How Utah Republicans ‘weaponized’ redistricting
Expert calls new congressional map a ‘brutal gerrymander’ that locks Democrats out of power for a decade.
| Nov. 17, 2021, 6:42 a.m.
| Updated: 7:28 a.m.
It’s difficult to argue the new congressional maps passed by the Utah Legislature aren’t gerrymandered. They slice up Salt Lake County into four pieces, a process known as “cracking.”
It’s not hard to understand why. Democrat Joe Biden carried Salt Lake County by just over 10 points over Republican Donald Trump.
The congressional map proposed by the independent redistricting commission would have created one competitive district out of the four, giving a Democrat a reasonable chance of winning. Instead, lawmakers ignored those maps in favor of their own, which overwhelmingly favored Republicans.
Now, we’re starting to get an idea of just how favorable the new congressional maps are for the GOP.
David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report described the maps as a “brutal 4R-0D gerrymander” that would “likely shut Democrats out of federal office for at least ten years.”
How much has the partisan advantage shifted?
CD1, currently held by Rep. Blake Moore, got less Republican, but that won’t be much of a problem. Under the old map, the district was rated R+20. Now Wasserman estimates it at R+12. CD1 was Trump +32 in 2020 and is now Trump +19.
Rep. Chris Stewart’s CD2 moves from R+10 to R+11. Trump carried the district by 15 points. The new map is Trump +17.
The 3rd District was R+17, but the new boundaries make it R+14 for incumbent Rep. John Curtis. CD3 was Trump +25 in 2020. Now it’s Trump +19.
The most significant shift was in CD4, which went from the least to the most Republican in Utah. Freshman Rep. Burgess Owens squeaked past Democrat Ben McAdams by a little more than 3,700 votes. His seat got a lot more Republican, moving from R+6 to R+16. Trump won the seat by 9 points in 2020. Now CD4 is Trump +25.
“Utah is exhibit A of how one-party states can use redistricting as a weapon to bludgeon the minority party,” Wasserman writes.
And the GOP doesn’t stop there.
Fresh from its successful drive to gerrymander congressional districts in Utah so as to make it nigh onto impossible for Republicans to lose any of them, the state’s GOP is considering another step in its Long March toward the creation of a state government that resembles nothing so much as the Chinese Politburo.
That’s a system where everyone can vote, but they don’t have any choice of who to vote for.
Amassing more power is something politicians are tempted to do when they already have almost all of the power. The people of Utah, and the more reasonable members of the Republican Party, should make it clear that they’ve had more than enough of this anti-democratic impulse.
As we learned Tuesday from Salt Lake Tribune political reporter Bryan Schott, Republican Utah GOP Chairman Carson Jorgensen is planning another run at removing the state law that requires political parties to allow candidates to win a spot on primary ballots by gathering signatures on a petition as an alternative to seeking the nomination through party caucuses and conventions.
The current two-track process was put into state elections law in 2014 with Senate Bill 54. It replaced a system where the only path to a party’s line on the ballot was through a caucus and convention system. That method slanted the whole process toward far-right true believers who not only don’t represent the principles and interests of most Utahns but are also out of sync with more moderate Republicans.
SB54 was once favored by many Republicans — enough to get it passed by the Republican super-majority in the Legislature — due to concern that the party was slanting too far to the right. It was aso seen as pushback against a move by activists that would have eliminated the convention system altogether in favor of the petition route.
But buyer’s remorse sank in quickly. Party leaders have tried, without success, to sue SB54 away. They even passed a rule to deny candidates who go the signature route the right to call themselves Republicans. But the rule was never enforced for fear of leaving the GOP line on the ballot blank.
Jorgensen would like the Legislature to allow parties to use the convention system only, with the proviso that a candidate has to win 66% percent of a county or state convention vote to avoid a primary and to go straight to the November election ballot. That is still far too restrictive a method and favors candidates that are plugged into the party’s extremist right rather than its big tent, well, not-so-far right.
Unlike some other red states — looking at you, Texas and Georgia — Utah is not big on voter suppression. We have easy voter registration, near-universal vote-by-mail, early voting and ID requirements that are not unreasonable. In recent years, voter turnout has been high and complaints rare. Such worthies as Gov. Spencer Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are rightly proud of how it all works here.
What Utah has instead is candidate suppression. Between gerrymandering and the convention system, Utah Republicans have put forth a situation where most people can vote but are often likely not to bother because they don’t like any of the candidates.
(Some of that sad situation can be blamed on the fact that Democrats in Utah have little influence and less money. Of course, this not likely to get better as long as Republicans keep building their one-party state.)
Answering critics of the latest redistricting, Cox said that people who don’t like the outcome of any legislative process just need to become more active politically in hopes of getting a better result next time.
If one is not paying that much attention, the governor’s admonition is obvious. But it is not possible to out-organize a system that is designed to keep the powerful in power and further insulate them from the will of the people.
Cox is among the Republican leaders who should expend some of their political capital to halt any effort to make elections in Utah less democratic.
Voters should let their members of the Utah Legislature know how they feel. While those members still have to pretend that they care how their constituents feel.
