Snyder Fails to Deliver for Democracy
Representative Pat Snyder’s campaign commercials (85th Assembly district) claim that he “always delivers.” In one of the most fundamental ways possible, Snyder has failed to deliver for the people of his district, and the state as a whole.
In a representative democracy, the people control the state legislature. Their votes will matter, and the makeup of the legislature will reflect the people’s priorities. In a partisan gerrymander, a political party controls the legislature regardless of the will of the voters. Under Wisconsin’s extreme partisan gerrymander, it didn’t matter how we voted. The Republican candidates always won 60 – 65% of the seats in the assembly. It didn’t matter which party won the most votes statewide for assembly candidates. The system has been rigged that way for many years.
For this year’s election, the State Supreme Court ruled that the partisan gerrymander violated the Wisconsin Constitution, and the court issued new legislative maps. As a last-ditch effort to protect their gerrymander, Republicans passed a toothless, window-dressing proposal that would establish a non-partisan commission to draw the legislative district maps. But under that proposal, the legislature was free to completely ignore whatever the commission might come up with and renew their extreme partisan gerrymander. Governor Evers wisely vetoed the legislation, calling for meaningful reform.
We still need a genuine nonpartisan redistricting law to prevent partisan gerrymandering. Representative Pat Snyder has failed to deliver on that issue, which affects all other issues that may or should come before the still gerrymandered legislature. Since his election eight years ago he has avoided taking a position on the issue, in spite of the wide majorities of both Democratic and Republican voters opposing partisan gerrymandering. He claims he supported nonpartisan redistricting because he voted for the sham proposal that left the gerrymanderers free to ignore the window-dressing commission they proposed.
Representative Snyder tries to use his vote for the sham proposal to take cover from the voters demanding meaningful reform. However, if he really wanted meaningful reform he would “take the pledge” in favor of effective non-partisan redistricting. Common Cause Wisconsin keeps track of legislative candidates who pledge to do so. I e-mailed Representative Snyder twice, inviting him to take this pledge. He has failed to do so. He has failed to deliver for representative democracy. He has instead delivered for the partisan gerrymanderers. His opponent, Yee Leng Xiong, made the pledge weeks ago. Fortunately, for those in the 85th district supporting meaningful nonpartisan redistricting reform there is a candidate prepared to deliver on this critical issue.