"I don't object to polarization if it achieves an objective."
- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga)
"We saw our opportunities and we took them. Is this the way it ought to work'?Of course not."
- Virginia Representative Thomas M. Davis III, who oversaw the House Republicans' 2000 redistricting efforts as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee
"Even in Madison's day, the practice of gerrymandering for partisan advantage was familiar. In the late seventeen-eighties, there were claims that Patrick Henry had tried to gerrymander Madison himself out of the First Congress. The term was coined during Madison's Presidency, to mock Elbridge Gerry, the governor of Massachusetts, who in 1811 approved an election district that was said to look like a salamander."
- Jeffrey Toobin, Journalist
"We are in the business of rigging elections."
- Former State Senator Mark McDaniel (R-North Carolina)
"It used to be that the idea was, once every two years voters elected their representatives, and now, instead, it's every ten years the representatives choose their constituents."
- Pamela Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School
"It seems very odd for you to be telling us that partisan gerrymandering is improper or say it is improper to address it."
- Justice Anthony Kennedy, referring to Texas' previous redistricting map, which was drawn by Democrats when they were the state's majority party.
Sources:
Jeffrey Toobin: DRAWING THE LINE, "Will Tom DeLay's redistricting in Texas cost him his seat?" by JEFFREY TOOBIN; The New Yorker Magazine, March 6, 2006
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060306fa_fact
Pamela Karlan (quoted in Toobin New Yorker article above)
Mark McDaniel:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060306fa_fact
Newt Gingrich: cited in Fight Club Politics, How Partisanship is Poisoning The House of Representatives by Julie Eilperin; 2006
Thomas M. Davis III:?cited in Fight Club Politics, ibid
Anthony Kennedy cited in Fox News Supreme Court Mulls Texas
Redistricting Map by Jane Roh, Thursday, March 02, 2006
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186542,00.html
