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Tell us about your [Congressional Districts]
That_Guy
I don't wanna be that guyRegistered User regular
I don't wanna be that guyRegistered User regular
I want to take you on a little tour of NC11.
https://www.census.gov/mycd/?st=37&cd=11
Now, the first thing you might notice is the odd shape. Why in the world would it have a big old chunk carved out of it like that? As you probably already guessed it's because of where the democrats live. The city of Asheville is the most developed bit of land for hundreds of miles in any direction. It's hard to understate just how rural Western NC is. You can drive half an hour from town and be out of cell service. An hour and you'd be lucky if there's telephone lines. We are at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains so development is hard. Roads around here are long and windy and tend to end up in the middle of nowhere. It's really easy to get lost around here. It's really only been in the last 10 years that GPS has become accurate enough to get reliable directions. It can still be wildly inaccurate when you get off paved public roads. There are some amazing views to be had though. The work I do takes me all over the place and affords me the opportunity to explore some of the less beaten paths. There are some amazing views to be had, even in winter.
You might have noticed we elected a Democrat governor a few years back despite winning just a handful of other seats. There are actually more dems voters in NC As I'm sure you are aware, liberals tend to flock to cities and vote in blocks. In order to maintain control the Republican Party conspired to divide and dilute the democratic voting base through gerrymandering. A reasonable lawmaker would make Asheville it's own district. Give us a representative that is responsive to the needs of a booming liberal city. Instead they drew a line right down the middle of Asheville so that the 2 halves are out populated by rural republican voters. This may end up coming back to bite them in the coming years. As I said, Asheville has been going through a boom for the last 5-10 years. It might not be that long before the city dems obtain a majority in both the NC10 and NC11.
Now back to the NC11, my home district. We have a median household income of just $46,337 compared to a national average of $61,372. We have 750,598 people living in NC11. 659,669 have health insurance. Of that a shocking 312,226 rely on pubic coverage. Now to look at the workforce. Education, healthcare and social services are the single largest employer of 83,637 people. With the number of people relying on public healthcare it's safe to say that more people than average rely on a functioning federal government for their livelihood and to just stay alive. I'm sure the 46,474 government workers agree. Looking at some of the population breakdowns, a whopping 687,713 citizens of the NC11 are white. This is kind of rare in the south to have such a low non-white population. Even compared to other NC districts our non-white population is low. Interestingly 275,071 citizens were not born in NC. This is just more evidence of the boom going on around here. NC11 is home to 54,959 veterans, most of which depend on the VA for their healthcare. We have 133,879 disabled people living here. A truly massive 66,914 people lived in a different county or state last year.
That's just a little bit about my home district. How about yours?
https://www.census.gov/mycd/?st=37&cd=11
Now, the first thing you might notice is the odd shape. Why in the world would it have a big old chunk carved out of it like that? As you probably already guessed it's because of where the democrats live. The city of Asheville is the most developed bit of land for hundreds of miles in any direction. It's hard to understate just how rural Western NC is. You can drive half an hour from town and be out of cell service. An hour and you'd be lucky if there's telephone lines. We are at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains so development is hard. Roads around here are long and windy and tend to end up in the middle of nowhere. It's really easy to get lost around here. It's really only been in the last 10 years that GPS has become accurate enough to get reliable directions. It can still be wildly inaccurate when you get off paved public roads. There are some amazing views to be had though. The work I do takes me all over the place and affords me the opportunity to explore some of the less beaten paths. There are some amazing views to be had, even in winter.
You might have noticed we elected a Democrat governor a few years back despite winning just a handful of other seats. There are actually more dems voters in NC As I'm sure you are aware, liberals tend to flock to cities and vote in blocks. In order to maintain control the Republican Party conspired to divide and dilute the democratic voting base through gerrymandering. A reasonable lawmaker would make Asheville it's own district. Give us a representative that is responsive to the needs of a booming liberal city. Instead they drew a line right down the middle of Asheville so that the 2 halves are out populated by rural republican voters. This may end up coming back to bite them in the coming years. As I said, Asheville has been going through a boom for the last 5-10 years. It might not be that long before the city dems obtain a majority in both the NC10 and NC11.
Now back to the NC11, my home district. We have a median household income of just $46,337 compared to a national average of $61,372. We have 750,598 people living in NC11. 659,669 have health insurance. Of that a shocking 312,226 rely on pubic coverage. Now to look at the workforce. Education, healthcare and social services are the single largest employer of 83,637 people. With the number of people relying on public healthcare it's safe to say that more people than average rely on a functioning federal government for their livelihood and to just stay alive. I'm sure the 46,474 government workers agree. Looking at some of the population breakdowns, a whopping 687,713 citizens of the NC11 are white. This is kind of rare in the south to have such a low non-white population. Even compared to other NC districts our non-white population is low. Interestingly 275,071 citizens were not born in NC. This is just more evidence of the boom going on around here. NC11 is home to 54,959 veterans, most of which depend on the VA for their healthcare. We have 133,879 disabled people living here. A truly massive 66,914 people lived in a different county or state last year.
That's just a little bit about my home district. How about yours?
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ah, the Fightin' 11th!
(my hometown's in VA-11 wassup)
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It sucks!
My home district is also NC11
@That_Guy wanna hit up Wicked Weed and bitch about our representative (after calling them on their bullshit, of course)
District 7 was originally meant to be a fairly competitive district when it was drawn in 2000, but over time has slowly swung more and more left. Perlmutter won the 2018 election quite handedly.
I don't really have any complaints overall about Perlmutter. The guy focuses a lot on the environment, aerospace, and weed. But he's a reliable left vote so again, no complaints. Overall I'm pretty happy with the political direction the state is taking, as Democrats now control all branches of state government. Cory Gardner is a shitheal and is screwed in 2020 so I have that to look forward to as well.
This abomination, which was created after the 2010 census redistricting and allows Rs to get 2 of the 3 seats in Franklin county with only 33% of the votes in it. Yep!
More about the area though:
It’s mostly the city of Columbus with parts of first ring suburbs- Worthington, which is affluent, one housing sub development of Westerville (this is where I live), Bexley where all the real old money is*, and Whitehall which is where all the money isn’t.
Ohio State’s main campus is in this district, but a lot of the faculty and a good chunk of the students actually reside in 1 of the other 2 districts in the county.
Also in this district: the airports, the open air poop treatment vats, and most of downtown Columbus- the NHL’s Blue Jackets actually reside in the ostensibly “suburban” district bordering this one, despite being right in the heart of the city’s main business corridor.
Joyce Beatty is my rep and I really don’t have issues with how she votes. She’s safe- D+19 as of 2018.
Columbus is a fast growing metro (by cannibalizing population from Cleveland), but most of the development is happening in OH12, one of the adjacent districts. I would imagine OH3 is relatively flat from the 2010 census.
Ok that’s all I got right now
*some would say this is Upper Arlington in the next district over, but UA’s original monied families were the anti-semites who couldn’t stand living in Bexley anymore, which has a relatively large Jewish population
I don't live there, but I visit my relatives there every year. It's crazy finding out internet people are in fact real people in places you visit.
Welcome to the Hereditary Fiefdom of Dingell, Michigan's 12th Congressional District. A Dingell, John Sr., John Jr., or Debbie (Junior's wife) has represented the Dearborn parts of this district since the 1930s. I basically like the Dingells, but that's pretty gross.
Anyway, the district itself is basically shoving a bunch of liberal parts of SE Michigan together to usually give the GOP the 7th and 11th (Haley Stevens managed to win the 11th this year). We usually win here 70-30 or more. Ann Arbor itself has a lot to do with that, especially given that more conservative Ann Arbor suburbs (hi Saline!) are in the 7th.
It's a mostly rural district with some blue dots.
My current rep is Greg Walden who sucks
His challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner visited every single part of the district during her run last year and held lots of public question/answer sessions. Walden hasn't held a town hall since hmm maybe before Trump was elected? He holds "telephone town hall" bullshit sessions where no hard questions are asked and nobody gets upset.
He's the worst
Does that include Bend? I'd assume Ben is the biggest blue dot in that region no?
Yes it's the biggest city this side of the mountains. Just elected a female mayor. County board is still majority Republican though a couple Dems came close to unseating them.
My parents live in Brevard and I'm visiting this week. They were talking about maybe going there today, even!
Last year we went to the Serra Nevada brewery out here and it was the fanciest brewery I've ever visited. My dad also likes Dale's a lot which is maybe the most blue collar unfancy brewery I've ever visited.
https://www.census.gov/mycd/?st=53&cd=09
A fairly diverse district (it is a majority-minority district) that covers the south side of Seattle, down to Tacoma, and over to Bellevue. This district includes a decent chunk of central Seattle, and then all the parts of Seattle that nobody thinks about, which is everything southeast of the stadiums. My neighborhood specifically is less than a third white, over a third black, and the other third is Asian, and that's pretty common for a lot of the Rainier Valley. The southern suburbs between Sea- and Tac are also home to some large Latino populations, through White Center, Kent, Des Moines, etc. Go up towards Bellevue and you find some fairly wealthy suburbs, and a separate downtown area home to a lot of tech brands you know and love (Microsoft, Expedia, T-Mobile, etc.). And Mercer Island is Mercer Island...they allow us plebs to drive across their island but we aren't allowed to exit unless we live there. Or so I hear.
The covered portion of Kent is I believe home to Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos's space venture. It may fall just outside the district. It's one of their two main facilities, with the other being in Texas(?). Renton is also home to Boeing, including their commercial aviation headquarters and the main 737 plant where I believe every single Boeing 737 you've ever flown on was built. You can watch fuselages and other large parts come in on rail, and finished planes get painted in the liveries of airlines from countries around the world, then take off from Renton Municipal Airport to go to...wherever they go.
Oh, and Tukwila is home to Wizards of the Coast. It is located in a nondescript mid-rise cube of glass that would look right at home in any office park in any part of the country, and it makes me sad. It is not magical.
We are represented by Adam Smith, who is a Democrat with 21 years in the House and is almost as non-descript as his name. Congressional history paints him as a smidge hawkish.
An aerial shot of the Boeing 737 plant at the south end of Lake Washington. That strip of trees you see just below the runway is actually a park, with walking and biking paths that actually cross the bridge the airliners use to move from plant to airfield. I've seen one roll by. Look at the planes for a sense of scale on those buildings, they're huge.
My rep is Cathy-McMorris Rodgers, who you’ve seen in the background of every GOP House leadership picture since John Boehner was in charge. She’s the GOP’s ideal woman; she mostly stays quiet and does as she’s told.
I encourage as many people from the I-5 corridor as possible to move to the 5th district so we can finally flip it back to blue. Housing is cheap, power is cheap, traffic is almost nonexistent compared to the west side. Spokane is really working to be a blue oasis in the vast red desert of the east.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Historically it has been a Red district, this has been changing both with time and a recent re-districting (gerrymander reversal). The even better answer is that the pre-2016 Representative (Republican John Mica) was seen taking a large donation from the NRA two days after the Pulse Shooting, which was on one of the district's borders.
So now the District is Blue (if only barely) and Stephanie Murphy is my Representative in Congress. Also the first Vietnamese-American Woman elected to the position, which was in that 2016 election.
It looks alright on the surface, except for that little odd area where they took great pains to keep the city of Holland, MI (you know, that place with all the tulip festivals and Danish people every spring) all tucked away in MI-02 to keep the Dems in Kalamazoo from unseating what has been a Republican stronghold for the last almost three decades. It encompasses St. Joseph, Cass, Berrien, Van Buren, Kalamazoo, and some 98% of Allegan county (except the aformentioned suburbs and outlying areas of Holland that are in 02). The biggest cities in the area would happen to be Kalamazoo and Portage, a Dem stronghold in a sea of rural voters- mostly because of places like Western Michigan University (Go Broncos!) and Kalamazoo College.
Our median income is about $53,400, under the national average. Outside of Kalamazoo, there are a lot of smaller towns and farms and the like.
My rep is Fred Upton, a Republican who's somehow been in Congress since 1987 and the rep for the area since 1993. To say I do not like this man would be like saying the South Pole is a little on the nippy side. We damn near got rid of him last go-round, but fell a few points short (about as many points as the guy running under the U.S. Taxpayers party flag got), so hopefully the next House election we have we can finally toss old Upton the Hutt out and put in someone who actually gives us what we want instead of someone willing to sell us out for the guy in charge. He's known for such things as being pro gun-nut, bringing a little something called the Video Game Decency Act to Congress in 2006, and generally being a barely-passable human being... but at least he's not Dave Agema.
The district, on the other hand, is pretty nice. You know how people from big cities and down south like to come on up north for the summer? This is where a lot of them come- we have a good chunk of lakeshore, as well as a number of tourist towns in places like St. Joseph and South Haven, and we have a pretty big bustling fruit industry, too. One of the surprising things about the area is all the wineries- including St. Julian's in Paw Paw, the oldest in the entire state), as well as plenty of breweries like Bell's Brewing in Kalamazoo (goddammit I want my Oberon...).
I can has cheezburger, yes?
I used to manage a team there for several years remotely from down in Columbus...
It's almost a quarter Hispanic these days.
Shit of course. I built a Spanish speaking customer service team there for a reason!
High five! Also district 7.
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Jesus, it's like your district was drawn by a Brownian motion algorithm.
That is impressive even by the standards of gerrymandering.
Woohoo! Where abouts? Wife and I are in Arvada currently, though we may move soon to Genesee or Evergreen.
Added in 2013 after Utah got another seat from the 2010 census. (EDIT: With the first election for the district in 2012)
A Frankenstein of a district created specifically to try to get rid of Jim Matheson and attempt to keep the whole state red. EDIT: People who know Utah can look at the district map and see immediately something wrong. It may not have the freakish or comical shape as some of the worst districts in the country, but it doesn't have to simply because of how the population of Utah is distributed and how the layout of cities/counties was designed from the get go. It is, however, just as egregious in its cutting through cities to disenfranchise traditionally democrat populations.
And that's not an exaggeration. Utah 2nd had been the seat Matheson held, and despite it being redistricted for the 2002 election to cut out West Valley City and add in literally 1/3 of rest of Utah (seriously, from this to this) to offset the left leaning Salt Lake City population, kept until the next redistricting happened to add another seat. When the 4th was created after the 2010 census it was redrawn to what we have now (which is this), where the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th carve up Salt Lake County and Park City, traditionally Democratic strongholds in the state (SLC has had a Democrat mayor since 1976), with the 4th having a tiny bit of SLC, South Salt Lake City and a good chunk of West Valley City and West Jordan (urban, poorer, higher minority populations than the rest of the state) offset by a large swath of rural conservative areas south around Nephi and more middle class, white, Lehi in the middle. Incidentally, this was also around when Lehi was exploding with tech jobs bringing in people at a rate that I suspect wasn't fully expected, resulting in Lehi actually being fairly moderate, at least compared to its more conservative (and mormon) neighbors like American Fork, Orem and Provo (plus Highland/Alpine). It's what let Matheson beat Love in 2012 and what let McAdams beat Love in 2018 (Love won in 2014 and 2016. Granted, Matheson barely beat Love in 2012, and lost to her in 2014, and McAdams didn't win by much in 2018. So the district is still pretty split).
Some would argue that the closeness would indicate a good district, but those people would be incorrect. Districts are supposed to be representative of their populations, in order to produce representatives to represent them.
Instead, in Utah (like so many other places) what we have is minority, urban, lower income, and other typically left leaning populations (like Park City) carved up to minimize their influence in any district, and as a result having their representation taken away. Yes, Matheson held the 2nd for over a decade, and yes, the 4th now has a Democrat representing it again; but in both cases they were the bluest of blue dog democrats, and in any state that wasn't so otherwise conservative, wouldn't be caught dead being called a democrat. McAdams has been loud and clear he has no intention of standing for any liberal ideas or progressivism, and in every policy and idea he put forth during the election, was conservative through and through. My personal opinion is that he's been a Democrat simply because he wanted to run in races where there was already a republican or in the case of Salt Lake County mayor, needed to be a Democrat for Salt Lake City; and that he has no allegiance to the party, and no resemblance to policy that you'd expect from someone with the (D) next to their name. I understand that other people don't agree, and there's a point to be made for votes for a majority, even if that vote can't be counted on in any other circumstance. I just don't agree. I'm not "right", just as the other view isn't "wrong", it's just not, in my view, a way to achieve change, simply maintain. If the new House, under Pelosi, and with McAdams as a "Democrat" actually manages to be a force to fight back against Trump and the wave of fascism in our country, then I will happily eat crow.
Being a young district, it has virtually no history, outside of the high profile races between Matheson and Love and then Love and McAdams, with the former indicating how well state Republicans drew the districts to make a long sitting congressman barely eek out a victory against a nobody mayor of a (then) tiny city that wasn't growing. The former? Well, dude ran a shitty campaign, had no message, no platform, and no charisma. The mild backlash against Trump here, and probably just being white and a man, pushed him over the top against Love, who hadn't made a name for herself, but was otherwise sure to win (she also ran on nothing, there was very little actual campaigning going on, as most all of the attention in the state was on Romney, I suspect she, and the Republican party, just assumed she'd win by default like she did against Owens in 2016). Despite the district returning to a Democrat, the function of the district was still preserved: get in a conservative that won't stand out from the crowd or indicate to anyone that Utah could be more moderate than it otherwise appears.
Having said all that, we will see what the next two years bring. Maybe the wave of activism among freshmen congresspersons will inspire McAdams to actually get a personality and represent the party he ran in. Too often it seems like freshmen have their will sucked out of them because they basically are just elected full time fundraisers; but it seems like a good chunk of the new class aren't going to play that game. Maybe if good things happen in the next two years, and the population of the 4th continues to become more diverse because of the influx of jobs and out-of-towners who aren't just by the book mormon conservatives; the district will actually backfire on the state Republicans who made it (particularly if the state holds up its end of the deal and forms the voted on redistricting panel) and get a foot in the door to progressives in the state who get inspired to speak up and appeal to the moderates, liberals and disillusioned conservatives (despite voting for him, people really do dislike Trump, and out of the topic of this thread, there's some stuff going on in the church that is changing things in a way that is becoming wholly unpredictable) and make Utah not just defacto Republican across the board.
As it stand though, there's work to be done to offset the intended design of the district and how it disenfranchises the urban, poor, and minority population of the State, that won't be able to be fixed without redistricting (fingers crossed) or a movement toward the left elsewhere. To the outside, it would seem an uninteresting district in an uninteresting state.
Things can change though.
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Also Arvada. I actually grew up in Evergreen.
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