Here & Now

Rep. Todd Novak on a Surprise Republican Redistricting Bill

Frederica Freyberg:

A Republican state representative who has long championed the Iowa model is here. Todd Novak joins us from Dodgeville. Thank you for being here.

Todd Novak:

I’m glad to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how surprising was it for you that suddenly the speaker moved to a redistricting process similar to what you have long proposed?

Todd Novak:

It wasn’t too surprising. My colleague and I, Representative Tranel from the 49th who’s in the neighboring district and I have been on this for years. We first started, him and I, talking about this after the last election. It’s like, you know, after going through the last court case, even before the election, and we started pushing and we actually met with the speaker before April and he said, you know, you might be right, talk to your colleagues, see if you can talk to some Democrats and we need to really probably take a look at this. Now, this is before April. So we have been working on it and, you know, I will say, it was — talking to some of my colleagues that have been opposed to it and why we need to do it, was not the easiest task, but they listened and then finally we got to a point, I would have rather put it out in May or June. Finally we got to a point where we had it coalesce, we had everything together and we went with it and so I will say this, in my career, this is one of the highlights of my legislative career.

Frederica Freyberg:

Does it matter to you that the about-face on the issue comes in the midst of redistricting lawsuits and talks of impeachment of Justice Protasiewicz and this Democratic ad blitz against that and that it came so quickly like that?

Todd Novak:

I mean, from me looking on the inside, talking to my Democrat colleagues over the summer, and our working group, I know the optics look bad, but, I mean, I’m usually considered one of the pretty trustworthy guy in the legislature by both parties, and my word’s gold, and we didn’t just throw this out in two or three days. I know the optics may look bad, but I’ve been working hard. We’ve been working, four or five of us, very hard on this for months, and as far as impeachment issue, we have not even talked about impeachment. I am one of the people that are being targeted by this — all this money, the Democrat money, and, you know, I really don’t care about it. I don’t tie the two together. I know the media maybe and the Democrats do, but in my mind, that’s not why I did this. Look at my record. I’ve been doing it for 10 years.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about the lawsuits? I mean, did that…

Todd Novak:

I have no I’m not — that’s not anything to do with me. I don’t even, you know — that’s — I’ve — I’m so used to — you know, you look back — we’ve been in the courts for two years on redistricting, two, three years. This all started — I mean this is kind of what got my colleagues there. The court could essentially flip in two years and then we could be back doing this. I don’t think anybody wants to do maps every two years, and now we have a system in place where it’s out of our hands.

Frederica Freyberg:

How do you respond to Democratic critics of the bill, including the governor, who calls it bogus?

Todd Novak:

The same governor who stood at the Assembly chamber podium demanding we do this in the state of the state or budget address, put this in his budget, I believe, this same exact plan, and now he’s saying it’s bogus. I think yesterday was very telling to me. We have all the Democrat caucus on record, various statements supporting this exact same thing, and now they were just yesterday, just totally flipped. And, oh, no — I won’t say all of them, secretly, behind the scenes, some said we really want this but our leadership won’t let us.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to get this question in. What about the question that earlier proposals for non-partisan map-making would require approval of at least three-quarters of all members elected in each house, whereas this proposal does not require that?

Todd Novak:

Now, we changed that to bipartisan, and it has to be a bipartisan vote. That was one of the — we put six amendments on last night with the request of some of our Democrat colleagues. It’s changed to bipartisan. And the reason is simply 75%, you could have 10 Democrats let’s say and 10 Republicans that say, selfishly say, I don’t like what you did to my district, I’m not voting for it. 75% threshold isn’t just getting another side on board, it’s getting — it would just be almost impossible to get in a certain situation. I don’t ever want that to happen. It doesn’t happen in Iowa. It’s not in the Iowa model. So only changes this bill from Iowa is what the Legislative Reference Bureau said we had to change to match our constitution.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Representative Novak, we need to leave it there. Thanks very much for your time.

Todd Novak:

Thank you. I’m glad to talk to you. Have a good day.