GOP legislators cry foul on the new political maps
By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
The Moapa Valley will no longer be split into two different political districts. After a controversial redistricting process, the Nevada State Legislature passed new district maps in a strictly partisan vote held on Tuesday, Nov. 16. Among other things, the new maps consolidate the Moapa Valley communities into a single district for its Assembly and State Senate representation.
For the past decade, the Moapa Valley community has been bifurcated on a line between Logandale and Overton which runs roughly along the east-west alignment of Lou Jean Avenue.
Residents north of that line in Logandale, Moapa and the Muddy River Indian Reservation have been in Assembly District 36 represented by Pahrump resident Greg Hafen; and in State Senate District 19 representated by Eureka resident Pete Goicoechea.
To the south of that line, though, Overton residents have voted in Assembly District 19 represented by Mesquite resident Annie Black; and State Senate District 12 held by Boulder City resident Joe Hardy.
The redistricting bill erases the Lou Jean Avenue line. Next November, all of the Moapa Valley communites will be included into Assembly District #19 along with Mesquite, Bunkerville and a small slice of Henderson.
The State Senate district has undergone a more complex change. Senator Joe Hardy, who will reach his term limit next year, has been displaced from the old District 12. Instead Hardy’s district will become District 20. It will include the Moapa Valley communities, Mesquite, Bunkerville, Boulder City, Laughlin and the entire southeast tip of the state.
For U.S. Congress representation, the communities in the Moapa and Virgin Valleys will all remain in Congressional District 4 which is currently represented by Rep. Steven Horsford.
The deeply partisan redistricting bill was roundly criticized by Republicans in the legislature, none of which voted for it. Some of that criticism was levelled from the legislators representing the Moapa and Virgin Valley communities.
“Let me put it nicely,” said Joe Hardy in an interview with The Progress last week. “The coalescence of the people’s representation in the Moapa Valley was the one thing that this bill did that made any sense at all!”
Otherwise, the whole process seemed focused solely on strengthening the chances of a Democrat supermajority in both houses of the legislature, Hardy said.
Using his own district as an example, Hardy told how redistricting had created an interesting byproduct involving his own district, that could benefit the Democrats’ position in upcoming elections.
Hardy explained that, according to the new maps, his district will be gaining just a small new notch of Henderson. Living within that notch is State Senator Keith Pickard, who represents what is now Senate District 20 in Henderson.
In 2018, Pickard won this mainly suburban seat by a very thin margin of about two dozen votes, Hardy said. But the new maps draw Pickard out of his own battleground district and places him, instead, into Hardy’s strongly Republican district. What’s more Hardy’s district was renamed to match Pickard’s old District 20.
“So in November, after I have termed out, the district will have a different number and if Keith Pickard runs for re-election, he will basically be running in my district,” Hardy said.
Hardy acknowledges that, in that case, Pickard shouldn’t have any trouble winning in this very conservative district.
“But what it does is that it opens up his old district for people that the Democrats want in the Senate,” Hardy said. “So what was once a Republican seat will probably now become a Democrat district. From there, they will have a district that is going to be safely Democratic for a long time to come.”
In another corner of the state Assemblyman Greg Hafen, who represents Logandale and Moapa, is claiming political foulplay in the redistricting process for his community of Pahrump.
Hafen has filed a lawsuit in Carson City District Court which claims that the redistricting bill “…has the effect of denying voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process of electing candidates of their choice.”
Even as the new maps bring Moapa Valley communities back together into a single voting block, they will be dividing the community of Pahrump – currently included in Hafen’s District 36 – into two separate Assembly districts.
“Pahrump, Nye County and the State of Nevada deserve better political boundaries than what Democrats drew up in the 33rd Special Session,” Hafen said in a statement last week. “They have split our county up into three districts and split my community of Pahrump up in a way that ties it to Elko and outlying areas of Las Vegas. Instead of our town and many of its unique interests, including complex water matters, being represented locally, it now stands to be represented more by voices from Las Vegas and Elko.”
Though Assemblywoman Annie Black stands to add the full breadth of the predominantly conservative Moapa Valley community to her district, she still views the new maps as a bad thing for the state.
“The new maps have drawn lines all across the state that favor the Democrats and will likely keep the Republicans in a superminority situation at the legislature,” Black said in an interview last week with The Progress. “That is just not going to be good for the people of Nevada.”
Black admitted that she didn’t have a lot of hope that a lawsuit would be a viable option to solve the problem. She believed that the only way to return to some balance might be if the Republicans could somehow manage to gain a majority in both houses of the legislature. Then redistricting could be brought up again for a review, she said.
“But that would pretty much take a miracle,” Black added.
