photo by: Kansas Legislative Research Department via AP

This image shows the "Ad Astra 2" congressional redistricting plan for Kansas drafted by the Kansas Legislative Research Department for Republican leaders in the GOP-controlled Legislature. The blue represents the new 1st Congressional District, and it takes in the city of Lawrence at its far eastern edge.

As the old song goes, breaking up is hard to do. But when it comes to the once-a-decade process of congressional redistricting, it is certain that someone in Kansas is going to break up.

Right now, a strong contender is Lawrence. In fact, it appears set to get dumped twice.

A map approved by the state Legislature, and now awaiting a signature or veto from Gov. Laura Kelly, would split Lawrence in two ways. First, it would split Lawrence out of the largely eastern Kansas 2nd Congressional District and move it into the sprawling 1st Congressional District, which is dominated by western and central Kansas farm fields, the small communities that surround them, and a whole bunch of die-hard political conservatives.

Second, the new map would split the city of Lawrence from the rest of Douglas County. While Lawrence itself would be in the 1st Congressional District, the rest of Douglas County would remain in the 2nd Congressional District.

Both prospects are creating angst among community leaders, but particularly the idea of Lawrence being in a congressional district that President Donald Trump won with nearly 70% of the vote.

“It is not a good feeling,” Hugh Carter, vice president of external affairs for the Lawrence chamber of commerce, said about the community mood surrounding a potential move.

But, how could this happen to Lawrence and Douglas County? Because it darn sure isn’t going to happen to Kansas City and Johnson County.

While partisan politics is certainly playing a role in Lawrence’s potential move to the 1st District, there also is a Kansas City math problem at play. For the first time, Johnson and Wyandotte counties — both strongly tied to the identity of Kansas City — have grown too large in population to both be fully included in the same congressional district. The combined populations of the two counties is about 45,000 people too large for both counties to fully remain in their current home of the 3rd Congressional District.

But there is no contest about which county holds more political power. Johnson County and Kansas City are the power couple of Kansas. It will take a lot more than a sharp chisel or a sharp tongue to split those two.

“There is a long history of not wanting to divide Johnson County at all,” said Michael Smith, a political science professor at Emporia State University, who is following the redistricting process.

Instead, the Republican-led Legislature has drawn a map that removes a large portion of Wyandotte County from the 3rd District, placing it into the second district. Many of those residents are registered Democrats. That became problematic for Lawrence’s future in the 2nd District. Wyandotte County Democrats combined with Lawrence Democrats would make for too many Democrats, in the view of the Republican-controlled legislature.

At that point, moving Lawrence to the 1st District became the obvious move, said Patrick Miller, a political science professor at the University of Kansas.

“From a partisan perspective, I think it is a solid choice for Republicans,” Miller said.

The question now becomes whether there is anything Lawrence can do about it. The answer is likely no, Miller said. He said Lawrence and Douglas County don’t appear to have a good legal case to fight being split or being moved to the 1st District.

But Wyandotte County may have a chance to force changes, both Miller and Smith said.

That’s because a large number of the Wyandotte County residents who are being moved from the 3rd District to the 2nd District are racial minorities. Federal courts won’t force states to change their redistricting lines over arguments about one party trying to gain a political advantage over another. But federal courts will force states to redraw lines if there is evidence that new maps are based on “racial gerrymandering.”

Miller said people who want to strike down the Legislature’s map likely would be wise to focus on the race issue rather than some of the concerns that are rising to the surface locally, such as Lawrence having such a different economy and culture than the rest of the rural 1st District.

“That is probably not the path to go down,” Miller said. “Race, though, is a totally different animal. There is so much history in the courts.”

Democratic leaders in Wyandotte County have given plenty of indications that they intend to challenge the redistricting map on those grounds. But even if they win and Wyandotte County is reinserted into the 3rd District, that doesn’t mean Lawrence would be moved back into the 2nd District.

There are ways that parts of Johnson County could be moved into the 2nd District, while Lawrence would remain in the 1st District. But Lawrence’s odds of staying in the 2nd District probably would increase if Wyandotte moves back to the 3rd District. Smith, the ESU political science professor, has drawn an example of a map where Wyandotte County remains in the 3rd District, while parts of southern Johnson County — Spring Hill, Gardner, Edgerton and many rural areas — move to the 2nd District. Based on recent voting patterns, Republicans would still have about a 12 percentage point advantage over Democrats.

photo by: Courtesy: Michael Smith/Davesredistricting.org

Emporia State University political science professor Michael Smith has drawn a map that would keep Lawrence and Douglas County in the 2nd Congressional District.

That may be safe enough for Republicans who are drawing the maps, but then again, they may not want to take any chances. If that is the case, they probably would look to move Lawrence into the 1st District. The reason is obvious, as Carter, the chamber executive, noted.

“We would be formally planted in a district that is never going blue,” Carter said of a Lawrence move to the 1st District.

The numbers certainly indicate that is true. According to voting numbers that Smith studies, Republicans in the current 1st District have about a 40 percentage point advantage over Democrats. With Lawrence in the district, the advantage would drop to about 29 percentage points.

The 1st District would become much bluer, but not enough for Democrats to realistically think they are going to win any elections. That’s a dispiriting thought for local Democrats, but KU’s Miller offered some perspective.

“We are not going to be relevant at all in the 1st District,” Miller said. “But how much of a change is that really from the politics we have now?”

The last time a Democrat won the 2nd District congressional seat was in 2006, when Nancy Boyda beat Jim Ryun, and Boyda was defeated by a Republican two years later. Since 2010, Democrats have lost by an average of 13 percentage points in the district. The average would be higher if not for Steve Watkins’ narrow 0.8 percentage point win over Lawrence’s Paul Davis in 2018. Watkins was a virtual unknown in Kansas Republican politics prior to the election, and ultimately created a split in the party and lost two years later in a Republican primary.

But in the 2nd District, at least those close races do have a chance to come around every so often. Miller said the numbers suggest Tracey Mann, the 1st District’s current congressman, probably would never have to set foot in Lawrence and could comfortably win reelection for the next 10 years.

But whether that would be the approach he would take is another matter. Miller said if Lawrence ends up in the 1st District, there is still a chance Republican office holders will offer good constituent services and take the phone calls of local leaders on important issues.

“I think we’ll probably get some degree of attention to say that they’ve come here,” Miller said. “We’ll still probably get constituent service requests answered. But, I think either way, we can’t expect the voting pattern of our member of Congress to reflect the politics of this community. That’s certainly, I think, an unreasonable expectation either way.”

Carter acknowledged that Lawrence isn’t likely to be the center of attention for politicians in either the 1st or 2nd Congressional districts. But he said there’s still a strong argument to be made that the 2nd District is better for Lawrence. Among the chief arguments is the 1st District is so sprawling in geographic size that a politician simply has less time to make it to all the communities in the district on a regular basis.

But, if you want to look on the bright side, we’ll have a chance to meet two members of Congress — one on one side of the city limits line and another on the other side. Carter said the split will involve more work on the part of local leaders to make connections with both sets of congressional offices.

“But, obviously, we would do the work to forge the relationships,” he said.

photo by: Source: Kansas Legislative Research Department

This map, based on a version drawn by the League of Women Voters, shows a scenario where Douglas County and Lawrence would remain in the 2nd Congressional District.