Opinion: Why the November Elections Really Matter

(Sept. 9) -- Elections matter. Some more than others, and often for reasons that aren't well understood.

That's certainly the case with the November elections. While pundits are focused on who will control Congress and what that means for President Barack Obama's agenda, there's another outcome that will matter far more down the road.

This year's winners of state legislatures and governorships will have the chance to redraw congressional districts based on the new census data. It sounds technical, but the bottom line is that the consequences of these races will be long-lasting and far-reaching.

In 1990 and again in 2000, Republicans recognized what redistricting could do for their prospects in Congress, and dominated Democrats on these important local political playing fields. Because of the resulting redistricting, there emerged a new set of safe Republican incumbents, and once-Democratic districts were transformed into districts clearly in play.

After the 1990 election, redistricting allowed Republicans to gain between 25 and 30 seats in the next two elections. Even in 1992, a good year for Democrats in which they took the presidency and picked up Senate seats, Republicans still won a net of nine house seats.

And two years later, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans were able to take control of the U.S. House and push through the Defense of Marriage Act, roll back regulation on big business and stonewall President Bill Clinton on his budget, bringing the federal government to a halt.

This was the case again in 2000, when Republicans put forth the most aggressive national effort the country had ever seen to flip and hold state legislatures for the purpose of redistricting. Republicans acquired a net gain of five state legislatures.

With Rep. Tom DeLay and Karl Rove at the helm, their successes meant more Republican congressional gains in 2002 -- a year that political convention says Republicans would have lost seats. The same happened again in 2004.

It should be noted that Democrats made gains in 2006 and 2008 despite gerrymandered, Republican-friendly districts in more conservative areas of the country. But this year, it is not just a difficult political environment that incumbent Democrats are up against; it is also district maps often drawn in a way that sets Democratic candidate up for failure.

In Michigan, for example, Republican John Engler defeated two-time Gov. James Blanchard back in 1990 by a margin of less than 1 percent. Engler went on to serve as governor until 2003, through two rounds of congressional redistricting. The redistricting plan he approved after the 2000 election eventually contributed to the losses of three incumbent Democratic representatives in newly designed districts.

Before 2002, the Michigan Delegation had nine Democrats and seven Republicans. After 2002, the delegation had nine Republicans and six Democrats. A victory of less than one percentage point in 1990 for Engler amounted to a complete flip in the state's congressional delegation by the beginning of the next decade.

In 2003 while minority leader of the Colorado Senate, I witnessed firsthand as rules and constitutional guarantees were violated to redraw congressional lines to the advantage of the Republican Party, which one reporter described as tyranny in action and utterly anti-democratic.

In short, the importance of control of state legislatures and governorships after November cannot be overstated.

While the pundits will talk about the horse-race battles that will decide control of the U.S. House and Senate in 2011, we should be focusing not just on contentious federal races, but on state house and governors' races. Long after the dust has settled in Washington, we will be living with the effects of those elections for years to come.

Joan Fitz-Gerald is president of America Votes, which has launched a Redistricting Control Project to coordinate efforts by progressive groups in top-priority races for redistricting.