With Republicans in charge of the state House, they managed to redistrict the state in such a way that four Democratic incumbents were "paired" against each other.
It was a redistricting plan Republicans believed would allow them to hold the majority of the state’s congressional districts throughout the decade.
“And they were right - for the first few elections,” quips Brown.
In 2000, the state's congressional delegation was split 11-10 in favor of Republicans. After the 2002 and 2004 elections, even after losing two districts in the reapportionment process, the state's congressional delegation was split 12-7 in the GOP’s favor.
The 2006 elections brought a major change - four Republican incumbents lost (Hart, Fitzpatrick, Weldon, Sherwood). In fairness, two of those losses more likely were related to the incumbents' scandals (Sherwood and Weldon) than to redistricting vulnerabilities.
The other two districts simply were competitive, vulnerable to swings in voter sentiment.
Republicans perhaps should have been wiser about making safer the seats they held in 2000, rather than trying to extend their reach or to maximize the number of GOP seats in the state’s congressional delegation.
Brown says Republicans in Harrisburg, in the last redistricting, probably overreached: They either dispersed Republican voters into too many districts or did not do enough to shore up those GOP districts that were clearly competitive and vulnerable to national waves running against the party.
Yet Keystone College political scientist Jeff Brauer throws a wrench into everything with what he calls “the X Factor” – the continual rise of independent voters.
“For the past several decades, American voters have identified and attached themselves less and less with either major political party,” Brauer says.
Blocks of independent voting areas make it more complicated to identify Republican versus Democratic districts, so necessary to successful packing, cracking or pairing.
Brauer says the inherently fickleness of many independents, who can be easily swayed in their electoral choices by the 24-hour news cycle, makes it very difficult to predict partisan voting behavior which is at the heart of successful gerrymandering.
“As usual, this state is in for a wild ride, and they largely have the Republicans who drew the map in 2002 to thank for that,” says Brown.