FRANKFORT, Ky. — As expected, the Kentucky state legislature on Saturday easily voted through maps realigning the state’s political districts to conform with population changes.
Republicans, with veto-proof majorities in both chambers, controlled the process from start to finish. Unlike some other states that delegate redistricting to independent commissions, Kentucky’s process for redrawing legislative districts is partisan.
Drawn behind closed doors since September, when Republican leaders say they received precinct-level data from the delayed 2020 U.S. Census, the maps were public for 10 days or fewer before the legislature passed them.
The House District maps were unveiled at a news conference on Dec. 30 while maps for the state’s U.S. Congressional Districts, Senate Districts, and Kentucky Supreme Court Districts were not made available until the 2022 General Assembly began on Tuesday.
Democrats and state political observers alike have said that the process needs to be slowed down and that the maps unfairly help their GOP counterparts in state and federal elections.
Legislators have said that the maps unfairly ‘crack’ urban areas, which are more often sympathetic to Democrats, and precincts with minority groups. Lawsuits are likely to come, per those in the House and at least one legal expert.
Republicans have repeatedly emphasized that the maps are constitutional, that they reached out to both Democrats and minority groups and that they followed the process to a tee.
Major changes in the U.S. Congressional District map include a lengthening of District 1, the state’s westernmost district, to a chunk of Central Kentucky as far east as Franklin County. The change would ostensibly benefit Central Kentucky U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, who now represents Franklin County, as the seat of state government was previously in his district and more often votes Democrat than the areas he gained.
Eastern Kentucky’s 5th District gained several counties due to major population losses in the area.
Jefferson County’s 3rd District, a traditional Democratic stronghold, was left largely untouched.
Newly passed House maps pit four sets of incumbent legislators, eight representatives, against each other; two pairs of Republicans in Eastern and Western Kentucky are set to square off while four Democratic women in Louisville will have to face each other.
House Democrats have said that the map will likely lead to Republicans gaining even more ground, despite already having a 75-25 advantage in that chamber.
The Senate maps received less overall pushback in both chambers, but still some protestations from Democrats, as well as Sen. Adrienne Southworth, R-Lawrenceburg.
In Fayette County, which some complained would now only have one senate district exclusively within its boundaries, three different candidates seeking to replace retiring senator Alice Forgy Kerr, R-Lexington, were thrown out of their district.
Democrats and political observers like University of Kentucky election law professor Josh Douglas have indicated that lawsuits are coming.
Douglas called the new House map, and potentially others passed by Republicans, “almost certainly unlawful.”
The map that got the most pushback from Democrats was that of the new House Districts, House Bill 2.
Republicans like Rep. Jerry Miller, R-Eastwood, who sponsored the House redistricting bill and did much of the legwork spoke to its merits as a bill that adhered to the applicable laws, followed the math and undid much of the perceived harm done when Democrats were in charge last time.
Democrats don’t see it that way.
On the house floor and in committee they have claimed that the current map unfairly splits apart cities, diminishes certain minority group influence and works to strengthen an already rock-solid Republican majority.
Buddy Wheatley said his own district was unfairly cut up to dilute the inner city. His new 65th District swung Republican in voter registration percentage by 30 points and is now a majority Republican registered district.
The northern part of Covington, Wheatley said, is unfairly getting lumped into a region with which it doesn’t have much in common.
“It has a more diverse population and it’s got much of an inner-city older core to it,” Wheatley said. “The Covington neighborhoods are much different than the suburban neighborhoods. With this district, they’re sending 50% of it out into the suburbs and dividing up that core.”
He said that it’s “very unlikely” that a Black person or person of color will be elected in the district as it is drawn.
Minority Leader Joni Jenkins sponsored an alternate House map. She said that the Republicans’ map had 75 districts that “lean Republican” – meaning that the composite average of the last several statewide elections in the district is more than 10% in Republican favor – 16 that lean Democrat and only 9 “competitive” districts.
Jenkins’ map, proposed as a floor amendment to House Bill 2, featured the same number of Democrat-leaning districts but took away eight Republican leaning ones and made them “competitive.” It also had one fewer plurality Black district, but two more “influence districts,” where Black voting age population is greater than 20%.
House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, said on the floor that he talked to Democratic leaders in 2021 about maps, but they submitted an incomplete plan just three days before Christmas.
“You were given a homework assignment, you turn it in late, you turn it in incomplete, and you’re mad because we aced the test,” Osborne said.
The House map passed 71-19 in the House and 23-10 in the Senate, with some GOP lawmakers in that chamber complaining about how counties in their districts were split.
When asked about the fairness of the House map in light of Republicans’ dominant majority, which outperforms that state’s partisan preference in presidential elections, Osborne said that there will always be questions about politics in redistricting and that judgment calls have to be made.
“We made the best judgments we possibly could,” Osborne said. “I’m sure there are a lot of majority members that are quite unhappy about some of these maps, but they understood the process... We did it as as well as we could possibly do it, and I’m proud of the map.”
Sen. Adrienne Southworth, R-Lawrenceburg, was by far the Republican most outspoken against her own party’s redistricting maps.
She voted against the U.S. Congressional District map, the Senate map and the House map.
The Senate and Congressional District maps hit close to home for her, as her home county of Anderson changed drastically.
Southworth, a deputy chief of staff under former Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton, also claimed that she lost 100,000 current constituents under her new district. The new Senate District 7 retains only Anderson County.
In the Congressional District maps, a slice of the Bluegrass region county is now in the majority-Western Kentucky 1st District -- that didn’t sit well with Southworth.
Graham, who like Southworth currently represents Franklin County, also took issue with the federal map.
He called the shift for Franklin County “wrong, pure and simple,” and that the county is squarely within the Bluegrass region of the state, not Western Kentucky.
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