Senate GOP Stabs Conservatives in Back – Make Dirty Deal With Democrats on Redistricting

From the #DyingPaper, sometimes alternatively referred to as the Union Leader:

Republicans and Democrats in the state Legislature have struck a deal on legislation to create an independent redistricting commission to redraw electoral district maps after the 2020 census.

…

Republican Sen. James Gray of Rochester and Democratic Rep. Marjorie Smith of Durham unveiled the compromise at a Wednesday hearing before the Senate Election Law Committee on House Bill 706, a redistricting commission bill that cleared the House in late February.

Only 16 Republicans joined all Democrats in supporting the bill. Since then, however, Gray and Smith appear to have come up with something that both parties can support.

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The bill, as it passed the House, called for a large pool of applicants screened by the Secretary of State, permitting leading lawmakers to use a process akin to jury selection to disqualify a certain number.

That was replaced by a provision that calls on the Senate and House leaders from the majority and minority parties to each choose five members. Those 10 are then empowered to select another five who are not members of either party.

So what’s wrong with that, you ask, they get five picks and we get five picks. We don’t really get five picks is the problem.

The Democrat “leaders” are the most partisan of the partisan. The GOP “leaders,” in contrast, —because there are so many RINOs in the Party and because conservatives almost always splinter— are not. Indeed, “leaders” like Chuck Morse and Jeb Bradley are well to the left of the center in the Republican Party, and share many of the same positions as the Democrats. Further, where these GOP “leaders” do differ from the Democrats, they are quick to seek bipartisanship, which typically takes the form of abandoning some GOP principles.

The “bottom line” is that under this so-called “compromise,” conservatives effectively get no say on how the maps are drawn. The “independent redistricting commission” will be composed of members chosen exclusively by partisan Democrats and squishy Republicans who want more than anything else to be liked by partisan Democrats and their allies in the media.

In other words, just like the original so-called “Independent Redistricting Commission” of HB 706, this iteration is in reality a Democrat Redistricting Commission.