What's your favorite new congressional district? Mine's the 12th. It's shaped kind of like a bulldog biting the paw of a terrier.
At least it does if you stare at the new congressional map long enough. You'll never stare it at long enough for it to make sense, so looking for shadow animals seems a more productive use of your time.
These districts are not designed to serve voters. They're recarved every 10 years to keep the party in power in power. So the 12th District crosses nine counties but contains only one entire county, all the better to keep the Democrats in check.
Republicans have the keys to the kingdom this decade, but blatant partisanship has been the rule, not the exception, since the American experiment began more than 200 years ago.
What irks some about this map, though, even Republicans, is the way it manages to split even the tiniest boroughs into pieces.
Rich Stampahar, the Allegheny County Republican County chairman, crawled out of a sickbed in his O'Hara home to pore over this map and ponder why his township of 8,856 has been divided between two members of Congress.
"I just cannot stand when they separate municipalities," Stampahar said. "Most residents don't know who their house members are or who their congressmen are. Why add to the confusion?"
Of the 130 municipalities in Allegheny County, at least 15 are divided between two members of Congress. You'd almost have to be trying to split municipalities in order to halve so many, but simply not caring does the trick, too.
I called Jim Zaenger, a conservative Republican now serving his fifth term on the O'Hara Township Council, to ask whether small municipalities are shortchanged when their voice is split in Congress. Zaenger, 65, said it doesn't matter much either way.
"Congressmen don't give a fig what any of us think."
Harry Dilmore, borough manager of Avalon for the past two years and a Democratic councilman for 27 years before that, thinks it matters, though. While it might sound good in theory to have two people in Congress working for the borough, the reality is a dilution of clout. With a congressional district containing more than 646,000 residents, it's far better to get on the phone to Washington as the voice of 5,300 residents rather than 2,650. Size matters.
Computers have made the difference this time around. As late as 20 years ago, such a map wouldn't have been possible, because mapmakers could not have entered data on how people really vote, not just how they're registered. Now nominal Democrats who have been voting Republican in recent elections have been gathered to maximum GOP advantage, and the boundaries are all but inconsequential to the mapmakers. That is why people in little Washington (Pa.) might soon find themselves with a Congressman in Johnstown, more than 100 miles away.
"This certainly is the most creative congressional map in Pennsylvania history," said Jon Delano, KDKA's money and politics editor.
Delano says the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on "one person, one vote" almost demands that municipalities be split to balance the congressional districts. Indeed, the six Western Pennsylvania districts have a downright phenomenal balance. The largest has only 15 people more people than the smallest.
"It is more important constitutionally that the districts be equal in population than municipal lines be respected," Delano said.
Given the continual shifts in population over the course of a decade, however, it's hard to believe that a court would look askance at a plan that preserved municipal boundaries and kept districts within a fraction of a percentage point of one another in population.
But then I guess I'm putting the cart before the horse. And the elephant. And the donkey.
Brian O'Neill's e-mail address is boneill@post-gazette.com.
E-mail this story 
