JUNEAU (AP) — The appointed board tasked with drawing Alaska’s legislative district boundaries has approved new state Senate districts for the Anchorage area, with the two members who opposed the plan calling it political.
The new plan puts Eagle River, north of Anchorage, and Girdwood, south of Anchorage into the same Senate district, separated by about 25 miles of uninhabited Chugach State Park.
The Alaska Redistricting Board adopted the plan by a 3-2 vote on April 13. The board had gone back to work after the state Supreme Court ruled that the board’s original plan pairing part of east Anchorage and the Eagle River area into a single Senate district constituted an “unconstitutional political gerrymander.”
The new plan would join part of the Eagle River area with south Anchorage and Girdwood for one Senate district and another part of the Eagle River area to an area that includes a military base for another Senate district. The board’s dissenting members said the plan would improperly give Eagle River greater representation in the Senate, with the chance for the conservative area to dominate in elections and take two of the Senate’s 20 seats.
“This is still gerrymandering, just in a different way, in my mind,” board member Melanie Bahnke said.
The board had been considering two options to address concerns raised by the court. The other option would have joined the Eagle River area’s two House districts into one Senate district, as has been the case for years.
“Eagle River is now going to have two senators; how is that not an advantage?” Borromeo said.
If the new plan is upheld, Republican Sen. Lora Reinbold of Eagle River and Republican Sen. Roger Holland of Anchorage would be in the same district.
Board members John Binkley, Bethany Marcum and Budd Simpson, all Republicans, voted in favor of the new plan. Members Bahnke and Nicole Borromeo, who are independents, dissented.
Binkley and Simpson said the new map is not biased in favor of Republicans, noting Reinbold and Holland testified against it.
The state Supreme Court found that a prior map that paired a House district that included part of Anchorage’s Muldoon area with an Eagle River area House district amounted to an “unconstitutional political gerrymander.”
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