Parties, seeking influence, carve up urban areas

Scores of U.S. cities, counties and metropolitan areas are being divided again — splitting apart families, neighbors and, most important, voters with similar interests and needs — as states engage in the once-a-decade process of drawing new congressional districts.

And mayors and local officials in many places are none too happy about it.

Austin, a liberal island in Texas that has long been carved into multiple districts, would still be divided in three under a plan that was drawn up last week by a Texas court. In North Carolina, where Republicans drew maps that are expected to give them a big advantage, a lawsuit complained that one of the new districts seeps into pieces of 19 different counties and has so many twists and turns that its perimeter is 1,319 miles long.

Gerrymandering, of course, is nearly as old as the Republic and is practiced with relish by both parties. But for local officials concerned with governing, oddly shaped congressional districts that do not follow city or county lines can make life that much more complicated. And when urban and metropolitan areas are broken up and combined with rural areas, mayors say, fewer voices are left to vigorously push an urban or metropolitan agenda in Washington.

When Utah gained a fourth congressional seat this year, local officials in Salt Lake County hoped that their booming metropolitan area would dominate at least one of the new districts. They sought what they called a donut hole-shaped district, centered on the county. But their county happens to have the highest concentration of Democratic voters in the heavily Republican state, so the Republicans who drew the maps opted for what they called pizza-slice-shaped districts that contained pieces of Salt Lake County in the center and broadened out. In the end, the map they split Salt Lake County into three of the state's four districts, stretching some of them into far more conservative, rural corners of Utah.

"We asked for a donut hole, we expected a pizza, and instead we got a plate of scrambled eggs," said Peter Corroon, the Democratic mayor of Salt Lake County. Odd-looking districts sometimes make sense for reasons other than partisan politics, as well, including creating districts that give power to black or Hispanic voters to comply with the Voting Rights Act. California's nonpartisan redistricting commission reported that the congressional districts it drew split 11 counties and 41 cities.