Yet another good reason why every conservative should be working his or her butt off to elect John Stephen
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, so let’s think back to 2001. Then Governor Jeanne Shaheen vetoed the Legislature’s plan to reapportion the House and Senate, and the State Supreme Court then took it upon itself to redistrict the State.
The result was a judicial gerrymander for the ages. Quoting from the far-left “Blue Hampshire” website: “Ten Senate districts lean Democratic, led by three overwhelmingly Democratic districts: District 5 (Hanover and Lebanon area), District 10 (Keene area), and District 21 (Dover and Durham area). Six districts lean Republican, though none are as heavily partisan as the three Democratic districts.” And that is even after subsequent legislation that watered down the judicial gerrymander in nine of the 24 senate districts!
The State Constitution directs the Legislature to…
… reapportion the House and the Senate at its regular session following the federal decennial census. So the Legislature elected this fall will be in charge of redistricting. If the national polls are any harbinger, the voters in New Hampshire will turn out most of the horde of hard-left progressives that rode into office in 2006 based on widespread disillusionment with the Iraq war. But having a reasonable Legislature will be meaningless as far as redistricting goes, if we don’t also have a reasonable Governor.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the viscerally partisan John Lynch will veto whatever redistricting plan a Republican Legislature comes up with in order to allow the State Supreme Court to again write an electoral map that favors the Democrat Party. And that will be even more of a disaster than ten years ago because, thanks to Lynch, the Supreme Court is an even more liberal, activist court.
The only way to protect our right to cast a meaningful vote is to elect John Stephen.