By Richard F. Kosich, Chair Conshohocken Republican Committee
On Friday, February 4th, 2022, the Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC) approved the Final Reapportionment Plan (including redistricting maps) for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Pennsylvania Senate. The final maps approved Friday were based on preliminary ones approved in December, with a number of changes made based on public comment and feedback from lawmakers.
One such lawmaker who provided feedback is State Representative Donna Bullock, chair of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus. As MoreThanTheCurve.com reported on January 23rd, Representative Bullock officially endorsed the preliminary map for Pennsylvania House Districts passed by the LRC on December 16th, 2021. The article also includes several passages from a column Bullock sent to the media on “legislative redistricting and the impact of the proposed map for communities of color” in which she attempts to justify the preliminary map & newly proposed district 54 in Montgomery County in particular. Norristown, Conshohocken and Plymouth Township would all be re-located in this new 54th legislative district from their current districts (e.g. 70th & 148th). For those of us living in these municipalities with differing viewpoints than Bullock’s, this would be totally unacceptable, as it’s clear Bullock’s stated justification for district 54 doesn’t hold up under further scrutiny. The moral imperative – and thus her reasons for the new map – are therefore rendered untenable.
For example, Bullock references population growth as one justification for the new map. In particular, Bullock claims that –
“The population growth in Philadelphia is part of a trend across the southeast of the commonwealth…the preliminary plan reflects this trend by placing new legislative districts in Montgomery and Lancaster counties which provide increased opportunities for the growing minority populations in those areas to secure equal representation.”
Sounds plausible enough, doesn’t it? – i.e. more people equals greater representation. Just one problem though; if the preliminary plan is reflective of this population growth she’s referencing, then how come the newly proposed 54th district will actually have fewer people in it than the current district Conshohocken resides in?
According to the ‘Redistricting & You’ website, for example, the total population of the current 148th is 70,926, with a voting-age population of 55,663. This is +6,873 people above the District average or +10.7%. The newly proposed 54th, however, would have a total population of only 63,471, with just 48,877 being of voting age. SO it would have -7,455 (-10.5%) fewer total people and -6,786 (-12.19%) less of a voting-age population. So much for the ‘population growth’ justification!
Bullock’s second justification for the new district is far more troubling, as it’s presented in starkly racial terms. She claims that the preliminary plan preserves and expands districts “in which a racial minority group makes up the majority of the population”, a phenomenon also known as ‘majority-minority’ in certain academic circles. She further goes on to clarify exactly which racial minority groups she’s referring to here when she writes:
“These districts, in which diverse communities of color make up a majority or plurality of the population, recognize the commonalities of Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous Pennsylvanians and will allow these communities to fully realize their political power.”
What Bullock fails to acknowledge, however, is that this political power she covets so greatly is usually obtained at someone else’s expense, politics essentially being a ‘zero-sum game’. And this concept of a ‘majority-minority’ community is also problematic; it seems to confer a special inherent status upon certain minority groups to preserve their rights & privileges – even when they become a majority in a given municipality. But what of the newly deposed minority in those particular cases – i.e. does this ostensibly altruistic concept apply to ALL racial, ethnic and/or tribal affiliations, or just ones that are ‘Cause du Jour’? If the latter, as Bullock makes abundantly clear in her column, then one could argue the ‘majority-minority’ concept is simply another form of Affirmation Action, as it appears to favor one group of people over another based upon race/ethnicity, which in of itself is the very definition or racism – or at least that’s what I was taught and currently understand it to be. Perhaps to Bullock, however, this is her idea of ‘equity in action’, and is perfectly legal, as long as this type of overt racism is aimed squarely at the ‘right people’ for the all the ‘right reasons’?
Lastly, Bullock argues in favor of the new map because the newly drawn HD 54 is “…a great example of a ‘coalition district’ that will undo previous efforts to dilute the political power of Black and Latino Pennsylvanians.” She further claims that this new map is favorable because it puts Norristown in a district with communities with more ‘commonalities’ in Conshohocken and Plymouth Township—and will have a racial minority population of nearly 45%. So according to Bullock, Norristown has more ‘commonalities’ with Conshohocken and Plymouth Township vs. the current communities it shares a house district with – e.g. East Norriton Township, Worcester Township and a fraction of Plymouth Township (currently PA’s 70th district).
There are two important points I want to make here which refute Bullock’s above claims. First, Bullock has already defined ‘coalition districts’ as one’s in which “…diverse communities of color make up a majority or plurality of the population”. But 45% is clearly NOT a majority – last time I checked – yet then again I was an English major, so what do I know about stats & percentages anyway? And although she’s correct about the racial minority composition of the new district, however, it’s also worth noting that per Figure 1 below from Dave’s Redistricting website the percentage of each race within Norristown’s current 70th district and the new 54th district are virtually identical, differing less than 1% between districts. ‘Whites’ would still hold the single racial/ethnic population edge in the new district with 48.3% of the overall population (oh the horror!).
The second point is that since the percentages of the racial composition between districts really doesn’t change, then by ‘coalition’ it’s reasonable to assume Bullock must be referring to political identification alone, since the entire point here is to empower the ‘marginalized’ communities Bullock singles out above. That said, one can see how this translates into party registration and voting behavior in these two districts during the last general election. Per Figures 2 & 3 below from the ‘Redistricting & YOU’ website, the % Biden vs. % Trump vote share in House District 70 during the 2020 general election was 66.5% to 33.5%, or a +33% D advantage. For the newly proposed House District 54 (per the LRC Preliminary Map which Bullock endorses), the % Biden to % Trump vote share expands even further – 71.8% to 28.2% respectively, or a +43.6% D vote advantage.
This dovetails almost exactly with the percentage of registered Democrats vs. Republicans in these two districts as well. It’s therefore clear the share of Democrat vs. Republican voters skews even more favorably for the D’s under this new map, which is apparently nothing more than a naked GERRYMANDERED POWER GRAB to favor one political party. Funny, but I thought that is exactly OPPOSITE what the new maps were supposed to accomplish. As an outnumbered Republican living in an already heavily-weighted Democratic district, I, therefore, find this newly proposed House District 54 to be totally unacceptable – and deeply offensive. Not sure how one squares that circle, or even if one should try, but Bullock’s justification that HD54 will “undo previous efforts to dilute the political power of Black and Latino Pennsylvanians” can only be viewed as brazenly political in nature, and therefore summarily dismissed in favor of a more cogent, less biased argument.
Lastly, I just wanted to point out that in order for these ‘communities of color’ to ‘fully realize their political power’ as Bullock envisions things, they would have to vote as a monolithic block at all times to maximize their political clout. IF these communities do not necessarily share the same political viewpoints or support similar candidates or identical political parties – which is reasonable to assume – then their political power fractures and the entire concept of racial consolidation for political gain becomes an overindulgent (yet pointless) exercise in social engineering. It’s clear many minority communities in America are NOT subscribing to the traditional Democratic narrative of racial oppression, victimhood and the soft bigotry of low expectations, which is a positive first step towards racial harmony and forming a more perfect Union. And then perhaps one day these ‘coalition districts’ will be drawn to reflect a communities socio-economic status, as opposed to its racial/ethnic composition, and the people therein will vote accordingly based upon their wants and needs, as opposed to their tribal affiliation.
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