Slow Down and Strike a Deal

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desire to put retired judges in charge of legislative redistricting and have them immediately redraw the lines is commendable. It can’t be healthy for democracy that not a single California legislator or member of Congress lost in the 2004 elections. And who can blame Schwarzenegger for impatience, because if he’s reelected, he’ll be out of office in 2010, two years before the next scheduled redistricting.

Still, he should wait. Majority Democrats say they are willing to give up their gerrymandering ways if the governor abandons his initiative quest for a mid-decade redistricting. Schwarzenegger should take the deal, for two reasons.

First, he probably can’t get his new political map when he wants it. His office dillydallied last fall and didn’t develop a redistricting reform plan of its own, so it’s stuck with one that would be on a November special-election ballot at the earliest.

That’s too late to affect the June 2006 elections. For a June election, courts have made it clear that candidates and county election officials need to know the districts by the end of January. The November-January time frame is simply too short for retired judges to be appointed, new districts to be drawn, public hearings to be conducted, precinct lines to be redrawn if necessary and the final map to be pre-cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Voting Rights Act.

The earliest elections for a redistricting initiative passed this November would be June 2008, a date that has its own problems. Map drawers would be using 8-year-old census data. They wouldn’t know where the state’s population gains had occurred.

It’s highly probable the courts wouldn’t stand for this. So as a practical matter, California may have no choice but to wait until after the 2010 census to draw new political maps.

The second reason Schwarzenegger should make a deal with Democrats is that Republicans have a lousy track record -- four losses in the last 23 years -- in persuading voters to adopt redistricting reform plans. It isn’t hard to figure out why: California is overwhelmingly Democratic.

The governor’s initiative probably won’t break this pattern. Written by conservative political activist Ted Costa, it has no Democratic support. In turning redistricting over to retired judges, the initiative risks alienating conservative voters suspicious of the reputedly liberal judiciary. The Costa measure would not rule out retired liberal members of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the one that struck “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Not one GOP-sponsored reform plan ever got a majority vote in Republican Orange County.

Schwarzenegger is a master salesman. But in 1984, when President Reagan carried California by 1.5 million votes, a redistricting reform initiative involving retired judges went down to defeat despite its sponsorship by a popular governor, George Deukmejian. California is even more Democratic today.

If the Democrats believe that they can easily defeat Schwarzenegger’s redistricting initiative, why would they offer to sacrifice their ability to gerrymander California when the next redistricting rolls around?

Because they want some give on term limits.

Democrats and many Republicans would like to see term limits changed so they can spend their entire careers in one house, something they cannot do now. According to the California Target Book, a publication that analyzes and handicaps state election races, 12 of 20 state senators and 34 of 80 Assembly members must give up their seats this year. Many of these legislators could continue in office if they could serve for 12 or 14 years in the same house.

Democrats have another consideration. In the bipartisan deal to gerrymander the state in 2001, they gave Republicans lots of safe seats, and their party has not gained any since the redesign. There are actually fewer Democrats in the Legislature today than were elected in 2000, the last year of the non-gerrymandered districts.

When former Vice President Al Gore carried California by 1.3 million votes in 2000, Democrats ousted four GOP congressmen. In 2004, operating under the sweetheart redistricting, no Republicans lost even though Sen. John Kerry carried California by 1.2 million votes.

Gerrymandering is no longer the friend of the Democratic Party. The GOP majority in the House of Representatives is cemented in place by a nationwide set of gerrymandered districts. The more astute Democratic consultants have figured out they have little to lose if they give up this power, and perhaps much to gain.

So it is no surprise that Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez has said publicly that he’ll support non-legislative redistricting, as long as it is not done until the new census. Because of term limits, not a single legislator elected in 2004 will be in his or her current district in 2012, so these lawmakers feel far less need to protect current district lines.

Therein lies an opportunity for Schwarzenegger to achieve major long-term reform: He should join with Democrats in the Legislature and place a bipartisan constitutional amendment on the ballot to achieve his redistricting goal. Republican hawks are urging the governor to push ahead with the Costa initiative -- maybe they think the fifth time will be the charm. But Schwarzenegger and his political team should recognize that Democrats won’t vote for it, and he can’t have his districts in time anyway.

There’s a victory in the making for the action governor, if he’ll just take the opportunity to grasp it.