As redistricting looms, New Jersey Democrats fear 'pack' mentality

The lexicon of recent American political slang has two words for what befalls black and other minority voters at redistricting time: packing and cracking.

 As politicians prepare to redraw the map for New Jersey's 40 legislative districts, Democrats are afraid Republicans will "pack" African Americans and the state's fast-growing Latino community - historically reliable Democratic voters - into a small number of districts to soften their political punch.

Accentuating their fears is the presence of a renowned Republican "packing" expert.

To be sure, a court decision and the increasing mobility of minorities make it harder for either party to dominate the complex remapping process. But that's where Ben Ginsberg comes in.

Ginsberg is lead lawyer for Republicans on the state Apportionment Commission, which is redrawing the maps. He is also a pioneer of corralling black voters into already solidly Democratic congressional districts to prevent them from threatening Republican wins in nearby suburbs.

In other words, he knows the art of packing.

In the 1990s, Ginsberg, of the Washington law firm Patton Boggs, helped persuade African American leaders to consolidate black voters into a handful of districts around the country.

"Democrats had controlled Congress for the previous 40 years," Ginsberg, who was a lawyer for George W. Bush's presidential campaigns, said last week in an interview. "And the way they did it was to crack racial-minority communities - especially African American, which was their most loyal voting bloc - and spread out those communities to basically elect white Democrats from the suburbs."

African American leaders went along with the strategy, since it meant they would acquire the concentrated numbers needed to elect black House members. More black representatives went to Congress - while many of the once-secure Democratic districts that black voters left became competitive.

Analysts credit that trade-off with helping Republicans take over the U.S. House in 1994 for the first time since the 1950s.

In Trenton, Harrisburg, and every other state capital, a similar mapmaking scrum is under way. It happens after each 10-year census, with both parties vying to craft districts that lean their way. The winners stand a good chance of controlling the legislature. In 1991, Republicans won the redistricting and took control in Trenton; a decade later, Democrats won the mapping game and took it back.

Now the Democrats' control is at stake. All 120 legislative seats - one for the Senate and two for the Assembly per district - are up for grabs this fall. The election will be the maps' first test.

Yet New Jersey may no longer be ripe for packing, according to Ingrid Reed, a policy analyst who recently retired from Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics. "There are fewer places now to do packing because we have had such a dispersal of the diverse population of New Jersey," Reed said.

Hispanics - now the state's largest minority, according to the census - as well as blacks have moved from cities to inner-ring suburbs. And voters generally are less inclined to vote along racial lines. In the last decade, Reed said, "we've demonstrated whites will vote for blacks and blacks will vote for whites."

Democrats could lose clout for other reasons, however. Population, the main factor in drawing the maps, has declined in heavily Democratic Hudson and Essex Counties while rising in GOP-leaning Ocean County and in Gloucester County, which is evolving from a Democratic stronghold into a swing district.

The party also is less able to crack urban voting blocs than in the past. Thanks to a 2009 court ruling, the bipartisan Apportionment Commission can't split Jersey City, in Hudson County, or Newark, in Essex, into more than two districts each. That's down from the two cities' combined current total of six districts.

The ruling said no other cities could be split into several districts. But creative mapmaking could still divvy up reliably Democratic turf.

Passaic could be pulled out of the 36th Legislative District, making the 36th more fertile for Republicans who already do well in nearby suburbs. And there is talk of tinkering with the district that includes Atlantic City.

So Democrats' fears about redistricting's diluting their strength in Trenton may not be so far off base - particularly when a Ben Ginsberg is helping draw the maps.