 Over at the San Berndardino Sun, they have what passes for an article on the redistricting situation. It starts with one premise, other states saw electoral upheavel, and maybe California was the exception with a Democratic surge, but there should have been some seats changing hands. And that's all the fault of gerrymandering.
"Other parts of the country have experienced electoral upheavals, and we have not," said Derek Cressman, the Western states operations director for good-government group Common Cause. "Here in California, our Legislature has an approval rating of either 10 percent or 13 percent, depending on which poll you look at, and yet on (Election Day) not a single incumbent in the California state Legislature was unseated."
Cressman and other political observers say there's a clear reason California's congressional and legislative seats seem nearly immune from political swings: gerrymandering, a problem that could disappear in 2012.(SB Sun_
Except, there is one big problem here. The good government groups and the media's infatuation with the concept of redistricting reform and "gerrymandering" won't change the simple fact of California's shifting demographics. The reason only one legislative seat changed hands? Demographics.
Let's be honest about this, rather than playing with some sort of grand vision about what Prop 11 will do. First, let's go back to the ranked criteria of Prop 11:
* Districts shall comply with the US Constitution, including equal population requirements.
* Districts shall comply with the Voting Rights Act.
* Districts shall be geographically contiguous.
* The geographic integrity of any city, county, or city and county, neighborhoods, or communities of interest shall be respected.
* Communities of interest shall not be defined as relations with incumbents, candidates, or parties.
* Districts shall be compact.
* To the extent possible, after the above criteria have been satisfied, districts shall be nested.
Is competitive in there somewhere? Did I miss it? Well, one could argue that excluding connections to parties or candidates means that there will be competitive districts, but the the first interest is that they are geographically tight. And therein lies the rub, and the truth comes out that what some of these players in this movement, Schwarzenegger and the right-leaning Rose Institute really want was more Republicans in the legislature.
But Johnson said voters simultaneously elected Democrats and showed conservative tendencies, approving the Republican-favored Proposition 26, which makes it harder for lawmakers to raise fees.
"I think if we had more competitive districts, there would have been a number of Republican pickups," Johnson said. "Republicans did better than they usually do, but the districts still protected Democrats."(SB Sun)
But looking back at reality, voters gave large victories to every statewide Democrat, save one race that is still being processed. More noticeably, they rejected Meg Whitman's outrageous spending to tell her flat out, her vision might be right for Texas, but California is different. California voters generally lean progressive, but comparing Prop 26 to actual political leanings is expecting too much out of voters that just don't have the time to figure out what it means. Perhaps they might have voted one way or the other had they spent the time to understand what it really meant, but as it was, all the information that they were getting on 26 came from Chevron and Philip Morris. That is hardly a bellwether of political leanings.
The underlying data just doesn't support the argument of the Rose Institute's Doug Johnson, or of Common Cause, or really any of the goo-goos. The 800lb. gorilla that is being completely ignored is that Californians have clearly sorted ourselves. If you draw tight districts, you get districts that are strongly partisan. That's the deal. David Latterman at Fall Line Analytics has done some great precinct by precinct analysis of the state. And as you can see, this is a very iedologically segregated state. The Progressives dominate the coast (where a majority of the state's population resides, and it generally gets more conservative as you head east.
The net result will be maybe a few additional tossup seats, maybe up to 5 in the assembly and 3 or 4 in the Senate. Congress would slot somewhere in between there. In the net, the Bay Area and LA are going to keep electing progressive Democrats, and the Central Valley is going to keep electing right-wing Republicans. And on the fringes there, you might make one seat that switches occasionally. But we'll continue to see incumbency (of candidate, not party) to reign supreme. Name ID holds great power in these races. But Common Cause just spent years of its existence to change the composition of a small handful of seats, seats that, in the current political environment won't make a huge difference anyway.
Congratulations on your big wins on 20 and 27. I'd like to invite you to celebrate with the world's smallest cupcake. |
