A Padlock for California’s Democracy : Redistricting: Democrats are primed to distort elections for a decade. Why are Republicans silent?

If Dianne Feinstein and Pete Wilson ever want to debate real issues, they might talk about the biggest stake in the governor’s race. This issue is enough to put me, a Democrat, in Wilson’s camp, but Wilson avoids it as steadfastly as Feinstein.

The issue is reapportionment--and control of California’s Legislature and congressional delegation for the 1990s. Our choice for governor will determine how the state’s legislative and congressional districts are drawn to the beginning of the next century. A Feinstein victory will padlock the state’s representative democracy for another 10 years.

Feinstein as governor would do what Democratic Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. did in 1981: sign a partisan gerrymander that maximizes Democratic seats in the Legislature and Congress. Any doubt that Feinstein will toe the redistricting line for her party is removed by her alliances. Already close to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, she met with state Senate Democrats after the June primary and won their pledge of fund-raising help. If Pete Wilson is elected, the historical model will be the reapportionment struggle of the 1970s. A Democratic Legislature then faced off against a Republican governor, Ronald Reagan. After Reagan vetoed one redistricting effort and stalemate set in, the state Supreme Court named a panel of retired judges to draw the districts. Nearly everyone agreed the plan they came up with was fair.

What happened in the 1980s--and what will happen in the 1990s if Feinstein is elected--was a triumph for California’s Democrats and a disaster for California’s democracy. You don’t have to be a Republican to find it unfair that elections for the entire decade are won by Democrats, not on the merits of the candidates or issues, but on the way the districts are drawn.

Even worse is the impact on our political system when legislators are insured against challenge at the polls. Thanks to pots of money and other perks of office, the advantages of incumbency are already potent enough; gerrymandering makes them all but insurmountable. In 300 races for the California Legislature from 1984 through 1988, only four incumbents have been defeated--compared with 17 from 1974 through 1978. Among California’s U.S. representatives, only one incumbent has lost--against six in the previous decade. And most incumbents have been winning by lopsided margins that make voting a vacant ritual.

With legislative elections atrophied, our political system increasingly deforms. The explosion of ballot initiatives--one-sided, overly broad, ill-considered, misleadingly advertised--has various causes, but the unresponsiveness of the California Legislature is surely one of them. It may also be no coincidence that a Legislature screened from public accountability becomes a moral wasteland. Nor should it be any surprise, when elections count for so little, that voter participation falls as low as it did in June’s primary--to 27% of adult citizens.

Both Feinstein and Wilson, and their backers, recognize reapportionment as the biggest stake in their race. It is probably why Wilson was persuaded to run. It is why the Democrats, led by Willie Brown, spent about $5 million last spring to fill the TV screens with cynical sales pitches by Jack Lemmon and James Garner in a successful effort to defend their redistricting power against Propositions 118 and 119.

It is not hard to figure why Feinstein stays mum on reapportionment. Even for California’s dwindling and jaded voters, killing competitive elections for another 10 years isn’t the shiniest campaign promise. But why won’t Wilson touch the issue? Reapportionment does tend to make voters’ eyes glaze over, but could the campaign be duller than it already is? Maybe Wilson shrinks from such a “partisan” issue because of the edge that Democrats still hold over Republicans in California’s voter registration. He should give the voters more credit, whichever way they are registered.

The health of California’s political system counts for more than keeping one’s own party in power no matter how. Since electing Dianne Feinstein would chloroform California’s elections for another decade, I’m for Wilson. But where are Wilson and Feinstein?