Or: Steve King, meet Mason City. Mason City, meet Steve King.
U.S. Rep. Tom Latham recently moved to Clive in preparation to challenge U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell for Iowa’s new 3rd House District. The Dallas County part of Clive is in the area that overlaps between his old and new districts. Based on the numbers given in the Register’s Redistricting Game from last year, here’s a guide to how much Iowa’s congressmen will need to travel to get acquainted with their new districts. The ideal district size is 761,589.
- Bruce Braley currently represents nine of 20 counties and 48.2% of the population of the new 1st. Most notably new are Linn, Marshall, and the eastern part of the tier along the Minnesota border.
- Dave Loebsack currently represents 15 of 25 counties and 53.8% of the new 2nd. Scott and Clinton counties account for much of the remainder population.
- Leonard Boswell currently represents only one county of the 16 in the new 3rd, Polk, but that accounts for 56.5% of the entire district!
- Tom Latham represents three — Dallas, Madison, and Warren — and they made up 16.8% of the population of the 3rd District in 2010.
- Finally, Steve King represents fewer than half of the new 4th — 18 of 39 — and they account for just under half of the population, 46.9%. The overlap is the three westernmost counties in the northernmost six tiers. Cerro Gordo, Story, and Webster are all new.
As I said early on, the big winners in this redistricting will be Iowa’s TV stations. The 3rd District is expected to be one of the nation’s hottest races, meaning lots and lots of money for Des Moines and Omaha. Meanwhile, with Christie Vilsack challenging King, viewers all the way up in Rochester MN are going to learn a lot about the formerly-western-Iowa congressman. The 1st District candidates can probably stick to the eastern Iowa stations, but those in the 2nd will need to go into the Quad Cities and Des Moines too.
The lines are not truly as defined as this map makes it; most border counties get both. See my main TV maps page for more detail. (No, I don’t know why Kossuth is with the Des Moines market.) Despite the division, it’s not likely Steve King will be parachuting into Reinbeck’s Independence Day parade, although Grundy County is his most Republican east of I-35.
UPDATE 5/16/20: Fixed directional mistake.