By Gene Robbins, The Packet Group
Redistricting — the once-in-a-decade process to even up the size of the 40 legislative districts — reached a head Sunday, just a week before candidates for state office have to file petitions to get on the ballot for this year’s elections.
Politicians and prospects now know the makeup of their election districts, and have until Monday (April 11) to file to get on the June primary ballots.
The 2011 map places Hunterdon County’s East Amwell Township, West Amwell Township and Lambertville — now in the 23rd District — in the 15th District, along with Mercer County’s Hopewell Borough, Hopewell Township, Pennington Borough, Lawrence Township, Ewing Township, Trenton and West Windsor.
Lawmakers must live in the area they represent, so the new map may mean that legislators whom voters have grown used to seeing or hearing about in the last 10 years now might live outside the boundaries of their new district. Assembly incumbents, such as Reed Gusciora (who now represents the 15th District), face a choice — change their place of residence or run for office in an unfamiliar area.
Princeton Township resident Gusciora, a Democrat, has been in the Assembly since 1996. His hometown has been moved out of the 15th district and into the heavily Republican 16th.
Assemblyman Gusciora, who moved from Princeton Borough to Princeton Township in March, is now packing his bags to move over the legislative border — probably to Trenton — to stay with his 15th District.
”I put my house on the market (Sunday). I’ve represented the district for 16 years,” and it would be hard to start over in the new 16th district with only one community remaining intact from the former 15th, he said.
Come January, the Princetons will be in the 16th district. With the new legislative lines drawn, Mercer County has three districts: 14th, 15th and 16th. Political analysts say the new map leans toward the Democrats statewide.
Exchanging West Windsor for Princeton in the 15th District makes the new 15th District marginally more competitive, according to Dudley Sipprelle, chairman of the Princeton Borough Republican committee.
Republican Assembly candidates in West Windsor only lost the last election by four percentage points, whereas in Princeton, it was more than 20 points.
THE 2010 CENSUS population counts, certified in early February, triggered the clock in the process. Both political parties drew maps to their preference. Each district aimed to have a population of about 220,000, plus or minus 5 percent, to be relatively equal, said Ingrid Reed, who worked at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics until last summer.
The 15th District was one of the districts smaller than the ideal 220,000 population and had to be expanded. Thus, after all was said and done, West Windsor (now in the 14th), and Hunterdon County’s East Amwell, West Amwell and Lambertville — currently in the 23rd District — were added to the 15th.
The respective maps went to a redistricting commission of five Democrats and five Republicans. It began meeting jointly in January and, not surprisingly, deadlocked. On March 3 state Supreme Court Justice Stuart Rabner chose a tie-breaking independent member, Alan Rosenthal, 78, a Princeton resident and a Rutgers University political science professor and director of the Eagleton Institute from 1974-94, as the neutral tie-breaking member.
Mr. Rosenthal worked with the two parties to try to develop a consensus, Ms. Reed said, but ultimately had to choose one of the parties’ maps. He selected the one submitted by the Democrats, who immediately proclaimed “victory” in a press release from their state leadership. A GOP court challenge is possible, but not considered likely.
On Monday, Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, said the new map, was “only slightly better” than the previous map, which he called “unfair and unconstitutional.” He had jumped into the debate personally, meeting three times with the GOP team during commission meetings in the last few weeks.
Central New Jersey is one of the most radically re-configured areas. Nine municipalities have been moved out in the 16th District, for instance, and five different ones included, said Ms. Reed. Its common characteristic is post-war, sprawling suburbia, she said, with a number of older boroughs.
The 16th was a compact north-south district — it took 25 minutes to get from one end to the other, said Peter Biondi, one of its Assembly members. It has been changed to a meandering east-west area that stretches from the Delaware River (Delaware Township in Hunterdon) to South Brunswick at its easternmost end. South Brunswick was shifted to the 16th from the Democratic-leaning 14th, today represented by three Democrats.
From the 1700s to 1966, New Jersey’s Legislature was made up of two assembly members and one senator from each of the 21 counties. That meant that rural Somerset, for instance, had the same voting strength as heavily populated Essex or Hudson.
Then, in the 1960s, federal law and the courts decreed that state election districts have roughly the same number of people, while trying to be compact and fair to minorities.
So, since 1971, New Jersey has had 40 state legislative districts (each with two members of the assembly and one senator) drawn with little regard to county lines.
Victoria Hurley-Schubert, The Packet Group, and Ruth Luse, managing editor, contributed to this account.

