California’s Great Redistricting Mirage
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By Peter Schrag
By the time you read this, California’s independent and presumably non-partisan redistricting commission may have turned its “preliminary final maps” into what it hopes will be its final final maps (maybe).
That means that the howling, which has been under way ever since the commissioners and their staff were first chosen, will get a little more strident and the threats of lawsuits louder.
There’ll be still more speculation about intra-party cannibalism: which politician will move into which other politician’s district. Will Dan Lungren muscle into Tom McClintock’s district? It’s entertaining for the junkies, but does anyone else really care?
By the classic political law that the smaller the prize, the nastier the fight, all that was probably predictable from the day in 2008 that California’s goo-goos and allied reformers managed to pass Proposition 11, shifting the power to reapportion the state’s Senate, Assembly and Board of Equalization districts from the legislature to the commission. A subsequent ballot measure added congressional districts to the commission’s jurisdiction.
For liberals, and a lot of good government types, the hope was always that the new system would increase the number of competitive districts, reduce partisanship, and make Sacramento a friendlier place.
Add Proposition 14, the top-two open primary ballot measure passed in June 2010, and the reformers’ hopes become even brighter. Under its terms, beginning next year, voters of any party may choose candidates of any party in the primary. The top finishers, again regardless of party, will compete in the general election. How we love non-political politics.
Given that Sacramento Democrats and Republicans can no longer collude in decennial gerrymandering to create safe districts for their respective parties, it’s hard to imagine that there wouldn’t be a few more competitive districts.
But don’t expect too much. Another classic political law warns of the unintended consequences of even the brightest reforms. Given the way that Californians have segregated themselves residentially, and since both Proposition 11 and federal law require that districts be drawn as much as possible to preserve community integrity, meaning social and economic segregation, our political demographics will still produce a majority of districts dominated by voters of one party or another.
But maybe the biggest frustrated expectation in this set of political reforms could be the hope of the left that Democrats may at last get the two or three additional seats in each house to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to raise taxes without Republican votes.
Democrats may get the seats, but don’t count on the votes. The Republican minority, in rigidly blocking any road to tax increases or, as this year, even a ballot measure giving voters a chance to extend the expiring taxes that the legislature itself approved in prior years, also protected Democrats from the voter backlash against the tax increases that they might have voted for. California Democrats have also voted for corporate tax loopholes.
If any new competitive districts produce those marginal Democrats, how eager will they be to vote for boosts in the vehicle license fee, the sales tax, or the gas tax? How willing would Gov. Jerry Brown be to sign such tax increases? In his last terms as governor his austere heart was always in thinking small for an era of limits. He stiffed the universities and never trusted big institutions.
California’s debt/deficit/budget problem – the nation’s problem – is not primarily structural; it’s not just the two thirds majorities needed to approve tax increases; it’s not just the Senate filibuster.
It’s cultural. We want a rich menu of public goods but don’t want to pay for them. Most of us, all hard numbers to the contrary notwithstanding, are sure we’re terribly overtaxed. Many of us aren’t sure that it’s our state (country) anymore and we’re damned if we’ll pay another cent in taxes for the education, health care and welfare of those illegal immigrants, or maybe any immigrants at all.
Maybe the new districts will generate some moderation, maybe even some leadership willing to change that culture. Certainly the coming months will see a lot of pre-occupation with the political, legal and ethnic shakeout that the new maps will produce.
But don’t count on any fundamental political revolution. During the past thirty-plus years the tax revolt and the hyper-distrust of government that Proposition 13 set in motion has hardened into popular orthodoxy. The nation began with a tax revolt; suspicion of government was always in our genes. It may take thirty years to change it – or maybe it will never change.
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Peter Schrag, whose exclusive weekly column appears every Monday in the California Progress Report, is the former editorial page editor and columnist of the Sacramento Bee. He is the author of Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future and California: America’s High Stakes Experiment. His new book, Not Fit for Our Society: Nativism, Eugenics, Immigration is now on sale.
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Any reformer who has been paying attention will already know that Prop. 14 isn't going to change the type of legislators we elect. Political scientist Boris Shor studied polarization and partisanship in the state legislatures of all 50 states for the period 1995-2010. His study covered 15 years, and was massive. He found no correlation between type of primary system and polarization. Although he learned that California had the most polarized legislature, Washington state had the 2nd most polarized legislature, and it has used either a top-two system or a blanket primary for most of the last 15 years. Some of the classic open primary states, like Ohio and Wisconsin, also had among the most polarized legislatures.
Even without this study, we should know this. California used a blanket primary 1998 and 2000, and used blanket primaries for all our special legislative and congressional elections 1967-2010. Those elections produced the same type of politicians. Also we have already used top-two for 3 special elections this year, and the same types of people win.
Peter Schrag paints with a broad brush that fails to reveal important distinctions.
It’s cultural? Whose culture? We are a society of many cultures.
We want a rich menu of public goods but don’t want to pay for them? First there is the question of "we." Who wants what? Then there is the question of payment. A starting point for discussion might be the thought that some people (who?) want public goods and want other people to pay for them. Then, for others, there is the question of whether the cost is reasonable or excessive.
Most of us, all hard numbers to the contrary notwithstanding, are sure we’re terribly overtaxed? Perhaps. But some of us are more concerned that our taxes are misspent. Taxes are the price we pay because we are not civilized. We just want our money's worth.
Many of us aren’t sure that it’s our state (country) anymore and we’re damned if we’ll pay another cent in taxes for the education, health care and welfare of those illegal immigrants, or maybe any immigrants at all? Well, some of us are certain that its not at all the great country that it was sixty years ago, and that misguided government policies (what is government - see below) are the reason. As for immigrants, everyone in the world, almost, is descended from people who came from somewhere else. So what? Sometimes, immigration is beneficial, in the sense of enriching the gene pool, or in the sense of reinforcing a culture, or positive diversification of a culture. Sometimes it is not, if it results in overpopulation. Then there is the matter of survival of cultures. Rome fell because it ceased to be Roman. The "Native Americans" perished because of "immigration." We don't seem capable of a rational discussion of immigration - criteria for entry; numbers; conditions - instead we have clichés, such as "We are a Nation of Immigrants." What has that to do with public policy?
The nation began with a tax revolt? In a sense. The reasons for the revolution are stated in the Declaration of Independence, and go beyond taxes.
Suspicion of government was always in our genes. Probably. But most of us realize that government in the sense of collective action is necessary to our well being. The problem, for many of us, is not the vague “government,” but the corruption, inefficiency and incompetence of so many (a) elected representatives; (b) appointed agency heads; and (c) thousands of GS 10s, 11s and 12s. Consider the despicable behavior of Tom DeLay (R-TX); Duke Cunningham (California’s own); Bob Ney; William Jefferson, John Doolittle (another Californian) and many others in congress. Look them up and ponder. Consider the actions of Phil Gramm in undermining financial regulation, the actions of Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin in brutally attacking Brooksley Born (Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission) for her efforts to regulate derivatives. Then there was the chicanery of the INS under Doris Meissner; the sleazy behavior at the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service; the incompetence at State with regard to issuance of visas, etc., etc. Consider the incompetence at so many agencies that resulted in the atrocities of 9/11.
Not that there aren’t some fine, capable people working for government, local, state and federal. I’ve dealt with a number of them. Unfortunately, Gresham’s law applies.
See:
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/pin/
www.corporatecrimereporter.com/corruptreport.pdf
Political Corruption in America – Mark Grossman, Grey House Publishing
It may take thirty years to change it – or maybe it will never change. Things won’t change until we have a disaster sufficient to grab and hold the attention of the people. That hasn’t happened yet. Even 9/11 didn’t have an effect. Nor has the financial crisis. Think about what it would take, based on history. Then pay attention for early warning signs.
http://www.house.gov/representatives/#state_ca
What we need are serious grass roots efforts to find and fund honest candidates in the primaries. Otherwise, we will continue to have a congress that money bought.
Watch, if you have the stomach, Casino Jack and the United States of Money. (Get it from Netflix).
Some of government employees and members of congress (including representatives from California) listed at http://thinkprogress.org/report/abramoff/
are in jail. Some are still in congress!