The Alaska Redistricting Board doesn’t get much attention because Alaska has only one House seat. Our redistricting is only for State and House seats. But as partisan politics expands to state and local levels, it does matter.
The Board has five members. Two appointed by the Governor, Conservative Republican Mike Dunleavy. He appointed a Juneau lawyer, who said in a deposition, he was appointed because there aren’t many Republicans in Southeast Alaska (not quite true.) His wife is heavily active in the Alaska Republican party. (And the Alaska Constitution prohibits selecting Board members based on party.) The Governor’s second choices was the CEO of the Alaska Policy Forum, a Libertarian Koch franchise. The Republican President of the State Senate appointed another Republican and former State Senator. The Independent Speaker of the House appointed an Alaska Native woman who is head of a local Native organization. The non-partisan Chief Justice appointed another Alaska Native woman who’s the attorney for a state wide Native organization.
They got most of the state taken care of without much dispute. All the meetings were publicly accessible by phone, any by video conference, and in person. The Executive Director did a yeoman job with the website and getting audio, video, and sometimes even transcripts up quickly. And making all the litigation information and key documents available. He also put up all the public testimony, generally within 24 hours.
But the clash came over Anchorage Senate pairings. The three Republican appointed members held firm for a map which gave Eagle River, a conservative, suburban, wilder (geographically), white area that’s part of the Municipality of Anchorage, but about 12 miles north with two military bases and state park in between. There were two Eagle River house seats, but instead of pairing them for the Senate seat, they paired one with a diverse, lower income neighborhood in Anchorage that was only connected by state park land. When a similar Senate district was created in the 2011 redistricting, the only black State Senator was knocked out of office by the Eagle River voters who’d been added to the district. The other Eagle River district was paired with a district that had 2/3 of its population living on Joint Base Elmendorf Fort Richardson (JBER), and 1/3 living off base in north urban Anchorage. Again, a much more diverse and lower income district than the Eagle River district it was paired with. The two Alaska Native women Board member refused to sign the Proclamation Plan until it was rewritten to say “Disapprove” on the signature page, and they made statements at the meeting calling out the plan as partisan gerrymandering.
Long story short, the map was challenged and the Superior Court judge and then the State Supreme Court ruled the challenged of the Eagle River/East Anchorage Senate district to be unconstitutionally (Alaska constitution) gerrymandered and ordered the Board to remap.
They did. The choices were narrowed down to Option 2, a map drawn by the plaintiffs who had sued originally. That map paired the two Eagle River districts together. The other final map, Option 3B, was drawn by long time Alaskan Republican operative, former head of the Alaska Republican Party, and a participant in the previous two redistricting processes (to be clear, that’s all describes just one person.) That map decoupled one of the Eagle River house districts from the East Anchorage district and paired it with a district in South Anchorage. Their boundary was in one of the largest state parks in the country. You can walk a mountainous trail for 25 miles or so, to get ‘directly’ from one district to the other. Or you can drive further through several other districts. They left the military base/downtown district paired with the other Eagle River district. There are no direct roads the public can use to get from one side of that Senate district to the other either.
Again the Republic majority approved the option that split Eagle River into two Senate seats.
The two Alaska Native women again loudly protested and again got the signature sheet to designate “Disapprove” where they signed.
And again it was challenged and again the Superior Court judge found it to be unconstitutional gerrymandering and ordered the Board to choose Option 2 as the interim plan for the 2022 election (deadline for candidates to file to run in June 1.)
The two members of the Board minority even privately hired an attorney this time so they could be amicus curiae, arguing the Board’s response to the lawsuits was invalid because it had been done by the two person ‘litigation committee’ in private and the decision to approve it hadn’t been made by the whole Board in public as required by the Alaska Public Meetings Act. The Supreme Court collectively raised their eyebrows, and the Board met on Sunday May 22, 2022 to again approve the Option 3B map and to reaffirm the litigation subcommittee by 3-2. The Supreme Court then turned down the amicus request.
Two days later, Tuesday, May 24, 2022, the Alaska Supreme Court agreed with the lower court. On Wednesday, May 26, the Board met again and voted 5-0 to adopt the interim plan Option 2, which pairs the two Eagle River districts together, as ordered by the courts.
The Supreme Court still has to write out its more detailed decisions and give the Board instructions on how to resolve the maps for the rest of the decade. It’s hard to imagine the Board majority trying to split up Eagle River again, and I’m assuming the interim map will become the permanent map. But no guarantees.
Some observations.
While there are more Republicans than Democrats, in the Alaska Legislature, the Republicans aren’t united. The House is run by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats with a minority Republican caucus. The Senate was also last time. So the kind of Republicans who get elected makes a difference.
Alaska is one of about 14 states that chooses judges using a merit based nominating process enshrined in the Alaska Constitution. People apply for open judge positions. The Alaska Judicial Council surveys judges, attorneys, jurors, police, social service workers, and court observers. Then the Council identifies the ‘most qualified’ and forwards three or four names to the Governor. It means that decisions are far more based on the law than on partisan or personal beliefs of the judges.
While the two Board minority members were belittled by Right wing social media, they refused to be silenced, argued their position, and eventually prevailed.
I’ve been covering the Alaska Redistricting process closely since December 2020. An annotated index of all my 2020-2022 posts is at whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/...