By Susanna Ray
Herald Writer
Snohomish County’s two congressional districts will lean just a bit more Republican in next year’s elections under a new redistricting plan, and south Everett, along with half of Monroe and Mukilteo, will get a new congressman.
But overall, the political changes in the new congressional map approved Tuesday by the state Redistricting Commission are far less drastic than in the state legislative map agreed to last month.
"The 1st (Congressional) District was 8 percent more Democrat than Republican, and now it will be about 6.5 percent more Democrat than Republican," said U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, the Democrat who represents the district. "So it doesn’t mean a lot. Any way you slice it, it’s a very, very thin slice of a large loaf."
In a last-minute meeting Tuesday, the bipartisan group of four citizen commissioners agreed to move the western half of Monroe from the 2nd to the 1st District. They also pushed the 1st District farther north to include two-thirds of Mukilteo and a swath of voters from Mill Creek through south Everett to the shores of Puget Sound.
"This moves the 2nd District a tenth of a percent toward the Republican column," based on how the precincts voted in the past, said Commissioner Dick Derham, a Republican from Seattle.
"We’re not worried," said Jeff Bjornstad, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, the freshman Democrat from Lake Stevens who represents the 2nd District. Larsen won his 2000 race against Republican John Koster by 4 percent, so a tenth of a percent difference wouldn’t have changed the outcome. "It keeps the voters’ intent intact," Bjornstad added.
Four of Washington’s nine congressional districts are considered swing districts, and two of those are in Snohomish County. The 2nd District is considered the most evenly split of the four, and the 1st District is considered the furthest from even (it leans Democrat), Derham said. That’s not likely to change under the new plan.
The political boundaries have to be redrawn once every 10 years to reflect shifts in the state’s population. Based on 2000 Census figures, each congressional district now must have about 655,000 people, which meant commissioners had to cut about 10 percent of the 2nd District’s population.
They tried to keep communities whole, but they split up Monroe and Mukilteo "just because you had to get both the population count and the political numbers to match the desired outcome," Derham said.
The new plan sticks Monroe and some rural areas of Snohomish County into a largely suburban district that runs in a squiggle around Seattle, including Bainbridge Island to the west and Redmond to the east. But Inslee said he wouldn’t have a problem representing his new constituents.
"We’ve had a diverse district already, between the software companies in Redmond and the military installations in Kitsap County," he said.
The new district lines would be in effect when Inslee and Larsen run for re-election this fall.
Although commissioners unanimously approved both plans, there’s a chance it will all be for naught. The legislative plan was approved more than four hours after the midnight Dec. 15 deadline, and the congressional one was agreed to on New Year’s Day, more than two weeks after the deadline.
But Jan. 1 was the deadline listed in the constitutional amendment that voters approved in 1983 to create the Redistricting Commission. Legislators later imposed the Dec. 15 deadline, so there’s a chance they could go back now and retroactively change it to Jan. 1.
Otherwise, it will likely be up to the state Supreme Court, which could either appoint a special master to redraw the lines or simply accept the commission’s maps.
"One way or another," Inslee said, "I think it’s probably likely that this will be the final map."
The legislative plan made significant changes in Snohomish County. Commissioners drew two local legislators out of their districts, added a district to the county and drastically increased the geographic size of another.
The maps and further information are available online at www.redistricting.wa.gov.
You can call Herald Writer Susanna Ray at 425-339-3439
or send e-mail to ray@heraldnet.com.
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