The District Stealers

Where did the center of California government go? Who left the empty hole where the moderates used to reside?

The answers are complicated, but let’s start with Fred Keeley of Boulder Creek, who served Santa Cruz County well for six years in the Assembly and looked forward to running for the state Senate’s coastal 15th District seat when Republican Bruce McPherson termed out in 2004. But a funny thing interrupted Democrat Keeley’s progression to the Senate: After the 2001 post-census political redistricting, he no longer lived in the 15th District, but in the 11th, where two other Democrats were fighting it out in the primary for the open seat.

Keeley, now the Santa Cruz County treasurer, was not alone. A similar fate awaited other talented and termed-out Assembly members viewed as likely state senators, including Helen Thomson of Davis and Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara.

“The good old boys screwed Thomson out of a Senate district,” observed Tony Quinn, a longtime Republican consultant on redistricting and coauthor of the California Target Book, the definitive guide to legislative and congressional elections. “They drew the lines for the boys.”

The Democratic leaders in the Legislature who helped guide the map-drawing even gave up seats they could have won. In the process, they passed over more talented legislators in favor of those viewed as chummier team players.

What was Keeley’s problem? One Sacramento insider says, “Maybe he had too much of a good-government streak in him.”

Obviously, good government was not the aim of the 2001 redistricting plan. It was a blatant redrawing of the 173 legislative and congressional districts to maintain the status quo of Democratic and Republican seats.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is demanding that the drawing of new districts be taken from the Legislature and sent to an independent commission. The Times strongly supports this effort.

Another redistricting victim was Democrat Thomson. She built a vigorous record during her six years in the Assembly, getting more bills signed into law by both Republican and Democratic governors than any other Assembly member. Thomson had planned to run in 2002 for the state Senate’s 4th District, which stretched from her Yolo County base near Sacramento to the Oregon border. It was a GOP-leaning seat, but Thomson, another moderate attuned well to her region, would have had a strong shot.

But the mapmakers took Yolo County out of the 4th and tacked it onto a newly elongated 5th District, held by incumbent Democrat Michael Machado of Linden, to make Machado’s marginal district more Democratic. Thomson ran for county supervisor.

Further south, the Senate seat that Democrat Jackson would most likely have won was moved far inland. The Santa Barbara portion was put in the 19th District of conservative Republican Tom McClintock, who easily won reelection in 2004. Jackson now oversees Speak Out, California, a progressive advocacy group.

The remnants of good government in California are fragile. Every election in which safe districts make the primary election tantamount to owning the seat pushes candidates further to the left and the right. The center is increasingly depopulated.

The road to restoring moderation begins with a change in the way districts are drawn.