The Zigzag Art of Politics

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When the wrangling began last year, Republicans had high hopes of chipping away at the 243-to-192 Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Seventeen seats had to be transferred from ten states in the Northeast and Midwest to eleven fast-growing states in the West and the South. Moreover, population shifts within the states themselves—largely from Democratic cities to Republican suburbs—promised to threaten dozens of Democratic strongholds.

Yet G.O.P. dreams are fading quickly. Michigan Congressman Guy Vander Jagt, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, still predicts that up to ten seats will shift in the G.O.P.'s favor, but Congressman Tony Coelho of California, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sharply disagrees. "There's no way they're going to do that," he says. "The most they'll get is five seats, and it might even be a wash."

Since the Democrats control twice as many statehouses as the Republicans, they enjoyed a larger say in drafting the new districts. Moreover, federal judges have proved scrupulous in protecting minority representatives, who tend to be Democrats. The U.S. Supreme Court, for example, upheld a plan drawn by Illinois Democrats that protected the seats of three black Democratic Congressmen, despite sharp population declines in their Chicago districts; two Republican incumbents, however, were dumped into the same new district. "The rest of the state suffered because of first having to take care of those three districts artificially," complains G.O.P. Congressman Edward J. Derwinski, who was shifted into the district of a fellow Republican. In Missouri, a three-judge federal panel redrew the map to save the seat of Democrat William Clay, a black whose St. Louis district has lost 25% of its population since 1970. In preserving Clay's seat, the judges combined two southeast Missouri districts—and pitted two Republican incumbents against one another.

The Republicans too can claim some successful gerrymandering. In Indiana, which will lose one seat, the G.O.P.-dominated legislature passed a plan that put three Democratic incumbents into the same district. The G.O.P. has also profited from internecine warfare among the Democrats. In Massachusetts, which must shed one seat, the Democratic legislature pushed Republican Congresswoman Margaret Heckler and Democratic Congressman Barney Frank into the same district. The new seat contains about 70% of Heckler's old district, and the legislators stoutly refused to tack on the Democratic city of Framingham to bolster Frank's chances. The abrasive Frank evidently made a lot of enemies in the Massachusetts house of representatives, where he served for eight years before winning a seat in Congress in 1980.