Lawyers, partisans debate legislative districts

While U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann was exiting the presidential race in Iowa on Wednesday, lawyers in St. Paul debated the outlines of her current and future congressional district, and whether she will have to fight for that seat with another sitting member of Congress.Bachmann, R-Stillwater, in her third term representing Minnesota's 6^th Congressional district, has not said whether she will seek a fourth term now that she is no longer a presidential candidate. A special redistricting panel of judges appointed by the Minnesota Supreme Court heard final oral arguments from lawyers who want to influence the panel's decision on redrawing congressional and legislative districts to conform to population shifts discovered in the 2010 census.One of the proposals – the plan backed by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party – would re-draw the current 4^th Congressional district to include residences of both the district's incumbent, U.S. Rep Betty McCollum, D-St. Paul, and Bachmann. Lawyer Eric Magnuson, representing a rival plan supported by Republicans, said of the Democratic plan: "It pairs the only two female congresswomen in Minnesota."
That does not mean Bachmann and McCollum are headed for a showdown. The map that puts them in the same district is but one of several proposals being considered by the five-judge panel. If DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature do not reach an agreement on new district lines, the panel will issue their maps by Feb. 21. At that point, political activists, partisans and elected officials will scramble to prepare to run in the new districts in November.An agreement by Dayton and the Legislature is unlikely. Redistricting plans passed the House and Senate with all-Republican votes in 2011 and were vetoed by the DFL governor.The panel, presided over by Judge Wilhelmina Wright of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, heard from Magnuson, a former Supreme Court Chief Justice now in private law practice, who argued on behalf of the Republican plan; Marc Elias and David Lillehaug, lawyers representing the Democratic plan; and lawyer Alan Weinblatt, representing a third plan. The hearing comes near the end of a lengthy process that has included multiple court filings by the parties and public hearings around the state.New district maps are needed every ten years to account for population shifts, and to ensure that the districts encompass roughly numbers of people. Magnuson defended maps and plans based on those passed by the Republican Legislature, saying they are an attempt to meet criteria set out by the redistricting panel.One key element of the Republican congressional plan is that rural districts stretch border to border from east-to-west, which Magnuson said is an "inevitability due to population shifts.'' He said these maps seek to avoid unnecessarily dividing cities and protecting "communities of interest,'' including tribal lands, border communities and other federal lands in the proposed 8^th Congressional District in the north.Magnuson critiqued rival plans to attempt to knit together disparate suburban communities. "The first girl I dated seriously lived in West St. Paul,'' he said. "I went to Osseo High School. The relationship didn't work.''Elias, critiquing the way Republicans drew the suburban 3^rd Congressional district, said if Magnuson had been living in Edina and dating a woman who lived in McLeod County to the west, "he would have found that even more unbearable." Both are in the Republicans' 3^rd Congressional District.He accused the Republicans of "gerrymandering" in order to lock in gains from the 2010 election and said the courts should not, in effect, overturn Dayton's veto by agreeing to the Republican plan. He said the DFL plan more closely "reflects the actual testimony of voters" from the panel's public hearings.Weinblatt encouraged the panel to "be judges, not politicians," and he called the east-west alignment of districts in the Republican plan "radical surgery.''