Free Republic

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- The citizens commission established by voters to create an independent process for drawing California's legislative and congressional districts has delivered on its first set of maps, voting to adopt new boundaries that appear to increase the reach of majority Democrats. The 14-member California Citizens Redistricting Commission voted Friday on final draft versions of district maps for Congress, the state Legislature and the state Board of Equalization, which administers sales and use taxes.

Republicans’ increasing complaints that the commission appointed to oversee the redrawing of borders for state legislative and congressional seats has gone partisan are “absolutely not true,” according to Gil Ontai, a San Diego architect who is on the panel. In an interview with a U-T editorial writer, he cited a lack of appreciation of the “complexity of this process.” We have no reason to question Ontai’s honesty or sincerity. Nevertheless, some of the criticism aimed at the commission seems valid. Plans to release a second draft of proposed borders this week were scrapped. Instead, interested parties can go online to...

Do you live in a "gayborhood"? Are you part of an Armenian sub-community or do you reside among black farmers and agriculturists? These and myriad other questions that most of us have never thought to ask will be answered Aug. 15, the day the Citizen's Redistricting Commission is scheduled to release its final maps. .. Among the criteria that the commission must consider when drawing its boundaries is "community of interest," a concept so vague as to remind one of Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography - "I know it when I see it." Knowing a community when one...

Congratulations are in order to Assembly Speaker John Perez. The Redistricting Commission has now delivered the 54th seat necessary for Speaker Perez to achieve two-thirds Democratic rule in the Assembly, (an accomplishment the Democrats never achieved on their own). With a two-thirds vote, Perez and his friends can pass tax increases to their heart’s delight. They need not spend money trying to elect more Democratic members; the Redistricting Commission has done it for them. It is all a matter of having friends in high places. Their friends are not just the 14 commissioners, who feign ignorance of the partisan seats...

The ideal of a citizens’ commission is good. We should not have politicians picking their voters. Voters should pick their politicians and perhaps the districts lines in which they run. But ideals often prove impractical. In the case of the Citizens Redistricting Commission, impractical would be an upgrade. When I testified in front of the Commission in March of this year, I warned them of the voters’ cynicism – the sense of many that their vote doesn't count because district lines are rigged and the system, i.e. gerrymandering, is unfair. I asked them not to hire a line-drawing firm that...

Republican Reps. Elton Gallegly, David Dreier, Gary Miller and Brian Bilbray all get the short end of the stick in the new map and could have difficulty returning to Congress. The GOP would also have to defend Reps. Dan Lungren and Jeff Denham, who saw things get tougher in their respective districts. On the Democratic side, Reps. Lois Capps, Loretta Sanchez and Jim Costa got more vulnerable, while Rep. Dennis Cardoza remains in potentially competitive district. In the end, chaos is the order the day in the new map — forcing many incumbents to reevaluatw their political futures, with almost...

June 10, 2011, Commission Votes 14-0 to Approve 1st Draft District Maps With four 14-0 votes, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission has released its first round of draft maps for Congressional, State Assembly, State Senate and Board of Equalization districts. The Commission is now soliciting public comment on the draft districts. Testimony can be submitted online to votersfirstact@crc.ca.gov, by mail to the Citizens Redistricting Commission, 901 P Street, Suite 154-A, Sacramento, CA 95814 or by FAX at 916-651-5711. The Commission will be holding 11 public input hearings in June on the draft maps. The hearing schedule and the draft maps...

To secure Republican votes for the state budget, Democrats have enlisted business leaders, police officers and teachers. Now they're hoping for a boost from cartographers. An independent mapping panel will release its first draft of new legislative boundaries Friday, shuffling incumbents into new districts and threatening some members' best-laid political plans. Democrats hope the redistricting maps will help shake free the necessary Republican votes for a budget that relies on taxes to bridge the remaining $9.6 billion deficit. They suggest the maps could place key Republicans in more competitive districts and reduce the influence of anti-tax conservatives. At the least,...

In one of its first acts, the new Citizens Redistricting Commission has decided to ignore the United States and California Constitutions by in effect repealing the historical “one person one vote” rule that has been law in America for 47 years. They did this by telling their staff to draw districts that will clearly violate constitutional population standards. This is so their final maps can over represent liberal areas of California that are losing population, such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and then under represent the more conservative inland areas of California that are growing.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm tentatively chosen by the state's new redistricting commission to provide legal advice on the federal Voting Rights Act, has given most of its campaign contributions to Democrats, a new compilation by Maplight.com found. Maplight, a Berkeley-based database on campaign contributions at state and federal levels, released its study of the law firm's donations Wednesday, just one day before the California Citizens Redistricting Commission is to decide whether to finalize its $150,000 contract. Gibson, Dunn was tentatively chosen last months after a Sacramento law and lobbying firm with strong Republican ties lost in a...

Our editorial today (wide application to other states): It was a corrupt system that allowed back-room politicking to redraw every 10 years California's boundaries for congressional, legislative and other districts. Legislators redrew lines to ensure reelection and protect their political parties. There is word for it: Gerrymandering. . . . Unfortunately, Californians apparently have traded one form of special-interest pandering for another.

If those who volunteered for the state's new redistricting commission believed that it would be a convivial civic exercise, last week's initial clashes over hiring legal and demographic advisers proved otherwise. The decisions that the 14-member commission makes on 120 legislative, 53 congressional and four Board of Equalization districts will affect not only political careers, but the state's ideological ambience for the next decade. An odd-bedfellows alliance of political reformers and right-of-center business and political groups, including former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, pushed two ballot measures that empowered the commission as the alternative to the Legislature drawing districts. . . ....

Eight names will be drawn at random Thursday from a pool of 36 finalists for positions on the state's new redistricting commission, and a Santa Monica College political science professor has calculated that there are 3.2 million possible combinations. What's more, Dr. Brain Lawson has figured the chances of names being drawn by gender, county of residence, income, ethnicity and what he calls being "incumbent friendly," basing his calculations on the detailed profiles of each finalist available on the Internet. He sees 11 of the 36 being "incumbent friendly" due to experience with redistricting and government, and names them in...

California legislators of both parties, then-Gov. Gray Davis and the George W. Bush White House made a pact with the political devil nine years ago by fixing outcomes of legislative and congressional elections for a decade. They agreed to redraw the boundaries of 120 legislative and 53 congressional districts to declare party ownership of each, lock in the partisan status quo and lock out real choice for voters. Since then, through five election cycles, there have been 765 legislative and congressional elections in California and in only about 15 of them have voters managed to overcome the intent of the...

The 620 remaining applicants for seats on the state's new redistricting commission are mostly affluent white male Democrats, according to a new statistical study by one of those on the list. Vladimir Kogan, a refugee from the Soviet Union who later became a journalist and political science scholar, reviewed the on-line profiles of all 620 to create his demographic and political profile. He is a researcher on governance issues for the Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, San Diego. Kogan found that 67.6 percent of those on the...

The speaker of the California Assembly last week spiked legislation that would have severely curtailed lawmakers' ability to accept concert and sporting-event tickets, meals, greens fees and other gifts from lobbyists. This was the same week that state senators - most of whom drive state-leased cars of their choice, which they fill up with gas and park at taxpayer expense - approved a bill that would compel local governments to curtail the amount of free public parking in their communities. Is it any wonder our Legislature's approval rating keeps sinking toward single digits? A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Karen Bass,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that California can thank legislative dysfunction for the recent passage of Proposition 11, which prevents state lawmakers from drawing their own district boundaries in 2011. The Republican governor appeared at the California State Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento along with leaders from government watchdog groups and the carpenters' union to celebrate Proposition 11. For Schwarzenegger, it marked a return to the stage of his famous 2003 recall campaign rally in which he called for an overhaul of California's political system. Among the proposals he announced was a redistricting change similar to Proposition 11. "At that...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking to get his reform mojo back. Buoyed by the passage of a redistricting overhaul he had sought for years, the governor who famously promised to "blow up the boxes" of state government is expected to press ahead next year with a broader government reform agenda ... . The goal: reverse the dysfunction of the Legislature, ... With many of his other policy ambitions stifled by the tanking state budget, reclaiming the reform mantle may be an opportunity for Schwarzenegger to burnish his legacy ... The narrow passage of Proposition 11, ... , gives...

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass is rounding out her leadership team. The latest additions: Paul Krekorian and John Pérez. The Public Policy Institute of California has released a survey of voters looking into why Californians voted for or against Propositions 1A (high speed rail), 4 (abortion notification), 8 (gay marriage) and 11 (redistricting). Find the full poll results on Capitol Alert's PPIC page. Most of the results are unsurprising. Evangelical Christians supported Proposition 8 at an 81 percent clip, while voters without a college degree (62 percent) were more likely to vote "yes" than college graduates (43 percent). One notable number...

But it was the unheralded passage of another initiative that may make the most history and crimp Democrat hopes for a prolonged era of dominance. Proposition 11, which passed with the narrowest of margins (50.8 percent), could mark the most serious challenge to the political class by voters since the foiled term limit movement of the 1990s. It strikes at the core pillar of power: incumbency guaranteed through gerrymandered districts. Californians took away from their legislature the power to draw its own districts--a key element of nearly uninterrupted Democratic control since 1970. The task will now be handled by an...

One looks like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. One is called the "Ribbon of Shame." Some have arms. Some have fingers. Many seem to defy logic. They're California's state Assembly and Senate - but not Congressional - districts, and they will change after the next Census. That's not new, of course. Districts change every 10 years. But because of Proposition 11, which passed narrowly last week, the new legislative districts that will take effect for the 2012 elections will be drawn by an independent commission, rather than by state lawmakers. That could have big implications for the state's balance of power in...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger teams up with former business partner (in Planet Hollywood) and actor Sylvester Stallone for a fundraiser tonight in La Jolla. The money goes toward passing Proposition 11, the redistricting measure on the Nov. 4 ballot. --snip-- Chairs of the events (those who give $25,000) get two seats at the head table, 10 dinner tickets and two photos each for two people with Schwarzenegger and Stallone.

T A X P A Y E R U P D A T E . . . from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (www.HJTA.org) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HJTA's 2008 Ballot Recommendations Propositions 1, 3 and 10 on this November's ballot, if approved, will add another $32 billion -- including interest -- to our alreadysubstantial debt burden. Vote no on Propositions 1, 3 and 10. With state and local governments massively in debt, HJTA also urges voters to reject all local bonds. HJTA recommends approval of Proposition 11. This will make legislative elections more competitive and politicians more responsive to average voters.

Reporting from Sacramento -- The chief cheerleader and fundraiser for Proposition 11, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has insisted that the push to change how voting districts are drawn is bipartisan. But the half-million dollars donated to the backers' campaign last week by Florida businessmen with Republican ties has fueled opponents' claims that it's a GOP power grab. "Republicans from Florida are giving huge donations to this initiative for one reason," said Paul Hefner, spokesman for the campaign against the measure. "They're convinced it helps their cause and hurts Democrats." At the posh Fort Lauderdale home of well-connected attorney and Republican backer...

Prop. 1A High Speed Rail Bond.  NOThis is the most outrageously expensive boondoggle in California’s long history of outrageously expensive boondoggles.  The ultimate cost of this project could end up exceeding $90 billion – or $10,000 per family – all for a train that goes from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours longer than it takes to fly.  It’s brought to you by the same folks who botched Boston’s “Big Dig.”  (I’m one of the official opponents of this measure.)Prop. 2 Farm Animals.  NOSorry, but farm animals are food, not friends.  Plan on somewhat happier cows and...

In an appearance in San Diego today promoting Proposition 11, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called passage of Proposition 11 "the most important thing." But Schwarzenegger also hinted at what good-government reform he might tackle next: open primaries. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled such a system in Washington state constitutional earlier this year. Political scientists generally believe open primaries lead to more moderate, centrist candidates. So here's what Schwarzenegger had to say today: "We will change the way the district lines are drawn and we will change the performance in Sacramento and will create more performance. And, of course, the next thing...

Jarvis Taxpayers Association Endorses Proposition 11 The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has announced the endorsement of Proposition 11 to stop the conflict of interest of lawmakers drawing their own districts and choosing the voters they want to help ensure their reelection. "The current system fixes elections so that fewer than five percent of state representatives face a challenge to their reelection," said HJTA president Jon Coupal. "This has resulted in a climate where lawmakers do not have to be accountable to voters for effectively addressing problems like on-going budget deficits and out-of-control spending." Proposition 11 will take the power to...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will campaign today with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for Proposition 11, an initiative to change how California draws its district boundaries. The two will appear publicly at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce offices, joined by representatives from AARP, California Common Cause and other organizations. --snip-- Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg have worked together to promote federal infrastructure investment. And the Republican governor once called Bloomberg his "soul mate," a reference to their shared moderate political views.

As reform measures go, Proposition 11 -- the redistricting reform measure -- is hardly a transformational law likely to supercharge activists (of any political stripe) eager to make Sacramento more effective and more accountable to the public. Proposition 11 is too complicated and too tame. Alas, it is the only measure on the November ballot that can improve the political climate in California. See how low the mighty have fallen. If Proposition 11 does not pass, it will signal yet another victory for entrenched state lawmakers, as it will bolster the system in place since the last redistricting in 2001,...

SACRAMENTO — If you want a less-polarized Legislature — if you want lawmakers who can actually compromise to get things done, such as agreeing on a budget — redistricting reform is not the answer. That's the finding of a report released Tuesday night by the Public Policy Institute of California, throwing into doubt the campaign message of Proposition 11, which would take the power to draw political boundaries away from lawmakers and hand it to a 14-member commission. Proponents have argued that the measure, which is on the Nov. 4 ballot, would rid Sacramento of the partisan bickering by setting...

Ban on Gay Marriage Trails -- Voters Split on Teen Abortion Constraints, Redistricting SAN FRANCISCO, California, August 27, 2008 — A majority of California’s likely voters oppose Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that would eliminate gay marriage, according to a statewide survey released today by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) with funding from The James Irvine Foundation. Likely voters are divided on two other closely watched measures – one that would require a parent to be notified before a teenager has an abortion and one that would take the power to draw legislative district lines away from...

Propositions that are on the November 4, 2008 General Election Ballot* Bond MeasureProposition 1 SB 1856 (Chapter 697, 2002). Costa. Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century.** **Note: The Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century was originally scheduled to appear on the November 2, 2004, General Election ballot. Subsequently, Senate Bill 1169, Chapter 71, Statutes of 2004, provided that it appear on the November 7, 2006, General Election ballot. However, most recently, Assembly Bill 713, Chapter 44, Statutes of 2006, provides for the submission of this Act on the November...