The first map released by the non-partisan Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission puts Lauren Boebert in a district that includes Boulder County, CO-2. She’d have to run against Joe Neguse (D-CO-2), who’s a rising star and one of the managers for Trump’s second impeachment. The map would give Colorado three red districts, four blue districts (including Boebert’s) and one competitive district.
Boebert’s home county is Garfield, which as you can see from the map above, is barely in CO-2. Her hope is that a further refinement puts Garfield in CO-3, which includes more rural counties and is one of the “safe red” districts. I wonder if Colorado Republicans will mount an effort to add Garfield to CO-3 or if they will feel well rid of her and just let this map stand.
I really thought that the FBI investigation would have linked her to some 1/6 terrorists, but if she can’t be put in prison, at least she can be voted out of office.
burnspbesq
I like that map. Colorado Springs is isolated so it can’t infect anything else, and Boebert is in deep, deep trouble if she’s in a district that includes both college towns.
That’s a pretty egregious partisan gerrymander, but Supreme Court say oh-tay so why not have some fun.
James E Powell
Sometimes I wonder if we are better off with Boebert exactly where she is. Put her in a completely red district, let her keep snorting that pure right-wing cocaine, and make sure every suburban white voter sees that if they vote R, they vote for Boebert.
I’m probably wrong, but I’d prefer that people think of Boebert, Taylor Greene, and Gosar rather than the slicker, more presentable Rs.
germy
https://www.laurensrapsheet.com/
trollhattan
There’s only one strategy left: buy moar gunz!
James E Powell
Evidence that she participated in the insurrection would make her one of the most popular Republicans in the nation, if she isn’t there already.
mrmoshpotato
I’m not wasting alcohol on that gun-humping imbecile.
Hopefully she’s thrown out on her ass next year.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
I would say her candle burnt out long before… but the lights were never on to begin with.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
It doesn’t sound like an egregious gerrymander to me. It’s a state that went for Biden by 13.5%, so having 4 D, 3R, and 1 competitive district is actually pretty generous to the Republicans. They could probably get a 6 D, 2 R gerrymander if they tried.
CaseyL
I don’t even know whether the FBI is investigating Members of Congress and the Executive Branch for participation in the coup attempt (and if not, why not?) but the Jan 6 Commission might unearth some inconvenient-for-the-GOP facts once it gets its hands on phone/text/email records.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@James E Powell: true, but even in supposedly midwestern mild iowa steve king held on long enough to get to a respected elder statesman role in the party
hell, normative gqp legacy officeholders like alfonse d’amato & peter king from otherwise blue ny were nettlesome buffoons, all het up for vince foster murder conspiracy
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
Boebert is being targeted.
Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you.
Kelly
Surprisingly ballsy first redistricting proposal from Oregon Democrats. Dems are going for a 5D 1R delegation in a 55 D 45 R state. After House Dems in the legislature granted R’s equal seats on redistricting I thought Oregon Dems didn’t have any fight in them. Four of six Oregon districts would include a slice of the deep blue Portland area. Blumenauer’s new 3rd would sweep from East Portland, up the Gorge to Hood River and down to newly Democratic Bend is a real standout. Peter DeFazio’s 4th swaps hopelessly red mid Willamette Valley Linn County and southern Oregon Josephine for fast growing blueish coastal Lincoln County. Schrader’s 5th loses Lincoln and Tillamook, gains Linn which should be offset by a bigger slice of the Portland metro reaching all the way to Powell Blvd. Legislature will likely fail to pass anything in which case mapping goes to Dem Sec of State Shemia Fagan. Edit: Worth noting voters not affiliated with any party outnumber R’s and are approaching the count for D’s
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/09/oregon-democrats-propose-a-congressional-district-map-that-would-likely-give-their-party-5-of-6-seats-in-us-house.html
debbie
Or both! I’m feeling optimistic today.
DavidA
I don’ t think this will impact Boebert. She currently represents District 3; although this proposed revision puts her current home outside District 3, all she has to do is move a few miles back into the new district to run for reelection to keep representing District 3.
That’s not a knock on the map, which seems fine.
Ken
@DavidA: But is another Republican representative already living in the newly-drawn district? That’s usually the nastiest tool in redistricting, dumping two current reps into the same district. You might as well toss a broken pool cue between them.
J R in WV
I saw somewhere that MS Boebert has a second home in that more conservative district. Not a poor person, Ms Boebert~!!~ Won’t have to move, buy another place, just change her voter registration to the other place…
patrick II
Lauren was just bragging the other day about how gerrymandering would bring a Republican House in 2022. I think she plans on being a star in it. Maybe not.
Wag
@burnspbesq: Not a partisan gerrymander. Colorado has a non-partisan commission that draws the lines. If Colorado allowed the party that controls the Legislature and Governor’s office to control redistricting then Colorado would have 6 safe Dem seats and 2 GOP
VOR
@DavidA: I don’t know if it depends on the state, but in some places you are not required to actually live in a congressional district in order to represent it. And of course we’ve all heard of the senators or representatives who really live in DC and just have a token representation back home. Living just a few miles outside the district seems defensible.
Ohio Mom
Sending a bat signal to our resident expert on Colorado, Miss Bianca.
Compared to my ridicolously gerrymandered state, with its long, skinny, twisted districts, this proposed map looks elegant.
Puddinhead
They need to make her new district the geographically smallest in the state. That way, when she charges her campaign $100K for travel, it will look as shady as possible. She is a crook. Make her be obvious about it.
Edward Brennan
This really isn’t gerrymandering.
It might be worth pointing out that Colorado has an Independent Redistricting Commission divided between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
The leading change for this map was that previous renditions didn’t treat Colorado’s large Hispanic community well.
This still isn’t, by far, the final map.
The process is surprisingly open, with proposals public for comment.
Starfish
@Roger Moore: The independent redistricting commission is three Rs, three Ds, and three independents.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
It’s certainly tidier!
mrmoshpotato
Via Kevin M. Kruse
Betty Cracker
Remember Laura Loomer, the wingnut lunatic who once ineffectually chained herself to one side of a double door at Twitter’s NYC office? She moved to Florida, of course, and ran against Rep. Lois Frankel in South Florida and predictably got squashed like a bug. Well, now she’s moving to N. Central FL to challenge my shitty rep, Republican Daniel Webster, in a solidly Republican district. Webster is a corrupt piece of crap who isn’t widely beloved. It’s possible local wingnuts might see fit to shake things up, in which case Boebert, Greene, Goser, Ghomert, et al., will have serious competition for the coveted Dumbest/Most Insane MoC trophy.
SiubhanDuinne
This is entirely off-topic: I’m just putting down a marker. One year from today will be the 500th anniversary of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world. I’m trying to figure out how to break it my flat-earthist brother.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
ETA: Magellan himself was dead by then, but the expedition returned to Spain on 6 September 1522.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@VOR: or mike pence using the indiana governor’s mansion as his legal address while serving as vp
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Ohio Mom: i think the pluggedin politics types, regardless of ideology, now use gerrymander as synonym for redistricting
it’s a result of bothsides brain in the lamestream media, that all parties draw their lines the same
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@SiubhanDuinne: up the pinoy!
mrmoshpotato
A writer for McSweeney’s thinks you should get fucking vaccinated.
Doc Sardonic
@Betty Cracker: To loosely quote the great Gopher Indian Chief Running Board. Whoopie Doopie you have big fun with that one. Maybe we will find out Ole Dan’l is as crazy as he is corrupt.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker:
But what about the batshit crazy nutjobs (how does that autoincorrect to “button”?) on the other side of the aisle?! With all their crazy legislating?
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne:
“Hey bro. Congrats on being dumber than they were 500 years ago.” ?
Roger Moore
@Ohio Mom:
One of the points that gerrymandering experts have made is that the funky-shaped districts aren’t really necessary. You can get surprisingly effective gerrymandering even with geographically compact districts. And even a very fair scheme may wind up with some odd-shaped districts in an attempt to keep a “community of interest” within a single district.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I suppose a 2 x 4 is out of the question?
*not intended as a serious statement
Benw
@SiubhanDuinne: here’s to the famous 499th!
I hear flat-earther and other adjacent types like to “do their own research.” Well, here’s a way that in the next couple of weeks (near the equinox) your bro can do the research and measure the earth’s circumference himself. Science!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/measure-earths-circumference-with-a-shadow/
(It’s actually pretty fun to do it yourself, too)
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato:
Do you guys think we need to run this past Cole before making it a rotating tag?
Lapassionara
@SiubhanDuinne: Have you read “A World Lit Only By Fire” by William Manchester? It has a section on Magellan and the voyage. Very interesting.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Roger Moore: but elbridge gerry was specifically about the funky shapes
JoyceH
Today it occurred to me to look it up, and it’s now two weeks since we were told that the report of the Maricopa County “audit” would be delayed because the Cyber Ninjas got COVID. So what do you folks think? Will someone eventually release an approximately report-shaped object consisting of a collection of word-like things and try to keep the grift alive? Or have they already taken it on the lam and will be heard of no more?
Roger Moore
@WaterGirl:
I believe the technical term is “clue by four”.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
I think they will try to quietly stretch it out for as long as they can in the hope that everyone forgets about it. Either that, or they’ll have something extraordinarily crazy that looks like it was written by Sidney Powell’s and Lin Wood’s love child.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: I like the proposed Oregon map, I hate being in wing nut Bentz’s district. The rest of central and southern Oregon hates liberal Bend, so I’d rather not be in the same district with them. Maybe that will lead to less MAGAT coal rolling parading here.
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s a tough problem.
PhysicsWorld has a good article on fighting flat-earthism.
It points to a Bruch Sherwood YouTube of his simple wireframe flat earth model and all the problems with it.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anonymous At Work
@Kelly: Per Betty’s open thread, how many of the “independents” are moderates vs. centrists? My time in Seattle tells me that a great many are “centrist Green Party” members.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Nah. You’re a front-pager. Make an executive decision.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Coup d’blog!
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Bien sûr!
SiubhanDuinne
@Lapassionara:
I did, but it was probably close to 30 years ago. I should probably reread it one of these days. Thanks for the timely reminder.
StringOnAStick
On the highway between Bend, Oregon and Redmond, Oregon (about 20 miles apart, with the regional airport being in Redmond) there’s a big “vote republican!” sign on a ranchette’s fence, right next to a bigger “move Oregon’s state boundary, join Idaho!” sign. I was pleased to see their proposed new boundary excluded Bend from Greater Idaho, though I don’t want to lose our wonderful liberal friends in Redmond, or their relatives in Hood River.
Ain’t it just like a wingnut to want to exclude the strongest regional economy (Bend) from their he-man liberal haters club. They’ll whine and complain, shouting along with their hate radio as they drive from their new Greater Idaho berg to where their jobs are, in Bend. Oh, and Redmond is getting bluer too since housing has gotten so expensive in Bend; they could lose Redmond eventually too. Hopefully soon.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Already aswim in a deep sea of F words.
Less is more. My dos centavos.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Oh, that looks really useful! Bookmarked, thanks!
Geminid
It sounds like Boebert can run in the CO 3rd if she wants to. Last year both trump and Boebert carried the 3rd by 6%. I wonder if this redistricting map leaves the new 3rd more Republican than the old one.
Boebert does have an announced primary challenger, a woman crane operator from the western part of the 3rd. She says she’s running because nuts like Boebert will run the Colorado Republican party into the ground. She’s right, but I wonder if this argument will cut much ice with primary voters. And I understand that the party can opt to forego a primary and nominate the candidate with caucuses and a district convention. This route tends to empower the fanatics. It could alienate unaffiliated voters, though, who I believe consitute a plurality of Colorado voters now.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@JoyceH: when is the debt ceiling up to be raised
could see the house gqp coordinating release of the fraudit to deflect coverage of the impact of gqp obstruction on budget & economy
SiubhanDuinne
@Benw:
I remember doing something like that in high school. Yes, it would be fun to set up and see if I can still do the calculations 65 years later!
A Ghost to Most
Works for us. We’re still in Ed Perlmutter’s district. Boebert is toast if her district includes Boulder and Fort Collins.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Rescind the New Math!
:)
sdhays
@Kelly: I think gerrymandering is an awful anti-democratic practice that should have been ruled un-Constitutional on its face 250 years ago. But it wasn’t, and so the only way I see to actually get everyone on board with that concept is for the Democrats to go as scorched Earth as the Republicans.
Benw
@SiubhanDuinne: it’s surprisingly satisfying how close you can get to the correct answer!
sdhays
@Geminid: Just as a data point – the Virginia GQP went that route for the opposite reason. They were terrified that their primary voters would choose the loud and proud white supremacist for the gubernatorial nominee, flushing their already dim prospects for any kind of win in the last decade down the crapper.
frosty
@WaterGirl: Are you sure Cole didn’t write that? Nominate it! Hell, approve it yourself on the sly.
Benw
@NotMax: meet the New Math, same as the Old Math! YEEEEEEEEEAAAAHH
Geminid
@sdhays: It sounds like Democratic majorities in the New York and Illinois state legislatures intend to be fairly aggressive with redistricting. Oregon, too, someone said.
I’m fine with that, even though I voted for Virginia’s independent redistriction commission. The constitutional amendment that created the commission passed by a 2-1 vote last November.
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: Blumenauer is the probably the most liberal major politician in Oregon.
@Anonymous At Work: Vote totals indicate a lot of our not affiliated are embarrassed Republicans. Worth noting there is an Independent Party that some voters probably sign up for thinking they are registering for no party.
@sdhays: Gerrymandering has been around a long time. Dem unilateral disarmament won’t make it go away. Not confident it can be reformed away.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: Very much like the rant that’s been in my head for weeks. I feel much better having read that ?
Geminid
@Anonymous At Work: Independents cover a wide ideological spectrum. Some political scientists have found that as a practical matter roughly 40% tend to vote Republican consistently, 40% tend to vote Democratic, and 20% are actual swing voters. The latter group may constitute 5-7% of the electorate.
Independents seem to have greater numbers out west. In Colorado “unaffiliated” voters outnumber those of either party. In Arizona, last October when the voting rolls closed, the fact that Democratic registrations had finally caught up with Independent made the news. Democrats were 32%, Independents were 31.7%, and Republicans were at 35%. These numbers indicate that Joe Biden and Mark Kelly both carried a majority of Independents on the way to fairly close wins, assuming each party got out their voters fairly well. It was a high turnout election, so they probably did.
Urban Suburbanite
I suspect Boebert is already angling for a gig on some conservative propaganda mill (Newsmax or OAN would be my guess), as Matt Gaetz had tried. She’s deranged, but she’s very much a wannabe influencer. Adding “former Congresswoman” to her byline is what counts, not governance.
Ascap_scab
My congress critter, child sex ring recipient Jim Hagedorn, rents an apartment in our district, but has a house and lives in St Paul.
Boebert can probably expense a combo residence/campaign office in her elected district.
Kent
I’m not from CO but I could honestly not give a flying fuck about Boebert. I just want to see the Dems play hardball to keep the House in Dem hands. I don’t really give a shit what kind of idiots will be sitting on the other side of the aisle. The number who aren’t utterly useless and vile can be counted on one hand.
Geminid
@sdhays: It would have made a funny cartoon: some elephants cowering up on chairs with a mouse labeled “Amanda Chase” standing in front of them.
Virginia Republicans are afraid of their voters for sure. They have been since Dave Brat knocked off Eric Cantor in the VA 7th primary of 2014. Brat lost that seat to Abigail Spanberger in 2018. The 7th had been in Republican hands since the party realignment iof the 1970’s.
This year Republicans were terrified that goofy Amanda Chase would win the Governor primary with a plurality, and in November drag the entire ticket into the Dismal Swamp. So after months of wrangling, the state committee decided to have a crappy “unassembled convention” to decide the nomination, which was then essentially bought by the slick-talking, connected, wealthy businessman who now heads the ticket.
Geminid
@Geminid: The “unassembled convention” used to select select the Republican candidate for Virginia Governor drew maybe 34,000 participants. They qualified as delegates, and cast ballots at 27 locations around the state. Deadlines to apply* were two weeks or more before the May event, so campaigns did not have much time to get out their vote. Youngkin easily beat his three principal opponents.
* I think those qualifying as delegates had to be registered voters. Virginia does not have party registration, so delegates probably had to affirm a commitment to support the party’s nominees.
Considering that Virginia’s population is over eight million people, 34,000 people is a small number to choose a statewide nominee for governor. In 2018 Abigail Spanberger won her 7th District primary with 35,000 votes, and the next of four candidates won 20,000 votes. And Virginia has ten other congressional districts.
WV Blondie
As awful as WV is, rotten with GQP fanatics, and as sad as it is that the state’s losing more residents than any other, I am thrilled that we’re losing a representative. I just hope that MY representative is the one who loses his job!
Michael Cain
The staff’s map is trying desperately to avoid the fact that 75% of the state’s population — ie, six of eight districts’ worth — now live in an urban/suburban strip 50 miles wide, centered on I-25, running from just north of Fort Collins to just south of Colorado Springs. The natural split is basically El Paso County as a district on the south end of that, Larimer/Weld as a district on the north end, four districts in the middle. Peel off from the edges to bring the two rural districts up the necessary population and do a bit of juggling to balance the population. This is not rocket science.
Watching for 30+ years now, I assert that the fundamental flaw is the insistence that Boulder deserves a Congressman (currently, Neguse). The initial cut by the commission, before the actual population numbers were in and this map was drawn, tried shrinking the 2nd district to be Boulder and Larimer Counties — only to discover, I think, that Larimer and Fort Collins would outvote them and John Kefalas could very well beat Neguse in a primary.
Yes, I live in Fort Collins now, and I’m a Democrat, and I’m incensed about being thrown to the wolves so Neguse doesn’t have to fight for his seat.
Brian
@Lapassionara: according to the forward, the book originated as a work on Magellan in the context of his times, and only later morphed into what it became.
jeepers
@burnspbesq:
No she isn’t. Why are people saying shit like this? Do you have numbers that show that CO has been gerrymandered? Because it sure doesn’t look like it in the map.