Redrawing the Political Landscape

Secretary of State Bill Jones, a Fresno vegetable farmer and cattle rancher, has been embroiled in some of California’s biggest policy debates. Crime: He sponsored the three-strikes bill. Water: He coauthored the hefty bond issue on last month’s ballot. Economy: The former Assembly Republican leader can expound all day about the business climate and jobs.

So your eyes naturally widen when this ambitious, 46-year-old politician lays out what he considers to be the very most important issue the state faces. It is--guess again--reapportionment, the redrawing of legislative districts once every decade.

Yes, he’s serious.

“It’s absolutely the most critical issue we have,” Jones says. “It will set the tone for California’s future in the 21st century.

“I know, people will say, ‘What’s he talking about? There’s education, jobs, water, crime. . . .’ But if we get this wrong, it will really set us back.”

As Jones sees it, Californians never will be fairly represented in Sacramento as long as legislators are allowed to create their own districts. Lawmakers are far less concerned about a community’s “commonality of interest”--not splintering it into weird pieces of gerrymander--than they are their own reelection interests. Carpetbaggers wind up representing communities they barely know; communities are represented by legislators who don’t fit the local politics.

It’s a simple game. The majority party draws districts to maximize its potential for retaining power. It steals Democratic voters from one district and shoves Republicans into another until a new district is formed that fits its political needs. Community needs? Get real.

Even most legislators of the minority party go along, groveling, because the game also involves creating “safe” districts for the maximum number of incumbents--Republican and Democrat--as long as the power balance does not change.

“Our only criteria was incumbent protection,” recalls Republican Tony Quinn, minority party consultant for the 1981 reapportionment.

“It’s a process of the politicians choosing the voters rather than the voters choosing the politicians.”

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Gov. Pete Wilson stopped all that, at least for this decade, when he vetoed the Democratic Legislature’s 1991 gerrymander. He didn’t even bother to negotiate. The GOP governor just shuffled off redistricting to the state Supreme Court, which handed it to three retired judges called “special masters.”

Republicans praised the court’s reapportionment as “fair.” Democrats criticized it, but only mildly. It’s hard to argue publicly against a plan that doesn’t kowtow to incumbents, but does create more competitive districts. Indeed, seven Assembly races in last month’s elections were decided by a total of less than 10,000 votes.

The court also tried to help Latino candidates. Four additional Latinos, in fact, were just elected to the Assembly, bringing their total to 14.

When the masters drew a district near Fresno that later was won by new Speaker Cruz Bustamante, for example, they explained “its shape was dictated by . . . the Latino population.” In fact, they said, three San Joaquin Valley districts were “the product of our efforts to maximize the Latino presence.”

The problem this poses for the Democratic Party, however, is that when Latino voters are bunched into one district, they then cannot be sprinkled strategically into two or more districts to improve party prospects. It may help a Latino get elected in one district, but it also helps GOP candidates elsewhere.

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Jones plans to sponsor a state constitutional amendment to turn over reapportionment to the courts. Permanently and completely. Don’t even let the Legislature touch it.

This will be particularly necessary, he insists, if term limits are tossed out by a federal judge--as many suspect is imminent--and incumbents again become entrenched.

Jones isn’t under any delusion that the required two-thirds legislative vote can be mustered to place his proposal on the 1998 ballot. But he’ll give the lawmakers one year, then begin collecting signatures for an initiative.

About that time he’ll either be running for reelection or the U.S. Senate. “I haven’t foreclosed anything,” he says.

Suspicious voters have rejected similar concepts in the past. Democratic pros I talked to still think it’s a dumb idea.

Says Phillip Isenberg, a savvy Sacramento Democrat just “termed out” of the Assembly: “Our system works reasonably well except for those self-interested parties who snivel they didn’t win.”

Republicans really should be sniveling now. Democrats just recaptured the Assembly--using the GOP’s preferred redistricting system.