Iolans could have a new senator and a new representative in the Kansas Legislature as a result of the redistricting decisions announced Thursday evening by three federal judges.
Rep. Bill Otto now is in new House District 76 along with two other incumbents, Reps. Peggy Mast of Emporia and Willie Prescott of Osage City.
Sen. Jeff King of Independence was put in in new Senate District 15 along with Sen. Dwayne Umbarger of Thayer.
Since neither the House nor the Senate district existed in the daylight hours Thursday, no one had filed in them from either party. The filing deadline is noon Monday.
This means Allen County is in brand new legislative districts which don’t have the power of incumbency, for whatever that is worth in legislative battles.
It also means that new Senate District 12 will not be dominated by any of its cities. It is made up of all or parts of Franklin, Miami, Allen, Anderson, Linn and Bourbon counties. Ottawa is the largest city in the new district. Iola will gain stature. Fort Scott is left out and becomes the northernmost city of size in District 13.
The new district is as homogenous as the judges could have made it; it complies with the principle that legislative districts should share commonality of interests.
That said, the new senate district means that Kansas will lose the energy, wisdom and political balance of either Jeff King or Dwayne Umbarger. These two moderate Republicans may face each other in the upcoming primary or one may decide to seek some gentler way to spend the coming four years. In either case, the state will lose the services of an outstanding man.
The new House map puts Rep. Otto in newly created District 76, which extends to the west and north. Allen County is now in House District 9, which also includes Chanute. One can assume that aspiring candidates from our two cities, which have have battled each other on athletic playing fields since the beginning of Kansas, will now find themselves contending for the title of Representative.
Those with such ambitions have until noon Monday to take the plunge.
THE LEGISLATURE couldn’t do its own redistricting because Gov. Sam Brownback and his supporters stubbornly insisted on a new map which would pit right-wing candidates against moderate Republicans, while the challenged incumbents just as stubbornly resisted this effort to defeat them, resulting in the stalemate which passed the buck to the courts.
As it turned out, the judges’ map ignored gerrymandering proposals from both sides and none of the targeted incumbents found themselves in the districts with their hand-picked opponents.
Moderates, however, lost in their effort to keep Manhattan and its Democrats in the Second Congressional District. The judges moved that poplulation into the Big First district to make up for the continuing loss of population in the western plains.
All in all, the new boundaries make sense. The populaton variance among the new districts is far less than any proposed by the self-concerned members of the Legislature. The new set of incumbents will probably discover in 2020 that redistricting after that census will be a snap.
They can make certain that is the case by proposing and fighting for a constitutional amendment which gives a bipartisan commission the authority to redistrict and establishes guidelines so that the job is done with the people of Kansas in mind, rather than its power-hungry partisans.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
