Frank Hecker

Last December I took the opportunity to review my Howard County-related blogging in 2010, and I thought it would be fun to repeat that for 2011, including presenting some site statistics and links to posts I think are worthy of note.

My biggest project of 2011 was my finishing my blog series on Howard County Council redistricting and publishing it as an ebook, Dividing Howard. My main goal in doing this was to learn how to create and self-publish an ebook, and having the material mostly already written made it relatively easy to do this; the goal of creating the book also motivated me to finish the series of posts. Given the specialized topic I expected that I’d be able to count the number of copies sold on the fingers of one or two hands, and that expectation has been met: As of today I’ve sold ten copies to people other than myself. Adding to that the three copies I bought myself in order to test the buying process, my total royalties thus far are $26.54; I’ve rounded up and donated $30 to Voices for Children.

As for regular old blogging, in 2011 I did a total of 42 Howard County blog posts (not counting this one), down from 57 in the latter part of 2010 after I started doing Howard County posts. That amounted to one post related to Howard County (even peripherally) every eight or nine days, considerably off last year’s pace of one every four days. My blog traffic was also down from 2010; the average number of views was about 56 views per day, compared to 70 per day in 2010, a 20% decrease. If this trend continues my blog will be attracting only one view a day in 2029.

Here’s a (somewhat selective) list of posts (or groups of posts) I published this year, with additional commentary as appropriate:

• Somewhat ironically for someone who’s not actually a libertarian, I did a number of posts on themes related to libertarianism and the free market, including a rant about Maryland’s discouraging the emerging industry of personal genetic testing, a look at free-market approaches to growing Maryland jobs, and some unsolicited advice to Ken Ulman as he (apparently) prepares to run for governor of Maryland. Widening my scope a bit I also looked at the so-called “bleeding heart libertarians” and the history of liberty.
• Closer to home, I published my somewhat fanciful ideas on reimagining Columbia’s village centers, reported on Chris Leinberger’s talk on walkable urbanism, discussed the old Rouse building as a symbol of Columbia, and pondered the question of whether I should donate to local charities.
• After finishing my history of Howard County Council redistricting I published some further thoughts on the general subject: I wondered what type of government Howard County would have had without Columbia, opined that the Howard County GOP outsmarted itself on council districts, explored why electing council members by one-party-dominated districts can hinder good governing, speculated whether redistricting can be done in a non-partisan way, and discussed whether we should revert to at-large council elections. I also contemplated the curious coincidences between the local elections of 1986 and 2010, and revisited one of my 2010 election predictions.
• Finally, in more personal blogging I bet that I could lose weight using the threat of a Newt Gingrich presidency as a goad (and subsequently lost that bet), plugged my math blog, and re-branded my main blog.

If you have an interest in continuing to read this blog in 2012, remember that you can see new posts as soon as they’re published by using Google Reader (or another RSS reader) to subscribe to the blog’s Howard County-specific RSS feed (http://frankhecker.com/category/howardcounty/feed/). You can also follow my tumblr if you have an interest in what I’m reading and bookmarking.

In my next post I’ll look forward to 2012 and what blogging-related projects I might undertake in the new year.

This is my fifth and final post in Dividing Howard week on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of county council redistricting in Howard County, Maryland, and the broader events of Howard County politics from 1960 on. Previous posts discussed the role of Columbia in spurring creation of a county council, the struggles of Howard County Republicans under the council district system, the problems with gerrymandering of council districts, and whether it’s possible to make redistricting less political. In today’s post I consider whether it would be preferable to go back to the previous method of electing council members at large.

As I noted in my discussion of selectorate theory, as a general principle it makes sense to broaden as much as possible the pool of voters who can meaningfully participate in electing leaders, so that those leaders will need to put together winning coalitions that are a significant fraction of the total voting population. Once elected such leaders would then be more likely as a general matter to pursue policies of benefit to everyone and not just to a relatively small band of supporters.

That general principle would lead us to require that a council member attract votes from people all over the county, and not just from those living in a relatively small district. As described in the early chapters of Dividing Howard, Howard County’s first charter required council members to be elected at large (in fact, no other scheme was permitted at the time by Maryland’s constitution), and the first five county council elections (1969, 1970, 1974, 1978, and 1982) were at-large elections.

Why not revert to the original system? There are multiple objections I can think of that need to be addressed. The first objection is that districts are needed to ensure diversity of the council, usually interpreted as racial diversity. This is the same argument recently used in support of the proposal to elect Howard County school board members by districts instead of at large. It’s motivated by the fact that at-large elections have historically been used in many jurisdictions to dilute minority voting power, in particular to ensure (in combination with white bloc voting for white candidates) that no African-American candidates are elected to at-large positions even where African-Americans form a significant portion of the voting population. The question of whether this argument is relevant to Howard County has both a practical and a legal dimension.

Practically speaking I don’t believe that an at-large system would necessarily be disadvantageous to African-American or other minority candidates. C. Vernon Gray was elected as the first African-American council member in an at-large election in 1982, and today I have no doubt that someone like Calvin Ball would be able to win election to the council on an at-large basis. Maybe I’ve missed something, but in modern times Howard County just doesn’t appear to have had the type of racially-motivated bloc voting, especially white voters voting as a bloc to reject black candidates, that has been characteristic of many other jurisdictions.

As discussed in chapter 23 of Dividing Howard, in 2001 African-Americans were only 23% of the Council District 2 population, yet local activists saw that as no barrier to electing an African-American council member to replace C. Vernon Gray; as Jared Thornton noted at he time, “A lot of things about Columbia seem to be different from any other place. We don’t need a super-majority in Howard County.”¹

However whether (re)introducing at-large council elections would pass legal muster is an entirely different question. Changes made to the Voting Rights Act in 1982 (coincidentally, the year of Howard County’s last at-large council election) tightened up the criteria under which at-large schemes could be deemed discriminatory, and in particular did not require actual intention of discrimination. Thus even if racial motivations were not behind an effort to change council elections to be on an at-large basis, such a change could still face a legal challenge on racial grounds.

However in 2009 in Bartlett v. Strickland the U.S. Supreme Court held that the relevant provision of the Voting Rights Act affecting by-district vs. at-large elections did not apply unless minorities constituted an actual majority in the area in question. Since this is not the case in Council District 2 (or indeed in any council district in Howard County) it may be that a change back to at-large council elections would be relatively immune to legal challenges.²

Beyond its affect on racial and ethnic minorities, another issue with moving to an at-large election system is its effect on the balance between the Democratic and Republican parties in Howard County. It’s a common complaint today that Republicans are under-represented on the county council relative to their share of registered voters: As of the 2010 general election Democrats were about 48% of registered voters, Republicans 31%, and independents 21%, with Democrats thus having a 1.56-1 registration advantage over Republicans, equivalent to 61% and 39% shares respectively of voters registering with the two major parties.³

Looking at election data instead of registration data, in the 2010 general election Democratic council candidates collectively received about 56% of all votes cast for council candidates compared to 44% cast for GOP council candidates, with Democratic council candidates under-performing a bit based on the Democratic registration advantage. If the county council reflected this division then we should expect the GOP to have two seats instead of their current one.⁴

Would electing council members at large correct this situation? I suspect that it would not, unless it were combined with additional changes to the voting system. In the type of at-large elections held in Howard County, both in the past for county council and at present for the Board of Education, the top set of vote-getters (e.g., top five for county council) are elected. (Political scientists refer to this as a multi-member district plurality system.) In such a system parties can run slates of candidates, and if voters select candidates along party lines then it is possible that all candidates selected in an at-large election would be of a single party.

For example, in Howard County if the 55% of voters who voted for Democratic council candidates in the 2010 general election were instead to vote as a bloc for a Democratic slate of five candidates in an at-large election, no Republican council members would be elected at all. As described in chapter 5 of Dividing Howard, this is pretty much what happened in the last at-large council election in 1982, with Democrats winning all five council seats and the only GOP candidate (Charles Feaga) being shut out.

Correcting this situation, so that the party composition of the council better reflects the party composition of the electorate, would require not just the abandonment of council districts but also the introduction of a voing scheme for proportional or semi-proportional representation. To go back to the 1982 Howard County council election, being the only GOP candidate didn’t help Charles Feaga: The best Republican voters could do was to vote for Feaga only, and no other candidate; however since Democrats significantly outnumbered Republicans this was insufficient to counter the effect of Democrats voting a straight ticket for five Democratic candidates.

One way to address this issue is to allow voters to cast multiple votes for one candidate, so that, for example, a GOP voter in 1982 could cast five votes for Charles Feaga instead of one. This so-called cumulative voting system was actually considered for use in Worcester County, Maryland, back in the 1990s to address the discriminatory effects of an at-large system on black voters. Other possible systems would have people vote for parties (not candidates) and then allot council seats on the basis of the total vote received by each party (a party list system) or allow users to express preferences between candidates (e.g., a single-transferable vote or STV system).

My overall point is that an at-large system in and of itself, especially like the one previously used in Howard County, would not necessarily address the complaints that Howard County Republicans have about the current district system. Neither would a system that combined, say, five council members elected by districts with two at-large members. Electing two members at large would help ensure expansion of the set of voters able to select a council majority (in line with my discussion of selectorate theory in a previous post), but given the Democratic advantage in voter preferences it’s quite likely that the two at-large members would always be Democrats, converting the present 4-1 Democratic council majority into a 6-1 majority.

This simple fact is that no voting system is perfect or can be perfect, in the sense of correctly reflecting all voters’ preferences and not producing results that seem to be contradictory to common sense. If people want to reform the way Howard County Council candidates are elected (a goal with which I’m sympathetic) then they’ll need to take the time to properly sift through the alternatives and (most important) build a strong case to the people of Howard County as to why such a change is necessary. Recall from Dividing Howard that it took at least five years to convince voters to move from the previous commissioner system to a county executive and county council, and over ten years to convince voters to replace the at-large system with council districts. For anyone interested in avoiding having another round of council redistricting in 2021, the time to start working is now.

One reason I decided to write my series of blog posts on Howard County council redistricting was to provide a sense of perspective about the issue that I think is badly needed. One reason I turned the blog series into the Dividing Howard ebook was to make it available for future readers who might be interested in the topic when the next round of redistricting occurs. If you haven’t already bought a copy, while wait until 2021? Dividing Howard is only $2.99 from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and all royalties go to the local charity Voices for Children, which recruits and trains volunteer advocates to represent the best interests of abused and neglected children in Howard County courts.

1. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a current figure for the African-American population of Council District 2, but based on a quick check of Census data for census tracts within District 2 I suspect the proportion of African-Americans in the district is about the same as in 2001, about one quarter; the highest proportion in any one tract is 35%. (I took the figures from the 2010 Census interactive population map.) In comparison, the current African-American population of Howard County as a whole is 17.5% (American Fact Finder, Table DP-1, Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010, 2010 Demographic Profile Data).

2. A good review of the legal issues around at-large elections, including the effect of the 1982 changes to the Voting Rights Act, is “At-Large Electoral Systems and Voting Rights” by Sidney Hemsley. Unfortunately however it does not discuss Bartlett v. Strickland.

3. Registration data is from my Howard County general election turnout spreadsheet. This in turn is based on data from the Maryland State Board of Elections for 1988, 1990, 1992 (for all voters, the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Alliance parties, and unaffiliated voters), 1994, 1996 (for all voters, the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Reform, Natural-Law, and Taxpayers parties, and unaffiliated voters), 1998, 2000 (for all voters, the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Reform, Green, and Constitution parties and unaffliated voters), 2002, 2004 (for all voters and broken down by party), 2006, 2008, and 2010.

4. In the 2010 Howard County general election Democratic council candidates collectively received a total of 57,131 votes compared to a total of 45,590 for all GOP candidates combined. The totals are based on the official results for the 2010 general election as published by the Howard County Board of Elections.

This is my fourth post in Dividing Howard week on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of council council redistricting in Howard County, Maryland, and the broader events of Howard County politics from 1960 on. Previous posts discussed the role of Columbia in spurring creation of a county council, the struggles of Howard County Republicans under the council district system, and the problems with gerrymandering of council districts. In today’s post I discuss whether it’s possible to avoid gerrymandering by making redistricting a nonpartisan affair.

Drawing district lines, whether of council districts or congressional districts, is one of those mundane political processes that tend to get people excited only when something particularly egregious happens—for example, the 2003 redistricting controversy in Texas, when (among other things) Democratic members of the Texas legislature actually fled the state in order to deny Republicans a quorum to pass a redistricting plan for Texas’s congressional districts. The usual solution proposed at such times is to “take the politics out of redistricting,” for example by having it be done by an independent and ostensibly nonpartisan commission.

Iowa was a leader in this regard, having established by law in 1980 a special agency (the Legislative Services Bureau, now part of the Legislative Services Agency) to handle redistricting of Iowa congressional and state legislative districts. The process has run fairly smoothly since then, with the state legislature approving the plans as a matter of course (sometimes after one or two revisions); the LSA completed the 2011 redistricting process in less than three months, with the final plan enacted almost unanimously.¹

More recently in two separate referendums (in 2008 and 2010) the voters of California voted to have an independent Citizens Redistricting Commission draw up district lines for California legislative and U.S. congressional districts. The commission members are chosen randomly from a pool of people determined to have the necessary qualifications, with five slots reserved for Democrats, five for Republicans, and four for independents or members of other parties. Unlike Iowa, the commission itself makes the final decision on district lines, not the state legislature.

As described in chapter 19 of Dividing Howard, Howard County uses a separate redistricting commission to draw council district lines. The members of the commission are nominated by the two main parties’ Central Committees; no independents or members of other parties need apply. (A third party could gain representation, but it would have to attract at least 25% of the vote in the county executive race.) The county council then appoints the commission’s chair to provide a “tie-breaker” vote, so that in practice the work of the commission is controlled by whatever party has a majority on the county council; the council also has the opportunity to modify the redistricting plan proposed by the commission. (This happened in the last round of redistricting, and may happen in this one as well.)

Thus the Howard County redistricting commission doesn’t have the independence and nonpartisan nature that advocates of redistricting reform typically call for. The commission seems to have instead been created mainly as a way to avoid having the county council be involved in the detailed work of creating redistricting plans, while still ensuring that the party with a majority on the council retained control over the outcome.

Making the Howard County redistricting commission more independent (e.g., along the lines of the California commission) would require a change to the Howard County charter, and there doesn’t seem to be any real support at present for making such a change. In the meantime another possible approach is enabling more public participation in the redistricting process, either as part of the formal redistricting process or as part of a separate unofficial initiative.

As described in chapter 7 of Dividing Howard, when the district system was first adopted in Howard County the League of Women Voters encouraged members of the general public to try their own hand at coming up with a district plan, publishing a pamphlet containing the rules for redistricting and the precinct population data needed as input to the process. That effort apparently didn’t have any real impact; beyond the limited public interest in the fine details of redistricting, the process of creating districts is complicated enough that it would be unlikely that a typical citizen would be able to come up with a usable plan that satisfied the various legal criteria (compactness, contiguity, etc.) without some sort of assistance.

However recent years have seen growing interest in and work toward creating redistricting applications that can be used by non-experts; these are typically based on geographic information system (GIS) applications with additional software to implement redistricting algorithms of various levels of sophistication. For example, ESRI, the vendor of the most popular family of GIS applications, partnered with Los Angeles County to create the Public Access Plan site to allow residents to create and submit their own plans.

Other organizations and even individuals have produced open source software that allows anyone to run a redistricting application for their own use or for use by the general public. The most notable of such projects is the Public Mapping Project, which has created the open source District Builder software. I actually played around with District Builder a fair bit to see if I could get it working, but ran into enough issues that I had to give it up. For those with more money than time the GIS vendor Azavea (whose developers helped create District Builder) offers implementation services; Azavea also sponsors the informative Redistricting the Nation site.²

However ultimately the attempts to create “citizen maps” will come to naught unless they receive institutional backing from those who actually have some measure of official input into the process. In a local context, Howard County Republicans seem to have approached this round of redistricting pretty much as they did the last time, like a football team that always runs it up the middle. It would have been interesting to see the Howard County GOP change their game plan somewhat and go with an approach that explicitly incorporated public input and participation.

For example, why not put local Republican redistricting experts to work creating a Howard County equivalent of the Los Angeles public access site, have the League of Women Voters or some other nonpartisan group sponsor it, and commit in advance to present as the Republican plan whatever came out of that public process? In the absence of a council majority the end result would have likely been the same, but the Howard County GOP I think would have been in a better position to lobby against district changes it didn’t like and to gain public support for future changes to improve its position in the redistricting game.

Or maybe the better thing, not just for Howard County Republicans but for Howard County as a whole, would just be to abandon the council district system entirely, and go back to electing council members at large. I’ll have more to say on that in my next post.

In the meantime I encourage you to check out Dividing Howard if you haven’t already; it’s only $2.99 from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and all royalties go to the local charity Voices for Children, which recruits and trains volunteer advocates to represent the best interests of abused and neglected children in Howard County courts.

1. See the Legislative Guide to Redistricting in Iowa for more information on the history and operation of the Iowa redistricting process.

2. For examples of individual efforts to create redistricting plans and software see the Redistricting Now and B-Districting blogs and the Dave’s Redistricting site. News articles on the phenomenon include “The rise of do-it-yourself redistricting” (Stateline), “There Comes a Time When People Just Have to Set Boundaries” (Wall Street Journal), and “Technology allows citizens to be part of redistricting process” (USA Today).

This is my third post in Dividing Howard week on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of council council redistricting in Howard County, Maryland, and the broader events of Howard County politics from 1960 on. Previous posts discussed the role of Columbia in spurring creation of a county council, and the struggles of Howard County Republicans under the council district system. In today’s post I take a step back and look at the overall impact of having a council district scheme with drawing of district lines primarily controlled by one party.

There are really two questions here: First, has there been gerrymandering going on with respect to council district lines? I think the answer to this is yes, as evidenced by the past behavior and statements of the people engaged in drawing district lines; see the later chapters of Dividing Howard for many examples. (Although arguably the gerrymandering in question has been less egregious than in other jurisdictions.) That’s not to say that it’s simply a matter of evil Democrats and victimized Republicans; there’s no question that Howard County Republicans would return the favor if they were ever in a position to do so. (And in fact Republicans in other jurisdictions have happily engaged in blatant gerrymandering against Democrats when given the chance.)

Second, why exactly is gerrymandering bad? There are many answers that people have given to this question: It reduces competition and prevents having a healthy two-party system, it advantages incumbents and discourages “new blood” in politics, it violates principles of fairness, and so on.

However I think a better answer is that gerrymandering works against the nominal purpose of government, to provide for the greater good of all. A good explanation for why this is the case comes from “selectorate theory“, an idea in political science recently discussed in the popular work The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. Selectorate theory provides a simple general model of how those who exercise power are motivated to behave, no matter the type of political system in which they operate.¹

In our context the important characteristics of the model are as follows:

1. The primary goal of all leaders is to remain in power. (They could certainly also be motivated by more noble motives, like serving the public, but if they do not remain in power then they will be unable to act on those motives.)
2. Given point 1, leaders will act first in the interests of those whose support is needed to stay in power, and only secondarily in their own interest. The interests of everyone else will always come last.
3. When the number of needed supporters is very small relative to the size of population (or, in general, the size of the group over which the leader exercises power) then leaders will attract supporters primarily by providing them private goods not made available to others. As the number of needed supporters increases to a significant fraction of the total population then providing private goods to supporters becomes less and less feasible and leaders will provide support increasingly in the form of public goods that benefit supporters but are generally available to others as well.

In this model the difference between a dictatorship and a representative democracy is not that leaders of democracies are more moral and public-spirited, rather it’s that
unlike dictators they must rely on coalitions of supporters that are much larger: A typical dictator might require the support of only a few dozen or few hundred people (key members of the military, intelligence service, personal guard, and various cronies), while the typical leader of a populous representative democracy might need the support of at least a few million people to gain and hold power.

In this light the problem with gerrymandering is this: It lowers the size of the “winning coalition” needed to put a leader into power, and therefore increases the chance that the leader will focus on the needs of the supporters in that coalition to the detriment of the needs of everyone else. This is most clearly seen in cities like Baltimore that are heavily dominated by Democrats or states like Utah that are heavily dominated by Republicans: In such jurisdictions the general election is essentially irrelevant, the outcome having already been decided in the party primaries, in which the number of people voting is relatively small. As long as politicians in these jurisdictions can keep their primary voter base happy it doesn’t matter whether anybody else is satisfied.

Closer to home, let’s look at the 2010 general election results for the Howard County Council. In Council Districts 2, 3, and 4 the Democratic candidates won the general election with approximately 67% of the vote, and in Council District 5 the Republican candidate won the general election with 67% of the vote. Only District 1 was relatively competitive, the Democratic candidate winning with 53% of the vote.²

In 2010 there were almost 180,000 registered voters in Howard County. However most of these were irrelevant to the final results. In particular, since Democratic dominance of Districts 2, 3, and 4 was so complete those races were arguably decided at the time of the party primaries. For example, in District 4 there were approximately 37,000 registered voters (the so-called “nominal selectorate”), but the race was essentially decided by the roughly 6,200 voters in the Democratic primary (the “real selectorate”), so that Mary Kay Sigaty’s winning coalition could be as small as about 3,100 voters—less than 10% of the total voter population in the district.

Similar calculations could be done for the other districts. As it happens both Calvin Ball in District 2 and Jen Terrasa in District 3 had no primary opposition, but if they had it’s likely that their winning coalitions could have been roughly the same size as Mary Kay Sigaty’s. The net effect is that three out of the five council members, and thus a council majority, could likely be selected based on the votes of as few as 9,000-10,000 people, or about 5% of the total number of registered voters in Howard County.

This is not to say that Calvin Ball, Jen Terrasa, or Mary Kay Sigaty don’t care about the other 95% of Howard County voters; I think they, like Courtney Watson and Greg Fox, in general are sincerely working for the good of Howard County as a whole. However if there’s something to selectorate theory, and I think there is, then I think it makes sense to arrange things so that politicians need as large a winning coalition as possible in order to get elected. This minimizes any incentives to favor a limited set of supporters at the expense of others, and maximizes the chances that their actions will be to the good of all.

Minimizing gerrymandering also can help prevent situations where a relatively small minority of voters can thwart the will of the majority and in essence demand special favors for themselves. For example, consider the current structure of the U.S. Senate: Because of the Senate’s rules on filibusters a minority of 40 senators can prevent legislation from passing unless it is modified to meet their demands (which, per selectorate theory, are really the demands of their winning coalitions). That minority of senators could then be elected from as few as twenty states, and those could be states with relatively small populations. If those states are also dominated by one party then in effect the direction of the country as a whole could hinge on the votes of at most a few million people.³

In a local context the Taxpayer Protection Initiative promoted by Howard County Republicans could have produced a similar effect had it been passed, allowing two council members out of five to block tax measures. Those members in turn could be elected with as few as 13,000-14,000 voters—about 2,500 voters in the Republican primary in District 5 and about 11,000 voters to elect a Republican in the general election in District 1—and would have the opportunity to hold spending measures hostage in order to extract special favors for their own supporters.⁴

So what would I suggest we do with respect to the current system of drawing council district lines? That will be the topic of my next two posts.

In the meantime I encourage you to check out Dividing Howard if you haven’t already; it’s only $2.99 from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and all royalties go to the local charity Voices for Children, which recruits and trains volunteer advocates to represent the best interests of abused and neglected children in Howard County courts.

1. Selectorate theory isn’t restricted to political systems; it can also be applied in the context of business, for example to explain why CEOs act the way they do. Also note that for purposes of this post I’ve simplified an already simple model even further.

2. These and other figures are from the official results for the 2010 general election and 2010 party primaries, as published by the Howard County Board of Elections.

3. To take an extreme example, Wyoming is the least populous state in the U.S., with less than 600,000 people. It is also reliably Republican; in the 2008 race for the Wyoming Senate seat Republican Mike Enzi won election with over 75% of the vote. The number of Republican voters in the primary that year was about 70,000, so as few as 35,000 voters could determine Wyoming’s two U.S. senators. (As it happens Enzi was unopposed in the 2008 primary, but the general point stands.)

4. Had I thought of it at the time I would have added this to the list of the reasons why the Taxpayer Protection Initiative was and is a bad idea.

I’m continuing Dividing Howard week on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of council council redistricting in Howard County, Maryland, and the broader events of Howard County politics from 1960 on. Today’s post poses the question: Is the current disadvantaged state of the Howard County Republican party, especially with respect to council redistricting, partly or even mostly of its own making?

Democrats have held a voter registration advantage over Republicans for the past fifty years in Howard County, and that advantage has reliably translated into an electoral advantage. Since Howard County’s current charter form of government came into effect in the late 1960s and the Howard County Council was established, Democrats have had a majority on the council for all but four years of that time.¹

That in turn has translated into Democrats having ultimate control over drawing the district lines for county council elections. The later chapters of Dividing Howard are filled with complaints from local Republicans about Democratic gerrymandering of council districts and exhortations to draw council district lines in a way that is allegedly more fair.

As it happens I too am concerned about the possibility of gerrymandering, both with county council districts and more generally. (I’ll have more to say about this soon.) However at the same time I don’t see local Republicans simply as innocent victims of a dastardly Democratic plot. To a large degree Howard County Republicans are complicit in the creation of the current council system under which they’re struggling to achieve electoral success.

First, as I discussed in yesterday’s post, if the planned community of Columbia had not been established then Howard County would likely have remained under the county commissioner form of government; it was local Republican leaders who originally formed the “How-Char-Go Committee” to promote switching Howard County to a charter form of government, and local Democratic leaders who pushed back, telling voters to reject a charter referendum in the 1964 general election (which the voters proceeded to do). Local Democrats eventually joined the charter movement, but there’s no question it started out as a Republican project.

In retrospect Howard County Republicans clearly didn’t realize that the establishment of Columbia would lead to a major influx of liberal Democrat voters, and any “buyer’s remorse” they might have felt is completely understandable. (See for example local Republican leader Charles Miller’s comments in 1977 on the tenth anniversary of Columbia, in which he expresses regret at having listened to Jim Rouse’s sale pitch.) However rather than accepting the new situation and trying to do their best to deal with it electorally, Republicans then proceeded to make it arguably worse from their point of view.

More specifically, when the Howard County Council was originally established in 1969 there were no council districts. All Howard County Council members were elected at large. However as discussed in chapter 2 of Dividing Howard, in the 1974 general election the growing population of Columbia led to the election of four Columbia Democrats to the county council, as well as the election of a county executive (Edward Cochran, father of Courtney Watson) who was sympathetic to the concerns of Columbia voters.

As outlined in chapters 3 through 6 of Dividing Howard, the result was a growing backlash in the rest of the county against Columbia’s political power, a backlash that led to a push by local Republicans and conservative Democrats to elect council members by district, in order to minimize as much as possible the influence of Columbia voters. In fact, the original district proposal would have expanded the council from five members to seven, and would have required that the five council incumbents, including the four council members from Columbia, compete in only two council districts of the seven proposed—this at a time when Columbia voters were approaching half of the Howard County electorate. No wonder 80% of Columbia voters rejected this plan in 1976.

Undeterred, local Republicans continued to join conservative Democrats in pushing for a council district scheme: Local Republican leader Charles Feaga led a petition drive to revive the seven-district scheme in 1980 after a Democrat-dominated commission had rejected the scheme. After his unsuccessful council bid in 1982 (in which he came in sixth as Democrats won all five at-large council positions) Feaga continued to push for establishment of council districts, along with other Republicans. Once council districts were approved by Howard County voters in 1984 Feaga was able to take advantage of the district system to finally become the first (and at that time, only) Republican council member in 1986.

So although Republicans were not the sole force behind the creation of council districts (I think the role of conservative Democrats outside of Columbia was more important), they certainly were consistently vocal in support of the district system and happy to see it established. Once districts were actually in place Republicans found themselves on the losing end of the council redistricting game, beginning with the 1986 redistricting effort, since the council was empowered to draw district lines and the council still had a Democratic majority. That’s when the Republican complaints of Democratic gerrymandering began.

Subsequently Howard County Republicans arguably botched their best chance of countering such gerrymandering. After the 1990 election of Republican Charles Ecker as county executive, Republicans were able to throw some sand in the gears of the redistricting process, using Ecker’s veto and a subsequent lawsuit, but still lacked the council majority necessary to control the process. However in 1994 Ecker won re-election and Republicans won a three-seat majority on the county council, as Feaga was joined by Darrell Drown and Dennis Schrader. If the Republicans had been able to repeat that success in 1998 then they would have been in a position to control council redistricting after the 2000 census.

However in 1998 Ecker had to step down due to term limits and Darrel Drown declined to run again for personal reasons. Charles Feaga and Dennis Schrader chose to give up their council seats and run against each other for the county executive position. This meant that there were open seats in all three council districts previously held by Republicans. Allan Kittleman succeeded Feaga in the safe Republican seat in western Howard, and Chris Merdon was able to hold Drown’s Ellicott City seat for the GOP. However in the absence of Dennis Schrader Republicans lost the District 3 seat in southeastern Howard to Democrat Guy Guzzone, and Schrader himself lost to James Robey in the county executive race.

The result was that a Democratic-majority county council had control of the council redistricting process after the 2000 census, and (unlike 1990) they had a Democratic county executive to back them up. That same situation holds true after the 2010 general election, except that Republicans have further lost ground on the county council, now retaining only the western Howard seat originally won by Charles Feaga back in 1986.

However as I said above, even if Howard County Republicans have committed a number of own goals in getting to their current state, I still think they have have a good general point about the undesirability of the current district system in terms of providing opportunities for gerrymandering. I’ll have more to say about that topic beginning with my next post.

In the meantime I encourage you to check out Dividing Howard if you haven’t already; it’s only $2.99 from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and all royalties go to the local charity Voices for Children, which recruits and trains volunteer advocates to represent the best interests of abused and neglected children in Howard County courts.

1. The footnote to my post “Howard County likely voters in the 2010 general election” has links to party voter registration and electoral composition data for Howard County elections since 1988. For more on the Howard County charter push, including more quotes and complete links to primary sources, see chapter 1 of Dividing Howard.

This is Dividing Howard week here on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of council council redistricting in Howard County, Maryland, and the broader events of Howard County politics from 1960 on. Today’s post poses the question: If Columbia didn’t exist in its present form, would Howard County have a county council and county executive?

In his recent post “Meanwhile, in an alternate universe…” Bill Woodcock of 53 Beers on Tap speculated on what would have happened in Howard County if the planned community of Columbia had never been built. His conclusion:

Howard County would have developed further along its major highways—I-70, US 40, US 29, US 1. …

Without a major population center, rather several smaller ones, Howard County would’ve become an exurb of Baltimore and DC rather than a suburb. Pressure would be great to build more homes in Howard, absent a major employer or tax base. …

In short, life in Howard County would have become radically different. Howard County would have become a balkanized bedroom community with no identity or clear sense of purpose. It would become sounthern Carroll County, on steroids.

I think this is pretty much on the mark. However at one point Bill mentions in passing what “the new charter government” would have done in the absence of Columbia. This is where I differ from him: As I discuss in chapter 1 of Dividing Howard, the fact that Howard County has a charter form of government, that is, a county council and county executive, is pretty much a direct result of the establishment of Columbia.

As Lewis Nippard, a member of the committee pushing for a charter change, said back in September 1963, “We do not believe the [existing] county commissioner form of government can meet the needs of the future as the county population begins to increase toward astronomical levels.” Nippard and others also pointed to the fact that Howard County had no incorporated towns or cities (in fact, it still doesn’t), and thus no real local government beyond the three county commissioners, who had to look to the Maryland General Assembly to enact any legislation needed to address Howard County local issues.¹

As it turned out, Nippard was right about the “astronomical level” of population growth; as Columbia was created and new residents flooded in beginning in the late 1960s, Howard County population growth grew to over 10% a year, a rate that would have doubled the county population every seven years if it had been sustained. (See my blog post “Howard County population growth, 1950-2009“ for more on this.) Absent the prospect of that growth I suspect that Howard County would have remained under the existing county commissioner system, and at most there would have been a push to formally incorporate Ellicott City (as Bill speculates).

The experience of neighboring counties is a guide here: Both Frederick County and Carroll County are situated similarly to Howard County in terms of their proximity to major major metropolitan areas, and both have experienced exurban development over the years. However neither of them had comparable developments to that of Columbia, and both also had existing incorporated towns and cities. Although both counties have considered or are considering moving to a charter form of government, both still remain governed by a Board of Commissioners. If Columbia had never existed I strongly suspect this would be true of Howard County as well.

One other key thing to note about Carroll and Frederick counties is that every county commissioner in both counties is a Republican. I’ll have more to say on that topic in my next post.

In the meantime I encourage you to check out Dividing Howard if you haven’t already; it’s only $2.99 from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and all royalties go to the local charity Voices for Children, which recruits and trains volunteer advocates to represent the best interests of abused and neglected children in Howard County courts.

1. For more on the Howard County charter push, including more quotes and complete links to primary sources, see chapter 1 of Dividing Howard.

For more on the various forms of government allowed for Maryland counties, see the page “Forms of County Government” published by the Maryland Association of Counties, and the documents linked to from that page.

For those of you who enjoyed my blog posts on Howard County Council redistricting so much that you’d like to read them all again in one convenient package, your wait is over: I’m proud to announce the publication of my new book Dividing Howard: A History of County Council Redistricting in Howard County, Maryland, now available for the Kindle from Amazon.com and for the Nook from Barnes and Noble.

I’m selling the book for $2.99, and will donate all royalties I receive (about $2 per copy) to Voices for Children, the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program in Howard County. Voices for Children recruits and trains volunteer advocates to represent the best interests of abused and neglected children in the Howard County Courts. I’ll post updates from time to time on how many copies of the book I’ve sold and how much I’ve been able to donate.

To answer some questions you may have:

You don’t actually need a Kindle or Nook device to read the book; you can use the Kindle or Nook applications for iPhone, iPad, and Android phones and tablets, available at no charge from the application stores for those devices. Don’t have a smartphone or tablet? You can use the Kindle or Nook applications for PC or Mac instead; just google “Kindle PC,” “Nook Mac,” and so on to find the application of your choice.

At this time I don’t have versions of the book available for download directly to the iBooks ereader application for iPhone or iPad or to ereader devices from Kobo, Sony, and others. That’s because those ereaders and their associated online stores don’t support an easy-t0-use no-charge self-publishing system like those provided by Amazon.com (Kindle Direct Publishing) and Barnes and Noble (PubIt!). However if your ereader device or application supports the EPUB ebook format and “sideloading” content then you can buy the Barnes and Noble version for the Nook application for PC or Mac, make a copy of the resulting EPUB-format file (which is DRM-free), and load it for use in your favorite ereader. (Ask your tech-y friends if you need more information on how to do this.)

At this time I have no plans to publish a print version of the book. Beyond the extra work involved, I’ve tried to take advantage of the ebook format and have included a lot of web links to primary sources. You can’t grep a dead tree, as the saying goes, and you can’t click on a link on one either. However if there’s a lot of people wanting this and I have copious spare time in the next month or two then I might reconsider.

Finally, the book ends where the blog series does, with the passage of the redistricting bill after the 2001 census (almost exactly ten years ago, as it happens). After the current round of redistricting ends I may produce a second edition that brings the story up to the present day, again depending on your interest and my time.

In the meantime buy the book, tell your friends, write a review or send me your suggestions on how to improve it. Thanks to all of you for reading the series over the past year and for providing the inspiration to collect it into book form.

P.S. A final note: There’s a minor glitch with the Kindle version of the book that causes the book to open to the last page the first time you read it after downloading. (Once you start reading it in the right place then the Kindle will remember where you were after that.) There may also be a few remaining typos I haven’t caught. At some point I may issue an updated version of the book and replace the current version on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. If and when I do that I’ll post instructions on how you can update your copy if you’d like to do that.

In part 22 the redistricting commission created an initial set of proposed council district maps. In this post the commission makes its final recommendation and the council acts on it, as we also see the emergence of some fresh faces in Howard County politics.

August 2001. Speculation arises over future council candidates, and in particular over who will succeed the retiring Mary Lorsung in District 4. At the center of attention is 27-year-old Columbia native Ken Ulman, championed by District 3 incumbent Guy Guzzone and other local and state Democratic politicians. Republican hopeful Greg Fox, who ran unsuccessfully against Lorsung in 1998, puts his own plans on hold pending resolution of council redistricting, which might put his Fulton home in any one of Districts 3, 4, or 5.

Meanwhile the redistricting commission winnows the number of plans down from five to three, moving forward with the Democratic plans proposed by David Marker and Priscilla Hart and the Republican plan proposed by Michael Deets. Deets modifies his plan to keep Kings Contrivance and thus Guy Guzzone in District 3 (I’m hoping that will be more to his liking) but regrets abandoning his proposal to keep all of Columbia within District 2 and 4 (I never bought into the idea that a community that represents 40 percent of the county’s population should get 60 percent of the County Council). Marker focuses on not diluting the voting strength of minorities in Districts 2, 3, and 4 (Any plan that doesn’t keep them strong in three districts could be attacked for weakening minority representation) while Warren Miller stresses the need for better equalizing the number of Democrats and Republicans in those districts, claiming that Republicans are close to having parity in the county.

In any case expectations are that a Democratic plan will prevail given the composition of the redistricting commission and the county council (They have the votes, notes District 5 incumbent Allan Kittleman), and David Marker sees a path to a compromise between his plan and that of fellow Democrat Priscilla Hart. Guy Guzzone professes no hard feelings over the attempt of Michael Deets to redistrict him out of District 3 (Would I get mad at someone for doing what’s best for their party? No. I understand where they’re coming from) while Allan Kittleman accepts the inevitable outcome (I will be happy to represent anyone they put in my district. Whatever they want to give me, I’ll take).

(Michael Cody, Political jockeying under way, Columbia Flier, August 9, 2001; Laura Cadiz, Redistricting plans picked for hearing, Baltimore Sun, August 15, 2001, 1B; Laura Cadiz, Redistricting apt to favor status quo, Baltimore Sun, August 19, 2001, 1B.)

September 2001. As the redistricting commission prepares for public hearings on the (now) three plans, speculation about future county council candidates shifts to District 2, where a previously-passed term limits measure means Democratic incumbent C. Vernon Gray will have to step down after a run of five terms and 20 years on the council. Local activists lament the absence of any African-American candidates to replace Gray (We’re still struggling for representation here. I think there needs to be a wake-up call, says the Rev. John Wright) while the Howard County NAACP stays out of the fray (We’re not a political group, notes chapter president Thelma Lucas) and Gray himself declines to recruit a successor ([It's] unreasonable for someone in political office to drag someone into the political process). In the absence of a clear front-runner several potential candidates ponder their options, including Cameron Miles of Ellicott City and 26-year-old Calvin Ball III of Columbia. Meanwhile in District 4 community activist Mary Kay Sigaty joins Ken Ulman as a potential county council candidate now that Mary Lorsung is retiring (There’s no way I would run against [Lorsung]. She’s very good at what she does, notes Sigaty).

A public hearing on the three proposed plans is as sparsely attended as previous redistricting commission hearings, with 14 attendees of which nine make public statements. However the speakers make up in intensity what they lack in numbers, as former council candidate John Taylor complains about being moved from District 4 to District 5, Sherman Howell worries about changes to District 2 making it harder to elect an African-American candidate to replace C. Vernon Gray, Republicans Louis Pope and Kirk Halpin protest the relatively wide population variations between the districts in the Democratic plans, and Libertarian council candidate David Margolis criticizes the entire redistricting process (All of you have played political games. Your arrogance has been on display from Day 1).

The redistricting commission prepares to select one of the three remaining plans to recommend to the council. Facing certain defeat for their own plan, Republicans call for a vote to approve the plan proposed by Democratic commission member Priscilla Hart. Commission chair David Marker issues a whispered warning to Hart (Priscilla, you can’t vote for this!) and Hart abstains from the vote out of party loyalty (I was caught in the middle). The vote fails 3-3 with Hart abstaining, and the commission proceeds to approve the other Democratic plan (with a few amendments) by a 4-3 margin. Marker expresses regret at the party-line vote (I thought we compromised a lot. I was disappointed) while Republican commission member Michael Deets begs to differ (Democrats weren’t even willing to accede to our standards of fairness). The plan extends District 5 to encompass parts of Fulton and Scaggsville, moves Dorsey Search from District 1 into District 4 with the rest of west Columbia, and puts almost all of Owen Brown into District 3.

(Larry Carson, No one vying to fill Gray’s council seat, Baltimore Sun, September 9, 2001, 1B; Larry Carson, Differences help define hopefuls for council post, Baltimore Sun, September 17, 2001, 1B; Larry Carson, Public hearing on tap for voting districts, Baltimore Sun, September 9, 2001, 1B; Larry Carson, Council district plans critiqued, Baltimore Sun, September 16, 2001, 1B; Larry Carson, Democrats prevail in redistricting vote, Baltimore Sun, September 21, 2001, 1B; Michael Cody, Democrats set to gain strength in redistricting, Howard County Times, September 27, 2001.)

October 2001. Candidates formally announce in the District 2 race to succeed C. Vernon Gray, as Calvin Ball joins community activist Michelle Williams to pursue the Democratic nomination. Ball notes that being a council member sounds just like my job now. People call me whenever they have a problem. Redistricting commission member Jared Thornton notes the high likelihood of electing an African-American candidate in a district with a 23% black population: A lot of things about Columbia seem to be different from any other place. We don’t need a super-majority in Howard County. Ball and Williams join announced candidates Mary Kay Sigaty and Ken Ulman, who are seeking the Democratic nomination for the other open council seat in District 4.

(Larry Carson, State employee, 26, files for council seat, Baltimore Sun, October 4, 2001, 1B; Michael Cody, Schools activist plans run for County Council, Columbia Flier, September 13, 2001.)

November 2001. The council holds a public hearing on the plan recommended by the redistricting commission, and prepares for a vote. However various council members propose last-minute changes to the plan: Mary Lorsung wants to keep parts of Fulton in District 4 instead of moving them to District 5, and keep some areas north of Route 108 in District 5 instead of moving them into District 4; the changes affect 70 voters in total. On the Republican side, District 5 incumbent Allan Kittleman wants to move 2,707 voters from Scaggsville and elsewhere in southern Howard County from his district into District 3, while District 1 incumbent Christopher Merdon tries to keep part of Ellicott City in his district and move part of Elkridge back into District 2. Democratic council members C. Vernon Gray and Guy Guzzone warn that they won’t stand for further changes to their districts.

(Larry Carson, Panel vote favors raises, Baltimore Sun, November 6, 2001, 1B; Larry Carson, Council district changes proposed, Baltimore Sun, November 28, 2001, 1B.)

December 2001. The council finally votes on a redistricting plan. Democrat Mary Lorsung joins Republicans Allan Kittleman and Christopher Merdon in approving various amendments to the plan, with her fellow Democrats C. Vernon Gray and Guy Guzzone opposing the changes. Angered by the passage of the amendments, Gray waits for the other members to deadlock 2-2 and then casts a deciding vote against the final bill as amended, thinking to take advantage of the charter provision that would force adoption of the original redistricting commission plan in the absence of council agreement.

Allan Kittleman smiles broadly (I bet my mouth was touching both ears), realizing that the defeat of the bill would allow Republicans the opportunity to pursue further changes and try to get three votes in favor of an alternative plan before the March 15 deadline (I thought, My gosh, he’s given me an opportunity to write the plan. It certainly was something I was relishing). After a series of consultations between Gray and Guy Guzzone and Guzzone and county solicitor Barbera Cook, Gray changes his vote and the council approves the plan as amended. It’s important to put this to bed and move on, Gray notes.

The amendments do not affect Districts 2 and 3, but instead make several minor changes to move small numbers of voters between Merdon’s, Kittleman’s, and Lorsung’s districts: keeping in District 5 a section of Ellicott City in which Kittleman’s legislative aide resides, keeping all of the Font Hill community in District 1, and moving some voters along Homewood Road back into District 5 in exchange for keeping some voters in Fulton and Highland in District 4. The final districts range in size from under 48,000 to over 50,000.¹

(Larry Carson, Lines drawn for council, Baltimore Sun, December 4, 2001, 1B; Michael Cody, Redistricting re-vote erases GOP’s momentary edge, Columbia Flier, December 6, 2001.)

Thus ended the post-2000-census council redistricting process, as the Democrat’s retaking control of the council in 1998 paid off with a Democratic-friendly district map that would be in effect for the next three council elections.

Almost ten years later and exactly one year to the day after I posted part 1, this is an appropriate point to end this series on the history of county council redistricting in Howard County. But I’m not quite done yet; please stayed tuned for an upcoming special announcement of possible interest to those of you who’ve been reading these posts thus far.

1. Note that the Baltimore Sun and Columbia Flier differ in their reporting of the district populations. I’ve phrased my account to be consistent with both stories.↩

In part 21 in this series we saw Democrats succeed in taking back both the Howard County Council and the county executive position from Republicans. In this post we see how that success translated into control over the council redistricting process, as the new redistricting commission scheme faced its first test.

December 2000. Facing a tight deadline for county council redistricting (with the 2002 council elections less than two years away), the Democratic and Republican parties prepare to name members to the seven-person redistricting commission. The Democrats publicly advertise for any party activists willing to serve, an action that surprises county GOP chair Louis Pope: You want people who understand the numbers, the issues and who can work toward a compromise. Both parties praise the new system as a better way to do redistricting than that followed in the previous cycle, in which conflict between the Democratic council majority and Republican county executive Charles Ecker degenerated into a lawsuit. Notes Maryland state delegate Robert Flanagan, At the very least members of the commission won’t be worried about their own [political] hides.

(Larry Carson, Parties will present names for redistricting commission, Baltimore Sun, December 14, 2000, 3B.)

February-March 2001. The two parties feud over appointments to the redistricting commission, as Republicans object to the Democrat’s choice of David Marker as commission chair, citing his actions during the early 1990s redistricting controversy and his public comments about working to produce a favorable result for Democrats. GOP council members Allan Kittleman and Christopher Merdon (representing Districts 1 and 5 respectively) propose instead appointing Carole Conors, president of the county chapter of the League of Women Voters, and take advantage of District 4 Democratic council member Mary Lorsung’s absence in Europe to force a postponement of the creation of the commission.

District 2 Democratic council member C. Vernon Gray fumes, This is nothing more than blatant partisan game-playing, while Marker acknowledges it as a good ploy by the Republicans to maximize their advantage. Meanwhile Conors protests that she wants to be on the commission to represent the League (We belong at the table) but not as chair, and the Columbia Flier worries about a return to the partisan bickering of the previous redistricting effort (If the council blows this job, the people—not the politicians—will pay the price.).

Back from Europe, Mary Lorsung is outraged that, unlike Republicans (who nominated B. Diane Wilson, aide to former Distrct 3 council member Dennis Schrader), Democrats did not nominate any women to the redistricting commission: Frankly, I thought we had gotten way beyond that. … One [woman] out of seven was just not acceptable. Trying to put an end to the controversy, Democrats add Lorsung ally Priscilla Hart to the commission, while still nominating David Marker as chair. District 3 Democratic council member Guy Guzzone notes that Republicans didn’t get rid of David Marker … [but they] certainly created a bit of anger within the Democratic Party, while Allan Kittleman and Christopher Merdon voice their approval of adding a Democratic woman to join GOP nominee Wilson (Kittleman: We agree with Mary [Lorsung] on that. Ms. Hart wouldn’t be there without Chris and I.). In addition to Marker, Hart, and Wilson, other nominees to the redistricting commission are Neil Quinter and J. T. Thornton for the Democrats and Michael Deets and Warren Miller for the Republicans.

(Michael Cody, Councilmanic redistricting again under the microscope, Columbia Flier, February 22, 2001; Larry Carson, Feud delays redistricting commission, Baltimore Sun, March 6, 2001, 1B; Council deadlocks on naming districting panel, Columbia Flier, March 7, 2001; Don’t let partisan strife again poison county redistricting, Columbia Flier, March 7, 2001; Larry Carson, Democrats add woman to redistricting panel, Baltimore Sun, March 28, 2001, 6B.)

April 2001. As the county council waits for another try at appointing the redistricting commission, local politicians speculate on the effects of Howard County’s population growth (an increase of 32% since the 1990 census, to 247,800 people) on its political clout in Annapolis (I would certainly hope that we will gain a whole legislative district for Howard County, says local Democratic chair Wendy Fiedler) and on the political balance between Columbia and the rest of Howard County (the growth that’s occurred [outside of Columbia] has got to help Republicans more than Democrats, says local GOP chair Louis Pope).

Relatively even population growth throughout the county means that only two council districts are outside the desired size of approximately 50,000 residents, with District 1 needing to become somewhat smaller and District 3 somewhat larger. However changes to District 1 and District 3 would force changes to other districts as well. Christopher Merdon anticipates a big counter-clockwise turn, in which District 3 would expand toward Columbia, District 2 would take part of Elkridge (splitting it with District 1), and District 1 might expand westward a bit into District 5.

District 3 incumbent Guy Guzzone looks forward to the possibility of having all of Owen Brown in his district, a move which would increase the chances of his retaining the seat. (Merdon concedes, They’ll probably try to make Guy’s [district] a little more Democrat to solidify that for the majority.) Local GOP chair Louis Pope also anticipates Democrats wanting to expand District 4 to remove from District 2 people angered by Guzzone’s position on rezoning of the Maple Lawn Farm property in Fulton. Meanwhile the council looks forward to approving the final composition of the redistricting commission.¹

(Larry Carson, Census gains may bring more political power, Baltimore Sun, March 21, 2001, 1B; Larry Carson, Border shifts for districts may be small, Baltimore Sun, April 15, 2001, 1B; Michael Cody, Council districts likely to shift for next election, Columbia Flier, April 5, 2001; Larry Carson, Higher fire tax looking likely, Baltimore Sun, April 17, 2001, 1B.)

June 2001. The newly-appointed redistricting commission holds its first public hearing at Long Reach High School and almost outnumbers the audience, as only a handful of residents show up and only three of them speak. Why? Because there’s nothing to react against [yet], explains commission member Michael Deets, while fellow commission member Priscilla Hart concurs: We know it’s easier to react to a plan than to put one together. Of those speaking, Ken Stevens endorses re-unifying all of Owen Brown in a single district, Rosemary Mortimer recommends not splitting school districts across council district boundaries, and David Margolis expresses a hope the the process doesn’t get mired down in politics.

(Larry Carson, Residents speak out on redistricting, Baltimore Sun, June 27, 2001, 1B; Redistricting group hears from citizens, Columbia Flier, June 28, 2001.)

July 2001. As the redistricting commission gets down to the task of drawing up plans, redistricting commission member and Columbia Democratic Club president Neil Quinter presents his and the club’s proposal, which would (as previously discussed) move all of Owen Brown from District 2 (east Columbia/Jessup) into District 3 (north Laurel/Savage/southeast Columbia), move Dorsey’s Search from District 1 (Ellicott City/Elkridge) into District 4 (west Columbia), and extend GOP-dominated District 5 from western Howard eastward to encompass parts of the Fulton/Maple Lawn/Scaggsville area that were previously part of either District 4 or District 3.

They’re trying to get rid of areas bad for them, claims District 5 council member Allan Kittleman, a claim with which Maple Lawn Farms opponent Peter Oswald concurs: [There's] a substantial amount of dissatisfaction with Guzzone on Maple Lawn Farms. … It is to Guzzone’s advantage to move that area to Kittleman’s district. Quinter defends the proposed plan (I’m not going to apologize for the fact that we’re trying to strengthen Democratic districts), while his fellow commission member Jared Thornton notes that at least Howard County is free of the pitched disputes over racially-related redistricting seen in neighboring Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties (In redistricting, Howard is sort of a boring county).

The Quinter/Columbia Democratic Club proposal joins four others championed by one or another of the commission’s members, two more Democratic plans (from chair David Marker and Priscilla Hart respectively) and two Republican plans (from Michael Deets and Warren Miller respectively). All three Democratic plans propose expanding District 3 northward to incorporate more of Columbia, while Deets’s plan takes the opposite approach and proposes a Columbia-free District 3; since Guy Guzzone lives in Kings Contrivance this would remove him from his district and put him into District 4 to compete for the seat being vacated by the retiring Mary Lorsung. By contrast Miller’s plan makes relatively minor changes to existing districts in an effort to keep them compact while still making Districts 3 and 4 more competitive for Republicans.

(Larry Carson, Democrats map plan for keeping majority, Baltimore Sun, July 26, 2001, 1B; Democratic club floats new council district map, Columbia Flier, July 26, 2001; Larry Carson, 5 plans offered for new districts, Baltimore Sun, July 27, 2001, 1B; Michael Cody, Rival redistricting plans seek an edge, Columbia Flier, August 2, 2001.)

In the next post we’ll see the outcome of the redistricting commission’s deliberations, and what the county council did with the commission’s recommendation.

1. Apparently the final council measure actually appointing the redistricting commission was noncontroversial; neither the Baltimore Sun nor the Columbia Flier saw fit to record the event of part of their county council coverage.↩