Congressional Redistricting

An advisory committee to the governor set off a bipartisan furor yesterday by unveiling a congressional redistricting plan that would put two Republicans in a re-election race from the Baltimore suburbs to the lowest reaches of the Eastern Shore.If the legislature goes along, Representatives Helen Delich Bentley and Wayne T. Gilchrest will square off in the proposed 1st District extending from Mrs. Bentley's Lutherville home in Baltimore County to Crisfield in Somerset County."It's not a Democratic Party plan or a Republican Party plan.

ANNAPOLIS -- The Maryland Democratic Party scrambled to complete a new, harmony-inducing map of the state's congressional districts yesterday.The plan offered yesterday would throw GOP Representatives Wayne T. Gilchrest, R-Md.-1st, and Helen Delich Bentley, R-Md.-2nd, into the same electoral pot in a district that would cover the Eastern Shore and wind around into parts of Cecil, Harford and Baltimore counties.Party planners were drawing a new "minority rights district" for heavily black sections of Prince George's and Montgomery counties.

Picture a lifeboat with eight passengers and only seven seats. The odd person out swims home with the sharks.That, in a nutshell, sums up Maryland's once-a-decade congressional redistricting process. As the process nears an end, state leaders face the unsavory prospect of putting two of the state's incumbent representatives into the same district.With a modest population increase documented in the 1990 census, Maryland will hold on to its eight congressional seats. But, it's almost a given that a federal voting-rights law will require the state to carve out a new majority-black district in the Washington suburbs.

WASHINGTON -- Maryland's congressional map next year will likely include a minority district in the Washington suburbs and a "safe seat" for Representative Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md.-5th, that encompasses most of Southern Maryland, according to lawmakers and officials.With that scenario now gaining wide acceptance, political leaders gearing up for the decennial redrawing of political lines are focusing on its explosive consequence: Two members of the state's congressional delegation will end up in one district.