This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 25, 2011 - The bipartisan co-chairmen of the St. Louis County Council's redistricting commission said Monday they're optimistic that, unlike their legislative counterparts, they'll reach a deal drawing new boundary lines without the involvement of judges.
The panel's co-chairs -- Republican Allen Icet and Democrat Butch Miller -- offered up their predictions after a brief public hearing at Lindbergh High School, where only one member of the public offered up a comment: Republican township committeeman John Judd.
The hearing is the second of three such sessions. The last will be held Nov. 7 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
The 14-member commission voted Monday to accept the two rival maps, one Republican and one Democratic, that draw new boundaries for the council's seven districts. The current map is at left.
The two maps display few major differences, a fact that in itself bolsters the deal-making confidence of Miller, a county lawyer and Democratic activist, and Icet, a former GOP state representative from Wildwood who spent his last House term as that chamber's Budget Committee chairman.
(Click here to view the county redistricting commission's web site, which soon is to display the rival maps.)
The next step will be for one commissioner from each party to try to hash out those slight differences in the hopes of reaching a compromise that the full panel can accept by the Thanksgiving Day deadline. If no settlement is reached, then the map-drawing will be tossed to county judges -- which is what happened a decade ago.
The most significance difference between the two county redistricting maps involves the politically swing 5th District, which now takes in all or part of a number of central and near-south county communities, from University City and Olivette to the north all the way to Shrewsbury and Grantwood Village in the south. (Democrat Pat Dolan currently represents the 5th.)
The Republican map would add in parts of GOP-leaning Sunset Hills, Crestwood and Huntleigh to the 5th -- presumably to bolster their party's voter presence. The Democratic map makes tiny inconsequential changes in the 5th, leaving it largely unchanged.
Under both maps, the county's 1st and 4th districts in its northern half would remain safely Democratic, while the 3rd and 7th districts in western St. Louis County would remain strongly Republican. The current councilpeople are Republicans Colleen Wasinger in the 3rd and Greg Quinn in the 7th, and Democrats Hazel Erby and Michael O'Mara in the 1st and 4th, respectively.
The 2nd District (now represented by Democrat Kathleen Kelly Burkett) in the northwest part of the county, as well as the 5th, would remain swing territory.
The 6th District is south St. Louis County -- under both maps -- is envisioned by both parties as leaning slightly Republican, although the district's current councilman, Chairman Steve Stenger of Affton, is a Democrat. The 6th is virtually untouched by both parties.