Don’t oust Pasco Sen. Nikki Torres while redrawing the 15th District | Opinion

A federal judge has ordered Washington to redraw the 15th Legislative District, which stretches from Yakima to Pasco. It would be sadly ironic if in doing so, Sen. Nikki Torres, a promising Latina first-term lawmaker, were to lose her seat.

The judge in the case ruled that the current 15th District dilutes the Latino vote in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Latino voters are 51.5% of all voters in the district. That gives them some advantage on Election Day, but not enough to overcome historic discrimination and to encourage diverse representation in the Legislature.

At least that’s what U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik ruled.

Discrimination persists to this day. Benton County will pay $75,000 to settle a Latino voter discrimination lawsuit. And Franklin County also must change how its commissioners are elected, having to pay $375,000 to settle a legal battle over Latino voter representation.

The 15th District includes parts of Benton and Franklin counties.

The judge therefore ordered the state redistricting commission to redraw the district by January and include more Latino voters. If the commission fails, the court will intervene so that new boundaries are in place in time for the 2024 elections.

Latino voters will have to come from neighboring districts, and a corresponding number of white voters will be pushed into those districts. That could include the 8th and 16th districts, which cover the rest of the Tri-Cities area.

Voters in the 15th District elected Torres, R-Pasco, to the Senate last year. She replaced long-time Sunnyside lawmaker Jim Honeyford and handily defeated Democrat Lindsey Keesling in the general election.

Torres is a former president of the Tri-Cities Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a role that earned her a glowing reputation statewide. In her first year in office, she secured a leadership position as the Republican deputy floor leader.

She advocated for farmers, securing passage of bills to expand the state’s farm-internship program and to improve crop protection. And she championed the state’s Indigenous people.

It’s unclear whether the redistricting commission can meet the federal judge’s January deadline. The state might not even reconvene the commission. If it does, the fact that the commission held secret meetings last time and engaged in other shenanigans doesn’t leave much hope that it would do a fair job.

Whoever draws the 15th District’s new boundaries must proceed carefully so as not to unfairly oust Torres. The worst outcome would be if this turns into a scrum with Democrats gerrymandering another Senate seat for themselves.

When lawmakers formed the first ever Legislative Latino Caucus, only Democrats were welcome. The state’s two Republican Latino lawmakers weren’t invited, according to Rep. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy.

Such partisanship overrode the fact that Torres and Ybarra represent rural communities with large Latino populations. Apparently some Democrats reject the idea that Latino Washingtonians can hold diverse political views.

It will be fine if Torres loses a re-election bid someday fair and square. That’s politics, though we hope it’s to someone else with close ties to the Tri-Cities region.

It will be a great shame if she loses in her first re-election bid because mapmakers stacked the 15th District’s voters against her and her party.

This story was originally published September 8, 2023 at 5:45 AM.