Day 6 AK Redistricting Trial: Putting The Puzzle Pieces Together

I've spent over a year now attending on line or in person almost all the Alaska Redistricting Board meetings.  An old overview of the Redistricting project and an index of all my posts is here and also at the AK Redistricting tap under the blog banner up top.  

Today we heard the end of the Valdez case and the beginning of the Calista case. 

• Stephen Colligan, Mat-Su's Redistricting Contractor again
• Sheri Pierce, the Valdez City Clerk on the stand again
• Kimball Brace, the Valdez Redistricting Expert again
• Andrew Guy, President and CEO of Calista, Calista Witness

The first three have all been on the stand before.  This was Guy's first appearance as we move into the Calista part of the trial.  But I'm going to hold off on that until I catch up  with other things.  This post is intended to try to make sense, from a macro view, of what's going on.

The Puzzle Pieces - D36, D29, Mat-Su and Fairbanks pieces

[There are three other areas of complaint (Eagle River senate pairings, Skagway, and Calista villages), but they don't seem to spill over into other areas so much.  So I'm not focusing on them right now.  I'd also note, if there is significant partisan consequences to this fight, I haven't figured that out yet.]

The trial is bringing out some of the things that weren't so obvious in the mapping process we saw.  I'm still trying to make sense of what was going on behind the scenes.  It's sort of like putting a jigsaw puzzle together with two exceptions:

1. All the pieces have to be within 3 or 4% of 18,335 people
2. The images on the pieces aren't that obvious 

Those images on the pieces are only slowly becoming visible - sort of like rubbing a pencil on a paper to get the image of a coin below.  They're showing up as the socio-economic ties that exist among the people in the districts, or at least that mappers claim exist.  

So let me tell you what's becoming clear.  There are two districts (D29 and D39) and two clusters of districts (Mat-Su and Fairbanks) whose population needs and  socio-economic integration claims conflict and are competing for the same territory.  The losers in this competition - Mat-Su and Valdez - have challenged the plan.  

Piece 1:  District 36 - Doyon Trying to Get Doyon and Ahtna Villages All Into One District 

The Doyon Coalition has been part of the redistricting process from early on.  They had a team that was preparing maps of the state well before the Board got the final census numbers in August and they submitted one of the Third Party maps that were adopted by the Board and taken around the state for comments.  

But what was their goal?  Through the testimony it's now clear that the goal was to get all their shareholders - Doyon and Ahtna - into one district.  If I understand this right, these are basically Athabascan villages.  

D36 & surround districts 29, FB, and Mat-Su

This has come out clearly in the testimony.  

D36 is, according to the redistricting expert for Valdez, the largest election district in the United States.  If it were a state it would be about the 8th largest in the US by size.  It goes from Holy Cross on the lower Yukon up and around Fairbanks and then back down the other side with a long straight edge against the Canadian border including Glennallen and the Copper River and the Richardson Highway communities but not Valdez.  And at the end they were able to carve out an arm reaching along the Denali Highway to reach Cantwell which as Michelle Anderson, President of Ahtna, explained has "about 30 shareholders with a Cantwell address." (It was later mentioned that there were more Athabascans in Cantwell, just not Ahtna shareholders.) 

D36 contains 4000 'excess' Fairbanks people, so it's one of the Fairbanks districts in a sense.  The others are circled in white. The Magenta outlines the Mat-Su districts and the Denali Borough, except the Cantwell cutout.  I'd note there were questions like how are Holy Cross and Glennallen socio-economically integrated?  I did notice doing this that Ahtna's headquarters are in Glennallen.  Another fact about this district: despite getting all the Doyon and Ahtna villages in, the population is 30% Native and 70% non-Native.  

Note:  You can see all the districts I write about in this post on the D36 map.

Piece 2:  District 36 - Valdez Cut Off From Traditional District With Richardson Highway Communities Partners Up Toward Fairbanks and/or PWS and now Paired With Palmer-Matsu Suburbs Instead 

This is the piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit according to the Valdez court challenge.  They argue they were the last piece for the Redistricting Board  and forced to fit in ways they argued against but lost.  75% of the population is in the Mat-Su, particularly the suburbs of Wasilla and Palmer.  Valdez has about 4000 people.  A key number in this story.  

In previous decades the Valdez district  had various parts of the Richardson Highway corridor and sometimes were joined with Prince William Sound. But in this map all the Richardson Highway communities were cut out and they have to drive over 100 miles outside the district to get to Palmer and Wasilla on the other side.  I'd note D29-0 (Valdez) is paired with 30-O to form a Senate seat.  30-O is the green district on the left and goes all the way to the edge of Fairbanks.  So after you drive to Palmer, it's another 300 mies or so to the other end of their Senate district.  

Valdez has made the most persuasive (to me) argument about why they are economically (if not socially) integrated with the pipeline corridor and that they are actually in competition with Palmer.  They argue that the port at Point McKenzie is competitive with the Valdez port for state money.  And they have competing natural gas pipeline proposals.  Thus having a Palmer/Wasilla based representative means their interests won't be represented as strongly (if at all) by their rep in Juneau.

Piece 3:  Mat-Su Cluster: Mat-Su Wanted To Keep All Their Districts In Mat-Su and Denali Boroughs - Did Not Want to be paired with Valdez

Mat-Su Borough had enough population for 5.84 districts.  They testified they'd been planning for this for five years.  They knew how to do this.  They said they gave their map to the Board, but it was ignored.   They wanted to be paired with Denali Borough to the north and along the Glenn Highway out to about Glennallen and surrounding communities.  (Can you see where this is going?)

Cantwell was eventually cut out of Denali Borough and  put into D36, though that's only about 200 people.  On the other end, Glennallen and the nearby Ahtna villages along the Glenn Highway also went to D36.  And so Mat-Su got paired with Valdez to fill out their numbers.  

Note:  You can see all of the Mat-Su/Denali/Valdez districts on the D36 map at the top of this post.

Piece 4 - Fairbanks Cluster - Board Chair John Binkley, of Fairbanks, Wanted To Keep All Five Fairbanks Districts Inside The Borough Boundaries Even Though They Were Overpopulated By 4000 People

While Mat-Su gained population, Fairbanks lost population.  They were down to enough population for 5.2 districts.  They had about 4000 people more than five districts.  Remember that number?  According to a few people who testified, Board Chair John Binkley, who was born and raised in Fairbanks and lives there now (though he spent some time in St Mary's and Bethel), didn't want to break the Fairbanks Borough boundaries.  Which meant that the five Fairbanks districts in his original map, were overpopulated.  They all were well over the 18,335 ideal size for a district, but not unconstitutionally over.  But probably too much for an urban area.  That means they would be underrepresented in the House because districts with more people have one rep and other districts with fewer people also have one rep.  Board member Nicole Borromeo and others reported Binkley was firm about this. 

Binkley testified he wanted to keep the Borough intact because, "Would I like to be moved out into a large rural district?"  

So that was the choice he saw.  People in Fairbanks would be taken out of the Borough and put into a large rural district -  D36.  But there were other options.  There had been districts in the past that paired Fairbanks to Valdez along the pipeline corridor. I don't know how much Binkley knew about Doyon's plan to have a district with all the Ahtna and Doyon villages. There was even a text presented in court from a Doyon team member to Board member Borromeo that seemed to show that they'd orchestrated a resolution from the Fairbanks Borough Assembly asking that the 4000 excess votes be moved to another district.  The question was from where in Fairbanks do you take the people?   

So when Fairbanks was broken on the west - causing an uproar from the people of Goldstream who were being moved into D36 - 4000 people went to D36.   Valdez' chances of their own 4000 people being put into  either D36 or a pipeline corridor district with the excess Fairbanks population were dashed.  

Conclusions

From what I can tell, and I'm far from certain, these are some of the consequences.

Athabascan Identity and Pride Was A Winner

Doyon and Ahtna won in the sense that their goal was to get all their villages into one district.  I think they've done that.  The main benefit that I see is symbolic and maybe even spiritual:  their territory, so to speak, is represented in a political subdivision of the State of Alaska. The political map matches the ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act) map.  As Ahtna president Michelle Anderson testified about the people of Cantwell, they don't feel excluded from their people any more.  While white urban folks might see a protuberance jutting into the Denali borough, that clashes with their ideal of district compactness, Athabascans see their brothers and sisters back as part of the family.  It's an important connection that is invisible to most people living in Anchorage.  

One thing that became clear to me in this trial is that most non-Native (particularly urban) Alaskans don't have a clue about rural Native Alaska. Even Judge Matthews had to be corrected on his pronunciation of the the word Calista (A ch sound, not a k sound.)  When most non-Native urban folk look at rural Alaska, we don't see all the differences between languages, dialects, family ties, types of traditional foods, and a myriad more factors that are important to the people urban non-Natives  lump together as "Alaska Natives."   These are similar to the religious, national origin, economic, racial, educational, political differences urban folk see among ourselves. Sometimes these are merely interesting, at other times they are significant.  

In this round of redistricting Alaska's Native peoples have had more input and impact on how Alaska's political maps treat the socio-economic factors that are important to Alaska Native peoples than ever before.  

A couple of notes here:

1.   While I'm pretty sure that Doyon is mainly Athabascan, I believe there was mention in the testimony that there are people from other groups mixed into the Doyon area.  Looking at Doyon's website (which everyone should do), I don't see claims that all their members are Athabascans, though it does include Athabascan history.  Ahtna's website explicitly tells us:

"Ahtna, Inc. shareholders are mainly comprised of the Ahtna Athabascan people of the Copper River and Cantwell regions of Southcentral Alaska."

2.  My spellcheck thinks Athabascan should be spelled Athabaskan.  I was confused when it changed my spelling, but I let it be.  But now as I look at the Doyon and Ahtna websites, I'm adding Athabascan with a c to my laptop's dictionary and taking out Athabaskan with a k.

Valdez Was The Biggest Loser

In yesterday's trial session, Intervenor attorney, Tanner Amdur-Clark, questioned Valdez City Clerk Sheri Pierce.  He challenged her assertion that the Board didn't really consider Valdez until the very end when everything else was locked in and there weren't any options left that Valdez wanted.  

He asked her if she had been to the September 17 session or the September 20 session.  Like any normal person, she couldn't tell for sure about random dates like that, but didn't recall hearing discussion of Valdez.  

But fortunately I have all my posts about the 2020 Redistricting Cycle indexed on a tab on the top of this blog.  So I went there, scrolled down, and checked those dates, pulled up the posts, and searched for 'Valdez.'   September 17 was when the third parties presented their maps and were questioned by the Board.  I don't have any details, just links to the proposals.  Mostly the third parties made presentations.  On September 20 the board questioned the third parties about their maps.  Amdur-Clark asserted that Nicole Borromeo talked about Valdez that day.  She did.  But she was merely questioning Tom Begich about the Senate Minority's decision to put Valdez in with Cordova and Kodiak. (The Board's final map puts Cordova with Kodiak, but leaves out Valdez which is also on Prince Willam Sound..)  When the Board spoke about Valdez, it was in the context of other districts.  The focus wasn't on Valdez until the end.  

Valdez made the best case I've heard at the trial on socio-economic integration (one of the Constitutional requirements for districts and a topic covered exhaustingly in this trial).  While others talk about why people are similar or different, Valdez is the only one I've heard that argues why it matters for their district.  The argue there are key economic issues - competing ports and competing natural gas pipeline proposals - where Valdez and Mat-Su are in competition.  A legislator representing both communities will be hard pressed to represent the interests of both communities fairly.   75% of the population of D29 live in the suburbs of Palmer and Mat-Su.  Valdez knows that means 

• it will be almost impossible for someone from Valdez to become the representative and 
• on the key issues of major infrastructure funding, the D29 rep will lean for the Mat-Su proposals.  

In a pipeline corridor district that Valdez wanted to be part of, the whole district would have the same interests as Valdez in these major projects.  (Valdez lists a lot of other issues they have in common with the pipeline corridor folks.)

Mat-Su Didn't Get What They Wanted, But Didn't Lose That Much Either  

I don't really see any serious legislative problem for Mat-Su.  It's true they are over populated by an average of 2-3% overall, but that's well within the limits.  There are some issues about parts of districts that, say Palmer thinks belong to them (the hospital) but are in another district.  However, they didn't make clear how that would hurt them in the legislature.  

They don't want to be paired with Valdez, and it certainly makes it trickier for a representative to have such spread out population centers, but Mat-Su has 75% of the voters in that district and should get what they want from their legislator.  

Some of the complaint I heard from Steve Colligan, their mapping expert, was frustration that although Mat-Su had begun planning for this five years, had gotten professional mappers and software, had prepared districts that met with their local needs (the hospital was together with Palmer, roads were divided in ways that made sense to the population living on them, etc.) the Board seemed to ignore all  that and did what it wanted, creating less perfect districts.  There's may well be more that I missed or wasn't stated.  

The pairings may also impact who runs for office.  Mat-Su has some of the most conservative legislators in the state, including lifetime Oath Keepers Member, David Eastman, whom the Alaska legislature is investigating for belonging to a group that advocates overthrowing the government  

Where the lines are drawn affects which potential candidates are in which districts, but I'm not up on those details and couldn't tell you.   

Fairbanks 

I know the least about the implications of Fairbanks.  The fact that the population that went to D36 came from the west Fairbanks community of Goldstream seems like a political decision.  Goldstream itself has almost 3600 people (notice how close that is to the 4000 number that keeps popping up) and it's a left leaning community.  In the testimony they said they were a short drive from the University, and many people work there.  Dermot Cole, a journalist from Fairbanks, says that cutting off the Goldstream community takes a strongly liberal leaning community out of the Fairbanks voting mix and puts them into the rural district that Doyon created, diluting liberal voting in Fairbanks.  The Division of Elections shows that the two Goldstream precincts voted for Biden 54%- 46% for Trump.

OK, that's enough for people to chew on.  It's just my take and I may have missed things.  Doing all this online and not in person means I can't easily chat with people mingling around the courtroom to get other insights.  But it also lowers everyone's risk of COVID.  But since we're near Seattle now being grandparents, the electronic connection is the only way I can keep track.