Approval of the new Hampden District, now represented by Sen. James Welch of West Springfield, creates a 3rd "majority-minority" Senate district, up from the current 2.
BOSTON – Massachusetts legislators considered placing all of Springfield into one state Senate district, but ultimately rejected the possibility in order to create a new Senate district with a higher percentage of minorities old enough to vote, a top lawmaker said Tuesday.
Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg, the Senate chairman of the Joint Committee on Redistricting, explained the reason for designing the new lines of the Hampden Senate District after the panel voted to approve new maps of state legislative districts. The committee unveiled the maps last week, but allowed a week for comment before Tuesday's vote.
Approval of the new Hampden District, now represented by Sen. James T. Welch of West Springfield, creates a third "majority-minority" Senate district, up from the current two.
Welch said the only negative is that the new district drops Agawam from his current district.
Sen. James Welch"I was very supportive of creating a minority-majority district," Welch said Tuesday. "I stepped up and said, 'It makes sense if it's part of the district I currently represent.' "
Legislators are drawing new state districts -- 160 in the state House of Representatives and 40 in the Senate -- to comply with population changes since 2000.
Rosenberg said the goal in Hampden County was to create a district mostly of blacks, Hispanics and other minorities of voting age, not to create a seat entirely of Springfield.
Rosenberg acknowledged that the entire city of Springfield's population of 153,060 includes mostly minorities -- 39 percent Hispanic, 22 percent black and 2.4 percent Asian, according to the 2010 census. But the voting-age population in the city has lower percentages of minorities, he said. And to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act, a district's voting-age population was used, he said.
State Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst.The committee also needed to balance other factors in establishing the new "majority-minority" Hampden district, including ensuring each Senate district is within plus or minus 5 percent of 163,691, the ideal population for a Senate district, and making changes as minor as possible to keep as many people as possible in the same district. It was also important to make sure voters had a fair chance to elect someone representing political and other considerations of the district, Rosenberg said.
Legislators could have added 10,000 people to Springfield to bring it up to the ideal size and keep the city whole, but that might have meant diluting the strong percentage of minorities with whites from neighboring towns or all but destroying Sen. Michael R. Knapik's Westfield-based district, one of only four Republican Senate districts, Rosenberg said. Knapik picked up Agawam, which is 95 percent white.
In order to establish the new Hampden district, it made more sense to unify the minority neighborhoods in Springfield and add precincts in Chicopee with high percentages of minorities, Rosenberg said. Generally speaking, the new Senate district does not include neighborhoods in Springfield with mostly whites, he added.
The new Hampden Senate district includes about 110,000 people in Springfield, according to Welch. The rest of the city is in the district of Sen. Gale D. Candaras, a Wilbraham Democrat, whose district currently includes a bigger portion of the city.
While the city's two senators are currently from the suburbs, the new district could give a Springfield resident a greater chance of getting elected in the future, since it includes more people from the city, according to Rosenberg.
The district, a variation on Welch's current district, includes 18 new precincts in Springfield from neighborhoods such as Liberty Heights, Hungry Hill and portions of East Springfield and Indian Orchard. It also includes all of West Springfield and new precincts in Chicopee.
The new district, with a population of 158,315, includes 37 percent Hispanic, 18 percent blacks and 41 percent white, according to the state Senate. It includes some areas already in Welch's district including the North and South Ends of the city.
Anthony L. Cignoli, a Springfield political consultant and partner in a group proposing a casino for Holyoke, said most people in Springfield think the new majority-minority Senate district makes sense. People don't seem concerned that Springfield remains split among two senators, he said, partly because the city is and has been represented by senators who keep a high profile in the city, he added.
The state House of Representatives and the state Senate are expected to vote next week on the new legislative maps.