Redistricting commission’s move smells like partisanship

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission has just made a decision that is, in the most charitable assessment we can possibly make, extremely odd.

The commission, composed of 2 Democrats, 2 Republicans and 1 independent, has recently been working on hiring an executive director for the detailed process of redistricting.

While the commission itself has the responsibility of developing district maps, the executive director position is where the rubber meets the road. Importantly, the decision to pick this E.D. from a field of candidates was the first opportunity to demonstrate how the commissioners could suppress their various partisan leanings in order to pick an administrator who displayed the highest likelihood of doing the job well.

By this.

Ideally, consensus on this administrative candidate would be reached, and there would be a unanimous vote.

But not only were they unable to achieve this ideal (the vote on the chosen candidate was 3-2), they picked the candidate who seemed to have the least relevant experience and demonstrated abilities, Brian Schmitt. He also conveniently skipped a potentially disqualifying element on his resume — namely that he orchestrated an event for the Martha McSally campaign and in other ways showed his primary occupation to be a political operative.

When queried on this point, Schmitt said he did it as a favor for a friend, not mentioning the more than $60,000 that he received for this “favor.”

But for a moment, let’s ignore his consistently partisan background; it’s true that a number of other candidates showed partisan work history or at least partisan leanings, the latter being hard to avoid in today’s political climate. If we only consider the qualifications of the candidates, the decision is still puzzling.

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Unlike some of the others, Schmitt has had extremely limited experience with government administration; he has had no experience with state procurement, no experience with redistricting here in the past, no experience with contracting.

We hesitate to ascribe any particular motive to the commission for this choice, but we fear what this bodes for future decisions. For instance, in the interviews, the Republican commissioners on the panel used the phrasing “following the [Arizona] Constitution” as a shorthand to suggest that “competitiveness” is named last in the stated redistricting criteria, and therefore is least important.

This is simply not correct.

The full list of criteria is: (1) Complying with the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act; (2) (Roughly) equal population between districts; (3) compactness and contiguousness; (4) reflecting communities of interest; (5) geographic features (county, city, etc); and (6) competitiveness.

Competitiveness is certainly named last in the criteria, but a 2011 court decision made clear that this was not an indication that it was less important. In fact, all but the first criterion have some phrasing in the original document like “to the extent practicable.”

On the new 2021 IRC website, the “Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission Legal Overview,” July 8, 2011, is posted. It states: “In

the Arizona Supreme Court suggested that the IRC’s advertised map should make adjustments for all six of the goals specified in subsections 1(14) (A) through (F), rather than addressing the sixth and final goal of competitiveness only after receiving public comment on the first advertised map, as the IRC did in 2002.” (emphasis added)

We sincerely hope that commission’s first major decision does not reflect a willingness to adhere to Republican concerns over that of the whole state. The public will be watching.