Kentucky Republicans are redistricting the state's six congressional districts this week as the 2022 General Assembly gets underway in Frankfort, and the first order of business is to make sure GOP Rep. Andy Barr never has a Democratic challenge again.
The Kentucky General Assembly approved new redistricting maps Saturday, mere days after its Republican leaders introduced their plans to redraw the boundaries for the state's legislative and congressional seats.
Redistricting happens every 10 years to reflect shifts in population, and this is the first time the GOP has fully controlled that process in Kentucky.
The Kentucky House of Representatives and Senate usually don't meet on weekends, but they did Saturday to pass this set of maps. Leading House Republicans unveiled their proposal just before the new year, while the Senate's GOP leadership waited to release their redistricting plans until the state's annual lawmaking session began this week.
The bills lawmakers approved Saturday and sent to Gov. Andy Beshear's desk included new maps for the state House and Senate as well as for the commonwealth's six congressional seats. The General Assembly also passed legislation that changes the Kentucky Supreme Court's districts for the first time in decades.
Leading Republican lawmakers have said they made sure these new maps meet all legal and constitutional requirements for redistricting.
It's possible, however, that someone could try to challenge the new redistricting plans in court.
The first redistricting plan that got final passage Saturday was the Senate GOP's redrawn map for Kentucky's congressional districts.
The House gave that proposal the last approval it needed in a 65-25 vote Saturday morning.
The new congressional map doesn't chop up Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District, represented by Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth, as some people feared it might. That district still will include most of Jefferson County, except for an eastern and southeastern swath that now will be represented by Rep. Brett Guthrie's 2nd Congressional District.
The particularly controversial part of the new map is Rep. James Comer's reshaped 1st Congressional District, which will stretch further northeast and take Franklin County — the home of the Democrat-friendly state capital of Frankfort — out of Rep. Andy Barr's 6th Congressional District. That's expected to make Barr's seat safer.
Rep. Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, criticized that shift in Franklin County's representation to Comer's district, which is primarily based in Western Kentucky.
"What it does to Franklin County is wrong," Graham said Saturday. "Franklin County was and is and always will be a part of Central Kentucky, both geographically and in spirit. ... Franklin County shares a lot of bonds with Western Kentucky, but we should not share a congressman."
So yeah, expect 5-1 US House delegations in favor of the GOP here long into the future.
At the state level, the KY GOP is making sure that it can keep their three-quarters super majority in both chambers in perpetuity, too. They only need 50% + 1 to override a Beshear veto, but...why not grab all the power you can? Worked for Ohio's GOP, after all.
The Senate signed off on the House's redistricting plan Saturday in a 23-10 vote, with a few Republicans joining the chamber's Democrats in opposition.
The House already had approved that bill earlier in the week on a mostly party-line vote, as Democrats repeated their objections that the maps were unfairly drawn to split urban areas and further help Republican candidates.
Democrats and the League of Women Voters of Kentucky have heavily criticized the House map. Common complaints have been that it unnecessarily splits some of Kentucky's biggest counties into different districts and targets women by pitting two sets of incumbent women against each other in Jefferson County.
Top Republicans have defended their plan, with House Speaker David Osborne recently saying he believes they achieved their goal of drawing "a thoughtful map that complied with every legal and constitutional requirement."
The House gave the Kentucky Senate's redrawn districts the final approval they needed in a 67-23 vote.
When the Senate passed the new map for its chamber earlier in the week, the Republican plan actually got the support of most Senate Democrats, none of whom will have to run against each other in the same district.
One criticism some people have raised is the way this map splits a few of the state's biggest counties into different districts.
Rep. Patti Minter, D-Bowling Green, said Saturday her home county of Warren had to be divvied up because it has gained so many residents in recent years, but she argued it should only have been cracked into two districts, not the three that make up its territory in this map.
Right now the KY GOP has 75 of 100 state House seats, and 30 or 38 Senate seats. The news plan will probably make it closer to 80-20 in the House and 32-6 in the Senate, meaning that there's absolutely no chance Democrats will ever be in power again in my lifetime, and that the GOP can pass whatever laws they want and override any possible veto from any future Democratic governor easily, and never have to pay a political price for it.
One party rule for good here, folks. Not a fun place to be in the years ahead.
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