Home > Gwinnett.talk > Archives > 2007 > March > 01 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USFloyd, so how ‘bout a Dem on the Gwinnett County Commission
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BEN GRAY / AJC
Gwinnett Legislators Reps. Hugh Floyd (left) and John Heard talk on the House floor.
Some Gwinnett commissioners seem to take it personally that Hugh Floyd wants to put a couple of new members on the board. Mike Beaudreau goes so far as to accuse the Democratic state House member of trying to get someone from his party elected to the all-GOP board.
The District 2 commissioner might not be entirely off base. While Floyd’s plan to add two superdistrict commissioners doesn’t sound like it would get a Democrat elected to either post, he has a Plan B that almost certainly would.
Floyd insists “this is not just a ploy for me to get a Democrat in.”
(We haven’t actually seen either plan. Floyd hasn’t introduced either proposal because state law prevents him from dropping either bill for at least a week after they’ve been advertised in the county legal organ.)
Plan B would redraw Gwinnett’s current commission district map and add two new districts to the board, Floyd said. Plan A merely overlays the current map with two new superdistrict seats, one of which would be be made up of Districts 1 and 3, and the other, Districts 2 and 4. Since the existing seats are all held by Republicans, there’s little chance the added superdistrict posts would be any different.
But Floyd says a second plan he’s thinking about introducing would create one Democrat-leaning seat that would include Gwinnett’s western I-85 corridor. One of Floyd’s Republican House colleagues, John Heard, said he’s seen the map and agrees that it does create a commission for a Democrat.
Some Gwinnett Republicans, among them Senate Rules Committee Chairman Don Balfour, said rapidly growing Gwinnett will ultimately need more representation on the board.
Floyd said it’s hard to draw a political map with more districts that doesn’t include a Democratic seat, especially in southern Gwinnett, which is trending that way. Floyd also pointed out that he didn’t draw the Plan B map, the nonpartisan state Legislative Reapportionment Office did.
“If Democrats get elected to the commission one day, it’ll have more to do with changing demographics than redrawing maps,” Floyd said.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Gwinnett Insider
Comments
By Bruce Wilcox
March 1, 2007 1:29 PM | Link to this
Why it seems some are actually afraid of Democrats, that one I just can not understand? Do you really think they could do any worse than the Republicans who have been in power since I moved here in 93’?
Well it took the nation a long time to rid us of the incompetent Republican Congress, how long will it take Gwinnett to wake up?
By Jason
March 1, 2007 2:46 PM | Link to this
Using the same county commission model for Gwinnett that is in place for tiny small rural counties does not make sense. Five members can not properly represent almost 200,000 citizens each. There are members of Congress who represent less citizens and are thus more accessable than the members of the Gwinnett County Commission.
While adding a couple of At-Large members could be a good thing, especially in cases where an issue effects the whole county or the representative from a particular area is ignoring their constituients, in order to solve the accessability problem, more districts need to be added. If one of those ends up being in the hands of a Democrat, so what? If Gwinnett has enough Democrats for one of them to get elected to the new larger commission, then there should be a member of that party in that position. To do otherwise would make us like the Communist Party in China or Cuba.
By WirelessBuzz
March 1, 2007 3:14 PM | Link to this
One Democrat is a foothold. Get three of the five on the board and its time for people to pack up and head out of Gwinnett.
By Bruce Wilcox
March 1, 2007 7:24 PM | Link to this
Wireless how can it be any worse than the leadership we have had since at least 93’.
By BobG
March 2, 2007 2:18 PM | Link to this
I and others were intimately involved in the effort five years ago to expand the commission, gathering around a dining room table to draw lines for six districts. We gave absolutely no consideration to the political biases of voters within the districts— we never even looked at those numbers. We followed accepted, court-proven redistricting guidelines.
We came up with a plan that fairly apportioned the county’s population (at that time, around 588,000) among six districts. Rep. Jeff Williams (R-Snellville) was our advocate in the State Legislature.
The plan was ultimately shot down by fellow Republicans including Don Balfour in the State Senate and Charles Bannister in the House. In a very vindictive move, Balfour presented a plan which split a couple of cities (a no-no) and actually drew the Dist. 1 Commissioner, a proponent of six districts, out of her own district!
In the end, the Gwinnett delegation approved a politically-motivated map that diluted Democrat voting strength by dividing it between Districts 1 and 2, and gave the developers’ friend on the Commission, Kevin Kenerly, control over a major portion of east Gwinnett where most of the development was projected to occur over the following years.
I could go on for hours describing the abuses heaped upon Gwinnett residents by the Republican majority (I consider myself an ultra-conservative; Republican if I have to name a party). But the main point is this:
We drew lines without any consideration at all of voting records. When we were done, the western-most district (now District 2) was still Republican, but just barely— 54% if I recall correctly. It is possible that, if drawn today, a “Democrat” district might be created— but it is what it is. Better representation is the goal, right?
Our little group of activists was criticized severely for trying to create a “Democrat” district. In the end, Republicans made sure that they prevented the possible creation of a “Democrat” district by spreading their voting strength across two districts.
Again, if the goal is fair and equitable representation, which was worse?