The redistricting train has left the station. - A good description of the competing GOP House & Senate maps.

Statehouse Republicans began a move to reshape Georgia's congressional map Tuesday, floating a pair of plans that retool districts the GOP has criticized for years.

Senate and House leaders unveiled drastically different plans, which would have to work their way through both chambers in the final half of the Legislature's 40-day session.

Both would make Georgia's 13 districts more compact and would likely also lead to more Republicans in Congress.

"This is what we've been saying all along, that (districts) need to be fair, with contiguous districts and no bizarre shapes," Republican Rep. Bobby Franklin, chairman of the Reapportionment Committee, said.

Democrats quickly criticized the plan as a way to help the GOP, not make districts fairer.

"We have legal maps that have withstood the challenges of the courts," said Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, who chaired the House redistricting committee until Republicans took control this year.

"There is no need to expend precious public resources on the political futures of whoever these maps are being drawn for."

The House redistricting map puts Macon's Jim Marshall, currently the representative from the 3rd Congressional District, into a new 8th District along with current 8th District Congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Newnan.

The political advantage is unclear, because the 8th District's new compact shape is shifted south and east from its current sprawl around the southern Atlanta suburbs. The new district would center roughly on the Crawford-Upson county line.

Only six of the new House-proposed 8th District counties are partly or wholly in Westmoreland's current district.

Twelve counties that are partly or wholly in Marshall's 3rd District would be in the new 8th District.

The new district also picks up a couple of counties on its western edge from the current 11th District.

The Senate proposal makes Westmoreland's district compact and pushes it up against the Alabama line. It elongates the 8th District along north-south lines, moving Peach County and most of Warner Robins into the southwestern 2nd District.

The Senate's plan would have the 8th District stretch from Newton County in the north to Colquitt and Cook counties in the south.

Marshall, who represented the old 8th District before reapportionment, narrowly beat Macon businessman Calder Clay III in 2002, with 50.5 percent of the vote. Marshall won re-election easily this past fall against Clay again, garnering 62.9 percent of the vote.

Marshall's overwhelming win in Bibb County in 2004 could change in the future.

Both proposed maps add the county's more-Republican northern suburbs to the district. Currently, they are in Westmoreland's district.

The House-proposed new 8th District splits only two county borders but cuts right through Warner Robins, slicing off the northern part of the city and leaving the rest, along with southern Houston County, in the 3rd District.

The map pushes the 1st District over to the coast, leaving the 3rd District wide open for new congressional candidates. Warner Robins, Dublin and Cordele would be its largest cities.

The proposed maps are a far cry from the current maps that were drawn in 2001 when Democrats controlled the statehouse. They acknowledged that they designed the districts to help them elect more Democrats to Congress.

Federal judges rejected, and ultimately redrew, state House and Senate plans - saying they violated the Constitution's one-person, one vote provision.

The congressional map was allowed to stand, although Republicans complained that it, too, was unfair.

Currently, the state has seven Republican and six Democratic members of Congress.

With both houses of the Legislature now under GOP control, some Republican congressmen have pressed state lawmakers to change the map, hoping that will make their next election campaigns easier. It has been widely speculated that several Republican state lawmakers also would like a chance to run for Congress in a friendly district.

"Today, we want to begin the process of making it easier for Georgians to know who represents them in Congress," Senate Majority Leader Bill Stephens, R-Canton, said.

Franklin's map, which he said wasn't influenced by congressmen or other Republican higher-ups, tightens east Georgia's 12th District, which currently stretches from Athens to Savannah and is represented by Democrat John Barrow.

The oddly shaped 13th District, in south metro Atlanta, would be tightened to include all of Henry, Newton, Clayton, Butts, Spalding and Jasper counties.

Democratic Rep. David Scott holds that seat.

The Senate map also squeezes the 12th and divides Chatham County - home to both Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson and incumbent Congressman Jack Kingston.

The 13th District would swing west from Clayton to Douglas County and a long, narrow middle Georgia district would stretch from Newton County, in metro Atlanta, to Cook County near the Florida line.

Senate Republicans said their plan was crafted without specific political data in mind.

"This was not done for 13 men or women who want to seek office," said Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, chairman of the Senate's map-drawing committee.

Sen. Tim Golden, D-Valdosta, who was redistricting chairman before Republicans took over that chamber three years ago, said it will be a tough task for the GOP to redraw the congressional lines.

Not only is the process highly partisan, he said, but Georgia also has to get federal approval for any new lines because of its segregationist past.

"It's been a political process since the days of Thomas Jefferson," Golden said. "It's a very serious minefield you have to walk through."

(2-16-05 The Macon Telegraph)