Democrats’ Ploy May Backfire

Two years ago, the Legislature moved the date of California’s primary to the first week of March so the state could have a voice in the selection of the president. Democratic leaders made sure the March date stuck for 2002. That would prevent Republicans from launching a referendum against redistricting plans that will pass in a few weeks. But what was once regarded as a clever ploy may cost the Democratic Party control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s election.

Nothing is as Byzantine as the politics of redistricting, the once-a-decade process of redrawing congressional and legislative district boundaries. Twenty years ago, when Democrats controlled reapportionment, as they do this year, the late Rep. Phil Burton of San Francisco masterminded a redistricting scheme that gave state Democrats a half dozen new representatives.

In response, angry Republicans successfully qualified a referendum to put the plan to a vote. But a Democratic-controlled state Supreme Court voided the referendum.

Since the current court has a majority of Republican judges, Democrats didn’t want the GOP to challenge another Democratic plan by asking the court to impose its own redistricting solution. So they decided not to give Republicans enough time to orchestrate a referendum by shortening the run-up time, from June to March, to the 2002 primary. Thus, California voters will nominate candidates for the 2002 November elections next March.

But Democrats have been too clever by half. The federal Voting Rights Act requires a congressional redistricting plan to receive “pre-clearance” from the U.S. Justice Department. Trouble is, Republican Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft runs the department.

In order to draw safe districts for all incumbent Democratic representatives, the reapportionment plans must dilute Latino voters in districts of endangered incumbents, especially in those districts of five white Democratic members of Congress in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside, and the three black Democratic congresswomen in South-Central Los Angeles. These districts have shown dramatic Latino population gains over the past decade, yet none have Latino members of Congress, nor are they likely to very soon.

Thus, the Justice Department could legally hold up any redistricting plan on the grounds that it diluted Latino voting opportunities. If it did, that would mean no new districts in place for the March 2002 primary, and the possibility that the courts would impose a temporary plan that could unsettle a lot of incumbents.

But if both parties are happy with the new districts, the pressure would be on the Justice Department to look the other way.

That is what Democrats decided to do. A congressional redistricting plan released this weekend gives safe districts to all 32 Democratic members of Congress and creates 20 Republican seats, thus maintaining the two-party balance from the last election. Interestingly, California’s one new district, because of the state’s population growth, will end up being a Republican seat in the Central Valley.

The new Republican district pops up in the Central Valley in part because of the Democrats’ need to solve their “Condit problem.” Reportedly, Rep. Gary A. Condit (D-Ceres) will be given a heavily Democratic district, but one with thousands of new voters who would never vote for him. He will be, in effect, gerrymandered into retirement.

As part of the deal, Republicans have agreed that the district of incumbent GOP Rep. Steve Horn will be made Democratic, and it will gain more Latino voters. Horn’s will be sold as California’s new 53rd district and a gain for Latinos reflective of the 2000 census. Truth be told, Horn won in 2000 by only 1,768 votes, and the seat is rapidly trending Democratic, anyway. If his district were left alone, Horn might lose next year to a Latino state legislator whose district overlaps part of Horn’s: Latina Democratic Assemblywoman Sally Havice has already declared for the district.

Part of the shell game of redistricting is to buy off potential opponents by giving them what they already have, or will have soon. Reportedly, Latino leaders are being urged to be happy with this “new” district and not to object to the bipartisan deal, even though it denies them a handful of other districts in rapidly growing Latino areas of the state.

Most fascinating, however, is what this deal does to Democratic hopes to gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats will add one new district, but Republicans will be safer in many of their districts, like Rep. David Dreier, whose San Gabriel Valley is rapidly going Democratic and would probably fall to a Democrat within an election cycle or two if left untouched.

If Democrats had done this year what Burton did 20 years ago, they could have gained as many as four congressional districts in California. Instead, they have apparently opted for the safety and security of their own incumbents rather than push through a wildly partisan reapportionment plan that would end up in court.

Republicans in other states haven’t been so kind. In Michigan, for example, the GOP squeezed six Democrats into three districts. But the need to get a redistricting plan quickly precleared in order to be ready for next year’s March primary has blocked such partisan behavior in California.

But that bipartisanship may deny the Democratic Party gains from California that might be used to offset likely Republican wins in states where the GOP controls redistricting. Right now, it looks like Republicans will gain at least a half-dozen seats, maybe more, from a national reapportionment that has shifted seats from Democratic Frostbelt states to the Republican-leaning Sunbelt. It makes the hill that Democrats must climb to retake control of the House of Representatives that much higher.