Fair Maps

 It is Time for Fair Maps

 

The current crop of Republican members of the House of Representatives Freedom Caucus cannot get anything done. Once more they played chicken, trying to shut down our government by refusing to vote for a continuing resolution that keeps basic funding levels for operations in place. 

 

Democrats and Republicans in the Senate cobbled together a last-minute agreement that keeps the lights on until March. Newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La) brought the Senate agreement to the House floor by suspending the rules of the House. He then needed Democratic votes to add to those in his caucus who still have some sense. In the end, 314 House members voted to support the agreement and send it on to President Biden for his signature averting a shut down. The GOP hard right game of chicken will be on us again come March.

 

Of the 314, 107 Republicans were joined by 207 Democrats to get the job done. Mike Johnson may well lose his speaker’s gavel as a result if the Freedom Caucus has its way. 

 

The Wisconsin delegation in the House is made up of eight representatives. Two are Democrats, Gwen Moore, and Mark Pocan. They both voted to keep the government running. Six are Republicans, Scott Fitzgerald (our Congressman), Mike Gallagher, Brian Steil, Tom Tiffany, Derrick Van Orden and our former state senator, Glenn Grothman. All six voted to shut the government down. All six are members of the Freedom Caucus. 

 

The Wisconsin gang of six are fully aligned with the former occupant of the White House who lost his last election and control of the Senate in the last mid-terms. How he manages to control these puppets and keep the remaining GOP co-conspirators in his thrall is a continuing mystery. What the six hope to gain by shutting down our government is also elusive. 

 

The Freedom Caucus does not have the votes in the House to get anything done. All they can accomplish is disruption and chaos and they are very good at both. They have their sights set on holding up funding to support the governments of Ukraine and Israel hoping to secure some radical changes to our immigration policy or, at least, keep it on a front burner hoping to hurt President Biden’s re-election effort. In the end, they will cave or be outflanked as they always are. 

 

The only way to get the Wisconsin gang of six out of Congress is to redraw their district maps which all but guarantee their re-elections. Their districtas are heavily gerrymandered, packing them with GOP voters.

 

Our Wisconsin Supreme Court has already declared our state’s legislative districts unconstitutional under rules in our state constitution and ordered new district maps be drawn before the next election. That decision will rid us of the most gerrymandered state legislative districts in the country. 

 

This week, several voters filed a petition with the state Supreme Court asking it to declare the maps of Wisconsin’s congressional districts unconstitutional as well using the rationale of Court’s previous decision as support. Should the Court take up the petition and void the congressional district maps, we might just end up with a much more balanced congressional delegation going forward. 

 

The Wisconsin GOP death grip on legislative power may well be headed to the dust bin of history where it rightfully belongs if the Court’s decisions hold. 

 

New, fair maps of state legislative and congressional districts should give voters a greater choice on the policies and platforms to be followed by our elected representatives. The outcomes of truly contested elections across the state will more clearly reflect the will of the people than they do presently. 

 

As long as our Supreme Court bases its decisions in these cases on the Wisconsin Constitution’s rules governing legislative district boundaries, they should be immune from scrutiny in Federal Courts where different more GOP friendly rules apply to judicial oversight of elections.

 

While we are in the throes of a cold snowy winter, the long cold winter of GOP control of Wisconsin government and a majority of its congressional seats may soon be coming to the heated end it deserves. 

 

For those of us who took up the cudgel when Scott Walker ushered in this latest aberration in Wisconsin’s progressive political history, these changes cannot come soon enough.