Prometheus 6   

Across U.S., Redistricting as a Never-Ending Battle
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

AUSTIN, Tex., June 30 � For most of the past century, redistricting has been a fairly predictable though often contentious ritual. Every 10 years, state legislators would use the new census data to redraw Congressional district lines, and the party in power would usually manage to draw maps that gave it an advantage.

Now, thanks to a determined effort by United States Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, with the quiet support of the White House, that tradition may be crumbling, as legislatures draw new districts whenever they have a partisan advantage.

Today, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature opened an extraordinary special session devoted solely to redrawing the state's 32 Congressional districts. If Republicans succeed in doing so, they could remove five or more Democratic congressmen and help their party consolidate its hold on power in Washington.

Republicans did much the same thing last month in Denver, pushing a new map through the Colorado Legislature specifically to shore up the seat of a freshman congressman who won office with a 121-vote margin. And Democrats are threatening retaliation in New Mexico and Oklahoma, while dropping hints about taking the redistricting battle to big-game territory: Illinois and California, where far more seats are at stake.

This amped-up partisanship on the state level could soon make redistricting battles a recurring feature of the political landscape, experts say, reviving the 19th-century practice of redrawing political maps every time a legislature changed hands.

Democrats warn of an even more corrosive effect if local governments, too, begin to treat redistricting as simply another arrow in the quiver of political tactics.

State Representative Garnet F. Coleman, Democrat of Houston, said, "This would be like on any city council, if they said, `We're going to redistrict because nobody likes Joe � the majority of us just don't like him,' and guess what, Joe's constituents can't even stop it."