Still waiting official ruling from state’s highest court
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
HARRISBURG — Michele Vaughn remembered getting the call about an hour before the Chester County Democratic Committee held its endorsement meeting last Wednesday.
Immediately, she knew her plans for the next few weeks had changed.
On the other end of the call, a voice told Vaughn, the committee chairwoman, that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had rejected the newly drawn state House and Senate district maps, throwing the start of the state’s primary election process into chaos.
As a result, the state legislative maps crafted in 2001 were still the law of the land, at least for now.
“We were certainly surprised by the court decision,” Vaughn said. “We had candidates that were moving from one district to another, we had a district that disappeared, and we had a lot of reshuffling to do.”
Statewide, candidates and political parties have been scrambling to respond to the unprecedented move by Pennsylvania’s highest court, and are awaiting further instructions from the seven judges who now hold the 2012 election in their hands.
The court only has issued a brief statement, saying it was rejecting the maps drawn by the state’s Legislative Reapportionment Commission for being “contrary to law” and promising to provide more specific guidelines in an official decision.
That decision is perhaps the most highly anticipated Supreme Court ruling in state history.
What is certain is that the deadline for collecting signatures to get on the ballot has been extended until Feb. 16, to give candidates a little more time to deal with the unusual situation. But, without guidance on where the new districts will be, an extra week might not help.
In Monroe County, the court ruling has state Rep. Mario Scavello, R-Monroe, pulling double duty.
Scavello was gearing up for a campaign to win the county’s new state Senate seat, which the redistricting commission had moved to Monroe from Allegheny County due to population shifts.
Now, he’s still running that campaign and circulating petitions to get on the ballot for the Senate seat, should it become a reality. But the court’s decision means the election will take place on the 2001 district lines, and he will remain in his old state House district instead.
“We’re running petitions in both the old districts and the new ones. Right now we’re in limbo, until they make this decision and give some clarity,” Scavello told PA Independent on Thursday. “In this situation, this county is really the biggest loser.”
On the now-rejected state Senate plan, Monroe County was supposed to be represented by a single district. Residents there have been pushing for this change since the last redistricting effort in 2001, when the county was divided among six different Senate seats, none of which are based in the county.
Democrats in the county are also upset that the Monroe Senate district is in jeopardy.
"We're really not happy about this, and it turned our whole Senate race upside-down," said Anne Tiracchia, chairwoman of the Monroe County Democratic Committee. "We had three people who were going to run for the (new) Senate seat and now they are in limbo."
The county also was supposed to gain a House district on the new map, which moved from neighboring Lackawanna County in response to population shifts.
Suddenly, that has all been thrown out the window.
In the meantime, county-level political committees are instructing prospective candidates to begin gathering signatures to get on the ballot, even if the district lines are unclear for now.
“I’m telling people to focus on the parts of the district that are not in question,” said A.C. Spickel, chairman of the Blair County Republican Committee. “We’re focusing our efforts in the parts of each district that would be in the district on both versions of the map.”
Democrats, for the most part, are ignoring the rejected plan and focusing their energy on the districts drawn in 2001.
Marcel Groen, chairman of the Montgomery County Democratic Committee, said he is ignoring rumors that the deadlines could be changed, or the primary election could be postponed.
“The law is clear that the old lines are still in place, so I’m telling candidates to go by that,” Groen said. “We’re trying to play it safe for our candidates.”
Even if the Supreme Court issues its decision by the end of the week, the earliest the redistricting commission could meet would be Monday.
But the Supreme Court justices could order another 30-day period for public comment and review before the maps can receive final approval. At the very least, they could allow for another round of legal challenges to the revised plan.
Either way, the process may take longer than a few weeks to play out, meaning candidates would have to complete the petition circulations without knowing their districts.
In Cambria County, Republican Committee Chairwoman Ann Wilson said she does not want to even think about the mess that could be created.
“I haven’t even thought that far ahead right now, but if they do not have an answer by the end of the week, I think they will have to extend the period,” Wilson said of the petition process. “Turning them in this year is going to be horrendous.”
Democrats are feeling optimistic and will see the outcome of the Supreme Court decision as a victory no matter what happens.
If the 2001 lines remain in place for the 2012 elections, the district lines favor Democrats more than any new Republican-drawn maps will. But even new, revised GOP maps would be better for the Democrats than the ones that were thrown out by the Supreme Court, several sources said.
Aren Platt, spokesman for the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, which organizes campaigns at the state level, commended the Supreme Court for making the bold decision.
“Looking forward, I can only say the 2012 lines, whatever they will be, will be fairer and more constitutional than what it was under the rejected” maps, Platts said.
But Republicans are taking whatever steps necessary to prevent the 2001 lines from being used in 2012.
Speaker of the House Sam Smith, R-Jefferson, has filed a lawsuit asking federal courts to prevent Pennsylvania from using the old lines, because they would disenfranchise some voters.
Smith’s lawsuit argues that population shifts in the past 11 years have caused some districts to grow and others to shrink by as much as 40 percent, and using the old lines would violate the Constitution’s “one man, one vote” mandate.
