Maybe all the controversy over reapportioning Louisiana’s congressional districts will become moot by the end of the decade, the latest national apportionment data suggest – which also increases the urgency of the incoming governor Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry to turn around the more than 100,000 population loss suffered under current Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Currently, the state is locked in a legal battle with special interests challenging the state’s last reapportionment. In a state where almost a third of the population identifies with at least some black ancestry, only one out of six Congressional districts has a majority-minority composition. Plaintiffs argue there should be two, and with some legal backing to their side the process continues that for now rests in the hands of the state but which could be decided by the federal judiciary.
But whatever comes from this, which likely won’t confirm the present map or rely on a new until 2026, it may then only apply for that and the next two elections. Because according to a group researching reapportionment, after 2030 Louisiana may be entitled only to five seats in the House of Representatives.
The American Redistricting Project took a look at recently-released census population estimates and extended the underlying trends to 2030, when the decennial census occurs that prompts reapportionment. It found some major shifts:
The states ARP estimates will lose at least one congressional seat – California (four seats), Illinois (two), Minnesota (one), New York (three), Oregon (one), Pennsylvania (one), and Rhode Island (one) – have Democratic governors. All but Pennsylvania, which has Republicans controlling its House and Democrats controlling its governorship and Senate, have a Democratic trifecta in which both legislative chambers and the governorship are controlled by the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, the states ARP estimates will gain at least one congressional seat – Arizona (one seat), Florida (three), Georgia (one), Idaho (one), North Carolina (one), Tennessee (one), Texas (four), and Utah (one) – have Republican trifectas or Republican legislative control. In Arizona and North Carolina, Republicans control the entire legislature but not the governorship.
This matters for Louisiana because, outside of these losses, while the next most endangered district to fall is in Wisconsin (that then would give Florida a fourth gain), after that comes Louisiana (which projects to go to South Carolina). Even a slight acceleration in population loss relative to other states will have the state lose a third district over five cycles. (This actually is slightly more optimistic than last year’s forecast, which had Louisiana having the most endangered of those not lost.)
Not only would this run very much counter to the prevailing trend – GOP-led states picking up seats without exception, Democrat-led states losing seats without exception, portending a +26 swing in the House towards Republicans – but also it would set up an extremely interesting situation internally, where the most logical district to disappear would be, if the current plaintiffs prevail, one of the two majority black districts. This would represent a first in the south, where there would be fewer M/M districts in a state as a result of reapportionment (Louisiana had two initially in the 1990s adding one M/M district after losing a district after 1990, but that arrangement the judiciary declared unconstitutional).
So, trying to shoehorn in another M/M district may be moot, although if that happens perhaps even more controversy than is happening now will rage over dispensing with that district under this scenario. Yet the major warning signal is the possible loss of a district whether it is M/M.
This creates additional urgency for Landry and the GOP supermajorities in the Legislature to stem the hemorrhaging by altering the ideological course guided by Edwards over the past eight years.
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