The Bee’s Weintraub Fronts Latest G.O.P. Redistricting Plan

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

Dan Weintraub beat up another straw man in his silly column in today’s Sacramento BEE.

Weintraub writes, “almost no one serving in the Legislature today has ever had to run a campaign appealing to independent voters or independent minded members of the opposite party.”

Weintraub blames redistricting for this failure. But he’s quite wrong.

Republicans never campaign to “independents” or “like minded Democrats”. They run intensely negative campaigns designed to depress the turnout of these groups – or to get them to pass over the contested race.

Lynn Daucher’s campaign, for example, mailed pieces attacking Lou Correa to Democratic and declined-to-state voters every day for a month. That’s 30 pieces of mail. None were designed to get votes for Daucher. All were designed to persuade “independents” and “independent minded Democrats” not to vote for Correa.

Shirley Horton survived three elections in the same manner. In her campaign against Patti Davis, she said two dozen times that Davis would raise taxes. The fact that Davis had pledged not to raise taxes didn’t matter. (The San Diego paper mentioned the charge as false in paragraph 5 of a wrap up story).

Republican Voters are loyal partisans – partisan because of ideology. If the proportion of Democrats and Independents casting votes in an election can be reduced far enough, then the Republican wins. Attacking the Republican doesn’t have a similar effect because a Democrat can’t attack from the ideological ‘right’ and, again, Republican voters are ideological.

It’s why Republican candidates win districts that are 40% registered Republican over 95% of the time: that 40% becomes half the vote when 30 hits produce dropoff among Democratic and declined to state voters. In 2006, John Kerry defeated George Bush in the 78th AD while Horton won in the same seat. She didn’t win with “cross over” votes. She won because Democrats “opted out” of voting at all because of the negative campaigning.