Lawrence, meet St. Francis and Elkhart, among your far-west siblings in the state’s planned new First congressional district.
With astonishing speed, the Republican-dominant Kansas Legislature has blessed new district boundaries for the state’s four U.S. House districts, each with – amazingly – equal populations of 734,470. The map was introduced on Jan. 19 and approved by the Senate (26-9) in three days. House approval is expected.
There were no hearings.
The map carves Lawrence from northern Douglas County and the Second District and squeezes it into the corner of a 59-county First District of western and central Kansas. Lawrence, a growing university city (pop. 95,000) of the five-county metropolitan northeast (pop. 1.16 million) is pressed into farm country and a district that extends nearly the width of the state.
In a way, this follows a pattern. Lawmakers every ten years must redraw state and congressional districts that reflect new census numbers. Over the past six decades the decennial count has been a story of rural population loss and urban gain. After the 2010 census, the Big First was again enlarged eastward, taking in Riley (Manhattan), Geary (Junction City), Pottawatomie (Wamego) and Wabaunsee Counties and bumping the Shawnee County line, ten miles from the state capitol.
Now, ten years later, Lawrence and a shotgun wedding. This has provoked uncertainty and agitation in the northeast and in the west, doubt and dismay. Neither place is wild about the plan.
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Last August, legislators in charge of reapportionment blitzed through 14 Kansas cities in five days to hear what people had to say about the state’s reapportionment process. In Salina, Hays and Manhattan, people had three overriding complaints:
– The hearings were a rush job. The 2020 census had not been released.
– Realigning seats and power in the state and federal legislatures should be the work of an independent commission, not wax for the molding of incumbent politicians.
– In rural and urban regions alike, citizens opposed any plan that would merge part of the metro northeast with farm country. They had no mutual interests, they said; their concerns differed and at times conflicted. At the time, the fear in both places was resurrection of a failed plan from 2010 that brought Wyandotte County and Kansas City into the First district.
Lawrence, within spitting distance of Kansas City, wasn’t mentioned.
Reapportionment is the allotment of power, and control lies with those in power. In Kansas, the Republicans are in charge. Their mission this year is to dilute the moderate and liberal vote by splicing it into conservative majority districts – protect incumbent Republicans, weaken the Democratic base. For them, geography, commerce and community are not in play.
On the Republicans’ new map, the First district is expanded east to take in Jackson, Jefferson and a northern nip of Douglas County that includes only Lawrence. (The rest of Douglas remains in the Second District.)
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The stretch of this planned new district is impressive. Lawrence to St. Francis via I-70 starts with 370 miles to Goodland, just short of the Colorado border. St Francis is 37 miles north. Total, more than 400 miles. A slower but scenic route to St. Francis begins with 60 miles north to Hiawatha, then US-36 west through a dozen counties. Again, 400 miles plus.
Lawrence southwest to Elkhart is another matter: Thirty miles west of Salina, angle southwest from I-70 on US156 through Great Bend, then US56 to Larned, Kinsley and on to Dodge City (37 miles). So far, 258 miles.
From Dodge, it’s 52 miles to Satanta, 35 to Hugoton and another 34 to Elkhart, the Morton County seat. Roughly 379 miles– a lovely ride from the Osage Questas through the rise and fall of the northern Flint Hills and the Smoky Hills, a stretch of the Ark River lowlands and, at last, the sweep of the High Plains tableland.
Far west Kansas, north or south, is immense and often windy, the horizon a distant blur. It tells of great spaces between hamlet and farm town, the energy of small cities. Great spaces evoke the beauty of geography, the isolation and yearning of people who live there.
Elkhart is closer to the capital cities of three other states (Denver, Santa Fe, and Oklahoma City) than to Topeka. For St. Francis, capitals nearer than Topeka are Cheyenne, Denver and Lincoln, and roughly the same 400-plus miles to Pierre, South Dakota, as to Topeka.
The contrast between Lawrence and the far west unfolds along the changing terrain, frame of landscape and frame of mind. Popping Lawrence into farm country may be fine for a political map, but it does nothing for the needs and desires of different worlds in the same state.
