is now winding its way up the U.S. Supreme Court. The conservatives have a majority on that court, but they may not side with the Republicans this time. If they don’t, it will be because even they can’t deny what the Pennsylvania court concluded, which is that the GOP has gone too far.
And yet the districts drawn fit all of the required criteria, and are actually fair. It gives Dems a chance of 9 seats in a state that is now essentially 50/50, but under neutral environments this would be unlikely. Well, would have been. Maybe there’s a new normal that was underfoot anyway. In any case, if they can’t draw a fairer map they can shut up. And the evidence continues to mount that they can’t do it in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin either.
If they really want to play this game, it is technically possible for Democrats to draw 53-0 in California. Are they game for that?
“Dems…53-0 in California”
Now that’s the sort of thing Roberts’ Repubs would find unconstitutional !
Hardball is not a game Dems play, however.
“[I]t is technically possible for Democrats to draw 53-0 in California.”
Not any more. The California Legislature no longer has control of redistricting. The California Citizens Redistricting Commission has had control of the process since 2010. They won’t draw a partisan map like that.
Oh of course, I think these commissions along with academics and a transparent showing of maps is the way to go. Besides, Democrats never gerrymander to entrench their political power per se, but entrench incumbency. They would never do what Republicans do even if they could.
Except in Illinois, for example.
IL isn’t that bad GOP has about 38% of the districts and Trump won about 38% of the vote in IL
People look at that weird district that looks like a “C” but that district actually connects to majority Latino areas of Chicago to make that a district a majority Latino district (the only one in the state).
The swing after the 2010 Census was primarily due to the Republicans gerrymandering efforts previously
Or Maryland, where we are also facing litigation for gerrymandering in favor of Dems. Of course, we are a pretty small state, so mostly no one is all that concerned.
The NC gerrymandering case of course has the potential to be one of the great landmark decisions, either enshrining Repub election-rigging as constitutionally protected or mandating fairly drawn districts nationwide, which would restore some measure of confidence in the currently rigged system and hurt only the party that has elected to base its power on one cheat after another. It’s all up to the weak link in Roberts’ Repubs, Kennedy.
Congressman Costello’s career relied upon the Repub gerrymander being ever more refined and unchallengeable, so of course he’s gone off the deep end when sensible government practices (i.e. legislative districts having some municipal and geographic logic) are mandated. Note that he doesn’t provide a substantive rejoinder, as the left did ad nauseum with Bush v Gore. As we can see from Costello’s statements, it’s only deemed “partisan” when/if the Dems respond to a grotesque (Repub) abuse.
But just as with Brown v Board, the courts are the only plausible means by which the (almost exclusively Repub) practice can be stopped, since by its very operation gerrymandering (refined by Repubs block by block) renders “democracy” impotent to correct the abuse and hold the abusing political party accountable. The people cannot break the (intentional) logjam.
A responsible national legislature could on its own refuse to seat the “winners” from intentionally gerrymandered states, but that is an institution we have never aspired to develop. And with the Repub party as a national “partner”, we never can….
“I basically agreed with Costello that this was a blatantly partisan move that invented the idea that gerrymandered districts violate the state Constitution.”
You did agree with Costello. You were wrong.
Thirty-two years ago, in Davis v. Bandemer, a badly fractured US Supreme Court held that political gerrymandering could violate the federal constitution’s equal protection clause, but the Indiana plan in front of them did not do so. In the opinion, the Court noted, “we have also repeatedly stated that districting that would “operate to minimize or cancel out the voting strength of racial or political elements of the voting population” would raise a constitutional question”(Emphasis in original) – quoting from a 1965 case.
So – for over 70 years, the US Supreme Court has acknowledged that a political gerrymander could violate the US constitution.
The protections afforded by the Penn Constitution to voting rights are even stronger than those granted by the US Constitution.
When you say the Pa Supreme Court “invented” this idea, you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s disappointing, not to say offensive.
The Article 1 Section 5 argument that the PA SC found persuasive seems pretty damn clear.
The very purpose of partisan gerrymandering is to devalue the voting power of some voters and enhance the voting power of others. The constitution demands free and equal elections. Deliberate partisan gerrymandering flies in the face of that requirement.
It might have taken a partisan supreme court to reach this obviously correct decision but that’s not an indictment of the winning side, it’s an indictment of the dissenters.
Contrast this to Bush v Gore which was utterly indefensible under any plausible interpretation of the equal protection clause- and even if one were to charitably accept the bogus equal protection argument the court prevented the state from complying and simply declared a winner without the thinnest pretense of a legal rationale.
Comparing the two decisions is ludicrous.
you can keep humping a 70 year old comment in a Supreme Court case that ruled the other way, but I know how I’d view it if the PA GOP used the court to rewrite our districts. the only standard under which this is okay is the one that says the GOP took things too far and got what was coming to them. The SCOTUS may conclude the same.
But the very fact that we have partisan redistricting and always have shows that it has never been considered inherently unconstitutional to draw districts to your own advantage. If we want to start that now, fine, but the PA SC never, ever, in a million years would have done this if it hurt the Democrats. And that’s the plain truth of the matter.
You can keep pretending that the court’s benign neglect toward partisan redistricting was an endorsement back before the big data era when it was artisanal small-batch disenfranchisement that only moved a few percentage points. Modern gerrymandering techniques are a direct assault on representative democracy. Technology has produced an obvious state change in the effectiveness of gerrymandering and the PA supreme court responded appropriately.
I agree that gerrymandering grew too effective for its own good.
What I don’t agree with is that the PA SC would have done anything about it if the Dems had drawn the districts after the 2010 census. This was a self-interested partisan ruling that has some intrinsic merit.
Politicians have been selecting their own voters in House and state and local races forever. If you want to argue that this never should have been okay, I’ll agree with you. But it’s hardly something new that somehow violates the Constitution. When courts step in like this, there is a giant cost.
Sometimes, like on civil rights or reproductive rights, you can’t wait around forever for the legislatures to do the right thing, but there’s always a cost.
. . . to violate the Constitution? Why can’t it be a longstanding, ongoing constitutional violation that had just never been adjudicated until now? (Which, in fact looks to me to be the case.)
You assert that this decision comes at the cost of PASC credibility to half the electorate. You’re wrong on that if the half you refer to are Republicans because credibility for any Democrat anywhere including judges, for any reason is not granted by them from the start. All we really have is the written decision itself and it’s pretty airtight. If GOP reps try to impeach the PASC, is their argument going to be, “You guys would’ve kept the map if it favored Democrats!” I suppose it will be. If they succeed, half the electorate will perceive the impeachment to be blatantly partisan and political. The difference is, they’ll be fine with that, because they know how to take “yes” for an answer.
I live in a state with a citizen led redistricting commission. There is a certain amount of horse trading that goes on to make this or that district a little more right or left, but over all it adheres to the compact, contiguous and equal doctrine. I live in a county that not long ago went from 3 districts to 5 via a referendum. I sat in on the nuts and bolts of making the districts to comply with the maps the voters agreed to. I gotta say, the Republicans on the commission were vile and mean-spirited in their attempts to bully the Dems into letting them have their way. They didn’t succeed because the Dems could refer to the map the voters approved over and over and over until the Republicans had to relent.
No part of me agrees with BooMan on this. I think the PS SC righted a wrong by allowing a non-partisan professional to generate new maps. That’s how we did it. It forces both parties to work harder to win elections instead of becoming entrenched and relying on bad maps to keep a thumb on the scale.
The problem with non-partisan professionals is that they don’t exist.
That is demonstratively not true. I encounter non-partisan people in all walks of life on a regular basis. The guy who drew our map never even thought about politics before he was hired. He was a map and data guy. He had no idea how any of what he was doing would affect electoral outcomes. He needed to get the numbers right. Period. That is all he was asked to do. That is all he did.
Ah but who chooses the choosers?
Both sides. Everyone had to agree on a technician. He was chosen because he was known by all parties to be impartial.
Oh. Are you asking how were the people who served on the committee chosen? They volunteered and no one objected.
The sheer number of boobs, half wits and mountebanks who gain American office and/or public exposure on the right boggles the mind.
First, a style point you may or may not care about: When writing about the United States Supreme Court, the rule is to capitalize the “S” in “Supreme” and the “C” in Court. But when writing about a state supreme court, you do not capitalize. At least, that’s how judges and lawyers roll.
Second, the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction over state supreme court cases that interpret state constitutional law. An exception is if the state court decision directly contradicts federal constitutional law. That’s a stretch here, and a very big one, which means I doubt the Supreme Court will stretch the rubber band until it snaps. They already had a chance to intervene once, and Alito(!) turned the state GOP down.
Mr. Dooley once said that he didn’t know if the Supreme Court read the newspapers, but they surely read the election returns. That is still true today, and I doubt they’ll touch this, instead declining for want of jurisdiction.
Nitpick: Here in Massachusetts the usage I see commonly is to cap the state’s Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court (not to be confused with the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals).
Lulz.
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