Remembering Gerry

I’ve never found a centipede
Who had precisely hundred feet
A delight thus to discover—
Of words I am a mighty lover—
That the famous salamander
Begot the heinous gerrymander,
That causes borders to meander,
And lets a party pander to its kin,
That famed word’s papa having been
A governor weighed down by sin,
A gentleman called Elbridge Gerry
Who aimed the Fed’ralists to bury
In Massachusetts—the state, I meant—
Where pirouette-like borders bent
In 1812 and ever after
Until the next census disaster.

This in the cause of making additions to the world’s stock of light verse.

P.S.

The Anti-Federalist doctrine
Favored the local o’er the Federal Brahmin
Claiming that states rights were at least equivalent
To any scurvy nationalist sentiment.