Redistricting in NJ: Hispanics seek their own place

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Early in the process to redraw the state’s 40 legislative districts, battle lines are already forming over how to represent New Jersey’s growing Hispanic population.

Hispanics make up almost 17 percent of the state, according to the American Community Survey.

...

“We are the youngest and fastest-growing community. We need to be at the table, not in back of the line like we are today,” said Angel Cordero, a member of the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey, at a meeting today in Camden of the committee that will redraw legislative district boundaries. “We ask that you guys be kind when you draw the lines and keep our communities together so that we can grow.”

The big question is whether to “pack” districts with more Latino voters to increase the chances they’ll elect Hispanics to the Legislature, as Republicans are expected to propose, or to keep the population spread out and mixed among other ethnic groups, as Democrats prefer.

It’s similar to the question that New Jersey grappled with in 2001, when Democrats took heavily minority districts and distributed their mostly Democratic voters into whiter, more Republican districts, giving the party an electoral advantage. Republicans took Democrats to court, accusing them of diluting minority voters’ clout, but Democrats successfully argued that doing so would help elect more minorities to the Legislature.

Under the current map, minority representation has expanded in the past decade, and Democrats, who control the Legislature, elected black and Hispanic members as Assembly speaker, the third-most powerful position in the state.

But Hispanics remain under-represented, and Republicans have met with the leader of Cordero’s group to talk about how they could get more Latino lawmakers elected.

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If a map “packs” Latinos, who as a group leaned Democratic in the 2010 elections, into Hispanic-concentrated districts, they are detached from whiter, suburban towns where Republicans would stand a better chance.

Republicans have not formally advocated the packing strategy, saying only that the new map should take demographic shifts into account. But Democrats and some other Hispanic groups say it’s clearly the GOP’s intention.

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“They don’t say it. But I’ve always been taught that what people don’t say is almost as important as what they say,” said Democratic State Committee Chairman John Wisniewski, who heads the Democrats’ redistricting team. “I think their strategy is to have minority candidates, in minority districts fight amongst themselves for as few positions as possible.”

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/01/hispanics_seek_their_own_place.html

[slim 1,530]

So you give 'em a district and they're not happy.

You don't give 'em a district and they're not happy.

Uh.... how do you make "those people" happy?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

If they are not happy there, they can always move to Hispania.

[mawilson 2,133]

They can call it Nueva Yersey.

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They can call it Nueva Yersey.

Telemundo already calls us that. Fast forward to 2:02.

[Danno 1,228]

We spend all this money... pass all these laws trampling over peoples property rights in order to insure everyone is well blended in our color blind society..... then we do back flips which to carve up people based on the singular trait of race to appease politics.

Is anyone surprised?

[peejay 327]

We spend all this money... pass all these laws trampling over peoples property rights in order to insure everyone is well blended in our color blind society..... then we do back flips which to carve up people based on the singular trait of race to appease politics.

Is anyone surprised?

Liberals talk up a "color blind society" when they get up on the soapbox to put themselves on some sort of self appointed morally superior pedestal, but if you read between the lines and watch them in action it is all about race. They do love labels and they do take note of race. They are the kings of racial politics. It pays off for them. Even though they deny it when it is blatantly obvious.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

We spend all this money... pass all these laws trampling over peoples property rights in order to insure everyone is well blended in our color blind society..... then we do back flips which to carve up people based on the singular trait of race to appease politics.

Is anyone surprised?

Nope. Democrats are racist as ####.