PHOENIX — The state Democratic Party wants Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate decisions by the Independent Redistricting Commission that give a political edge to three incumbent GOP senators.
And what turns up could lead to seeking to have the legislative map redrawn.
In a complaint being delivered Monday, Charlie Fisher, the party’s executive director, says the commission was on track to create legislative districts that comply with the 2000 voter-approved initiative that created the five-member panel.
The draft map adopted in late October following those laws ended up putting incumbent Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff into a heavily Democratic district.
Sine Kerr of Buckeye also wound up in a district with a Democratic edge. And early proposals put Vince Leach, who lives in the southern Pinal County community of SaddleBrooke, into a district considered competitive, with Republicans having just a 4.2% edge.
But by the time the final maps were adopted, the two Republican commissioners, with the consent of Erika Neuberg, the nonpartisan chairwoman of the panel, altered the lines — sometimes by just a few blocks — to ensure all three found themselves in districts with large GOP margins.
Fisher contends the maneuvers were not by accident. Now he wants Brnovich to determine if they were illegal.
The Republican commissioners and Neuberg, questioned by reporters as these decisions were being made, denied any wrongdoing.
Democratic Party spokeswoman Morgan Dick said there is no interest in creating problems and recrafting lines so close to the 2022 election, what with early ballots for the primary going out in mid-July. But she also said that if Brnovich confirms that laws were broken, the party may go to court to have the lines redrawn ahead of the 2024 election.
At the heart of this is the 2000 voter-approved constitutional amendment creating the commission.
Prior to that, the decennial process was left to lawmakers. That resulted in maps crafted by the majority party, allowing it to cement its hold on power for the coming decade.
That 2000 amendment set up the five-member commission of two Democrats, two Republicans and an independent and provided specific rules about how to craft maps. Those include protecting communities of interest, complying with federal voting rights laws and, to the extent it doesn't interfere with other goals, creating competitive districts.
And there's something else.
“The places of residence of incumbents or candidates shall not be identified or considered,” it reads. Fisher, in his complaint to Brnovich, said that means that commissioners are not supposed to tell staff to design maps using that information. And he said the record suggests otherwise.
One of the most notable last-minute changes between the draft and final maps involves Rogers — who lives in a mobile home park on the south side of Route 66, just west of downtown Flagstaff.
The original map had placed her into Legislative District 6 that includes much of Flagstaff but also stretches through the Navajo, Hopi, Havasupai, White River Apache and San Carlos Apache reservations. It also is a district that has a heavy Democratic edge.
But that was before David Mehl, a Republican member of the panel, asked that the lines be tweaked to put the mobile home park and a few blocks around it into LD 7. It runs through Snowflake and Payson into Apache Junction and as far south as Oracle and San Manuel.
It also is a safe Republican district.
Mehl initially declined to answer questions from reporters about the reason. When pushed, he sidestepped the issue, saying it was done to help Democrats boost Navajo voting strength in LD 6.
But Shereen Lerner, one of the Democrats on the panel, said that Mehl told her a different story.
“He came over to me and he said, ‘I’d like to make a change for a friend of mine who asked me to make this change,’” Lerner said. She said she agreed but pursued the issue.
“I said, ‘Don't tell me if it’s for an incumbent,’” Lerner continued. “And he said, ‘Then, I won’t tell you.”
Different and more complex dynamics were at play in Leach’s district.
Initial “test maps” of the area in northern Pima County had put the SaddleBrooke community where Leach lives in a district that includes the suburban Tucson communities of Marana, Oro Valley and Casa Adobes. That would have been a politically competitive district.
But what emerged in the final map as LD 17 excluded Casa Adobes and instead extended the line to instead take in the Tanque Verde area and everything east of Camino Seco all the way to the edge of Vail. It also gave the district a distinctly Republican edge.
That change was promoted as being advanced by the Southern Arizona Leadership Council. And Ted Maxwell, the group's executive director, said at least part of the reason was to ensure there would be GOP lawmakers from Southern Arizona to promote issues in the Republican-controlled legislature.
As it turned out, the map with the proposed changes were not submitted by SALC.
Fisher said public records obtained by the Democratic Party show it came from a Republican political consultant who is in Leach’s district. He also said there is evidence that shows that a letter that Mehl touted from Marana Mayor Ed Honea supporting the change actually was crafted by a Senate staffer at Leach’s direction — and from taxpayer funded offices during business hours.
Leach said he has a legal opinion from legislative lawyers that say he is entitled to try to influence the redistricting process. But he said he can’t answer the questions about what Senate staffers may have done.
Neuberg herself stated at one point she went along with the two GOP commissioners because she wanted to create what amounted to a safe Republican district for largely Democratic Pima County. She later recanted — partly.
“I used a very poor word when we deliberated the first time,” she said. But Neuberg argued there were legitimate reasons for drawing the lines the way the panel did — and excluding Democratic areas — even if it did give Republicans a political boost.
The third change was a bit more subtle.
Going into the final decisions, the unincorporated community of Liberty, outside of Buckeye, was slated to be in LD 23. That heavily Democratic district stretches from the far western suburbs of Phoenix west to parts of Yuma and south through the Tohono O'odham Nation, even including a few blocks of the Drexel Heights neighborhood of Tucson.
But the commission, at Mehl’s request, decided to move the approximately 600 residents there — including Kerr — instead into safe Republican LD 25. That runs from Buckeye through Sun Valley into areas on the east side of Yuma.
The issue of where the commission drew those lines is particularly important in legislative races, where candidates are required to reside in their districts. By contrast, congressional candidates need not live in the district they represent.
By 
