House Editor David Wasserman writes: When health care administrator Colleen Coyle Mathis applied to serve as the independent member of Arizona's redistricting commission, she touted her "post-partisan" views, noting she had drifted away from her past as a registered Republican in recent years. When her fellow commissioners chose her, Democrats were immediately optimistic they would get a much better deal in than they would have gotten if redistricting were in the hands of GOP legislators. Sure enough, the approved draft map is pretty much what Democrats would have drawn had they been in charge of the process, and a GOP nightmare.
Approved last Friday without the two GOP commissioners' support, the draft map packs Republicans into four safe districts, keeps safe seats for the state's three Democratic incumbents, and paves the way for two possible comebacks in both the areas Democrats lost last year. Former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick is already running for the state's rural 1st CD, which now stretches from her home base of Flagstaff to the Mexican border, and former Rep. Harry Mitchell may have the right of
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