Also, his name reminds us of tequila!
In the last thrilling episode Blaska Policy Werkes asked who are the two unmasked men four progressives on the state supreme court appointed to (most likely) redraw Wisconsin’s legislative maps?
We were prepared to dislike them more than last Christmas’ fruitcake, since Justice Janet (spell it with me) Protasiewicz made good on her naked campaign pledge to toss district maps that had been affirmed by the court only the year before.
One is an old guy pushing 80, Bernard Grofman out of the University of California-Irvine. The other is his former student, only 38 years old and a former Las Vegas bartender, name of Jonathan Cervas. He’s at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.
Turns out Cervas redrew the congressional and state senate maps in the state of New York. Did his job so well that Republicans flipped four House seats in that uber-blue state — more than in any other state. Yeah, Jonathan Cervas gave us George Santos!
So maybe Wisconsin Republicans aren’t as screwed as we first thought. From the New York Times:
Mr. Cervas’s new maps radically reshaped several districts, scrambling the future of the state’s political establishment for the next decade. Republicans were quietly pleased, and some anti-gerrymandering groups praised his work. But Democrats, who saw several potential pickups in the House of Representatives potentially evaporate, were outraged. … Representative Hakeem Jeffries, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens, was particularly galled.”
— “If Democrats lose the House, they may have New York to blame”
The contiguity gambit
Wisconsin’s supreme court seized on contiguity as the saddle horn to pull down existing legislative districts, noting that unconnected “islands” dotted over half the 99 assembly districts. Those are, however, remnants of town government stranded when cities and villages gobbled up surrounding territory for annexation. In most cases, those islands remain vacant farmland. Even where populated, courts have always held that respecting municipal boundaries is important. Indeed, a Legislative Reference Bureau paper on redistricting from three years ago expressly excuses such islands in order to preserve municipalities.
Cervas, apparently, agrees. “In my map making I avoided fragmenting existing political subunits.” (Source here.) The Protasiewicz court seems determined to slay what it considers partisan gerrymandering — a windmill that Chief Justice Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in June 2019 in a case emanating from North Carolina: “Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions.” If Wisconsin’s Jill Karofsky found such authority in the state constitution, she did not cite it.
Partisanship is evanescent. One-third of Wisconsin’s 72 counties voted for Barack Obama twice and then for Donald Trump in 2016.
The New York story is instructive. Voters there created a bipartisan legislative districting commission which, of course, couldn’t agree on the day of the week. It went to the judges, who appointed Cervas, who took on Grofman of Cal-Irvine as an assistant, returning the favor when Grofman was the special redistricting master in Virginia. The two of them have co-written 17 redistricting papers that we could find.
Guess what, there’s another redistricting lawsuit in New York! Democrats want Cervas’ maps to be redrawn!
The New York Times reports that Cervas is a registered independent in Pennsylvania, where he lives, but he says he voted in a Republican primary there in hopes of electing a moderate. (None dare call him RINO!)
Blaska’s Bottom Line: In any worse-case scenario, Republicans would see their 64-35 majority whittled down to 56-43. If Democrats keep defending DEI, boys in the girls’ room, and higher taxes, we will gain seats.
4 responses to “Maybe Republicans aren’t as screwed as we think”
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The clock is ticking. April 2 is coming up fast.
a better question is should republicans concentrate on winning hearts and minds instead of court cases? they were talking about impeaching JP before she was sworn in. save all the bitching until the court decides the case.
“The New York Times reports that Cervas is a registered independent in Pennsylvania, where he lives, but he says he voted in a Republican primary there in hopes of electing a moderate. ”
PA has closed primaries. Independents or other party registrants cannot vote for other parties’ primary candidates. The PA Legislature is looking at changing that, but it hasn’t happened yet. If Cervas voted for a Republican in the primary, he would have had to change his party affiliation before the deadline for that election.