Alpena – The New Humphrey (updated)

It was bound to happen.  When you draw lines for redistricting with the goal of creating a partisan advantage instead of communities of interest, you end…well…splitting communities of interest.  This was on display during Congressional redistricting when an error led to the city of Humphrey being split in half with one half a non-continuous island.  This year, it appears Alpena has come out on the short-end.

Bill Bowen with the Arkansas Democrat Gazette gets credit for the discovery this time pointing out in his article today that this same town of 392 in northwest Arkansas will be split into three Senate districts and two House districts.  When asked about it, the Governor’s office pointed the finger back at Alpena for not figuring it out themselves and saying something.  From the ADG article:

The fragmenting of Alpena was done by accident, said Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe.

“That was absolutely not intentional on our part,” DeCample said. “We have nothing against the good folks of Alpena. But the lines have to go somewhere. That’s a unique situation for a town that small. Sometimes we’re able to catch things like that. Sometimes they slip through.”

DeCample said the Governor’s office was unaware of the situation involving Alpena until informed of it by a reporter Friday afternoon.

“I think if we had gotten feedback from Alpena that it was something they were really worried about, [the district lines] would have been something we could have moved,” he said.

So I guess the author of the map, Gov. Beebe, expected the fine folks in Alpena to figure out what his own office did not know.  I am not sure how he expected this since he did not release any of the precinct data for the maps in advance of the vote. (I did obtain this information on Thursday evening from the Secretary of State, but did not have time to do much of a review it before the vote.)

UPDATE – The Alpena Five – An inquisitive reader asked which five legislators will represent the small town of Alpena.  It’s a good question that is tricky to answer with the reshaped districts.  As best I can tell, the three Senators making up the Alpena Five will be Sen. Johnny Key of Mountain Home (61 miles away), term-limited Sen. Randy Laverty of Jasper (31 miles away), and term-limited Sen. Ruth Whitaker of Cedarville (127 miles away).  The two House members will be term-limited Rep. Bryan King of Green Forrest (10 miles away) and Rep. David Branscum of Marshall (54 miles away.)

I also have to add that Gov. Beebe’s take on how to work around FOIA’s meeting requirements is quite interesting.  From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette‘s Sarah Wire today…

“All of our staffs had worked together for months … it became clear that the secretary of state’s vision was different,” McDaniel said.

Beebe said he did not work with McDaniel on his map, saying it would have been a violation of the state’s Freedom of Information Act for two board members to meet without public notice. He said the staff from all three offices worked together.

“Their staff worked with our staff, didn’t have any trouble working, and I think if you talk to the [attorney general’s] staff they’ll tell you that they had no problem working with our staff, but of course I didn’t work with Martin and I didn’t work with McDaniel privately because it would have been a violation of the Freedom of Information Act. [Martin] ought to know that by now, since he’s gotten into so much trouble with the Freedom of Information Act,” Beebe said.

Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample clarified that the governor was referring to interaction between media and the secretary of state’s office about the act in recent months.

A spokesman for Martin disputed what Beebe and McDaniel said.

“They never gave us a direction they wanted to go, and they never reacted positively or negatively to the maps [put out by the secretary of state,]” spokesman Mark Myers said. “Obviously, they had been corresponding with each other and leaving us out of the discussion.”

Mmmmmm…..okay.