| (crossposted from www.BuffaloRidgeBlog.com )
Redistricting: Finally, It's Over!
Assuming nobody runs off to the federal courts, which has happened before. Iowa got this all over with, what, a year ago? They learned long ago that redistricting is far too important to trust to the politicians who are getting redistricted, especially when they're republicans. So they have a bunch of old judges do the job, and they get it done in plenty of time. But in Minnesota we let the politicians try their hand, even though they almost always fail, and THEN we get around to letting the judges do the job, but almost a year later.
So the Judges have delivered their judgement, and their judgement was pretty good.The new congressional district lines shuffle a few counties about from the 1st to the 7th district, but not enough to change the outcome- the 1st will still lean Democratic and probably be represented again by moderate Democrat Tim Walz, and the 7th leans slightly Republican and will probably be represented by conservative Democrat Colin Peterson.
The Minnesota chunk of the Buffalo Ridge has been losing population, so we're losing two or three legislative seats. The judges seem to have done a good job of spreading the pain, with only one district ending up with two incumbent Democrats and a district or two ending up with two Republicans. With the district lines shifting, a few districts have gotten bluer or redder, but overall the Democrats should hold onto their current seats and maybe pick up a couple. Hard to predict, though- these will be hard fought races in swing districts.
So overall, the judges have done a good job of setting the field for some exciting races on the Buffalo Ridge. |
