After a lengthy labor, we can slap that 1st Congressional District baby on the bottom and declare: It's a Democrat.
The close and contentious race finally produced a winner Tuesday when Andy Harris conceded and Frank Kratovil declared victory, shifting the conservative-leaning district from Republican to Democratic hands for the first time since 1991.
If it's true that victory has many fathers but defeat is an orphan, the parentage of Kratovil's win would have to include sheer timing (it was a good year for Democrats overall), third-party spoilage (the Libertarian candidate siphoned off potential Harris votes) and the blessing of the departing incumbent (Wayne T. Gilchrest, jumping party lines).
But there is another, older parent - call it the grandfather - of this victory: the 2002 redistricting plan, which seems to have succeeded beyond even the wildest dreams of its architect, then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening.
Even back then, the redrawing of district lines came off as blatantly partisan - and personal - with the Democratic governor rewarding supporters with friendly territory and punishing opponents with decidedly more hostile playing fields.
But it's only now that the true measure of what redistricting has wrought is apparent. Before the plan, Maryland sent an equal number of Democrats and Republicans to the House of Representatives; now, with Kratovil's victory, it's a decidedly more lopsided 7-1 split.
Redistricting is a time-honored political exercise, mandated by law after every census to make sure that congressional apportionment reflects any population shifts in the intervening years. Ha! Such mischievous men, those writers of our Constitution. Given that it's politicians who redraw the map, it devolved almost immediately into an exercise that is part creative, free-form drawing and part cutthroat power-grabbing.
The result is a lot of districts whose shapes generally would not be found in nature, crossing over major thoroughfares and even bodies of water, picking up a stray patch here, dumping a block there.
You could probably use them in a Rorschach test and see what the weirdly shaped districts that result call to mind. Maryland's 1st, for example, which at one point was simply the Eastern Shore, morphed into a district that includes parts of Baltimore, Harford and Anne Arundel counties. With the Chesapeake Bay jutting through it, I see a sea horse.
