Keogh, Hurley, sue over redistricting

MAT-SU — A Mat-Su Borough assemblyman and a well-known longtime politician and public servant have filed a request in court that the state re-draw legislative districts in the Valley.

“The borough population (nearly 90,000 people) is ideal for five House seats entirely within borough boundaries,” Assemblyman Warren Keogh says in a press release announcing the complaint. “However, the Redistricting Board has established six House seats, two of which include areas outside the Borough, such as the Municipality of Anchorage and distant towns like Valdez.”

Court records show he is joined by Katie Hurley — who was secretary to Alaska’s Constitutional Convention and a former state representative, among numerous other offices both elected and appointed — and the Alaska Democratic Party.

Keogh points out the current map — which the redistricting board has finalized but which the Alaska Supreme Court has not yet signed off on — pairs communities on Palmer Fishhook Road with places like Valdez, Glennallen and Delta.

The Mat-Su Borough Assembly on Aug. 6 actually voted to endorse the plan. Keogh had come to that meeting with a letter intended to censure Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss for endorsing the map without first getting authorization from the assembly to speak on behalf of the borough.

Keogh’s letter was killed before anyone could vote on it, and in its place Assemblyman Steve Colligan successfully proposed the letter endorsing the plan.

“The mayor clearly stated in public record that he was speaking on his own behalf,” Colligan said. “Nobody else weighed in.”

Colligan has been intimately involved in the redistricting process, drawing maps on behalf of various clients like native corporations that were weighing in on the redistricting process. In previous interviews with the Frontiersman, Colligan has said that the split districts are inevitable.

There could be five districts in Mat-Su, he said, but Anchorage has a half-district worth of population that has to go somewhere and so does Fairbanks.

The final map is pretty close to the one former Republican Party Chair Randy Reudrich had suggested. Colligan is himself a former vice-chair of that party.

Keogh’s press release notes that the redistricting board has tried three times to draw a map suitable for the state and has twice been rejected in the courts. He called those two maps attempts to “gerrymander” the districts in a “very partisan way.” He calls the third attempt “flawed.”

The supposition from opponents of the plan has been that the Republicans are trying to dilute Democratic votes in Fairbanks and Anchorage by pairing them with the deeply conservative Mat-Su Valley and shore up Republican seats.

Proponents of the map, including Reudrich himself, have pointed out that far from making Republican seats safer, the new map in some cases pit sitting Republicans against one another.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.