Political Scramble Expected Over 7 New House Seats

California soon will reap a rich political bounty because of the 1990 census, but there is no particular joy in either Washington or Sacramento as leaders ponder the torturous process they face in carving the state into 52 new congressional fiefdoms.

Under the census figures, the Golden State will gain seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and in 1992 will elect 52 members to the House--more than any state has ever had and about 12% of the entire House membership of 435.

“This is going to be an ugly, ugly year,” one legislative consultant in Sacramento said Thursday as he contemplated the political bloodletting that could accompany the decennial process of allocating congressional seats on the basis of new U.S. Census figures.

Five of the seven new seats will go to Southern California, largely because of growth in predominantly Republican suburban areas. The two Northern California districts will be needed to accommodate a soaring population in the San Joaquin Valley, around Sacramento and in the new suburban communities fanning out east of San Francisco Bay.

At the outset, Democrats will be fully in command of the political pie-cutting since the Nov. 6 election results gave them increased control of the Senate and Assembly, which are empowered to draft both legislative and congressional reapportionment bills. The Democrats rule the present 45-seat California congressional delegation by 28 to 17.

But standing in the way will be Republican Gov.-elect Pete Wilson, who takes office Jan. 7 and has vowed to veto any reapportionment bill that does not offer Republicans fair representation within the California House delegation.

The situation is complicated by Proposition 140, the new state term-limits law that cuts off the careers of all present state lawmakers in either six or eight years and eliminates their lucrative retirement plans. With no future for them in Sacramento, ambitious legislators are beginning to covet congressional seats as never before.

“I think there will be some long knives out for the new congressional districts,” said the Sacramento consultant, who asked not to be identified.

In the past, the state Legislature tended to defer to California’s congressional leadership in drawing new House district lines. The late Rep. Phillip Burton (D-San Francisco) almost single-handedly drew the present 45 districts with a primary goal of crafting politically safe seats for incumbents and, in one notorious case, creating a district tailor-made for his brother, John, stretching across San Francisco Bay to do so.

With Phil Burton’s death, the job will pass to Reps. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento) and Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles), working with Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado) and John Doolittle (R-Citrus Heights). In a telephone interview from Washington on Thursday, Fazio said Phil Burton was guilty of “a little overkill” in fashioning the 1980s congressional districting plan, but that it does not favor Democrats as much as many Republicans contend.

Still, Fazio promised “a different approach and style this time, with more public involvement and nowhere near as much influence by any one individual, more public hearings and probably far more attention given to county and city lines.”

But Fazio and his colleagues will have to deal with a corps of state lawmakers who have an eye on Washington and will try to influence the reapportionment process so that the new congressional districts are built around centers of their own political strength.

“There’s no question that some may want to draw lines for themselves,” Fazio said.

If an influential legislator does not have a new congressional district available, that legislator might work to alter an existing district to make it favorable to his own Washington ambitions. Such ambitions are likely to pit not only Democratic state legislators against some incumbent Republican members of Congress, but also Democrats against Democrats.

The allocation of congressional seats has been a contentious and inherently political process ever since the beginning of the republic.

Until 1842, many states avoided drawing congressional district lines by electing House members at large. But Congress decided this practice violated the Constitution’s intent of having House members directly and frequently accountable to the people in local regions.

For more than 150 years, Congress avoided dispute merely by increasing the size of the House of Representatives to accommodate growth and shifting populations, from 65 seats in 1789 to 435 in 1910. The final size of the House was not established by law at 435 until 1929. The nation went from 1910 until the early 1930s without any reapportionment because of the ongoing dispute over the size of House membership. As a result, the California delegation soared in the early 1930s by nine seats--the most ever--from 11 to 20.

The traditional practice in redistricting is for the state party in power to draw district lines that maximize the party’s voting clout, usually by dividing heavy concentrations of its own party members into separate districts.

Over time, federal laws and court rulings have sharply curbed the ability of states to draw lines purely for political advantage. The primary constraint is that all districts must contain a similar population with a variance of no more than 1% or 2% from district to district. In California, the new districts should have an average of about 574,000 residents. With the use of computer-fed data from individual census tracts it is possible to draw districts that do not vary by more than a few residents.

Compactness also is a criteria. Where possible, entire counties, neighboring cities or other recognized communities of interest are supposed to be lumped into the same district.

Stretching districts over vast distances to bring in favorable voting groups is known as “gerrymandering.” In 1812, artist Gilbert Stuart whimsically drew a head, tail and wings on the map of a Massachusetts district and declared, “That will do for a salamander.” Observing this, editor Benjamin Russell added, “Better say a Gerrymander,” after then-Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry.

Fazio said he and Berman would strive for more geographical compactness in 1991. Neat district lines are not always possible, Fazio said, but he added, “I think there will be less creativity this time.”

Another critical factor controlling redistricting is federal voting-rights legislation that prohibits any plan that dilutes minority representation. This poses a special problem for Democrats who, in the past, have sought to maximize the political support of Democratic-leaning minority groups by dividing their numbers into separate districts. But clustering large numbers of Latinos, for example, into one district will not necessarily guarantee a Latino seat since many residents may not be eligible to vote or may not be registered, Fazio said.

The allocation of seven new seats to California, and the Prop. 140 pressures on state legislators to seek longevity in Congress, are not the only factors likely to lead to a major shake-up in both the Legislature and California’s House delegation in the 1990s.

Election year 1992 will be the last chance for veteran members of the House to retire and keep their campaign treasuries as personal income, an incentive to retire after the current term. And both California seats in the U.S. Senate will be up in the 1992 election. The prospect of a Senate seat already has lured at least two Democratic representatives, Bob Matsui of Sacramento and Barbara Boxer of Greenbrae. More House members--Republicans as well as Democrats--may join the race. They will have to relinquish their House seats to run for the Senate. The departure of any House member for whatever reason will ease the job of reapportionment drafters, eliminating the pressure to preserve a seat for an incumbent.

Robert Naylor, the former Republican leader in the Assembly, has predicted, “There will be an unprecedented musical chairs-like scramble as members of both houses (Senate and Assembly) seek congressional seats, Assembly members seek the vacated Senate seats and some incumbents run against others because of dramatic shifts in district lines.”

Writing in the California Political Review, Naylor said the partisan effect of this will depend on the shape of the new districts. That, in turn, “will depend upon the effectiveness of Gov. Wilson in keeping legislative Republicans unified enough to strike a bargain for districts that are fair from a statewide partisan standpoint as opposed to benefitting incumbents.”

But Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown Jr. (D-San Francisco) has said in interviews that the first order of business in drafting a redistricting plan is to satisfy as many incumbents of both parties as possible. By doing that, Brown might develop a consensus legislative bill that is insulated against a Wilson veto.

CALIFORNIA CONGRESSIONAL REAPPORTIONMENT

* What is it? Every 10 years, new U.S. Census figures are used to reapportion the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among the 50 states to reflect relative population gains or losses during the previous 10 years. Under the 1990 census, California will gain seven House seats, with its delegation increasing from 45 to 52, more than any state has ever had.

* The next step: In 1991, it will be up to the California Legislature to draw new Congressional districts to reflect the new seats as well as population shifts among the existing 45 seats. Five of the new seats will be south of the Tehachapi Mountains and two will be in Northern California. Leaders of both the Republican and Democratic House delegations will discuss their desires with legislative leaders who will draft the reapportionment bills. The legislation, reflecting further census figures that are not expected to be available until July, probably will pass sometime in the fall.

* What then? As with any legislation, the reapportionment bill will be sent by the Democratic-controlled Legislature to Republican Gov.-elect Pete Wilson, who takes office Jan. 6. Wilson has vowed to veto any measure that does not assure a fair balance of districts that are likely to be controlled by Republicans and Democrats, judged on the basis of current party registration in those areas. A compromise plan signed into law by Wilson would go into effect for the 1992 elections. If there is a veto, the Legislature could override the governor and put the plan into effect with a two-thirds vote of each house. Otherwise, the Legislature would have to try to come up with another plan acceptable to the governor.

* What if . . . ? Let’s say Wilson and the Legislature cannot agree on a plan. Then, most likely, the issue would land in the courts. In such a deadlock in the early 1970s, the state Supreme Court drew the lines for both Congressional and Legislative seats. In the 1980s, the Democratic governor and Legislature agreed on a plan, but Republicans challenged it in the courts. The case was finally dismissed in 1989. In the case of a protracted conflict, the courts could order 1992 elections held in the old districts or under a new plan with the understanding that those district lines could change before the 1994 voting.