I don’t wish to wade into political science, but this occurred to me during the last few days:

Rep. John Boehner was an influential figure in the debate and negotiations.

Boehner is a representative from Ohio.

I’m from Ohio but I haven’t lived there for 8 years.  I knew John Boehner was from Ohio but I never checked into it.  Until now.  Here’s his district

I lived somewhere on that map (though not necessarily in the 8th district)  for 34 years.  I lived in the 8th district for 5 years .

A few personal observations about the district :

1.  Farmers.  Lots of farmers.
2. His district has no major urban areas in it.
2b. Many bedroom communities for major urban areas are in it.  Bedroom communities have all of positives of an urban area (smart, active and rich people) without any of the negatives (inner city deterioration, unemployment).
3. That hook, just below Huber Heights: I can’t believe how well it is drawn so to avoid including Black people.  I cannot imagine a legitimate algorithm or procedure which would produce such gerrymandering other than “let’s avoid Black people.”

So, this district, which put Boehner into the debate, was drawn to include a specific demographic — a demographic which would be more likely to elect someone as conservative as he is.

Those are just my subjective observations.  Wikipedia lists the 8th district’s demographics as being:

My personal observation was that much of Montgomery County was excluded to create a unique demographic.  Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Montgomery County:

The racial makeup of the county was 76.57% White, 19.86% Black or African American, 0.23% Native American, 1.31% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.49% from other races, and 1.51% from two or more races. 1.27% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

The median income for a household in the county was $40,156, and the median income for a family was $50,071. Males had a median income of $38,710 versus $27,297 for females. The per capita income for the county was $21,743. About 8.30% of families and 11.30% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.60% of those under age 18 and 8.20% of those age 65 or over.

And my observations were proven correct: Montgomery County has three times as many Black residents as Boehner’s district!    Wikipedia didn’t specify – for the 8th District – what they meant by median income, so I found an OSU document which listed family income in Boehner’s district as $65,666 – $15,595 higher than Montgomery County’s median family income!

If the 8th Congressional District was just Montgomery County, Boehner may not have won. My ‘8th district’s as Montgomery County’ representative would have to be elected by a more urban, more diverse and poorer demographic.  Most likely, Boehner’s politics and policies wouldn’t have made it in an election.

Maybe from a political science perspective my point is naive, but: Demographics in marketing is very important and demographics change from neighborhood to neighborhood.  You pick the product to sell and the marketing to use based upon the neighborhood.  So the gerrymandering is actually good marketing.  You pick the best neighborhoods to sell your party to and avoid the “bad” neighborhoods that won’t buy your party.

But, Boehner is a congressional representative.  Representative. The idea behind representative democracy is to represent people accurately and not on the basis of playing games with local demographics.

Especially when those demographics are based upon race.

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Trivia from a native:
A. Piqua is pronounced Pick-wa.  The Battle of Piqua was a decisive 18th century slaughter of (battle with) American Indians.  The Battle of Piqua didn’t take place in Piqua but in Springfield, Oh.
B. During the 80’s, Hamilton officially changed the spelling of its name to Hamilton! – with the exclamation mark.
C. Huber Heights is known for being the largest all brick home community in the nation.  It’s named after Charles Huber, a local developer.  Huber Heights was his development and well as many other suburban developments in that area.  I lived for several years in a home my parents bought from Charles Huber (although not in Huber Heights).