Redistricting 2011: How to beat Joe Coniglio

could pull off one hell of an upset.

That'd be nice, but I think the Supreme Court would have to reverse 1962's Baker v. Carr decision and I don't see them doing that. That was the one that issued "one man, one vote." Another way to add GOP votes to 38 would be to add Hawthorne and North Haledon to the district and remove Cliffside Park. That would mean a primary between Girgenti and Coniglio (a real race) and a swing in off years of 3,000 or so votes to the Republicans.

... that a district including Ridgewood, perhaps New Jersey's quintessential Republican town (but where Kerry ran even with Bush in 2004) -- a town where my grandparents grew up and then raised my mother, and where, as my grandfather would joke ruefully, "An elephant could get elected mayor" -- could still go Democratic ...

Shouldn't the public be fed-up? Would it not be a good time to demand "Initiative and Referendum" from our Republican Legislators.

If you can run for Governor with 1000 signatures why not place a binding referendum on the ballot with 1000 votes. If we demand that they all favor I&R we could move the ball. How many of our Republicans want to have the people involved? Right, that's why we should be cleaning them out.

As for how to beat Coniglio here and now, Democrats should learn the lesson of Senator Bennett. If they don't throw out their garbage, Republicans will.

"The ultimate decision about what is acceptable as right and wrong will be made not by individual wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the 'wrong' beliefs." - F. A. Hayek

The districts as they are composed not only favor Democrats, but machine-oriented, fiscally irresponsible Democrats. It was not always this way. For instance, my town of Fair Lawn (where George Bush had one of his biggest nationwide improvements in 2004 and where the GOP won two council seats by a landslide in 2005), used to be in the 40th District which extended north to West Milford. We did not have pairing with the Democratic bastions in eastern Bergen and this allowed our moderately Democratic town to elect Republicans like Nick Felice along with the rest of the district. Similarly, Hawthorne, North Haledon and Totowa are locked in the 35th District with Paterson which is a representational absurdity for these conservative communities. We should also amend the state constitution to allow division of Paterson into more than one district. Having this voting force locked in one district has assured victory for every Democrat since 1995 and most before that. If Paterson was split into two different districts, they could truly be competitive with liberal Paterson and conservative suburbs.

Coniglio is safe as long as he isn't indicted. If that happens, then Uncle Joe pulls the rug out and the switcheroo saves the seat.

Rep Conscience... it is six states that do NOT have County government. The other 44 do have counties, for what their worth.

As for redistricting, the anemic growth rate in NE NJ will require Newark and Jersey City based districts to grow outward. It appears that each city will include parts of three districts (even though the Constitution clearly states their districts only allow for two districts based on population).

Based on the current ideal district of 218K and the Hudson districts averaging about 13K below that, a couple of additional Bergen towns will have to be swallowed. Look for Cliffside Park and/or Edgewater to sink into the abyss. This would go a long way toward making 38 potentially competitive again in 2011.

I don't think I'd call Hudson an abyss, but it is certainly shrinking, with only Jersey City, Hoboken, amd West New York growing between 2000 and 2006, and only Hoboken beat an anemic 1% rate of growth. The new districts could end up looking something like this: Dist. 31 Bayonne 58,844 Jersey City 159,000=217,844 District 32: Kearny 38,008 N. Bergen 57,237 Secaucus 15,562 Harrison 13,942 E. Newark 2,217 Fairview 13,628 Edgewater 9,628 Jersey City 68,000 =218,000, but then... District 33... UC 63,930 WE 12,649 WNY 46,398 Hob 39,853 Gutt 10,717 JC 12,000 185,547 And also the 33rd cannot easily be added to anything else. Enter scenario 2... Bayonne and 23,000 Jersey City residents are now in District 20... District 31: Jersey City: 218,000 Now the remainder of Hudson County only has 314,141 people as of 2006, only enough for a district and a half. Thus, the 32nd could potentially become... UC 63,930 WE 12,649 WNY 46,398 Hob 39,853 Gutt 10,717 N. Bergen57,237 230,784 Theoretically by 2010, that district might only have 225,000 people. This would mean a primary between Brian Stack and Nicholas Sacco, which I think Stack would win since he beat Sal Vega in West New York. The problem is what do with the 69,729 residents of West Hudson who would now be out of a district. They could be added to an Essex-Passaic District that could look like this... Kearny 38,008 Secaucus 15,562 Harrison 13,942 E. Newark 2,217 Bloomfield 34,444 Belleville 45,372 Clifton 79,606 229,151