California Reapportionment

I am amused at the crocodile tears flowing from the eyes of Democrats as a result of the reapportionment plan proposed by the court-appointed special masters. Their protestations are as absurd as cries of unfairness from a swindler being forced to disgorge his ill-gotten gains.

Because of their gerrymander, Democrats were able to hold sizable and stable majorities in both houses of the state Legislature and in California’s delegation to Congress throughout the 1980s. This, even as California was voting three times for a Republican President, three times for a Republican governor and sending Pete Wilson to the Senate twice by comfortable majorities while sending Alan Cranston back just barely.

In 1982 I lost my first job out of college when the Democrats gerrymandered my boss, then-Rep. John H. Rousselot (R-Arcadia), into a district with a fellow Republican. Rather than run against his colleague in the district where his natural constituency was placed, Rousselot ran in the district where his residence was, a district created for a Latino Democrat. Rousselot narrowly lost that race, but only after putting up a spirited fight in which he took his beliefs to the people. That race, and Rousselot’s actions, redefined for me political courage and commitment to a set of beliefs.

I invite Democratic officeholders who truly believe in their philosophy, and think they have been marked for extinction as a result of the proposed reapportionment plan, to follow Rousselot’s 1982 example. They may lose a race, but the electorate will have been given a real choice at the polls, a choice that the Democrats have effectively denied this state for a decade.

MARK A. ROBBINS, Los Angeles