Politicians say they care about policy, but they prove over and
over again that protecting their own jobs and the jobs of their
friends takes top priority. Take the ridiculous spat this spring in
Texas where 53 rebel Democrats in the Texas state house, egged on
by Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, secretly
left the state in a bus to deprive the legislature of a quorum.
Their walkout, which stalled dozens of important bills, was to
prevent voting on a new congressional redistricting map that
benefited Republicans. The Republican House Speaker threatened to
have them arrested and compelled to attend the legislative
session.
The Republican redistricting plan itself was the work of U.S.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, still angry over a 1991 Democratic
gerrymander of Texas congressional seats that has forestalled GOP
gains in President George W. Bush’s increasingly conservative home
state. When the next redistricting rolled around in a decade later,
Republicans and Democrats each controlled a house of the Texas
legislature and the whole process wound up in court. There a state
judge issued a competitive plan that discomfited incumbents and
elicited howls of outrage from Rep. Martin Frost, former head of
the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. After a week’s
worth of consultations with leading politicians, the judge — a
Democrat — suddenly changed his mind and released an incumbent
protection plan that left the state without a single competitive
House race in last year’s election. Indeed, six of the 28
incumbents seeking re-election last year in Texas had no
major-party competition at all.
The result in 2002 was that Republicans in Texas won 57 percent
of the congressional vote, but wound up with less than half the
seats — 15 out of 32. Majority Leader DeLay, still smarting from
what he considered an outrageous flip-flop by the Democratic judge,
plotted to have the new legislature — with both houses now
controlled by Republicans — come back this year with a gerrymander
largely designed by him. The result would be to increase GOP
strength in the Texas delegation to at least 20 out of 32 seats,
helping ensure continued GOP control of the U.S. House for some
time to come. Hence the Democratic bus ride to prevent a vote. The
mess may not be resolved until a special session this summer (if
then).
Incumbent-protection schemes are one of the most significant
remaining barriers to voters’ ability to express their preferences
adequately in elections. The outcome for almost all U.S. House
races last year was preordained by devices such as gerrymandering,
made easier than ever by computer mapping software that allows both
parties to manipulate district lines until they have the perfect
political DNA to ensure the re-election of incumbents. Senate races
remain more competitive because no one has yet figured out a way to
gerrymander a state’s boundaries. But the House — the body
intended by the founders to be closest to the people — has become
an elite preserve for incumbents who have walled themselves off
from competition.
Disenfranchising voters became a bipartisan exercise last year,
when the new census mandated redistricting. If Democrats moan that
they have little chance of taking back the House in the next
election, they can in large part blame themselves for allowing
their incumbents to greedily build political castles at the expense
of more competitive districts that would have left House control
more in doubt.
Consider what happened in California, where Democrats controlled
the redistricting process but nonetheless cut a sweetheart deal
with Republican incumbents. That was the only way that Anglo
Democrats such as Howard Berman and Henry Waxman could protect
their increasingly Hispanic districts from primary challenges. The
result is that only one of the state’s 53 seats was competitive
last year, and that was only because scandal-tarred Rep. Gary
Condit had been defeated in a primary.
In Illinois, House Speaker Dennis Hastert struck a deal with
Rep. William Lipinski, the senior Democrat in the state, to make
all of the state’s 19 districts safe for existing incumbents. Only
one race this year is competitive, and that’s only because the
state is losing a seat in redistricting and two incumbents have
been thrown together in a musical -chairs contest.
The effect of all this bipartisan backscratching is to create a
Congress in which members increasingly feel that they don’t have to
listen to the folks back home. In Illinois, GOP Rep. Tim Johnson
won his first election in 2000, with 53 percent of the vote. But in
2002, a bipartisan gerrymander turned his district into a bizarre,
100-mile long fishhook stretching along the Indiana border,
connecting him with more Republican voters. The results were
predictable. Instead of seeking a rematch, his former opponent
dropped out as soon as the new lines were announced. And Rep.
Johnson, secure enough in his incumbency, announced that his own
pledge to limit himself to three terms in office is no longer
valid.
Such moves will surely increase voter apathy and cynicism,
making low voter turnouts almost inevitable. Why vote if you
already know who is going to win and there has been no effective
campaign against the incumbent?
Nationwide, only 30 of the 435 seats in the House of
Representatives were even remotely competitive last year. More
incumbents lost in the House than in the Senate, but only because
five districts featured incumbent vs. incumbent matchups mandated
shifting populations. Outside those races, the incumbent
re-election rate against hit 98 percent.
All of this is not only bad for democracy, but also bad for
political compromise. Districts with entrenched incumbents tend to
elect members on the political extremes, with little incentive to
modify their partisan positions. That will make it harder to reach
sensible common ground on Social Security or Medicare reform that
everyone agrees is necessary.
Unfortunately, the situation isn’t likely to get better anytime
soon. With the exception of states such as Texas, where unusual
circumstances apply, the nation is stuck with the gerrymandered
districts now in place for the next ten years. But that shouldn’t
stop people now from coming up with a better way. Iowa and Arizona
had some of the most competitive House races in the last election,
in large part because they have turned over redistricting to
non-partisan commissions. Those bodies can have their own biases,
but at least they can be forced to address considerations such as
compactness and the need to keep communities together, which
self-promoting legislatures routinely ignore. Perhaps more of the
24 states with the initiative process will consider similar
reforms. You can bet such reforms won’t be pushed by state
legislators without popular pressure. State lawmakers are happy
with their own incumbent gerrymanders.
The Founding Fathers envisioned the House of Representatives to
be the people’s chamber, the body most representative of popular
concerns. Instead, it has become a House of Lords, insulated from
competition and vigorous challenge. We have gone from voters
choosing their representatives to representatives choosing their
voters through the artful use of incumbent-protection software. Our
democracy won’t be fully vibrant until we figure out a way to stop
incumbents from fixing the elections in advance.
