Free Republic

This is the second of a three-part series on the redistricting process that was dictated by a Proposition voted by the residents of California to take the politics out of the process.Republicans believe that they were hoodwinked by the Democrats in the new redistricting process in California – principally because the Republicans played by the rules specified in the initiative. What they obviously didn’t understand was that the process itself – specifically, how the commission’s members were selected – undermined the Republicans from the outset. The first problem facing the Republicans was finding people willing to sit on the commission,...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- The citizens commission established by voters to create an independent process for drawing California's legislative and congressional districts has delivered on its first set of maps, voting to adopt new boundaries that appear to increase the reach of majority Democrats. The 14-member California Citizens Redistricting Commission voted Friday on final draft versions of district maps for Congress, the state Legislature and the state Board of Equalization, which administers sales and use taxes.

Republicans’ increasing complaints that the commission appointed to oversee the redrawing of borders for state legislative and congressional seats has gone partisan are “absolutely not true,” according to Gil Ontai, a San Diego architect who is on the panel. In an interview with a U-T editorial writer, he cited a lack of appreciation of the “complexity of this process.” We have no reason to question Ontai’s honesty or sincerity. Nevertheless, some of the criticism aimed at the commission seems valid. Plans to release a second draft of proposed borders this week were scrapped. Instead, interested parties can go online to...

Do you live in a "gayborhood"? Are you part of an Armenian sub-community or do you reside among black farmers and agriculturists? These and myriad other questions that most of us have never thought to ask will be answered Aug. 15, the day the Citizen's Redistricting Commission is scheduled to release its final maps. .. Among the criteria that the commission must consider when drawing its boundaries is "community of interest," a concept so vague as to remind one of Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography - "I know it when I see it." Knowing a community when one...

Congratulations are in order to Assembly Speaker John Perez. The Redistricting Commission has now delivered the 54th seat necessary for Speaker Perez to achieve two-thirds Democratic rule in the Assembly, (an accomplishment the Democrats never achieved on their own). With a two-thirds vote, Perez and his friends can pass tax increases to their heart’s delight. They need not spend money trying to elect more Democratic members; the Redistricting Commission has done it for them. It is all a matter of having friends in high places. Their friends are not just the 14 commissioners, who feign ignorance of the partisan seats...

The ideal of a citizens’ commission is good. We should not have politicians picking their voters. Voters should pick their politicians and perhaps the districts lines in which they run. But ideals often prove impractical. In the case of the Citizens Redistricting Commission, impractical would be an upgrade. When I testified in front of the Commission in March of this year, I warned them of the voters’ cynicism – the sense of many that their vote doesn't count because district lines are rigged and the system, i.e. gerrymandering, is unfair. I asked them not to hire a line-drawing firm that...

Republican Reps. Elton Gallegly, David Dreier, Gary Miller and Brian Bilbray all get the short end of the stick in the new map and could have difficulty returning to Congress. The GOP would also have to defend Reps. Dan Lungren and Jeff Denham, who saw things get tougher in their respective districts. On the Democratic side, Reps. Lois Capps, Loretta Sanchez and Jim Costa got more vulnerable, while Rep. Dennis Cardoza remains in potentially competitive district. In the end, chaos is the order the day in the new map — forcing many incumbents to reevaluatw their political futures, with almost...

June 10, 2011, Commission Votes 14-0 to Approve 1st Draft District Maps With four 14-0 votes, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission has released its first round of draft maps for Congressional, State Assembly, State Senate and Board of Equalization districts. The Commission is now soliciting public comment on the draft districts. Testimony can be submitted online to votersfirstact@crc.ca.gov, by mail to the Citizens Redistricting Commission, 901 P Street, Suite 154-A, Sacramento, CA 95814 or by FAX at 916-651-5711. The Commission will be holding 11 public input hearings in June on the draft maps. The hearing schedule and the draft maps...

To secure Republican votes for the state budget, Democrats have enlisted business leaders, police officers and teachers. Now they're hoping for a boost from cartographers. An independent mapping panel will release its first draft of new legislative boundaries Friday, shuffling incumbents into new districts and threatening some members' best-laid political plans. Democrats hope the redistricting maps will help shake free the necessary Republican votes for a budget that relies on taxes to bridge the remaining $9.6 billion deficit. They suggest the maps could place key Republicans in more competitive districts and reduce the influence of anti-tax conservatives. At the least,...

In one of its first acts, the new Citizens Redistricting Commission has decided to ignore the United States and California Constitutions by in effect repealing the historical “one person one vote” rule that has been law in America for 47 years. They did this by telling their staff to draw districts that will clearly violate constitutional population standards. This is so their final maps can over represent liberal areas of California that are losing population, such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and then under represent the more conservative inland areas of California that are growing.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm tentatively chosen by the state's new redistricting commission to provide legal advice on the federal Voting Rights Act, has given most of its campaign contributions to Democrats, a new compilation by Maplight.com found. Maplight, a Berkeley-based database on campaign contributions at state and federal levels, released its study of the law firm's donations Wednesday, just one day before the California Citizens Redistricting Commission is to decide whether to finalize its $150,000 contract. Gibson, Dunn was tentatively chosen last months after a Sacramento law and lobbying firm with strong Republican ties lost in a...

Our editorial today (wide application to other states): It was a corrupt system that allowed back-room politicking to redraw every 10 years California's boundaries for congressional, legislative and other districts. Legislators redrew lines to ensure reelection and protect their political parties. There is word for it: Gerrymandering. . . . Unfortunately, Californians apparently have traded one form of special-interest pandering for another.

If those who volunteered for the state's new redistricting commission believed that it would be a convivial civic exercise, last week's initial clashes over hiring legal and demographic advisers proved otherwise. The decisions that the 14-member commission makes on 120 legislative, 53 congressional and four Board of Equalization districts will affect not only political careers, but the state's ideological ambience for the next decade. An odd-bedfellows alliance of political reformers and right-of-center business and political groups, including former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, pushed two ballot measures that empowered the commission as the alternative to the Legislature drawing districts. . . ....

Eight names will be drawn at random Thursday from a pool of 36 finalists for positions on the state's new redistricting commission, and a Santa Monica College political science professor has calculated that there are 3.2 million possible combinations. What's more, Dr. Brain Lawson has figured the chances of names being drawn by gender, county of residence, income, ethnicity and what he calls being "incumbent friendly," basing his calculations on the detailed profiles of each finalist available on the Internet. He sees 11 of the 36 being "incumbent friendly" due to experience with redistricting and government, and names them in...

California legislators of both parties, then-Gov. Gray Davis and the George W. Bush White House made a pact with the political devil nine years ago by fixing outcomes of legislative and congressional elections for a decade. They agreed to redraw the boundaries of 120 legislative and 53 congressional districts to declare party ownership of each, lock in the partisan status quo and lock out real choice for voters. Since then, through five election cycles, there have been 765 legislative and congressional elections in California and in only about 15 of them have voters managed to overcome the intent of the...

The 620 remaining applicants for seats on the state's new redistricting commission are mostly affluent white male Democrats, according to a new statistical study by one of those on the list. Vladimir Kogan, a refugee from the Soviet Union who later became a journalist and political science scholar, reviewed the on-line profiles of all 620 to create his demographic and political profile. He is a researcher on governance issues for the Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, San Diego. Kogan found that 67.6 percent of those on the...

The speaker of the California Assembly last week spiked legislation that would have severely curtailed lawmakers' ability to accept concert and sporting-event tickets, meals, greens fees and other gifts from lobbyists. This was the same week that state senators - most of whom drive state-leased cars of their choice, which they fill up with gas and park at taxpayer expense - approved a bill that would compel local governments to curtail the amount of free public parking in their communities. Is it any wonder our Legislature's approval rating keeps sinking toward single digits? A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Karen Bass,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that California can thank legislative dysfunction for the recent passage of Proposition 11, which prevents state lawmakers from drawing their own district boundaries in 2011. The Republican governor appeared at the California State Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento along with leaders from government watchdog groups and the carpenters' union to celebrate Proposition 11. For Schwarzenegger, it marked a return to the stage of his famous 2003 recall campaign rally in which he called for an overhaul of California's political system. Among the proposals he announced was a redistricting change similar to Proposition 11. "At that...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking to get his reform mojo back. Buoyed by the passage of a redistricting overhaul he had sought for years, the governor who famously promised to "blow up the boxes" of state government is expected to press ahead next year with a broader government reform agenda ... . The goal: reverse the dysfunction of the Legislature, ... With many of his other policy ambitions stifled by the tanking state budget, reclaiming the reform mantle may be an opportunity for Schwarzenegger to burnish his legacy ... The narrow passage of Proposition 11, ... , gives...

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass is rounding out her leadership team. The latest additions: Paul Krekorian and John Pérez. The Public Policy Institute of California has released a survey of voters looking into why Californians voted for or against Propositions 1A (high speed rail), 4 (abortion notification), 8 (gay marriage) and 11 (redistricting). Find the full poll results on Capitol Alert's PPIC page. Most of the results are unsurprising. Evangelical Christians supported Proposition 8 at an 81 percent clip, while voters without a college degree (62 percent) were more likely to vote "yes" than college graduates (43 percent). One notable number...