Because the U.S. Census shows it has a lower percentage of population relative to other states, Massachusetts is one of the states losing a U.S. House seat during its redistricting process this year.\u00a0 But before Bay State cartographers can put pen to paper, they have to solve a simple math problem: what to do with 10 members who want 9 seats?<\/p>\n
According to Roll Call<\/em><\/a>, the Democratic Party may be expected to dust off its Joe Sestak file<\/a> on how (not) to coax a candidate into swapping a campaign for a cushy administration job.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what one operative had to say about a potential match-up of Democratic incumbents:<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s unlikely to happen unless there\u2019s some decision made at a higher level that such should be the case,\u201d said Philip Johnston, former chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, who also suggested national party leaders would have to find a soft landing for either of those Members, such as an ambassadorship, in order for them to willingly leave their seats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you were a voter, would you want to be represented by someone who\u2019s willing to be bought into retirement instead of fighting for reelection?\u00a0 Besides, how long would an ambassadorship last if President Barack Obama gets beat in 18 months?\u00a0 As most of the Massachusetts Democratic Congressional delegation knows, winning a seat in Congress virtually assures one of lifetime tenure.<\/p>\n Trading a long-term job for a short-term payoff isn’t a graceful exit.\u00a0 It’s an explicit admission that representing a constituency isn’t worth the price of fighting a competitive campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Because the U.S. Census shows it has a lower percentage of population relative to other states, Massachusetts is one of the states losing a U.S. House seat during its redistricting process this year.\u00a0 But before Bay State cartographers can put pen to paper, they have to solve a simple math problem: what to do with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[841,143,84,1308,159,977],"class_list":["post-9417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2012-elections","tag-barack-obama","tag-congress","tag-joe-sestak","tag-massachusetts","tag-redistricting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9417"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9420,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9417\/revisions\/9420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}