All eyes on the lines
Allegheny County residents tell legislative committee they’ll be watching how they draw Pa. congressional map
Dozens of Allegheny County residents made it clear on Wednesday that they’ll be closely monitoring Harrisburg’s redrawing of congressional districts in the coming months, and that they care deeply about preventing their communities from being split across tangled webs of politically advantageous lines.
Given the opportunity to testify to a committee of state lawmakers at a regional hearing in South Fayette, the only hearing scheduled for Allegheny County, citizen advocates said a fair congressional map — dividing Pennsylvania into 17 U.S. House districts — would keep communities intact, unite shared constituencies under common representation and be drawn in the open, absent the influence of partisan deal-making.
“To see some of these maps that are carved into like very strange homemade Rorschach tests of sort is utterly ridiculous and purely political, and shameful,” said Hill Jordan, a lifelong Pittsburgh resident and professional musician.
“That’s not in my [written] testimony. That’s in my heart,” he said.
Like Mr. Jordan, other testifiers came prepared with impassioned first-person accounts, data and maps, and gave the House State Government Committee what it said it wanted when it embarked on this series of regional hearings: insight into regions they may not be familiar with before they’re tasked with helping to draw the maps.
Many presenters agreed on some of the fundamentals of fair district advocacy; they urged the committee to use a blank map when they start drawing and cautioned lawmakers against using the process to their political advantage, which would leave the maps open to court intervention again.
But the presenters differed in their suggestions on the ins-andouts of where to draw the lines, bringing their own interests to the official record.
Mr. Jordan, for one, talked of Pittsburgh’s emerging arts scene, and how it should be quartered in one federal voting district to preserve common interests. He also noted that Pittsburgh lost a decent chunk of its Black population in the past decade, saying that for quality of life to improve for African Americans there, “it is imperative that our voting district boundaries not be chiseled by gerrymandering.” The state Supreme Court deemed 2011’s Congressional maps a partisan gerrymander, defined as one that’s built to
advantage one political party.
Rather than fall victim to political jockeying, many communities, neighborhoods and population centers would benefit from having common representation in Congress, a majority of the advocates said.
Timothy Campbell, a Bethel Park councilman, asked the committee to keep his municipality and neighborhoods in the South Hills separate from the City of Pittsburgh, unlike the current maps — which lump all the areas into the 18th District, represented by Democrat Mike Doyle. He said residents fear having a representative who focuses too much on the city’s needs, which are far different from needs in the suburbs.
Meanwhile, GL Johnson, a Pittsburgh resident, suggested the East End and North Side continue to be joined with the eastern suburbs from Wilkinsburg and Penn Hills to the Mon Valley. That’s where a majority of Black voters reside, he said, and the areas share vital mass transit links.
And then there was Xiaohong Doughty, of Pine, who insisted the 17th District — represented by Democrat Conor Lamb — be kept whole, justified by its growing population over the past decade. Political insiders had expected the 17th to be essentially eliminated or dramatically altered, but recent Census data showed growth in many areas. Because of stagnant population growth statewide, Pennsylvania is losing one congressional seat.
“Any congressional and state seat shifting should not come from Allegheny County,” Ms. Doughty said.
One woman, Suzanna Broughton of McCandless, traced the roots of her congressional district for the committee, and remarked that maps have traditionally been drawn by the majority party leadership with little to no consultation from anyone else. It’s resulted in districts outlined in weird, sometimes unbelievable shapes — meant to keep one party in power, among other reasons, some of the advocates claimed.
“I look at this like a capitalist. Let’s let the market decide,” said Nick Flower, a Pittsburgh resident. “If we end gerrymandering, we can set up a system where the most popular idea wins.”
Rosemary Prostko, of Bridgeville, said the Legislature has the chance to restore the public’s faith in the electoral system. Many people don’t vote because they don’t think it will count, she said.
Then, she went off script, and started to criticize Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, who was not present at the meeting, for his recent comments supporting an audit of the 2020 election.
“That’s outside the scope of this hearing,” State Government Committee Chairman Seth Grove, R-York, said.
“No, it’s not. It’s fairness,” she said, before her microphone was cut.