Braun confident of redistricting special session success

INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Mike Braun announced Monday that he was calling state lawmakers back into a special session of the General Assembly next week to redraw Indiana’s congressional map and then he retreated behind closed doors, off-limits to the media that night, to address the state GOP’s annual dinner in Indianapolis.

On Tuesday, the governor answered fleetingly but exclusively questions posed by FOX59/CBS4 about the unprecedented mid-decade redistricting effort.

“Governor, is there anything you want to tell me about calling the special session?” FOX59/CBS4’s Russ McQuaid asked Braun as he rushed from a press announcement at the annual FFA convention in downtown Indianapolis.

“No, I think it’s all in motion,” he said. “And we feel that we’re gonna get a positive result from it.”

“Do you think you’ve got enough support in the State Senate to pass it?” McQuaid asked, referring to Republican Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray’s contention that he doesn’t have the votes from his own supermajority party to approve redistricting.

“I think so, I think so,” said the governor descending on an escalator. “Yeah.”

The governor’s optimism is not shared not only by his party’s senate leader but by a majority of Hoosier voters who, when polled, opposed redistricting, which typically occurs after the annual census taken every 10 years.

”Hoosiers aren’t worried about maps being redrawn,” said Representative Alex Burton, a democrat from Evansville. “They’re worried about their energy costs, child care access, health care being affordable and so many other things that are right now impacting so many other people on a monthly basis that there are no answers for.”

Burton will have a chance to hear what his constituents care and do not care about when he holds a town hall meeting at an Evansville Public Library branch on Wednesday night.

“The current republican party has identified the maps that they want to do,” said Burton. “The backroom conversation happening right now has everything to do with who’s gonna be the new congressman from Indiana as opposed to doing what’s best for Hoosiers.”

Current maps give democrats two of the state’s nine seats in traditional strongholds of northwest Indiana and Marion County.

Proposed maps making their rounds at the Statehouse show the 7th District in Marion County being divided up and swallowed by surrounding Republican-led districts and the 1^st District in the Region extended south along the Indiana/Illinois border.

”I’m all for redistricting,” said Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith. “I think it needs to happen. It’s long overdue to get things back into a fair consistency across the nation. Indiana…our voice has been watered down in Washington because of the various actions of states like Illinois and California and New England states. They gerrymandered and rigged the system. I think by us redistricting we’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re taking back some of our voice in Washington,’ so I’m all for it. 9-0…that’s what we’re going for…9-0…and let’s go.”

While the special session is limited to 45 days, lawmakers may be up against the calendar as Nov. 18 is Organization Day, leaving just two weeks for debate and potential public input.

”Our typical redistricting process takes truly months,” said University of Indianapolis Poli Sci Professor Laura Wilson. “When you have the U.S. census, you have the data, you’re looking at the maps and there is public input. It’s not clear how much public input will be available in this process.”