Boston politics can go home from October 2022, but it can never leave.
The redistricting spectacle was back in the spotlight on multiple fronts on Monday, when a sitting congressman was testifying in federal court against the council’s process from this past fall and a city councilor filed a hearing order seeking to have the body go back and look at it all again.
A cast of Boston political characters coalesced at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in what was day four of at least six in a series of proceedings that will come before a judge will decide whether to implement a preliminary injunction to stop implementation of the map the council passed last fall.
The proceedings, which have already included the testimony of three current or former city councilors, continue to rehash the arguments on October, with the councilors representing South Boston and Dorchester and their allies alleging that the mapmakers acted improperly in the changes they made to Dot-centric District 3 and the public-housing heavy areas of Southie.
In Moakley on Monday were City Council President Ed Flynn and City Councilors Frank Baker, Michael Flaherty and Erin Murphy — the four of the 13 councilors who voted against the final map that passed in November and was signed into law by Mayor Michelle Wu. Baker and Murphy each would at times pop up to whisper with the counsel for the plaintiffs, who are suing the city council, so therefore technically them.
Elsewhere in the crowd were staffers for City Councilors Liz Breadon, the redistricting chair, and Ricardo Arroyo, co-sponsor of the map as well as assorted interested parties on both sides, such as former state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, one of the main organizers of support behind the final map and someone who pleaded guilty in 2010 in that very courthouse of taking bribes.
And on the stand was the congressman from South Boston, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, a witness for the plaintiffs.
Lynch was letting loose on the map as passed, saying it “eviscerated” certain communities of interest by splitting the Southie-based public housing between two districts and moving four precincts from southern Dorchester from Baker’s District 3 to City Councilor Brian Worrell’s D4.
“It changes the whole dynamic there — very divisive, I think,” Lynch said. After the hearing to reporters, when asked why a congressman was involved in this, he said “All politics is local, right?”
On the subject of how Baker has claimed he was “targeted” in redistricting, Lynch added that of Baker and Flynn, the district councilor from South Boston, “it could be that both of them were targeted.”
The city, the defendant in the case, called Dr. Moon Duchin, a redistricting expert, who, in a somewhat jarring contrast to how both sides portrayed the final map, called it “very status quo.” She said both the old map and the final map appear to comply with federal law.
About three-quarters of a mile away in City Hall, the issue was popping back up on the council agenda for the week. Murphy, an at-large councilor from Dorchester, filed hearing order to discuss the results of a local attorney’s records request for councilors’ emails during the nasty redistricting fight.
Murphy wrote that “several councilors, and their staff, have made it their top objective to ignore legal advice and push to draw district lines based on race,” and she several email chains involving Wilkerson, putting those into the council record.
Murphy also cited a line from Wilkerson in which the former state senator on Oct. 9 wrote that “We’re happy to report that we already have the major support of City Council members.”
That was about a week before the map was formally introduced into the council, and at the time several opponents of the map fumed about what they believed was behind-the-scenes impropriety as Breadon and Arroyo collaborated with activists.
The order calls for the council to hold a hearing at a later date “to discuss these concerns and ensure that we, the Boston City Council Committee of Redistricting, followed the proper procedures to redraw the redistricting maps.”
Wilkerson, reached by phone on Monday, said she’d be perfectly happy to show up to whatever hearing the council holds.
“There’s nothing nefarious or corrupt about being able to count,” Wilkerson said. “Any politician worth their salt counts votes. I’d be scared if she wasn’t counting votes … If anybody has any questions, I’m happy to answer them.”