TUCSON, Ariz. _ A warm breeze blew past Colleen Coyle Mathis and her husband, Christopher, as they lounged on the back porch of their Spanish Colonial Revival-style house one evening earlier this month, drinking bottles of Pacifico. Marigold, their 2-year-old Bernese mountain dog, lay at their feet, and the music of Linda Ronstadt hummed in the background.
Life in the Mathis house wasn't always so idyllic. Eight years ago, the couple had boarded up their bedroom windows with plywood and secured their front doors with floor bolts. Colleen, then a health care consultant, traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with FBI agents about public threats to her life. Feeling insecure in her own home, she spent evenings with her neighbors and weeks away with her husband in another state.
What made Mathis so fearful? Her volunteer state job. As the independent chairwoman of the state's citizen-led redistricting commission, she became the target of intense organized opposition from tea party-inspired residents and Republican lawmakers to her leadership and the new maps she supported.
Arizona is one of 18 states where independent commissions, instead of state legislators, draw congressional and legislative lines. The panels are designed to keep politics out of the process, under the idealized notion that average citizens would redraw district boundaries after the census without producing stacked, gerrymandered maps.
But during Arizona's 2011 redistricting cycle, Mathis, a political independent with no interest in interparty squabbles, got caught up in a process so bitter she feared for her own safety.
"We were afraid for our lives," she said in an understated, steady inflection. Mathis, 53, wears her blonde hair below her shoulders, falling over a sandy blazer and turquoise necklace. "The danger wasn't far-fetched. It felt like it was at our doorstep."
