Brownsberger, the Senate chairman of the committee, countered repeated comparisons in the Fourth District between Fall River, a blue-collar city whose economy has been built on manufacturing, and the wealthy Boston suburbs of Newton and Brookline that anchor it to the north. “I don’t see a thriving immigrant community, at least by the numbers.” “I hear immigrant communities and I look at the numbers: Fall River is 71 percent non-Hispanic white,” Moran said, comparing it to New Bedford, where 40 percent of residents are people of color. One of every 5 residents in both cities was also born outside the United States, according to census data. Fall River, a 94,000-person city, and New Bedford, with 105,000 people, have the country’s highest numbers of Portuguese-American residents, a connection advocates and some South Coast elected officials urged lawmakers not to split along district lines. Moran and others appeared to chafe at several arguments advocates made to combine the cities in one district, questioning assertions about Fall River’s immigrant population and outright rejecting the suggestion that the plan gerrymandered the region, particularly along racial lines.Īrguments on Tuesday, however, often centered on culture. We’re going to do what we think is right,” he said.
“It is a very unique kind of thing that we’re looking at here today. Moran, a Brighton Democrat and the House chairman of the redistricting committee, said of those testifying for or against the South Coast proposal. “I don’t know if it’s 50-50, but it’s pretty close,” state Representative Michael J. On Tuesday, the competing arguments seemingly ping-ponged between speakers over 5 1/2 hours, dominating a legislative hearing that was ostensibly designed to take feedback about all nine proposed districts.
The decision has polarized the region’s elected and civic leaders over whether the two cities should share a representative and potentially strengthen their shared political hand or whether they would be best served as the largest city in their own districts.
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