LAT: GOP Fears a Redistricting Backfire (in CA)

[question everything]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-congress8feb08,1,3983998.story?coll=la-headlines-california

GOP Fears a Redistricting Backfire

Schwarzenegger plan is seen as jeopardizing control of Congress.
By Peter Nicholas
Times Staff Writer

February 8, 2005

SACRAMENTO — Worried about losing clout in Congress, influential Republicans in Washington are telling Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that he should drop his effort to redraw congressional voting districts in time for next year's elections and limit his focus to reshaping the state Legislature.

(snip)

The fear is that tinkering with the California congressional boundaries could jeopardize Republican control of the U.S. House. By some estimates, the state's 20-person GOP congressional delegation opposes the governor's effort 4 to 1.

The Republican backlash underscores a reality of redistricting: What's most important to incumbents is ensuring their own survival. Even with California Republicans confined to minority status in both the legislative and congressional delegations, many members would rather keep the existing lines than gamble on a plan that could plunk them in unfriendly districts where they would have trouble getting reelected.

Schwarzenegger has made redistricting a centerpiece of his 2005 agenda, contending that the lines now drawn protect incumbents to such a degree that races are no longer competitive and parties stand virtually no chance of losing seats they control. He would sooner scuttle redistricting altogether than agree to a compromise in which Congress is spared, the governor's aides said recently.

(snip)

[Mark E. Smith]

1. Now That Is Unfortunate.

We have discussed this here in our Assembly District meetings here and have quietly hoped that old Steroid Arnie could make this happen. Here in Republican gerrymandered District 59 we have been making steady gains against the 'Pugs, and with an extra Democratic neighborhood or two tacked on we could send neanderthals like Dennis "The Abominable No Man" Mountjoy packing.

C'mon Arnie! Don't listen to those girlie men!

[Beetwasher]

2. Dems Damn Well Better Fucking Redistrict California

And I expect some crazy ass lines to be drawn. Time to stop playing nice. The Repubs did it in TX and stole a bunch of seats, we gotta do it to Cali. Fuck it. I've had it w/ these assholes.

And don't bother whining to me about hypocrisy because I'll just tell you to fuck off right now and we'll leave it at that.

[Gyre]

4. A big red line defining Orange county as a single district

Would be a very good start. Let's see how much clout S.Cal repubes have after that happens.

[Beetwasher]

5. Actually, I'm Thinking More Along the Lines Of Making Orange

County part of San Francisco's district. That way, they're clout is TOTALLY negated! :evilgrin:

Actually though, and seriuosly, if they were smart, they would chop up Orange County into tiny slices that will become part of more Democratic districts. That's what the Repubs did in TX to Dem strongholds.

[last_texas_dem]

10. Yup

That's exactly what the TX 'pugs did to Austin- the only large, substantially Democratic city in TX. They split it into three (maybe even four districts), I believe only one of which is still represented by a Democrat. Democrat Lloyd Doggett (who formerly represented a large chunk of Austin) was one of the few white Democratic incumbents to escape reasonably unscathed. (The 'pugs didn't mess around so much with minority Dems; they figured out they can give them districts with high minority populations and not get in trouble with the courts for diluting minority voting strength while, in turn, severely diluting Democratic voting strength by cramming large Democratic populations into a few districts.)

I read that Austin is the largest United States city to not anchor its own congressional district. Meanwhile there are Texas towns like, I believe Shrub's true hometown of Midland that do...

What happened in Texas is a travesty, but this is one matter where I'm all for revenge. Democratic-controlled legislatures should do all they can to re-redistrict states in just as "fair" a manner as Texas was redistricted. What's unfortunate is that it seems that the states that are currently most gerrymandered against the Dems are ones that we don't control the state legislature to be able to do anything about it...

[trogdor]

20. This was my wet dream for awhile.

Slice it up like a pie, with the center located right behind second base at Angel Stadium of Anaheim.

[question everything]

16. You mean, mujahadeen Dana will have to go back surfing?

And Chris Cox will finally be forced to make a decision - about anything?

LOL, this would be a sight worth watching

[DBoon]

6. Stop defending incumbents and start fighting for your party!

None of this nonsense of "safe" districts. No districts should be "safe" for a republican!

[pmbryant]

9. What would that accomplish?

CA doesn't have a Dem governor, so it's not even possible.

But even if it were, it would at most get Dems an extra few seats in Congress. We'd still be stuck in the minority, given how hopelessly gerrymandered (pro-GOP) states like Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania are.

It's time to shake things up. Hopefully redistricting reform in California can help start a nationwide movement.

Plus, it's the right move for a true democracy.

:bounce:

Peter

[Beetwasher]

12. Call Me Cynical

But I don't think a nationwide movement to reform redistricting will get anywhere. Most people are too stupid to understand the importance and will yawn at it because it's not sexy. Meanwhile, Repubs will continue on their tear of gerrymandering anything they can get their filthy hands on.

You may be right pragmatically speaking in that we won't be able to accomplish it in CA, and ideologically speaking as well about gerrymandering in general, but Repubs don't play fair and Dems lose every time they do. Time to take off the gloves. In '06 when we dump Pataki on his ass here in NY and replace him w/ a Dem (hopefully Spitzer), I hope to hell we redistrict the fuck out of NY too.

[question everything]

17. Get Perot with his paper and markers

And chart an example of a gerrymander district, going in all directions in all shapes, like an amoeba. And next to it draw a square, or a rectangle, or even a square with one wavy border to describe a natural border like a river or a mountain range. I think that his type of simplicity will make it clear even to all the "Me Tarzan, You Jane" crowd.

[pmbryant]

19. I think that's a losing battle

Even if we can somehow take the NY governor office and the NY senate (we only have the NY house now, I believe), NY doesn't have as many seats as Texas and Florida and Pennsylvania. Same with Illinois.

Even in TX with DeLay tactics, the GOP only picked up 4 seats. We're a lot further down than that.

Do you think we can outslime the GOP?

I just don't think that's a smart strategy. In fact, it's the same strategy that's helped to put us in the hole we're now in.

A hole that we have no way to get out of thanks to all the gerrymandered districts around the country.

--Peter

[mitchtv]

29. what CRAP !

you think we'l be voting for that? It will be after all under Arnold's wing. Don't be a fool

[mitchtv]

28. we should roll that Bakersfield district

right into downtown LA give Bill Thomas a run for his money.Add Santa monica to Darryl Issa's district Don't kid yourself. Ahnuld will name criminals to the panel It must be stopped. A good way is to add a conflicting/confuser initiative to the ballot.

[Arugula Latte]

31. You tell 'em, Beetwasher!

I'm with you. No more nicey-nice. :yourock:

[shoelace414]

3. Campaign finance reform

and gerrymandering are IMO the two things most screwing our politics up.. or something.

[yellowcanine]

7. We need country wide non-partisan redistricting - then Dems would

control the House again - I am convinced.

[nolabels]

8. Could it be?

That's funny, now the repukes are starting to count their cards.

When you think you are winning and you believe in what you are doing then there is no looking back at where you have been. Being defensive and protecting the gains is what is happening here, but Arnie is not bright enough to realize it and will go full steam ahead in my estimation.

Thank heavens the RNC has chosen such a brain-child to foist upon California.

Go Arnie, Go :evilgrin:

On edit, my syntax and spelling suck

[d.l.Green]

11. I'm confused. I thought the idea behind redistricting was to

adjust to the want of the voters. Wasn't that how they framed it in Texas? Now it becomes to find a way to make sure challengers(Repugs) have a better shot at winning.:shrug:

[nolabels]

24. Mostly it's to what ever is politically expedient at the time it seems

But just for fair measure The Un-Supreme Court has ruled on it a few times.

Redistricting in the Post-Shaw World

Shaw's Underpinnings

To understand Shaw, one must start with the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), and its rejection in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). A scant six years after Brown came Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960) and its rejection of the concept that political power can be allocated constitutionally on the basis of race. Just as it was wrong to gerrymander the black population of Tuskegee, Alabama, out of the city limits and thereby remove their fundamental right to vote in Gomillion, and just as it was wrong for racial segregation policies and laws institutionalizing blatant racism to be used to keep black schoolchildren out of white schools in Brown, it was just as wrong, divisive and disruptive for race-predominant redistricting and its singular emphasis on racial separatism to be foisted on state and local governments in the 1990's. Indeed, over forty years after Brown, at the urging of the Justice Department and the organized civil rights community, state and local governments had become embroiled in precisely the same wrong-headed efforts to separate blacks into their own "majority-minority districts" so as to enable blacks to elect the "authentic" black candidate of their choice, leaving in the aftermath an overwhelmingly racially identifiable assortment of elected officials supposedly beholden to those voters of their own racial or ethnic cleavage.

Johnson v. DeGrandy

In Johnson v. DeGrandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1011-12 (1994), the Supreme Court held that proof of the Gingles preconditions alone is not sufficient to establish §2 liability, and that is necessary for other evidence to be examined in the totality of circumstances, "including the extent of the opportunities minority voters enjoy to participate in the political process."

The Court further held that, in determining whether equality of opportunity exists, a court should not ask whether it is physically possible to draw additional black majority districts, because a state is not required to maximize the number of majority-minority districts. DeGrandy, 512 U.S. at 1009, 1016-17. Instead, to assess the totality of circumstances, courts should use the factors identified in the legislative history of §2. Id. At 1010-12.
(snip)
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legman/redmtg/Post-Shaw.htm

[David__77]

13. This is the thing that will stop this probably.

Congressional lines are the ones most favorable to the GOP. There are a few districts we could win with some tinkering. However, I'm of the thinking that they could regret the assembly and senate being messed with also. They're frustrated because they were CERTAIN they would pickup several seats, and they got a BIG FAT ZERO last year.

[tom_paine]

14. Busheviks tell Schwarzenneggar: The way to boil a frog to death is SLOWLY

Slow down, Gropenfuhrer, and you will get everythign you want, including the Imperial Throne of Amerika.

The Busheviks are telling Gropenfuhrer that the Imperial Subjects of Amerika don't yet realize what kind of a Orwellian Totalitarianism they now live in.

The Busheviks are telling him that they didn't get where they were, to near One-Party De Facto Totalitarianism by doing anything too fast and obvious that might not be able to be surpressed off of Corporate TV Pravda and which might be simple enough that people might stir.

The Busheviks aretelling Gropenfuhrer, essentially, to follow a plan more than 70 years old, and the one THEY THEMSELVES are following:

we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic (American)" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html

Slow down, Ahnold. If you wake the Sheep, you might ruin everything.

[Walt Starr]

15. Illinois Democrats should be picking up on this, too

We could extend our seats in the State Legislature with redistricting and could piuck up five seats, including Hyde's and Hastert's, with the correct redistricting.

Republicans blazed the trail in this new era of gerrymandering. The Democrats need to pick up the torch to burn a new path!

[Beetwasher]

18. Yup, If We Redistrict CA, NY, IL, MI

we can redistrict the Repubs right out of the majority. Then watch them whine about it and THEN we can talk about redistricting reform.

[pmbryant]

22. We don't control any of those states (except IL)

In NY, the Senate and the Governor are GOP.
In MI, both houses are GOP (as I understand).
In CA, the Governor is GOP.

This isn't going to happen.

And, long term, it is doomed as after every census NY and IL and MI lose seats to TX, FL, GA, etc.

--Peter

[Beetwasher]

26. Stop Bumming Me Out!

A man can dream can't he?

NY may actually be possible in a couple of years once we boot Pataki and retake the Senate, both are VERY realistic goals here.

[pmbryant]

23. IL Dems should do this, definitely.

It would piss off Repubs and perhaps help kick-start a national, non-partisan, movement for redistricting reform.

But to make sure we don't cede the reform mantle to Schwarzenegger and the GOP, some Dem governors need to get on the redistricting reform bandwagon.

The Dem governors of Michigan and Pennsylvania are obvious choices, as both of these states currently have pro-GOP congressional districts.

What are they waiting for?

--Peter

[DS1]

21. And I say to those people in Congress, Stop Being Geographical Girliemen!

:eyes:

[NewJeffCT]

25. LOL - good one

What is the state legislature balance in CA?

[ourbluenation]

27. tips to the dems - big time

[NewJeffCT]

30. is it Veto Proof?

I know in CT, the state House is 1 or 2 short of veto proof, while the state Senate is 1 or 2 over the margin. So, if we can get a Dem governor in CT, we can redistrict Nancy Johnson against Chris Shays for 2008, or maybe move a R town in Rob Simmons' district to DeLauro or Larson.