Topeka ? The Kansas House on Monday approved a Republican congressional map that splits Lawrence.

One Lawrence-area Republican voted for it, though he said he didn’t like it. He, like Democratic opponents of the plan, said the map was drawn to hurt re-election chances of U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore, the only Democrat from Kansas in Congress.

“In the final analysis, we should simply recognize this is a political decision made on political grounds,” said Rep. Ralph Tanner, R-Baldwin.

“Dennis Moore won his seat in Douglas County, in Lawrence. Why shouldn’t the Republicans say ‘The hell with that?'” Tanner said.

In 1998, Moore unseated a Republican incumbent to win the 3rd District, which includes Lawrence, all of Douglas County except the northwest quarter, and all of Johnson and Wyandotte counties. He won re-election in 2000.

Overall, the district’s registered voters are 41 percent Republican, 28 percent Democrat and 30 percent unaffiliated.

But Moore has done well in Douglas County among Democrats and moderate Republicans. In 2000, Moore received 21,051 votes in Douglas County, compared with 14,459 for the Republican candidate, Phill Kline of Shawnee.

Democrats have long accused Republican state legislators of trying to re-draw the 3rd District to take away Moore’s base of support in Lawrence.

But Republicans have maintained that the purpose of splitting Lawrence between the 2nd and 3rd districts has nothing to do with politics.

Instead, they say, the fast-growing 3rd District simply needs to lose population to other districts as legislators re-draw maps using the 2000 census.

Splitting Lawrence accomplishes that goal, they argued.

But Tanner rejected that argument from his Republican colleagues.

“It’s a bunch of baloney,” he said.

On Friday, Tanner voted against splitting Lawrence when the House gave it preliminary approval.

Asked why he switched his vote Monday, Tanner said, “It was an impulse vote.”

He said his vote didn’t really matter in the final score, an assertion he made Friday when he refused to vote either for or against amendments to the bill. Some of those amendments would have unified Lawrence, placing it either in the 3rd District or 2nd District.

The 2nd District is represented by U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun, one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress.

The total vote Friday and Monday was mostly along party lines with Republicans voting to split Lawrence and Democrats opposed. Reps. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, and Lee Tafanelli, R-Ozawkie, were among the few Republicans voting against splitting Lawrence on both days.

Under the proposal, Lawrence would be split roughly along Iowa Street, with the eastern portion, including the Kansas University campus, staying in the 3rd District, and the western portion going into the 2nd.

KU officials argued the Lawrence campus should remain in the 3rd because of its link to the KU Medical Center and Edwards campus in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

But Tanner said he disagreed with that argument.

“It is not essential to have the KU campus in the 3rd District. This community of interest argument is a bunch of bull,” he said.

The House bill will now go to the Senate for consideration.