Gerrymandered districts favored GOP in Executive Council, Senate races

Nov. 12—Republicans emerged from Tuesday's midterm elections in solid control of the N.H. Executive Council and the state Senate even though Democratic candidates for those two bodies got more total votes than their GOP competitors.

A majority of votes did not translate to control of the council or Senate because Republicans gerrymandered the districts, or drew them to the advantage of their party, University of New Hampshire political science Prof. Dante Scala said Friday.

"It was very clear when Republicans drew the maps for the state Senate and the Executive Council that they were doing it with an eye toward partisan advantage," he said. "There was no mistaking it.

"It was clearly meant to ensure that Democrats would have to do especially well in order to gain a majority, and Democrats did well on Tuesday, but not that well."

In the five-member Executive Council, which shares executive power with the governor, the only Democrat before and after the election was Cinde Warmington of Concord.

Her 2nd District, which includes much of the Monadnock Region, is gerrymandered to maximize the number of Democratic constituents so that the other districts are more heavily Republican, she said.

Warmington defeated N.H. Sen. Harold French, R-Canterbury, 74,107 to 49,428, but the other four council races were much closer. A tally of all the votes for the five Democrats running for the panel was about 1,500 higher than the Republican vote total.

"The reality is we really are a 50-50 state," she said. "I think that's pretty much been shown. We're a purple state, but we're 80 percent represented by Republicans on the Executive Council.

"There's nothing more gerrymandered in this state than the Executive Council."

All the incumbent Republicans on the Executive Council were re-elected on Tuesday: Joseph Kenney of Union, Janet Stevens of Rye, Theodore Gatsas of Manchester and David Wheeler of Milford, whose district takes in a number of Monadnock Region towns.

Like the Executive Council, the partisan makeup of the N.H. Senate didn't change this election. The 14-10 split in favor of the GOP will continue.

This is despite the fact that Democratic Senate candidates garnered about 6,000 more votes than their Republican competitors in the aggregate.

Meanwhile, incumbent U.S. Democratic Reps. Annie Kuster of Hopkinton and Chris Pappas of Manchester both won re-election. Republicans wanted to gerrymander those districts, too, Scala said.

But GOP Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed a Republican-backed congressional redistricting bill, saying he likes political competition. A court then set new congressional district boundaries that were much like the old ones.

The governor approved Republican-backed redistricting bills this year for the Executive Council, the N.H. Senate and the N.H. House. Redistricting is done every 10 years after the U.S. Census. The party in control of the Legislature, in the case of New Hampshire this past session the GOP, sways the process.

Sununu's veto of the congressional redistricting bill didn't sit well with some members of his party.

"I'm sure there are a lot of House Republicans right now who are saying to themselves, 'Well see, told you so. If we had drawn the 1st Congressional District like we wanted maybe Karoline Leavitt would be the next congresswoman,' " Scala said.

Pappas beat Leavitt, of Hampton, 167,391 to 142,229.

N.H. Rep. Ross Berry, R-Manchester, worked on the redistricting bill Sununu vetoed.

Berry said the proposal would have made the race between Pappas and Leavitt more competitive, but it might not have changed the outcome.

However, he also said it's possible a more right-leaning district might have attracted different candidates or increased campaign funding for Leavitt, and these factors could have been consequential.

Berry said New Hampshire has concentrated areas that favor the Democratic Party and large swaths of the state that are Republican-leaning.

"When you look at the map, it's a red map with deep blue pockets inside of it," he said. "It's hard not to draw a Republican map for the Senate."

Gerrymandering is something both political parties have done over the years, and it, of course, is not the only factor in an election, Scala, the UNH political science professor, said.

"You can talk about candidate quality, and incumbency is a real advantage," he said. But he stressed that gerrymandering put Democrats at a disadvantage before the first vote was cast in New Hampshire's midterm elections.

"No doubt about it," he said. "From the get go was it a level playing field? No it wasn't."

Rick Green can be reached at rgreen@keenesentinel.com or 603-355-8567.