An effort to redraw St. Louis County鈥檚 seven council districts collapsed on Monday after Democrats sought a map that, among other things, drew Councilman Tim Fitch out of his district.
Failure to approve the map likely means a federal judge will now redraw council districts, as has been the case for the past few decades.
Before Monday, and approve a redistricting plan that made relatively minor changes to the council鈥檚 seven districts. That would have maintained four safe Democratic seats, one safe Republican seat and two swing seats.
Republicans and Democrats met for a few hours on Sunday to try to hash out relatively minor differences. But on Monday, that drew Fitch鈥檚 home out of the 3rd District 鈥� and moved University City to the 5th District. That city is currently split between the 1st and 5th Districts.
Democrats contended that the proposal aligned with their goals of trying to keep most of the county鈥檚 municipalities intact in their districts 鈥� and added that it didn鈥檛 make sense to create a map simply to accommodate Fitch. He told 漏 2024 外网天堂 last week he was planning to run for reelection in the 3rd District, which has historically been GOP-leaning but has become more competitive in recent years.
鈥淎nd we personally don鈥檛 believe that we should change our map to accommodate one individual,鈥� said Democratic commissioner Dana Sandweiss. 鈥淲e believe that this map represents a fair map for St. Louis County going forward.鈥�
But Republicans decried the effort against Fitch, who has clashed with St. Louis County Executive Sam Page, a Democrat. They also questioned why the Democratic members couldn鈥檛 try to smooth out differences between two maps that were produced at the commission鈥檚 meeting last week.
鈥淚鈥檓 not inherently an emotional person, but I just find it insulting to have our time wasted like that,鈥� said Republican commissioner Adam Bohn.
Fitch, who watched the meeting virtually, said: 鈥淭he last I knew, I thought this had all been worked out. Then at the last minute I鈥檓 drawn out of the district again.鈥�
鈥淚 can only assume that was for one particular reason and that was to write me out of my district,鈥� Fitch said.
The commission voted 7-7 on the Democratic map, as well as
since success requires nine votes. With the commission split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, that would require at least two people from the other party to cross over.
The process will now shift to the federal judiciary. When the commission deadlocked in 2011, a federal magistrate drew lines that made fairly modest changes to the county council map.
Democrats had initially put forward a more sweeping redrawing of the county council map. But they retreated from that proposal mainly because it substantially reduced the Black population of the 1st District.
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