County abandons nonpartisan approach to redistricting; panel split along party lines
The nonpartisan League of Women Voters was voted out of a Sedgwick County redistricting committee Friday, replaced by a mostly partisan board.
That was the end result of a special County Commission meeting called Friday to form the committee and appoint the first members, one for each of the five commissioners.
The commission had voted Wednesday to form a special redistricting committee to advise the commissioners before they redraw boundaries between their districts, which they’re required to do after the Census every 10 years to equalize populations and ensure more-or-less equal representation.
But the final committee approved Friday bears little resemblance to what the commissioners approved two days earlier.
The original plan called for a 15-member committee, five members chosen by the commissioners and 10 selected by the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan watchdog group focused on fair elections and voting rights.
On Friday, the committee shifted to a more partisan direction, replacing the 10 League appointees with five each from the county Democratic and Republican parties.
The proposed changes were brought forth by Commissioner David Dennis, one of the three Republicans on the commission.
When commissioners selected their representatives to the committee, Dennis appointed Lamont Anderson.
The Eagle asked the county election office on Friday morning for party registration status of all the appointees and officials there identified Anderson as a registered Democrat, which would have given a narrow 8-7 majority to Democrats on the committee.
Friday night, Anderson said he is actually an unaffiliated voter, which would even up the Republican-Democratic balance at seven each.
Anderson said he was a Republican until 2015, when he switched his registration to the Democratic Party. But in 2018 or 2019, he changed his registration again, to unaffiliated, he said.
The county election commissioners’ office was closed and no one there could be reached for confirmation, but Anderson provided a screen shot showing him as unaffiliated from www.ksvotes.org, a nonprofit organization that allows individuals to check their own registration status.
Dennis said he didn’t ask Anderson’s party affiliation before choosing him. “He was chairman of my Citizens’ Advisory Board and he’s a good guy,” Dennis said.
The other commissioners did hew the party line with their appointees:
▪ District 1: Republican Commissioner Pete Meitzner appointed state Rep. Patrick Penn, who will chair the redistricting committee.
▪ District 2: Democratic Commissioner Sarah Lopez appointed Martha Pint, co-president of the Sedgwick County and Kansas chapters of the League of Women Voters.
▪ District 4: Democratic Commissioner Lacey Cruse appointed Melody Miller, a former county commissioner and Democratic state legislator.
▪ District 5: Republican Commissioner Jim Howell appointed Elizabeth Stanton, who recently won a race for City Council in Derby and will take office in January.
Dennis had discussed the proposal in advance with county Republican Party Chairman David Thorne, who provided him with a list of the Republican selections for the committee.
They are:
▪ Keith Dater, a former aide to U.S. Sen Pat Roberts
▪ Leann Moore, a leader of a group called Stand Up Kansas that has been campaigning against COVID vaccine mandates.
▪ Vail Fruechting, who unsuccessfully challenged Democratic state Sen. Mary Ware in 2020.
▪ Con Howerton, the husband of state Rep. Cindy Howerton.
▪ Joseph “Tex” Dozier, an Republican campaign and public relations consultant.
The Democrats haven’t made their selections yet.
Party Chairman Joseph Shepard said he didn’t find out about the new plan until Friday morning’s meeting and will be working on picking his party’s five committee members this weekend.
He said the most important qualities he’s looking for are strong advocacy skills, varied perspectives and knowledge of the process.
“Those are the three things that I think are really important to contribute to this discussion that’s going to impact us for years,” Shepard said. “This decision is going to have major implications on our community. I think making a hasty decision to just select five people is irresponsible and reckless and I want to take my time to think about who should really be at that table to represent the voice of Democrats, but more importantly doing right by Sedgwick County.”
Dennis’ plan originally set aside an additional two seats for League of Women Voters representatives, one Republican and one Democrat.
But Pint said the League is nonpartisan and would not comply with the requirement to select its representatives by party.
“When you refer to bipartisan, the League of Women Voters is strictly nonpartisan,” Pint said. “The way this is stated, to ask us to appoint someone who is a Republican member and a Democratic member, we wouldn’t be able to do that because we don’t ask.”
Pint also cautioned the commission that bringing parties into the process was, in the League’s view, a bad idea.
“Focusing strictly on party for those people that would be members of this committee would be troublesome for the League of Women Voters, because our findings in studying this issue over the years has found that when you focus strictly on party . . . there’s a strong leaning in the maps that are passed and (they) often wind up in the courts due to their very partisan status,” she said. “That would give the League of Women voters pause if the maps are heavily partisan and gerrymandered; we’ll use the word, gerrymandered.”
Gerrymandering is the political term for drawing district maps linking political strongholds to unfairly increase one party’s election advantage. The name derives from Elbridge Gerry, the fifth vice president of the United States, who as governor of Massachusetts in 1812 signed off on a blatantly partisan district that was compared to the shape of a salamander.
After Pint’s statement, the League was removed from what would have been a 17-member board, leaving a 15-member committee in its place.
Pint said the League had planned to reach out to various groups around the county to determine their interests before endorsing or proposing a map, and still intends to do that.
Commissioners called the special session because as originally planned, the committee would have been allotted only nine days from formation to the presentation of a final report.
Friday’s action moved up the appointments, originally scheduled for Dec. 1, which increases the time frame for the committee’s work to about three weeks.
At least 11 maps are already proposed and more are expected.
The commissioners want the redistricting committee’s report by Dec. 10 to allow them to finalize their new political boundaries by Dec. 15, the last opportunity before the commission’s Christmas meeting break.
The commission’s next scheduled meeting after that will be Jan. 5.
This story was originally published November 19, 2021 at 5:47 PM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story identified Lamont Anderson as a Democrat.
