Both parties submit best and final map to Wallace, will adjourn congressional redistricting meetings until Monday

After four days of meetings with tiebreaker John E. Wallace, Jr., the New Jersey Congressional Redistricting Commission has adjourned for the weekend without a new map.

There still has been no map exchange between the two parties, with both sides being sent home by Wallace, a former state Supreme Court Justice who serves as chairman of the thirteen-member panel that had been holed up at a Cherry Hill hotel since Wednesday.

Instead, Wallace had both parties submit their best and final maps on Saturday, the New Jersey Globe confirmed.   Wallace and his staff will conduct their own reviews of the maps, including their own competitiveness analysis, before the commission resumes their session on Monday.

Wallace and his staff, which includes representatives of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, have been conducting a form of shuttle diplomacy.  He’s offered his comments on maps submitted by the two parties but has not brought both sides in to the room.

As a result, Democrats and Republicans have not seen the actual maps being proposed by their counterparts.

Last Friday night and into the early hours of this morning, Democrats argued over tweaks to the map being proposed two commissioners from South Jersey, Camden County Commissioner Jeff Nash and former Camden Mayor Dana Redd.  Those changes, the New Jersey Globe has learned, would have strengthened the winning percentage of Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), possibly at the expense of other Democratic incumbents.

But South Jersey Democrats withdrew their requests and consented to a version supported by the other four Democratic commissioners, the NJ Globe has confirmed.