Should Vashon Island remain politically linked to West Seattle? Or should it be hitched to the Kitsap Peninsula? That’s the question suddenly raised by the Washington Redistricting Commission’s initial round of proposals for redrawing districts for the Legislature ahead of next year’s elections.

One of four competing maps moves Vashon from the 34th District, which is dominated by West Seattle, to a redrawn version of the 26th District, which currently stretches up the Kitsap from Gig Harbor to Bremerton.

First, a little background: In most states, redistricting, the once-a-decade process of rebalancing congressional and state legislative districts after the U.S. Census, is a bare-knuckled political process dominated by whichever party already controls the Legislature. But in Washington, a technically bipartisan commission draws the maps. Each of the four caucuses of the Legislature appoints a commissioner, and it takes three votes to approve the final maps.

That makes the process a subtle chess match unlike the brute power plays elsewhere. Each party is ultimately looking for incremental advantages. But all that making nice and cutting deals happens later. The first round of maps for legislative districts released last week are the opening salvo in the negotiation, and they’re aggressively partisan.

Only one of the four maps, the one proposed by former state Rep. Brady Walkinshaw, who represents the Senate Democrats, would move Vashon out of the 34th. The move is aimed at creating a safer, more Democratic 26th for first-term Sen. Emily Randall, who beat a weak Republican opponent by just 104 votes in 2018, a particularly strong year for Democrats. Both House members from the 26th are Republicans. One of them, conservative Rep. Jesse Young, R-Gig Harbor, is gearing up to challenge Randall next year.

Walkinshaw’s proposal would cut Young out of the district by moving its southern boundary north of Gig Harbor. It would also reach across Colvos Passage to take in Vashon and push north to include all of Bremerton, Randall’s home turf.

Walkinshaw said this decision to put the island into the 26th District was based primarily on two factors: the state law dictating that districts should unite “communities of interest” and the population growth in Seattle, which essentially requires that the 34th lose geographical area.

He pointed out that the ferry connection between Vashon and Southworth is 10 minutes, as opposed to 20 minutes between Vashon and Fauntleroy, and that Vashon’s population density, which is about 280 people per square mile, is more similar to the Kitsap Peninsula than to West Seattle.

On a statewide level, Walkinshaw’s map also creates fewer ferry-dependent districts, but with higher concentrations of ferry-dependent voters. For example, he proposes combining Whidbey Island, Anacortes and the San Juans in an “islands” district.

It’s worth noting that there’s a fairly strong likelihood this won’t happen. The Republican commissioners are unlikely to agree to convert a winnable swing district into a safe Democratic district without a major concession elsewhere in the state.

Politics aside, there are also structural and good-government reasons for doing this. The 34th, like all of Seattle’s districts, currently has too many people, and shaving off its only rural enclave is a sensible way to solve that problem. Also, unifying Bremerton in a single district is generally considered good because the process is supposed to avoid dividing cities and other local government boundaries if possible while unifying “communities of interest.”

But there are also some eyebrow-raising elements. Vashon is part of King County and would become part of a district otherwise made up entirely of Kitsap County. Meanwhile, the main justification for declaring Vashon and Kitsap County a “community of interest” is the lightly used ferry connection to Southworth. Anyone who’s spent any time on the ferry dock knows that the boats to and from West Seattle leave and arrive full much of the time, while only a handful of vehicles — mostly tradespeople who live on the Kitsap — go to and from Southworth.

And then there’s the question of representation. Except for the tenure of former Senate Majority Leader Sharon Nelson, an islander herself, the island has traditionally been the red-headed stepchild of the 34th, with just 6 percent of the district’s population. Meanwhile, as an unincorporated, ferry-dependent area, Vashon is uniquely dependent on the state, and therefore needs influential representatives. It’s so dependent that it has a well-established reputation for producing aggressively demanding constituents. Your correspondent first experienced this 20 years ago when he was covering Olympia for The Associated Press. Vashonites flocked to the capitol to protest the state’s abandonment of passenger-only ferry service between the island and downtown Seattle.

The 34th is currently represented by first-term Sen. Joe Nguyen, D-West Seattle: and Reps. Eileen Cody, D-West Seattle, and Joe Fitzgibbon, D-Burien. Cody and Fitzgibbon are both veteran lawmakers who chair powerful committees. Should Vashon join a new Democratic 26th, it would likely get Randall, a member of Senate leadership despite being one of the Legislatures youngest members, and two brand-new House members elected next year. It’s likely those House members will hail from Bremerton. It’s not clear how much influence those members would wield early in their careers, or how attuned they would be to islanders’ concerns.

“I enjoy representing Vashon islanders and am proud of the island and its values,” Fitzgibbon said when asked about the proposal. “I trust that the Redistricting Commissioners will take into account islanders’ views when deciding into which side of the water to district Vashon and Maury.”

There are also questions of how the island’s new representatives might come down on specific issues of policy. For example, there is a running debate between Vashon and Southworth about the allocation of ferry service. Where would a new Bremerton-based legislative delegation fall on that question? As an aside Walkinshaw’s map would have the effect of significantly reducing the number of lawmakers who are incentivized to care about the ferry system because it also lumps the San Juan Island and Whidbey Island into a single district.

But there’s also an interesting question of politics. Vashon’s voters aren’t necessary for Democrats to win in the overwhelmingly Democratic 34th. Even a redrawn 26th would be much more competitive, and fervent Democrats might relish the chance to help maintain Democrats’ majorities in the House and Senate. The island might be rewarded in various ways for that service. Likewise, the island’s comparatively small number of Republicans might also relish the possibility of being represented by politicians someone less able to dismiss them outright.

Exactly what the next step in the process will be isn’t totally clear. Because the census data was late this year, it’s not clear the commission will issue another round of maps before a final deal is cut.

Editor’s Note: Paul Queary, a Vashon resident, is a veteran political reporter who publishes The Washington Observer, an independent newsletter on politics, government, and the influence thereof in Washington State. You can find the Observer at washingtonobserver.substack.com.