Former Iowa Governor and U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad spoke at the Jefferson Rotary Club meeting earlier this week.

The Iowa Legislature recently approved the second set of congressional and state legislative maps that were presented by the non-partisan Iowa Legislative Agency. Branstad talked about how today’s process of selecting district boundaries got its start when he was first elected in 1972 to serve in the Iowa House.

“And that’s a year that the (Iowa) Supreme Court struck down the legislative plan because it was protecting incumbents and not doing enough to equalize enough representation. So we came up with a bipartisan system where the Legislature cannot amend the proposal that’s developed by the Legislative Service Bureau. And they either have to approve the first plan (and) if they reject that, go to a second plan, and in this case they chose the second plan.”

The longest serving governor in U.S. history weighed in on the newly enacted congressional district maps.

“I agree that the first plan wasn’t fair, especially the congressional districts. When you have Ames, Ottumwa, and northeast Iowa all in the same district, to me that doesn’t make a lot of sense. You’re never going to have a perfect plan but I think the Legislature did the right thing and they pass the reapportionment plan on a strong bipartisan vote.”

The new redistricting maps will be used going into the 2022 midterm elections.