By Jim O'Sullivan

It's been batted about like a hot potato, coveted like a nugget of electoral gold and shied from like a political porcupine. It's erratically represented on Beacon Hill and irregularly shaped in Jones Hill, wending south from East Cottage Street down to Hancock Street.

Nestled near the intersection of three Massachusetts House and two Congressional districts, Ward 13 Precinct 6 serves as a microcosm of the contentious redistricting debate, which has pitted minority-voter advocacy groups like the Black Political Task Force and ¿Oiste? against state political leaders like House Speaker Thomas Finneran and Secretary of State William Galvin.

And 13-6, the precinct that extends from Hancock St. north to East Cottage and Willis, and east-west between Pleasant St. and Sumner St. also represents disparities in the political make-up of three Dorchester state representatives, providing a telling axis, in particular, for the neighborhood's split personality on the matter of gay marriage.

From the precinct's south and west, Dorchester legislators Marie St. Fleur and Marty Walsh were among the most vociferous and unflinching backers of recent efforts on Beacon Hill to protect gay marriage in the state constitution. From the north, South Boston native Brian Wallace, who represents a handful of Dorchester precincts including 13-6, stood as one of the staunchest backers of a ban on gay marriage. The Jones Hill area, trumpeted by some realtors and landlords as "the new South End," has seen a heavy influx of gays and lesbians.

Under redistricting Plan B, released April 6, the precinct would land back in Marie St. Fleur's district, which it had called home before the 2001 redistricting. Under that plan, then state Rep. Jack Hart took the outlying precinct.

Until attorneys for the state Legislature announced the new proposal, the precinct had produced a Wallace opponent, John Nunnari of Windermere Rd., who opted to put his challenge on hold once redistricting lawyers appeared to lean toward placing 13-6 back in St. Fleur's district.

Nunnari said Wallace's Southie pedigree left the one-term incumbent vulnerable &endash; more so than St. Fleur.

"I do believe that it is under-represented," said Nunnari, adding that he has suspended fundraising and active campaigning until the redistricting decision is finalized.

"The views that [Wallace] had been espousing, which may represent the constituency of Southie, don't necessarily represent Uphams Corner," Nunnari said.

Officials insisted that Nunnari's campaign - even in its nascent stages, a long shot against a Southie native whose neighborhood dominates his district - played no role in the redistricting. Nor, they said, did flack Wallace had received for his gay marriage votes.

Finneran said he had "never heard of" Nunnari, and that he had maintained a hands-off approach to redistricting.

"I think, essentially, quite frankly, it's a question of trying to figure out the numbers in accordance with the constitutional demands," the speaker said Tuesday at a Mattapan Community Health Center event.

And Wallace's chief of staff said the representative had not lobbied for the elimination of 13-6 from his district.

"We really don't have a say," said Jerry McKenna last week. (Wallace did not respond to requests for comment). "We really didn't get much of an option on it. It's just a question of what they have to do, voter-wise, to make the district more representative of the population."

But officials also said that Wallace would be glad to shed 13-6, whose significant gay population has chafed under what many see as an overly conservative stance. Some officials said that Wallace infrequently visited the district or met with its residents.

"I suppose, if I was him, I'd be concerned," said St. Fleur.

"If they feel he has not, in terms of their rights … I think any representative would be concerned," she said.

City Councillor Maureen Feeney, whose 3rd council district encompasses 13-6, said outlying precincts sometimes suffer for their geographic remove.

"I think a lot of the neighborhoods that are on the border of several districts, if you spoke with residents on the fringes of the district, they're not as included as they'd like to be," said Feeney, who faced her own redistricting controversy in 2002, when she came under fire from fellow Dorchester Councillor Charles Yancey and others for decisions she made as redistricting chair.

St. Fleur, the nation's first Haitian-American legislator, said 13-6 had been an early outpost of support for her during the early stages of her first campaign, in the waning months of 1998. Several of its activists helped comprise her kitchen cabinet, she said.

And, she said, the precinct's "significant white" population appealed to her because "I like a diverse district."

Someone else who wouldn't have minded seeing 13-6 land in his district was Walsh, whose solid support for gay marriage matched St. Fleur's - and may cost him some support in his heavily Catholic and more conservative 13th Suffolk district.

"I would've loved to have had it," Walsh said last week of the district. Walsh grew up on Taft St., which abuts 13-6 and he now lives on Tuttle, just across Dorchester Ave. His uncle lives in 13-6, Walsh said.

Both St. Fleur and Feeney said the proposed absorption of 13-6 by St. Fleur's 5th Suffolk would make geographic sense, unifying it with Uphams Corner.

"We always have this tendency to split neighborhoods, and this Jones Hill area and Annapolis area is part of my larger Uphams Corner area," St. Fleur said.