Why Are G.O.P. Contributors Putting Big Money Into California Redistricting ‘Reform’ - A Love of ‘Fairness’??

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

The Republicans have enlisted Common Cause and the League of Women Voters in their campaign to take control of the Legislature through redistricting.

The Governor has endorsed this plan – and the money behind it is almost entirely Republican. They use the rhetoric of reform, but be clear: this GOP money has one aim and intent, and that is GOP control. Fellow-traveling Reformers would have you focus on the process and not the product – but it’s the product that is important. And that product is a passel more of Republican seats. Enough GOP gains that the Democrats would have to sweep the table of the marginal seats to maintain their majority.

Let’s look at the product, seat by seat.

Assembly District 1. Following the Constitution, the Legislature began in the upper left hand side of California with Del Norte. Then, running down the coast, added counties (Humboldt, Mendocino) until reaching Sonoma where the liberal areas around the Russian River made it a Democratic seat. Lake County, heavy in retired seniors, and Trinity, insignificant in population, were also added.

But the move into Sonoma isn’t necessary. A movement East, into Shasta, is more symmetrical and the likely direction a Commission would take. This shifts the seat from one dominated by coastal environmentalists to one dominated by the economics of timber. A Democrat supporting coastal environmentalists would lose to a Republican backing the timber economy. A Democrat who tried to hold centrist voters would lose 12-15% of the vote (and the election) to a ‘Green’ party candidate. (Cf. Doug Bosco)--and, in any case, adding 30 Dem, 48 Rep. registration in Shasta would finish the job: (minus 1)

Assembly District 17 includes the entire County of Merced, some sheep farms along I-5 in Stanislaus County that connect the seat to Tracy in San Joaquin. It slides along the Delta to Stockton – where it takes in the ‘old’ portion of town (primarily African American).