Corman Backs Out of Redistricting Forum
By Mike Joseph, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.
Mar. 23–State Sen. Jake Corman, R-Benner Township, said Saturday that he will not participate in a League of Women Voters forum on gerrymandering that was scheduled for Thursday evening to fit his own schedule.
Corman said he will attend the Centre County Republican Committee’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner instead, which will honor retiring U.S. Rep. John Peterson and which was arranged for the same evening but not until after the gerrymandering forum was scheduled. The forum will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Mount Nittany Middle School in College Township.
“That’s why I felt so bad about it (begging off from the gerrymandering forum),” Corman said. Corman, whose five-county district includes all but two Centre County municipalities, is the highest-ranking state lawmaker from the county.
He and the three state House lawmakers in Centre County — state Reps. Mike Hanna, D-Lock Haven, Scott Conklin, D-Rush Township, and Kerry Benninghoff, R-Bellefonte — agreed in January to participate in the League of Women Voters forum.
Other participants include gerrymandering reform advocates Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause-Pennsylvania, and Tim Potts, co-founder and executive director of Democracy Rising PA. Common Cause and Democracy Rising are nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations.
Potts, speaking to the Centre County Democratic breakfast meeting Saturday, said June 23 is the deadline for the General Assembly to begin the process of amending the state constitution to reduce the controlling influence of political power in drawing the maps of legislative districts.
If that deadline is missed, another decade of gerrymandered districts based on the 2010 census will result, Potts said. He said Pennsylvania has the second-worst case of gerrymandering of all 50 states. Texas is last.
Potts said four legislative leaders now have all the power to draw voting district lines to make safe seats for most of the 253 House and Senate members. He said they leave only two dozen or so districts with a great enough mix of Republicans and Democrats to be competitive.
“They figure out how to disenfranchise voters, Potts said. “Governance is the only place we do not compete.”
Two bills in the House state government committee that would reform gerrymandering have not moved for a year, though hearings have been held on them recently.
Benninghoff, a member of the state government committee, said Saturday that he will stop by the Lincoln Day Dinner early in the evening Thursday but will then participate as planned in the League of Women Voters gerrymandering forum. “I made a commitment to them,” Benninghoff said. “I think I ought to be there.”
Candace Dannaker, president of the League of Women Voters, said Saturday that she is concerned that advocates of the status quo may be underrepresented at the forum.
She said the forum cannot be rescheduled because arrangements have already been made for it to be televised by the Pennsylvania Cable Network and by local cable channel C-Net.
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