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“COMPETITIVE” ASSEMBLY SEATS IN CALIFORNIA – IS REDISTRICTING REFORM NEEDED?

OR, DO G.O.P. CANDIDATES NEED BETTER CANDIDATES AND BETTER POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS?

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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.

Posted on June 04, 2007

Comments

The logic of your spin is deeply flawed, Bill (as is your math: 13 + 16 = 29, not 39).

The logic problem is this: you claim there's 39 competitive Assembly seats, yet the same party has one EVERY ONE of those seats every time since the 2001 redistricting.

It's possible that your jab at Republicans boomerangs: are Democrats also that inept at candidate recruitment that they cannot win any of the Republican-held seats? I don't think so.

I think your definition of competitive is simply but deeply flawed, and the reality is that the 2001 bipartisan sweetheart gerrymander carefully and systematically removed every ounce of competitiveness from the plan that you and your Republican accomplices could possibly eliminate.

Posted by: Doug Johnson at June 4, 2007 08:12 PM

Some additional problems with your line of reasoning:

1. When the lines were drawn, three of the Assembly seats currently held by Republicans were supposed to be "Democratic districts," so if the Republicans were as completely inept as you suggest, they wouldn't have won (and held) those seats through several elections.

2. Your solution to the problem is hilarious. If you were a Republican, you'd support using taxpayer dollars on campaigns (something Republicans rightly oppose) simply for political gain, and you'd try to recruit candidates who are Republican in name, but who vote with the Democrats on everything. In other words, if you were a Republican, you'd still be a Democrat.

I do appreciate, however, that you cited financial disparities as a primary reason for Democrats having a majority. That's honest analysis, because many election outcomes do have a lot more to do with outspending the Republicans than with the Democrat candidate's out-of-the-mainstream ideology.

You complain about the Republican negative campaigning, but the Dems do the same thing (Republicans are all environment-killing, woman-oppressing, minority bashers who want to give tax breaks to the rich, screw the poor, and give firearms to infants and toddlers). When the Dems spend more money to sway uninformed voters with their hit pieces, they often win.

Posted by: John Public at June 5, 2007 12:07 AM

Excuse me.

Pot?

This is Kettle.

You're black.

(I sincerely hope you didn't write this with a straight face, Bill.) lol

Posted by: Gary at June 5, 2007 07:26 AM

Ha, this is a funny/great analysis. Keep in mind that Schwarzenegger won by making a fundamentally dishonest, free-lunch proposal to voters: "My opponent likes to tax... but what I like to do is spend." No one but a Hollywood megastar could have realistically gotten away with that. The press never called him out on this (with the slight exception of Weintraub).

Fundamentally, the constant, relentless and nearly crazed whining about taxes message has declining amounts of traction in significant parts of the state. Especially now that there's a powerful, one-word image of what that results in. ("Katrina") People just get burned out on a message after a while.

Leopards don't change their spots - if I were an R I have no idea what I'd do. Maybe try to recruit more hollywood megastars to run.

Posted by: Dan Ancona at June 5, 2007 08:24 AM

>Leopards don't change their spots - if I were an R I
>have no idea what I'd do. Maybe try to recruit more >hollywood megastars to run.

Yes! Where's Mel Gibson when you need him!

Posted by: Joe Voter at June 7, 2007 11:11 AM

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