After redistricting negotiations between various parties seemed to come to a halt in recent days in both Arkansas and Louisiana, the logjams have finally broken. We're now seeing two of the first new maps to get passed into law (or very close thereto) in the wake of new data from the 2010 census. First up is Arkansas:
The state Senate gave final approval to a congressional redistricting plan today and sent the bill to the governor for his signature.Gov. Mike Beebe has said he will sign the bill, which divides five counties, including Sebastian and Jefferson, between districts but keeps Fayetteville, Fort Smith and Russellville in the 3rd Congressional District and keeps Pine Bluff in the 4th District. ...
Under SB 972 and HB 1836, Jefferson County would be split between the 4th and 1st districts, Crawford, Newton and Sebastian counties between the 3rd and 4th districts, and Searcy County between the 3rd and 1st districts.
Also, Madison, Franklin and Johnson counties would move to from the 3rd to the 4th District, Yell County would move from the 2nd to the 4th and Lincoln, Desha and Chicot counties would move from the 4th to the 1st.
Here's the new map, which eliminates the so-called "Fayetteville Finger", which would have put Dem-leaning Fayetteville in the 4th CD instead of the 3rd:
ARDem at Blue Arkansas thinks this is a sucky map, and blames Dems for caving. (Read the whole post for the full background.) Considering we comfortably control the trifecta here, it sounds like we did a very lousy job.
The House on Wednesday voted 63-35 to approve a congressional redistricting plan, sending it to Gov. Bobby Jindal who is expected to sign it.About 90 minutes earlier, the Senate voted 25-13 for the measure. ...
The redistricting vote came on House Bill 6 by Rep. Erich Ponti, R-Baton Rouge, after three hours of debate and most amendments being rejected. Ponti asked the House to approve the Senate-made changes to his bill when the House took it up shortly before 2 p.m. ...
Ponti's bill keeps in place two north Louisiana-based congressional districts that run from the Arkansas border into Acadiana and the Florida parishes on the east and almost to Lake Charles on the west.
Population breakdowns of the new districts, as well as detail insets of densely populated areas like New Orleans, are in this file (PDF). The overview map and demographic breakdowns are below:
Democrats had hoped to create a second district that would be favorably disposed to electing an African-American, but that didn't happen with this map - though conceivably something like that could be imposed by litigation under the Voting Rights Act.
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