Legislature OKs 4th district map

Some senators complained that another possible candidate for the new district, House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, was trying to protect Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley, and other vulnerable GOP House members by moving them into the new 4th District.

Being in what is widely expected to be a GOP U.S. House district could protect them from the so-called "Matheson effect," votes lost by down-ballot Republicans to the popular U.S. House member's Democratic political coattails.

The oddly shaped district boundary that resulted, nicknamed the "Bigelow boot," was "something the House wanted bad enough that they were ready to walk away from the table," said Senate Minority Whip Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake.

But Curtis said the early attempts at drawing a four-seat plan reflected his effort to put as many Democrats as reasonable into Matheson's 2nd District, and if that left some mid-valley House Republicans in the new 4th District, so be it.

After some reportedly heated debates in lengthy closed Senate and House GOP caucuses, all efforts to amend the so-called compromise "Plan L" failed Monday.

The map passed the Senate 23-4-2 without any amendments, even though several changes were proposed in the GOP caucus including re-drawing the boundaries so Taylorsville was not split between the 2nd and the 4th districts.

Sen. Mike Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, said he voted against the map in part because his amendment was not accepted by the caucus. He and other senators also raised constitutional concerns about giving Washington, D.C. a vote in Congress.

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Pete Knudson, R-Brigham City, said there was interest in the proposed changes, but caucus members didn't want to jeopardize the bill's passage by tinkering with it.

"They didn't want to screw up that deal," Knudson said.

On the House floor, Rep. Julie Fisher, R-Fruit Heights, offered an amendment that would have adopted Plan L, but not place it into law until after Congress either gave Washington, D.C., back to Maryland (where its residents could vote as a citizen of that state), created a D.C. state or changed the U.S. Constitution to specially allow D.C. to have a voting member.

She said it is "clearly unconstitutional" to let anyone not from a state vote in Congress — a position that coincidentally was passed by a meeting of the Salt Lake County Republican Party's central committee on Saturday.

But Fisher's amendment failed in a voice vote. And the county GOP's resolution wasn't even debated by lawmakers, who ignored it.

Plan L was the four-seat plan recommended last week by a hastily organized special legislative redistricting committee.