Was it a surprise when Utah judges ruled that the Legislature violated the state constitution, which provides for citizen initiatives to establish law and reform government, and selected a new map for Utah’s congressional districts?
Yes and no.
Like most citizens, I paid little attention to the meaning of “redistricting” in my history classes or when I went to the polls as a young voter. I recalled gerrymandering as something early in our U.S. history to create maps that benefited one party. But when I later served as a Utah state representative, I found myself in the middle of a redistricting exercise.
In 2000, I was the Democratic/minority leader in the Utah House, the same year a U.S. census took place. The Constitution mandates an official, complete count of every person living in the U.S. and establishes legislative districts for the next 10 years based on equal population among and within states.
Our Democratic leadership team in the Utah House was responsible for providing input on redistricting from our vantage point. When I met with the speaker, Marty Stephens, to discuss the matter, I was dumbstruck by two things he said:
- Because of a population shift away from Salt Lake City, a seat would be lost for Democrats and Salt Lake City, and
- Republicans were going to redistrict the state to ensure that Utah’s one Democratic member of Congress, Jim Matheson, would lose his seat.
While I appreciated Speaker Stephens’ frankness, I also saw the raw side of politics: The Republican majority would be using redistricting to maximize their political advantage. As the 2001 process played out over several months, redistricting battles created personal animosity among legislators from both parties that took years to recover from.
Some Democrats were coerced into voting for maps to save a winnable seat, or to lose a seat due to being combined with other Democrats. One Democrat even changed parties in exchange for a winnable election next time. Convoluted geographic districts were created to protect Republicans and hurt Democrats.
In our efforts to end the hyperpartisanship and personal politics, House Democrats learned about — and proposed — a common-sense approach to the map-drawing decision-making process: an independent redistricting commission. Citizens would determine districts objectively, based on demographic and natural or physical boundaries, without the political considerations that invariably resulted from the Legislature’s unilateral redistricting decisions.
Sadly, our proposal never received a hearing. The 2001 Legislature succeeded in gerrymandering the maps. In the next several elections, Republicans added seats in the Legislature and forced Jim Matheson to leave Congress.
By 2010, when the next census and redistricting process occurred, I was mayor of Salt Lake City. I attended a legislative hearing on redistricting and pleaded with the lawmakers to keep Salt Lake City whole. It had been divided into three districts, minimizing our influence in elections and our representation at the federal level. The Legislature granted my request, but it created a geography that encompassed Salt Lake City and followed the I-80 West corridor, merging the district with Western Utah, which was solidly Republican. The Legislature had achieved the same partisan result while maintaining that Salt Lake City remained whole.
After I left the mayor’s office in 2016, a friend and a political adviser approached me about research they were conducting on redistricting. They concluded that through a ballot initiative and vote of the people, it would be possible to change Utah’s redistricting process. They asked if I was interested. I was! I had no illusions about how difficult it would be to establish an independent redistricting commission. The Legislature would hate ceding its unrestrained authority to map boundaries. I also knew this was not a Democratic or Republican issue; it is human nature to want to preserve power. In states across the country, redistricting was skewed depending on which party was in power.
In Utah, from 2016 until the final court rulings this year, a bipartisan group of committed citizens has strategically and persistently pursued an independent redistricting commission. That group, the nonprofit Better Boundaries, worked tirelessly through many obstacles, ups and downs, wins and losses. In my opinion, the group prevailed for the following reasons:
- We never lost sight of our objective.
- We never made the results about partisan gain.
- We raised enough money to cover the costly process.
- We worked collaboratively through every issue.
- We maintained confidence that our cause was just and the citizens of Utah would support that cause.
For me, the redistricting reform has been a long journey of trying to improve a horrible political process by creating more competitive elections and engaging more citizens in government decision making.
It remains to be seen whether Utah’s new maps will remain. There is no doubt the Legislature and the Republican Party will do everything in their power to undo the new congressional districts. But for now, Utah once again has districts that better represent its communities of interest.