Reply #14: He's got a lot to worry about these days:

[Freddie Stubbs]

Why Dennis Kucinich Has a Target on His Back

With redistricting looming, the Ohio congressman’s plight shows how the GOP will be able to make 2012 more difficult for Democrats across the country.


From 1998 to 2008, longtime Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich won each of his reelection campaigns by at least 49,000 votes. Even in the Democratic bloodbath that was the 2010 midterms, the former mayor of Cleveland and presidential candidate carried his district in northeast Ohio by a 16,000-vote margin, more than 8 percent. So why should he be worried about 2012?

Because it’s redistricting season again, the time when legislators redraw district boundaries based on new census data, and Republicans in Ohio are holding the pen. The Ohio GOP won the governor’s seat and took over the state legislature in the midterms, part of a nationwide statehouse surge that has placed Republicans in charge of redrawing congressional-district lines in 17 states, which account for a full 193 out of 435 seats in the House of Representatives, including all the seats from the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Come 2011, the GOP will control more state legislatures than at any time since 1928. Democrats, by contrast, have maintained control of the redistricting process in six states and will have sole say over 44 districts (that will rise to seven states and 72 districts if Democrats end up holding the New York state Senate).

Is all that a prescription for Republican dominance until the next round of redistricting in 2020? Not quite. District borders are only part of the election equation. “You still have to have good candidates good campaigns,” says Tim Storey, senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures. But redistricting can give certain candidates a “head start,” as Storey puts it. And the quagmire Kucinich is facing illustrates how the GOP will be able to make life more difficult for Democrats across the country.

more: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/15/redistricting-could-spell-trouble-for-democrats.html