Carving up the pie

Congressional districting is a fine-tuned art.

Some are kinda boring like Utah's three districts:

Utah is pretty red and there aren't large racial neighborhoods to be carved up.

Here's the map of the new guy, Jason Chaffetz:

Not many democrats here. Inner city Salt Lake and Ogden are the donkey strongholds in Utah, and Jason's got none of that territory. He's got the more affluent Salt Lake suburbs, Utah County, and the farm country. His biggest ethnic battle is the west side of I-15 in Salt Lake County. On balance, he's got a good chunk of the Utah conservative base.

But Illinois is much different. Here is the 14th district map, drawn by ex-Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert, so he could be assured a win every time.

Guess what? Hastert resigned abruptly to skirt the new lobbyist laws and a democrat won the district. A new democrat. Bill Foster.

Here's the district once held by Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff:

A few twists and turns, but still credible.

Now, here's the map of Luis Gutierrez' 4th district. This is a map custom made for a Hispanic politician:

It looks like a pair of pliers! The beauty of it is that it is 74.5% Hispanic. How weird is that? Cook County is 19.9% Hispanic. Chicago is 28.1%

I'd say Luis has it lucky. It does explain why Gutierrez is leading the parade on amnesty.