I don’t know how Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd will rule in the re-districting case. Nor am I a constitutional attorney, so I can’t say with any authority the maps drawn by the Democratic controlled House to benefit Democrats or the one drawn by the Republican Senate to benefit Republicans are constitutional.
But I recall Sen. Sam Ervin, the North Carolina Senator with the marvelously mobile eyebrows who chaired the Watergate Committee. When Nixon aide John Ehrlichman questioned Ervin’s interpretation of a constitutional principle, asking the venerable Senator how he knew that’s what the document said, the apoplectic Ervin slammed his glasses on the table, his eyebrows danced and darted and he exclaimed: “Because my momma taught me to read the King’s English, that’s how!”
The House plan splits more than the minimum possible number of counties. It features gerrymandered boundaries in some Republican districts. Two stand out: a district with a razor-thin strip in Pulaski County connecting Casey County to Rockcastle County and a narrow corridor through the center and length of Republican Laurel County to connect Jackson and McCreary counties. It appears to exceed the 5 percent population deviation standard in some districts.
The Senate plan appears to exceed the 5 percent deviation in at least one district. Another runs from Rowan County in the north to Knox County in the south with no discernible rationale but to put Democratic Sen. Walter Blevins of Morehead into a district he can’t win with Republican Robert Stivers. Still another has a narrow peninsula extending into Warren County to allow Republican Rep. Jim DeCesare to run. (The House plan just as clearly was designed to make it difficult for DeCesare to win re-election to that body.)
Both plans combine incumbents and disenfranchise voters. The Senate plan gives a Fayette County district represented by Sen. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, a new Senator, Democrat Dorsey Ridley, a senator they didn’t elect and who lives in Henderson. The House plan carves up Republican Lewis County among three Democrats the folks in Lewis County didn’t elect and puts the representative they elected, Jill York, into a district represented by the well-funded Democratic Majority Leader Rocky Adkins of Sandy Hook.
My vision isn’t great but I see well enough to evaluate those maps and my mother and teachers taught me to read the King’s English. Despite protests from House Democrats that their plan is better than the Senate’s and Republican Senators’ contention theirs is less egregious than the House plan, both are equally without virtue.
I concede population shifts and Kentucky’s 120 counties make drawing the maps difficult and someone has to lose. I realize re-districting is inherently political and it’s naïve to expect politicians to act in non-political ways. It’s also inconvenient and Shepherd’s willingness to scrutinize the plans’ compliance with the state constitution and previous court rulings throws the fall election, filing deadline and the General Assembly into temporary confusion. The plans are inherently unfair to minority members of each chamber.
But the real offense is to citizens who are disenfranchised, forced to accept representatives they had no voice in choosing. Residents in Stein’s district won’t get to vote for a senator for a total of six years and will be represented for two of them by Ridley who lives more than two and a half hours away. Lewis County voters, most of whom are registered Republican, are stuck with three Democrats no one from Lewis County voted for, albeit for a shorter period of time.
The plans may or may not be unconstitutional. They are clearly indefensible.
•••
RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com.
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Ronnie Ellis
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