The history of Minnesota's reapportionment process is a tale of partisanship, changing demographics, conflict of interests, judicial intervention and the battle for political supremacy. It is the essence of what power politics is all about.
Redistricting (or reapportionment) of Minnesota's legislative and congressional seats involves the redrawing of district lines once every 10 years after the U.S. census. The act of drawing these lines is significant, for it determines the political boundaries for all of the 201 legislative and eight congressional districts in the state.
The political fate of candidates for these offices and control of the Legislature itself rests with how the lines are drawn: Put more DFLers or Republicans in a district, and it will tip the electoral outcome. Construct the right district, and it will favor incumbents over challengers. Or draw the lines to enable more rural, suburban or urban districts, and you will ensure that a particular region has more power. Redistricting can determine the balance of power. The task of redistricting falls to the state Legislature and the governor. Thus, in a sense, legislators get to select their voters.
Or so it goes in theory. In Minnesota this cycle, a plan for redistricting is more than likely to be drawn by the courts. And a historical survey of redistricting reveals that this year's struggle has become a commonplace one in the past several decades.
Redistricting in Minnesota's early years through the 1950s
From the early days of Minnesota history, reapportionment has been about political power. The original 1858 Constitution (in Article IV, Section 2) called for Minnesota House and Senate district lines to be drawn to reflect population. Because Minnesota was rapidly growing, a special mid-decade census, to begin in 1865, was called for in Article IV, sections 23 and 24, to record it. This mid-decade census and redistricting never occurred, and a 1964 constitutional amendment making it optional remains on the books.
From statehood until 1913, redistricting occurred regularly in Minnesota, because new legislative and congressional seats could be added without taking any away. But after that date, the growing urban and decreasing rural populations forced the latter to give up seats to the former. Instead of complying, the Republican Legislature simply refused to redraw the lines, thereby protecting rural power from changing demographics for a time.
The Minnesota Supreme Court endorsed this practice. In the 1914 case Meigham v. Weatherall, it ruled that so long as the Legislature made a good-faith effort to undertake a fair apportionment, uniformity of population was not required. Then, in its 1945 Smith v. Holm opinion, the court ruled that a once-valid reapportionment plan was not rendered invalid simply due to shifts in population.
Between the 1910 census, which was the basis for the 1913 districting plan, and 1950, Minnesota's population increased 44 percent. In 1957, the largest Senate district had a population of 153,455, and the smallest 16,878. For the House, the largest was 107,246, and the smallest 7,290. The 1913 plan still favored rural Minnesota, in other words -- and a Legislature dominated by leaders from greater Minnesota had no incentive to redraw lines to undermine their power.
But in 1958, a U.S. district court was asked to rule (in Magraw v. Donovan) that Minnesota's districting plan from 1913 was unconstitutional. The court did not invalidate the plan but instead called on the Legislature to address the problem. In 1959, this forced the first redistricting since 1913. The lines were drawn by a theoretically nonpartisan Legislature (legislative elections were nonpartisan from 1914 to 1973) that in reality was controlled by Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the House. It significantly moved legislative seats closer to equality of population, but in the House the largest urban district had seven times the population as the smallest rural one. This new legislative map, effective for 1962, shifted 11 House and five-and-a-half Senate seats from rural to more urban and suburban Twin Cities dominance. In the next election, Republicans won all these seats.
Redistricting from the 1960s to 1980s
The U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 Reynolds v. Sims decision, which dictated that reapportionment follow a "one-person, one-vote" standard, made a profound impact on redistricting across the country, and Minnesota was no exception. The ruling declared that districts had to be as nearly equal in population as possible. At the congressional level, the court eventually ruled that mathematical equality was mandatory. But for state legislative seats, some deviation from pure population equality was permitted in order to respect other traditional redistricting criteria such as compactness and contiguity of districts, the integrity of communities of interest and minimal disruptions to local government boundaries.
After Reynolds, in 1965, both legislative houses were controlled by Republicans, and they adopted a new plan that was promptly vetoed by DFL Gov. Karl Rolvaag. (The Senate challenged the veto, but the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld it.) A 1966 special session subsequently produced a new map that shifted nine House seats and four-and-a-half Senate seats to the metro suburbs. The Republicans won most of these seats in the next election.
The 1970 census forced another redrawing of district lines. The Republican-controlled Legislature and DFL Gov. Wendell Anderson could not agree on a plan, however, so ultimately it fell to the federal courts to draw the lines. In order to achieve population parity, the district court cut the size of the Legislature by nearly one-fourth, prompting the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule that action, retaining the 67-seat Senate and 134-seat House.
The plan adopted in 1972 by the court moved five more Senate and 10 more House seats to the metro area. Now half of all state legislative seats represented the Twin Cities area. The population deviation across districts was less than 2 percent, and analysis by independent scholars such as University of Minnesota professor Charlie Backstrom found the plan to be fair to both parties despite protests by Republicans that it favored the DFL. With this map in place, the DFL gained control of the Legislature in the first party-endorsed elections since 1913.
Angered by perceptions that the redistricting process had become too partisan and contentious, Minnesotans went to the polls in 1980 to vote on a constitutional amendment to create a special nine-member commission that would do reapportionment instead of the Legislature. While 58 percent of those voting on the amendment approved it, it fell 3,000 votes shy of the absolute statewide majority of all voters in that election, causing it to fail.
After the 1980 census, the DFL controlled both legislative houses and Independent-Republican Al Quie was governor. Once again, partisan disputes at the Legislature left courts to draw the district lines in 1981; and once again, population shifts from the countryside to the metro area produced a further erosion of rural power. In the 1982 elections, the DFL retained control of the Legislature and picked up the governorship with Rudy Perpich.
Redistricting in the 1990s: The saga of the failed veto
The legislative redistricting map created after the 1990 census is the only one in recent times that was not drawn entirely by the courts. But the judiciary played a major role nonetheless.
In 1990 Republican Arne Carlson was elected governor. In January a suit was filed in Hennepin County asking that the courts take over the redistricting process. Then, in March, a suit was filed in federal court contending that any plan adopted by the Legislature would discriminate against minorities.
On May 18, 1991, the DFL Legislature adopted a redistricting plan and Carlson vetoed it.
But he did so belatedly, mistakenly applying his veto after the constitutional deadline to do so had passed. In August, a Ramsey County judge declared the veto invalid. The governor did not appeal the decision, but the Republican Party filed suit in federal court and the case was joined with the one filed in March. In October, a state court ruled the DFL plan unconstitutional due to errors but then adapted that plan to generate a map of its own, which was released in November.
But then, in December, a federal court issued an injunction preventing the state court plan from being used in the 1992 elections. It also enjoined the Legislature from drafting a new plan.
In January 1992 a special legislative session was called to correct the errors in the previous plans created by the DFL majorities. Carlson vetoed the plan on Jan. 11 -- but the day before, on Jan. 10, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the stay on the plan developed in state court.
It thus appeared that the battle was over -- but no. In February 1992, a U.S. district court declared that the state plan violated minority interests and was unconstitutional. It then imposed its own redistricting plan for the 1992 elections.
But a month later, in March 1992, after an appeal from Secretary of State Joan Growe and the DFL, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state court plan for the legislative races and the federal plan for the congressional ones. These were the plans used in the 1992 elections.
But in 1993 the Supreme Court ruled in Growe v. Emison that the state redistricting plan drawn by the state judges for both the legislative and congressional races, and which were very similar to the ones created by the DFL Legislature, were valid and would be used. In so ruling, the court effectively changed the boundaries for a couple of congressional districts, but the court did not invalidate any 1992 results.
When all was said and done, the Emison decision did set a major national precedent for redistricting -- establishing the principle that state courts should be given a chance to draw redistricting plans before federal courts intervene.
The 2000 redistricting: Reapportioning in a tripartisan world
If partisan disputes between two parties complicate redistricting, the disputes in 2001 after the 2000 census faced an additional hurdle -- tripartisanship. Jesse Ventura was elected governor as the Reform Party candidate in 1998. In that election, the DFL held control of the Senate, but the Republicans took control of the House. This meant that for any legislatively generated plan to become law, three political parties had to reach agreement. That did not happen.
Initially the governor created an 11-member Citizen Advisory Commission on Redistricting composed of legislative leaders and groups such as Common Cause and the League of Women Voters. However well-meaning, the commission was unable to get the Legislature to agree on a single plan; the Republican House and DFL Senate put forth their own ideas. Among the differences, the Republicans proposed combining the two congressional seats that separately represented Minneapolis and St. Paul into one district. Ventura also expressed concern that the plans offered by both houses discriminated against third parties.
State law requires that the district lines for congressional and legislative races be completed 25 weeks before the primary in years ending with a 2. In 2001, this meant that a plan had to be adopted by March 19, 2002. But back on July 12, 2001, anticipating that the governor and the Legislature would not reach agreement in time, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Blatz, in response to a lawsuit, appointed a special judicial panel to draw upon new districts in the event that the March 19 deadline was missed. It was, and in Zachman v. Kiffmeyer, the court's plan was adopted for the 2002 elections.
The lines drawn for the 2002 elections pitted a near-record number of legislative incumbents against each other. It preserved Minneapolis and St. Paul as distinct congressional districts, and it also produced an oddly shaped 6th Congressional District winding from Stillwater to Anoka County to Stearns County and then to Wright County and Delano. The district was strongly Republican. In 2004 Republican Mark Kennedy won the seat and held it until he lost the U.S. Senate race to Amy Klobuchar in 2006. In 2006 Michele Bachmann won the seat.
The 2002 court plan reflected a further deterioration in the number of rural seats in Minnesota. It created more legislative seats in the Twin Cities suburbs, a development that favored Republicans. Moreover, because of the decline in rural Minnesota's population, the Iron Range and Duluth -- traditionally a DFL stronghold -- lost seats. More importantly, the 8th District, held by Congressman Jim Oberstar, was extended from Duluth and St. Louis County to include Chisago County -- the outer boundary of the Twin Cities suburbs. This proved critical in the 2010 elections, when Republican Chip Cravaack of Lindstrom defeated Oberstar by a narrow 4,400-vote margin. The changing demographics of the state significantly contributed to his victory.
2010 and the challenges of divided government and a changing state
The 2010 elections produced the first DFL governor, Mark Dayton, to win since Rudy Perpich's victory in 1986. It also produced the first House and Senate controlled by the Republicans since 1978. Mixed government again seems to be the recipe for an inability to reach agreement on a redistricting plan, and it is all but certain that state courts will be given the task of completing a new political map if the governor and legislature do not reach agreement by Feb. 21, 2012.
On Jan. 12, 2011, a suit was filed in state court charging that any plan adopted would discriminate against high-population areas and that the Legislature would fail to adopt a plan in a timely fashion. On June 1, 2011, Chief Justice Lorie Gildea appointed a special judicial panel to begin work on a plan in the event that the governor and Legislature fail to adopt one by Feb. 21.
During the 2011 session, House and Senate Republican majorities put forward plans for redistricting. Among the proposed changes were a plan to move 7th District DFLer Collin Peterson into a new 8th District that would cover the northern part of the state and shift Cravaack into a new 7th District that includes the northern suburbs and rural western Minnesota. Effectively, the plan switches Cravaack and Peterson's districts. Additionally, the 1st District, represented by DFLer Tim Walz, would encompass the southern part of the state. Bachmann's district would face changes as well but remain largely intact. All of these proposed changes clearly would have favored Republicans. This plan was vetoed by Dayton, almost guaranteeing that the courts will draw the maps again.
On Oct. 6, 2011, the special panel directed parties to submit plans in advance of a scheduled Jan. 4, 2012, hearing. In leading up to the hearing, the DFL and Republicans have proposed their own criteria that should be included when redistricting. They agree on the traditional redistricting criteria -- population, compact and contiguous districts, respect for communities of interest, local political boundaries and minority interests. But the plans differ markedly in how they apply those criteria in the face of changing demographics that continue to shrink the population of both rural Minnesota and the urban cores of the Twin Cities and to grow the population of the suburbs, especially the outer ring municipalities.
Republicans have successfully argued that the metro region around the Twin Cities needed to be expanded to include 11 counties to incorporate the growth in the exburbs. This is significant, since it would then bring the traditional DFL areas of Minneapolis, St. Paul and their inner ring suburbs into a potential community of interest with farther-flung suburbs. This would allow for a drawing of lines that would mix these population-losing DFL areas with the more rapidly growing Republican suburbs.
Demographic shifts in 2011 mean that the challenge in redistricting is how to address the continued shrinkage of rural Minnesota with changes in the metro region that are shifting more people into the suburbs, while at the same time representing the growing minority interests in the state. Whatever plan is adopted, it will have to address these concerns.
Conclusion
What can we learn from the history of redistricting in Minnesota? First, battles over redistricting are about power -- power for the rural, urban or suburban areas, or for particular parties and specific interests. Second, because it is about power, the process is highly partisan and contentious as parties seek to use the process to favor their interests. Third, at least since the 1960s, the political process has generally proved unable to produce agreement on how to draw new lines, necessitating court intervention time and again to accomplish that task. Finally, while the courts have drawn the lines many times, their results have not been free of controversy, either, and many critics contend that the judiciary should not be tasked with this responsibility.
Wherever the 2011-12 redistricting process is headed, one can argue that the current process for drawing lines is broken. A more permanent and adequate solution than simply turning it over the judiciary is needed. But it is unlikely that legislators will willingly turn this task over to someone else, since to do so would mean relinquishing one of the most powerful tools they have -- the prerogative to draw their own election districts and thus to determine who their voters will be.