Posted on 06/05/2002 2:59:15 PM PDT by not-alone
MIAMI -- State House member Lois Frankel would be Congresswoman Lois Frankel if newly drawn district lines and election rules had been in place a decade ago, a voting patterns expert testified Tuesday in a trial over Florida's new district maps.
That Frankel, who is white, would have prevailed in a district created to elect a black candidate is proof that the new lines drawn by Florida's Republican leadership illegally "retrogress" minority seats, testified Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C.
Lichtman, the first of two expert witnesses for the Democratic critics of the plans, said that map-makers' reduction in the black "voting strength" in the district of U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings would likely produce a white winner if 1992's election were held again using the new boundaries.
In that race, Hastings was one of several black candidates in the Democratic primary against Frankel, the only white. Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, received the most votes in the primary, but then lost to Hastings in the runoff a month later.
This year, because there will be no runoff election, a white candidate getting the most votes among a field of mainly black candidates would win the nomination and therefore the general election in the solidly Democratic district, Lichtman told the three federal judges hearing the case.
"These are consequential changes," Lichtman said. The other two black districts created in the 1992 map also have smaller percentages of black voters in the new map, but not to the extent seen in Hastings' district, he added. Fred Turner, Hastings' press secretary, said the changes in the district were why Hastings signed onto the federal suit as well as initiated a state court lawsuit in Broward County.
"There is retrogression," Turner said. "The Supreme Court has said that's not permissible."
Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, who is retiring from the House this year because of term limits and is currently running for governor, agreed. "It sounds to me like he's got a valid legal argument, without me passing judgment as to whether I should be in Congress or he should be in Congress," she said.
Miguel DeGrande, a lawyer for House Speaker Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, tried to diminish Lichtman's impact, pointing out during his cross examination that Hastings was not a typical black candidate. "I mean, how many elections do you have an indicted and successfully impeached federal judge?" DeGrande asked.
Hastings served 10 years on the federal bench in Miami before Congress removed him from office in 1989 for conspiring to take a bribe. He was, however, cleared of the charges in court.
DeGrande also defended the changes made to Hastings' district as necessary because it needed to gain 20,000 residents to achieve parity with the other 24 districts following the latest reapportionment.
To that, Lichtman countered: "You're not required to meet one-person, one-vote by moving in 20,000 white people."
: "You're not required to meet one-person, one-vote by moving in 20,000 white people." I guess they could count ex-cons and illegals working here.
OPS I meant NJ not NY......
Also,If Hasting was not on the ballot, a white person would win his seat....he won because of his colorful background..
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