Parties Prepping for Redistricting Fight

[ccharles000]

First in a two-part series: A look at Republicans' efforts to prepare for redistricting will run Tuesday.
Republicans and Democrats are already organizing and strategizing for their decennial battle over Congressional redistricting, with a decade’s worth of elections hanging in the balance.

While the fight over conducting the census is expected to take center stage over the next year and a half, partisans on both sides of the aisle are keenly aware of what is at stake in the post-2010 redrawing of district boundaries.

Democrats thus far appear to have the upper hand over their GOP counterparts in terms of behind-the-scenes planning for the fight, perhaps a result of the fact that the party lost the overall battle in the last round of redistricting.

Democrats are also now in control of Congress and the White House, which was not the case at the time of the last redraw, and they will no doubt look to the upcoming effort to help cement, and grow, their majority.

Former Rep. Tom Davis (Va.) was deeply involved in the last redistricting as head of the National Republican Congressional Committee from 1999 through 2002.

“They were sleeping last time,” Davis said of Democrats. “They slept through this stuff. I think they’ve gone to school on what we did.”

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/54_132/politics/34992-1.html?type=printer_friendly

[struggle4progress]

1. The 2010 elections are really important!

[sharp_stick]

2. Finally I can look at

gerrymandering and laugh my ass off. I really hope to see the odd repuke district about 100 yards wide and 124 miles long.

[struggle4progress]

3. My goal is nice compact districts, each about 20% Republican