The partisan reactions to the state Supreme Court’s rejection of the commonwealth’s House and Senate reapportionment plan are laid bare in the tale of a Monroe County Senate seat.
Republicans are urging the justices to quickly release instructions on which district maps apply to this year’s election, while Democrats say the justices should take their time and use the old maps drawn in 2001.
As the waiting game continued into this week, Republican Rep. Mario Scavello said he’s collecting signatures for two seats at the same time – one in his current House district and one in the newly created Monroe County Senate district, where he plans to run for office.
“I pretty much have my signatures that I need for both already,” said Scavello. “Now it’s just pretty much waiting to see what, actually, the decision is.”
Democratic Sen. Jim Brewster currently represents the Allegheny County Senate district that would be moved under the rejected redistricting plan. He said justices should let the old maps from a decade ago stand for this year’s primary.
“It’s not permanent,” said Brewster. “Everyone is being represented… no one is out in limbo.”
GOP lawmakers would disagree. On Monday, the House and Senate Republican leaders said in written statements that reverting to the 2001 legislative districts would disenfranchise voters and would actually be unconstitutional, because districts now vary in population.
In a statement on his Facebook page, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi said the population differences in House and Senate districts are drastic enough that “voters in smaller districts would have more influence over elections -- and, as a result, more influence over policy decisions -- than voters in larger districts.voters in smaller districts would have more influence over elections – and, as a result, more influence over policy decisions – than voters in larger districts.”
Both Pileggi and House Majority Leader Mike Turzai are urging the state’s high court to be speedy about sending instructions. In a letter to House GOP members, Turzai said he “would expect an Opinion sooner, rather than later from the Supreme Court as a follow-up to its order of January 25, 2012… it should not be difficult to finalize a map to meet any new standards set forth in the Court's Opinion.”
Pileggi’s Facebook post urges the Supreme Court justices to send an opinion “as soon as possible.”
Contrast that with a letter from House Minority Leader Frank Dermody to the chair of the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, in which Dermody writes that he opposes “any attempt to rush the reapportionment process now that the Supreme Court has set aside the proposed final map.”
In the meantime, Democratic candidates, like Brewster, are voicing hopes for a return to 2001 districts. Republican candidates are echoing the concerns of an unconstitutional map in such a scenario.
One such GOP candidate is Don O’Shell. The Clerk of Courts for York County had planned to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Dauphin County Republican Jeff Piccola. With district lines up in the air, and no clue from the state Supreme Court as to where they’ll fall, many candidates are focusing their campaigns in regions where the old districts and the newly drawn districts overlap. But O’Shell says that doesn’t help him.
“I’m not in the overlap. I’m totally in a new area, and so I can’t go up to Dauphin County, for example, and circulate [petitions] up there because I don’t reside in Dauphin County. I reside in York County.”
O’Shell said in the meantime, he’s going full steam ahead collecting signatures as if the newly drawn 15th Senate District were valid. He’s not aggressively seeking campaign donations anymore, he said, but he’ll accept the ones that come in and offer to refund them to donors if the Senate seat ultimately is never redrawn in York County.
“We’re trying to cover any eventuality as we best can,” said O’Shell.
