The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission met in downtown Phoenix on Dec. 17, 2021. Photo by Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
Democrats got a pair of big wins Friday in determining the direction of the state’s next legislative and congressional districts when the chairwoman of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission voted to adopt their maps, a rare split in which she went against her Republican colleagues.
As its new starting point, the AIRC is using a legislative map with 13 safe Republican districts, 12 safe Democratic districts and five competitive districts. On the congressional map, two districts are hypercompetitive, with a partisan advantage of under a percentage point, and two others are barely within the range that the commission considers competitive, with one leaning solidly toward the Democrats and the other toward the GOP.
Throughout the mapping process, independent Chairwoman Erika Neuberg has sided with Republican Commissioners David Mehl and Doug York on most split votes. Even her vote Thursday on the commission’s congressional map, only the second time she sided with the Democrats on a split vote, resulted in a map that became more favorable for the Republicans.
The tide shifted on Friday morning, when Neuberg opened the commission’s meeting by announcing her support for the changes that Democratic Commissioners Shereen Lerner and Derrick Watchman proposed to the Republicans’ legislative map that she’d backed the previous day.
Neuberg said she could have been persuaded to use either map as a new starting point, but that she favored Lerner and Watchman’s proposal because it did a better job of respecting minority communities’ interests.
