Dimming a bright light

“This is why I’m not doing interviews right now,” an emotional state Rep. Megan Godfrey of Springdale said as she gave an interview right now, this being Tuesday afternoon.

But I’d texted, then emailed. I’d said I really needed to get directly from her some clarity on why she had announced abruptly Monday that she wouldn’t seek election in an alien state House district into which she’d been drawn hours earlier by the final action of the state Board of Apportionment.

She has represented for two terms a downtown Springdale district that is heavily Latino. She has, in fact, represented the heck out of it.

She connected her Spanishfluent self with it and managed as a moderate Democrat in a conservative Republican Legislature to pass legislation providing that children brought here by undocumented parents and trained to be nurses could get licensed as such.

Availing herself of sensitivities acquired as coordinator of secondlanguage programs in the Fayetteville schools, Godfrey also led the passage of a bill permitting school districts to offer dual immersion learning programs by which Latino students could simultaneously be taught coursework in Spanish while immersed in learning English.

She was a bright light in the dimming—and now dimmer—Democratic caucus of the Arkansas General Assembly.

So, long story short: The all-Republican Board of Apportionment— Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and Secretary of State John Thurston—announced several days ago proposed new legislative districts under the new Census that included the creation of the state’s first majority-Latino district.

As it happened, the new proposed map separated Godfrey’s nearby home from those Latino neighborhoods, presumably surprising even Hutchinson, and put her in a district going the opposite direction in Springdale and meandering into the country and up to Benton County.

She and others in her current district—Latino constituents—had mobilized to try to get the Board to revise the district to stretch it over railroad tracks to Godfrey’s home. Latino constituents said Latinomajority districts were inevitable, but that for now they’d prefer Godfrey to breaking in a rookie.

On Friday, the board did not change Godfrey’s situation. It gave final approval to the district as drawn.

On a redistricting map remarkable otherwise for protecting incumbents’ interests amid major population shifts, Godfrey was conspicuously unprotected.

In short order, Godfrey made the announcement on social media of her decision not to run. She did it with a thread of 10 posts on Twitter.

I understood them. Still, I needed to hear from her: Was she already certain she wouldn’t run in this new area next year because she knew a Democrat couldn’t win in it? Or was she dismayed by politics, by what political partisanship had done to her? Or was she so peeved as to say to hell with it, which, I’ll admit, didn’t sound like her.

It was, she said, with voice breaking, what she announced. The new district in which she now resides “doesn’t feel like a Springdale district,” and her essence as a Springdale native was representing Springdale. “It just didn’t seem like a good fit.”

Had she been given any reason to expect a different outcome from the Republican board? She said she indeed had been. She said she’d been led to believe—she said she couldn’t say by whom—that the Latino district would be tinkered with to put her back into it.

“You want to believe,” she said, more emotionally, “that people will do what they say.”

Was that dismaying for her as a relative newcomer to politics? She said it was.

I tried to make her feel better, failing at that, by saying she could find ways to maintain a high profile in continuing her championing of Latino causes. Maybe, she said, adding, “This isn’t part of any strategic plan. Right now I’m just giving myself a couple of days to be sad.”

I meekly suggested looking on the bright side. Maybe a Latino state representative will indeed get elected from the new district.

She said she hoped so, and that it would be a good and effective one, and that she had begun to think about how to encourage and support that.

“But I just have to say that I’m sorry it’s not going to be me.”

That’s where the column came in, with emotion that explained why Godfrey wasn’t giving interviews right now.

Hutchinson told me the board considered seeking to change the plan for Godfrey and in response to public comments, but found there was no way to do it and maintain the Latino voting-age majority population.

I suspect he was alone on the board in giving consideration to obliging Godfrey and her supporting constituents, but he wouldn’t say.

Telling Godfrey and her supporters—and readers—that it’s just politics and that politics can be ugly … that seems inadequate.

I wish we could have found out how an independent commission doing the redistricting instead of selfinterested politicians would have handled the situation.

Maybe next time. We only have to wait a decade.