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TOPEKA — A potential dispute among legislative leaders emerged Friday over whether lawmakers should expand a congressional district that covers the western and central two-thirds of the state so it absorbs the northeast Kansas community of Manhattan.
House Speaker Mike O’Neal, a Hutchinson Republican who leads his chamber’s Redistricting Committee, said he opposes the idea. He is siding with officials in Manhattan, who want their community to remain in its eastern Kansas district.
The proposal to redraw the lines of the 1st District of western and central Kansas far enough east to take in the Manhattan area came this week from Senate Reapportionment Committee Chairman Tim Owens, R-Overland Park. The plan for adjusting the district, which needs a larger population, has strong support from Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka.
But O’Neal said Manhattan officials have made a strong case that their community has more in common with other eastern Kansas communities in its current 2nd District than with the western part of the state. For example, the 2nd District includes part of Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas, and Manhattan is home to Kansas State University.
O’Neal said sweeping Manhattan into the 1st District also forces changes in other district lines that can be avoided.
“I’m not ready to say that Manhattan just gets dumped into the 1st,” O’Neal said. “I don’t see that being the final product by any stretch of the imagination.”
Legislators must redraw congressional districts at least once every 10 years to account for shifts in population and follow court mandates that districts be as equal in population as possible. The 1st District is almost 58,000 residents short of the ideal population of about 713,000 and must gain territory.
The Senate committee plans to meet Monday to discuss congressional redistricting. Hensley predicted that the plan Owens drafted would have strong support from committee members and said a vote could come as early as next week.
But Owens, who doubts there would be a quick committee vote, said he drafted the plan only to open the debate over congressional redistricting, which the Senate is taking up first.
“I felt like we needed to have something out there to start the discussion, and it looks like we’ve done that,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of positive support for it, but there are questions about it from the Manhattan folks.”
The 1st District currently includes Junction City, which neighbors Manhattan, but not adjoining Fort Riley. A decade ago, Manhattan officials also worked to keep their community in the 2nd District, in part to keep the college towns mostly in the same district.
“We feel that it gives us a better presence in Washington to have the strength of the university communities gathered together in one district,” said state Rep. Sydney Carlin, D-Manhattan.
Hensley said legislators can’t avoid upsetting some Kansas residents during the redistricting process, and that shifting Manhattan into the 1st District would result in relatively compact districts.
“That is the easiest fix with the least amount of partisan pain to be injected into the process,” he said.
But O’Neal doesn’t find the changes simple. Under the plan, the overpopulated 3rd District – which centers on the Kansas City area – would lose its half of Lawrence, which would be united in the 2nd District, as it was before redistricting in 1992.
The 2nd also would pick up Montgomery County from the 4th District of south-central Kansas, centered on Wichita. The county is part of a bloc of nine in the state’s southeastern corner where officials traditionally have worked together on economic projects.
To compensate, the 4th District also would expand westward to pull in six counties and part of a seventh in southwestern Kansas.
“What they do the 4th District is unnecessary,” O’Neal said.
