Much at Stake in California's Redistricting System

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

As the 1980’s began, Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and, with their sitting Governor, Jerry Brown providing a signature, and his Court ratifying that judgment, the entire government of California.

As a result, redistricting in 1981 was strictly a Democratic affair. In the State Senate, districts were modified to take care of population changes, but otherwise incumbents kept what they had. It satisfied the Democrats – and the Republicans.

In the Assembly, then new Speaker Willie Brown was struggling to increase the 50% support he held among the Democrats while holding on to the Republican votes that had elected him the previous November. But Assembly redistricting proved difficult. The seats short of population were in Democratic areas (Bay Area, Los Angeles). Brown thought to resolve it by dropping a Republican seat in the Bay Area and a Democratic seat in LA. Republicans, believing a ‘fair’ redistricting would give them net gains, revolted. They withdrew their support for Brown. But Brown survived because the dissident Democrats closed ranks behind him.

Redistricting made Brown a Democratic Speaker in fact.

Embracing necessity, Brown accepted the recommendations of the Democratic Congressional Delegation provided by his old mentor Rep. Phil Burton. I’ll leave it to historians to describe the details, but that was a gerrymander, providing Democrats with enough additional seats to keep President Reagan from having a Republican Congress after the 1982 elections.

It was Congress, not the Legislature, that was the focus of most redistricting mayhem

The Court’s let the new Congressional lines stand after a Republican referendum, and they voted predictably Democratic. Republicans believed they could strike the lines in Federal Court, and sued. Eight years later they lost as the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of partisan considerations to draw lines. It was at that point that serious GOP efforts began to recruit US Senator Pete Wilson away from his federal career pattern and into Governor of California where he could thwart a repeat of 1982.