June 4, 2007. 1 comments. Topic: Redistricting/Reapportionment

“COMPETITIVE” ASSEMBLY SEATS IN CALIFIORNIA – IS REDISTRICTING REFORM NEEDED? OR, DO G.O.P. CANDIDATES

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By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

An election district is either “safe” for the Democrats or Republicans or it is “competitive” - a seat where the outcome is not predetermined by party registration numbers.

I would argue that any Assembly District carried by Phil Angelides is a “safe” Democratic seat. Logically, then, seats carried by Governor Schwarzenegger that were also won by the Democratic candidate for Assembly are “competitive” districts. Or safe Republican seats. I would argue any seat where Richard Mountjoy defeated Diane Feinstein is a safe GOP seat.

Schwarzenegger carried 22 districts won by the Democrat for Assembly.

Mountjoy carried 19 seats against Feinstein, all also carried by the Republican for Assembly.

So 41 seats in the Assembly are invulnerable to challenge by the party out of power.

But that leaves 39 seats that have been carried by either the Democrat or the Republican. These seats are competitive between the two parties – by definition.

So why don’t seats change hands? Why have the Democrats controlled the Legislature from time immemorial (excepting only 1994-6)? Well, we Democrats have a slight edge in registration. If you count only Democrats and Republicans, we have about a 51-49 edge 6, 667,437 of the 12,029,910 voters registered with either the Dems or the Reps. With 51% of the two-party registration, we control 54% of the Assembly seats.

But the real reason we win is that the Republicans don’t contest all of the seats which are empirically competitive in a serious manner. They don’t spend enough money. They don’t recruit Assembly candidates that share Schwarzenegger’s attributes, personally and ideologically. And they don’t run political campaigns that are innovative or intelligent.

The typical Republican campaign involves pounding Democratic and Decline to State voters with an incessant barrage of negative message designed to persuade those voters either not to vote at all or at least to by pass the Assembly on the office block ballot.
The message: that the Democrat is a ‘tax and spend liberal’.

Yawn.

But let’s give the Republicans some credit. They have managed to win 13 of the 39 competitive seats to the Democrats 16.

So what will redistricting reform do to this structure? Add to the number of safe GOP seats? Add to the current stack of 39 competitive districts at the expense of Democrats?

Why is it needed in the first place?

If I were a Republican, I would be arguing vociferously for public financing of political campaigns – so I could move into those seats currently held by Democrats but not ‘safe’ because of registration.

And I’d be searching for candidates that looked more like Arnold Schwarzenegger and less like Richard Mountjoy.

Bill Cavala was Deputy Director of the Assembly Speaker’s Office of Member Services where he worked for over 30 years.

He attended undergraduate and graduate school in the 1960’s and received a doctorate in political science at UC Berkeley. He taught political science at UC Berkeley during the 1970's while he worked part-time for the State Assembly.

Cavala left teaching at UC Berkeley and went to work for Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in 1981 until his tenure as Speaker ended in 1995, and he has worked for his five successors as Speaker up to and including Speaker Fabian Nunez.

Mr. Cavala manages election campaigns for Democratic candidates.

Comments

anonymous June 4, 2007 at 10:04 PM

They don’t recruit Assembly candidates that share Schwarzenegger’s attributes, personally and ideologically.
So spake Cavala.

But let's examine this a little more deeply than things are usually examined in Sacramento (or political science). Why don't the Republicans nominate more centrist candidates (because, obviously, if they did, they could wipe the Democrats out--let's face it, there were two Democratic landslides in the last century--Roosevelt (the Depression) and Johnson (Kennedy nostalgia and Goldwater being nuts). The Republicans, on the other hand, constantly wiped out Democrats (all the elections except Wilson before the Depression,
Eisenhower, Reagan)).

The reason is clear--the Republicans don't run more centrist candidates because they already have power running right-wing nuts. Why? Because it takes two Democratic votes to overcome one Republican vote, due to the 2/3rds vote on revenue measures. What the 2001 redistricting did was create enough safe Democratic seats that the Democrats have been able to hold out against the 1/3 veto block the Republicans had (otherwise, the Democrats would have been forced to cave on Schwart's deamnds for cuts on the poor). If redistricting "reform" takes place, the Democrats will be caving all the times as "centrist" (read threatened) Democrats will give in (the editorials will demand "reasonableness", which means rolling over for the Republicans--after all, none of these editorial writers are living on $3/day for food (like people on food stamps)).

The only real reform that makes sense making a trade for the redistricting power is putting the state back on a democratic, as opposed to plutocratic, basis--a simple majority to pass revenue measures. After all, while the current Democratic leadership in the legislature is fine, they are no more exceptional than the previous leaderships. But if redistricting "reform" is put into law, look for a lot more budget cuts on the poor, the blind and the disabled.

“COMPETITIVE” ASSEMBLY SEATS IN CALIFIORNIA – IS REDISTRICTING REFORM NEEDED? OR, DO G.O.P. CANDIDATES

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