A federal judge in August ordered a single Yakima Valley legislative district redrawn to give Latino voters a louder political voice.
But the solution in the redistricting dispute could leave up to eight Republican legislators pushed out of their districts and some forced to run this year against incumbent colleagues.
Five possible ways to redraw the 15th Legislative District are now pending before U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik. Lasnik ruled the district’s borders violate federal law by impairing the ability of Latino voters to participate equally in elections. He’s said he wants a new map in place for the district in time for the 2024 elections.
Each of the five options – all provided in December by those who launched the legal challenge – would move multiple GOP legislators and hundreds of thousands of residents into new districts.
None displace a Democratic lawmaker, prompting the state Senate Republican leader to deem the proposals “a giant political power grab” that would transform a “swing” district, in which a candidate from either party could win, into one that strongly favors Democrats.
“This is a complete gerrymander,” Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, said after the proposed maps were filed with the court Dec. 1. “It’s just an effort to use the courts as rough cover to pick up a district in eastern Washington without doing a thing to help the Latino community.”
Four of the proposals push GOP Sen. Nikki Torres of Pasco, the chamber’s lone Republican Latina, out of the 15th District into the neighboring 16th. If she wanted to keep serving, she’d have to challenge and unseat fellow Republican Sen. Perry Dozier of Waitsburg in 2024.
One proposed map would make changes as far away as King County. It would move House Minority Leader Drew Stokesbary and Sen. Phil Fortunato, both Auburn residents, from the 31st District into the 5th District where they’d be running for seats now held by Democrats.
“The Court should reject all five of Plaintiffs’ proposed remedial maps,” begins the legal brief filed by a group of Latinos who intervened in the original lawsuit and opposed Lasnik’s ruling. Stokesbary, an attorney, is part of the legal team representing the intervenors.
The proposals are “overtly partisan” and each would dilute the voting strength of Latinos below the level within the current boundaries, the intervenors assert. They also criticize the maps for requiring up to 14 legislative districts to be redrawn to fix the one Lasnik invalidated.
“Plaintiffs decided to swing for the fences to see just how far they can exploit the Court’s ruling to benefit State Democrats,” they wrote. “While one cannot fault Plaintiffs for lack of ambition, their fealty to geography and traditional redistricting principles is another matter.”
Simone Leeper, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center representing the plaintiffs, said all five maps provide the remedy sought by Lasnik.
“The reality of redistricting is that changes to one district necessarily cause changes to others,” she said in an email. “Plaintiffs have provided the Court multiple options to consider, some of which require greater changes to surrounding districts than others to comply with Washington’s redistricting criteria, but all of which would cure the violation of federal law.”
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson agreed with the plaintiffs’ arguments that the current district boundaries are illegal.
But state attorneys chose not to propose any new maps nor comment on those put forth by plaintiffs.
“The State defers to the Court on which remedial map best provides Latino voters with an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice while also balancing traditional redistricting criteria and federal law,” reads the three-page court filing signed by Assistant Attorney General Andrew Hughes on behalf of Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat.
Pack your bags?
In all, 10 Republican lawmakers face potential eviction from their districts depending on how this plays out. The most legislators moved in any of the plans is eight, and the least is four.
Reps. Gina Mosbrucker of Goldendale and Chris Corry of Yakima, of the 14th District are drawn out in all five maps. Where they end up differs. Corry could end up in the 13th District, where two Republicans already serve. Mosbrucker could wind up in the 17th or the 16th, where Republican colleagues occupy the four representative seats.
Other representatives who could be moved include Bruce Chandler of Granger, Bryan Sandlin of Zillah, Stephanie Barnard of Pasco, and Stokesbary. Among senators, Torres, Fortunato, Curtis King of Yakima, and Brad Hawkins of East Wenatchee are moved around in the different cartographic iterations.
The intervenors said many of the shifts “appear gratuitous and intentional.” King and Mosbrucker, for example, are drawn out of their current district by less than one mile and Chandler is moved into a neighboring district by 500 feet, according to an analysis submitted with their court brief.
And Stokesbary, the legal filing states, “sees his neighborhood in South Auburn split in half, with his residence ending up one-half mile outside his current district.”
How we got here
In August, Lasnik invalidated the map for the 15th Legislative District drawn by the bipartisan state Redistricting Commission in 2021. The district encompasses parts of five counties in south-central Washington and is represented by three Republicans – Torres in the Senate and Chandler and Sandlin in the House.
“The question in this case is whether the state has engaged in line-drawing which, in combination with the social and historical conditions in the Yakima Valley region, impairs the ability of Latino voters in that area to elect their candidate of choice on an equal basis with other voters. The answer is yes,” Lasnik wrote in his 32-page decision.
Lasnik wanted the state Legislature to reconvene the Redistricting Commission to draw up new boundaries. Republican legislative leaders wanted that too.
But House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, and Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig, D-Spokane, didn’t. And Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee chose not to force the issue by calling a special session.
Drawing the map for the 15th District was one of the commission’s most difficult agreements to reach before it adjourned in November 2021. Commissioners wound up creating a majority-minority district with Latinos comprising 73% of the total population and an estimated 51.5% of voting-age residents.
Two months later, the lawsuit was filed contending the final map violated the federal Voting Rights Act because it diluted the electoral power of those voters. The case included a trial in June 2022 featuring testimony from commissioners and voting experts.
Plaintiffs argued that while Latinos are a slight majority of the district’s voters, the final contours included areas where their turnout is historically lower and excluded communities where Latinos are more politically active.
This fracturing can depress Latino turnout and weaken their voting strength, they argued. Lasnik agreed.
Three registered voters, including state Rep. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy, were allowed to enter the case as intervenors. They argued race was given too much weight in the drawing of boundaries and the map should be redrawn with a focus on compactness and communities of interest.
They argued that Hispanic voters can choose the candidate they want as they comprise a majority of the voting-age population now. They cited the example of Torres who won in November 2022 in the district boundaries established by the Redistricting Commission.
Five possible fixes
The first thing one notices about the maps the plaintiffs propose is the number of the redrawn legislative district. It’s no longer 15. It’s 14.
The reason, Leeper explained, is the Latino community will have a much better opportunity to elect a candidate of their choosing if the legislative races coincide with the gubernatorial and presidential elections.
Because the Senate seat in the 14th is on the ballot this year and the 15th is not until 2026, it led to the numerical change. Representatives are on the ballot every two years.
In addition, proposed boundaries for the plaintiffs’ four preferred proposals create a district in which no sitting lawmaker is a resident. That means no incumbent would be on the ballot although a legislator who is moved out of the district in this process could move into the newly drawn district to run.
The fifth proposed map is drawn in a way that Torres remains in the 15th District and King keeps his seat in the 14th.
Kassra A.R. Oskooii, a University of Washington graduate and current associate professor of political science at the University of Delaware, drew the maps for the plaintiffs.
Loren Collingwood, a redistricting expert retained by plaintiffs, submitted an analysis that concludes all five maps “provide Latino voters in the Yakima Valley region with an equal opportunity to elect candidates of choice to the state Legislature.”
And she predicted Latino-preferred candidates would win by a safe margin with each proposal.
In their court filing, intervenors contend the percentage of the Hispanic voting-age population in each proposed map is less than the 52.6% in the current district. It was 51.5% when the state Legislature enacted the boundaries in early 2022.
Collingwood, in her report, says the Hispanic citizen voting age population would be 51.65% in two proposals, 50.14% in two others and 47% in the last.
“While purporting to remedy dilution of Hispanic voting strength, every single one of the proposals actually dilutes Hispanic voting strength further,” attorneys for the intervenors wrote.
In the meantime, the opponents note, the chance of a Democrat winning in the new district is much better than in the current one. Proposed changes would shift the Yakima Valley district from having a slight advantage for Republicans to one much more favorable to Democrats, they contend.
A decision by March
Last month, Judge Lasnik appointed Karin Mac Donald, a redistricting expert from California, as special master to assist the court in evaluating the proposed maps. Mac Donald, who is director of the Election Administration Research Center at University of California, Berkeley, was the principal consultant to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2011 and 2021.
The goal, Lasnik noted in an order appointing Mac Donald, “is to provide equal electoral opportunities for both white and Latino voters in the Yakima Valley region, keeping in mind the social, economic, and historical conditions” outlined in the August decision.
Redistricting principles, such as population equality, compactness, contiguity, respect for political subdivisions, and preservation of communities of interest must be respected too, he wrote.
Mac Donald will suggest if modifications to the proposed maps are necessary to meet the goals, he wrote. Lasnik said he will lay out his decision in a hearing in early March.
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