If congressional redistricting fails, candidates can always run statewide, Stumbo says

Redrawing the congressional maps will likely produce a few headaches to start the session — but gridlock could produce an interesting political result, House Speaker Greg Stumbo said.

Stumbo, a Democrat from Prestonsburg, said if the courts have to intervene over the new congressional maps, Kentucky could end up with all the congressional candidates running statewide and the top six vote-getters go to Congress. That happened in 1932 when lawmakers clashed over redrawing the lines.

“What the court would do likely is require what they did once before is that there be an election this cycle and the top vote-getters in the congressional races just become the winners,” Stumbo said (3:00 to 4:00 of the interview)

Find out what Stumbo says about potential changes to the 1st and 6th congressional districts after the 4:30 mark of the video.

On the state House redistricting map, Stumbo said he couldn’t commit to whether the map would avoid pitting two incumbents against each other in the same district.

“We don’t know what map. Maybe yes and maybe no,” he said.

But he acknowledged that Republicans have a bit of an advantage in redistricting because most of the population growth occurred in suburban areas (Northern Kentucky, Bowling Green, outside of Lexington and in the ring counties around Louisville) that have been more conservative.

“Because of the growth, they are probably better situated to do that. That is likely. But they also are vulnerable in some of the seats they picked up last cycle,” Stumbo said (2:15).

Stumbo predicted the chambers to successfully redraw their own maps.

“The House and Senate plans likely will be done. Whether we can do something on the congressional map has yet to be seen,” he said. (6:30)