With just days remaining in the Legislature's post-census redistricting session, five Republican members of Louisiana's congressional delegation and Gov. Bobby Jindal are calling for state lawmakers to postpone drawing new U.S. House districts until 2012.
The request for postponement first became public Saturday in a letter from the congressmen to the governor. Jindal's chief of staff, Timmy Teepell, said the governor also supports waiting until next year.
The development increases the likelihood that the Legislature will conclude the session, which by law must end by Wednesday, without reaching a resolution on how to realign the state's current seven congressional districts into six.
The letter also ratchets up the tensions in a process already fraught with competing regional, party, racial and incumbent interests, and featuring rare public spats among the state's GOP congressmen, who often walk lockstep on questions of policy.
The five congressmen -- Rodney Alexander, R-Quitman; Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge; John Fleming, R-Minden; Jeff Landry, R-New Iberia; and Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson -- did not mention in their letter the increasingly acrimonious debate over how to redraw the district boundaries.
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