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Post on June 29, 2011 by 4 Comments »

Republicans say their proposed new congressional district lines will be released Friday and rumors persist that the likely partisan gerrymandering will put some Democratic incumbents in the same districts and create other districts that current Democratic members of Congress will find impossible to win.

That’s a far cry from the fair districts the Republicans promised and of course violates the spirit of the independent redistricting process that Republicans clamored so loudly for when they were in the minority.

A story in the Mountain Express in Asheville seems to indicate that Democrat Heath Shuler doesn’t think his district will fare too well.

Shuler is reportedly considering the athletic director’s job at the University of Tennessee, where he was a star quarterback 20 years ago.

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Comments (Closed):4

  1. Sean D Sorrentino
    June 29, 2011 at 6:19 am

    #1. With Obama on the ticket dragging Dems down, it might be a good idea to exit the political stage.
    #2. Isn’t it too bad that the Dems didn’t pass the non-partisan redistricting law last year? Oh, well, 10 years of suffering in the wilderness isn’t too high a price to pay for 100 years of gerrymandering the opposition out of a chance. Maybe it will help you endure it if you think of it as “Affirmative Action.”

  2. Chris Fitzsimon
    June 29, 2011 at 6:23 am

    Yes, the Democrats should have passed a non-partisan redistricting law when they were in power as we wrote many times during the last few years. Republicans sponsored the bill and we praised them for it, Now, their answer and yours it seems, is that it is ok for them to break their promise about gerrymandering because the Democrats did it too.

    It is also worth noting that more people in North Carolina approve of the job Obama is doing than disapprove. Even the Civitas polls show that.

  3. Just Desserts
    June 29, 2011 at 9:33 am

    “Partisan Gerrymandering”? You mean like Brad Miller’s personally drawn district? Or the fact that Charlotte and Wake County are cracked into 3 districts each? Not to mention the minor miracle it took to get Bob Etheridge out of his insanely drawn district.
    Republican Congressional candidates won more than 200,000 more votes than Democratic candidates in 2010, yet Democrats kept 7 of the 13 seats. We’ve been a state that leans towards Republicans for years now, and the only thing holding that tide off has been the redistricting process. Any map that DOESN’T produce a Republican majority in the delegation would be a gerrymander.

  4. Steve
    June 29, 2011 at 11:19 am

    Just an FYI from a friendly editor: It’s Mountain Xpress, not Mountain Express.