The proposed map of six Oregon congressional districts crafted by Democrats on the Legislature’s redistricting committees would likely result in five Democrats and a lone Republican being elected to the U.S. House.
The draft map, released Friday, would pack all of the state’s most heavily Republican areas into one district and spread Democratic voters among the other five districts in a way that all of them would lean Democratic, although some narrowly so, multiple analyses including one by The Oregonian/OregonLive found.
The proposed map is significantly more partisan than the current map of five districts – as evidenced by the fact it would likely yield an Oregon U.S. House delegation that is 86% Democrats, even though Oregon voters in recent years have given the Democratic candidate from 50% (Gov. Kate Brown in 2018) to 56% (President Joe Biden in 2020) of the statewide vote in competitive elections. (Republicans won 44% and 40% of the votes in those two contests, with the remainder going to candidates from minor parties.)
Not surprisingly, the map proposed by Republican lawmakers on the redistricting committees looks starkly different and would likely yield a very different Oregon line-up in the U.S. House. The Republicans would keep heavily Democratic areas of Hood River County and Bend in the same district as heavily Republican eastern Oregon, as is now the case. And it would pack heavily Democratic Multnomah and Washington counties into two overwhelmingly Democratic districts, leaving the remaining three districts fairly competitive. The most likely scenario, depending on the strength of candidates who were to run, would be a three-three Republican-Democratic split.
Among the analysts who have reached those or similar conclusions about the proposed maps, based on voter registration data and recent election outcomes, are PlanScore, a project of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal System; polling, politics and sports statistics website fivethirtyeight.com; and The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Neither of the lawmakers’ proposed maps, nor the maps each of the parties has proposed for state House and Senate districts, are final. Lawmakers on the House and Senate redistricting committees will hold 12 joint public hearings over four days starting Wednesday and wrapping up Sept. 13. Then the committees will decide, if they are able, on final maps.
Sen. Kathleen Taylor, a Portland Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Redistricting, noted Friday morning when releasing her party’s proposed maps that they are a “work in progress.”
Her committee can approve any maps that its Democratic members want, since Democrats hold the majority. So the map as proposed Friday could pass that committee.
But that map won’t pass the House Committee on Redistricting, as would be required to get the proposal to the House floor for a vote. That’s because, to bring an end to Republican delay tactics during the legislative session, House Speaker Tina Kotek handed Republicans a favor. Instead of giving her party a majority of seats on her chamber’s powerful redistricting committee, as is customary, she gave Republicans half the seats.
Thus, any map that House and Senate Democrats favor will have to please House Republicans enough that their three redistricting committee members won’t tank it.
Republicans have good reason to get new state House and Senate districts passed in the Legislature, however, even if it’s not a plan they love, since the job would pass to the secretary of state, Democrat Shemia Fagan, if lawmakers fail.
Even if Republicans agree to a compromise with Democrats and pass a plan through both chambers of the Legislature, Brown could veto it, which would also have the effect of passing the map drawing to Fagan.
Lawmakers tentatively plan to hold a special session the week of Sept. 20 to pass the plans. They face a Sept. 27 deadline under a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.
-- Betsy Hammond; betsyhammond@oregonian.com; @OregonianPol
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