Fact: What goes around, comes around.
Shortly after his first inauguration in 2009, while meeting with Republican congressional leaders, President Barack Obama suggested their proposals for changing his economic proposals wouldn’t carry much weight.
Elections have consequences, he told them, and his bottom line was, “I won.” Translation: You lost. Deal with it.
Republicans in Tennessee are now basically saying the same thing to Democrats. Again.
Consider the last half-dozen or so election cycles in Tennessee statewide politics. Republicans have been winning, and Democrats have been losing. As a consequence, the Red Team has a 73-26 supermajority in the State House, and a 27-6 super-duper majority in the Senate.
For the ratio-minded, that’s a 76% Republican House and a 79% Republican Senate. This in a state in which the actual Republican vote is more like 60%.
A look at the Senate is particularly telling. As I mentioned in a column a couple of years ago, it was tilted red as recently as 2010, but more reasonably so: 20 Republicans, 13 Democrats. By 2012, the balance had shifted to 26 to 7.
What happened in between to facilitate such a shift? A redistricting based on the 2010 census, orchestrated by Republicans. Who were pulling the same sort of shenanigans Democrats did when they were in power.
What had gone around, came around. And it’s back.
Redistricting is again on the table in the wake of the 2020 census, and the big news so far is the proposal to split Davidson County – Nashville – into three congressional districts.
Republicans portray the move as simple demographics based on population shifts.
“[O]ur population of the state has moved to Middle Tennessee,” Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton said, according to WTVF. “The 5th District was the last district that was drawn.”
The 5th District incumbent, Jim Cooper, a Democrat, is predictably peeved by the proposal.
“For at least 100 years, Nashvillians have freely chosen Democratic representatives in Congress, but that tradition is about to end,” he said, according to The Tennessean. “What Republicans could not win in local elections, they are stealing through gerrymandering.”
Full disclosure: I live in the 5th District. If the House remapping is adopted, I would either be in the 6th or the 7th, it’s a little hard to tell from maps I’ve seen. The incumbent for the 6th District is John Rose, for the 7th it is Mark Green.
Both of them voted against certifying the 2020 presidential vote. As did all five other Republican House members from Tennessee. Right after the assault on the U.S. Capitol. Astonishing. And yet, not surprising.
Is the process of drawing lines fair? Don’t be silly. This is politics. The rule is to screw the other side, lie about it in public and chuckle about it in private. The only thing that matters is what you can get away with.
As to that question, Rep. Pat Marsh, vice chairman of the redistricting panel, says the “concept complies with all state, federal, constitutional and statutory requirements,” again according to The Tennessean.
There is talk among Democrats of lawsuits, but I don’t hold out much hope for success on that front. It’s true that in Ohio, the state Supreme Court threw out legislative redistricting plans created by a Republican-dominated redistricting commission.
But Democrats have a 4-3 majority on the Ohio Supreme Court, and the decision – surprise! – was along party lines. The Tennessee Supreme Court, I should note, has one justice appointed by a Democratic governor, and three – soon to be four – by Republicans.
What’s more, Ohio voters in 2015 overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the state constitution barring partisan gerrymandering. Not so, Tennessee.
As for the federal courts, the Supreme Court declared in a 2019 case that gerrymandering is a political issue beyond the scope of judicial review. So I don’t see any help coming from that direction.
I do believe things will eventually change, Democrats will regain control in Tennessee, and redistricting efforts will reflect their dominance. I don’t know exactly when, but probably sometime in the 22nd century.
Or 23rd. Or...
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at jrogink@gmail.com