So interesting, and so cool. What is that city? Do you notice how it differs from "the city" that spends so much time (and money) announcing its urban vitality? How does it differ? It looks oddly like what we sometimes call "sprawl." I find that so thrilling. What should we name this strange new city?

"They’re not necessarily accountable to communities of color," Cheung said, "because communities of color make up such a small percentage of those districts.”

Complete horseshit...my district, #8, has far more participation by people of color than say, north seattle with its 3% non-white, non-asian representation.

Go and soil your own nest, you liars.

@2 you really need to get out more.

Ballard isn't as white as you think it is.

That changed a while back.

Still, it would be good to keep the free-spending neocons South of the Ship Canal in a different district.

I'm curious about where UFR's funding comes from, given how invested the GOP has been in creating majority-minority districts:

"Organized labor wasn't the right's only target. In the late '80s and early '90s, Republican strategists approached the NAACP with offers of free mapping software to help them create majority-minority congressional districts that would be more likely to elect black and Hispanic members of Congress. But this tactic, dubbed "Project Ratfuck" by one of its chief architects, had nothing to do with increasing minority representation. Rather, it was designed to pack lots of liberal-leaning minority voters into a single district, leaving the surrounding districts as easy pickings for Republican challengers."

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/…

Would creating this seat make Reichert's seat more secure for the GOP?

@6 Yeah, and it certainly doesn't *look* like your typical gerrymandered district.

Still... 'follow the money' is a pretty good rule of thumb, since the first redistricting proposal I saw looked like it would have put Reichert's seat in play.

Okay, looks like my suspicions were baseless:

http://www.westernstatescenter.org/about…

George Cheung, Seattle, WA (Treasurer)

George is the Executive Director of Win/Win Network. George founded and served as first Executive Director of Equal Rights Washington, the state’s largest LGBT advocacy organization and founded Lopez & Cheung, Inc., a public affairs consulting firm specializing in social science research, demographics and civic engagement. Prior to his consulting work, George served as a civil rights investigator for several state agencies and completed a Masters in Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

I was thinking "wow, I didn't realize I was a minority in Renton." But then it occurred to me that my own house is only 25% white.

@5 -- you raise a key point. Any successful redistricting map will only come into being when it works for the incumbents, of both parties. The majority-minority district will obviously elect a Democrat, and you can be sure Republican commissioners will mightily resist adding another sure D to the WA delegation.

Unfortunately, there is a LOT of work to be done before we can turn minority districts into minority voting districts. Like eastern Washington, most folks in working class minority communities don't vote. If you look at south county with huge communities of color in places like auburn federal way you have republican mayors same in eastern Washington he'll twkwila is the most diverse in the country but their whole gov is white and conservative. George and a lot of activists should concentrate on voter registration and turn out if not these minority districts will stay conservative because the few non minorities vote consistently

@7 You are correct in that it isn't an artificial construct. Having grown up in Auburn, the proposed district really can be considered an defined geographic community. Folks in the KingCo South End don't identify with either Seattle or Tacoma, and certainly not the Eastside.

The question really is, will an established (read: white) pol win such a district, or a new face (read: Cheung)? What will the actual electorate look like?

@12: Hah! I wasn't cynical enough to consider that Cheung might run for such a seat...