CAMDEN — New Jersey’s state legislative districts are too safe for political parties, a political analyst today told the commission charged with redrawing them. Although New Jersey has 40 legislative districts, the vast majority of them favor either Democrats or Republicans. In any given election year, only three to five state legislative elections are competitive for either party, said...
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CAMDEN — New Jersey’s state legislative districts are too safe for political parties, a political analyst today told the commission charged with redrawing them.
Although New Jersey has 40 legislative districts, the vast majority of them favor either Democrats or Republicans. In any given election year, only three to five state legislative elections are competitive for either party, said Ingrid Reed, the retired director of the New Jersey Project at the Eagleton Institute of Politics.
“There are probably at most two solid stories in the newspaper about what is happening in a district that is not competitive,” said Reed. “Debates are usually not held in districts that are not competitive. “All the attention is focused usually in those 3 to 5 districts, which means people don’t get to discuss you issues you all say is important and mean people don’t get to know the legislators.”
Reed was one of more than a dozen people who testified at the state legislative redistricting commission’s first public hearing in Camden this morning. The commission is also meeting in Toms River at 2:30 this afternoon.
Some attendees complained that the commission did not provide enough public notice of the meetings, which were announced on Wednesday.
“The vast majority of New Jersey residents do not know that this morning’s hearing is even happening, and even for the few who might they probably can’t change their normal Saturday morning routine on such short notice,” said Ev Liebman, director of organizing and advocacy for liberal watchdog group New Jersey Citizen Action.
The one-in-a-decade redistricting process is extremely important, as the shape of legislative districts goes a long way towards determining which party will control the Legislature for the next 10 years. In 2001, Democrats outmaneuvered Republcans during the process, going from a minority party to controlling both the Assembly and Senate within four years.
The lines are set to change significantly, both because of legal decisions and Census data that is expected to show the state’s population shifting south — a development that could favor Republicans.
Some people complained that their hometowns or counties were lumped into districts with other towns that have different interests. For instance, Mannington Township Mayor Ernest Tark, a farmer, said his rural home county of Salem – the least populous in New Jersey – should not be lumped in with industrial towns along the Delaware River. Tark is a member of the Republican State Committee.
“It’s my home, and me being a farmer representing the agricultural community, which we think now is the one minority you haven’t heard from,” he said. “It’s our hope that when you redistrict you try to keep our district as rural as possible, rather than moving us up into the urban community.”
Representatives of Hispanic advocacy groups also complained that Hispanics — which make up almost 17 percent of the state's population — are drastically underrepresented in the Legislature. But the groups differed in how to increase Hispanic representation. Members of the Latino Leadership Alliance advocated created districts with a majority Hispanic voters, while advocates for the Latino Action Network said that would create one or two Hispanic differences but lessen their voters' clout elsewhere.