Valley likely winner

WASILLA — Every 10 years when the census rolls around, the state sits down to figure out legislative districts and after the 2010 census, if the experts are to be believed, the Valley is all but assured another seat in the House of Representatives.

“At least a seat. There might even be a portion of another, it just depends,” said Tom Begich, who has worked on redistricting efforts in the past. He also testified as an expert in court when redistricting wound up sparking litigation — something Begich said is almost always the case. Begich is the brother of U.S. Sen. Mark Begich.

Representative Wes Keller (R-Wasilla) said he, for one, is excited at the possibility.

“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that happens because it’s the right thing,” he said.

Begich said it may wind up that the Mat-Su doesn’t gain a seat so much as gain pieces of two seats. Right now, he pointed out, Reps. Bill Stoltze and John Harris have districts that are essentially split. Harris represents Valdez and a sliver of the borough on its eastern edge. Stoltze has about a third of his constituency in Butte and the other two-thirds in Chugiak and Peters Creek.

In such a scenario, the seats held by Stoltze and Harris would become wholly Valley seats.

Keller said that’d be fine with him. He said he works very well with both Stoltze and Harris.

“They have a split representation so they’ve got to look out for the needs of Fairbanks and Valdez and all this stuff, which I sure don’t begrudge them but as long as we’ve got the people in the Valley, we should have more representation out there,” he said.

Redistricting doesn’t add seats to the total number of legislators. So, for the Valley to gain a seat some other region has to lose one. Begich said, judging by population trends in Alaska Department of Labor statistics, it looks like the loser this go-round will likely be Southeast.

But since no seats are added, the calculations are, in some ways, rather simple. The state’s population is divided by 40 — the number of representatives — and that’s the number of people each district must contain.

But in a lot of other ways it’s very complicated.

For instance, Alaska is the only state outside of the Deep South still under the jurisdiction of the Voting Rights Act. Begich said that’s because literacy tests were deemed to disenfranchise Alaska Native voters. The state, therefore, has to make sure that at least some of the districts would conceivably elect a Native representative.

“It might create really contorted-looking districts,” Begich said.

And then there’s the politics of the whole thing. Redistricting is done through a board of appointees. The governor gets two appointees, the Legislature gets two and the court system gets one.

Begich said the last redistricting after the 2000 census resulted in a map with quite a few competitive seats.

The board, he said, chose to do that, “rather than creating bastions of the two parties that would become so stuck in the mud they would never solve anything.”

As proof that the plan worked, he pointed to House seats where the election hinged on less than 100 votes.

“Voters are going to get the choice of really the best candidates,” he said.

The lines were drawn that way, Begich said, because there was a balance of political interests on the board.

“This Legislature has the opportunity to be bold and take the risk and allow for that balance. I don’t think they will but I wish that they would,” Begich said.

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