and even if the governor was elected God, he couldn't change that.' -- Democratic Senate President Pro Tem John Burton
Posted on 09/20/2004 9:24:48 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
It's the political season, but just try to find a real election race in California.
The state with the most electoral votes seems wrapped up for Democrat John Kerry, despite his mushy-mouthed appearances every night on national TV. At any rate, he and President Bush aren't competing here.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer is running comfortably ahead of Republican Bill Jones in an obscure matchup with neither candidate exciting voters.
There are no statewide races in California during a presidential election, so that brings us down to low-profile U.S. House and state legislative contests.
Put it this way: The chance of living where one of these races might be interesting is, at best, 1 in 7 for the Assembly, 1 in 13 for the state Senate and 1 in 53 for Congress.
"Last year at this time, during the recall, California was the center of the world. Right now we're not even on the same planet," says Tony Quinn, co-editor of the Target Book, which monitors legislative and House races. "We're having trouble finding any action for the Target Book."
Blame old-fashioned gerrymandering.
Legislators — Democrats and Republicans alike — redrew legislative and congressional districts in 2001 to protect incumbents and the party then holding each seat. Their aim was to lock in the status quo, which favored Democrats. But the Bush White House pushed for it to preserve GOP House seats and safeguard Republican control of Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I wanna see some numbers!! I find it very interesting that CA isn't mentioned very often. Thus maybe a swing like Bush moving into single digits behind Kerry in NY.
I'm handing out one "Attaboy" for the first person to post, without looking it up first, the origin of the term "Gerrymander".
I've long said that the correct districting plan would be to take a population density map and start in the highest density area, and draw a circle encompassing X number of voters. Then zoom in and jiggle the boundaries of the circle so that District 1 would adhere to the principles of geographic compactness and continuity - trying to avoid splitting local units of government between two Districts, but still making the Districts as small as possible and as even number of voters per District as possible.
Such a plan could only happen with serious voter support, enough to override the entrenched political interests and the Special Interest groups...
Elbridge [?] Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence (or Constitution?) who drew a legislative district shaped like a salamander.
I looked it up, so no attaboy for me. Interesting word origin.
Right, gerrymandering, that's what reduced Califas to a one-party state.
Redistricting done back in the late 1800 by a pol name Gerry… drew outrages district to create safe zone .. Some one look at one of his plan district commented It looks like a salamander … from then on be came known to "Gerrymander".
With Kerry in a tailspin...I would think the Oh So Popular Arnold would step up for GW soon if they have any feeling they could win.....otherwise Arnie lays low as he tries to get the trust of the liberals he needs to sway over the next few years.....
My goal is to spend November 3rd watching my neighbors scrape the Kerry loser bumper stickers off their cars....!
Elbridge Gerry was, as Lurking said, a signer of the DOI, and worked in many other capacities for the Revolution. He was also elected as Governor of Massachusetts, a member of the House of Representatives, and Vice President (although he died before ever taking the oath for the latter).
In an effort to ensure Mr. Gerry's re-election to the House, his party managed to secure a rather long, curvy, and narrow district for him that captured centers of his support. A newspaper of the day printed the map of the district, added the appropriate style of feet and a face, and satrically proclaimed that a new animal had been found under the heavens, a "gerrymander", combining Mr. Gerry's name and "salamander". The name has stuck to such a district ever since. This happened in the quite early 1800's, though; Eldbridge Gerry died in 1814 (that I had to look up).
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