Greetings from Portage County, which is sort of like a disenfranchised Balkan state since congressional district maps were redrawn earlier this year.
In effect, we have no representation to speak of at the moment. Technically, Sean Duffy is our congressman after winning the "old" 7th District seat in last November's election. But Duffy has been as rare as a Buffalo nickel around here in the aftermath of the redistricting announced last summer, even though it technically doesn't take effect until the next election. Well, he did hold a town hall meeting in a rural community, which was announced a day before the event.
You can hardly blame Duffy for snubbing the old parts of the district. Why waste time on last year's corn? Besides, Portage County, with Stevens Point as the county seat, has been rock-solid Democratic country for decades. Duffy may be too slick for his own good, but he's not a dope.
The net result, though, is a de facto form of taxation without representation here. Duffy ought to refund part of his congressional salary. It's not like Duffy doesn't know where we are. He campaigned here last year and did attend a Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner last winter at a hotel on the edge of town. Maybe the fact that a couple of thousand protesters lined the roads outside the hotel had something to do with the congressman pretty much going AWOL since then. But that was in the heat of the Walker rebellion. If Duffy were to appear today there would probably only be several hundred protesters.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel came to the obvious conclusion earlier this year that the redistricting plan had one key goal: to protect Duffy. One way to do that is to whack off Portage County from the 7th District. Of course, redistricting is all about politics. If Democrats had been in control, they'd have wanted to protect their own, too.
The new district separates cities closely linked by proximity and economic, social and cultural ties. Wausau and Stevens Point are a half-hour apart. People move back and forth between the two cities every day for all sorts of reasons. They've been in the same congressional district for decades, and for good reason.
Over in Wood County, Marshfield stayed in the 7th District, while Wisconsin Rapids was yanked from it along with Point, and plunked in a weirdly shaped 3rd District, currently represented by Democrat Ron Kind. Nothing against La Crosse, the heart of the 3rd District, but it's a Mississippi River town. Central Wisconsin communities are all linked to the Wisconsin River valley.
When the redistricting was announced, former Democratic U.S. Rep. David Obey said it "shredded communities of interest." But it was actually a former Republican governor, Lee Dreyfus, who first pointed out that the communities of Marshfield, Stevens Point, Wausau and Wisconsin Rapids and points in between comprised a single entity he called a ruroplex. While chancellor at UW-Stevens Point, Dreyfus often used that term when he described the potential of the region.
The idea took off, sort of. Marathon and Portage counties jointly operate a regional airport. The Marshfield Clinic serves as a major regional medical facility. Indeed, the region is linked in ways that go well beyond political boundaries. That was ignored when politicians got their hands on the maps.
