Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 3, 1991 TAG: 9104030503
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
What's laughable is that the Democrats have already gone to great lengths to concoct a Southwest Virginia gerrymander that protects their own, Macfarlane included.
The man, after all, is not thrown in a district with another incumbent; he keeps all of the predominantly Democratic city of Roanoke; surely he can learn to live with a few Republican-ish precincts in southern Roanoke County.
According to other senators, the Macfarlane revision - which would have given those precincts to Sen. Dudley Emick in exchange for Democrat-ish ones in northern Roanoke County - apparently was a one-man deal, never agreed to by Macfarlane's Southwest Virginia colleagues. Emick, for one, might have some interest in knowing which precincts would be included in his district.
Which is worth maybe a chuckle or two, especially as Macfarlane is accusing his tormentors of unilateral decision-making and "secrecy" in reversing his rearrangement. The amusement ends, though, when you consider some of the underlying implications.
Governmental secrecy merits criticism. But Macfarlane's complaint of secrecy, in the alteration (he says) of his district or its restoration (others say) to what it was supposed to be, seems not to extend to the question of how the purported agreement on his plan was reached. Alternatively, if there was never such an agreement, how did the lines get redrawn in his favor?
Eagerness for a constituency tailored to a legislator's liking is hardly unique to Macfarlane. His ire is simply an uncommonly naked and uncommonly extreme manifestation of the self-interest that dominates legislative redistricting as practiced in Virginia.
Other lawmakers usually aren't so blunt about it, but political survival is the main force behind the majority Democrats' redistricting plans for House and Senate. At best, such notions as compact districts that maintain the integrity of localities and preserve communities of interest are considered as afterthoughts.
Also troubling is that Macfarlane, in his eighth year in office, still seems unable to understand the legislative lesson that you can't always get what you want. Indeed, you often can't get any of what you want, unless you respect the fact that other legislators have their own, often competing interests to tend to.
Macfarlane's isolation from his colleagues isn't a new story. Still, the disdain evident in for-the-record comments by senior Democratic senators is troubling, because it suggests again how little influence Macfarlane is apt to have even on issues where he's right.
On this one, incidentally, he isn't right. Principled opposition to the Democrats' redistricting plan would be welcome. Lonely opposition to a gerrymander, on the ground it doesn't gerrymander enough for one legislator's liking, is not welcome.
by CNB