The Map: Day 4

The Map: Day 4

Had so much fun with the linkfest yesterday that I went looking for more.

A first good look at the specifics in Linn County that quotes much of the delegation. An important specific: The Speaker is satisfied with his turf.

Paulsen would be in a more compact district, including part of Marion, Robins, Hiawatha and Bowman Woods. Based on voters registration, he said, it might be a better district for him.

Also mentions the pair in Johnson:

Democratic Reps. Mary Mascher of Iowa City and Dave Jacoby of Coralville would be in the same district.

Jacoby believes he’ll fare well in his more compact district in Coralville where he served as a city councilman before being elected to the Legislature.

Mascher, in her ninth term, isn’t sweating the new boundaries. Much of her current district is in a newly created open district in Johnson County. Mascher stopped short of saying she will move.

And here's the guy who gets pulled all the way out of Johnson County:

Rep. Nate Willems, D-Lisbon, will see a big change if the first plan is accepted. He would be in a district stretching from southeast Linn County into southeast Buchanan County. He would pick up much of the territory that has elected and re-elected Republicans Paulsen and Wagner.

Willems noted his current district is made up of several small towns, the largest just 4,000 people.

“I don’t see the new district being much different than that,” he said. “I’m very comfortable with that.”

Worth a mention: For the first time ever, Marion is so big it has to be split.

More analysis from Siouxland: Bret Hayworth looks at the pair between two freshmen, Democrat Chris Hall and Republican Jeremy Taylor. There's an open seat next door in 14 that Hayworth says is D-leaning, yet he refers to Taylor as the loser here.

Hayworth also looks at the District 3 two Republican pair of Royd Chambers and Dan Huseman.

Also in the northwest the Le Mars Daily Sentinel has the Plymouth County perspective:

Currently much of the county is in Senate District 2, which includes Lyon and most of Sioux. Randy Feenstra, a Republican from Hull, is the District 2 senator.

The new Senate District 3 would include most of Plymouth County -- including all towns in the county -- and the northwest half of Woodbury County, excluding much of Sioux City and the very northwest corner.

"It means we'd have a new senator," said Jon Neunaber, Plymouth County Democratic chairman. "We won't have Feenstra any more. We might have Bill Anderson."

The important part of the story is that they found a Democrat in Plymouth County.

In Ames, Lisa Heddens is technically in House 48, but really in 46; the article misses the fact that 46 is empty.

A look at Ottumwa, which is roughly district-size so not much change for Dem Mary Gaskill. But nearby in tulip country, "Much of the area now represented by Jim Van Engelenhoven would fall in a different District. This realignment places Van Engelenhoven in the same district as Representative Guy Vander Linden, a Republican from Oskaloosa." Van Engelenhoven moved in 2001.

KTVO mentions the two C/Kurt pair of Democrats Swaim of Bloomfield and Hanson of the significantly larger Fairfield. Swaim alienated some dems by joining Republicans on the marriage equality vote, while Hanson fought off a full court press on that issue AND made friends across the whole state during the 2009 special election campaign.

Empty House 80, based in Appanoose and Monroe Counties, lies next to three paired districts: Swaim-Hanson, Klein-DeBoef, and VanEngelenhoeven-Vander Linden. It comes up to the Osky and Ottumwa city limits. Does Vander Linden move? (That could also be a Plan B for Betty DeBoef but I'd peg Backwards Button Betty as a more likely retirement.) It would also be a nice place for any member of the Judge family.

Or is the Pella-Osky pair the GOP equivalent of the Keokuk-Ft. Madison pair of 2002, which led to the only two incumbent primary in the state? Keokuk's Phil Wise narrowly prevailed over Ft. Madison's Rick Larkin.

And that's what people forget in these stories, with their hypothetical primaries and general election pairings. 2001 saw 25 senators and 39 reps paired, and in the end there was ONE two-Dem primary in the House and TWO Democrat vs. Republican matchups in the Senate. That's IT. A district is kind of an artificial construct anyway. Senator Amanda Ragan puts it well in a Mason City article: "North Iowa is North Iowa, and I think most of our legislators will tell you that."