| When Proposition 11 was passed more than two years ago, I was worried that it was so complicated and convoluted that it was inevitable that the lines would end up going to court and be drawn by judges not the commission. Well the good news is the Commission did get through the Rube Goldberg selection process and is up and running and working very hard to organize itself to adopt maps by the rapidly approaching August 15th deadline.
The bad news is our Republican friends have already launched a concerted effort to blow up the process and make sure the Commission has no chance of finishing their work on time.
What is their latest complaint? Well apparently they have a problem with the fact the Commission is considering hiring Karin MacDonald, the Director of the non-partisan Statewide Database (swdb.berkeley.edu). They say Mac Donald is a Democratic operative. Of course facts are always secondary to their arguments. In truth, MacDonald is a registered Decline to State, has never done work for Democratic campaigns and rather has worked on a series of other independent redistricting commissions including one in my home town of San Francisco.
Of course they also leave out the fact that who they prefer really is a political operative: A Republican political operative. They are pushing Doug Johnson who used to work for Republican Congressmember Steve Horn. Hopefully the commissioners, Democrats, Republicans and Others, will see through this hypocrisy and make decisions based on what is fair, not who complains the most. If not, I'm afraid my worries of two years ago will be proven all too prophetic. |
