The Oregon House interim committee on redistricting, evenly split with three Democrats and three Republicans, also offered vastly different maps on how the existing five U.S. House of Representative districts in Oregon should be drawn.

Four of Oregon’s House seats in Congress are currently held by Democrats while one has long been held by a Republican.

The Democrats’ map says new congressional District 6 should be south of Portland, Oregon’s biggest city, and west of Interstate 5. Republicans also put it south of Portland, but on the east side of the interstate.

Expanding Oregon’s number of U.S. House seats from five to six won’t necessarily be a win for Democrats, who control the state politically.

The new district would be safely Democratic under the Democrats’ map and competitive under the Republican map, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, a website that gets its name from the number of Electoral College members and which focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics and other topics.

The maps were released with little fanfare. The proposed placement of the six congressional districts were not discussed by the interim committee members, who met remotely by video. A series of virtual public hearings about redrawing the districts will start next Wednesday.

Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, a Republican and co-chair of the interim redistricting committee, accused Democrats of having in the past conducted gerrymandering — which is the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to win an unfair political advantage.

“Our current districts have diluted the voices of Oregonians for two decades to advance one political party and incumbent politicians,” Boshart said during Friday’s meeting.

Rep. Andrea Salinas, a Democrat and fellow co-chair of the interim committee, contested the allegation.

“With all due respect to my co-chair, repeating the false claim of gerrymandering doesn’t make it true,” Salinas said. “The maps that we’re basing our current maps on passed in 2011, and they were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.”

One of the biggest map redraws came from the Democrats, whose draft plan would expand U.S. House District 3 — currently squeezed between Portland’s eastern suburbs and the Columbia River — toward the southeast, all the way to the edge of the central Oregon town of Bend.

The Republican map squeezes District 3 even closer to the river that marks the Washington state line, to allow for the new District 6 to fit into the electoral boundary puzzle.

In a normal redistricting year, the redistricting process would likely have been completed by this time. But the coronavirus pandemic caused delays in the release of U.S. Census Bureau data required to draw new maps. The redistricting data, culled from the 2020 census, was released last month — four months later than expected.

The redistricting numbers that states use for redrawing congressional and legislative districts show where white, Asian, Black and Hispanic communities grew over the past decade.

Steady population growth — driven by newcomers from other states — is giving Oregon greater national political clout. U.S. Census Bureau figures released in April showed the state’s population increased by 10% over the past decade. Oregon as a result got an additional congressional district for the first time in 40 years.

For state legislative districts, there is a set number of districts, so lawmakers can only move the boundary lines and the legislators’ districts must be equal in population. Congressional districts are added and subtracted to states based on population and also must be equal in population.

State legislative Democrats, who overwhelmingly control the Legislature, agreed to give up an advantage in redrawing the state’s political districts for the next 10 years in exchange for a Republican commitment to stop blocking legislation in the state Legislature with delay tactics.

The deal gives Republicans more say over what the boundaries for 90 legislative districts will look like and increases the GOP’s influence on how to divide the state into congressional districts.

The Legislature has until Sept. 27 to complete the redistricting process.

If lawmakers fail to pass new legislative boundaries by then, the task will fall to Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, a progressive Democrat. Lawmakers have succeeded in passing a legal redistricting plan just twice since 1911.

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Cline, who reported from Portland, Oregon, is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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When Oregon lawmakers unveil their first proposals for redrawing the state’s political maps Friday morning, plenty of people will be tuned in.

Business interests, bankrolling a new advocacy group, will be watching for districts they deem unfair to Republicans.

Organized labor, a major backer of the state’s supermajority Democrats, will have their own arguments about fair districts at the ready.

National committees fretting about the delicate balance of power in Washington, D.C., will be keenly interested in lawmakers’ first crack at drawing a brand new congressional district — Oregon’s first in 40 years.

And most likely, they’ll all begin fighting. The draft maps state Senate and House lawmakers plan to drop Friday are the first volleys in a chaotic but brief battle — one that will hold major consequences for the next decade. Oregonians can expect no end of advocacy and arguing as legislators sprint toward their Sept. 27 deadline to pass new maps.

“We have an idea what we think the maps should look like,” said Joe Baessler, associate director for AFSCME Council 75, one of the state’s largest labor groups. “We’re obviously organizing testimony. Fundamentally, we want the Legislature to have a fair process.”

Via affiliate group Our Oregon, labor has been marshalling supporters to testify at 12 virtual public hearings set to begin Sept. 8, advocating for political boundaries they believe best reflect how Oregon should divide its electorate into 60 House districts, 30 Senate districts, and soon-to-be six congressional districts.

Forming up on the other side is a group called Fair Maps Oregon. A nonprofit organization that’s not required to disclose its donors, the group is affiliated with a cadre of industry lobbyists and Republican allies, state filings show.

Preston Mann, a former House Republican staffer and vice president of public affairs for the business group Oregon Manufacturers and Commerce, is the director of Fair Maps Oregon. He said in a recent interview the group would focus on educating citizens about redistricting, but would also push back against maps it feels give Democrats an unfair advantage.

“Redistricting at times can be this abstract concept to Oregonians that happens once a decade,” Mann said. “The goal here is, one, raise awareness of what is about to happen over the next month and, two, raise awareness about why it’s so important.”

Room for creativity

The task the groups will be trying to influence is more art than science. State and federal law include rules the Legislature must abide by during redistricting, but leave room for plenty of creative license.

Lawmakers must draw contiguous districts of roughly equal populations, using existing geographical or political boundaries, and connecting districts by transportation links. Lawmakers also must not draw districts to favor any party or incumbent, and cannot unnecessarily divide “communities of interest,” an amorphous term that can describe any number of things, from ethnic groups to members of a close-knit church.

The question is whether lawmakers want to tweak existing districts at the edges — making more dramatic changes in high-growth areas like central Oregon and the Portland suburbs, and low-growth areas like eastern and southern Oregon — or rethink the map entirely.

“I don’t think anyone has the right answer” said state Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Lake Oswego, a co-chair of the House Redistricting Committee. “You can slice and dice this is in so many ways. I believe where you start really makes a difference in how your map ends up.”

Democrats have also said they will be focused on communities of interest, with a goal of not unduly diluting the voting power of traditionally underserved communities by splitting them up. Republicans have been more concerned with districts that they say unnaturally meld urban and rural populations — and therefore tend to overpower conservative-leaning voters by roping in a slice of a liberal city.

The process of drawing an entirely new congressional district is likely to be especially fraught. Democrats currently hold four of the state’s five seats in the U.S. House. In separating the state into six pieces, both parties will be keenly aware of the possible implications for congressional control.

Democrats could press for a map that would give them an additional seat, a 5-1 imbalance that does not reflect the ratio of Democrat to Republican votes statewide. Or the party could content itself with shoring up its strength in two existing, competitive districts held by Democratic U.S. Reps. Kurt Schrader and Peter DeFazio, and agreeing to a new district that leans conservative.

With Democrats holding a tenuous majority in congress, national interest groups are keeping an eye on that dynamic.

“We’re definitely watching the process in Oregon and looking forward to seeing the draft maps in a few days,” said Fabiola Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

Early disagreement

Already, there are signs that the Legislature’s chances of passing maps might be dim.

In recent weeks, Democrats had envisioned working with Republicans to develop a single set of draft maps for release Friday. Those maps would have been refined — or altered dramatically — based on feedback and redistricting maps submitted by the public and advocacy groups.

Instead, it appears lawmakers will begin on more divided terms. House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, said Wednesday that her members bristled at a map-drafting process that would have been driven by Senate Democrats. Instead, Drazan said her caucus will unveil its own proposal for new districts that would differ from any drafts by Democrats.

“There was an expectation in [the Senate] that they were going to just kind of tell everybody else how it was going to be,” Drazan said. “Where we’re at now is we’re going to be transparent about this. We’re not going to start this process and finish this process before Oregonians engage.”

The approach, Drazan conceded, might make finding bipartisan agreement more difficult. But such agreement will be necessary for lawmakers to pass a new redistricting plan.

As part of a deal to avoid Republican delay tactics in this year’s legislative session, House Speaker Tina Kotek agreed to give GOP members an equal say on the House Redistricting Committee. Without at least one Republican vote in that committee, no map can pass.

“I think we have people who want to get to agreement,” Drazan said. “But I am not going to sign off on a map that I believe is gerrymandered.”

Salinas, who is leading House Democrats’ effort, acknowledged Thursday that common ground had been hard to find so far. Her party’s own map, she said, started by situating districts around population centers and areas of highest population growth, and worked from there.

“It could look extreme to some people,” she said, adding she believed her first draft complied with federal and state law. “I will be curious to see the maps that come out tomorrow.”

It was unclear Thursday whether Republicans and Democrats in the Senate would release a united plan or separate drafts. Sen. Tim Knopp, the Bend Republican running point on the issue for his party in the Senate, said Thursday morning talks were still ongoing. Sen. Kathleen Taylor, the Portland Democrat who chairs the Senate Redistricting Committee, did not respond to inquiries.

A rough decade for Republicans

Advocates for more political balance in Oregon have reason to push for altered maps. Republicans and Democrats held almost equal power in the statehouse when the last maps were drawn in 2011. But Democrats have come to dominate legislative politics in the decade since, achieving three-fifths supermajorities in both chambers.

That change can’t only be attributed to maps. The growth of registered Democrats in the state has outpaced that of Republicans in the last decade, 22% to 13%, according to state records. Once reliably red or purple districts in the suburbs and Central Oregon have grown bluer. The party also typically has a better organized reservoir of volunteers to assist its campaigns.

One analysis of Oregon’s current legislative maps, by the Washington, D.C., nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, suggests they are slightly tilted in Democrats’ favor, but do not lean as far to either side as maps of previous decades. Based on four metrics for determining whether maps are biased, the CLC describes Oregon’s districts as “balanced.”

Drazan and others believe that’s not the case.

While she concedes Democrats gained strength, Drazan says the fastest-growing segment of voters — those affiliated with neither party — also have a say. And when all votes are tallied, she notes, results in competitive statewide elections reveal an electorate that is more evenly balanced than the current Legislature.

“There are not landslide governor’s races,” she says. No Democrat has cleared more than 50.7% of the vote in the last six gubernatorial elections. No Republican has received less than 42.8% of the vote.

The claim that Oregon’s legislative maps are drawn to assure Democratic dominance might seem confusing if you’re familiar with the state’s last redistricting effort in 2011. With the House evenly split between parties, and the Senate nearly so, Republicans and Democrats had an equal say in those maps.

The parties ultimately found agreement, and the Legislature was able to pass new districts for just the second time in a century.

Marion County Commissioner Kevin Cameron was the House Republican leader in 2011. Cameron said he recalls both Republicans and Democrats celebrating the fact they were able to come to an agreement over the maps for the first time in as long as anyone could remember.

“I think we demonstrated civility and worked together on a lot of issues, but particularly redistricting at that point in time,” Cameron said. “It was a good accomplishment.”

Others say Cameron’s sunny view is off base. Members of both parties suggested to OPB that Democrats were better prepared than Republicans for the 2011 redistricting process, and so were able to access better data to help them understand which way a new district was likely to vote.

Time is short

This year’s redistricting process comes with one major difference from 2011′s: It has to happen at hyperspeed.

The U.S. Census data states rely on to draw new maps was delayed by months this year, largely due to COVID-19. As a result, the Oregon Supreme Court gave lawmakers until Sept. 27 to pass new maps — a far tighter window than in most redistricting years.

The Legislature is tentatively scheduled to meet in a special session beginning Sept. 20 to attempt to find agreement. If lawmakers cannot pass a plan by the deadline, the job of redistricting will be snatched away from them.

A panel of judges will decide what the state’s congressional districts look like. Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, a liberal Democrat, will have responsibility for drawing legislative maps. Fagan announced last month she’ll get input from a citizens’ committee if the task is handed to her. Even so, it’s an outcome few Republicans would relish.

“I just don’t think [Fagan] has to take the same political considerations into account as I would,” Salinas said. “That would feel riskier to me if I were the Republicans.”

Drazan disagreed, saying she’s unwilling to vote in favor of a plan she deems unfair.

“I have to look at this from the perspective of the map,” she said. “If I’m staring at a gerrymandered map that cements a Democratic quorum-proof supermajority, whether that’s written by [Democratic state Sen.] Kathleen Taylor or it’s written by Shemia Fagan, it’s still a gerrymandered map.”

OPB reporter Sam Stites contributed to this story.

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Lawmakers taking up the question of how to redraw Oregon’s legislative and congressional districts this year have decided not to take the show on the road.

As COVID-19 continues its alarming spread in the state, members of the Senate and House committees tasked with coming up with new political maps will instead hold required public hearings on potential maps in a virtual hearing format that has grown familiar.

“While the committees had hoped to visit communities across Oregon in person, the recent surge in COVID-19 cases has made this increasingly risky to public health,” Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, and House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, said in a statement Monday. “More Oregonians are now in our hospitals, intensive care units, or on ventilators than ever before in this pandemic.”

The announcement is not entirely surprising. Chairs of the Senate and House redistricting committees in recent days had voiced uncertainty about whether they would be able to hold in-person public hearings as they have in past redistricting years.

Under state law, legislators are required to hold “at least 10 public hearings at locations throughout the state” before proposing new maps. They’re also encouraged to hold five hearings once maps have been proposed. The law explicitly encourages use of video technology to allow people in far-flung areas to testify.

This year, lawmakers are facing an uncharacteristically rushed time table. Delays at the U.S. Census Bureau meant that states only received detailed population data required for redrawing maps this month, roughly six months late.

As a result Oregon lawmakers have already had to breach constitutional requirements for getting maps completed by July 1. With the blessing of the Oregon Supreme Court, the Legislature now has until Sept. 27 to pass a new plan.

Even so, the Legislature appears set to hold more than the required number of public hearings.

The two legislative redistricting committees held 10 virtual meetings to take testimony from the public in March and April — two hearings apiece for the state’s five congressional districts. While citizens in those hearings did not have access to final census data, they were able to advocate for cultural communities or geographic areas they believe should be united into certain political districts.

Lawmakers now plan to unveil a set of draft maps on Sept. 3, before a series of 12 more virtual public hearings from Sept. 8-13. Of key interest in those maps, and the discussion that follows, will be how lawmakers propose drawing a new, sixth congressional district the state was granted this year.

Citizens have a way to offer input beyond testifying remotely. They can use the Legislature’s district mapping tool to create their own proposed maps for state House and Senate districts, as long as they meet legal requirements for how those districts are arranged.

The once-a-decade redistricting process comes with high political stakes. The outcome of new legislative and congressional maps can dictate which party holds sway in Oregon, and help determine control of Congress.

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