King County (Washington State) Redistricting -- Update

King County, home of Seattle, is reducing its districts from 13 to 9, due to a successful initiative passed in November.  My diary last week (Here) discussed the timetable (1 week left before council vote on plan) and 4 options presented by the bipartisan citizen's redistricting committee.

The committee has now produced a single "compromise" plan, Proposal X.  The bottom line is, it's not bad.  See below for more detail.  See Maps and Seattle Times article.

This plan is similar to Plan D, which I was advocating as the best of the previous 4.  As with plan D, Plan X would pit 2 Dem incumbents (Larry Gossett & Bob Ferguson) against each other and 2 Repug incumbents (David Irons & Kathy Lambert) against each other.  Two current council members are not running for reelection in November 2005, leaving 11 incumbants.  There will be 1 pseudo-incumbent, a replacement for Rob McKenna (Repug) who is leaving this week to become WA State attorney general.

Some notable differences from Plan D are: Mercer Island is back with Kirkland and most of Bellevue ("the Eastside"); Woodinville is back with the northern suburbs of Bothell, Lake Forest Park and Shoreline; All of Redmond is back with Sammamish and Issaquah and half of rural King County; NE Seattle down to 80th Street (and a little below in parts) is grouped with the northern suburbs; half of Renton and all of Newcastle (SE suburbs) are grouped with the exurbs of Covington and Maple Valley and the other half of rural King County.

All in all, this will likely give the Dems 5 seats and the Repugs 4 seats on the new council.