FRANKFORT, Ky. — After the House and Senate each passed two redistricting bills on Thursday, the committee process effectively started over on Friday in the opposite chambers.
What You Need To Know
- Lawmakers have spent the first week of session passing new maps for the Kentucky House, Kentucky Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and the Kentucky Supreme Court
- The process has been fast-tracked by Republicans, who hold legislative supermajorities and retain full control over redistricting
- Each chamber introduced two maps and passed them Thursday, sending them to the opposite chamber
- Committees approved the maps on Friday, setting up floor votes on Saturday to send the maps to Gov. Andy Beshear
The House Elections Committee signed off the new congressional map, although several lawmakers were unhappy with how the 1st Congressional District is drawn, stretching from far Western Kentucky, along the border with Tennessee, and then curling all the way up to Frankfort, nearly 300 miles from the other end of the proposed 1st district.
"I can see a Jefferson County district, obviously, very clearly. I can see what pretty well looks like a northern Kentucky map,” Rep. Jim Gooch (R-Providence) said. “I can see an east Kentucky map — it’s very large, but I can still see it there — and central Kentucky and maybe a northeast Kentucky map, but what I do not see with this map is a west Kentucky district.”
The Kentucky Senate map also passed in committee along party lines.
Rep. McKenzie Cantrell (D-Louisville) said she has issues with how the Senate carved up Fayette County, with one district dedicated to Lexington and six others that include other counties.
She had similar concerns about Fayette County and the proposed Kentucky House map.
“It does seem like, through both of these maps, Fayette County grew a lot but is losing representation,” Cantrell said.
Senate President Robert Stivers (R-Manchester) defended the map.
“You want Fayette County to only have two voices, but now they have seven,” he said in response to Rep. Cantrell. “And where we learned that type of practice was from [former Democratic House Speaker] Greg Stumbo and [former Democratic House Speaker Pro Tempore] Larry Clark.”
Over in the Senate State and Local Government Committee, lawmakers signed off on the new Kentucky House map.
Only two Senators voted against it: Rep. Adrienne Southworth (R-Lawrenceburg) and Senate Minority Floor Leader Morgan McGarvey (D-Louisville).
“There’s a lot of partisan drawing of these lines,” McGarvey said. “It’s pitting incumbents against each other unnecessarily, which I think we discussed (Thursday) on the Senate floor. The Senate President said that was one of the marks of the fairness of a map, and I think this map falls short of that.”
Lawmakers plan on coming in at 9 a.m. Saturday to finish passing the maps.