Three ways to draw the 9th District

Here’s one of the big questions facing Virginia’s new redistricting commission, perhaps the biggest on this side of the state: Should the 9^th Congressional District include the Roanoke Valley?

Historically, the Fightin’ Ninth has been a Southwest Virginia district. Until the early ’60s, the 9^th went no farther north than Pulaski County (and even Wythe County was carved out to join the 5^th District to the east). Since then, population changes in the state – growth in the urban crescent, declines in Southwest Virginia – have forced mapmakers to draw the 9^th District farther north and east to take in enough people. In 1972, the 9^th took in Montgomery County for the first time. In 1992, it started eating into Roanoke County. In 2002, it bit off part of Alleghany County. In 2012, took in Salem and all of Alleghany County. (You can find those old maps here.)

As the commission faces the task of drawing new district lines, the commissioners face this unforgiving math: Each new district should contain 784,672 residents. Right now, as it’s presently drawn, the 9^th has only 696,755 people, so even if every locality now in the 9^th stays in the 9^th, the district is still going to have to pick up 87,917 people. Given that most of the localities in Southwest Virginia are losing population, and are likely to continue to lose population, mapmakers probably ought to draw a 9^th that’s slightly over-populated (within the confines of what’s acceptable by court rulings, of course) because we all know that over the coming decade those numbers are going to shrink.

The 9^th, as presently drawn, could easily pick up those numbers by gobbing up more of Roanoke County, or part of Roanoke, or some combination thereof.

It’s not quite that easy, though – or shouldn’t be. First, the commission has rightly said that it will start drawing maps from scratch, not use the existing maps, so the current map of the 9^th District doesn’t really mean very much. As a practical matter, though, it’s still a good starting point for our discussion today because the 9^th, hemmed in by Tennessee and North Carolina to the south, and Kentucky and West Virginia to the east, can only grow in a limited number of ways.

That’s a practical consideration. Here are two philosophical ones: First, should we be splitting localities any more than we have to? Let’s say “no.” Some splits are inevitable to make the math work, but can we make the math work for the 9^th without splitting any localities? I bet we can! That means let’s not split Roanoke County between two congressional districts. Since Roanoke County is a doughnut with Roanoke and Salem in the middle, that means it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. Should they be in the 9^th or should they be out? There’s a political consequence to this, since the 9th’s current representative, Republican Morgan Griffith, lives in Salem, but let’s not pay attention to the politics. Instead, let’s focus on this question: Do we really want to make the 9^th less rural? Adding the Roanoke Valley wouldn’t change the overall politics of the 9^th – it would still be a Republican district, because adding all those Republican voters in Roanoke County would negate all the Democratic ones in Roanoke city – but it would make it substantially less rural. Adding the Roanoke Valley would change the character of the district in ways that are hard to predict, but which voters in rural areas might not appreciate. Urban voters generally don’t have to worry about the lack of broadband, for instance, but might be more interested in federal funding for city bus systems.

So here’s the challenge: Can we draw a reasonably shaped district that doesn’t include the Roanoke Valley? And also doesn’t split city and county lines?

Get out your calculators. Let’s go!

First, let’s draw lines that take the 9^th no farther north than Montgomery County and no farther east than the Blue Ridge (so Carroll and Floyd become the eastern border). The population in that core part of the district adds up to 552,831 – or 231,841 people short of the ideal of 784,672. So where can we go to find 231,841 people without taking in the Roanoke Valley?

First let’s go north. The 9^th already goes up to Alleghany County, so if we keep Craig County, Alleghany County and Covington in the district, that puts us at 578,863. Here’s the problem with going exclusively north and trying to work around the Roanoke Valley: The 9^th could add in Bath, Highland, Rockbridge, Lexington, Buena Vista, Augusta, Staunton and Waynesboro and still would just be at 747,168. We could cheat and say that Botetourt County isn’t part of the Roanoke Valley; that gets the 9^th to 780,764. At that point we’ve created a massive district that doesn’t make much sense – Scott County may not feel much commonality with Staunton – and we’re still short by 3,908 people. Maybe that’s close enough but the district is still huge. We’ve also effectively swapped congressmen because that map would put the 6^th‘s Ben Cline (who lives in Botetourt) in the 9^th and the 9^th‘s Morgan Griffith (who lives in Salem) in some other district. The politics shouldn’t be a concern but the sheer size of the district should be.

Can we all agree that’s not a good way to go?

So let’s look east instead. The 9^th already takes in Patrick County, Martinsville and part of Henry County. If we keep those and add in all of Henry? That gets us to 634,872. If we add in Franklin County, we’re up to 689,349. We could go north to Bedford County, but that starts to break up the Roanoke-Lynchburg corridor. So if we go farther east and add Pittsylvania County and Danville, then we’re at 792,440, some 7,768 more than we need (although, as I pointed out, it’s best to draw a 9^th that’s slightly over-populated because it will quickly become under-populated). This is why sometimes localities get split, to make the math work out.

For those who care about the politics, this would still be a Republican district, it just wouldn’t have an incumbent. Oh, well. The real question is: Does a 9^th District that stretches all the way to Danville make sense? There are certainly some economic commonalities between Southwest and Southside. Heck, the whole rationale for Cardinal Press is that the two regions have a lot of things in common; both are mostly rural regions that are trying to reinvent their economies after traditional employers have declined or disappeared. However, by adding so much of Southside into the 9^th District, we eliminate all hope of a purely Southside-focused district. Southside voters might not like that.

That brings us back to the solution this mapmaking exercise was hoping to avoid: having the 9^th District take in the entire Roanoke Valley. If we start with that core of 536,766 from Montgomery County west, and then add in Roanoke, Roanoke County, Salem and Craig County, that’s 763,944. If we count Botetourt County as part of the Roanoke Valley (which we should), then we’re up to 797,640, somewhat above our target of 784,672. Politically, this is complicated – it puts two congressmen, Griffith and Cline, in the same district. The commission has said that shouldn’t be a consideration. But if you’re curious, if we didn’t include Botetourt County but added in Alleghany County and Covington instead, then we’d be at 781,904, just under our target, and Griffith and Cline would stay in separate districts. Keeping the Roanoke Valley metro intact by including Botetourt would be more logical, though; just as we shouldn’t split cities and counties, we shouldn’t split metro areas if we don’t have to. Either way, bringing in the core part of the Roanoke Valley raises that question about how much the nature of the district would be changed. However, a 9^th District that runs from Botetourt County west is undeniably compact and contiguous and completely ungerrymandered. Geographically, it makes the most sense.

Now, for that question I teased earlier: Can we draw a purely Southside district? For that, check back tomorrow and let’s see what we can draw.

Yancey is editor of Cardinal News. His views are his own. Reach him at dwayne@cardinalnews.org.