Safe Seats in House Keep True Races Rare

California has 53 seats in the House of Representatives, nearly twice as many as any other state, and every one is up for grabs in November -- technically.

In the increasingly predetermined reality of House races, just a single seat is really in dispute. And even that one, in the Central Valley, fails to make the cut when Democrats and Republicans list the truly competitive races in the nation.

California, often alone in its embrace of political novelty, is merely the most obvious example of a national phenomenon: congressional races that aren’t races at all.

Just two of New York’s 29 seats are considered competitive this year. In Florida, one out of 25 involves a race. Of the 435 seats in the House, experts from both parties say, only about 30 are in serious doubt.

“ ‘Coronations’ is a good word when talking about congressional contests,” said Rob Richie, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Voting and Democracy. “We’re getting back to the divine right of kings.”

Several factors have led to the paucity of real contests, including the high cost of campaigns and the natural advantages of incumbency.

But those who study the subject say the most important driving forces are the careful, computer-aided redrawing of congressional districts and the willingness of incumbents from both major parties to embrace new political maps that help them retain their seats.

The redrawing of political boundaries, a time-honored but once-coarse craft involving considerable guesswork, has evolved in the computer age into a fine science.

Many people insist that they vote for the individual, not the party. But most voters are reliably partisan. Run their voting histories through a few computer programs, and the political demographics of a neighborhood can be calculated with accuracy, allowing creation of districts with stable Democratic or Republican majorities.

The results can be seen in election returns: A decade ago, 91% of House members battling for reelection won. That lack of competitive races seemed dramatic until the next cycle, in 1996, when 95% returned to the House. Since 1998, the figure has risen to above 98%.

And the victories are not close. Although the framers of the Constitution designed the House to be the most fluid branch of government, the one best suited to shift along with public opinion, the average winning candidate goes to Washington, D.C., with 70% of the vote.

Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, is among the many observers who argue that the carving of districts -- nipping off bits of cities and slicing off slivers of counties and otherwise ignoring what might seem obvious lines both governmental and geographic -- has helped exacerbate the sometimes bitter divisions between Republican, or red, areas of the country and Democratic blue areas.

With legislators at both the state and federal levels increasingly elected from noncompetitive districts, their toughest tests often come in primaries rather than the general election, Gans said. As a result, Democrats tend to move toward the left, Republicans to the right.

“If you want to know why we have such polarization in our politics, it’s because of this,” Gans said. The dearth of competitive congressional races “is the single most important procedural problem that needs to be addressed in our politics.”

As much to demonstrate the preordained nature of congressional races as to guide voters, the Center for Voting and Democracy has taken to predicting outcomes based primarily on the partisan divide in a district. The center has made 1,200 predictions over the last several years. It has been wrong once.

Not all believe that’s such a serious problem.

“When we had all of these cross-party votes in Congress ... people complained about no clear party positions. We had Southern Democrats, liberal Republicans,” said UC San Diego political scientist Samuel Popkin. “Now we’ve sorted it out, just the way people used to want it, with responsible parties.”

People who blame redistricting for the sometimes sour tone of modern politics are reaching for an overly simplistic explanation, Popkin said. “After 1988, people blamed negative advertising for all the problems in civic America. Now it’s congressional redistricting,” he said.

And although many civic activists decry the decline in competitive races, voters on the whole seem less concerned.

Ted Costa, the longtime California activist who helped push the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis, circulated signatures this year in a so-far unsuccessful effort for a ballot initiative that would strip the Legislature of its power to draw district lines.

Costa compares congressional races to a novelty shop flyswatter that comes with a tiny hole in its mesh and the words, “Give the fly a sporting chance.”

“That’s how they treat the voters,” he said of incumbents and supporters of legislative redistricting. “They say, ‘Oh, yeah, this is a real election. The other guy could win.’ Nonsense. The other guy can’t win.”

But, he concedes, the reaction from voters has been tepid. Every 10 years, people get upset about redistricting, he said, “then they forget about it.”

Others suggest district lines that divide Democrats and Republicans wind up providing both groups with representation rather than close contests in which nearly half the voters are disappointed with the outcome.

Still, the lack of competitive congressional races, combined with a lackluster Senate race and a presidential campaign in which neither party is seriously contesting the state, has helped make California feel this year like the state that politics forgot.

One exception is the closest California has to a competitive congressional contest. It features Republican state Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield and former Democratic state Sen. Jim Costa of Fresno squaring off to replace the retiring Democratic Rep. Calvin Dooley of Hanford in the 20th District.

Republican notables -- including Vice President Dick Cheney, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- have stumped for Ashburn. The National Republican Congressional Committee has committed $406,000 in advertising money to Ashburn, in a year when candidates in the hottest races are spending more than $2 million.

Despite Ashburn’s high-profile visitors and backing from his national party, national Democratic officials thus far have calculated that Jim Costa, who represented much of the area for 24 years as a state legislator, can beat Ashburn on his own.

Elsewhere in the state, plenty of challengers are willing to run despite the odds, sometimes with an eye on making a point or setting themselves up for a future race.

Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, the Democratic leader in the House, faces two: a 30-year-old Republican attorney with a stellar curriculum vitae but little campaign money; and a 26-year-old student at San Francisco State University, a member of the Peace and Freedom Party with no reported campaign money who pledges to close the Pentagon if elected.

Henry Waxman, the 15-term Democratic incumbent from the 30th District, which winds from Beverly Hills through Malibu to Calabasas, faces Republican Victor Elizalde.

A Sony movie executive, Elizalde has built one of the more robust longshot campaigns, in part by reminding voters of the duration of Waxman’s tenure and, by implication, that of other House members.

Against an aural backdrop of classic disco music, Elizalde’s movie trailer-cum-political ad playing in Los Angeles-area theaters flashes scenes of roller-dancers, people with immense afro hairdos, BASIC-language computers and mirror balls.

“A lot of things have changed since 1974,” the ad reads. “Except your congressman.... Vote Elizalde for Congress.”

It’s a clever ad, political observers and moviegoers agree. And, despite evidence to the contrary, Elizalde said he believed the national GOP would give him the money he needed to air it more widely.

“I’m absolutely optimistic that the national party will further recognize the importance of this race and our ability to win,” he said.

Political observers, however, predict that Waxman will have little difficulty retaining his seat. Across the state, the expectations for his colleagues are about the same.

From 1970 through the 1990s, redistricting in California was a partisan battle. But after the last Census, in 2000, the maps were redrawn not only with precision but also with a new goal.

“The last gerrymandering wasn’t about Republicans versus Democrats,” said Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, who was one of just a handful of incumbents to publicly oppose the redistricting. “It was about incumbent retention. Representatives from both sides of the aisle signed on to protect their seats.”

Before the lines were redrawn, for example, Democratic Rep. Lois Capps of Santa Barbara represented a 23rd District that was about 53% Republican. Her reshaped district is now 55% Democratic, hugging the coast and its generally liberal communities so closely that at points it ventures just two miles inland.

On the other side of the aisle, Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) represents a district that covers the San Gabriel Valley and parts of San Bernardino County. His 26th District was 51% Democratic before redistricting. Now it’s 55% Republican.

As a result, Republicans see little chance of unseating Capps, and Democrats have made little effort to defeat Dreier.

Those who advocate changing the system differ on solutions. Some, like Ted Costa, argue that a panel of retired judges -- or retired or not-retired teachers, or just about anyone other than elected politicians -- should handle the mapmaking.

Others advocate Iowa’s method, which prohibits the splitting of counties and the drawing of district boundaries in a way designed to protect incumbents.

The Center for Voting and Democracy favors a system once used in Illinois, in which districts are fewer and larger and represented by three House members.

Such models tend to lead to districts in which two members of one party and one from the other are elected, but all three represent the same constituents.

Each system has drawbacks. One reason the Iowa model works well is that it’s used in Iowa, a state that is politically quite uniform across its geography, unlike most states, where urban or coastal areas tend to be more liberal, and rural and inland regions more conservative.

But advocates for change say almost any system is better than the one used in much of the country.

“There’s a hundred ways to do it,” said Ted Costa. “But the one way not to do it is the way we do it, to let [politicians] have any say in mapping their own districts.”