Let’s face it, a lot of folks (even our dear, wonderful readers) like to bitch and moan. They also don’t like to do squat when it comes to their issue of choice. We usually hear that it’s because one person can’t make a difference. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, tell that to a piano teacher who just ended up cited by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a decision that threw out all of our new legislative districts and forces us back to 2001 lines for the rest of the year – maybe.
Oh, and did I mention that this decision that relies on her proposal actually screws things up enough that candidates were already gathering petitions for the old (new) districts and now they may not even be able to run in them?
So, yeah, one person made a difference. Probably a bigger difference than she imagined.
I don’t know the details of the cited story yet, but I would observe that often one person can make a difference — if they have standing to take an issue to court. But, someone has to pay for it. You either put up your own money, or raise the money in some way. So in a very real sense, one person can make as big a difference in our system as they are willing to pay for.
The first thing that caught my eye in this story was her surname (Google it in our area) and the second thing was that she is a member of the Republican State Committee. Does either item mean anything? I don’t know, but I suspect she is not without resources or a network.
She was simply someone who submitted a map. Just because she has the same last name as people in this area doesn’t mean anything. You’re trying to be cynical about an issue without any evidence – which you admit.
Please admit that her being “a member of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania and a judge of elections for her precinct” totally tramples on the narrative of the article you link to and partly on your comments.
Yes, she’s “someone” (but the “simply” simply doesn’t apply) who “made a difference” (got cited and listened to … which in my book falls short of that phrase, let’s see if the new boundaries are actually Constitutional, certainly the once and future 2012 ones won’t be), but the characterization of her as “a piano teacher” just doesn’t fly. “Political operative” be too strong absent evidence, but something in-between….
Sorry, I missed that. But, she’s not a member of the redistricting commission. I was hanging out with a member of the Democratic state committee last election day, and he definitely wouldn’t have had this kind of pull. In that case, there is a bit in between.