On a new map, Pennsylvania elects most diverse assembly ever
HARRISBURG — When mapmakers reimagined the boundaries of Pennsylvania’s 253 legislative districts, they did it with an eye on the state’s growing racial and ethnic minorities, and officials say that has helped yield the most diverse incoming class of lawmakers yet.
The number of state lawmakers who are Black, Latino or of South Asian descent will rise as part of what House Democrats call the “most diverse class of freshmen legislators” in Pennsylvania history after candidates ran in this year’s election in the newly drawn map of districts.
Pennsylvania’s Legislature will remain disproportionately white, like nearly every other state’s, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures last gathered in 2020.
But, in Pennsylvania, the once-a-decade process of redrawing district boundaries to reflect demographic trends may have had a greater impact than anywhere else on diversifying the racial and ethnic makeup of the Legislature.
“I think that having a fair map made it possible for a more fair expression of the will of the people,” said state Sen. Sharif Street, the state Democratic Party chair.
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2023/01/01/pennsylvania-legislative-districts-diversity/stories/202212270078
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And some of those new "diverse" people are NOT from the large densely urbanized areas. For example, there is a new state Rep. coming from Lancaster City in rural Lancaster County -
Rep.-elect Ismail Smith-Wade-El
The 2011 map had been severely gerrymandered and was taken to court and only had cosmetic changes done to it in 2012 with no further intervention because at the time, the GOP had a trifecta (Legislature, Governor, state Supreme Court). That same trifecta had done similar to the Congressional districts but those eventually got torpedoed in 2018, and the fairer redraw was pretty much maintained in 2020 (despite the loss of 1 congressional district).
This time things were different - i.e., only the state Legislature was GOP (and as of the 2022 midterms, even that is slowly changing as the GOP now only control one chamber of the state Assembly) and the Governor/state Supreme Court were and will continue to be (D)).
