Republican ambition could tighten Pa. races

By Christopher P. Borick

'Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." These words - made famous by Oliver Stone's fictional Wall Street villain Gordon Gekko - express a sentiment quite out of fashion thanks to the real Wall Street villains of today. But greed may be the one thing that can make Pennsylvania's coming congressional elections something more than a mockery of democratic principles.

With the state in the midst of its redistricting process, there has been growing interest in how it will reconfigure congressional districts leading up to the 2012 elections. And when the 2010 census numbers came out earlier this year and confirmed that the commonwealth's congressional delegation would have to shrink from 19 members to 18, the intrigue only increased.

In Pennsylvania, the task of drawing new congressional districts falls primarily to the state legislature. Republicans, who control both legislative chambers, are therefore in the driver's seat.

The GOP's dominance would appear to kill any chances of a redistricting process that promotes true competition for congressional seats. But the party's commanding position may actually help create more competitive elections over the next decade.

This is where the need for greed comes in. If the state's Republican leaders seek to play it safe and strengthen the concentration of Republican voters in most but not all of their districts - while confining Democrats to a few strongholds - they will practically assure that the state's voters spend the next decade in an electoral wasteland where competition withers. But if the GOP gets greedy and tries to protect all 12 of its seats - or, better yet, attempts to increase its share of the pie - the state's voters may get the gift of more robust congressional races.

That's exactly what happened after the last redistricting. Following the 2000 census, GOP leaders hoped to build on their majority in the state's congressional delegation. By slightly weakening their advantages in a number of Republican-held districts, they looked to increase their candidates' competitiveness in districts held by Democrats. The idea was to hold on to the districts they had and wrest a few more from Democrats.

In the short term, that's what happened. But as the political tides shifted in the middle of the last decade, Democrats gained five of the state's congressional seats in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Then, in 2010, Republicans reclaimed many of the same seats.

All of this added up to a rare and wonderful period in which the "safe" districts so typical of contemporary congressional elections became less typical in the Keystone State. This was a very good thing for the state's voters.

The problems with safe districts are many. The lack of competition breeds extremism. The strict party-line votes and lack of compromise that define Congress today can be traced to the safe seats that permeate the nation.

Safe seats also strand voters in districts where they have no chance of casting a meaningful vote in a congressional election. For a Democratic voter trapped in a Republican district, or a GOP voter languishing in a Democratic district, there is palpable frustration and understandable disengagement.

So, if you value a democracy in which real competition among candidates produces responsive government, root for the greed of elected officials in Harrisburg. It would be wonderful if Republicans in the state capital try to squeeze a few more seats out of redistricting. Pennsylvania's Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike should encourage them to go for broke.

A quarter of a century ago, Gordon Gekko told audiences that greed would save a malfunctioning corporation called the United States of America. Perhaps it can also come to the rescue of the malfunctioning system of congressional elections that has become the American standard.