Both the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News are reporting that U.S. House Republicans just killed the Davis bill.

Earlier Tuesday, a spokesman for House Majority Leader John Boehner reaffirmed that the bill is not coming up. "That hasn't changed," spokesman Kevin Madden said.

I am glad they waited until after Utah spent all that money and effort to create a map before they nixed it.

Maybe they didn't like the map. Or maybe they believed what I wrote and worried about Utah Democrats picking up a seat.

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Utah and DC's seat deal remains valid in theory.  The New York Times picked up the story, which makes it seem more likely this is going to happen after all.  But the local papers are the ones with the actual news.   Buried in the first couple paragraphs of the Deseret News' article yesterday was this gem on the "bipartisan" bill, which I will show you on the flip

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The Utah Legislature organized a whirlwind redistricting committee these past two weeks. The final approval by a special session is pending for next week. On the assumption that we'll be facing a vote on Map L, let's take a look at who won and lost so far.

Check out lots more news about Utah and redistricting on Brian's Utah Weblog.

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Cross Posted at The Third Avenue. Bumped--Chris

In the end, the Legislature's special committee decided on a plan whose map was never released to the public...Plan L(PDF).

 L looks somewhat similar to previous plans.  The new 4th district will be Southwestern Utah (Tooele, Juab [save the Eastern jug end where everyone lives], Millard, Beaver, Iron, Washington Counties). However, the 4th also would include Southern Salt Lake County-- South Jordan, West Jordan, Cottonwood Heights, Talyorsville, Sandy, and parts of West Valley. The new 2nd will be like the 1990's 2nd (Northern Salt Lake County, with the Park City part of Summitt County, and a tiny sliver of Davis and Utah Counties [Woods Cross and Alta respectively]).  The new 3rd will include Eastern Utah "centered" around Provo (Morgan, rest of Summitt, Daggett, Wasatch, Utah, Duchesne, Uintah, Carbon, rest of Juab, Sanpete, Emory, Grant, Piute, Wayne, Garfield, San Juan, and Kane Counties).  The new 1st will be centered around Ogden (Box Elder, Cash, Weber, 99% of Davis, and Rich Counties).  

Bottom line, Matheson could run in the 4th, but he would have to overcome super conservative Washington county.  He was born in Iron County, so he should be OK there. He is excited to get back Talyorsville and would love to kick around House Speaker Greg Curtis some more in Sandy.  I wonder if he will bite.  I will lobby him to, because this 2nd district is pretty Democrat friendly.  I can envision a number of candidates who could be successful and still be A) Democrats B) not named Matheson. I think Matheson could win in this 4th, but it will be tough.  All his pork for St. George will come in handy now.  

"We've had a significant amount of public input," Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, committee co-chairman told the Tribune. "There's been a great deal of discussion about the public perception that this is a majority party whitewash. That we are simply trying to gerrymander Republican Party seats. Nothing could be further from the case."

Um I say that is complete Bull.  No member of the public asked for protecting Matheson, not even Matheson.  The number of people wanting a mix of urban and rural districts were solely Republican partisans.  Why don't you ask the people living out in the rural areas if they want to fight for attention with Provo, Salt Lake County, or Davis/Weber Counties?  Of course they never had a hearing in rural areas, the closest they got was in St. George, our fastest growing city.

(Cross posted on the Third Avenue)

As expected, the Republican-controlled committee assigned with the task of drawing a 4-seat map for Utah released proposed maps when they were sure no one was looking--the day before Thanksgiving.

I will show you what they don't want the public to see in the extended entry.

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