is anyone here old enough to remember when Iowa went down to 5 seats in '92?

[RobertPlant]

I'm looking at a lot of old maps on what the Iowa districts used to look like and I noticed that in 1992, Neal Smith's district was gerrymandered to try to get rid of him by taking out Ames and Newton and adding in a lot of southwest Iowa.

[ISUGRADIA]

1. Nope, not gerrymandered

Non-partisan leg staff comes up with maps and the legislature votes up or down on them. State House and Senate were Democratically controlled those years. It was thought Smith could win in that district because of his senority and ag experience.

[RobertPlant]

2. he actually did win the first go round

In 1992 the first election Iowa had 5 districts, Smith won with 62% of the vote.

[rurallib]

3. iowa's method of re-alignment of house districts is considered

one of the best if not the best. Even at that it is hard to realign and not come up with some strange configurations.
Wasn't that the year that we got a district that went from river to river along the southern border?

[RobertPlant]

4. the southern Iowa district you're talking about

was Lightfoot's district and then in 1996 when he resigned to run for governor, Lenny Boswell was elected to that seat.