Republican candidates chime in on redistricting reform

After lawmakers in Harrisburg tabled a measure to reform the way legislative districts are redrawn, Republican candidates in Philadelphia are speaking out in favor of the reform and hammering Democrats for putting it off.

 
The measure was tabled by a state House committee last week and by its counterpart committee in the state Senate this week. Critics of the measure have called it flawed reform, while others have called it a necessary move to stop the process of "gerrymandering," or redrawing districts to the advantage of incumbents and majority parties. Pennsylvania is the second-most gerrymandered state in the country, according to the League of Women Voters.

 
Wally Zimolong, a litigation attorney running for state representative in the 182nd Legislative District in Center City Philadelphia, criticized his opponent, state Rep. Babette Josephs (D-Philadelphia) in an interview with PolitickerPA.com today. Josephs chairs the state House committee that first put off voting on the measure. She had previously cosponsored the bill.

 
"It was a good measure," Zimolong said. "It was a measure that should have been passed and there should have been action taken on it as a start."

 
"I think Babette Josephs' failure to take action on it is indicative of her anti-reform stance," he added.

 
He also took issue with her co-sponsoring the bill and later squashing it.

 
"She cosponsored the bill, and her explanation for scrapping the bill was that she read the bill thoroughly, made calls to the legislative reference bureau, and decided it wasn't reform," Zimolong said. "So my question is, before she co-sponsored the bill and affixed her name to it, did she even read it in the first place? Apparently not."

 
Josephs has come under fire since tabling the bill, but has repeatedly said it was flawed, in large part because the body that would have been entrusted with redistricting responsibilities is beholden to legislators. She reiterated that sentiment today while also defending her decision to delay a committee vote on the measure and touting other reform efforts she has spearheaded.

 
"I co-sponsored [the bill] before the experts in the legislature made any kind of legislative analysis," she told PolickerPA.com. "I did that because I wanted to indicate to people ... that I am reformer, that I am interested in fixing this particular problem, as well as many others, and it was only when I did a word-by-word line-to-line analysis and deeply discussed it with experts at the state department and demographers that I realized how deeply flawed the bill was."

 
"But I'm also very cognizant of the fact that if you're pushing anything, a defeat is something you want to avoid. And when I did this close reading, I realized I might not even be able to get this bill out of committee, and that if it were defeated, it would be a setback. That is much worse than just pulling it."

 
While Zimolong is a long-shot candidate in a district that is overwhelmingly Democratic, Matt Taubenberger is facing a more competitive race for state representative in Northeast Philadelphia, an area with far more Republican voters than anywhere else in the city. Taubenberger, the son of last year's failed Republican mayoral candidate Al Taubenberger, is running to replace his current boss, state Rep. George Kenney (R-Philadelphia), in the 170th Legislative District.

 
In an interview, Taubenberger chose a softer tack than his Republican colleagues.

 
"I haven't had the chance to go through [the bill] thoroughly, but I do think that when you look at some of these districts, they need to be drawn a little more contiguously," he said.

 
"Bottom line is somebody has to draw these districts," he added. "And you have to put a group together that is ultimately going to draw them without being biased."