PHOENIX — Rejecting an offer to negotiate, members of the Independent Redistricting Commission voted Friday to appeal a court ruling ordering them to draw new legislative boundaries.
The vote came despite a proposal from the attorney who won the lawsuit to essentially compromise: Create two more districts where Democrats have a better chance of winning and the lawsuit will go away.
Attorney Paul Eckstein even suggested which ones he would change: District 26 on Tucson's North Side, and District 11 in north-central Phoenix.
That change could help Democrats actually take control of the Legislature in 2008 — or at least not lose ground.
But Commissioner James Huntwork said that would be an admission that he and his colleagues made a mistake in the first place in setting the boundaries for the 30 legislative districts — the ones that have been used to elect lawmakers in 2002, 2004 and 2006. He doesn't believe that is the case.
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In fact, Huntwork said, Democrats were elected in several districts just this month, districts that had not been considered competitive.
At this point it appears Demo- crats picked up six seats in the 60-member House and one in the 30-member Senate. Huntwork said that prove the system works.
That argument drew derision from state Rep. Peter Rios, D-Dudleyville, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the commission.
"Don't be fooled," he told commissioners. Rios said 2006 was an unusual year, with Republicans being ousted because of a general anti-GOP sentiment.
And Commissioner Andrea Minkoff said that in any normal year, the best predictor of who will be elected to the Legislature is voter registration. Using that standard, she said, only four of the 30 districts are politically competitive, where either party has a reasonable chance of winning.
Friday's vote means it will be months — if not longer — before anyone knows whether lawmakers will run for office in 2008 in their current districts or new ones. It will take that long for the case to make its way through appeals.
These lines used to be drawn by legislators, often with the result of incumbents protecting their own turf. A constitutional amendment approved in 2000 created the Independent Redistricting Commission to perform the task.
That constitutional provision requires commissioners to consider various factors, including protecting communities of interest and not violating the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting minority voting strength. It also requires the commission to create politically competitive districts where doing so does not undermine the other goals.
A coalition of Democrats and Hispanics got Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Fields to throw out the lines, saying the commissioners did not give enough consideration to competitiveness. But the Court of Appeals said Fields used the wrong legal standards to reach that conclusion and told him to reconsider.
Earlier this month Fields again concluded that the district lines were flawed, directing the commission to come up with new ones by the middle of March. But the commission's vote Friday means it would prefer to challenge the judge's latest order rather than reconsider prior actions.
