Brady Walkinshaw, April Sims to represent Democrats on 2021 Redistricting Commission

Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­isla­tive lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton State announced today that they’ve cho­sen two high­ly qual­i­fied indi­vid­u­als to rep­re­sent their cau­cus­es on the 2021 Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion, the body tasked with attempt­ing to redraw the state’s con­gres­sion­al and leg­isla­tive maps fol­low­ing the decen­ni­al census.

Rep­re­sent­ing the House Democ­rats will be Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil Sec­re­tary-Trea­sur­er April Sims; rep­re­sent­ing the Sen­ate Democ­rats will be Grist CEO and for­mer State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Brady Walkin­shaw.

In nam­ing Walkin­shaw and Sims to the Com­mis­sion, House Speak­er Lau­rie Jink­ins and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Andy Bil­lig have ful­filled their respon­si­bil­i­ty under the Con­sti­tu­tion and state law to select two capa­ble indi­vid­u­als to rep­re­sent the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in this vital­ly impor­tant map­mak­ing exercise.

“Our state’s approach to draw­ing our leg­isla­tive and con­gres­sion­al maps is cru­cial to the fair and rep­re­sen­ta­tive out­comes of our demo­c­ra­t­ic process,” said Walkin­shaw, the first Lati­no Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion­er. “I’m hon­ored by the appoint­ment and look for­ward to the work over the com­ing year.”

“I am hon­ored to be the first woman of col­or and Black per­son appoint­ed to serve on Washington’s Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion,” said April Sims. “I look for­ward to work­ing with my fel­low Com­mis­sion­ers to devel­op a process that is fair, trans­par­ent, inclu­sive, and in line with the val­ues of our state.”

It’s now the Repub­li­cans’ turn to unveil their picks. The Com­mis­sion will be almost com­plete when House Repub­li­can Leader J.T. Wilcox and Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader John Braun announce the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of their respec­tive cau­cus­es. They have until Jan­u­ary 15th to name their selections.

Once they do, the four com­mis­sion­ers will have the joint respon­si­bil­i­ty of pick­ing the com­mis­sion’s fifth and final mem­ber, who will serve as the non­vot­ing chair. (The indi­vid­ual cho­sen to chair the Com­mis­sion must not be aligned with a polit­i­cal par­ty.) The com­mis­sion­ers will have until Jan­u­ary 31st to agree on a chair.

After that, the Com­mis­sion will begin its work in earnest.

It is the Con­sti­tu­tion, and specif­i­cal­ly Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 43, that stip­u­lates that the redis­trict­ing process shall be car­ried out by a bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion instead of by the Leg­is­la­ture. The Framers of the Sev­en­ty-Fourth Amend­ment (adopt­ed in 1983, which cre­at­ed the process we have now) rea­soned that an equal­ly divid­ed com­mis­sion would have an incen­tive to bar­gain and compromise.

How­ev­er, rec­og­niz­ing that fail­ure is an option, the Framers wise­ly cre­at­ed a fail­safe mech­a­nism. In the event the com­mis­sion dead­locks and can­not agree on new maps by the dead­line (Novem­ber 15th, 2021), the respon­si­bil­i­ty of draw­ing new bound­aries shall pass to the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court.

The bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion has nev­er failed to pro­duce a new set of maps before. How­ev­er, these are very polar­ized times, and there’s a first time for everything.

Past com­mis­sions have gone down to wire in their efforts to strike a deal.

The 2011 Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion con­sist­ed of Demo­c­ra­t­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dean Fos­ter and Tim Ceis, Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tives Tom Huff and Slade Gor­ton, and non­vot­ing chair Lura Pow­ell. The team of Huff and Gor­ton are acknowl­edged by Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can strate­gists alike as hav­ing secured favor­able maps out of that last round of redis­trict­ing, espe­cial­ly at the leg­isla­tive level.

How­ev­er, with Slade Gor­ton and Tom Huff hav­ing passed away, Repub­li­can leg­isla­tive lead­ers will not be able to rely on them next year, not even as advis­ers to the 2021 com­mis­sion­ers. Repub­li­cans may espe­cial­ly feel the loss of Gor­ton’s leg­endary keen intel­lect and nego­ti­at­ing skills.

Anoth­er prob­lem the Repub­li­cans will have to grap­ple with, aside from not hav­ing Gor­ton and Huf­f’s knowl­edge and exper­tise at their dis­pos­al, is that most of Wash­ing­ton’s recent pop­u­la­tion growth has been in areas where they are polit­i­cal­ly weak, chiefly King Coun­ty, where the Repub­li­can Par­ty is all but dead.

Many of the exist­ing leg­isla­tive dis­tricts span­ning the state’s pop­u­lous core are just too big, and will need to shrink geo­graph­i­cal­ly to allow a new set of dis­tricts of rough­ly equal num­bers of peo­ple to be drawn.

Giv­en recent pop­u­la­tion changes, the Big Three — King, Pierce, and Sno­homish coun­ties — are very like­ly to emerge from this round of redis­trict­ing with more polit­i­cal pow­er in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture than they have today.

The con­gres­sion­al map con­sists of ten dis­tricts, and Wash­ing­ton is not in line for a new one this year like it was last time, so the changes to that map may not be as sig­nif­i­cant. The best the Repub­li­cans can prob­a­bly hope for is a map that gives them what they already have: two solid­ly red dis­tricts and one that leans red.

The ide­al out­come for Democ­rats is eight con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts that are either safe­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic or are com­pet­i­tive enough for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates to win.

If you find redis­trict­ing fas­ci­nat­ing and have always won­dered what it’d be like to try to draw the maps, then give our friend Dave Bradlee’s Redis­trict­ing App a try. It’s extreme­ly well put togeth­er and not dif­fi­cult to learn how to use.