State Rep Joel Kitchens Says Gerrymandered Maps "Honestly" Don't Make a Difference

Rigged Maps and Partisan Gerrymandering Are Overblown Concern

Updated - Wisconsin State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) publicly supported the popular Assembly Bill 303, (Senate Bill 288), the Fair Maps-anti-gerrymandering initiative, in July 2019, (The Capital Times).

Kitchens lists AB 303 as bills he has co-authored on his legislative webpage.

Joel Kitchens' support for the popular initiative is for show.

On late Tuesday afternoon, August 6, a Door County constituent recorded Joel Kitchens at the Sturgeon Bay Branch of the Door County library in northeastern Wisconsin.

Speaking before the Republican Party of Door County and an audience of some one dozen people, Kitchens took a question from a Door County resident on his co-authorship of the Fair Maps-anti-gerrymandering initiative, AB 303, the constituent reports.

Said Kitchens in reply (in part):

I'll repeat what I often said about; redistricting maps naturally favor Republicans because Democrats are extremely concentrated in Madison and Milwaukee. And it's the same with the Electoral College, which is why the Electoral College favors Republicans because the Democrats had to be so concentrated.

So, I think the blame on the majority of the Republicans have winning the battle on gerrymandering, I think, is way overblown. Which is why I'm okay with, you know, I just as soon take the issue off the table, honestly, because we get beaten up over it so much. And I honestly don't think that it makes a whole lot of difference. It's about having good candidates and good messages.    

Good candidates and good messages certainly help with State Assembly elections, a point the Democratic Party of Wisconsin does not always get.

But Wisconsin Republicans gerrymandered congressional and state redistricting maps in secret because the contorted maps make a lot of difference. Kitchens knows this.

Kitchens' stated reason for supporting Fair Maps, to "take the issue off the table," is not reassuring for voters looking for candor and commitment to democracy. 

Wisconsin taxpayers were on track in January 2019 to spend $3.5 million to defend in federal court the Republicans' gerrymandered maps drawn to elect Republicans as many Republicans as possible.

Kitchens repeats a Republican talking point that Democratic voters mostly live in Milwaukee and Madison, and not the rest of the state.

This is a lie.

A swing of roughly 166,000 votes from 2014 to 2018 cost Scott Walker his reelection and most of the votes did not come from Madison and Milwaukee. The swing votes came from smaller municipalities.

"Democratic gains in the cities of Milwaukee and Madison accounted for less than a quarter of that statewide swing [in 2018]. The rest of it happened largely in county seats, regional hubs and red and blue suburbs both close to and far from the state’s two biggest cities," reported Craig Gilbert in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Republicans drew the current gerrymandered district maps using simulations generated by sophisticated computer modeling, (Bazelon, New York Times). The outcomes are the current redistricting maps that elect the most Republicans.

But Joel Kitchens says it's all about good candidates and messages.

I have a question for Joel Kitchens.

Why did the Republican Party of Wisconsin go to all this trouble to gerrymander congressional and legislative districts if gerrymandered maps do not make a difference?

Gill v. Whitford — Court Opinions to Voters: Here's How You Win

In Wisconsin gerrymandering case, voters
have to wait while Republicans rampage.
Waiting image by Edward Hopper.

The United States Supreme Court did more than provide voters with a roadmap back to the Court in Gill v. Whitford, Wisconsin's gerrymandering case.

The four liberal judges' concurring opinion built a legal yellow-brick road and a fast-track for Wisconsin voters to prevail against the Republican state-election riggers, going so far as to suggest evidence, argument, type of plaintiff and harm claims that would presumably snag at least Justice Anthony Kennedy's vote.

That's a pretty good result from an order to remand to lower court that has Republicans pretending to ballyhoo.

The three-judge, lower-court panel, except for Federalist Society-linked, rightwing and corrupt Judge William Griesbach, will likely not be amused by Republican stalling this time around.

Wisconsin Republicans are lying about the no-decision, passing Roberts' opinion off as an unanimous decision on the merits, which it definitely is not, an indisputable fact that everyone except for Gov. Scott Walker (R) and Attorney General Brad Schimel (R) understands.

Gill v. Whitford is not a "reversal," as Schimel pretends. It's a do-over.

Concludes Chief Judge John Roberts: "The judgment of the District Court is vacated, and the case is  remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion," (p.22).

Further proceedings in this case means litigation at the three-judge panel in the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit jurisdiction, then directly back to United States Supreme Court.

Roberts went out of his way not to dismiss the claims, calling the claims "unsettled," (p.21) and unresolved. Kennedy likely forced this most-significant of concessions by Roberts. The two Soviet-minded justices, Thomas and Gorsuch, write in a concurring opinion they want the case dismissed.

Though Roberts frustrates voting rights by dismissing the argument that engineering one-party control of the legislature through gerrymandering is a mere "generalized" claim not sufficient for the Court to hear and decide, a ridiculous position, the take-away from Gill v. Whitford is obvious.

Roberts wants to decide the case, and wants a nationwide, precedent-setting (and narrow) remedy for voters getting the shaft on gerrymandering by craven state politicians.

Frustrating for sure, because now pro-democracy forces have to wait and Republican-appointed justices' forced a punt on a case they should have decided now.

But from a Supreme Court that is hostile to Due Process claims, perverse on the First Amendment and corrupted for Republican interests on political cases, there is ample reason in the opinions for voters to celebrate: A coming victory in a year or two assuming Anthony Kennedy does not retire.

Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case — Sent Back to Lower Court for Further Proceedings

Updated: "[P]artisan  gerrymandering  injures  enough  indi­viduals and  organizations  in enough concrete ways to  ensure  that  standing  requirements,  properly  applied, will  not often or long  prevent  courts  from  reaching  the merits  of  cases  like  this  one.  Or from insisting, when they do, that partisan officials stop degrading the nation’s democracy."
—Justice Kagen, joined by Justices Ginsberg, Breyer and Sotomayor, (p.2 of concurring opinion)
 ---
Wisconsin's Republican gerrymandering scheme is remanded back to lower court for further proceeding, the United States Supreme Court ruled today, (Howe, SCOTUSBlog).

The court sends the case back for further proceedings, "in the course of which those plaintiffs may attempt to demonstrate standing in accord with the analysis in this opinion," notes Amy Howe.

Decision is here.

Writes Howe:

The court explains that it would normally order the dismissal of the plaintiffs' claims, but this "is not the usual case. It concerns an unsettled kind of claim this Court has not agreed upon, the contours and justiciability of which are unreslved." So the court sends the case back to the district court to give the plaintiffs a chance to show that they themselves have suffered "concrete and particularized injuries."

by Amy Howe 9:21 AM

What happened is the swing-vote Kennedy is so weak and suspicious of liberty claims that the four liberal justices went along with remanding the case so plaintiffs, voters, can establish incontrovertible standing and harm inflicted by the Republican redistricting scheme in Wisconsin.

The concurring opinion by Kagen, joined by the three liberal justices, makes clear Kennedy as well is looking for a precedent-setting opinion that applies nationwide, not statewide in Wisconsin.

Writes Kagen, (p.2 of concurring opinion):

Partisan gerrymandering, as this Court has recognized, is  'incompatible  with  democratic  principles.'   Arizona State   Legislature v.   Arizona   Independent   Redistricting  Comm’n,  576  U.  S.  ___,  ___  (2015)  (slip  op.,  at  1)  (quoting  Vieth v.  Jubelirer,  541  U.  S.  267,  292  (2004)  (plurality  opinion); alterations omitted).
More effectively every day, that practice enables politicians to entrench themselves in power  against  the  people’s  will.  And  only  the  courts  can do anything to remedy the problem, because gerrymanders benefit those who control the political  branches.  None  of  those  facts  gives  judges  any  excuse  to  disregard  Article III’s (United States Constitution and standing to litigate) demands. The Court is right to say they were not met here. But partisan  gerrymandering  injures  enough  indi­viduals and  organizations  in enough concrete ways to  ensure  that  standing  requirements,  properly  applied, will  not often or long  prevent  courts  from  reaching  the merits  of  cases  like  this  one.  Or  from  insisting,  when they do, that partisan officials stop degrading the nation’s democracy.  

Liberty-loving voters just have to wait another year, and hope Kennedy does not retire.

Fed Panel Finds Wisc Republican Gerrymandering Unconstitutional

Whitford. v. Nichol opinion and order, p.11

Wisconsin case heads directly to United States Supreme Court

Updated: Wisconsin gerrymandering case follows by some three months a gerrymandering case in North Carolina in which Republicans in a similar manner to Wisconsin Republicans drew a redistricting map as a means to choose voters and help Republicans stay in political power, (Convington v. North Carolina, (Case No. 1:15-cv-399)).
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The Wisconsin Republican Party's gerrymandered map of state legislative districts has been unconstitutional by a three judge panel.

The federal panel is composed of Kenneth Francis Ripple, (Senior Judge status, Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit), Barbara Crabb, (Senior Judge status U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin), and William C. Griesbach (Chief Judge, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Wisconsin).

The case is Whitford v. Nichol, (District Court (Case 3:15-cv-00421)) (2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155022 (W.D. Wis., Nov. 17, 2015)).

Case filings can be found at Whitford v. Nichol, (Moritz). The opinion and order are posted. Judge Griesbach dissented.

A trial was held last May, challenging the constitutionality of the Republican legislative-redistricting scheme.

Election law expert, Rick Hasen, writes in reaction to today's opinion, Whitford is a "major victory for those who believe that courts should be in the business of policing redistricting plans that give partisan advantage to one party or another. [The three-judge court] has ruled 2-1 that the Wisconsin assembly districts drawn by the WI Republican legislature are an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. There’s still more to do in the case—namely figure out the correct remedy—but this is a case that will be headed directly to the Supreme Court, where its fate might depend upon who President-elect Trump nominates to the Supreme Court."

In 2011 Wisconsin legislative Republicans were told in secret to sign confidentiality agreements, ignore the public and repeat Republican-crafted talking points in deliberating 2011 Act 43, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported in February 2012:

As legislative leaders secretly developed new election maps last year to strengthen their majority, Republican lawmakers were told to ignore public comments and instead focus on what was said in private strategy sessions, according to a GOP memo that became public Monday.

Other newly, [in 2012], released documents also show almost all Republican lawmakers signed legal agreements promising not to discuss the new maps while they were being developed.

GOP lawmakers fought releasing these new documents and testifying about the maps in a pending court case, [since decided], but relented after a panel of three federal judges based in Milwaukee last month found they had filed frivolous motions in trying to shield the information from the public.

Included in the documents released Monday was a set of talking points that stressed that those who discussed the maps could eventually be called as a witness in a court case.

'Public comments on this map may be different than what you hear in this room. Ignore the public comments,' the talking points also say, (Patrick Marley, Daniel Bice and Jason Stein)

The plaintiffs are William Whitford, Roger Anclam, Emily Bunting, Mary Lynne Donohue, Helen Harris, Wayne Jensen, Wendy Sue Johnson, Janet Mitchell, James Seaton, Allison Seaton, Jerome Wallace and Donald Winter.

Linked ahead is Exhibit 4 - Secrecy Agreements, (PDF, beginning at p. 173 in July 2015 complaint), listing all of the legislative Republicans who signed secrecy agreements with Michael Best and Friedrich, LLP.

Wisconsin Gerrymandering Trial Under Way Before Federal Panel

Wisconsin Republicans crafted the worst partisan gerrymander in modern American history in their secret effort to turn Wisconsin into a red state

Whitford v. Nichol, (District Court (Case 3:15-cv-00421)) (2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155022 (W.D. Wis., Nov. 17, 2015)), is a federal case at trial from May 23-27, challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin's Republican-drawn legislative-redistricting scheme.

A three-judge panel is hearing the case.

The federal panel is composed of Kenneth Francis Ripple, (Senior Judge status, Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit), Barbara Crabb, (Senior Judge status U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin), and William C. Griesbach (Chief Judge, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Wisconsin).

Wisconsin Republicans were told in secret to sign confidentiality agreements, ignore the public and repeat Republican-crafted talking points in deliberating 2011 Act 43, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported in February 2012:

As legislative leaders secretly developed new election maps last year to strengthen their majority, Republican lawmakers were told to ignore public comments and instead focus on what was said in private strategy sessions, according to a GOP memo that became public Monday.

Other newly released documents also show almost all Republican lawmakers signed legal agreements promising not to discuss the new maps while they were being developed.

GOP lawmakers fought releasing these new documents and testifying about the maps in a pending court case, [since decided], but relented after a panel of three federal judges based in Milwaukee last month found they had filed frivolous motions in trying to shield the information from the public.

Included in the documents released Monday was a set of talking points that stressed that those who discussed the maps could eventually be called as a witness in a court case.

'Public comments on this map may be different than what you hear in this room. Ignore the public comments,' the talking points also say. (Patrick Marley, Daniel Bice and Jason Stein)

The plaintiffs are William Whitford, Roger Anclam, Emily Bunting, Mary Lynne Donohue, Helen Harris, Wayne Jensen, Wendy Sue Johnson, Janet Mitchell, James Seaton, Allison Seaton, Jerome Wallace and Donald Winter.

The July 2105 complaint reads in part

Plaintiffs seek both a declaratory judgment that the Wisconsin State Assembly district plan adopted in 2012 by Wisconsin Act 43 (the “Current Plan”) violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and an order permanently enjoining the implementation of the Current Plan in the 2016 election.  As explained in greater detail below, the Current Plan is, by any measure, one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in modern American history.  In the first election in which it was in force in 2012, the Current Plan enabled Republican candidates to win sixty of the Assembly’s ninety-nine seats even though Democratic candidates won a majority of the statewide Assembly vote. The evidence is overwhelming that the Current Plan was adopted to achieve precisely that result:  indeed, before submitting the map for approval, the Republican leadership retained an expert (at State expense) who predicted the partisan performance of each proposed district—as it turned out, with remarkable accuracy.

The Republican-drawn gerrymander is Wisconsin Republicans at their worst: Secretive, corrupt and anti-public.

"Republicans disregarded traditional county and city boundaries that are normally used to draw districts. Act 43 splits 58 counties even though county boundaries are supposed to be respected. For the first time, gerrymandered maps were used to draw wards, when previously wards had been used to draw maps. Memos and draft maps were prepared for review by individual Republican legislators, but Democratic legislators were entirely excluded," notes Mary Botari at PRWatch.

The state of Wisconsin on its official Redistricting website claims "the purpose of redistricting and the end result remain unchanged ... the establishment of election districts which provide representational equality for all potential voters."

This would be a lie. Republican gerrymandering in Wisconsin is intended to help elect Republicans period.

Linked ahead is Exhibit 4 -Secrecy Agreements, (PDF, beginning at p. 173), in the complaint listing all of the legislative Republicans who signed secrecy agreements with Michael Best and Friedrich LLP.

Gerrymandering and Transparency

Without the Republican Party's secretly developed, gerrymandered district maps, Republicans would not enjoy a partisan advantage today.

That's what we know.

Now, a federal court panel has ordered the GOP to at last give the contents of the computers used to make the gerrymandered maps to groups suing the GOP legislature.

Transparency, making GOP corrupt practices known, increases what we know.

The GOP is not happy.

Daiky Kos has the story.

Radically reconfigured districts, aka GOP Gerrymandering

Wisconsin gerrymandering case may end up in the
U.S. Supreme Court of the United States

The insult given to Milwaukee-area Latinos by Wisconsin Republicans may prove critical when, as looks likely, a judicial panel finds the GOP violative of the U.S. Constitution and Voting Rights Act in the redistricting trial.

And smoking gun e-mails will again bury the Republicans proving they calculated that their proposed maps would disenfranchise 10,000s of state residents.

As a bonus Republicans diluted the Latino vote in Milwaukee in senate district 3 by rearranging assembly borders causing "18 times as many voters as necessary in Latino areas" to be moved. (Marley, MJS) In the minds of the GOP, that's a good thing.

The e-mails show GOP staff and its tax-payer-funded law firms explicitly discussing the question of reducing "our number of disenfranchised voters on the recall elections[.]"

School Voucher Lobbyists Fingerprints on Redistricting Maps

Community Latino leaders were excluded from the secretive redistricting process unless they had a declared GOP alliance, like James Klauser's Hispanics for school choice, yet another anti-public school GOP outfit like the American Federation for Children.

Wisconsin's only Latina legislator, JoCasta Zamarripa (8th Assembly District (Milwaukee)), is quietly letting the judicial process proceed without comment, but when the trial ends you can be sure that Rep. JoCasta (as she is known) will make the facts known about what is just another corrupt use of public office by Republicans for partisan purposes.

The Eighth Assembly district (JoCasta's) is Wisconsin's most densely populated, arguably its most diverse, and heavily democratic.

Recent developments

• More corruption from the Republican Party costing tax payers $Million-plus. Uppity Wisconsin
• "Republican legislators moved 18 times as many voters as necessary in Latino areas, UW-Madison political scientist says." MJS
• "[D]ocuments forced out by the judges showed that former Republican Assembly Majority Leader Scott Jensen - - now a school choice advocate with a national conservative policy and funding organization (AFC) - - was contacted about the process." The Political Environment

We have a brilliant, community-oriented state representative, the Latino community of Milwaukee and good government activists versus the Republican disenfranchisement machine, including the corrupt voice from the past, Scott Jensen, who, as noted above, suddenly has taken an interest in the Latino community in Milwaukee.

The 2008 electorate is the most diverse in U.S. history, and Republicans feel the need to obstruct voters and gerrymander the voting districts nationwide, lest November 2012 sees whites' proportion of voting America and political power continuing to decline. Wisconsin is but one example.

Wrote GOP attorney Troupis: "I did meet with the General Counsel to the RNC and reported to him on this and other issues."

Racism and disenfranchisement are that ole time religion for the GOP and they are desperate to not give it up.