On Wichita redistricting, you tell me who’s being a partisan hack | Opinion
.JPG "State Rep. Patrick Penn engages in some name calling at the Wednesday meeting of the Wichita Commission of Electors.")
The Wichita redistricting committee held a meeting Wednesday night and the main point of controversy was Dion Lefler.
Yep, that’s me.
In absentia, I was called a “partisan hack” by state Rep. Patrick Penn, R-Wichita.
Given his track record, I’m not sure whether to take that as an insult or a compliment.
How’d we get here?
Redistricting is the once-every-10-years process of redrawing legislative boundaries to equalize population of districts based on new Census data.
It’s the one time when instead of voters choosing their politicians, politicians choose their voters.
It’s a season of all manner of political mischief as ruling cliques shift district lines around to bolster their re-election chances and punish opponents.
In my column of July 15, I suggested that the City Council might be able to avoid that.
Four of the six council districts are already within the acceptable 5% of each other in population and the other two are barely outside it. So I suggested the council could move one precinct from Becky Tuttle’s District 2 to Mike Hoheisel’s District 3 and we can all go on with our lives.
That column ended with: “The choice is simple. Move one precinct and call it a day; or put the community through 5 1/2 months of political maneuvering, backbiting and infighting. I suspect we’re in for a long 5 1/2 months.”
The council took the second option and here we all are. Sometimes I hate being right.
The council has appointed the redistricting committee, given it the grandiose title of “Commission of Electors,” and charged it with coming up with a new redistricting map recommendation.
The problem of the moment is that City Hall has created special channels for residents to give their input on the redistricting process and come up crickets. The forum page has eight comments on it and half of them are from four weeks ago.
The chairwoman of the committee, former Goddard mayor and now Wichita resident Marcey Gregory, suggested that since I’ve shown interest in the process, maybe they could ask me to put something in The Eagle and Kansas.com to spur the public to get involved.
That didn’t go over well with Penn:
“I do have pause, seeing as Mr. Lefler has shown himself to be quite partisan as of late. Inviting a very partisan hack into this particular situation, if there’s another mechanism that is more objective to glean any public input, I don’t think that we need to tamper our particular efforts here with partisan hackery. So I would be opposed to that particular solution set.”
Speaking of partisan hackery, the last time I wrote about Penn was a month ago.
He went before the County Commission to mansplain about abortions to Democratic Commissioner Lacey Cruse and tell the commission why his take on the potential effect of the Value Them Both Amendment should replace hers in her district newsletter. The county actually did that, and yeah, I had something to say about it. Twice.
Penn’s not a fan of civic engagement.
At a legislative hearing I covered in January, he berated state education officials for teaching civic engagement in schools, because it might inspire students to participate in political causes with which he disagrees.
The next day he voted for a congressional redistricting map that threw aside public input and split racially diverse Wyandotte County between two districts, to make it harder to win re-election for the state’s only Democratic representative, Sharice Davids.
It doesn’t surprise me that Penn thinks I’m a partisan hack. He seems to think that of anyone who doesn’t agree 100% with his brand of far-right Republicanism, or anyone who defends a Democrat against his unwarranted attacks.
For the record, I first registered as a Republican the year Penn was born, and neither I, nor anyone else, need his guidance on how to be one.
Being a public-spirited citizen and out of respect for Marcey Gregory, I am going to tell you how to weigh in on redistricting and urge you to get involved.
It’s important. The decisions of the next few months will determine who’s representing you for the next 10 years.
Go to www.wichita.gov/Council/Pages/Redistricting.aspx and you can check out some of the proposed maps and make comments in the forum.
If I were you, I’d watch this like a hawk.
