In a hearing on the post-2000 redistricting (or "gerrymandering") in New York state, Representative Benjamin Gilman, an upstate Republican, remarked that in 1982, he had been promised by the majority leader of the state senate that "if I accepted that challenge of a fair-fight district, I would never again be asked or forced by the state to face that prospect of a fair fight [with Democrats] once again... I think it would be unfair not only to myself and my district to face that divisive prospect once again."

[According to Richard Pildes, a professor of law at New York University, by 2002 (when eighty-one incumbents ran unopposed by a major party candidate), there were roughly four hundred "safe seats" in Congress and the level of competitiveness had fallen so far that the House could hardly be described as involving competitive elections at all.]

[Republican strategist Ben Ginsberg had a nickname for the Republican redistricting operation in 1990: "Project Ratf---."]