Topeka ? A coalition of Democrats and conservative Republicans pushed a redistricting bill through the Senate on Thursday over the objections of the chamber’s GOP leaders.

Meanwhile, the House on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a bill redrawing the chamber’s 125 districts, with a few members still unhappy about the process as a whole and their own futures in particular.

Approved on a 21-19 vote and sent to the House, the new map of the Senate’s 40 districts better preserves the voice of rural western Kansas than a version produced by a Senate committee, its proponents said.

The main features of the new Senate map are creation of one new district in Johnson County, where population rose sharply in the 1990s, and the collapse of two large western Kansas districts into one.

Less significant adjustments were made in the boundaries of many other districts, to even out their populations which is the point of the redistricting that is carried out every 10 years.

The map approved Thursday had been submitted and given initial approval a day earlier as an amendment by Sen. Ed Pugh, R-Wamego, to a plan approved by the Senate Reapportionment Committee. The committee’s version was supported by many Republicans, including Senate President Dave Kerr.

After a long debate Wednesday, the House added several amendments to the bill, which pairs four Democrats in two new districts and put incumbent Republicans against Democratic incumbents in two other new districts.

Not all Republicans were pleased with the final map. It splits the city of Fort Scott and puts Reps. Dennis Pyle, R-Hiawatha, and Bruce Larkin, D-Baileyville, in the same district in northeast Kansas.

Senate realignments

On Thursday, Kerr denounced the Pugh plan.

“The amendment that was adopted on the floor of the Senate yesterday represented a poor example of legislating,” said Kerr, R-Hutchinson. “The amendment was presented with a total disregard for the time and hard work of those who toiled in the trenches at the committee level.”

The Pugh plan places Sens. Janis Lee, D-Kensington, and Larry Salmans, R-Hanston, in a new 36th District that would stretch from the Nebraska border to within two counties of the Oklahoma border.

The committee’s plan had put Lee in a district with Sen. Stan Clark, R-Oakley.

Last week, Clark and Lee responded with an alternative map that would have preserved the cores of all current districts and avoided pairing any incumbents including themselves. The committee ignored their plan, and the Senate rejected it Wednesday.

The final map expands Clark’s 15-county district to 18 districts of northwest Kansas. Clark said maintaining rural voices to the north and west of Salina was the purpose of the Pugh plan.

“That voice would not be heard again in the Senate for 10 years” if either his seat or Lee’s were eliminated, Clark said.

“It probably wouldn’t be heard ever again,” he added.

Two senators on Thursday switched the positions they had taken Wednesday on the initial vote on Pugh’s plan. Sen. Karin Brownlee, R-Olathe, ended up voting for the Pugh plan, while Majority Leader Lana Oleen, R-Manhattan, cast her final vote against it.

Brownlee said she had given the map further study Wednesday night.

“I had a comfort level today that I didn’t have yesterday,” Brownlee said. “The more time I had to think about it, the more it was a ‘yes’ vote.”

Oleen had surprised some colleagues by backing the Pugh plan Wednesday, but said Thursday she couldn’t vote for it after considering it overnight.

“The map made changes throughout the state that affected a lot of people,” said Oleen. “I didn’t see the map until it was placed on my desk. There was no fairness doctrine in it.”

The measure is expected to clear the House without debate, since each chamber traditionally approves the other’s redistricting plan without changes. From the House the bill would go to Gov. Bill Graves, then to the Kansas Supreme Court for an automatic review.

House redraws areas

In the House, the Pyle-Larkin matchup resulted from an amendment offered by Democratic Rep. Bill Reardon of Kansas City, the chamber’s longest-serving member. The amendment passed 59-55 on Wednesday.

“They definitely don’t have the musketeer motto, ‘all for one and one for all,”‘ Pyle, who voted against the final bill, said of his GOP House colleagues. “I’m very disappointed.”

Larkin thought Reardon’s amendment was good for northeast Kansas, but voted against the final plan. He has said the redistricting process has been partisan, with majority Republicans being heavy-handed.

The map also removes part of Fort Scott, in southeast Kansas, from the 4th District now represented by Andrew Howell and places it in the 2nd District.

Howell, R-Fort Scott, serves on the House Redistricting Committee, which had endorsed a different map. He, too, voted against the bill.

“I don’t like splitting a town,” Howell said. “I think we could have done a better job.”

But the bill passed, 105-16, with overwhelming bipartisan support, including that of Rep. Laura McClure, D-Osborne, who had promised Republicans not to run if it was passed.

McClure voted for the map, which she said was better for Democrats than earlier versions had been, despite the denials of Republicans that they sought the promise from her.

Rep. Clay Aurand, R-Courtland, told the House Wednesday that the promise was the result of miscommunication.

Before the House, McClure asked both Aurand and Rep. Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, the chairman of the redistricting committee, if they would release her from the promise if it resulted from a misunderstanding.

Neither answered her question directly, saying they had not asked for it.

O’Neal said he was pleased with the Thursday’s vote because it represented a good bipartisan showing.

“That’s very acceptable,” he said. “I like those numbers.”

The Senate is expected to pass the bill without debate because, by tradition, one chamber does not interfere with the other’s map. From the Senate the bill would go to Gov. Bill Graves, then to the Kansas Supreme Court for an automatic review.