Maryland proposed 6th congressional district (Baltimore, Frederick: retire, office, snake)

[mrcountryboy]

Do you agree with associating montgomery county with western maryland and carroll county

[westsideboy]

No, but I wasn't really thrilled with Western Maryland being lumped with Washington, Frederick, and Carroll County to begin with. I suppose we are politically more like those counties, but honestly, our region doesn't have much in common with either.

Of course Western Maryland needs to be lumped with some other part of the state for congressional purposes. I preferred the old 6th to the new if that is the question.

[North Beach Person]

This whole redistricting was done by Busch, Miller and O' Malley to knock off Bartlett. They did the same thing 10 years ago with the old Bentley/Ehrlich districts. Before that the 8 MD Congressional Districts were split 4 R and 4 D. Miller, especially, couldn't stand that and stated publicly after the redistricting was made public that it was done to get rid of as many Republican Congressmen as possible. This time they not only screwed Bartlett over but also Donna Edwards who, although a Democrat, doesn't always play ball with the "boys".

They also wanted to protect Hoyer and didn't create another majority/minority district. Since he's 70 or so, once Hoyer retires his district will automatically become majority/minority since it's centered around Prince George's and Charles Counties (which will become majority/minority in the next couple years) with the rest of Southern MD just thrown in for show (we used to be in the 1st with the Eastern Shore).

[Steelers10]

Originally Posted by westsideboy

No, but I wasn't really thrilled with Western Maryland being lumped with Washington, Frederick, and Carroll County to begin with. I suppose we are politically more like those counties, but honestly, our region doesn't have much in common with either.

Of course Western Maryland needs to be lumped with some other part of the state for congressional purposes. I preferred the old 6th to the new if that is the question.

Yeah they were all lumped in together not on some geographic commonality but on the basis of all these counties being a majority white. If you can have half of the state's territory in two mostly white districts (1 and 6) then the rest of the spoils would go to the Democrats. But this is based on the false assumption that a majority white district will always vote Republican and a majority black district will always vote Democrat. As previously pointed out, Hoyer represents a massive minority population. Doesn't seem to bother anyone that he is not a minority.

And Westsideboy you have discussed Cas Taylor in previous forums. A charasmatic Democrat could emerge from Washington County (hey the Sheriff is a Democrat) and win District 6 or a Michael Steele-type Republican could always emerge from PG County to take advantage of their fiscal and social conservatism. Just because Montgomery County is solidly Democratic now does not mean carving off a chunk of it to place in district 6 will flip the whole district. That is based on the assumption that all of the other gerrymandered districts will continue to vote the same way and have no radical demographic shifts.

[mrcountryboy]

I wonder if they would ever split a county like west howard, or the western part of montgomery county

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by mrcountryboy

I wonder if they would ever split a county like west howard, or the western part of montgomery county

They have Anne Arundel which is represented by 4 different Congressmen.

[westsideboy]

Originally Posted by mrcountryboy

I wonder if they would ever split a county like west howard, or the western part of montgomery county

Both counties are split up under the current map.

Maryland 2010 Redistricting - Congressional Districts

and both counties were split up under the old map.

Maryland

So, I guess the answer is "yes."

[PhenomenalAJ]

Is the 6th Roscoe Bartlett's district? Maryland has some odd snake-like districts to get Dems elected. They really screwed around with my district the 8th (Chris Van Hollen) and it extends from east MoCo all the way north to places like Westminster and Thurmont. Before it took in logical portions of most of MoCo and some Democratic areas of PG; it was made as such to get Republican Connie Morella out of office.

I'm suprised they didn't try to pour Dems into Andy Harris' district, which takes in most of Eastern MD. It'd be more logical to add areas of Baltimore, PG and Anne Arundel to that district to get Democrat Frank Kratovil elected, who was only voted out of that district 2 yrs ago. They could've done that and given Bartlett pretty much every Republican area in the northern part of the state extending all the way out to Kent County.

I'm glad the legislature got another Dem seat but this partisan gerrymandering overall is a horrible thing. One party has to do it because the other party does it, it's like how no one wants to unilaterally disarm with nukes. It's a shame we'll never get a Constitutional amendment with a uniform fair standard of redistricting covering every state in America.

[North Beach Person]

They tried to ace Harris out but the district wouldn't have passed Court review. They had to settle for just going after Bartlett.

[Martha39]

Of course Western Maryland needs to be lumped with some other part of the state for congressional purposes. I preferred the old 6th to the new if that is the question.