After a turbulent remapping process, politicos evaluate new landscape

After nearly 18 hours of marathon meetings over two days, the five volunteers tasked with redrawing Arizona’s political boundaries cast their votes on a new legislative map and marked the end of one of the most tumultuous political battles the state has ever seen.

The fight surrounding the Independent Redistricting Commission and its work included allegations of bid-rigging, conspiracy and back-room shenanigans, and ultimately led the governor and the Senate to take the unprecedented step of removing the commission’s chairwoman — only to see the Arizona Supreme Court reverse the move days later.

The conclusion of the redistricting process, shortly after 9 p.m. on Dec. 20, marks the beginning of another type of political fight, however, as candidates can now pull the trigger on campaign plans for 2012.

After holding their collective breaths over the … Read More »

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission is considering a handful of changes to its legislative map, including proposals that would add another competitive district.

At just about every meeting of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, at least one of several attorneys representing a group called FAIR Trust sits among the audience.

They take notes, make public recommendations to the commission and occasionally talk privately with commissioners.

FAIR Trust’s attorneys say they want to help the commission adhere to the legal requirements that govern the high-stakes, once-in-a-decade political remapping process, and the group’s name suggests it is interested in fairness.

But what FAIR Trust’s attorneys refuse to say is that they’re actually representing a group of incumbent Republicans from Arizona’s congressional delegation and the state Legislature.

The legal arguments FAIR Trust makes aren’t presented to the redistricting commission as serving the interests of those politicians, but the recommendations they’ve made would create safe districts for the four Republican members of Congress who will seek re-election in 2012: U.S. Reps. … Read More »

Placing the “I” word in front of Redistricting Commission doesn’t mean it’s really independent.

And the five commissioners — Democrats Linda McNulty and José Herrera, Republicans Richard Stertz and Scott Freeman and independent chairwoman Colleen Mathis — who soon will begin redrawing the state’s legislative and congressional district boundaries, are about to find out that politics, like desert sand in the summer winds, infiltrates everything, no matter what adjective modifies their group.

Politics, of course, is mobilization and persuasion, the handshakes, backslaps and wagging fingers in the opponent’s face. But the seeds of politics are in the unlikeliest of places: on a piece of paper. For it is the mission of the IRC, written in the Arizona Constitution, to satisfy six standards of electoral theory, and two of them are on a collision course: “communities of interest” and “competitive districts.”

Already, Hispanic activists … Read More »

It was a Saturday gathering that started with a sizzling race for chairmanship of the Arizona Republican Party, climaxed with a bare majority for the winner, then ended with the smiles and sounds of unity.

But now comes the hard part: the charting of the future of a party apparatus that boasts of electoral victories, but falls short in fundraising.

And with Tom Morrissey — late entrant in the race for the chairmanship, former U.S. marshal, Tea Party activist — now in charge of the state party, questions abound as to whether Republicans can overcome the growing can’t-be-too-far-right mood that mocks moderates and scares off big-money contributors.

A Tea Party chairman might encourage the continuation of diverting campaign money around the party structure and cause moderate Republicans to be boxed out of the party campaign machine in favor of more rigid Tea Party … Read More »