11th District

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!Just ask any member of the Congressional Black Caucus or one of their special-interest support groups that railed against the Supreme Court's decision throwing into doubt specially crafted minority election districts.To hear them tell it, this is the end of democracy as we know it. One advocate called it ''the first step in the resegregation of American electoral democracy.''In fact, the court decision may lead in the opposite direction: An end to a dangerous trend toward segregating voters according to race.

The once decorous state Senate race in northwestern Baltimore County has turned nasty, with incumbent Democrat Paula C. Hollinger and GOP challenger Richard J. Manski hurling accusations of lying and distortion.Ms. Hollinger was furious Friday about a Manski campaign brochure that included a "Special Crime Alert Insert!" The insert showed a photo of drug paraphernalia with the caption, "Free Heroin and Crack for Addicts," Paula Hollinger, Baltimore Sun, 10/10/94.She complained that her remarks had been distorted and taken out of context.

It may have been political naivete, but when Jodi Hammerman said, "I'm speaking realistically," she meant it -- even though it violated conventions of partisan optimism.Realistically, "something cataclysmic" will have to happen for the Republican Party to capture more than one of three House of Delegate seats in the 11th District of Baltimore County, the 30-year-old attorney and GOP hopeful said.With Democrats enjoying a 2-to-1 registration edge in the sprawling northwestern district, that cataclysm would have to include a major Democratic defection to more conservative Republican candidates -- traditionally the only way the GOP can win in the county.

Sen. Paula C. Hollinger trounced fellow Sen. Janice Piccinini last night in their race for the Democratic nomination in the newly created 11th District of northwestern Baltimore County.In the equally new and adjoining 10th District, Del. Delores G. Kelley swamped community activist Harold G. Gordon for the Democratic Senate nomination in unofficial returns.The new 10th, which includes Woodlawn, Randallstown and the Liberty Road corridor and has a large black majority, will bring the county its first elected African-American officials.

There are few verities in politics but one is that a Baltimore County state senator will bite the dust in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary.Sen. Paula C. Hollinger, 53, of Pikesville, and Sen. Janice Piccinini, 48, of Timonium, are each determined to be the one still standing after the electoral shootout.But this cannot be: One must fall.The confrontation between the two incumbents, both feisty liberals, arose when district lines were redrawn to meet population changes in the 1990 Census and court decisions requiring more black representation.

He isn't the nominal head of the state Democratic Party, he doesn't hold public office anymore, and a lot of people didn't recognize him at first.But state Sen. Paula C. Hollinger couldn't have been more pleased with the endorsement she got Tuesday night from former Gov. Harry R. Hughes.Support from Maryland's last governor, Mrs. Hollinger implied, will do more for her campaign than the endorsement Gov. William Donald Schaefer gave her opponent, Sen. Janice Piccinini, in a bitter battle of Baltimore County incumbents thrown together by redistricting.

One man, one vote is the principle the founders of our country used as a basis for our government.This is the reason that after everydecennial census, the General Assembly must redraw the congressionaland legislative districts within Carroll and Maryland.That has been dictated by Congress as well as the U.S. Supreme Court.Ideally, the process works to ensure that every citizen has equal and fair representation. Population changes -- people move, people die.An area that in 1980 had 50,000 people might have a population of 100,000 in 1992.

Pikesville's state legislators told their constituents last night that they have reached the 11th hour for the 11th District.Sen. Paula C. Hollinger said the redistricting plan approved Dec. 18 by the governor's Redistricting Advisory Committee would chop up communities and decimate the district she has represented for 14 years.She said there are problems with the plan everywhere in the district: Communities such as Imperial Gardens and Millbrook would be divided; some 16,000 people would be shifted into the city-based 42nd District; and the Pikesville business district -- the focus of an intensive revitalization effort in the past decade -- would be split between the city and the county.

In Baltimore County, redrawing the lines for state legislative districts is far more than a partisan battle. It is, at its core, a matter of whether the county's growing African American population will be equitably represented in Annapolis. The plan approved by the county's Senate and House delegations is, however, little more than tokenism: It simply takes a block of black voters out of the 11th District and attaches that "sub-district" to the 10th.Since all the 11th District delegates are Democrats, and all those in the 10th are Republicans, the brouhaha over partisanship which has come in its wake is understandable.