Politics And California Redistricting

By Steve Cummings, Member
Ventura County Democratic Central Committee
CaliforniaProgressReport.com
June 27, 2008

Whenever I hear someone discuss redistricting reform, I can’t help but paraphrase the famous Claude Rains line from the movie Casablanca—I‘m shocked, shocked that politics is going on in redistricting and the legislature! While the reformers may be appalled at the prospect, like it or not, redistricting is a political act. No matter how you draw the lines, one political group is going to be favored over another. Even the most innocuous redistricting activity can have political overtones.

A case in point was the redistricting of the Board of Supervisors in Ventura County in 2001. As it turned out, our Democratic redistricting committee was armed with a secret weapon—a color printer. While county staff was presenting their maps to the board in good old black and white, we presented our maps in color. Guess whose maps won the day. As a result, red (to 2008) Ventura County has had a Democratic Board of Supervisors throughout the decade. This story illustrates how difficult it is to get politics out of redistricting in even the most basic activity, such as printing maps. It also points out the many political redistricting activities going on that are never discussed by the reformers.

Democrats in Ventura County are no fans of the maps drawn by the legislature in 2001, particularly the state senate maps. As was pointed out by Bill Cavala, speaker Bob Hertzberg shafted both Fred Keeley and Hannah-Beth Jackson when he shifted Jack O’Connell’s senate seat to the Central Valley for Dennis Cardoza. Yet the real problem with the maps was not that they were politically motivated, but that they were done to benefit a few incumbents to the exclusion of all other political considerations. Most significantly, Democratic legislators drew them with little input from Democratic Party leaders in the areas being redrawn. That is how the Democrats, as part of a deal with the Republicans, lost two Assembly seats and the Senate seat drawn specifically for Cardoza in what were supposed to be safe districts. The problem with these seats was that people who didn’t know how to run a campaign in those areas drew them, and the results showed.

It is naive to think we can get politics out of redistricting, but we can get districts that are more functional if party officials rather than legislators designed the maps. After all the party people will be dealing with these maps long after the legislators are termed out.

Finally, I have noted with great amusement the minor political dust storm that was stirred up by the California Democratic Council’s endorsement of the California Voters First Initiative at the CDC convention in Fresno. Although I spent most of my time in Fresno running around putting on the convention as CDC Controller and was not directly part of the endorsing process, it is gratifying to see that a CDC endorsement still matters to Democrats. The CDC officers are looking at bylaws changes to make the CDC endorsement more relevant than it has been recently. But to those who had problems with the CDC endorsement of the initiative, my response is start attending CDC convention and board meetings and be part of the CDC endorsing process.

Steve Cummings is a member of the Ventura County Democratic Central Committee, Controller for CDC, and the Southern VP for the California Federation of Democratic Central Committee Members. His book, Red States, Blue States, and the Coming Sharecropper Society, was published by Algora Publishing, NY in April 2008.